i am reduced to just reading through random horoscopes and reacting to it, because i have absolutely no time to be still.
past month has been crazy, and for two septembers now, my OST has been wake me up when september ends. damn self-fulfilling prophetic song.
Today you meet someone whose delusions of grandeur will entertain and amuse you.
Daily singles love (by Astrology.com)
If you're perceiving that everyone's acting like a lunatic now, well, you are a perceptive one! Just don't be surprised if you join right in. Hmm -- perhaps this energy could be useful in the realm of romance!
hey, if it makes me laugh, go! i'll take any happy pill i can get.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
haha and i say it again... haha
seriously. the funniest thing i've heard all day.
PISCES: The day starts in a warm and fuzzy way with the Moon in your sign, so be open about what you want and let others take the strain for a change. You’ve been under quite a lot of stress just lately so it’s hardly surprising that you need to be kind and gentle to yourself. A workplace issue is on the way to a peaceful resolution, Pisces. The person who has been driving you crazy is moving on.
PISCES: The day starts in a warm and fuzzy way with the Moon in your sign, so be open about what you want and let others take the strain for a change. You’ve been under quite a lot of stress just lately so it’s hardly surprising that you need to be kind and gentle to yourself. A workplace issue is on the way to a peaceful resolution, Pisces. The person who has been driving you crazy is moving on.
Monday, September 24, 2007
hahay
sabi ko na nga be eh...but hey, i'm a work in progress...
Daily extended (by Astrology.com)
You need to start understanding that expressing yourself is necessary to get you to the next level of happiness. In other words, for a healthier life, you need to share your feelings -- no matter what they are. So today, whenever you feel something, express it in the most original and creative way you can. Singing, dancing, cooking or even just goofing around are all great ways to display how you're feeling. If you keep your emotions inside or mask them, you'll be wasting your time.
Daily extended (by Astrology.com)
You need to start understanding that expressing yourself is necessary to get you to the next level of happiness. In other words, for a healthier life, you need to share your feelings -- no matter what they are. So today, whenever you feel something, express it in the most original and creative way you can. Singing, dancing, cooking or even just goofing around are all great ways to display how you're feeling. If you keep your emotions inside or mask them, you'll be wasting your time.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
maybe
the right way to go about these things
is to look for people whose baggage
matches yours...
a trunk case, perhaps, to go with my tote?
or a backpack to go with my trolley?
of course, colors must match
or at least have the prints go together.
ahh, just like in shopping for that perfect piece
to find you need to look.
is to look for people whose baggage
matches yours...
a trunk case, perhaps, to go with my tote?
or a backpack to go with my trolley?
of course, colors must match
or at least have the prints go together.
ahh, just like in shopping for that perfect piece
to find you need to look.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
because this is just what i need right now
i might have posted this somewhere before, but one can never have too much of great life stories...
“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
stay_hungry_stay_foolish.jpg
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
stay_hungry_stay_foolish.jpg
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Sunday, September 09, 2007
PISCES: A little kindness today can help remove the emotional rubbish that you don’t need, Pisces. One way of expunging negativity is to be useful. Help someone who is feeling under the weather. Give to your loved ones of your time, because when you give, you prepare yourself to receive. When you worry less about yourself and concentrate on what you can do for your family, you open yourself to be blessed.
Monday, September 03, 2007
whutevaaah!
You guys saw that cute little kid on YouTube? :)
So, I may not be as cute as this little girl, but my entry is really that- whatever! :)
So, I may not be as cute as this little girl, but my entry is really that- whatever! :)
Going through my drafts, I came upon this and realized that this perfectly echoes what I felt sometime last Friday.
If one read some entries, it would seem like I am one sad little girl. Well that would be both correct and untrue.
Just because I think a lot, just because I have a lot of I wonder and aha moments do not mean that I’m also always in some deep dark corner and moping. Well, not entirely incorrect again because I can be really deep and serious but anyone who know me well know can attest that I am a silly goose.
Why am I justifying my thoughts, in my blog? I think I just want to be comforted with the fact that while innately I am still the same, I also know myself well enough that I embrace change as necessary to living. That no matter how slow, fast, or whirlwind everything might get, I still know me and that I am not afraid to make mistakes anymore. I joyfully accept any failures as much as any victory. I will not listen to that voice at the back of my head that criticizes my every move, that voice that is in constant anticipation of failure- my inner nag, as someone I know calls it. Listen people, everyone is entitled to their own share of mistakes and everyone deserves a do-over. Ask me if you haven’t gotten your supply yet.
Ok then, on to explaining myself- something that I hate doing, but ah well, there you have it.
Life has been good to me, even if I haven’t been good all the time. For me to deny the fact that I have unhappy moments is to deny the happy moments that I have felt. So when someone tells me that I seem unhappy and incomplete, I sometimes wonder where they would get that idea. What exactly is their barometer of happiness? Is it being with somebody? Is it being happily married, with 1.5 kids, a dog and that white picket fence? Is it being at the top of your corporate game, or being ahead in your ventures and adventures? Admittedly, it gets infuriating, when people automatically assume that being single equals being unhappy. With everything that’s on my plate right now, I honestly haven’t paused long enough to wish for things that are not mine- yet. See, I have this habit of taking life by the reins and not wasting any more time moping. While maybe other single women pine and bemoan their singledom, I have places to see, things to do, people to see and things to accomplish. If other people cannot seem to understand that my happiness is really unto me, then woe to them.
sunshowers and sea foam
In the real Little Mermaid, Arial actually ended up sea foam- not as romantic and as glamorous as Disney would have us believe. Egads- I don’t want to be sea foam, flotsam and jetsam!Well, I lived my mermaid fantasy for a bit when I went diving with friends last week.
