Live Today

..................................Oooo

Some people .............( .....)

come into our lives..... ) ../

and quickly go.......... (__/

oooO

(..... ) .......Some people

..\.. ( ........become friends

...\__)...... and stay a while...

leaving beautiful .....Oooo

footprints on our ....(...... )

hearts..........................)... /

..................................(_ _/

oooO

.(..... )...... and we are

...\... ( .......~ never ~

....\__) ......quite the same

because we have made a good friend!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday is history.

Tomorrow a mystery.

Today is a gift.

That's why it's called the present!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right Now -

-somebody is very proud of you.

-somebody is thinking of you.

-somebody is caring about you.

-somebody misses you.

-somebody wants to talk to you.

-somebody wants to be with you.

-somebody hopes you aren't in trouble.

-somebody is thankful for the support you have provided.

-somebody wants to hold your hand.

-somebody hopes everything turns out all right.

-somebody wants you to be happy.

-somebody wants you to find him/her.

-somebody is celebrating your successes.

-somebody wants to give you a gift.

-somebody thinks that you ARE a gift.

-somebody hopes you're not too cold, or too hot

-somebody wants to hug you.

-somebody loves you.

-somebody admires your strength.

-somebody is thinking of you and smiling.

-somebody wants to be your shoulder to cry on.

-somebody wants to go out with you and have a lot of fun.

-somebody thinks the world of you.

-somebody wants to protect you.

-somebody would do anything for you.

-somebody wants to be forgiven.

-somebody is grateful for your forgiveness.

-somebody wants to laugh with you.

-somebody remembers you and wishes that you were there.

-somebody is praising God for you.

-somebody needs to know that your love is unconditional.

-somebody values your advice.

-somebody wants to tell you how much they care.

-somebody wants to share their dreams with you.

-somebody wants to hold you in their arms.

-somebody wants YOU to hold them in your arms.

-somebody treasures your spirit.

-somebody wishes they could STOP time because of you.

-somebody praises God for your friendship and love.

-somebody can't wait to see you.

-somebody loves you for who you are.

-somebody loves the way you make them feel.

-somebody wants to be with you.

-somebody wants you to know they are there for you.

-somebody's glad that you're his/her friend.

-somebody wants to be your friend.

-somebody stayed up all night thinking about you.

-somebody is alive because of you.

-somebody is wishing that you noticed him/her.

-somebody wants to get to know you better.

-somebody wants to be near you.

-somebody misses your advice/guidance.

-somebody has faith in you.

-somebody trusts you.

-somebody needs you to send them this letter

-somebody needs your support.

-somebody needs you to have faith in them.

-somebody will cry when they read this.

-somebody needs you to let them be your friend.

-somebody hears a song that reminds them of you.

Didn' t Learn in High School

Excerpt from Charles Sykes ,On the rules of life for graduates.

Some have said this was from Bill Gates talk to high school graduates but probably he did not say this unless he quoted Sykes.

RULE 1.

Life is not fair; get used to it.

RULE 2.

The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

RULE 3.

You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school OR college. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone, until you earn both.

RULE 4.

If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

RULE 5.

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

RULE 6.

If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

RULE 7.

Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try "delousing" the closet in your own room.

RULE 8.

Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

RULE 9.

Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

RULE 10.

Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

RULE 11.

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Heavy Heart

   There are things that I have planned lately and they didn'y go through as much as I wanted to. I hate it. I left my sister's place with a heavy heart, coz it made me sad to leave them. I didn't had tha chance to see that store open. It was already closed as soon as I stepped out of the cab. I've said farewell to a very good friend of mine. I'm so disappointed because I didn't attend the mass. So pissed off because all the things that I've planned didn't push through. I felt so bad, things didn't get in my way. I've wasted time, money and energy.

   I felt so bad. I don't know if my feelings for this certain guy is love for a friend or for more than that. And I've been thinking about another guy who has been special to me. But he's so bizarre about his real feelings. Or perhaps, he really has no feelings for me at all. It's just me being assuming. I hate it. Everything is in disorder. I am sad today. Really sad and really disppointed.

   Maybe I won't sleep that long again. I'll wake up before my alarm ticks. And I hate it, it happened for almost a week already. I'll sleep late, I'll wake up early, with thoughts that will make me unhappy. I don't like it that way. I felt so empty. I want to get tired and really exhausted, so it'll be easier for me to fall asleep. But it isn't that way. I want serenity and happiness. I really felt so alone, So, bear with me.

