Letter to the great @michaeljosh

Dear Sir Josh,

I was backreading my Tumblr the other day, reminded of how totally depressed, hopeless, helpless I was last year. I asked you, if Jeff had not left, would you still have hired me? You said yes. I hope that's true. Because I cannot even begin to ponder on the alternate reality of me not having met you, worked with you, of not having met Neil and Stacy, who, in a year, have become my brother and sister. Of not having met Gayna and Justin, who, by the way, I feel sorry for. Neil and Stacy had 1 1/2 years with you, I had one, the time they spent with you is just way, way too short.

There's a line in this movie that goes, "How much did they first pay you to give up your dreams?" I watched that movie during the 6 months of my depression, I remember feeling scared shitless of someday maybe having to answer that question. But then you called me, and welcomed me "home" and taught me, mentored me, and Sir Josh, because of you, I will never have to answer it. That is the most amazing gift anybody can give someone, thanks for giving it to me.

You oversell me sometimes, you know. Build me up, sign me up for things I'm not sure I can even do. You know how frustrated it was becoming for me not being able to write -- and one day, you said, "go write an article for Online." It felt like finally taking off ground, that was my respite, and you understood. Remember the couple of AVs I got to write because of you? I may not have shown it, but I'm sure you know, it meant the whole world to me. You get just how important for me this job is, and day after day after day, you give me opportunities to make things happen for myself.

I remember that one day in Bacolod where we set up an interview with the Azkals (thanks to the power of Facebook, and great charm :p) and watching you, for the first time, do field reporting. I was in total awe of how good you are in everything you do. Sometimes it's overwhelming, listening to you talk, and you staring at me, waiting for my input in the discussion, when all I can do is think "Man, this guy knows his shit." But still you let me talk, and talk, and talk, senseless many times, but somehow you find a way to pick pieces out of what I said, weave it into something brilliant, and credits me for it! You once told me, you're putting in your all to teach us, to set us up for bigger things, and that you are not threatened of the possibility of us being better than you someday. Which is laughable, because you're a genius it actually makes me sick, no way we'll be better than you, but 3/4 of our time together, you made us feel we are. That was the formula that worked. Only you could have pulled that off.

I told you I have already reached the 5th stage - Acceptance. And I think I have, I actually did well today. But a Harry Potter reference just had to find me, didn't it, it just had to. "When Dumbledore left, it was the end of Hogwarts being a safe place for Harry to live in."

Maybe we were all wrong setting up a relationship as close as our team's, knowing that working together in a fickle industry, we would have to part ways some time. Maybe it's that. But screw it, if I have to do it all over again, I wouldn't have done it any other way. There is no person better to have coached my 1st year in my dream job than you. I desperately hope I could extend that time, but this has to happen, you have to go, and I have to let you.

I found a blog that I did a few weeks before you hired me. The blog reeked of anger, I was a writer, hell I was writing a piece on Senator Salonga, and I was....unhappy. "There's a severe lack of trust in leadership," I wrote. That was our team's gold, you were our gold, the insurmountable trust in your leadership that has allowed us to grow into better practitioners, better people. My mom sends her thank you.

I will miss our constant clashes in ideas. Your angry g-Chats when I do something that falls off your standard, and me, instead of hating you (as with every other employee), hating myself for letting you down. Simply put, I will miss you, so badly it may even make me cry. Congratulations, you have always wanted to prove my "Nobody makes me cry" statement wrong.

But get this, like Harry and Dumbledore, we will someday meet at King's Cross Station, and we will sit down, and you will tell me, looking back, that it had been the plan, for me to carry out a prophecy, and I will realize I'm even luckier than Harry, because you, Sir Josh, are not "just inside my head" you're real, and my dreams came true because of it.

You're a great teacher, Sir. Not just that, you're a great friend, and as I told you, brother and shrink at times.

As Stacy put it, there will never be another @michaeljosh in my life. And while that's too damn tragic, I know too well that the weight is a gift. So this pain of parting ways with you? This will all just be manifested in making you proud.

"Lian, you have to grow up," you tell me often, I can't promise you that I will, because you know how much this affects me and I'll probably be angry and tortured for a while, but this I promise you Sir Josh: I will do you freaking proud.

