This year I discovered, at the expense of the sanity of our neighbors, that I can sing. I now have a way to get even with those who do the same thing given a videoke and shots of alcohol.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Civil War day!)
The (Bad) Voice
First blog post
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Old School Flatland, Anyone?
I have found my second lagoon. In my younger years I hang out a lot with my friends in Bacolod Lagoon to kill time with our bikes and to test ourselves if we can mimic what we saw on BMX Trix 101. I can’t recall if it’s on Betamax or VHS format, definitely not on disc, but it’s the only video source we have back then–YouTube wasn’t around yet. I continued with freestyle until before I got married in 1996.
Years later, I would soon find myself on my twenty-year old Haro bike, stepping on its pegs, figuring out if I can still do either the scuff or rolling tricks that I like to do. And I still can. I am now in the midst of the new generation riders—and I’m lost in their lingo and the names of the famous riders they know. These guys use bikes with small sprockets, low seats, and mostly brakeless. I have an old school setup. One remarked that my Spintech detangler is now only available on eBay. My freestyle bike is the heaviest. But yes, I am among the few here who can do flatland. The rest do street.
I am now on my third week of mingling with whoever is at the Tanuan plaza–yesterday we transferred to their other location as a political campaign was ongoing. I have a list of routines to recover but I was able to do a satisfactory frontyard yesterday and I got a short clip of myself doing a backwards forkwheelie. Need to avoid skinny jeans though.
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To be with other BMX riders is already almost home but to speak with others in my own dialect makes it a lot better. I did not expect that here in Batangas I would meet others who are from either Ilo-ilo or Bacolod. The guy who can do time machine is from Ilo-ilo while the one from Bacolod (he’s here for a vacation) rides with one of the current popular riders, Paulo Gepulango, who happens to be a friend of a Facebook friend. My FB friend is the son of one of my best friends and BMX teammate. Then last week, I was in bike shop whose owner and their mechanic are from Negros Occidental, too. Small world?
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (I need a bike rack so I can take Marcus and his wheelchair with me.)
Goldilocks’ Heroes Cake
Kids are hard to please nowadays and Marcus is one of them. Give them the gift that they have longed for and they look for another. Yesterday, he received the toys that he wanted, only the affordable ones though, but asked that his birthday cake be Batman themed. I did not anticipate his request, I thought I have explained it before that he can’t have it. But then again, kids will be kids, their mind will change at any moment especially if they know it’s their birthday.
So where do I get Batman? A high beam over Batangas’ skies won’t make us see the caped crusader gliding down to the rescue. Good thing, Goldilocks knows their customers and I found one cake that would instantly resolve the problem.
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Marcus actually received a gift from Batman himself–at least it’s what the gift card says so at the expense of our Skylander gifts being set aside so soon.
The good American Santas once sent Marcus a used Skylander set and I know he has finished the game already. Later I learned he is missing two other elements so he can explore the game more. On this eighth birthday, he received the air and fire characters, thanks to wifey (I owe you one).
On a side note, kiddo also has his gift to himself. Being a big fan of the Halo game series, he finally opened up his panda coin bank and got for himself a Halo 3 CD. It costs P950 and I think the panda still has more. We will try to sneak later and get some to cover for his birthday party expenses. Shhh.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Recovered the sleep I skipped. Yesterday, I only had more than an hour coming from night shift.)
Marcus turns Eight
Another year ticks by. It wasn’t the best year, in fact, to say it was the most challenging is an understatement. This new year, our wishes go beyond more candles to blow and more birthdays to come. We wish that we all become physically stronger, mentally tougher , and spiritually better. All for Marcus. Happy birthday, son. Always remember, you are loved.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Juggling between parenting and broken touchscreen.)
Feel the Drift
So we discovered this one place in Nuvali where we experience drifting a car outside of the virtual world. Marcus loved it so much that we have to do it again on our second visit. Thanks to wifey who this time tagged along with us to capture this video.
By the way, thanks to the crew of Skidkart Circuit who made a kid in a wheelchair (and his dad) experience what he only sees on his Need For Speed Most Wanted game. We will try to find you in Tagaytay if we happen to be there.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (This Ayala Mall Solenad already feels like home to Marcus.)
The Mamon Experience
We haven’t had the chance to watch the latest Kung Fu Panda movie but at least Marcus got to have a different, cheaper one, way to experience it.
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I am Mr. Ping, Marcus is Po.
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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (He has asked the question.)
We Will Rock London
We are not done talking about dreams yet. There is probably no other place where Marcus would like to be and it’s not where most would go to. At the same age, kids in general would say Disneyland, some Universal Studio, some Legoland. But none of these are Marcus’ choice. Where then? London. Yes, London. If he had a bucket list this would be among his things to do, we bet it could be his topmost even. His obsession with this place amuses us.
Firstly, he wants to meet one of his YouTube idols, DanTDM. Given his own free will, he plans to see him and his pugs. Just like that. For Marcus, things were as simple as just dropping by to say hello, like how he now does with this cousins wherein he visits them almost every day since we transferred. He spends so much time on YouTube channel of DanTDM that he feels his favorite YouTuber is no celebrity but rather someone ordinary who he has access to in short notice. Oh by the way, our son’s such a big fan that he wants to color his hair blue just like Dan did. I told him he can when he turns ten. (Two years to go and I hope he forgets.)
Then what’s a visit to London if you haven’t seen the Queen? So this one too is part of Marcus’ agenda. He once asked if he would be allowed to enter the palace to see the Queen. We told him it isn’t easy to get past the guards but he was insistent and it seems like he already has a plan. “I will sing We Will Rock You, that’s by the Queen,” he stressed. Well, he’s got a different Queen in mind, Freddy Mercury would be proud.
