Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas to you!
May you and your family be blessed.

emilie

Julia's Zen Paintings

One Saturday morning, Julia just wanted to paint and paint she did. She finished all these paintings within minutes. Although she had the full watercolor pallette, she only mainly used black and purple brown colors for these ones. Watching her and seeing her paintings, reminded me of how the zen monks use free flow painting (using mostly a single color) for their meditation. In a way, staring at Julia's paintings produces a similar meditative effect in me. I almost always would form different images in my head whenever I look at them and it made me feel peaceful. I asked her what these were, and she replied, pointing at them, "Stones, circles and rain".

STONES

CIRCLES

RAIN

Autumn Shadows

I usually associate shadows with sunlight and with that comes heat. So it is a strange new experience for me to have a lot of sun (and shadows) yet it is chilling cold. It feels like seeing the two together is short circuiting some long standing programming in my brain..like seeing oil and water mixing. But I must admit, having shadows in the cold is pretty neat.

A Poem from Ogden Nash

Living in an apartment building with a common laundry room has its advantages. For one, you never know what books and magazines you'll find in the shelf. These were apparently intended to make the laundry wait more enjoyable. The other day, I found a book titled, "Candy is Dandy - The Best of Ogden Nash". It is a 2 inches bumper volume of 400 of his poems between 1931-1972. Now there is a person with a somewhat strange sense of humor but offers a nice new perspective on things nevertheless. I have this belief that I tend to find books (or maybe they tend to find me) that exactly match my state of mind for that moment. Finding Ogden Nash's book in the laundry room wasn't an exception.

I am currently applying for jobs and trying not to spend my time waiting. Most days I spend wandering around the streets of downtown Victoria, after I drop Julia off at daycare. I ride the bus and hear two women complaining about the presence of so much hidden animal fat in their vegetarian food, I put on my headphones to keep myself from listening. I see a petite teen wearing black skirts, net stockings, handstitched black bag, pierced ears, lips and nose, the sides of her head shaved and the remaining center hair standing 8 inches above her scalp colored purple and blond, I close my eyes to keep myself from staring. I pick up a book displayed outside the bookstore and recieve a hard stare from a woman browsing beside me, am I being rude? I look up and see seomeone from an office high up the glass building looking back at me, maybe we were thinking of the same thing..

MORE ABOUT PEOPLE (Ogden Nash)
When people aren't asking questions
They're making suggestions
And when they're not doing one of those
They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes
And then as if that weren't enough to annoy you
They employ you.
Anybody at leisure
Incurs everybody's displeasure.
It seems to be very irking
To people at work to see other people not working,
So look at Firestone and Ford and Edison,
And they lecture you till they're out of breath or something
And then if you don't succumb they starve you to death or something.
All of which results in a nasty quirk:
That if you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.

Pictures of Fall

I'll try to make up for my blog absence with these nice pictures of autumn. I didn't realize how much of a pleasure it is to see lots of colorful leaves falling from the trees, covering most of the ground and hearing them crackle under my feet. Fall is quite a nice season..like a short windy pause before great things come.

Julia and her Flamingo stand

After reading Eric Carle's book titled the Mixed up Chameleon, I found my daughter calling me and showing me her newest trick. She calls it her "flamingo stand"! Yaaaay! Bravo! bravo! bravo!

I did a sketch below to commemorate her achievement. :) I plan to embroider the pattern one of these days and frame it for her to have when she gets married and have her first child. :)

Funny Julia

It is amazing what children pick up from their surroundings and retain as part of their memory. Julia never ceases to amaze me with all the random little things that she recalls, from the tunes we had sang months ago to the routines we do everyday.

One time I caught her seriously piling up her colors in the corner of the room. I asked her what she was doing. And she replied without looking up, "Colors. Timeout". It was indeed the same corner that I put her in when she is having her timeout. And it had been more than a month already since I have given her one.
After a couple of hours, I remembered about the colors being in the corner and told her that I thought the colors already had enough timeout to last them a year. She promptly removed them from the corner and returned them to their canister.
I found the incident quite amusing. Funny Julia.

Colors having their time-out... I wonder what they have done. They do look like they are sulking, aren't they?

Canada Day!

Yesterday (July 1) was Canada Day. I was told that Canada day meant it's Canada's birthday. Canada turned 141 years old this year. Being here and celebrating Canada day made me realize how much loyalty (and love) Canadians have for their country. Flags are everywhere and one can feel the pride and spirit of being Canadian in the smallest things. Julia and I celebrated the day walking downtown with her grandma Mary and grandpa Stan. It was a beautiful day! I can't wait for next year's Canada day to come again. Sharing some pictures below:

Julia was captivated by the young musicians who sang their heart out and were quite great. Her Canada flag was given by one of the people we passed by. I find that most of the senior folks here in Victoria treat children like gold nuggets. Julia always gets a lot of affection, freebies and greetings from senior strangers.

