experiencing bacolod

good friends are like stars... you don't always see them, but you know they are always there...

last thursday, i took the bus to manila and did the first leg of my trip to experience bacolod.  i was with friends ritzie and kristian.  the bus arrived in manila early so the three of us checked in at my place by the diamond hotel.  bwahahaha!
we had the chance to catch on some lost sleep and freshen up before taking the afternoon flight that would transport us to bacolod.

i have never been to this place, tho i have heard so much about it.  my ilonggo experience before this was a few bites of piaya for which bacolod is known for.  and except for a few pleasant college memories with my former ilonggo dorm-mates in the eliazo-cervini halls at the ateneo, the place is practically alien to me.

Balay Negrense

The Ruins

 @ Tana Dicang with Ritzie and KC

i never thought that my first ever bacolod trip would be the best ever short holiday i would take,  and i had taken a lot other.  after two days of experiencing bacolod, i took my flight and a bus ride home, filled to the brim.

Raymund BB Legaspi

Charlie Co

so today, i am grateful for my bacolod experience which has rekindled, reawakened, renewed old friendships, and introduced, bridged, started a few new ones.

27.  my ateneo friends who i have shared my college life with at the eliazo & cervini halls.  seeing them again, after more than two decades, has given me the chance to reminisce the good old days.

KC, Ritzie, Angelie Yulo, Alan Gensoli, Karina Montalvo, bidibidi & Connie de la Rama @ the Art District

connie, who made sure all the arrangements were done way before the trip dates, whose friendship made it possible to reconnect with angelie, karina, alan and francis.  

Francis Te

who paved the way for us to meet new art friends and new farm buddies.  and who hosted all our bacolod dinners.  thank you so much, connie!

28.  my new friends who i share my passions with, in the arts and in agriculture.

Raymund BB Legaspi

 

Charlie Co

raymund bb legaspi, charlie co and the orange gallery artists who have shared with us their own art experiences and welcomed us wholeheartedly in their group.

the orange gallery and some bacolod artists

KC & bidibidi with the film artist, Tiaks & BB

the Art Forum @ the Orange Gallery

during the forum

mr and mrs henares who made me realize that before a farmer can grow lettuce, he must first grow a conscience.  

with Mr. Henares at the farm house @ buro-buro farm

dinner @ mushu with Connie & Pam Henares of buro-buro farm

29.  my hometown friends who took time to see us.

lunch @ pendy's with Tiaks & Romy & Betty Aglugub

romy and betty aglugub, also for hosting our pendy lunch.

@ The Ruins with Connie

@ buro-buro farm with Mr. Henares & Ritzie

organic lemon orchard @ buro-buro farm

art on exhibit @ Tana Dicang

enjoying frozen brazo with Charlie Co at his residence & studio

visual art exhibit opening featuring Moreen Austria @ Italia

at the lobby of Nature's Village resort, where we stayed

at Tiak's ornamentals nursery

@ Balay Negrense with Ritzie

what a wonderful mix of experiences.  life is definitely good, in bacolod!  bwahahaha!.

i am earnest

with you,
i am a butterfly...
my wings of colours spread to take flight
i step out of my sanctuary...
with your gentle hands
holding me
guiding me
caressing me...

and letting me be...

with you,
i am just perfect...
my wrinkles
nestle my beautiful face...
my white hair
a milieu of my sad eyes
even my tears of sorrow,
they never make me less wonderful...


and you kiss me with deep affection
on my forehead...
teasing me fondly.

with you, 
i can never go wrong
i am faultless
with you i am perfect


but


am i?


ps. ilysm, thank you for telling me that, too. bwahahaha!

my world is colourful, with you in it!

i love the way you paint my world colourful!  thank you BB!

 

ilysm i know you know it!

love is in bacolod!

i always knew love can grow wings!  but i did not know it can have its way to get plane tickets, too.  bwahahaha! 

thank you for being in Bacolod with me, life is good, with my honey and the full moon!

ilysm and i know you know it!

healing the bruise

it was a toss and turn sleep last night.  actually, it has been for the past three nights.  i lied when i said yesterday that i had a wonderful sleep.  truth is, i have been crying myself to snooze.  but my reason for that is just too private for this my blog.  let me just say that the onset of the cold season starts the bidibidi blues, too.  so much said.

i have been trying to practice meditating.  this morning, before the noise of transport broke the golden silence of dawn, i set up some soft music that helps me relax.  except for the occasional tolling of bells from the nearby church, there was a perfect silence in the surroundings, a rarity.  and i started to open myself up to the silence within me.  and tried to quiet the incessant roar of my own thoughts.  and failed miserably.  

i just can't seem to take things off my mind.  i tried again and again, and somehow, succeeded for a very short time, to get the peace that i have been needing to have - that state of mind where there is just no thoughts crowding it.  i know it is the only state of being that will commence the healing.  ok, i will own up to it.  i am all bruised up, amidst my everyday bwahahas.  and i need some healing to happen.  and i am starting that today.  may the force be with me.

and wait, yes, there is one thing i am thankful for, today.
 