Love,

your favorite :-D

(At 3am in the Newsroom, after deciding to stay when the Libyan rebels proclaimed they had

taken hold of Gaddafi bastions, and accidentally getting to cover the East Coast quake. Fun times)

Falling Slowly

The first time I heard Glen Hansard and Marketa Inglova's 'Falling Slowly,' I thought wow this is a really good song. Then I heard it again, and learned the words, heard it again, downloaded it, heard it again, put it on my repeat playlist, and just when you think there's only so much time to devour a song, you hear it again on a movie it was made for, with lead 'actors' that turned out to have actually 'fallen slowly' for each other in real life, and a story that defies the foundation of this theory we call the 'Happy Ending.'

In one of Glen Hansard's live performances, he introduced the song as a "story about going to a party with your girlfriend, and she goes off to get a drink, and you're standing there on your own, and you look across the room, and you see this girl you utterly fancy, it's not mental, you just feel it, and you realize that it's your girlfriend. You're like cha ching!"

But what if you don't have the 'cha ching' moment? What if, when you look across the room, staring at this beautiful person you just desperately fancy and you realize, he's not your boyfriend? What if when you look across the room, you find that nobody's even there?

And Miluju tebe? ('It's you I love' in Czech) What if you can't say it? What if there's no one to say it to?

What I loved most about the film 'Once,' despite the characters remaining nameless throughout, is their not ending up together. The guy fancied the girl, the girl loved the guy - at a whim, on a romantic hill in Dublin, days before deciding she wanted to make it work with her husband. And it ends there. Him going to London, going back to the love he once lost and chasing a dream. Her staying in Dublin, rekindling a marriage. Was it a sad ending? No. It's life. It's not perfect, but it's tragically brilliant when it hits the right notes.

I think that even though longevity and consistency make for a wonderful life, sometimes you have to look at it in frozen frames, pick out moments when the world stood still and you said to yourself, "cha ching! this is it," no matter how long it lasted for. In a span of weeks, a guy met a girl he at least loved for a moment, and those moments were incomparable only because they shared the same sad music. And that whiff of a memory, of meeting a girl, and singing in a music store after knowing her for only a day, has a potential of lasting forever.

When you're 21 and still single, every conversation you will have will more or less include a question why you haven't found love yet. How do you answer something like that? They'll ask, "don't you want to?" "aren't you ready?" But of course you want to, and you're ready. But when have wanting and being ready ever merited realization?

You could be standing all the way across the room, looking out a window to nothing, and feeling happy by default. And you say, "wait I'm happy here." Sometimes, that's enough, and you can only wish for more moments like that. Like tonight, as I write this, and on the 15th time today that I've played this song, I look across the room, and I realize, I am, in fact, happy.

Cha ching.

Besides, "games that never amount to what they're meant will play themselves out" right? It falls slowly, and sometimes on a rather different path, sometimes painful, but it falls in whatever place it should. It doesn't mean it's not a happy ending.

It's just life. Raise your hopeful voice. You have a choice.

Life to the Twenty somethings

It's too early to call it a midlife crisis, too late to call it puberty. It's the time of your life where you're too old to show off and too young to screw up. The time you're pressured to "go out there," "have fun" and "see the world" when you can barely afford a decent meal.

It's the time of paradoxes. Season of the bipolars. Age of depression.

Your decisions could determine the next 10 years of your life. The no's and yeses you give out could ultimately draw the line whether you're gonna marry your true love, or someone who makes sense, or if you marry at all. Whether you get married in a beach, or at the city hall; whether you get to live in your dream suburban house or in an urban broken home.

It's all being decided at this very moment, when all you have the energy for is battle PMS. The world is staring you bluntly in the face, asking "What the hell are you going to do?' and you, well, you don't know.

It's not that you don't know what you're doing. It's that you want to do everything. You want to travel, you want to fall in love, you want to be dedicated to your job, be the best at it, you want to change the world, and there is just so little time to do it all.

Hollywood actress Helen Mirren once said: "The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening."

When you are finally at a liberty to do everything you want, that's when it gets the scariest. Because what if you can't do it all, what if you can't do anything? You can no longer blame it on the perils of being too young, or too much responsibilities, you can only blame it on yourself and the fact that at your best, you were the worst.

And it's messing up your head. You're at a sweet spot of having aged but maintaining a little innocence. The perfect time to be responsible, but to dream big. The time you're allowed to see the world through rose-tinted glasses because you're young, and idealistic. You are part of the future, and you can actually change the course of your generation.

It's a lot of pressure.

Mostly on yourself. When you look in the mirror and see a twenty-something so unsure of herself, when she should be weaving magic.

But as I said, it's the time of paradoxes. You're chasing the unknown.