People enjoying the sun while waiting for the concert

Julia with grandma and getting excited with all the sights and sounds

View of the Empress Hotel from Inner harbor

Even the babies (and tired parents) joined the celebration

Happy crowd at the park

Julia looking down at the bay, attractive flags and crowd. Underwater museum at the top left of photo.

"Uni-cycler" entertaining the crowd

Julia strolling with grandpa and grandma

Julia playing under the big redwood tree. What a fun day!

Scribbling with Julia

Julia is doing a lot of scribbling with her crayons, pens, markers and pencils these days. The pile of paper filled with her intriguing scribbles is growing everyday. I often wonder what's going on in her mind when she draws and why she chose the colors that she had used. When I asked her about it, she answered me in her matter-of-fact tone - "Juyia drawing house"; "Juyia drawing circle"; "Juyia mixing". Such simple but amazing answers.

Below is a sample of her scribble and mine. I honestly think hers is much more spontaneous and creative (and therefore much better).

Julia's Scribble

My scribble

The Art of Eating

I have often looked at food as something that I needed, to help nourish my body and one that gives me energy to live. A lot of times I took it for granted, either mindlessly filling my mouth with whatever flavor it wishes to have or cramming everything in to ease the pain of hunger after hours spent on things that occupy my mind.

Seeing how my "canadian" uncle and aunt ate during the first weeks we spent with them and how the Canadian people eat here, have changed the way I eat nowadays. It seemed to me that because the environment here is not as hectic and fast paced, people get to spend more time selecting, buying, preparing and eating their food. And they buy it fresh from the market almost everyday, with the market being just a few blocks away. And given the variety of produce available from all over the world, most frequently people end up getting a little of everything which then ends up into being cooked into a little bit of every dish.

I am reminded of this little-bit-of-everything way of eating when I was on one of my business trips to China and my engineers took me out to a really nice restaurant where they served food by batches and with each batch having more than 6 varieties of dishes. They had done the ordering so I didn't know what was coming and when it was coming. I was just picking little pinches of food here and there, sampling every dish as it came, taking 2 pieces at the most for each dish while laughing and having a great time talking and next thing I knew, I was already very satisfyingly full. I was surprised at how I could have been full, when I was just eating a little piece of each dish and they haven't even served rice yet? For me, if there' s no rice, I wasn't eating yet. I was just sampling to decide which dish I would heap on my plate later. Eating, for me meant having my plate full with rice (or pasta or noodles or anything packed with carbohydrates) plus 2 or 3 big servings of side dishes and gulping them up with the help of a drink on the side. It was unceremonious, a little territorial maybe as the food needed to be safely stocked on my plate and not too much variety as having more than 12 different kinds of "little" samples of food in one sitting.

Here in Canada, it is similar in some ways. It's having a little of everything mixed in a way that each food goes well with the other dishes served. The servings can be small ones but it has a lot more variety offered within each meal. Having a fruit for me use to mean just having a piece of banana, but here it seems to mean, having a banana, a small bowl of grapes (green and violet ones), slices of pears, and a few pieces of cherries. I noticed this with my co-workers, they have their sandwich, then some fruits and then some cutlets of cheese and a coffee or juice. If it was me, I had stopped at just having the sandwich (which already has the lettuce, mustard, mayo, turkey and tomato to boot anyway) and the juice.

Last weekend, we had dinner at my uncle's house and he had prepared roast beef. Roast beef was served with a paste of creamed radish on the side (not mustard, as my uncle pointed out, creamed radish was far better and healthier than mustard), mixed vegetables (composed of pine nuts, celery, green beans, onions, peas and mushrooms - pine nuts as uncle puts it, is good for you), soup with noodles and then a variety of fruits and then a choice of red wine or chinese coffee. I was finishing my red wine when I was struck with that moment - the moment when I realized deep in my wine filled heart, that there is an art to eating and that I fully resolved to living the rest of my life savoring this art form. It meant not just cooking rice and cooking 2-3 other dishes to go with it to ease my hunger but giving thought on every little detail and having the right little bits of food on the table that just explode with all these different flavors when chewed together in the mouth.

