SJCS MANILA BATCH 82 HOMEPAGE

January 25, 2009

[ Notes from YLB: Kudos to DocGerald for his wonderful pics, we're almost sure he was a KAS officer (pero was that us standing together during the elem induction?) Still can't get over the fact that he now has the former leader of the free world as a kabarangay, but we are willing to bet that you have more skills and smarts in your tiny little finger than he has in his shoe-dodging head. catchy caption about the neurosurgeon and the neurologist btw]

Time truly flies. Somewhere between the ages of 25 and 35, when you think you're still hot, young and fresh (we think the Mandarin term is liao bu qi) but you are already growing hair in the wrong places (or worse, starting to shed hair) or beginning to forget things, it might still be time flies when you're having fun but beyond this period, it's definitely time flies. Imagine, barely 3something decades ago we were a wailing bunch of nursery kids desperate to stay with our mama / yaya despite their need to leave us for work / the baby at home / other chores, soiling our underwear ( and sometimes uniforms ) enduring bullies ( pati girl bullies ha ) & bawling our eyes out hysterically if our sundo was even half a minute late. . .

Now , we get upset / sentimental at the slightest perceived dedma (pls refer to PRANING NA SI LOLA, ETC) still endure bullies (mas sophisticated lang ng konti) cry during senti movies (hard to admit, but we got misty-eyed viewing Brokeback Mountain) and get cross when the boyfriend / girlfriend / spouse is late. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Except our youth.

THE DARK CLOUD. They all run like thoroughbreds doing it every minute of the day. While we run like our legs are made of lead and getting heavier by the minute. Still we plod on convinced that this is the only way to prevent our legs from atrophying shrinking and becoming useless extremities in our extreme old age. Instead of dwelling on the number of laps remaining (slow torture), we focus on the moment, on each stride and meter we've completed and the graceful way we've accomplished it. IT DOESNT WORK. Oh well. We know that by the time we drag our carcass to bed, our joints and litid will be creaking and whining and we will yet again regret this excursion to takbuhan land. But what choice do we have? To be inactive is to invite, with our fastfood diet, a quick but permanent visit from Manong Obesity, who will surely text his barkada Lolo Hypertension and Lola Diabetes, and its oblivion after that. But. . .

THE SILVER LINING. Well, the fact that we can run at all and not die gasping and wheezing on our deathbed afterwards is already blessing enough. At the risk of being struck by lightning, we did not think we would last THIS long ( enjoying wine, women and song ) and still be in reasonably good working order (read: all indoor plumbing still there) not unlike our Kuya's 1976 L-type Lancer that still looks sexy as ever (the Lancer, not the Kuya). When we were both waiting for our respective sundo in 1979, his last year in SJCS, DocGerald / SuJinghong had his dad's white Opel Rekord (circa 70s model) and we were fetched by our dad's delivery Willys Jeep (of even earlier vintage), both vehicles were trusty dependable beasts-of-burden that withstood any weather, Survivor style. Wish we could say the same for our bodies now. Am not complaining though ! Knock on wood and fingers crossed, we will get to play habulan and monster-monster with adorable grandkids courtesy of Nigel, Nicole and Brent. And THAT, dear kabatch, is a blessing worth waiting for. . .

THE DARK CAVE. Hair is such a sensitive topic, but in the spirit of sharing and bonding, we will say our piece (pun intended). Can anyone remember the time when hair was falling over everywhere and still we never seemed to run out of it? Pillows, towels, bathroom tiles, we saw traces of our DNA everywhere free for CSI to collect and compare with sex offenders in all 50 states and 72 provinces, and "runway" blues (think of foreheads widening into runways), sabila treatments (aloe vera) and preserving every strand was probably light years away. Now, we look at people who can't seem to appreciate their hirsuteness, smile at them cuz they, too will bemoan making light of their hairy days. Cellophane, rebonding and hairstraightening ordeals are standard to every lady batchmate's existence (all in the name of seducing ones mate, potential or otherwise) but what if there is no more hair to prettify and fuss over?

LIGHT AT CAVE'S END. No matter what, there is always something to be said at the minimalist appeal of baldness and minimum of hair. Yul Brynner, Bruce Willis, Michael Jordan (even Sinead O'Connor), and all those rappers / actors (don't forget Vin Diesel) make bald the New Macho, or make that the retro New Macho. For more and more women, the clean, spartan and streamlined "aerodynamic" look is makalaglag panty (if ul forgive the term), we wouldnt mind using the look ourselves if not for the fact that we don't have the aesthetically roundish head (naforceps ata kami crawling out of Mommy's birth canal)

THE AGONY. To be brutally honest, we are on our last molars on the South Side. Not all the brushing, flossing and mouthwash could prevent the fact that, our teeth being so close together, the slightest deposit of detritus would generate internal rot and decay without our knowing it, cuz as far as we knew the pearly whites looked good on the outside. We can no longer hide the yawning gaps when we flash our wide-angle grins, demure smiles na lang ala Mona Lisa. Weirdly, we can already stick our tongue out without unclenching our teeth, this terrifies the toddlers we have discovered. Lastly, the empty space where the molars used to be causes our tongue to be paranoid at all the extra room it can move around in, as if to say Is the party over? Still lots of food left ha?

