Taking Care of What's Mine

About fourteen years ago, my family had to migrate to Indonesia and live there. We stayed there for three years but we didn't really go island hopping. Most of our days there were spent in Jakarta, the capital city. Jakarta as I recall, is very similar to the Philippines except for the "call to prayer" you hear every afternoon that signals the people to go to the Mosque and pray. This is because Indonesia is, after all, a Muslim country. Since I was just five years old then, my daily activities revolved around going to school, coming back home and either staying or leaving with my mom to go visit her friends. Every saturday we would almost always be at the bowling alley because my dad loved to play bowling. He even won first place for a tournament there. As I recall, it was a long bowling alley and had a snack bar at the corner. They also had a place where you can rent bowling shoes and I think it occupied almost a third of the length of the whole place. Behind the lanes there were racks and on it were different coloured balls depending on how heavy it was, but the design of the balls were all swirly patterns. Swirls of yellow, orange, blue and pink. If my dad loved to bowl there I, on the other hand, loved the noodles they served there. They called it "Mi goreng" which in English means fried noodles, but it's basically close to pancit canton. The difference is that it's sweet and a little bit spicy. It also had toppings of squid balls, some carrots, and chicken. I never really got tired of eating those noodles.

The one thing I enjoyed the most then was buying a Batman toy from the Toys R Us store there. I think we also have a Toys R Us here in the Philippines too. I don't know if I remember correctly but I think that store was a lot bigger than the any of the Toys R Us stores here. It's about as twice as big as the Palma Hall lobby the shelves were really high. Maybe it was due to my being a lot smaller back then but I still remember that they really had many many toys. Anyway, about the batman toy, I was really happy when I was playing with that toy. Ever since I can recall, Batman was really my favorite hero and so I would make up stories and let him battle against villains, which were my other toys, and try to make sure that Batman ended u winning in the end. To describe the Batman toy I owned, it had Batman's signature hood, his gloves, boots, and utility belt but it had no cape. It's clothes was a blue suit in a camouflage design and instead of the cape it had something of a flying gadget, somewhat similar to the flying machine Da Vinci made in his sketches. I recall that I really took care of that toy and even now I can't really remember playing with my other action figures that much. They were only extras in a playwhere my favorite toy was the star. Having been really careful of my stuff, like placing them in my toy box so that they woudn't get lost and not banging the toys together or throwing them,a lot of my toys lasted until we came back to the Philippines. But the thing that made me most proud was that I was able to take care of that Batman toy until I finally passed it on to my little brother. He was born a bit after we had returned and so in a sense, my toy was older than him. As of now, I do not know where it is anymore. It's not among my brother's toys. It goes to show the difference in how we value things I guess. I don't know if he lost it or my mother gave it away...sigh.

Bowing to Higher Powers...

There is something liberating about the feeling of powerlessness when experienced, especially in today's world. This story starts out as just a regular weekend at home in Santa Rosa, Laguna, doing what I always do, where I just stay awake until I feel that gravity just feels a little bit stronger and my body ready to collapse to fall asleep as soon as I lay down the bed. But this just wasn't the day. I had heard that a typhoon was going to pass through the Philippines again after Ondoy had left its mark on our humble archipelago. But this next one was not at all like I expected it to be. I was quietly going about my business in front of my laptop when suddenly I was hearing gushes of strong wind outside. It was still okay as I thought that it would be over soon and the rains would come pouring down. But the sounds didn't stop , the typhoon was after all mostly wind. The winds suddenly grew faster and faster, the sound stronger and stronger, in a flash the lights went out and though my laptop could run on batteries for quite a while, I found I had no internet connection. I felt like a child with my favorite toy being taken away. Dumbfounded, I had nothing to do. Luckily it was 2:00 a.m. at that time and I was already feeling the drunkenness of not having slept. I thought of how I would feel if I went outside and stood against the wind's wrath. I wanted to go outside, but seeing how the trees were shaking, debris flying all over the place, and our banana tree breaking, I chickened out from the thought of dying from being hit by flying rocks. I realized that I wasn't ready to die. So I tried to content myself with opening the window in my room, experiencing a smaller version of the devastation I saw outside.