Until now, I still savor the moment when I was chewing that tender roast beef with just a hint of creamed radish and red wine tiltillating my ignorant taste buds, in the company of family, with the sun setting nicely outside our window and with just a touch of chill reaching my warm throat - such a luxurious pleasure! (I beat my head for having been stuck with my old eating habits all these years that not even the occassional watching of international food shows have made me realize how life -and food- should have been savored). Happiness do come in the smallest of things and in this case, it comes from having a little bit of everything (on the table :).

Happiness Is

Borrowing a chinese monk's saying:

Julia's joy, My joy.

Same. same.

The First Weeks

During one of the sessions given by the Canadian immigration office to would be immigrants, they talked about "culture shock". They said that anyone moving into Canada from another country is likely to suffer from the stresses of their inability to understand the workings of the new culture. Scientific research also has shown that there are distinct stages in the process of cultural adjustment.

1] Euphoria - just before and after arriving where you have high hopes and expectations. Everything is fascinating.

2] Disenchantment - you are absorbed in many practical problems such as finding employment, housing etc. Feelings include frustration, fear, anger, nostalgia or depression.

3] Gradual adjustment - you start feeling more in control of your life as you acquire better understanding of the new country.

4] Mental isolation - the initial problems of settling have been resolved. You now have time to think about everything you have lost in your old country. Deeper psychological problems may come to force and you may isolate yourself from the new culture.

5] Acceptance and integration - a routine is established. You have become accustomed to the habits, customs, food and people of the new country.

As I was listening to these points being discussed, I had smugly thought that I most likely wouldn't go through the same process as I have been in and out of the US and other foreign countries often, even travelling alone for months. I was wrong. It is different going into different countries with nothing to worry about but the business that you needed to do in that place and everything is being paid for by the company (I even get to drive those nice fancy rental cars with GPS, along with nice lunches/dinners and nice hotels). In contrast, coming in as an immigrant, I am bringing my family with no job, no house, no car, nothing else but 6 baggage's, our life savings (which decreased 40x the moment we converted it to Canadian dollars) and those fragile pebbles that I kept in my pocket - hope and faith.

I have to say, Canada specifically British Columbia is beautiful. The trees and flowers are having a battle on who could make tourists trip from staring at their amazing display of branches, pregnant with whatever eye catching plumage possible. I have never seen shrubbery that is totally covered with flowers, like the whole plant just had an internal battle between leaves and flowers and the flowers won, so all the leaves had to vacate the branches and move somewhere else - the roots maybe.

However beautiful nature is in Canada, I did feel the "disenchantment" stage, just as the immigration officer had said. And it came in the form of fear, more specifically, it came when I saw the faces of the homeless Canadians scattered along its major streets -- an old man sitting on the pavement, not moving, eyes hazy, staring at nothing, and blood was trickling from somewhere on the top of his head down his nose and cheek. He didn't even care to move to wipe or cover it. There was another who was sitting in front of a black digital watch, which was carefully laid out on the pavement floor before him and a note beside it saying - "I will trade watch for food." Another was busily tapping out the remaining unused tobacco from thrown out cigarette butts. In the church, there's a wailing wall of prayers, one note said - "Lord, I am alone again, my child is with me. Please help us find a home." There was a woman, who was sitting on her luggage, holding out his cap with one hand and holding a small teddy bear in the other, she had the smile of my mother.
In Canada's homeless, I saw the face of poverty like I have never seen before. I am used to seeing poverty at home, even worse that what I see here. But to see 'white people', begging on the streets, with all their belongings tucked carefully in shopping carts, it just short circuits my colonial brain. If white people, who somehow in these few days of transition, my brain suddenly sees as a higher and better race than mine, could end up homeless and in that miserable state, then it is entirely possible it could happen to me and my family. It was a terrifying thought, one that hasn't entered my consciousness before, ever.. till now.
With every cent we spend for our daily needs everyday, I see those faces of the homeless and the fear in my heart grows. I didn't know the rules of their games here. I didn't even know that we have to apply for apartments like we are applying for jobs. After being turned down because we had no rental history nor jobs, I felt helpless. It was a very strange and terrifying feeling. I feel for those old homeless people. I often wonder what could possibly have happened in their lives for them to just stop moving, just sit there, in those cold cold streets, not caring to wipe the blood dripping on their face and just waiting for their lives to drain away. The worms are too slow moving.

That was my experience with disenchantment. I am happy to say that I have passed that stage now. I couldn't have imagined having thoughts like the ones I had during those first few days, but I did. I think that for immigrants, the first few weeks are like passing through twilight zone. You'll never know what dark things could come up to face you from within. One really has to face and conquer ones fears. I am very thankful for the encouragement and inspiration from my friends who called me at that time - Mon, Rela, Peter, Rose, Din - thank you very much!

