tinted files

The Last Day

by B. Russell and J. Ewbank

sung by Sandi Patti

if today were the last of all days

would it change how you feel, who you are

would you rise for a moment above all your fears

become one with the moon and the stars

would you like what you see looking down

did you give everything that you could

have you done all the things that you wanted to do

or is there still so much more that you would.

follow your dreams to the end of the rainbow

way beyond one pot of gold

open your eyes to the colors around you

and find the true beauty life holds

would you live for the moment like when you were young

when time didn’t travel so fast

being free in the present, enjoying the now

not tied to a future or past

follow your dreams to the end of the rainbow

way beyond one pot of gold

open your eyes to the colors around you

and find the true beauty life holds

you’d probably say all you wanted to say

but doesn’t it strike you as strange

that we only begin to start living our lives

if today were the last of all days

if today were the last of all days.

*thank you to hannah and tarits. i miss you both so much. *

a list of my 2005 firsts…

1. stepped on Panay island, Iloilo City
2. handled a dead human body
3. stood on top of Mount Bato and looked down on Camp Bato! (one of my favorite firsts!)
4. stepped on Guimaras
5. went to Roxas City
6. cried over a boy… because. yeah, pretty pathetic i know.
7. had christmas without my mother.
8. had christmas without my second brother jade
9. visited Bacolod.
10. wore a spaghetti-strapped dress in public.
11. had a superferry boat trip alone from Manila to Cebu
12. carried a conversation in hiligaynon.
13. played tennis.
14. cooked carbonara on my own.
15. enjoyed a basketball game and cheered and rooted for my team!
16. went to divisoria without my mother
17. attended an LCDC that wasn’t in NCR
18. attended lcdc not as a camper nor as a counselor but as speaker!! haha.
19. attended an iscf camp as a counselor.
20. willingly wore lipstick! (it was a wedding, you know.)
21. wore a nameplate
22. visited UPMiag-ao
23. spoke at a fellowship na hindi svcf-uplb
24. nanakawan ng cellphone
25. hindi nag-manic texting ng christmas at new year

…at yan lng ang maalala ko sa ngayon… yan muna.

a staffworker told me this the other day: "love is being near". and that got me crying. hard. again. as in dire-diretsong luha na walang tunog. buhay nga naman. di ko maintindihan. i thought i was over this. but i guess i’m not. and i was told also that "it’s something you might not get used to".

ang hirap nga naman tumanda. ang hirap din sumunod. at least i no longer feel that i’m in a blender. mejo nasa baso nako ngayon….

ang hirap din mag-aral.

kanina may exam kami sa cardio. gudlak. as in. hello block exam na lng. hay ewan.

dinagyang festival nextweek. yehey. university week din next week. walang pasok. yehey? sige na lng, yehey. may cheering. nyet talga. imagine, post-graduate students… haaay… buti na lng di ako kasali.

masarap dito sa iloilo. dinadaan-daanan lng kami ng mga tao from everywhere. yehey, hello tita bing kahapon! =) i missed you! balik ka ha. dalaw kayo dito sa iloilo.

iloilo air is way different from manila air. it gentles you. and there’s nothing you can do about it except let it sweep over you and change you. hay.

ano kayang gagawin ko sa summer?

*thank you Kenny Rogers. =)

                      Christopher Robin and i walked a lot

                      under branches lit up by the moon

                      posing our questions to owl in the oak

                      as our days disappeared all too soon

                      but i’ve wandered much farther today than i should

                      and i can’t seem to find my way back to the woods

                      so help me if you can i gotta get

                      back to the house at pooh corner by one

                      you’ll be surprised there’s so much to be done

                      count all the bees in the hive

                      chase all the clouds in the sky

                      back to the days of christopher robin and pooh

                      winnie the pooh doesn’t know what to do

                      got a honey jar stuck on his nose

                      he came to me asking help and advice

                      and from there no one knows where he goes

                      so i sent him to ask of the owl if he’s there

                      how to loosen a jar from the nose of a bear

                      it’s hard to explain how a few precious things

                      seem to follow throughout all our lives

                      after all’s said and done, i was watching my son

                      sleeping there with my bear by his side

                      so i tucked him and kissed him and as i was going

                      i swear that old bear whispered "boy welcome home!"

