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November 29, 2004
The Monday after
So today is the monday after Thanksgiving. We've been on holiday since Thursday, that's 4 days of doing nothing but eat and shop. Thanksgiving dinner was great as usual. The wife spared no expense in making this Thanksgiving spread the best so far. Our family Thanksgiving tradition is simple and we've kept it the past 5 years. It is a night spent with just the four of us verbalizing the things we are thankful for and having dinner. Sam and Patty are thankful they have each other as sisters as well as thankful that we are their parents. teehee. We as parents are thankful that we've never been happier with our life. The past year has been sooo good to us I don't even know where to start. Suffice it to say that we are now where were we've always wanted to be. :-)
The day after Thanksgiving was spent early in The Mall at Short Hills. Though we had planned to be there early (not crazy early like 5am) we only managed to be there before noon. Early enough before the lunch crowd gathered. Did I mention we were all tired after all the shopping. Lerie got what she wanted so I guess the trip was worth it.
We then explored the city, FAO, Takashimaya, lunch at the Rockefeller Center and a walk through Broadway. Weather was great. Although I think I'd rather go to the city when there are less tourists. It was crazy walking through 5th Avenue!
The Winter Parade at Metuchen was cancelled due to the rain. A shame because Sam and Patty's Girls Scout Troop was joining this year.
So it's back to work for me and now I can't wait for the 23rd to fly to Chicago for some 2 weeks of Holiday vacation. ;-)
Posted by ernie at 04:22 PM | Comments (4183)
November 17, 2004
October 18, 1994
Last night in between levels of Halo 2, I typed 'Ernani Agtarap' in
Google and found two entries. Both link to a piece I had written ten years ago on my 26th birthday.
DEATH AND LIFE
by Ernani Agtarap
Today (October 18), I celebrate another birthday. Then I come to think what birthdays are really about. The day when your mother gave birth to you. Brought you out in this world. Gave you life. What should my birthday mean? Should everyone I know remember? And if they don't? Will my life and the meaning of my birth depend on how other people are affected by it?
Recently I went to a wake for a child of 8 years, died of leukemia. Everytime I feel a sense of death - I lose something in me. The active child in me dies and the adult in me thinks hard and deep. I feel a compelling need to look at my life and reflect on how these things affect me. "These Things", are things that doesn't pass through our brain but rather skips it and pierce our hearts directly. I look at a dead child and questions I've asked a million times when I was a child comes back in great abundance and suddenly I don't have answers. As a child, I ask - why must people, young and old die? As a young man, I recall having definite answers to these questions but now I realize those weren't answers but reality checks on the state of my being as it tries to cope with life.
I die when someone close to me die. I cry when someone I love cry. I feel a certain pain only I know when "these things" pass my life. I love life and what it presents me from Monday to Sunday. When I look up the sky I don? see clouds but life, the same way I look at flowers - life. So why must death be part of life?
I wish I won't ever feel lonely. I can be very lonely in the most crowded of places. Loneliness is the dagger of life and like your physical body, when you are struck - even on the most remote part - your whole being is pained. Sometimes I feel I'm being struck every once in a while. As a child - I was what you would call a very hyper-active child, a lot of attention in school, church with peers. Now, all I remember was all the time I spent alone in my room crying as child because I had to memorize a twelve page declamation piece. That I had to wake very early and prepare my speech for this club and that Sunday school class. That I had to go to national writing contest when I didn't want to. Before I sleep - as a child, I cried a lot. I think it was during this time that I realized the real meaning of being lonely, the child in me would die of loneliness.
Maybe death was a way out of being lonely - maybe it was the answer to all people's misery. Maybe it was LIFE after life. That's what I thought. I remember my first experience with death. I was around 7 or 8 years old, I had a puppy - it was the most beautiful puppy that I've ever seen, his name was Beauty. I ate with him, slept and felt sad whenever I'd leave the house without him. I was Beauty and Beauty was me. Then one afternoon coming home from school I noticed Beauty didn't have any energy to play with me. I told my mother who then brought him to the vet. When they came back - I felt different, I knew then Beauty won't be around for long. That night I stayed with Beauty and watched his nose very closely. They say when a dog's nose dry up - he would eventually die. I lay down in the corner of my room where beauty sleeps and watched him till I fell asleep. The following morning I woke up in my bed and saw Beauty? beddings folded. I asked by mother where Beauty was and they told me he was in already in heaven. I cried a lot inside my heart that day and for days after that. There was nothing I could do. I had no control. Maybe that's why it hurt so much. Up to this day whenever I see a puppy or a dog - I look at the nose first!