I'm Back

I have landed in my new home country and have settled just enough to have an apartment and internet access of our own. I think this one sentence summary of how I'm doing so far is a huge understatement of the emotional and mental upheaval that I've gone through these past two weeks of my so called "adventure". I'll try to write about it in my next blogs. For now, I need to fullfill the promise I made.

During the last week before I left, my friends treated me out for dinner. On the way to the restaurant, I blurted out that I couldn't wait to leave, this is after weeks of taking the local transport (as we have already sold our car) in the middle of the hottest summer ever plus all the other reasons which I will list out shortly. Then Rose, for whatever "evil" plot she's planning for me in the future, made me promise that if I really meant what I said, I'd write them out in this blog. Me eating my words in the future for one, is at stake. (which I could already imagine, she will be asking me to be doing it in this blog in the future as well) So here it is..

Top Things I Will Not Be Missing about the Philippines:
1] I will not miss the very HOT and Humid climate specially the summers - it has become much hotter every year and this year, it really bites. Being in a cold country is much better than being in a hot and humid one...(they are giving me 2 winters to retract this statement.)
2] I will not miss riding the jeepneys, tricycles and buses, ever. - I will not miss the smoke belchers and dust, the endless traffic, the constant stopping anywhere, the squeezing and sardines like packing of people inside these moving tin cans, the constant vigilance for pickpockets and snatchers, all the wading and waiting to get a ride.
3] I will not miss the great big malls, the constant hum and loud music that bombards me the moment I enter them, the waves of people to wade through, the long lines in the counters, the monotony of the items available for sale.
4] I will not miss my nosy and noisy neighbors who feel like everyone and everything is in their business to know and that they are doing their neighbors a great big service by providing loud music for free (special delivery early in the morning).
5] I will not miss the traffic officers who seem to appear everytime you are confused about all the signs they have put up to confuse people so they can either scare you with their tickets or have you take the lesser evil instead (starts with "b") and who, like Santa's elves, appear to multiply a thousand times during Christmas season.

After listing these, I wouldn't want readers to get the wrong impression. I am missing the Philippines a lot. Here are some of the things I miss.

1] I miss my friends, my family and the comfortable chaos of an environment that we have there.
2] I miss the patience, underlying resilience, acceptance and understanding of people and strangers. Just the other day, my aunt here in Canada (60+ years old), was getting a bottle of coffee from the grocery counter and had accidentally nudged a woman (in her early 20's). She shot us her peircing eyes and in a voice at the edge of rage, uttered her warning to my aunt to not do it again. I was shocked. I couldn't imagine any teen/younger woman back home, talking to an old woman like that even if she had ran her over with a bulldozer.
3] I miss my work and the poeople I worked with.
4] I miss the beautiful beaches and lazy afternoons.
5] I miss my daughter's nanny (yaya nimfa)...not having to do laundry, cooking, washing the dishes and doing household chores.

I miss home.

Quiet Time

I haven't been able to blog the past weeks as it had been difficult for me to access the internet, coupled with all the activities I needed to do before my impending move to Canada next week. I do hope to resume my weekly postings once we get settled there. So this is my last posting here in my homecountry before I take my flights.

I had thought that leaving my job and company of 12 years would have been the difficult part and the migrating part, the easier one. I got it wrong, as it was the other way around. I had a peaceful mind and strong resolve when I went through my last days at work, saying godbye to great friends, processing my retirement and walking like a ghost amidst familiar cubicles, meeting rooms and people I've worked with for years. I did feel like I was slowly fading from their memories, like a digital image slowing disappearing, as people I once worked passionately with are going about their busy lives at the office and passing me by. But aside from this few seconds of invisibility and nostalgia, it went better than I had expected.