                      believe me if you can i’ve fin’lly come

                      back to the house at pooh corner by one

                      what do you know there’s so much to be done

                      count all the bees in the hive

                      chase all the clouds in the sky

                      back to the days of christopher robin

                      back to the ways of christopher robin

                      back to the days of pooh

                      oooh…  oooooh….

*for some reason, i cried… really hard… when i heard this song yesterday… really got me going. <sigh> and i got to thinking about the things and places that remind me of my childhood — the best time of my life. i wanted to find my own corner in the world where i am most comforted and most at home..and i realized that it has always been and always will be the ivcf bldg in don antonio… ivcf… for me, will always be home.

nobody told me to fall in love with aslan. i just did. <ahem. i borrowed this line from someone… borrow muna ha.) maybe that’s why i love cats now! because of aslan, the great cat who gave his life for edmund…

i grew up loving fairy tales. and until now i love them. i read and reread our red book volume 1 and 2 kase andun ung mga fairy tales. i never got tired of reading how beauty tamed the beast, how cinderella got the better of her step-family, how the three bears taught goldilocks a lesson, and all those other children stuff. fairy tale books and nursery rhyme books were the earliest printed material that i devoured with pleasure. they were my earliest friends. but my most favorite of all books were C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles and john white’s Iron Sceptre. There was a time in my life when i expected to enter another world upon opening various cupboards, closets or doors. reading about talking beasts, walking trees, and divine waters gave me something wonderful to think about and allowed my imagination to run wild. you cannot imagine how disappointing it is to ask a cat to talk and it just stares at you. hay. even now, i still hope that our animals in our world would suddenly speak to me. what adventures and stories they would relate! imagine what the trees would tell us if they could but speak!

more than that, it is the world of Narnia and Anthropos that also shaped my thinking at such a young age. battles between good and evil, concepts of family, courage and honesty were not to be avoided in those books. forgiveness, love, and friendship were always present and demonstrated by the characters. i could not help but wish i could be like Queen Lucy or Susan. Queen Suneidesis and Lisa were two other good examples for me in the book Iron Sceptre. and of course, there were Aslan, son of the Emperor-over-the-sea, and Gaal, the Lord of all, to be awed of and to revere, to trust and to love. even then, it was plain that these stories i was reading spoke of great truths even though they were written as tales with enchantments and magic involved. one cannot help but love the characters. and if one is wise, one cannot help but see what these books would like to impart. and one cannot help but appreciate fairy tales.

i don’t regret spending time reading fairy tales. even now, i enjoy reading them. bahala na kung mukhang childish. if loving Aslan and Gaal and yearning and looking forward to a better world is childish, then i’d gladly stay as a child as long as i can.

today, i actually held a human heart in my hands. literally.

no blood, no wetness, no pulsations. just the mass of muscles that is our heart. hard, a little bigger than my fist, dry, and filled with powdery stuff that is clotted blood. looking into that chest and putting my fingers into the cavity we opened up was a remarkable experience. weird. yet strangely exciting. really gives you a new view of life. and death. and the human body. and dying. and things way beyond our understanding. and God. years before, that heart gave life to a human being. but now…

in a few years, i may be putting my hand into the chest of a live person and see and feel for myself the difference between that heart and that which i held in my hands today. until then, i can only imagine.