Love That Bites

I’m going to fall in love someday. One day, perhaps from out of the blue, perhaps from behind my back, some wonderfully precious lady is going to grab one of those caveman type clubs and send it crashing over my head. She’s going to make me see stars. For days, I’m going to be in a smiling stupor. Maybe I’ll even drool a bit. And I’m going to be in love.

This love is going to be neither cheap nor easy. It’s not going to be a plastic ring bought at the corner dime store. It’s not going to be a brass ring purchased at some commercial mall. It’s going to be a set of diamond in a ring of gold. This ring will not come from a gemstone though. I’m going to craft it myself. I’m going to smelt the ore, fashion the ring, cut the diamonds, and forge this magnificent jewel. It’s going to shine in the sunlight, glitter in the moonlight, and it will last for more than a thousand years. And it will befor her.

Now I don’t want this love to be bed of roses, painted or otherwise. I don’t want it simply sweet and sugary. I don’t want it to be just like peppermint bits or chocolate kisses.

I want this love to hurt.

I want this love to bite. I want this love to be able to bite. I’m not talking about ant bites, mosquito bites, bee stings. I don’t want to be bitten by some pitiful insect that I can slap away or crush with barely a thought. I want to be bitten by something with teeth. I want to be bitten by a great white shark or the king of the jungle. I want a piece of myself to be torn away and chewed on. I want to bleed.

I’m not crazy, and I’m not a masochist. I have never enjoyed pain and I don’t like being hurt. But I want my love to be able to hurt me.

I want my love to be someone I can fuss over, someone who’ll have me pulling out of my hair in fistfuls trying to decide whether she’d rather have the dozen roses or the Valentine truffles. I want my love to make me chew my fingernails down to my knuckles when it’s almost midnight and she’s not home from the office yet. I want my love to make my heart pound ceaselessly when I worry about her driving on highways inhabited by gas-pedal-pushing madmen.

I want my love to make me pace back and forth, wearing deep trenches in the carpet, when it’s 8:30 and she hasn’t called yet. I want my love to push big, fat, watery tears from the hiding places in my eyes, down my flushed cheeks, off my hardened chin, and onto my clenched fists when she yells the word “hate” in my face and calls me a jerk. I want to feel the cold kiss of steel through my heart should my love ever leave me all alone.

And should my love ever die, I want to weep for days on end. I want to scream and kick and curse and hate. I want to feel as if my body were being burned by fierce flames. I want to thrash madly about and when my spirit is spent, I want to feel a noose tighten around my neck, slowly choking me.

With my hands clasped about my throat, I want to feel cold, as if ice had slid through my veins. I want to feel the heavy black weight loss and love on my frail shoulders.

I want my love to hurt, hurt as painfully as can be. I want to feel every bit of this pain. I want to feel every bit of this love.

I want this because love that doesn’t hurt is love that isn’t real. And I want the real thing for me and my true love.

*by Paolo Manlapaz

The One Who Got Away

In your life, you’ll make note of a lot of people. Ones with whom you shared something special, ones who will always mean something. There’s the one you first kissed, the one you first loved, the one you lost your virginity to, the one you put on a pedestal, the one you’re with …and the one that got away.

Who is the one that got away?

I guess it’s that person with who everything was great, everything was perfect, but the timing was just wrong. There was no fault in the person, there was no flaw in the chemistry, but the cards just didn’t fall the right way, I suppose. I believe in the fact that ending up with someone, finding a long time partner that is, does not lie merely in the other person. I can actually argue that an equal part, or maybe even the greater part, has to do with the matter of timing.

It has to do with you being ready to settle down and commit to someone in a way that goes beyond the little niceties of giddy romance. How often have you gone through it without even realizing it? When you’re not ready to commit in that mature manner, it doesn’t matter who you’re with, it just doesn’t work. Small problems become big; inconsequential become deal breakers simply because you’re not ready and it shows. It’s not that you and the person you’re with are no good; it’s just that it’s not yet right, and little things become the flashpoint of that fact.