26.  i am thankful for the flowers i found strewn on the path to my refuge, my sanctuary.

not knowing who put the flowers there adds to the wonderful mystery, and it is good to know there is an unknown who knows what i am going through.  bwahahaha!  ooops, there i go, again!

ilysm and i know you know it!

 

follow your dreams, no matter what

i dared to dream.

my dream was off the beaten track

what made me more unwavering to follow my dreams, was my mother's last words to me, before she passed away:  "seguir tus suenos"  (follow your dreams).  my ma and i would sometimes have our spanish exchanges, just for her to check if i still remember the language i aced at the ateneo.  i didn't know then, that that would be her last words to me, and that those words would condition and prepare me to follow my dreams, no matter what.



i have always been drawn to the rural lifestyle.  although my travels brought me to places far and near, there is an undefined lure that would always take me back to baao, and the rural lifestyle.  at first, i was anxious that i would get bored with the parochial way of life.  little did i know then, that the farm lifestyle i was about to embrace would make me outstanding in the field. 

today, i am thankful for:


23.  Rosario, my mother, who believed in my dreams and Leopoldo, my father, who ingrained in me the love for farming

Rosario, my mother, from whose name the farm is known - La Huerta de Rosario

24.  Teresa, my sister, whose support, appreciation and occasional doubts made me more firm, staunch and unyielding on my dreams

Martin, Ma, Teresa, bidibidi, Pa

25.  Martin, my brother, who i know, is proud of me, despite his not being very vocal about it.  bwahahaha!

being outstanding in the field is a conscious choice i make everyday, every moment.  

and being recognized 
for doing what i love doing, 
what i was born to do, 
for living the dream. . .

is a bonus, an extra, a plus.


life is definitely good!  bwahahaha!

fresh and green morning

it is far from daybreak, sunrise is hours away.  i am wanting i had spent the night at the farm, where i will hear my coop make their morning noise, my avian friends chirp their morning songs. . .

i wake up too soon and couldn't go back to sleep, so my brain started to t.h.i.n.k. . .


(sometimes i hate it when it does that.  and it was too late to recall what ned and i talked about the last time, over a brew - the mind tricks you, do not listen to it, listen instead to your heart.)

i took myself down a path that i shouldn't have gone and when i got there, i said, "lakokafalfal!"  bwahahaha!


well, i am not really an idiot, but what i am is unkind, cruel, nasty and hurtful to the self.  when i stripped away the illusion, the figment of my imagination, my chimera ( i love the sound of this word.  bwahahaha!), of what i had been thinking about, and saw instead the truth of the situation, i realized that the only person in the situation who is being unkind and out of alignment with the person i was created to be, was me. (hello!  bwahahaha!)

i know the person that i want to be and that person always chooses peace and love (am a flower person), but i so often find myself choosing emotions that are in conflict with that desire.


(giving myself a break now, at least now i know what is causing the problem.)

being the person i want to be, requires me to get rid of my expectations and judgements about the behaviour of others, and this is the hardest thing to do!  yet, in doing so, i have judged the self and found the self lacking, wanting. . .

the face of unkindness is not on him, it is on me.  and whatever life brings to me, i cannot blame anyone else for my lack of peace, or my stress.  i can choose to judge the behaviour of others and find them right or wrong, or i can choose my response to it,  because i know that each one of us has to live with the consequences of our choices.  

as part of my morning meditation/journaling routine,  i have often listed things that i am grateful for.  so, today, i am grateful for:


22. the fresh and green villa where i live and where the crack of dawn brings a new beginning, always.

focusing my attention now on what my heart sees, and not MINDing too much. . .and it is a good thing.  

now am ready and i choose you and ilysm.  bwahahaha!

walls

my walls now go up quickly. . .

i've learned to build them from a master. . .

i met my hero, now, he knows my name!

last week, i experienced one of the most exhilarating, breath-taking, thrilling feelings in the world!  i got to host the visit of one national artist!  bienvenido lumbera, mang bien, for those close to him.  a recipient of the ramon magsaysay award for journalism, literature and creative communications.  winner of numerous literary awards, including the national book awards from the national book foundation and the carlos palanca memorial awards.  and the list goes on. . .