ang saya mag-med…

we’ve just finished our neuroanatomy block. that means we’ve finished pottering about with the brain and the spine. we’ve sawed open the skull and delved into the inner recesses of the head. we’ve also exposed the many nerves that conduct impulses to different parts of the body so that we can feel and move. i’ve held the brain in my hands and tried to understand how it works. but no matter how much we studied or read, there are still a lot of things we do not know about it. where does thought originate? how does the brain process memory? where do feelings come from? how are they formed? and many other questions are still left for the Lord to answer when we get to heaven. =)

and now we’re on to another exciting organ of the body, the heart. we’ve opened the chest and seen where it lies. kanina, and session namin was heart prosection. ung isang doctor lng ung nagdissect sa harap tapos naka-project sa wall ung ginagawa nya so all of us could see what he was doing without having to gather around him and look over his shoulder. it’s a very exciting organ to study. simple lng pero may sense ung mga andun. mas madali ata siya aralin kesa sa brain kase at least you could easily see where everything is. e sa brain mejo malabo, puro imagination ung papairalin mo to visuailze things. at least sa heart andun na lahat. but one thing struck me as we were studying knina…

even though i may be able to discuss cardiac anatomy or even neuroanatomy without errors, or even physiology and histology, and recite all its parts and functions perfectly, i still cannot understand this one phenomenon that is such a major part of human life — that elusive ‘l’ word that is invariably related to these structures. hay.

i think i’d rather prefer to study medicine. it’s less complicated.

i woke up yesterday thinking, "oh no. this cannot be. my vacation is over." hay. andito na ako ngayon sa iloilo and we had classes kanina. owel. ganun talaga. =)

kahapon, nasa manila pa ako. i woke at 7am to a bright sunny day. buti naman at hindi umuulan kahapon kung hindi nakadagdag pa yun sa lungkot ko. i thought that i was already used to leaving. i’ve done it many times since my family members live on different islands of the philippines since i was in first year college. pero yesterday proved me wrong. it’s always hard to leave behind the people you love, places you’re comfortable with, things you’re used to. and so april, ang classmate at housemate ko na kasabay ko pauwi, and the check-in area at the domestic airport bore witness to a teary-eyed tint. waaaaah! kakalungkot tlga.

pero may masayang nangyari after. i asked the girl behind me if she had any bags to check-in at sabi nya naman wala. so pinasuyo ko ung dalawa kong bags na overload and so, sa dami ng dala ko kahapon, about 30 kilos siguro, ay wala akong binayaran na excess baggage. thank God for kind strangers and small miracles. =)

our plane was supposed to leave at 3:20 kaya lng na-delay so naging 4:40 ung departure time namin. sayang at nagmadali pa naman kami papuntang airport. (salamat nga pla sa driver ko! hehe.) habang naghihintay ay nagutom ang kasama ko at lumabas muna siya to get food (dahil walang tindang donuts ung mister donut sa loob ng pre-departure area). after a while, ay biglang nag-announce na anjan na ung plan namin at pwede na kami mag-board. waaaahh!!! wala pa si april until nag-final call na. so i went up to the ladies sa gate and told them i was waiting for someone and she just went out to get food. tinatawagan ko na si april at pina-page twice pero la pa rin. kami na lng ung hinihintay ng plane… nag-iisip nako ng drama ko para di kami maiwan. haha! buti na lng ay before tumagal ng husto ay dumating na si april at nakasakay kami. hehe, kakahiya pa kasi sa dulo ako nakaupo so i had to walk past all the passengers to get to my seat. waaaah! if i could blush i’m sure i would have been beet-red at that time.

at san daw galing si april? ay, lumabas sa airport! at kumain sa burger machine. panalo. at ang fone nya? nasa bag nya na iniwan sa tabi ko. kaya pala. haha.

"tayo po ay parating na sa paliparan ng iloilo. mangyari po lamang na inyong ikabit ang inyong sintorong pangkaligtasan, ituwid ang inyong mga upuan at itupi ang mga mesa. salamat po sa inyong pagpili sa cebu pacific para sa inyong paglalakbay."

^_^