Scrambling for a dream you're not even sure exists.

And you're falling and you're sinking, and you take on a destructive path into the labyrinth of suffering out to your great perhaps.

There's no other feeling.

21st

Turning 21 on the 18th. F yeah. I started to blog wish lists on my 18th birthday. It's been 3 unproductive years of wishing :-D

But the kicks you get out of just the process of thinking about what you want to get, googling for images, and the expectation that lasts for 2 minutes - it's enough gift.

You never know what might arrive on your doors, after all on Harry's 11th birthday, he got a letter from Hogwarts. Here's to the hope that maybe, as I turn 21, something magical happens.

But I'm willing to be materialistic in the meantime:

An iPod Nano. Just like the one I lost. I have terrible dreams about it.

I need it when I take the jeep or the train. I need it when I walk around alone.

I need it when I eat by myself. I need it when I write. I need it as I sleep.

I need it, basically.

This is a book light, in case you were wondering.

Because I don't have a bedside lamp.

It's a story of a carnival couple madly in love who decided to chemically engineer their children,

resulting to a family of freaks. I love it. Can't find it anywhere though.

'Looking for Alaska' was one of the best reading experiences of my life. The closest I've come to feeling the same lately was the Hunger Games trilogy. I want that feeling back. I'm taking a risk with John Green - anything from him. (But maybe not 'Will Grayson, Will Grayson.' I'm still upset with David Levithan.)

Yes I know I said I will not fall into Apple's lair. But about everyone I know who uses iPhone look happy, and digitally contented. I want the same life, please.

(This one's a hint for my Sister)

Or you know, you can just give me bottles of Nutella and I'll be just as happy.

Or awesome tees.

Or just leave a One Tree Hill/Harry Potter quote or lyrics from Coldplay/Snow Patrol on my Facebook wall. I'm not hard to please.

Cheerios.

Reality Bites

My best friend has lately been blogging about the Winona Ryder movie "Reality Bites." She was just quoting characters from the movie, and until tonight, she has not written comprehensively about how she's feeling. But I knew why, because I assume we'd have the same reasons if I was to also blog about that movie.

"You better do it now, and you better do it fast because the world doesn't owe you any favors." When I was 15, graduating from High School, I had a complete set of dreams. I had my life planned out, I was going to pass UST, become the school paper's editor, win writing awards, and graduate Cum Laude. Only one of those happened, that I went to UST. Looking back, I have regrets, would I have cared to be the school paper's editor or Cum Laude? Probably, but in conclusion, I think going to UST was enough, the things I didn't do and didn't get were in exchange of lessons and motivations I hold dear to me now.

By 4th year, I assessed myself, I had a knack for story-telling, I was getting decent feedback. I had two targets: GMA and Inquirer. At least one of those came true. But it wasn't easy getting there, I did sports, business (for a very brief while) and then settled when I thought I felt reality bite: I was going to be a writer for a Magazine. I was ready to make that job forever, except that against my acceptance was unhappiness. There was something wrong. And then someone called, my future boss. And my life, after months of wandering lost, was back on track.

Am I happy? Yes. Is it everything I hoped for? More. Is it enough? Not yet. And that's the point. It's never enough. You get a trial period, sink into the excitement of something new and good, and then lose it, for the search of something better. And then you get it, and then you want more, again.

You see friends, classmates, colleagues, who, at your age, have achieved more than you have, who are doing the things you want to do, living the life you ache to live. It triggers you into questioning whether what you're doing, where you are is the right thing. Of course at that moment, it's not, your mind is already tainted by the illusions of what could be. Then you sleep it off, so the next morning you could wake up feeling good about yourself, and regaining the happiness that momentarily slipped off.

I had plans of taking a Master's degree or a crash Journalism program; of working freelance in London or New York, just to fulfill a fantasy of living abroad. Experience the apartment-hunting, interviewing room mates, getting chinese in the middle of the night, taking the subway, checking voice mails. I had plans of having a piece published on Inquirer's Young Blood, or meeting a favorite writer over coffee (which might happen, by the way). I had simple plans too: learn how to play guitar, drink alcohol, kiss somebody, and go out of town alone. (I did get out of town, several times, but with friends.) Plans that take a backseat to obligations to my job, familiy, and bank account. I've always said I wasn't going to write for money, but I have to admit, it's getting increasingly harder to keep that principle.