but i just didn't meet him.

i got his autograph.

i got my picture taken with him.

i listened to him speak.
i talked with him.

i hosted a dinner for him.
i got to know the person behind the name.

it was amazing!

but i think one of the coolest thing about it, the thing that really struck me, was that he now knows MY name - bidibidi.  (he even learned to pronounce it correctly!  bwahahaha!)  he took interest in me as an individual, even though i was feeling very insignificant while i was having the jitters of anticipation of meeting a hero, the feeling of being small in the presence of a great person.

the day ended leaving me feeling special, not because of what i had done, but because of the way he had taken me in his circle.  and taken interest in me personally.  and this was one of many ways i see and feel joy!

ps.  i even made him laugh with my jokes!  bwahahaha!  


pps.  my thanks to: kristian, OsacnaB, fr. eric, bing, butchog, ibyang, bembot, the baao children's choir, of course to my la huerta crew: virgie, lalaine, jr, sandy, inggay.  my joy was possible because of you!  life is good!

a random act of kindness

just a short account of a wonderful experience yesterday.

i was on a bus from the DA office.  the bus was full, well, except for a lone empty seat at the very end.  imagine how i was trying to keep my poise and my balance at the same time, walking the bus aisle, when the bus lurched forward, as if making it a perfect timing to make me wish i had my own car!!! and am not shouting. bwahahaha!

somehow, i reached the seat, whew! with no bumps and bruises.  i had to catch my breath, tho!  it was the longest bus aisle trek i ever had!  and for every step i took, i was cursing that mad driver!  and he has to stop at every single person standing by the hiway, even when all the seats were taken already.  so, the aisle started to be filled with passengers, too, all eager to go home.

i was already resigned to ending a good day with this annoying and dismal experience, when two young men seated just in front of me, stood up and offered their seats to two standing passengers.  that surely caught my attention.  not that they were loud, but  the rarity of what i was hearing made my eyes look up in disbelief.  such random act of kindness was rare!  at least in buses like the one i was on, yesterday.

so i looked to see who the two fine young men were, and found out, i do not know them.  ( i was of course hoping, they were members of my estudiantinas, or my 4h club, or one of my f.a.r.m. scholars).  so, i keenly observed and didnt know that i had the biggest smile on, that caught the attention of one of the two young men, now standing just beside me.  he smiled back.

when the passengers they gave up their seats for, got off at anayan, they took their seats back.  after a short distance, the bus then reached the bula junction and of course, the driver stopped and let more passengers in.  lo and behold, the two offered their seats again.  and it went on for more passengers.  the two young men didn't really qualify who they were offering their seats to, they were doing it so randomly, and it was amazing to watch and observe.

i couldn't keep myself from taking pics of them.  my seatmate (who i suppose is a teacher, she got on the bus by the deped area), was surprised and asked me why i was doing that.  i told her i was always on the lookout for random acts of kindness and would like to write an account of my experience.

to make this yesterday experience complete, one of the two young men got off the bus in buluang, and the other in san nicolas.  my seatmate (now, also interested in the subject of my observation), said:  "oh, they are from baao."  i was actually beaming with pride.

random acts of kindness are a means by which we make a deliberate attempt to brighten another person's day by doing something thoughtful, nice, and caring for them.  kindness is a way of showing others that they count and that even in the face of hostility and selfishness, we are making a stand for kindness.

thank you, two fine young men!  you make life good!  bwahahaha! 

the gift of the simple and the ordinary

this morning, i wrote on my journal early, before the break of dawn.  it was a bit of a toss n turn sleep, he was causin' and i was not mindin'.  bwahahaha!  i love everythin' he does to me, also makin' me silly...

part of my morning ritual and has been for sometime, is to write an acknowledgement of the blessings that come my way, everyday.  and today, my morning started with the usual, and then i wrote, "thank you for every situation in my life, because it is a way of learning...a way of creating...who i am."  so however strange my situation is, my connection, my liaison with him, i am thankful and grateful, too.  afterall, my life is but the fulfillment of His design.

i was at my eden early, too.  i love having breakfast here at la huerta, where everything is beautiful, and am not just sayin'.


i love the meanderings that my twist and turn path grant me, and i chanced upon a patch of weeds that were bloomin' this time of year.  and they bring to mind a line i read somewhere that says:  "one of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."  

so for today, i am thankful for:

21.  the simple and ordinary blooms that make my eden complete. they surely are a treat!