I guess I got over Beauty but I can't say I got over death. I thank God that my near-death experiences were never repeated when I was a small person till last year.
My grandmother (my mom's mother) wasn't your typical grandma. She didn't bake cakes or cookies. She wasn't overweight. She didn't have a farm house in the country. She wasn't very religious. But she wasn't just a grandmother she was my Nanay. She died last year of reasons I'm still not sure about. She loved me. She didn't have much to offer but whatever she had she gave. When I was starting out in grade school her days were occupied by being a seamstress - in the afternoon she would play kwaho a card game with her local grandma friends. Everytime she'd see me, she would hand me a coin - it didn't matter how much, for a child in those days, coins were power. I remember the time I was so envy of my friends because they had Matchbox, these are small steel toy cars. I wasn? one to ask for gifts be she gave me one. With her frail body I remember she would carry me on her back on the way to church or school. I remember her coin filled purse as if it had my name written on it. She always had something to give me, I always thought my grandmother was very rich - and she was! If only I could turn back the digital sequence of my liquid crystal watch (the hands of time in those days) and tell her how much I love her. I missed that opportunity - I was too busy being a child. It should now be my turn to keep a coin-filled purse and carry her on my back - I missed that opportunity, I was too busy carrying my own weight. It should now be my turn to give her the Matchbox that she had always wanted - I missed that opportunity, I was too busy with all my Matchbox. I keep that toy car with me as a reminder of my childhood and the person that made me feel even as an adult very much a child.
A great sense of loss, that's death for me. Maybe people who die are happier than people who are just born. Birth is a trial, a phase, a ritual. To die one must overcome life - its pains, trials, hurdles and sorrows. So far I?e lived a fair life. I'm happy to be alive and loved. I reflect about the people who have been a part of my life but are not with us anymore. They will always be a part of my life. Maybe that? the reason I love to sleep. In my sleep I? with everybody - with Beauty and my Nanay and the people that love me now. A sense of loss, I felt that recently reading TIME magazine. As I look at a man lying dead in a rescue boat in a north sea accident. I don't know that man but his face was enough for me to see him as my brother. I never got to meet him. It's a missed opportunity. Maybe I do know him - in my dream.
I still get lonely a lot these days. But I feel I'm able to cope with life. 26 years seems like a long time but I believe my next 26 would be too short. I thank God for death but I thank him more for life.
Posted by ernie at 11:07 AM | Comments (3165)
November 16, 2004
G5 'Tower'
Our department just received delivery of some 20+ G5 Powermacs with 23inch flat screens. We decided to make an actual 'G5 Tower' while the techies set them up. :-)
I was chatting with a friend from Apple and she broke me the news that she and her husband are getting a divorce. She has a 4 year old daughter. I was shocked to say the least that her husband would dare fool around as she must be one of the sweetest and kindest person I've met with a killer smile to boot. I can almost feel what she must be going through. Her husband is fighting for full custody of their daughter - the ass. Makes me wonder what kind of man would leave a perfectly nice and hard working wife and their lovely 4 year old daughter. Some things are just too hard to understand. But these things happen sad to say. At the end of our talk she told me that 'things could be worse' - true, I just feel so sad for their daughter.
Posted by ernie at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
Avenue Q
If you have $9.99 to spare, go and buy the Avenue Q album. The inspired brainchild of the songwriters Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, this canny toy chest of a musical takes its stylistic cues from "Sesame Street," from its cheery urban set to its singing puppets of assorted colors and dispositions. And in doing so it becomes the first mainstream musical since "Rent" to coo with such seductive directness to theatergoers on the fair side of 40 in their own language, in which irony is less a mind-set than a loosely worn style. Directed by Jason Moore, with a book by Jeff Whitty, the show applies the coaxing, learning-is-fun attitude of children's educational television to the R-rated situations of postcollegiate life in the big city. Featuring a pitch-perfect ensemble of live performers and oversize hand puppets, "Avenue Q" is to "Sesame Street" what Mel Brooks's "Producers" is to vintage Broadway musicals: a connoisseur's tribute to what it only seems to send up.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=2899519
Posted by ernie at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)