Immigrating out of the country though turned out to be much like standing in line to ride the daunting roller coaster. I am a bowlful mixture of emotions. The ingredients of which are a cupful of excitement, table spoons (or maybe a half cup) of fear, a teaspoon of anxiety, a pinch of anticipation, and that whole palmsize lump of solid coal mixed in the middle of this swirling dough of emotions. At anytime I feel like laughing or crying or vomiting, I couldn't figure out which one my body really wants to do. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised as I well know this is what taking risks feels like...specially when to my mind, I have my whole comfortable life to loose. A friend had asked me why in the world am I leaving the country when I already have a great job, house, car. great family and a nice comfortable lifestyle? (Which are, as they pointed out unlike the prevailing reason of most immigrants namely lack of good opportunities, better paying jobs and better lifestyle.) Honestly, the question took me by surprised and further took more seconds of thought before I could reply. And the one answer that I know in my heart was true (but was probably the most unpractical one) was because my spirit needed the adventure - the adventure of discovering what life is like in another land, to take my hands off the helm and let the wind take me anywhere it pleases, to believe in destiny so much that my heart aches with anticipation while my mind cries out loudly that I am indeed insane.
I am reminded of that powerful scene in the movie - Elizabeth, the Golden Age, where the young queen Elizabeth asked the seafarer what it was like to see the New World. And the seafarer replied in his hypnotizing voice:

Can you imagine what it is like to cross an ocean?
For weeks, you see nothing but the horizon,
Perfect and empty;
You live in the grip of fear,
Fear of the storm; Fear of sickness on board;
Fear of the immensity.
So you must drive that fear down
Deep down in your belly;
Study your chance,
Watch your compass,
Pray for fair wind and hope...
Pure, naked, fragile Hope.
At first it's no more than a haze in the horizon,
So you watch, you watch..
And there's a smudge,
A shadow in the far water.
For a day, for another day,
The stain slowly spreads along the horizon, taking form
Until on the third day, you let yourself believe,
You dare to whisper the word...........land.
Land, Life, Resurrection!
A true adventure!
Coming out of the vast unknown,
Out of the immensity,
Into a new life.
That, (your majesty) is the New World.

What I am feeling right now is something that must have been felt in all it's different spectrum, by the generations of people who must have at one point in their lives, lifted their feet from that nice comfortable path of cobblestone and into the rugged edges of untamed rocks. People who have taken risks and went on adventures with nothing but Hope in their hearts. Even for just the experience of these emotions, I am immensely glad I took this journey.

I'll see you soon.

Dinner in Tagaytay

I very much enjoyed the dinner we had in Tagaytay last Friday. We had it at Buon Giorno! The food was great (both in presentation and taste), the ambiance was amazing and the company of friends was a pure joy. Who would have thought such a nice cozy place and authentic italian dining could be found just 30 minutes away?

I had a really great time. Thanks a lot Julia, Yen, Rose and Laarni! :)

Photos by Rose

Theory of Relativity

One of the sites I have found which I recently decided to participate in, albeit inconsistently, is the Illustration Friday website. It is a site where they post a topic every week and then people draw/illustrate their interpretations of that topic and post their illustrations in the site. It's a nice way of doing free flow drawing, allowing me to just express whatever ideas that would come out of my head when I read each topic.

This week's topic is "Theory". The one theory that came to my mind that I have the least understanding on is the relativity theory, specifically, Einstein's special relativity theory. I had asked my husband to explain it to me last night and among all his explanations, most of which passed my mind and out of my other ear, the only thing that I retained was his example. He said, "If you have a pair of twin sisters, Maria and Juana, and Maria spends all her life on earth while Juana decides to spend her life riding a comet that travels at a very much faster speed than the earth, when they meet 60 years from now and come face to face with each other, Juana will be younger than Maria. And the reason is because the movement of time for a moving object is slower than that of a stationary one. That is one of the consequences of Einstein's theory."

I find this very hard to imagine but I leave my mind open to when I could fully understand it in the future. For now, the image of Maria and Juana meeting each other within this time dilation capsule is what I have in mind. In below colored pencil drawing, I show a much younger Juana coming face to face with her now older twin sister, Maria. They are separated by the different time orbits that encapsulated them.

Sometimes, it is easier to see science through art. :)

Shoes Are Made For Walking

We just sold our car + I recieved my bonus + Nike had a sale = brand new shoes for Julia and me :)
Since we'll be doing a lot of walking here and in Canada, what better way to walk than to walk on Air!

Going Away Presents

During a three hour breakfast business update meeting last week, I was surprised to find that they had alloted time for a send- off tribute (or you can call it celebration for good riddance? :) for those employees who are leaving the company early this year. I'm one of the eight. Most were transferring to other local external companies while others were transferring to a new company half owned by my current one due to a recent merger and sale of that part of the business. One was moving to Malaysia for a two year assignment. I was the farthest "leaver", I guess, as I was going out of the region.

