My health has slowly been deteriorating over the course of the past two or three years. I have received and tested many advices on what to do to get back to my old stalwart self, but all and sundry have been for naught.

I am inspired by the secret of the bamboo and how it can seem to live on forever. And it is how I've been trying to be - staying put, unassuming, lean, tall, hard, repellant to the elements, and with color that adapts to the season of the year. It also eradicates itself to be of use as something else.

One does not need to be evergreen and towering to stay perennial.

I woke up today on the most possible road to recovery. After three long years, my chronic back pain is showing signs of getting healed. For the last three years, I couldn't even straighten my back when I get up. Today, I danced as soon as I got up from bed!

My husband's jaw dropped upon seeing me. He was utterly surprised that, after a long time, I woke up without cringing in pain and all balled up into one sorry mass of aching body parts. Either that or he was appalled at seeing my still enviable dancing prowess.

I am now a great believer in the ion strips from Japan. Alternative medicine does work!

We just have all been duped by these multinational pharmaceutical companies that have been cashing in on people's collective paranoia.

Hang gliding this weekend, anyone?

On days that I'm toxic, I want to eat a ball of anthrax.

Don't you notice that the harder you work, the more luck you have?

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.-

There are 12,000 Wanted Persons in the Philippines today. These are the top crop among the fiercest criminals in the country.

Everyday, the courts hand 500 warrants of arrest for law enforcers to serve.

They say the Philippines badly needs heroes. But it is the existence of these templates of ideals that produce failures.

Goodness shouldn't be put on a pedestal. It should be the norm.

The day that the hero doesn't need to exist anymore is the day the criminal won't either.

One in three Filipinos are now living in poverty despite the purported modest economic gains in recent years.

The number of Filipinos living on just one dollar a day rose from 23.8 million in 2003 to 27.6 million in 2006, according to a survey released by the country's economic planners.

Oil prices have been rising (22 percent over the last three years). So have the cost of transport and basic food items. Wages have barely moved in the past few years. Inflation has been rising steadily (5.4 percent in February, the highest since October 2006).

Poor personal income in the face of soaring cost of living equals a desperate country.

"Let's move to Australia," my husband says, lost in thought.

I shoot back nonchalantly, "The opportunity for this country to go up is available only when it's down."

"You're philosophizing Reuters. You wax everything poetic," he retorts teasingly with a silly grin.

"At least my life does not revolve around pairs of Nikes," I snap back only half-jokingly.

He grabbed to hug me, as if to say I win the argument hands down.

Yes, I am hopeful for this country. It's the only one I have. I had made a definitive choice a long time ago to not be part of the statistics of diaspora. I probably think this way because I happen to be in a childless double-income family. The thoughts might not be the same with those coming from families of large broods and a myriad of needs.

But making dreams in a place like this can only be put on hold. I pinch myself each time I say that things will be okay in this desperate land. In the meantime, we merely dream of moving out of our city-center dwelling and set up residence in the suburbs where we can have a garden (planted on land, and not in pots), keep a dog and cat (that can procreate their respective lines till they can), and inhale unadulterated air (as well as exhale unadulterated carbon dioxide). We can also almost see our little adopted Aeta boy from Pinatubo with a mop of hair in very tight curls.

Complicated lives run short. But those that have been content with simplicity and stillness run the length of time. In quietude, time slows down.

Through bleary eyes from a long sleepless night, I offer you this token of all my efforts to put sense into the harshness of realities.  

I simply try all the time.

You will see that it is, indeed, possible to find the beauty of a fragile rose upon a hard rock.

One without the other makes for a less dramatic scene.

Now, I go to sleep.

You can't be beautiful, and hate.

I absolutely envy the quietness and stillness of nature where can life can exist and move forward without complications.

Things got ruffled up, noisy, and chaotic only when we disrupt nature's course.

We learn our lessons too late, if we even do at all. The things we need to learn are right there in the natural world. We simply got too smart for our own good.

There is a time, at least once a day, when you can glow and illuminate the beauty around you.

When communication graduated into telecommunication, people have become less human. We have become a country that is so desperate, or so it seems, to communicate with one another. We rack up phone bills. We hog dark corners in computer shops to chat away the hours. We have unearthed otherwise unheard of terminologies such as VoiP. We sacrifice a month's pay just to acquire yet another cellphone model. We sacrifice our snack budget just to be able to purchase a pre-paid load card. We have suddenly become so obsessed to communicate that it has replaced our good old premiums and priorities. 

The downside of it all is dark and sickening. In some police files, the blotter contents can be hilariously sad:

There are teens who actually prostitute their bodies so they can earn a fast buck to buy cellphone pre-paid load.

Women who realized their cherished dream to come face-to-face with their chatmates from another time zone actually end up dead because they unwittingly hooked up with serial murderers and thrill killers.

Some people have ended up robbed, held up, even dead, when they finally get to "eyeball" with their textmates.

Some women have been victims of blackmail by their chatmates because they went a little too far revealing themselves on webcams.

Social networks such as Friendster are actually used as recruitment mechanism of illegal gangs and nefarious fraternities.

Just when we thought we have advanced as a people do we come to stumble upon the fact that we have actually become less of humans. Or do we even realize that?

For some, no matter. They are too much in a hurry to finish their chores so they can resume chatting on the Net with that "special someone" from far away whose romantic, even sexual, overtures make a whole day's burden worth a beautiful life. Most, if not all, have their fingers steadily cocked on cellphone keypads, ready to text their lives away. 

We are only afraid of what we don't know and ask only about what we don't understand. The rest of time, we are content sitting on the fence.

Truth is, man will look out for his own interest and protect himself. He will guard his life, limb, and property at all cost. That is his nature because he is an animal. Jun Lozada came out because he wanted to protect himself and his family from impending real danger. Dante Madriaga wanted to save his name in the face of the accusation that he was mulcting in exchange for his testimony. The Arroyo mafia wants to protect their coffers so as to ensure a good enough size even after the power has gone. Joey de Venecia wanted to protect the reputation and interest of his company. Jose de Venecia wanted to protect his interest in the political party.

They are all just acting according to their nature. All simply want to protect personal interest and ensure safety and comfort. Isn't that the essence of democracy?

That is why democracy doesn't work. And it never will so long as animals rule this planet. The concept of the seemingly level playing field does not, and cannot, exist among animals.

Man will never be a higher being capable of looking out for others because there is only one life and only one Earth.

We are nothing but common clay.

In my younger years, I used to knock myself off with a bottle. Down and out in one sitting. There was much to celebrate all the time.

One morning, I woke up. It was 15 years later.

Now, I don't need any one of these glasses to celebrate life. There's much to do and so little time! Life's too short when the agenda is full. Who needs a bottle when the passion to live and let live is intoxicating enough?

Life, love, family, work - these are Absolut(e).

What gives us life kills us.

First, it cracks due to some overwhelming pressure from within.

Then, a fissure is created that splits it into two.

Soon after, heat seeps through the crevice.

Any time now, the whole structure will predictably break apart.

This is the state of the current Philippine government in its latest self-made, now irreparable, blunder.  

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

Ever wonder why those at the top seem nonchalant about the heaviness encountered by those at the bottom? Arrogance comes from being at a higher vantage point. It doesn't matter at what height they are; the view changes at the top. Up there, it is easier to "look down."

Either that or it's because oxygen thins out as one goes up. And we all know that lack of oxygen in the brain alters  sanity.