Gas attack!

No, this is not an account about the infamous chemical warfare assaults suffered by soldiers during world war I (later grouped under the class WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION). This is something else more benign.

It appears that my son Josha, who is now a month and 6 days old is perenially struggling to rid himself of a lot of gas from his tummy. Flatulence, I guess, to us adults. It seems really laughable but I guess to Josh, it is anything but a laughing matter. In fact, I catch him making all manner of odd sounds amidst screwing his face into an equally large amount of odd expressions. Some may say this looks cute but I swear that if Josh could talk like we can, we'd hear an earful about all this. I further suspect very little of it would be very nice to hear.

Mulling over this seemingly trivial matter of infant intestinal gas has reaffirmed to me that everyone of us on this planet, no exception, have our own personal hurdles to face and overcome each day. It doesn't matter if you're the richest man in the city, with hordes of fawning sycophants at your beck and call. Neither does it matter if you're Mr. Politico from our infamous "house of representa-thieves" who sleeps on a bed of hard earned cash (earned with such difficulty by somebody else of course!). The bottom line is, you've got your personal struggles everyday, every minute. It only really ends when you're dead (and somehow, there's a distinct possibility it may not really end at that point....). The only way to face all of this, is to do so the way everyone has been doing it for the last fifty thousand or so years: taking it one day at a time.

So there's Joshua's intestinal gas which he manfully deals with, a day at a time. I've heard it said that babyhood is bliss and infants sleep like they haven't a care in the world. Seeing all this convinces me this may not altogether be true. So in the meantime, we'd gotten a routine infant stool test to see if the problem is in his infant formula. I guess we'll find out soon.

As for me, there's my own personal hurdle to face when the results are out. It is called pre-Chirstmas traffic, Metro Manila style. Oh yeah, an expatriate who's a client once remarked that the Philippines shuts down on December 16 every year and goes on holiday mode, only to resume work in January. Just experiencing traffic in Metro Manila's pre-Chirstmas thoroughfares makes me wonder what he meant by shutting down. Judging from the view down here at street level it just seems that EVERYONE is out in force.....