(Very) Late bloomer

I made my son happy this Christmas. I think. I hope so. I bought him his first Android phone. :) It cost quite a lot, at least in my standards. I am (for the most part!) a practical spender, and my son knows it. I have been using the same outdated cellphone for the last two or three years, and I am not even thinking of getting a new one anytime soon. So, when he told me that this Christmas wish was to have a new phone, the hesitation was there. I will never forget, however, the happiness on my son's face the moment the sales clerk handed him his brand-new phone. I saw in my son a very youthful look of excitement, pride, and joy. He's 15, and at his age, the one thing that matters to him most is his life in the virtual world. As we walked out of the store, my son uttered a word of thanks to me. That was very thoughtful and heartwarming. Every centavo I shelled out for that gadget was suddenly worth it.

Thirty-three days to go, and another year goes down the drain. No thanks to my poor memory, I can only relate what this year was like from the third quarter up until the current one. I must say, 2011 has been both nasty and nice. I was a constant victim of stress, so much so my body and mind became its breeding ground. I slept, woke up, and worked my butt off feeling stressed. I developed acid reflux, felt deprived from lack of sleep (I remember getting FOUR hours of sleep in a span of two days!), and accumulated a great deal of emotional baggage. So, is there a nice part to this after all? Honestly, not much at first glance. But, I realized, this year taught me a lot of things. Because half of my time was stress-filled, I got to appreciate more the other half that I had, until I learned to take life as it is, no matter how tough it is. I became more appreciative of the good times and prepared (I think!) for the bad times. I am aiming for more in 2012: more wisdom (read: I need to g

After Ludlum, I chanced upon the works of science fiction thriller master, Stephen King. It is quite hard to pick a favorite among his novels because most of them impressed on me King's utter talent. Dreamcatcher really freaked me out I couldn't get myself to read (it) at night. The Green Mile is no doubt a contemporary masterpiece, with John Coffey, and even Mr. Jingles, breaking my heart. The Regulators and Desperation have twisted plots that only creative geniuses like King can conjure. I am just in awe of the writer-storyteller that King is.

I sorely miss reading books. After switching careers from advertising to business process outsourcing, I stopped reading as a hobby. It was around the same time that I also stopped writing. Truly, reading and writing either flourish or die together. My earliest favorite books were from the Nancy Drew series. IKR. It's old school. Years back, I would spend summer vacation with my aunt and her family. Except for my aunt (who was always busy in the kitchen), everyone of us in that household either had a book to read or a movie video to watch. My cousins had a fairly wide collection of readings, which they either bought with their allowance or were given to them by their dad, and the ones that first got me hooked into reading were the Nancy Drew paperbacks. I can't remember now which titles I have read (I won't deny memory gap is something I have developed in my state of motherhood.), but they definitely triggered my love for mystery novels toward the latter years. When Nan

Shame on me: For keeping dormant blog accounts that never got to anything more than two frigging posts over the last five years; For being uncertain if I can keep this blog going (not again!); For abandoning writing when all I've ever dreamed was to get published; For letting my life pass me by with no written record of people I've met (family and friends, most especially), places I've been, and things I've considered dear; what a shame indeed. No time to despair now, as I do realize quite belatedly: Life is too short for that. I got a lot of looking back and catching up to do. I got to look back (and sigh) on the things I passed up and get myself to change those misses into hits. (I was about to say before time runs out on me, but that's creepy.)  It will be like my life on playback and fast-forward.