The "send-off" was short and sweet. They had a slideshow playing on the screen, reminiscing old times (and old haircuts) and they gave us a big paper bag containing company tokens and a box which had gifts and notes given by our colleagues. It was touching. My favorites, if I have to name them, were the brown bag (a nice remembrance of my time with the company and which makes a nice art bag that I could use to log my sketchbook and art materials), the sketch pad, the tattoo pens and the nice children's book (The Ice Dragon by George R. Martin given by Rose). (I did get an extra one which was an award for a project I finished with a virtual team last year..a $100 worth award which nicely fits into my travel wallet. :)



I had made a small poster made of paper cuts, my way of thanking them in remembrance of the accomplishments we had last year. (picture below)



I was lucky, I was able to get through my goodbye speech without choking. Leaving the people I have grown to love, like (and even disliked) is always a tough emotional road to pass. I guess I am writing this with a light note now but when the music stops playing, all hugs exchanged, goodbyes sent, funny (and not so funny) memories recollected and I am left in the silence and darkness in my room, in the middle of the night, looking out at the lone lampost outside my window, the loneliness hits me like a wave. Deep down, I know everything will never be the same, some friendships will fade with distance and time, and the cozy, warm cocoon I currently am in is slowly cracking and opening up, releasing me to a new alien world. I will truly miss my friends.

Afternoon Walk with Julia

Closing a Page

One thing that I am always very thankful of is the fact that I have always been very very lucky to have had great managers, not just good, but great. They are one of the best managers in the world. As I am approaching the last day of work now and prepare to migrate to Canada in April, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming mix of emotions of gratitude, pride, and nostalgia
for the 11 years I have been with the company. I will surely miss my mentors who have helped shape me to who I am today.

I remember back 5 years ago, when we were about to certify the release of a new product but during the assembly of the first ones, we encountered a showstopper with units failing our tests. We had to determine what the failure was, why it occured and how to fix it in less than twenty four hours. The atmosphere was like that in the movie Apollo13 where all the NASA ground team would squeeze their brains out to get the solution. We needed to ship those products out. Ravi was my manager then, he is a physicist. While we were sitting down late at night, in the lab, exhausted from hours of brainstorming, after a long silence, he just quipped -- "Guys, really if you look at history, if you trace down where ALL brilliant ideas originate, you will find that all brilliant ideas form and germinate from a single mind and NOT from several minds. The team is there to provide information and build up the discussion which could lead to that idea but that idea will have to come from a single mind." He was always the one where when you are wriggling your way in the tiniest details, in a second, he'd fly you up a million miles above and show you how it looks like from the galaxy's perspective. I remember his words and it has influenced how I had worked. To this day, I have a lot of meetings and discussions but I always make sure I spend time away from everyone, to digest all those discussions, for me to get to that space where I could think for myself and reach into my idea bank which is unique (and hopefully brilliant :).

I also remember an advice that Scott, who is one of the coolest manager I have ever had, have given me some time ago. He told me that what is holding us back sometimes is the lack of belief in our own capabilities. We are not really fully sold out with the idea that we are brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous (as Nelson Mandela have said in his 1994 inaugural speech). We have moments of insecurity specially when we face people of higher status or higher percieved capabilities as we are. That sometimes we play small so that other people will not feel insecure around us or we would not be given bigger responsibilities or power, because deep down, we may fear that we are not worthy of that power.
I find this somewhat true for me and I think for most Filipinos, where it is deeply ingrained in me/us that we should always be humble, and humility really is a virtue. And pride is not a good thing. I remember a talk from one of the leaders in this country, she mentioned an incident where she was invited to a middle class house, and as they enter the doorway, the owner pointed out to her that the stairs had some holes and it still needs to be fixed and then moved on to apologize for the shabby wall painting and then for the old furniture and so on. The leader had said, "Why do we tend to notice the negative things about our house instead of mentioning the positives to our foreign visitor friends and letting them feel our sense of pride for who we are and what we have?"
From Scott, I learned that all I needed to do is to embrace it. To embrace my greatness. To embrace my brillliance. To embrace my light. I have done a lot of embracing since.

I have other several great learnings that I could share maybe in other days as this blog entry is getting long. What I could leave for now is a site by another one of my previous managers, Anand. Anand has been one of my elder mentors and his main influence on me has been to think outside the box. To question my current beliefs and to keep pounding that wall that we often unconscoiusly build around ourselves and our minds over time that makes us think the way we have always thought. A qoute from Einstein: " A problem cannot be solved by the same minds that created it".

Anand has a blog,

where he shares inspiring stories to busy professionals and people working in companies.