Besides singing his way in to the palace, he has other tests for the famous Buckingham Palace guards. Having seen it once on Mr. Bean’s cartoon show, he would like to prove if they do stay still while on duty despite being surrounded by annoying tourists. This reminds me of one of his classmates who once said she remembers Marcus whenever she watches Mr. Bean. Yup, he could be as animated and funny at times. When not being stubborn, he’s a natural comedian.
There was also a day when while undergoing his session with a local reflexology therapist or manghihilot, he saw on Pinoy Abroad, a local TV network afternoon series, the familiar London underground sign that he sees a lot in Modern Warfare 3. He said he wants to see the actual place to check if it does look like the one in his Call of Duty game. Yup, I know, the game’s rated M so sue me.
So how do we get him to London? We can’t for now but Marcus is keeping his fingers crossed that I win the lotto. Far-fetched but sounds like the only plan.
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Our son seems to be bent on getting his travel funds. Last night he asked his mommy if he can help finish her freelance job. Hmm.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Today we are committed to fight the summer heat. Home-made halu-halo coming.)
Marcus Can Dream
We have stopped taking note of Marcus’ milestones. We consider him as any regular kid except that he cannot walk. In the past few months since his last check up, nothing seems to have happened significantly which for me and my wife is good enough. Actually, things have been relatively normal for us. There is this one though that we have been wondering if or when it would happen. Now it did.
Marcus has started dreaming, well, at least he already started telling us what they were. Not until this year, he has never told us about his dreams. I find it weird that he doesn’t have any–not even a nightmare. It is just so unbelievable that he won’t have one with all the things going around him like video games, movies, stories, school, toys, flawed parents, and any other factors that would easily form good or bad images or a combo of both while he is on REM. I was thinking then that either he is among those who soon forget their dreams once they open their eyes, or he opts to lie all about it. Whatever that is, I was sort of worried that he does not have a dream to tell.
My wife said that she would sometimes observe Marcus talking in his sleep but he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recall what he dreamt of when asked about it in the morning. Soon, however, we would hear one from him.
The first instance he disclosed his dream was one that’s outright scary. Obviously a nightmare. He told his mommy about his dream where God is bad so much so that he is now afraid of seeing that ‘God’ again. We have already assured him that it couldn’t be so, that it couldn’t be the God we know. He has not described what he saw and I do not want to ask either (I had nightmares of holy statues and figures in the past and they’re the worse ones).
But he had happy ones, too. Whew. He excitedly told us one day that he dreamt of being able to walk and run around and I can very well feel how it must be like for him–it’s like me dreaming of flying freely just to wake up and realize that I can’t. Come to think of it, it was rather a bittersweet dream but it is a dream I am sure he would always like to have.
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Some of Marcus’ dreams are actually coming true. While he dreams of being on a plane to London, he will soon be on one but to another destination.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Will catch some sleep. Will dream.)
Oh my gash
Scratches, scratches, and more scratches. It has been more than a month since I have been dealing with lots of it, left and right, front and back. Some of unknown reason, some almost obvious. The most recent is a huge scrape on my front left bumper which I noticed after we returned home from watching Batman V Superman. It is the nastiest so far since we had the car as applying rubbing compound just didn’t fix it this time.
A close inspection points to only one culprit–the wall perpendicular to our parking space. When the snafu happened wasn’t immediately clear though. Initially, I thought it was on our way back–it was my first time to back up into the tight space on a night time plus Marcus kept on annoying me with his series of questions about Batman, past and present. However, things begin to fit like a puzzle the next morning.
Curious where the bumper actually hit, I checked my sister-in-law’s wall again when I gave Marcus a stroll in his wheelchair. Nothing was obvious at first, the wall and its paint seem intact just like after I checked last night.
A few seconds of head scratching (that word again) soon pointed to a tell-tale clump of gray paint. I felt like Frank Hardy. The scrape shows that the bumper made contact on my way out which explains why a guy at the car wash where we stopped by before proceeding to the mall asked what happened to the car. I dismissed his inquiry, didn’t even bother to check the car, thinking he was referring to a damage on the rear door–one that happened more than three years ago in the same area but due to a tree’s fault.
So it wasn’t Marcus after all. My ego scratched.
I do cringe at this new unsightly mark on my front end but I know that I’ll get over it soon. It’s just like how it was with some other scratches made by envious neighbors, playful kids, careless shoppers, disappointed beggars, reckless bikers and motorcycle riders and cats, dogs, and chickens included. Name it, the car has it.
The bright side here is that I had something to draft at a parking lot while waiting for someone. I offered to drive for my brother-in-law and his family for the wedding they attended to this Easter Sunday which by the way is the main reason I decided to leave the house and have the car washed on the afternoon the car scraped the wall–and the very next day after I said the car survived unscathed its week of being parked in a tight space. Spoke too soon. Ti abi.
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Not all scratch stories are the same.
The day we moved into our new house, we observed details that seem off: the windows’ screen frames were interchanged; bits of screen were in the sliding window’s rail; a portion of the wall had uneven gray patches; and, the front door had scratches on the bottom part. All seem to be hints of sloppy workmanship showing up. But it wasn’t.
We soon learned that someone left the dog unnoticed inside the house and it eventually panicked and tried to escape and made a total mess like the Tasmanian Devil. Fortunately, help was available in short notice and everything was restored somehow. The dog now stays just outside our front door serving as our own sentry.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Back online. We now have internet connection.)
Marcus Can Blog 