For 2 years, I've been holding on to this title: "Dreams come true in Manila." Over time, ideas have come on how to execute it, who to get as subject, how to start it. It's just always been at the back of my mind to do a project that will both fulfill a personal goal, and something more that "sounds cornball but I'd like to somehow make a difference in people's lives."

When I stop and sit to think about what I'm going to write, I come to a halt to a sentence that begins with, "I." How was I going to write about dreams coming true when I don't know for sure if mine have. And I think that it will be a long-running struggle, because who can tell whether your dreams have come true? Who is to say that it has climaxed, and who's to say that it has stopped. Lelaina was right, "The answer is... I don't know."

We don't know. I will be turning 21 in October, would I be the person I was going to be by the time I was 21? I had a list, an idea of who I was going to be, but at the end of the day, reality does bite. "The only person you have to be by the time you're (23) is yourself."

And you just have to hope and make sure that that person is happy, and that she's doing what she should, because dreams come true everyday that you have it. And everyday is another day to be yourself.

The Bernidos: A love story

Both Theoretical Physicists, you'd expect a constant stream of heavy science when you talk to them. Well, that's just half right.

Commenting on husband Cristopher's schoolboy addiction to Marvel Comics and its mutant heroes, Maria Victoria Bernido, 'Marivic' to friends says, “Mutation is very possible now. You're synthesizing; if you go down to the molecular level of nature and combine it with engineering, it is possible.”

Before the topic of mutants, the couple talked about tackling the biological application of Physics for their 6th International Workshop in 2012. They said these kinds of conversations relax them.

It was during the middle of a no-class day at the Central Visayas Institute Foundation (CVIF), the high school the Bernidos revived in 1999 which earned them a Ramon Magsaysay Award last August 2010. They had most of the day off, and they revel in the fact that they could talk about Science without running the School at the back of their minds.

Still, they were in School that day, both alternately leaving the table to check on things.

The self-proclaimed workaholic couple, who admit to being jaded by “the same interview questions,” laughed when I said was writing their love story.

Not Too Bored After All

When they met in 1982, Marivic was an instructor at the University of the Philippines Department of Physics and had no intention of marrying anyone. “I didn't want to get bored,” she recalls thinking at the time. Marivic was a girl who spent high school solving the most difficult mathematical problems simply because they were difficult.

Little did she know she had a male equal, Cris Bernido. When they met, Cris was a visiting professor at the University of the Philippines while taking his doctorate Physics degree in Albany, New York.

Cris eventually became department chairman and he and Marivic had frequent conversations on the backwardness of the Philippines in terms of science, among other things. Marivic was slowly realizing that before her was someone who shared her views and aspirations. And, soon enough, love was born.

Lovers' Talk

Never in the young couple's wildest dreams did they imagine that, 28 years later, their love would serve the cause of Philippine Education in a way that would make the world sit up and take notice.

The cornerstone of CVIF is the Dynamic Learning Program, a student-focused teaching strategy. The program has earned the couple admirers from the global academe. The local media, meanwhile, focused on their decision to leave the Big Apple to live in Jagna, the rural part of Bohol where Dunkin' Donuts is as rare as the couple's decision to leave the First World.

The Bernidos say moving to Bohol was no sacrifice. “We have long fantasized to live close to nature,” Marivic quips.

Cris says that when they talk of love, a lot of it has to do with the trees, the silent breeze, solitude, meditating and, of course, science. Their dream is to build a Research Center atop the Ilihan Hill, a 10-minute trek from the mercado (market) where a small chapel stands overlooking Jagna's main roads.

Although that dream is yet to become reality, the Bernidos have been hosting the Jagna International Workshop for Physics for the past 15 years. It has been attended by such luminaries of the world stage as Nobel Peace Prize Winners Gerardus 't Hooft (1999) and Frank Wilczek (2004).

Radical

In the 1990s, public secondary education in the Philippines became free, so private school enrollment dropped and many teachers began transferring to public schools. Thus began the decline of CVIF.

When the Bernidos took over, students didn't know their decimals and fractions, and couldn't even compute the circumference of a circle. Cris found it lamentable since, he recalls, in high school he was already predicting the distance and time of projectile motion.

“Your goals are high, and reality is just way below,” Marivic points out. To remedy the situation, the first thing the Bernidos did was to ban calculators. Second, they reduced non-class days.

In Jagna, as in most remote provinces, the town fiesta is a big deal. So big that the school had to hold off classes for a month to focus on festivities. This led to the Bernidos' most drastic transitional act: fire some teachers.

