Decisions – decisions! Where to go for dinner when you’re international with friends of different ethnic backgrounds: Japanese, Chinese and Filipino. I decided, since I played host and offered to treat. Thai it is. Everyone heartily agreed. I just wondered: if the choice was cuisine from any of our backgrounds, likely, a friendly argument would ensue. That would be utter waste of time, especially when we all were pitifully starving; some of us, having missed lunch in expectation of a huge dinner. Thus, we headed to Amarin, a pleasant Thai restaurant in Mountain View, CA.
Now, here’s the caveat, I warned my curious group. Read More »
Not the usual Sunday for me. Didn’t rush home after worship service and Sunday class. I stayed longer than usual in church today. I parleyed with friends, ate a church-sponsored lunch offered in celebration of the church’s 70th anniversary, engaged in more social chats over lunch, greeted old friends I had not seen in a while, walked to the ladies’ powder room where I met twin sisters whom I’ve seen but never spoke with before, then drove home.
A very productive, meaningful Sunday for me, and I’ll tell you why.
Embarrassed to admit, but I’ll say it anyway. Technology perplexes me. It frazzles me. For the past week, my web consultant and I battled the consequences of shifting to a newer version of the domain site, supposedly, to benefit from additional features. We were too excited with the prospect of enjoying the advantages over the old program, and either failed or refused to expect challenges and issues with the updated mechanism. The thrill of having something new was just too irresistible, for me at least. But stress crept in.
Jitters attacked me. It was the night of the junior-senior prom at my American high school where I was an exchange student. The grand ball of the year, where high school seniors and juniors swept out of their ostentatiously decorated cars in their best gowns and tuxedos, where girls became ladies hanging on to the genteel arm of their handsome escorts, where boys turned gentlemen opening car doors and pulling chairs for their ladies. It was a splendid night of putting on the ritz.
The opening event was a march of the voted homecoming king and queen and their royal court. Having been voted by the school population as third runner-up for homecoming queen, I was thus designated as a princess of the court. That night, I felt like a pampered princess in a lovely apple green machine-embroidered cotton gown sewed by my American host Mom. My escort, blond, blue eyes, six-foot tall and all seemed like a prince. The prince, however, was terribly shy and barely spoke 30 words that night. He could have been a frog. If he croaked, that would have thrilled me. But he was much too quiet. Bring two bashful youths together, and the result is disaster … though now, quite funny to me.
Today, I’m in my brother and his wife’s home in a suburb in Las Pinas, Philippines, for a week’s staycation. I’m sitting in the patio converted receiving room. To my left is a tall and wide grilled window bordered with pots of bougainvillea bearing newly opened fuchsia, white, yellow and pink blooms. True to its reputation, the orange one is slow in flowering. Sitting on my favorite polished molave wooden chair, I savor the aura of a Philippine setting. An observation suddenly loomed. I’ve always assumed that roosters crow at the crack of dawn. Now, I realize that cock-a-doodle-doos sporadically toll all times of the day. Chicken calls echo from various distances like a continuous repartee, and at times, like choral refrains. The resonance doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, it delights me. After all, I don’t hear symphonies of cock-a-doodle-doos back home in Palo Alto. Perhaps, I should record them for nostalgia’s sake.
Babyboomerlola.com turns one year old this month. It’s been an interesting journey with intriguing surprises for me. In writing my blogs, I learned to be more transparent about my thoughts, feelings, expectations and observations. Sharing my reflections and memories wasn’t easy at first, I must confess. There was this little voice in me that wanted to dominate, telling me that the “world” does not have to know my opinions, thinking, or experiences, and that I could very well convey stories about others, but not about myself.
The compromise is, not every blog is about me, I argued with that little voice. Though I agree that my blogs mirror my perception of happenings or events – and that’s where “me” comes into the picture. I admit, it took a little while to be comfortable with this. Sharing my thoughts, feelings and memories is letting you into my world. Hopefully, you’ll agree, that when you engage in my world – I engage in yours, too. And when we “connect”, this world becomes a “small world”. And that’s what I love about Babyboomerlola, it’s not just my creative outlet – it’s also a venue to connect. To date, this site carries 61 blogs plus the sidebar. Read More »
