Darkness is the absence of light…and blindness is the presence of a oncoming vehicle on high beam.
***
The long wait for the part has come to an end. More than a month after my low beam conked out because of a faulty headlight switch, I got the call from my Honda service advisor informing me about the replacement part’s availability. And with this, the people whom I usually meet while on their way back home from a tiring work day will now be so grateful not to have another blinding encounter. To the tired engineers driving their cars, factory workers riding their underbones, Tagaytay-bound party goers, jeepney drivers, tricycle backseat passengers, village security guards, toll booth workers, and others — pedestrians, street dogs, and stray cats included — whom I have blinded, my sincerest apology. I had no choice but to drive on full high beam. Contact a Honda engineer for more explanation why its part no. 35255-S5A-A12 failed before its fifth year.
***
If it’s any consolation, I saw the light — my low beam light — again on 12/12/12.
Email message: I was about to ask you last Sunday na pumayat po kayo (you have lose weight)…Do you need prayers?
My reply: Yes, I need prayers…and burgers…
***
I don’t know how my other friends and immediate family will think once they see me because other than losing weight I am starting to sport a longer hair with the goal to get that ponytail back (I will try if I can find a pic) which I had when I got married and maintained until around 2004. Let’s see this Christmas vacation once I am home and and which is also when I’ll know if I can fend off food that will be abundant this time of the year. Few more days, time’s fast.
***
Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Dear God, Thanks for good health.)
The last page of the calendar is already out. It is already December but lately a lot of news on TV have been overwhelmingly sad. Crime rate is going up and this is not the Christmas season that most of us once knew as kids and definitely not the one that we would like our own kids to remember. It is therefore a relief that behind all the negativity around us are things that tell the young minds that Christmas is still around the corner. Among these is the movie Rise of the Guardians.
Thanks to the creative geniuses at Dreamworks Animation as they have once again concocted and produced a movie that not only entertains but at the same time conveys a subject matter that kids do not easily find nowadays. Rise of the Guardians is an animated film about Jack Frost and other popular mythical characters but appearing in their not usual form: there is the authoritative Santa Claus (known as North), the cranky Easter Bunny, the sexy tooth fairy, and the nonverbal Sandman. And of course, there is the bad guy named Pitch, aka the boogeyman.
Originally, I got attracted to this movie just because it has a Santa Claus but its appeal grew twofold. As the movie goes along I begin to notice that behind the spectacular animation and funny scenes (I became a fan of the golden Sandman) is a story which I think has a lot of biblical references thus making those lessons from the holy book easier to digest by the younger ones.
To cite an example, among the lines in the film “…for as long as they believe in us, we will guard them with our lives” actually has its own mature equivalent from Genesis 18:26: “…if you can find a man, if there is any that executes justice, that seeks the truth; and I will pardon it.”
And the one told by Jack Frost said to Jamie (not verbatim): “you don’t stop believing in the sun just because it is hidden behind the dark clouds” made me recall the one from my other blog regarding an argument about faith between a student and his atheist professor.
While it is highly likely that its young moviegoers, like Marcus who knows more Ninjago characters than Saints, won’t fully understand yet the deeper meaning of the messages that Rise of the Guardians relay, it is nice to know that there is another movie this yuletide season that conditions the minds of our kids, through good entertainment, what the values that they are supposed to know and do at least during Christmas time.
***
There are things I realized while watching Rise of the Guardians:
I never knew Sandman as someone associated with kids’ dreams. I blame Metallica and Spider-Man.
Despite recently celebrating my birthday, making me closer to that age wherein they say is when life begins, I am among those who get excited at the sight of that fat man in red suit.
The long thanksgiving weekend in the US gave me another time to spend with Marcus. With my wife out of town to have her scheduled check-up–-also a disguised parenting day off–and with Marcus still needing to attend school, it was just me and him from Thursday until the weekends. During this whole time I assumed the entire alpha role at home including cooking – rice and anything fried.
If I am not mistaken this must be the longest time I ate the most fried food in just a matter of few days, not by choice but by the lack of it. And so today, Sunday, after just taking for breakfast the leftover we had last night–-fried meatloaf AND fried rice, I am looking forward to Batangas where I imagine myself having something green and leafy.
***
Our recent father-and-son time made me discover something. Firstly, I can live unplugged. To focus on Marcus’ exam review as well as to spend more time playing with him after, I denied myself access to Wi-Fi and bedroom TV. Other than having more quality time (some usual quibbling in between), I have also proven that without these electronics inside our room, our son is able to be in bed earlier than before. This time he didn’t breach the 12 midnight period. But if I can continue this, is now a big question.
Secondly, I realized that with the absence of wifey at home, Marcus and I would be 24X7 fast food customers. At first the thought of meatloaf and hotdogs seem exciting but just after two meals I began to accept that I am way past that enjoyment kids (and to mention that my birthday is approaching and I’ll be a lot older by then) get when they hear that sizzling sound the frying pan makes. In fact, if by some stroke of luck, wifey will be away for another day, I’ll likely grab one of those recipe books in the shelf and force myself to cook one that doesn’t have oil.
