Lost in the Immaterium

I don't know if its my PC or whatever. The final result was that the pictures I wanted to load in the last post did not come in. My cousin Mako who is a 40k fanatic would say that the picts were lost in the immaterium. Whatever. I hope they come out now.

A pretty good weekend

The month of May is almost over and for that i am very very glad. This month appears to have dragged on too long.... too many aggravations and too hot to boot! I wish classes start already so that kids who are not supposed to be where they are can be put where they are supposed to be!

We ate out at Superbowls at Greenbelt 3 and Joshua loved it too! Ana and I think that Joshua's going to be afflicted with wanderlust in his life sooner or later. We took a ton of pictures as usual and everyone had a fun time.

Mass at AIM in the morning was pretty good too. Father David had a way of getting straight to the point which was what we all appreciated. Some priests have this habit of prolonging a rambling and pointless sermon. I liken this to an incompetent dentist prolonging a painful tooth extraction. In either case, people suffer. That's why we stopped going to mass in San Lorenzo Village. No offense to the celebrants but the mass sermon ultimately degenerates into a session of story-telling-a-lie (as we used to say in my cadet officer days) filled with media gossip (something Ana and I despise like the plague), half-truths (or half-lies?) and absurd urban myths. All in all, the whole excersie becomes a farce, like the priest is going through the motions and trying to meet a quota of 30 minutes minimum time for a rambling sermon.

I guess sermons of this type are our pet peeve. We were at Christ the King last week and the priest also did a number on the people over there. While I was very understanding of his handicap in speaking English (he would have been better off if he talked to us in Tagalog), I couldn't make sense out of his seeming obsession with the Da Vinci Code. During the last ten minutes of an already circuitous, drawn-out and increasingly pointless sermon, he takes it upon himself to sprout the in-vogue party line of the local church: the Da Vinci Code is a lie and Dan Brown is a heretic. Good Catholics like you and me don't watch such movies nor read such books.
Nice, I'd have forgiven him for the aimless sermon if he just went on ahead with the mass, but he just had to go on (in his halting, terriible grammar) about how heretical the Da Vinci Code was....

I firmly believe that God gave all of us free will. He even gave us the freedom NOT to worship or reconginze him if we chose to do so. Implicit in the freedom he gave us is the freedom to read and watch anything we wish to do so. Of course, corollary to our freedom is the responsibility which goes with it. While you are free to read and watch anything you well damn please, you're likewise ultimately responsible to yourself and to your brethren as to what you will do after watching and reading what you choose to do so in the first place. With this, I don't think any religion or system has a damn right to tell me what to read and what to watch. Show me a religion or a system that advocates this kind of "big brother is watching you" attitude and I'll show you a religion or a system that tells its constituents what to think. After all, if you arrogate unto yourself the right to stop me from educating myself, you're practically already doing the thinking for me.

You can warn me, you can suggest and point me to the right direction - but you can never think for me. Thanks, but God gave me my own brain to do that for myself.


Anyhow, this rant has gotten too long and too cumbersome already that the point behind this post is almost forgotten. All in all, it was a good weekend in an otherwise good month, save for the usual heartaches and disappointments (but this time, the heartaches and disappointments are leading me to a clearer realization on what to do next in my life).

As to the charges of heresy, I'll keep those in abbeyance and watch the Da Vinci Code. Good thing the Catholic Church here has no Ordo Hereticus from what I've seen. Still, I'll be looking behind my back and keep my heavy bolter ready. You'll never know when an inquisitor might be getting the drop on you.....

Living a Lie?

I once ranted and raved about this.

I guess kids should be taught this the first thing they enter school: life is not what you were led to believe it to be. But then again, maybe not. If you take away their idealism before they even got out into the world, civilization will just collapse overnight.

Still, i was walking into the building yesterday when I saw one of the new large conspicuous signs outside the building: THIS IS A SMOKE FREE BUILDING.

I had everything I could from doubling up and laughing until I could not breathe.

Maybe the genius who ordered that sign to be put up should mozey along to Unit 1409 East Tower.

Smoke free my arse.