Needless to say, I feel proud for my stay here in this company. And as I take a step out into the "outside" world, I bring with me what one of the company's founders have ingrained in us - " Do not be encumbered by the past. Go out and do something wonderful". (Nowadays this qoute has already morphed into - Go out and do something ridiculous). Maybe going to Canada is ridiculous, but I am going anyway.
As I watch the soon to be released TV commercials that showcase the impact of our future products, I am filled with pride for having been a part of delivering the microprocessors, which have become a huge part of our lives today. (I wouldn't even be blogging now without it.)
A person had said of the microprocessor-- "this little thing is my lifeline to the world"..technology really has changed our lives. And to qoute the ad - "as the microprocessors continue to evolve, with more capabilities and more ingenuity, everyone has a chance to dream big dreams and do great things by finding their genius inside."
This small thumbsize microprocessor (picture below is just slightly larger than the real chip size) continues to change the world..and I will continue to watch it from the outside.

Friday Poems

I recently discovered how I could add links in this blog and to celebrate that, I am sharing you a link to one of my favorite poetry sites that was forwarded to me by an american friend years ago. I have since then subscribed to its weekly feed and to this day, I still look forward to the poems that Ted Kooser picks. His short introductions to the poems he had chosen are as valuable and inspiring to me as the poems themselves. Here is this week's choice.


American Life in Poetry: Column 148 (link to site here :)
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I've written about the pleasures of poetry that offers us vivid scenes but which lets us draw our own conclusions about the implications of what we're being shown. The poet can steer us a little by the selection of details, but a lot of the effect of the poem is in what is not said, in what we deduce. Lee McCarthy is a California poet, and here is something seen from across the street, something quite ordinary yet packed with life.

Santa Paula
There's a woman kissing a cowboy
across the street. His eight-year-old son
watches from the bus stop bench.
She's really planting one on him,
his Stetson in danger.
It must have been some weekend.
Seeing no room in that embrace for himself,
the boy measures his future, legs
straight out in front of him.
Both hands hold onto a suitcase handle,
thin arms ready to prove themselves.

Here is a poem that I wrote last year when I was in Oregon and got to meet an old friend who just bought his dream car - a red Porsche! (My friend promptly corrects me that it is pronounced as "por-tia" and not "porsh".) Having come from a developing country and never having seen a Porsche in my entire life, it was an unforgettable moment. Mainly because it was great to see an old friend and also because I got to ride a shiny new porsche, with the nice Oregon air blowing in my face (no rain!) and me getting to wave my hands out in the air like famous people do when they pass by crowds in their fancy cars during parades. For a moment, I felt super special. :)

Have a great weekend!

The Porsche

by Emilie S. (June 19, 2007)

It glided smoothly towards me
Glistening under the weak sun;
Like a red cat it purred and laid waiting
Ready to pounce for some fun;

I feel its salient power
Pulsing through its neat beige arms;
I am filled with anticipation
To experience a marvel created by man;

I could have sworn I was flying
As I didn’t feel the ground
Hugging it so tightly
Gracefully yielding to its masters capable hands;

I will remember that day
The day I rode a Porsche;
Passing ever so swiftly
Through the unworthy road.

R is for Rose

I enjoy people very much. I think I will have several future blog entries on my encounters with some of the interesting people I have met, was touched by, read about and have learned from. I wouldn’t be who I am today without them. Even now, I look forward to continuing my adventures in the vast wonders of humanity, as I wake up every morning.

I don't remember exactly when Rose and I got close but I do have distinct memories of what I treasure in her.

I very much enjoyed our many lively and often bizarre discussions starting with her book series collection of Griffin and Sabine’s correspondence by Nick Bantock which I had borrowed and re-borrowed. For one, I had fun reading it during the night and then going to Rose’s cubicle at work to complain. The book was too symbolic for my very technical mind and I needed someone like Rose (who majors in psychology) to interpret it for me. We almost always ended up having different opinions and what started as possible logical explanation of events, would end up to being illogical, fancy and near crazy interpretations. And of course, Rose’s interpretation almost always ends up being closer to the truth than mine.

Rose is the only person I know who drinks starbucks coffee primarily to collect the receipts so she could enroll in Starbuck’s customer survey, answer the survey online (!), to get free book planners during the end of the year….and this she does, not just with Starbucks but with Fully Booked bookstore too. Yesterday, I saw her writing on her new sleek Fully Booked daily planner which she got because she probably is at their top twenty customer list. (And she probably will be one of the bookstore’s major shareholder someday, all because of the free daily planners they give at the end of the year. Imagine that.) Other daily planners that you could buy, don’t interest her. For Rose, it is definitely the journey (and probably the exclusivity of that journey) that matters.