Finally, after much deliberation, our son’s stuffed toys will soon have their new home. It has been about half a year already when we decided, with our son’s approval, that most of the stuffed toys that used to be on our bed will be kept. But hating that these cuddly toys will just remain inside a plastic bag for good, we have been thinking of potential recipients and this week we zeroed out on one – a child institution where my employer will be having its outreach program. So with some anxiety, very normal to someone letting go of prized possessions, the three of us dusted off, tagged each toy with a personalized gift card, and packed the toys ready to be hugged by some of the kids in Sto. Domingo.
Wifey and Marcus teaming up to tag the stuffed toys.
***
Stuffed toys from Marcus to Sto. Domingo.
Please don’t feel bad if you can identify one of the stuffed toys. Be proud that a toy from you that once made Marcus smile, and feel so appreciated, will have another chance to cheer someone up and that it is also a toy that has taught our son the value of sharing this Christmas time.
***
FYI. One of the Spongebob stays.
***
Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Exam day for Marcus. Another review coming when he wakes up. Will make it a love-one-another-warmly session this time. Will try.)
Oatmeal breakfast: both a confession and a penance.
***
Have had sinful diet in the recent days, from wifey’s baking (like her Christmas cookies and one that’s ongoing which involves cream cheese) and the dine outs at work (with female colleagues who seem to have a different idea when they say that they’re on a diet). And with the holidays fast approaching, the trend is likely to continue thus the challenge in appeasing the palate while keeping my waistline in check could be a tough one. Thankfully, there’s always the reliable oatmeal to the rescue though honestly, I really think that it is one boring meal just like any vegetable.
***
Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Wifey’s been making me help manually mix her batters. It’s tough. She needs a mixer.)
There are people that we tend to ignore their importance in our lives as time passes. Day in day out, as we continue to become more focused on our own self, they become a nobody, just someone annoying, just someone that badly needs to be controlled; and if things turn real bad or not as we want them to be, we freak out, we put the blame on them. They become the villain, us, the hero of our story. And this is what the movie Wreck-It Ralph is about. Disney’s latest animated movie which has a video game villain as its hero imparts another lesson-filled story to its viewers.
Wreck-it Ralph is the antagonist of who lives in one of the arcade’s video games and who, after years of playing the bad guy, got tired of being the outcast and eventually leaves his Atari-resolution-like Fix-It Felix Jr. game world to look for his own hero medal. He shortly finds his coveted medal in another video game by pretending to be one of the bug fighters in Hero’s Duty, an action-packed first-person futuristic shooting game.
Ecstatic of his first ever hero medal, he clumsily breaks a bug egg, steps into a space capsule and ends up in another video game, Sugar Rush, where he meets the witty girl named Vanellope von Schweetz who steals his newly acquired shiny medal and uses it to join the race she has been longing to participate. Ralph soon learns, however, that like him, Vanellope is also an exile of the confectionery world where she resides. And so seeing that they have something in common, they strike an agreement to beat the odds. But it was short-lived.
After breaching a deal that is supposed to make him get his prized possession back and her winning the game’s race, Ralph later finds out that Sugar Rush’s King Candy is actually Turbo, a character of the video game Turbo-time that was permanently unplugged long time ago. Angered by the loss of his own game, Turbo sets revenge by infecting other games but finally settles in Sugar Rush and decides to change Vanellope from being Sugar Rush’s key player to just someone considered as a glitch. Turbo also made other racers believe that she is a threat that will lead to the demise of the whole game thus the utter hatred aimed at her. Stunned by this discovery, Ralph breaks Felix Jr. free from King Candy’s lair, where he has been jailed after stepping on a trap while on his quest to bring Ralph back, and had him fix the young girl’s car and gets her back ready for the race.
But while the cars made of anything sugar battle for first place, the sole bug that Ralph accidentally brought with him inside the space capsule has hatched more eggs underground. Mayhem soon ensues as in the middle of the race, the bugs spring out of their breeding place and terrorizes all the sweeties. The odd tandem of the short and bubbly Fix-It Felix Jr. and slender, feisty and armor-clad Sergeant Calhoun soon arrives to the rescue, albeit still outnumbered. In the midst of the melee, Ralph suddenly recalls how the bugs got defeated in Hero’s Duty and then devises a way to reproduce the ray of bright light that attracts and eventually kills all the flying adversaries.
In the end, Felix Jr. marries Calhoun, Vanellope gets her main spot in Sugar Rush and Ralph goes back to his Fix-It Felix Jr. environment, still the bad guy but with realization that his role and others is what makes the video game a video game – with a hero and a villain. Perhaps this is a fact of life. Perhaps it is also what parenting should be like. No one can claim to be a good parent without a challenging kid, and not one kid will be known as a good child without a strict parent – just like us right now, bad guy and good guy, Wreck-It Rafael and Fix-It Cris, not in particular order.
Coming from Nuvali and driving with poor headlight, we arrived home with me almost dead tired but with Marcus still full of energy — must be the donuts and Skittles he had. Riled up from his usual begging for attention I said something firm in straight Tagalog and his reply made me and wifey suppress a smile.
Me: …O, ayan Marcus ha, baka hindi mo pa maintindihan yan. Tagalog na yan!
Marcus: Tagawog? Daddy, what [is] that?
***
Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Anxious. We are going to Marcus’ 1st home.)
Marcus Can Blog 