Feb 26th, 2008 by onyx |
One of my most vivid childhood memories about my late grandfather was the time when he bought me a new pair of shoes. As a 12-year-old who usually got scolded by grandpa on a near daily basis, his gesture came as a pleasant surprise for me.
After crossing a somewhat deserted street on our way to Fairmart, a popular local department store in Cebu, we found a policewoman waiting for us at the other side. The city government at that time recently implemented the “No-Jaywalking policy” by fining pedestrian violators with P50 pesos (a rather significant amount then) or placing them in a temporary holding cell if they didn’t have enough money in hand to pay the fine. And let me tell you that a whole lot of people in the hundreds got caught and contributed to the city government’s revenues.
Expecting my grandfather to pay the stiff fine, what followed made me realize for the first time just how crafty grandpa was. My grandfather by the way, usually wears a white polo shirt and dark gray slacks over his slightly stooped, lanky frame. He kinda reminds me of a chinese comic character, Lao Hu Tze, albeit with a pair of glasses and a watch chain dangling from his belt into his pocket.
“I’m sorry officer but we were in a hurry,” he told the policewoman. “I’m having some problems breathing and I can feel my heart palpitating so we’re on our way to see my doctor a few blocks from here. There was nobody else left to watch over him at home so I brought my grandson with me.” (I took the liberty to translate the conversation from Visayan into English)
Let me tell you that I was pretty amazed listening to my grandfather get us out of that jam. The lady officer in question quickly waved us along after which we then proceeded to the department store to buy that pair of shoes he promised me.
I found myself looking at my grandfather with a new set of eyes from then on.
Feb 24th, 2008 by onyx |
When I was a college sophomore at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, I heard a story of courage that fascinated me no end. I believe this might have become one of the university’s urban legends by now:
A college professor conducted an exam for his social sciences class of graduating seniors. It was a crucial exam that contained only one question to spell a pass-fail mark so everyone in the class studied all their notes and books in preparation for the exam. Everyone except for Bryan that is.
Bryan who just came back from a week-long family vacation in Bali didn’t spend any time studying while he was abroad. Thoroughly unprepared, the fact just dawned on him that this exam would actually determine if he was going to pass the subject and attend the graduation rites.
He noticed that the student at his left already has a page-long answer while the one at the right side was already working on her second page. Sweating bullets and getting desperate, he looked at the question on the test paper: What is courage?
Thinking real hard it didn’t take him more than a minute to scribble his answer, hand it over to his professor, and walk out the door.
The surprised professor looked at his test paper:
Q: What is courage?
A: This is courage! (referring to his 3-word answer and his subsequent actions)
Needless to say that he passed the exam with the highest score.
Feb 23rd, 2008 by onyx |
I just couldn’t help but post these nice pictures I took of my wife with the kids a year or so ago. I know these are a bit dated but it was hard to resist putting these up after finding them in my hard drive’s seldom visited picture folder.
Picture at Left: Mommy Riza with one-year-old Audrick Rafael. This shot was taken in 2005 during the company-wide sportsfest held at the ACSAT activity center located in Carmen, Cagayan de Oro City.
They spent a good part of the day running around the greens with a soccer ball in tow. It was on a Saturday so we ended up having lunch at McDonald’s in the Divisoria area before calling it quits and going home.
Picture at right: Riza with 6-month-old Audrey Rose during her baptism at Eco-church in Kauswagan, Cagayan de Oro City.
