Life, Day by Day

...at least for today, it looks like summer.  The sun shone brightly with no rain clouds in sight. It was a different story yesterday when it rained so hard in Bacolod...but only in the vicinity of the Lagoon, SM and downtown area because when I got to Robinson's and Lopue's, it was just rain showers and by the time I reached the Ayala area, it was drier than dry.   What Rain? Reaching Silay, I drove into a gas station for a refill and asked, "did it rain here?"  I got a blank stare that said..."what rain?" Oh...okay.  But this is actually a common occurrence in the occidental side of Negros Island since who knows when.  My mom tells me that when she first came here to live in the 50's after she got married, she and my dad would borrow my grandfather's jeep to go to Bacolod.  The sun would be shining in Silay and the weather balmy.  But when they enter the boundary between Talisay and Bacolod, it would be raining...and vice versa.  It was real

If only I could hold it off a little bit longer but Preemie girl is turning 4 in July and yes, I know...she needs to start school now. So it's off to summer classes for our little girl, in preparation for the regular school year this June. I enrolled her in our local parochial pre-school which has been putting out graduates who easily get accepted into the first grade of the big schools. I am hoping that if she does well, she can get accelerated to Prep school by the time she is 5 years old since the government's primary and secondary levels will now be 12 years all in all (K12), as compared to the old curriculum which took only 10 years. That means Preemie girl will graduate from high school at 17 years of age (I was only 15 when I graduated from high school) and if she takes up medicine, that will be another 10 years!. It's been 2 days now and so far, so good. She seems to be enjoying herself in the 2 hours that she is in class and made friends with another

We have been experiencing really crazy weather the past week.  I don't know if I should be grateful that the dry season isn't really going to be dry, which is good for the farms and the grass; or scared because summer should be here by now and it is still raining and quite heavily too. What is even more weird is the fact that yesterday at mid-day, a "buhawi/ipu-ipo" (tornado) hit the areas around The Bacolod Doctor's Hospital, St. John's Institute and the back portion of the University of St. La Salle, uprooting trees, throwing off billboards, ripping off rooftops and damaging properties. Retrieved from skyscrapercity.com ( original post by member Boy Muscovado ) flying debris are GI sheets, glass and wood  (picture taken from behind The Doctor's Hospital) besides the old Ceres North Terminal (photo retrieved from GMA news) USLS parking lot besides the football field another view (Bayan Mo, Ipatrol mo) And to top it all, because of the heavy r

In the summer of 2007 I was invited to be part of a group that went to  El Nido Resort s. Back then I was blogging intermittently and was not yet on Facebook.  As I reviewed my travel pages here, I realized that I never wrote about my trip to this beautiful resort that was doubly memorable, because it was a trip of many firsts for me.

It's graduation time once more and many kids in the provinces will be moving to Manila for college. Parents are busy preparing for this move emotionally and financially. Thank God, I did not have to do that as my son chose to go to a university less than 25 kms from our house.  Last year  however, I was asked by my brother to assist my nephew for his move to Ateneo de Manila, where he was going to be enroll as a college freshman.  Why me?  Well, I think it's because I am most familiar with Metro Manila and I continue to come and go for seminars and other work related events.  Like me, my brother also spent his 8 years of schooling there, but for the last 15 years or so, he rarely goes there and he says he does not know how to get around anymore.  So last June 2011, I helped my nephew settle in his student residence outside campus. The whole experience of helping him move was I think, not much different to my own experience in the mid-70's when I went to UST, also in Manila

Last week, I wrote about Preemie girl and now it's Big brother's turn. My son whom I raised since he was 5 months old is now 21 and hopefully will be graduating from college this year. Unlike my daughter, I had no behavior issues with him when he was growing up. He was such an obedient child that it was easy to bring him along with me to public places because he was very behaved. It was when he started school that problems started. Although he was a sensitive and intelligent boy, he did not like studying. Unfortunately, I did not have the skill nor the inclination to instill in him good study habits because I too did not like to "study". Therefore, I could not teach him what I did not have, which is weird because I was and still am an avid reader and a life-long learner. It is not the learning part that I hated about school but the process of teaching of what must be learned that was being used by traditional schools. I was the type that needed teachers who

I did not watch last year's American Idol simply because I thought most of the finalists were not that great.  Last year's Fil-Am finalist, Thia Megia had a sweet voice but it wasn't good enough to win.  A few voice lessons, more exposure and she will be great for broadway.  This year however is a slightly different story.  The season 11 batch has another Fil-Am, Jessica Sanchez who I think has a good fighting chance to win the title.  Although her biography states that she has a Filipino mother and a Mexican father, she looks very Asian.  I guess her Mexican blood must have more Mayan genes than Spanish :)  But just like Mexico, the Philippines was also colonized by Spain. We share a common heritage and history in the galleon trade .  Check out her rendition of "I will always love you ".  Mabuhay Ang Pilipinas, Viva Mexico!