THE ECSTASY. Beggars can't be choosers. Which is why we are still quite thankful we can chew and savor food every mealtime, which is one of the few joys in life remaining to us. To be sure, we can no longer attack and assault foods like corn-on-the- cob (which doesn't agree with most people anyway) unsliced fruit (certainly an adventure if you wanna risk it) and semi-tough meat (we don't need to relive the primeval forays of our Neanderthal forbears naman dba?), but we still enjoy the simple pleasures in life without foregoing the foreplay of incising, chomping or masticating. There IS more than one kind of foreplay in human intercourse, you know.

here comes the miscellaneous stuff :

DR JEKYLL & MR PACQUIAO. Hope our esteemed batchmates overseas don't mind but, having been away for a while, we're beginning to graft "OFW" onto our skin as it evokes images of heroism and toiling for the motherland.. . even if the end-in-mind is still migration. As an OFW, the Filipino abroad is accorded more than the usual respect than is usually given to an Asian expat, mainly because he/she gets along more easily with the local populace, and adjusts more readily to unfamiliar conditions.. .however, we cant for the life of me cope with the incongruous ness of our Pinoy-Chinese "facade" whenever we try to present the typical face of what we are: let me explain. A few times, we put on our best "proper" neutral accent and put on the airs of the people we see on "Mr. Bean" and "Benny Hill", only to be told that we should be proud to carry our Filipino accent and talk the way Manny Pacquiao talks. Does that make you blush or what? Other times, we are as real as possible, nagpapakatutoo lang and respond plainly (which is boisterously, if you know most Pinoys) to Visayans / Ilokanos we happen to be with, and we hear locals muttering under their breath, "why dont these bloody Asians try to at least talk the way we talk and keep it down a bit?" Ano ba yan kuya???

NBA REDUX: We are no longer NBA addicts (just like tobacco addiction, if you wanna recover, stop cold turkey, meaning no more regular watching for me, but woe to you who may relapse, cause just like smoking again, you'll get hooked more than ever!) but we chanced upon a Top 10 Plays of The Night highlight reel (from ESPN or NBA Jam! yata) and our jaw dropped for i think 9 out of the 10 highlights we viewed. We are no longer connoisseurs of the names, teams and matchups that have captured the imagination of the regular hoops junkie, but this guy Chris Paul (CP3) and teammate Tyson Chandler were simply ASTOUNDING in their teamwork and athleticism. We saw The Truth ( is that Paul Pierce's nickname) swish a 3-pointer while half-supine on the bench, and living retro highlight reel Jason Kidd was issuing awesome alleyoops to his teammates (Josh Howard & Jason Terry) as a balik-Dallas Maverick. Again, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

THE UNBEARABLE LIKENESS, DAGDAG PA PO. Cant help but revisit our experience being encountered as back-to-back faces of the more visible Asian ethnic groups in these parts. Invariably when we meet new people, even strangers on the street, we are asked from which Asian idyll we emerged. We confess being partial to identifying ourselves as Pinoy, but we happily represent ourselves as Chinese, esp if the asker is likewise from the Yellow Race. The pleasant surprise is that quite a few Caucasians and even fellow Asians tend to identify Pinoys and Chinese with each other. Why so? Well, this is just anecdotal evidence, but we have heard more than once that both Chinese and Filipinos are the types that most readily adapt to whatever culture that hosts them. Secondly, Pinay Indays and Chinese Mei-meis are obviously very high on the list of Caucasians who say they are prized for their lustrous and perfect skin, tasty cooking, and unearthly charms. We have no competence to comment, pero we're not surprised why white guys (no knock on their race, it's just a practical way to call them ha?) have turned from their own kind and have kept a lusty eye on our women. Lastly, and again this is very subjective, but both our brown and yellow brothers do not consider the so-called language barrier a block to advancement in either business and career. Witness the facility of both Chinos and Pinoys in English, well of course, we have had the advantage of learning English earlier in life, while the Chinese are simply determined to learn, all 1.2 billion of them.

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD A GUESS. Lastly, if not for that fact that our job principally involves manual labor in a noisy setting, we wouldnt be subject to annual lung capacity & hearing tests. Industrial medicine establishes that loss of hearing starts at age 45, but nothing prepared us for the initial finding that at higher frequencies, we had already begun to suffer loss of auditory power. No biggie, but enough for us to inquire as to the reasons, for we may have already started to lose our other small pleasures. Seems that at 90 decibels (the noise level at our workplace), the maximum allowable unprotected exposure is only 2.5 hours a day, and although we have basic earmuff protection, we remove it frequently as we have yet to master the quirky accent of our superiors. Likewise, we realized that besides egg cells and stem cells, there are other cells in the body that are finite, and among these are bronchioles, or the smaller lung cells involved in breathing. We were informed that the reason for our sometime wheezing (di naman breathing difficulty) was that some of our bronchioles may have been damaged when we were younger. Don't know if this is due to childhood asthma or juvenile smoking, but you get the idea. Longevity is not much use if not enjoyed in good health. Haaay naku Noel, pasaway ka talaga !!!

Thanks for the memories.

YLB
NOel