Then one day you’re ready. You really are. And when this happens you’ll be ready to settle down with someone. He or she may not be perfect, they might not be the brightest star of romance to ever have burned in your life, but it’ll work because you’re ready. It’ll work because it’s the right time and you’ll make it work. And it’ll make sense, it really will. The day comes when you’re finally making sense of things, and you find yourself to be a different person. Things are different, your approach is different, you finally understand who you are and what you want and you’ve become ready because the time has truly arrived. And mind you, there’s no telling when this day will come.

Hopefully you’re single… but you could be in a long-term relationship, you could be married with three kids, it doesn’t matter. All you know is that you’ve changed, and for some reason, the one that got away, is the first person you think about. You’ll think about them because you’ll wonder, "What if they were here today?" You’ll wonder, "What if we were together now, with me as I am and not as I was?"

That’s what the one that got away is. The biggest "What if?" you’ll have in your life.

If you’re married, you’ll just have to accept the fact that the one that got away, got away. Believe me, no matter how fairy tale you think your marriage is, this can happen to the best of us. But hopefully you’re mature enough to realize that if you’re already with the one you’re with, that this is just another test of your commitment, one which will just strengthen your marriage when you get past it. Sure, you’ll think about him/her every so often, but it’s alright. It’s never nice to live with a "might have been," but it happens.

Maybe the one that got away is the one who’s already married. In which case it’s the same thing. You just have to accept and know that your memories of that person will probably bring a nice little smile to your lips in the future when you’re old and gray and reminiscing.

But if neither of that is the case, then it’s different. What do you do if it’s not yet too late? Simple… find him, find her. Because the very existence of a "one that got away" means that you’ll always wonder, what if you got that one? Ask him out to coffee; ask her out to a movie, it doesn’t matter if you’ve dropped in from out of nowhere. You’d be surprised, you just might be "the one that got away" as well for the person who is your "the one that got away." You might drop in from out of nowhere and it won’t make a difference.

If the timing is finally right, it’ll all just fall into place somehow. And it would be a great feeling, if in the end, you’d be able to say to someone, "Hey you, you’re the one that almost got away."

The Manila Times

Mark Macapagal

The Rules of being Human

You will receive a body.  You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live.  How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

You will learn lessons.  You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life.  Each day, you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you need to know.  The lessons presented are often completely different from those you think you need.

There are no mistakes, only lessons.  Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation.  You can learn as much from failure as you can from success. Maybe more.

A lesson is repeated until it is learned.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it (as evidenced by a change in your attitude and ultimately your behavior) then you can go on to the next lesson.

Learning lessons does not end.  There is no stage of life that does not contain some lessons.  As long as you live there will be something more to learn.

“There” is no better than “here”.  When your “there” has become a “here” you will simply discover another “there” that will again look better than your “here.” Don’t be fooled by believing that the unattainable is better than what you have.

Others are merely mirrors of you.  You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.  When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself why you feel so strongly.

What you make of your life is up to you.  You have all the tools and resources you need.  What you create with those tools and resources is up to you.  Remember that through desire, goal setting and unflagging effort you can have anything you want. Persistence is the key to success.

The answers lie inside of you.  The solutions to all of life’s problems lie within your grasp.  All you need to do is ask, look, listen and trust yourself.

Quidnunc

   Busy, busy, busy. How I love to be such. I was on leave the other day because I had to suffice the necessary papers on my fast approaching gamble/adventure/risk/leisure to another place on earth. And others would only think that I was on lazy leave. Oh for heavens sake, I've never thought of malingering since I started to get a job. If I get to have a leave, it's because I wanted to utilize the leaves I am entitled to. Mind you, I've accumulated even the last year's leaves I didn't use, so you see, I have a lot more. But I don't get to enjoy the privilege because whenever I come back for work from a "vacation" leave, I end up being rattled and stressed more. So instead of taking the leave, I'll just wait for a long weekend. It is also a big favor to my reliever if I absent myself, because she has deadlines to meet up too. That is why, I'll still choose to wake up and go to work and learn more and more.    Going back to the unscheduled leave I had, that day was really dead tiring. I won't have to elucidate more on what & how it happened but after all that I have accomplished, I felt really pleased with myself. At last, my legal papers are good and I'm finally set.