Feeding Redux

My Uncle Nio from the United States once remarked that Joshua seems to have more pictures of himself than my uncle, and my uncle is already an adult! Well, that seems to be quite true.

On the subject of pictures, I took these shots when we gave Joshua another dose of real food four days ago. This time, it was all natural rice gruel (here termed as "lugao"). He loved it but I guess he is still working on downing the solid pieces of food. I was taking a video of this at about the same time when the kid looked like he was choking. You can imagine the attendant chaos that followed soon afterward. Even the later semgment of the video turned out to be like something out of reality TV. Oh well....

The others include a shot of Ana and Joshua near the pool when we took him for an early morning walk and another shot from the recent Mothers' Day lunch at Sugi. I liked the swords too but they looked like reproductions, and not very good ones at that.

Mothers' Day 2006

This year's Mothers' Day celebration was a blast. For one thing, it is the first year wherein Ana celebrates as a mom. As for the celebration itself, it was the first time Joshua went out to a restaurant.

The tail end of the storm which hit the country during the weekend brought about breezy and cloudy weather - the best kind of weather to go walking around on a Sunday. Ate Rica, my sister-in-law managed to book us a function room at Sugi Japanese Restaurant at Greenbelt III. The place was very conducive to family dining, the staff corteous, patient and competent. A couple of hefty men bore up Joshua's stroller (with Joshua inside) to the second floor and we proceeded to the function room. Somehow I was reminded of a Native Central American god in a palanquin being borne up the steps of a temple. Joshua enjoyed the ride too from the looks of it.

My folks followed shortly afterwards and so did my brother Louie. All in all the family had loads of fun.

Nine year itch

I had a hard time sleeping last night. I had to play Diablo 2 of my PC for 2 hours before I got to sleep. Ana and Joshua were already snoring when I got to close my eyes. Maybe its the bout of mild food poisoning I suffered on Thursday and Friday. Remind me never to touch the mushrooms ala pobre at Salsa Rosa italian restaurant behind my office building. The food is pretty good but the mushrooms are suspect.

I guess it was providential because Ana noticed I seemed to be more and more discontented with work these days. It is very hard to maintain a standard of excellence and professional commitment when you work in an office where people don't seem to care about these matters.

Coming to work was quite an experience last week. The common room was filled with a roiling miasma of cigarette smoke as early at 10 am. And this is a non-smoking building. i was told to bring this to the attention of the partners. Right, like I haven't tried doing this a dozen times over before? I have an industrial size air filter in my office room. I keep the door shut. Notwithstanding all of this, I smell like smoke every time I get home. I hate to imagine the damage all the nicotene loaded shit I breath at work is doing to my lungs. And I had a grandpa who died of lung cancer.

They bought two air filters the other day and installed them in the common room. Personally I think this is hogwash. A waste of money. Why not let the smokers smoke along with the rest of the smokers in the building lobby and keep the office smoke free? The money wasted on filters could have been used for upgrading our PC software which desperately needs to be upgraded.

You'd think reasonable people in charge would have done something a long time back. Nooooo. I guess doing the right thing is just beyond them....

It does not end there: every day I see our messengers sitting in the common room with their feet up on the tables taking a smoke (when they are not gambling at cards). WTF? Is this a scraver speakeasy joint in Fading Suns or a law office? Things were different when my old mentor was still with us before he returned to Canada for good. In the old days, there was a semblance of discipline. There were just some things you did not do. I am a believer in the thought that when you stop acting the way you should be acting, you begin to forget who you are and why you are doing what you are supposed to be doing in the first place. People aren't acting like they work in a law office, hence we have lost all semblance of being in a law office.

I had clients come in and ask me why the office stank with rank smoke. What could I say?

Its hard to maintain one's sense of excellence and commitment to the craft when one is surrounded by others who don't or won't give a damn.

Its going to be nine years to the day on July 2006 since i first joined this firm. Much that I am trying my damnest best to fit in, heretical thoughts keep coming to me unbidden and unwanted. I have a nagging feeling i should be looking around for a more professional-driven work environment. I thought i'd just stay where i am now while we wait for our application to immigrate to Canada to be processed and approved. But the way things are turning out, I may have to make some tough decisions in the coming months.