What ties us together is our shared passion for drawing. Rose draws cartoons. She does most of her drawings during meetings, (when she is supposed to be listening and paying attention to the discussion – to which she would strongly emphasize that she IS listening and paying attention to the discussion). Sometimes I am tempted to schedule a meeting with Rose, make a bogus presentation and pretend to discuss something just so she can make those nice cartoon doodles for me.

Here are samples of her nice and fun work. I have gotten her permission to put them in this blog. She tells me that I am using her drawings to make up for my slack of not having made anything of my own lately. (She is partly right, as always. :) The other reason is that I really admire her for her free style cartoons and really, people should see her drawings. I couldn’t wait to see what her drawings will be five years from now. The latest of her drawings is a bird drawing where she practiced using watercolor pencils. (I couldn’t scan it at this time unfortunately). She use to tell me that she is not a watercolor person because she likes the very clean and neat outlines that her pen creates as well as the control that pen and ink medium gives . (She painstakingly shades the outline, thickens it with a fine point pen and makes it look like she had used a thicker pen or paintbrush.) But on her recent bird drawing, she veered away from that and still has her distinctive style showing.

That’s one of the things I like about Rose, she is very distinct being her own person. I remember I use to struggle finding my own voice, my own identity. In a way, I still am continuing that process of searching and redefining who I am.

Art is a beautiful way of knowing and exploring one’s self. Because you cannot express in paper what you are not in person.

New Year 2008

As with all my Christmas and New year vacations, I spent my holidays with my family back home in Ormoc City. Ormoc used to be a small city, small enough for people to know almost everyone they see in the streets. Now, I could barely recognize anyone. The streets seem to have shrunk and the tricycles multiplied by the hundreds and buzzing like flies. Judging by the presence of a Jollibee branch, a dunkin donuts outlet and a high end coffee bar where the cost of a cup of coffee is much more than an average farmer could afford, the city has changed a lot.

It's not just the city. My family used to live in a big clan house together with all the other five main families on my father's side. (I say "main" because there are secondary families from the second generation that got added, which makes it more than five.) We use to share the living room, kitchen and dining rooms everyday. Mealtimes were always as noisy and as loud as the marketplace.
Christmas and New years were spent with all families - from the first to the third generation, huddled in the living room where baskets and baskets of gifts were showered over the lucky third generation kids. Each child recieves at least five gifts from the five different main families.
And there are at least twenty third generation kids to track. It takes more than an hour to distribute all the gifts to each kid, with chaos mounting as the mounds of crumpled giftwrappers grow and threaten to bury the smaller kids alive.
New Years were spent with everyone gathered outside the lawn and the men lighting up the fire crackers as the clock strikes midnight and we all each hug all our cousins, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, in laws, maids, dogs etc. It takes less than an hour to hug everyone, that is if we were lucky enough to find them amidst the melee or sober enough not to end up double hugging everyone as we often forget who we've already hugged earlier.
But this year was different. Our clan house is no longer ours. All the families except one are already living in different houses. We barely see each other.
Christmas was strained with most of the first generation "elders" not joining and we celebrated New Year just within my own family (with my mom, sister, brother and our kids). KC, my niece, commented, "This is the most boring new year ever." I couldn't blame her. It was a peaceful and intimate New Year for me but for a child like KC, it was a big change from the chaos she was used to.

This Christmas holiday was also the grand twentieth year reunion of my highschool batchmates from year 1987. I wasn't able to attend as it was scheduled much earlier than my arrival date but I could view the pictures and read about what transpired from our batch webpages. On the outside, it was your usual fun and great-to-see-you-again-after-all-these-years reunion stuff. But what surprised me were the stories I heard that occurred behind the scenes...the ones you wouldn't see in the photos, wouldn't find in the emails or wouldn't notice on the faces of people you talk to. Along with all the stories of success, achievements, and funny moments, there were also stories of elicit affairs, fighting, sex and scandals. Most of the time, I would find myself gasping,"Did he really do that??!" .."Did she really say that?".."She what??!" .."You what???!!" My neck hurt from all the head shaking from disbelief. I couldn't believe that the pictures I had in my mind of my batchmates, were no longer true....and I wonder how much of me has changed.

Sometimes I find myself resisting change. I love change but there are moments like now where for a second, I wish things wouldn't change. That everything would be always like they were..like furnitures, like rocks, like diamonds.
But then again, they would have to stay motionless to stay the same.
I don't think I'd like to live life like a stone.
Life is like water, change is its waves.
As the new year comes and a new life awaits, I take to my feet and ride the waves.

Image by my friend Doug Petit. I miss you my friend.