adventures in neverland

(a year after super typhoon yolanda devastated much of the visayas region and claimed a lot of lives, i am reposting something that i wrote during those nerve-wracking days when all that was left for us to do was to pray and seek divine providence.) we were outside of the then sparklingly new robinson's shopping mall waiting for a taxi, when out of the blue (maybe i was concerned that we ran out of things to talk about; or i am just like everyone else, uncomfortable of the long silences between conversations), i asked my sister why she loves living in this coastal city of tacloban, where she spent more than half of her life.  you see, she studied and graduated at the university of the philippines - visayas -- in tacloban city. when she got married, she and her husband decided to live there to raise a family. in contrast, i have always been a big city person. i love getting lost and dizzy in the labyrinthian but chaotic streets of a mega metropolis, as well as get...

(a beautiful rainbow appeared in tacloban days after yolanda hammered the coastal city (and parts of the visayas), flattened houses and buildings, claimed lives and ravaged the once bustling capital of leyte.) of course we all love our lessons. don't we? since we were kids, we were taught to learn from anything -- fairy tales, a bad injury after crashing our bicycles, an accident that included falling off a tree, leaving our coloring pencils at home, doing poorly in an oral or written exams because we opted to watch teevee instead of studying our lessons. nobody can underestimate the value of lessons. we live, we learn. if we don't learn anything from anything, then we are better off dead. nobody wants to live as a zombie. &&&&&&&&& more than a week after the strongest typhoon to ever hit the earth crashed all our dreams, mahatma gandah hopes for our sakes that we learned something valuable from that nightmare. countless lives ...

we were outside of the then sparklingly new robinson's shopping mall waiting for a taxi, when out of the blue (maybe i was concerned that we ran out of things to talk about; or i am just like everyone else, uncomfortable of the long silences between conversations), i asked my sister why she loves living in this coastal city of tacloban, where she spent more than half of her life. she studied and graduated at the university of the philippines - visayas. when she got married, she and her husband decided to live there to raise a family. in contrast, i have always been a big city person. i love getting lost and dizzy in the labyrinthian but chaotic streets of a metropolis, as well as in maze-like giant shopping malls, in unfamiliar places inhabited by people speaking in strange tongues, in walking or traveling on well-groomed and seemingly endless roads, and in being dazzled by city creatures in their fineries with some looking straight out of a fashion magazine no matter what th...