For 70 years—starting from when Cris' great grandfather was Bohol Governor—CVIF had been run a certain way. Then came these rich physicists from New York changing too many things. People were angry. “There were very painful decisions,” Marivic admits, “but we had a goal for the school.”

The drastic measures taken by the Bernidos led to a drastic improvement in the quality of teaching as well as CVIF graduates.

Before the Bernidos took over, the passing rate for the University of the Philippines College Admissions Test (the UPCAT, what many consider the toughest in the country) was 0. This year alone, nine CVIF students have passed the UPCAT. An increasing number of CVIF students have gone on to college.

The One

“We didn't want to be just consumers of science and technology. We wanted to have a chance at a bigger success,” Marivic recalls, sharing that this mutual vision was what told her Cris was The One. Cris had proposed through a letter, telling her they should get married because together they would “build a nation.”

After a six-year, long-distance relationship—Marivic took her post-grad studies in New York, while Cris returned to UP to teach and flew across Europe for his post-doctorate studies—they finally married in 1988.

What about babies? “After realizing we were not having kids, we accepted that there was another plan for us,” Marivic says. “And that was to have 498 intellectual children instead.” The couple never bothered to find out why they couldn't have kids. They focused on building their own version of home.

“But there's still so much more to do,” says Cris. Among them will probably be the reconstruction of the 1930s main building, which used to be a cinema house, as well as modernizing the school in terms of structure and equipment. Marivic admits progress is slow. “Hindi pa namin nasusundan, naluluma na yung nasisimulan. (We haven't even resumed the work, and already, the structures we built are wearing down.)

Despite the tight budget, the Bernidos are determined to “never ask for dole-outs.” It has been their principle from day one. “Breaking points came often,” Cris says. But they were set to do anything to stick to their no-handouts policy. Once, they even took advantage of an airline overbooking mix up to receive US$400 worth of compensation, right at the time their bank account had been depleted to a mere US$10.

Passion

Although 78% of their students are scholars, they still have to help out others—especially those who bucked the odds and were going off to college. “There was a time when all of them asked for an allowance at once, and we didn't know where to get the cash,” Marivic recounts. “We are never really childless. We actually have a handful.”

Like busy parents, the Bernidos hardly have any time for themselves. They've never been to a real vacation in a decade and have not had a television for 11 years (the latter, by choice). Cris affectionately blames his wife for their lack of downtime. “She feels her time is better spent on research,” he says.

The Bernidos' day starts at seven in the morning for the flag ceremony. They're home by five. During their free time, the couple does research on the Internet. On weekends, they speak at conventions. More lecture invitations pour in during summer breaks. “One day, we will,” Marivic promises when asked when they would take a trip to relax. Cris only smiles.

Sweetness

From time to time during our visit, Marivic would ask her husband if she looked nice. At one point, she teases Cris into singing the song he used to her during the early days of their romance. Cris finally agrees. Marivic gets up and stands behind Cris' shoulder, her hand resting on it as she sings along. After 22 years, they are still passionately in love.

Their love story will continue against the backdrop of Jagna. “Manila or New York has no appeal for us anymore,” Cris says. When asked if there is nothing more they desire, Cris chuckles and replies, “For a climber, there's always another mountain to climb.”

“Ad infinitum,” Marivic agrees.

The analog hearts

What makes a great song? Is it the lyrics? Is it the beat? Is it the voice behind it? Your favorite artist? The personal story you discover behind the writing? Once during an American Idol season, one of the judges said Siobhan has a quality that just eats up the entire stage. And that's true. But when the show's done for the night, who do you listen back to? Which song would be put on loop on your itunes, which would have a quality that just eats up your entire room, and would have meaning when all the lights are gone, and there's just you and the music?

I got my first walkman when I was around 10. My tapes were mostly Spice Girls, Cranberries, Lionel Richie, and (of course) Freestyle then. That was the time of appreciating albums, listening to every track. The difficulty of getting through the next songs made it inescapable to listen to the whole thing. Now it's just always that one song you google to get the title of, download, and between everything we have to get done in a day, we miss out on the other songs in the album, or the other albums from the artist.

And then there was the discman. I got mine at a very pivotal moment of my life: my grade school graduation. It was a graduation gift. That was my Westlife era, I had all the albums, and though I didn't quite relate to all of them at the time, I felt like I did, and they were the only thing that made me feel better. My sister then introduced me to Edwin McCain and Goo goo dolls. It was my understanding that High School girls during that period had - they just had to - listen to 'I'll be' and 'Iris.' So I did, I liked Iris. Everything was changing at the time, I was leaving my childhood friends, my family, and changing continents. Could you imagine how uncomfortable it was to sleep with the discman playing overnight? I never found the right place in my bed where it would not poke me and jolt me awake in the middle of the night. But for all the comfort it offered, I can't really complain.

