Set Meal Meme
Once again, from
Friday's Feast, yet another Set Meal:
Appetizer
Choose one: moving to another state, having triplets, or never being able to eat chocolate again.Move to another state/place. Metro Manila will always be my hometown, but I believe that if you have the freedom and the opportunity to move where you can enjoy a better quality of life, then by all means do so. I'm not quite sold on the idea of moving out of the country though, despite the nauseating political scene, but you can try to remove yourself from the thick of things in the mountains or on a deserted island still within the archipelago.
Soup
Name a news story that truly shocked you.Dolphy and Zsa-zsa's wedding was called off? Good grief, what rock was I hiding under?
Salad
What was your very first job? Advertising and Promotions Assistant for Viva Films, Inc. I was 18, hired a few weeks before college graduation, and I had a blast while it lasted. :-) My first job out of law school was as an underbar associate and later associate attorney at a very chichi Ayala Avenue boutique firm, a job I likewise landed even before I'd taken the Bar. I fell in love with them when the only important questions they asked at my interview were "Do you drink?" and "Do you play pusoy dos?" I adore those people to this day.
Main Course
If you had the chance to read the diary of someone you're really close to, would you? Why or why not?Never. I have the utmost respect for another's privacy. Besides, ignorance is bliss. :-)
Dessert
What's something you're looking forward to?Moving to BC, albeit temporarily (but who knows?), writing and walking and just doing everything I never quite get around to doing in Manila. Going to the beach or further up into the mountains on a whim, reconnecting with friends in a different setting, exploring new mission territories. Sleeping without airconditioning and waking up to "my view." Finding God :-)
I Just Did It
Or I will be doing it, tomorrow, God willing. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I've never been one to let daydreams remain daydreams - I believe that even reveries should have purpose and eventually translate into reality. Sometimes they don't end up quite the way I envisioned or as perfectly as I imagined, but at least I've never ended up regretting that I didn't do what I could have done. :-) I'm going for it baby. BC, here I come.
BC
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to
just do it.In 1993, when the country was beset by eight-hour power outages that transformed Manila into a cheap sauna, I attended a sorority sister's
cañao in Baguio City. And, although the electricity went on and off for the duration of the entire three days of wedding festivities, there was no trace of that uncomfortable humidity that afflicts the lowlands. It was sheer bliss. I began to seriously look into the possibility of moving to Baguio City for good and setting up my legal career in the mountains.
Obviously, that didn't quite pan out, but that dream has continually tugged at my heart since (minus the legal career part). Especially over the last few years, when I found myself frequenting BC more than ever. Last year alone, I think I was up in the City of Pines a dozen times or so - whether as a destination in itself or a stop en route to and from Kabayan, Benguet. And, late last year, with the help of a few determined artistic friends, renovations were finally resumed on the family house in BC (my sister and I started fixing the place up a few years ago, but an unfortunate car accident discouraged me from continuing our weekly Baguio expeditions). The house, which has been fondly christened "JJ P(h)ad Baguio" (in the tradition of JJ Phad Roxas and JJ Phad Kabayan).
Cool weather agrees with me (as opposed to
cold weather - I have a notorious reputation for freezing my ears off at the slightest change in wind chill, and for plunging into depression when the sun doesn't show itself for more than 24 hours). And so I find myself extremely comfortable in the climes of Malaybalay, Bukidnon, Tagaytay City, Benguet, and Mountain Province. So comfortable, in fact, that I could live the rest of my life in any one of those places - or, to be more practical about it, since we already have an unoccupied house there, in Baguio City.
BC is conducive to two of my favorite activities - sleeping, and writing. I've found myself dreaming of the day when I can do just those two things for months on end (or at least one week). But I've got "work" to do down in the metropolis - although I can't help thinking that perhaps, one of these days, "work" will take me to BC and the opportunity to live there. It all really depends upon my Boss and what He'll have me do in the near future. Until then, I can dream, can't I - and hope that my dreams coincide with His. :-) Because BC, just like Paris, is always a good idea.
(Photo of X doing the walls of JJ Phad Baguio - a work continually in progress indeed)