   When I came home, I felt hunger and that deprivation of lavishly sound sleep. So after my 50 minute bathe, I rushed to eat and freshen up again and there, I fell asleep at 2pm-ish. But I woke up after 20 minutes, so I believe it was just forty winks at that. And I stared at the ceiling telling myself that I should stand up and be more productive for the day. When I actually had the entire morning running around for errands. Okay, so I stood up, got the broom and swept the floor until I see no more dust. And since it's still a sunny day, I sweat a lot and felt good. Cause for me, if I had physical tasks done for the day, I'd feel that I was really a hardworker (oh, beat that?). It's not that it's good for the body to make me stay fit but it's just a different feeling for me. So from exerting all my full effort to tidy up the room, I got knackered. Then again, fell asleep for an hour.

   Yes, I felt the energy again. But why then would I feel that sleeping in the afternoon is a guilty pleasure? I wanted to do more, go to other places and explore. It was as if there's no tomorrow for me. It's as though I am shooting for a Centrum MultiVitamin commercial that I wanted to be complete? I wanted to be more. I don't want to stay idle for a long time or else my brain gets rusty and my body will be frozen as ice.And so all I have to do is do a little of this and a little of that. Because if you add a little to a little it becomes more, right?

   Okay, so you wanna know what do I wanted to be? (just like for Centrum's commercial). There are a lot of jobs I wanted to have. I wish I could at least be each of these everyday ;p

   These comes in no particular order.

   I wanted to be part of a dance group. I get so giddy whenever I watch G-force perform. So yeah, being a dance enthusiast since I was a little kid, I love the moves of this group even if it's just a single-single, double-double. There's just something on the way they move that I really carefully gaze at (I auditoned twice but didn't get through;p). Count me in as a ballet teacher too. Don't you just love the Tendu step, Ronde de Jambe and the Degage steps in ballet dancing? As though they have no weight at all and like flying goddesses at the theatre. And even the Swan positon, how terrific. Plus the hair bun and tip toes, tutu skirts and bodices. This is so sexy yet classical. I wanted to be a Miss Saigon, oh please, do not appeal. Or portrait a role in stage play of Les Miserables. If I could have the chance to supercede Miss Lea Salonga, well I would. But hell yeah, I couldn't even try to hit the right notes & pitch of On My Own - pretending he's beside me... Enough of the entertainment. Next, I want to be a flight attendant. From Manila to Paris, or from Malaysia to New York, all for free. Doze off on different luxurious hotels during layovers, again for free. This is just a stunning job every girl wants to have. But you have to be a friend of insomnia, jetlags, coping up on different timezones etc etc. So, shall I pursue or not? Let's wait and see. I wanted to be a doctor. an Obstetrician-Gynecologist or Pediatrician (just like my Grandma and Aunt). It's so nice to see the white blazer or whatever that is. It even makes your name a little longer because of the title, like this Clarence Tracy L. Castañeda, Md or another. I want to be a corporate lawyer, maybe it sounds better if it's this way, Atty. Clarence Tracy L. Castañeda. Gosh, it's so nice. And then you can drive around the city with your plate number as Judge, so even if it's your coding day, you can stroll. I want to be an engineer. I am not so sure on what it is called but the one who is the mastermind of all the building infrastructures, I wanna be like that. And how cool is that, a lady up in the unfinished building. I want to be a pre-school teacher. Toddler years are the most crucial years for a child's development, so I want to partake on the child's learning. And kids are sweet even if they are playful and naughty. I want to be chef. Cooking all the sumptuous lunch and dinner for a 6-star resto. I want to be a CEO of a commercial bank. I want to be an ambassador. I want to travel the world! I want to be a mother of twins, a boy and a girl. So cute, with all those kisses and hugs from babies. I want to be a photographer. Capturing moments in the most professional way. I want to put up a charity, I want to protect battered women. Hmm. so there. I wanna be more.

   Whenever I am home I see to it that I do a little of the chores. Sweep the floor, srcrub the comfort room's tiles, wash my clothes, hang and dry them, fold them after. A lot like a domesticated woman can do. I love it when I do the cleaning. I love how it makes me busy.

   So little time so much that I wanted to do, so much that I wanted to be. Dreams are good. Perhaps, I don't want boredom. Or if I am bored I get to think of these dreams and eventually make them real. And I believe that there is always a room of improvement. I will never opt for the bum life. Because if I work, I earn. And the money I have is hard earned money. And I'd live a life full of honor and dignity. So now, I'd love to be called miss independent because of such busyness.