I miss CDs. My mom always hated the fact that it doesn't take more than 2 weeks for me to break the CD case, and lose the disc amid a pile of indiscernible stuff inside my room. Do you remember the CD pull-outs? How it's terribly disappointing to find only pictures and not song lyrics? And when you do find lyrics, it feels almost an obligation to pore over the words. Of course it helped that there was MTV, who provided us with the must lists. For some time, it was a dictator of taste among the young generation, and it did a good job. At least for me, it introduced me to Coldplay.

What were the hits when you were in HighSchool? I remember it was a big time for the OPMs. Sponge Cola had just released its first album 'Palabas', and boy was it brilliant. I have never really gotten over Neon and Gemini enough to carry on with them through their succeeding releases. It's just that when I think Sponge Cola, "I know I can never be enough to replace your whatever" automatically plays in my head same as when I think of Hale, I sing "I really really need you here tonight" even when at the time, I knew squat about needing somebody. I just knew that whatever those words were, it might mean something enough to affect me.

I think song's meanings aren't absolute. My best friend's happy song is One Republic's Apologize, as one of mine is Snow Patrol's You could be happy even if to the majority (or to common sense) they are heartbreak songs. But you can't really fight the feeling inside you - if it makes you happy, it's a happy song. Augustana's 'Boston' is close to the hearts of many for its moment-stopping piano intro, and for most, it could be that. To me its the getting of lover and moving out to Spain thing. That line just says so much about all the frustrations in my life that sporadically finds me in the most inconvenient times of the day. And just to listen to it, even without the piano, it makes sense to me probably not in the way it makes sense for some.

My friend, who is a Sara Bareilles super fan, told me Sara wrote 'Love Song' as a protest to the record execs who kept telling her to write a Love Song, when she didn't want to. When I first heard it, I thought it was a modern theme for feminism, and it probably still is despite Sara's intent otherwise. Isaac Slade was also quoted as saying that 'You found me' is dedicated to the moments when he wanted to meet God in the sidewalk to ask why life was that way. Weird that I also connected to the song like that. Though for some, it's hopeful. Whatever it means to you. As long as it makes sense, right?

And then comes the ipod. God in the form of Steve Jobs' gift to mankind. There was the shuffle feature, the itunes genius, the most played feature. It was the golden era for the music lovers. Not discounting the influence of TV Shows, movies that led the way to a google search of a song, which ends up to a whole weekend of indulging in an album from a newly-discovered artist. One Tree Hill gave me Keane, Nada Surf, Jimmy Eat World, Gavin DeGraw, Wakey Wakey, Kate Voegele and so many more. Sometimes I look back to the days when we didn't have ipods, or the internet, would I have discovered the music I have, would I have owed so much to songs as I do, would I have grown up depending heavily on it? Or would I have carried on with my McCain stance of loving a song for its fuzzy exterior? I don't know. But I'd like to think I would have still loved it as much, no matter how.

So I go back: What makes a great song? It's when you hear it, either for the first or the thousandth time, and everything around you just falls apart so nothing in the world exists but just you and the words that make that moment worth staying alive for. Even if it's just for a moment, even when you press stop, the sorrow resurfaces and you're back to being terrified. What matters is you had that moment, of clarity, of tranquility, of assurance that this world is not so much a bad place.

I have not had an iPod for 5(?) months now. I have also not had the chance to download and restore my music library. There was a night when I had to get up at 1 am in the morning to turn my room over to try and find that iPod, which never turned itself in, and which rendered me sleepless that night. I needed my music so much that when a taxi radio played U2's With or Without you the next night as I was pulling in to the door of my building, I almost didn't wanna get out. Speaking of U2, I once walked the stretch of Ayala Ave. in Makati aimlessly with only 'Beautiful day' to assure me that I was not lost. And that I'll probably find my way back.

Last weekend, I began the work of downloading. By Saturday I had almost 10 albums and 30 songs of variety. I woke up Sunday morning doing nothing until sunset but lay in bed and listen. I just kept still, and immersed as if I was meeting a special friend for the first time and rediscovering things about myself in the process.

It was a great day. They were great songs, and they tell me that this is probably a great life.