The three-day weekend was the perfect time to catch up on sleep, my laundry and chores, more work, and finally, an out of town trip. Sunday I was to sleep over at Gracie’s so we could head out early at 5am to meet the rest of the group in Cubao. I had to do a bit of work before I could turn on my :beach mode: then on to get some TLC- the cheapest and most sulit footspa, pedicure, hot oil and a back rub. I didn’t have time to do the whole nine yards anymore.
I met up with the Zuluetas in Megamall to buy aqua shoes but lotus feet that I am, they got the first pair they laid their eyes on while I had to drag them all over the mall just so I could find one for myself. Well, I did, eventually, at Speedo. Ugh, don’t ask me how much it cost. I don’t regret buying it though, as I intend to use it over and over again- until the soles run through or I grow scales, whichever comes first. And yes Annapot, I’ll even use it in the office, if I can get away with it. Haha.
We all got PizzaHut (of course!) for dinner and spent the night at their place for a movie and a lot of catching up. Then, as only the promise of the beach can do to me, I woke up really early and off we went. After Cubao, we met up with the rest of the group at McDonald’s somewhere in ATC, which was the start of out of town for me. Hey, I’m a batang west ave.
The group arrived in Pier Uno, Anilao with a bit of trepidation since most of us were first timers. The place had a nice welcome touch, greeting us with drinks and the instructors heading the introductions. A short lecture, a pop quiz, and after Dennis the valedictorian asked his questions, we first had to practice breathing through the mouthpiece and the oxygen. Sigh, fresh air.
Since we couldn’t dive without the instructors, we went in groups of three while the rest went snorkeling- yeah right, like that wasn’t part of my agenda. Now, am not the best of swimmers but damn, I’m a fish girl (being Pisces) and I was hell bent on being in the water as much as I could. The hissing sound while breathing through the mouthpiece and swimming with the fishes was more than enough to make the trip worthwhile. The silence that envelopes you while underwater, floating, weightless, and going where the current takes you made me forget all my worries- it was as if one could actually live only in that place and time. The feeling of being in the water’s welcome embrace, while at times scary, was so natural- which figures as in utero we were floating in our mums’ wombs. I could barely describe the things that I saw underwater and I know words wouldn’t do justice anyway. It was those you just had to be there moments. I could wax poetic about the experience too, but am too lazy now to think. Of course, there’s also the fact that I don’t know a lot of fish names. All I ever could recognize were all the Nemos and Dorys.
The actual diving part was for 30 minutes each person. A bit scary- ok, ok, a whole lot scary, if not for the promise of what I wanted to see underwater. I had to mind equalizing my ear pressure, the hand signals, the balancing of my tank, and I had the unfortunate experience of having to resurface at one point because of a leg cramp. Hah, I wouldn’t let a mere cramp ruin it for me, so I went down again and this time I went as far down as 20 feet or so for about 18 minutes. They say time flies when you’re having fun, but time flies a whole lot faster underwater!
I saw some old tires placed underwater as makeshift fish houses and I remembered a story about my grandfather going diving and helping in marine life preservation- his group used to collect old tires and planted them underwater. When I saw one, it felt a bit eerie- I felt a sureness that what I was doing, where I was, I was meant to be. Oh, don’t even get me started on the possibilities of underwater photography! This other diver we were with had a digicam that had a casing for underwater. Great thing about camera models now are the new accessories they come up with.
Comparing proper diving with snorkeling, I think I’ll stick to snorkeling- for now. Aside from the fact getting certified is expensive, I feel that being a diver is a lot of work. For one, you carry a lot of gadgets- your oxygen supply, your mouthpiece, your mask, etc. And then there are so many things you have to mind- equalizing, as mentioned, what to do when water gets in your mask (!), your mouthpiece getting knocked off, your throat drying up, those damned fins that you have to wear which I need to get used to, not to forget to breathe- which I do. I just need more practice and next time, it’ll have be another intro course so I could get a divemaster to mind all the other essentials. Hehe.
One would think I’ve had enough of snorkeling, but no. After a sumptuous buffet lunch and a yummy concoction of café mocha ala kapeng barako sipped along the shore while it was drizzling, I was raring to go again. The result- a deeper tan, fed more fishes, and a lot of laughs.
It was a great trip and I was sorry to see it end so soon. Met new people and would have been great to have stayed overnight, or have had the usual suspects come with us. Oh well, there’s always the next beach trip. Naturally, I couldn’t leave without my usual little rock token that I collect from all of my trips. I had to get it from the shore- I’d feel a bit guilty getting it from the ocean floor.
So, going home spent but happily recharged, I couldn’t help but wonder: If you feed fish tuna sandwiches, does that make them cannibals? Does diving and inhaling oxygen from tanks negate the effects of the occasional stick of ciggie? :)
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