Thank You For the Music

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Last night, my nephew, the son of Oscar, my late brother asked me if I knew the notes of his dad’s award winning composition Pangarap ng Musmos (Dream of the Youth) which was played over 30 years ago in an Ateneo College Music Festival. I told him I didn’t have it but if he can hear the notes, it is easy to take it down. Honestly, I haven’t heard my brother’s composition for a long time now and decided to turn it on again. As I listened to “Pangarap ng Musmos”, the tears just rolled down my cheeks as the lilting music streamed through my bedroom. As I watched a video of my brother playing Love Story on the piano, the more I sobbed. What irony! He was dying of leukemia as he played the melody.

I missed my brother so much and listening to his music made me feel he was right there in the room, playing it for me. The heartfelt passion as he played every note in the piano moved me so much. I also missed my other brother Reuben and my dad and mom. I counted 4 deaths in my family of origin. not counting my own son. Five deaths in my immediate family.

It is easy to count what we do not have.

I cannot ignore fleeting moments of nostalgia. In my sadness, I assessed what I had. I counted my blessings.

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Happy Birthday Dear Bloggers

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Meet Casey, one of the first generation net kids. If you have read my daughter’s blog (then online journal) when it started in 1996, then you might have met Casey in a few of her entries. Casey is not his real name. I first met Casey and a few of my daughter’s online friends in 1996 because I was an internet safety head of World Kids Network. Back when modems were cranking screeching noises and webpages screaming with blinking fonts, I was a Web 1.0 designer where I built hand-coded HTML pages as the structure to house the content of our websites. I didn’t have an online journal. I thought it was for kids. Lauren and Casey were one of the few kids that started an online journal in 1996.

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Long Distance Loving

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My husband’s email the other day said something like “surviving here but missing you”. I’ve been trying to reach him via Skype but never got to. Finally at around lunchtime (Philippine time) he managed to get on Skype with the help of Lauren.

It’s his first time to use Skype so he has this huge smile written all over his face. I panned my macbook around my sister’s home so he could say a quick hello to them.

Then we got to talk.

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Kippy Cat Travels

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I am right now in Narita airport en route to San Francisco and I might as well entertain myself before boarding time. It’s been years since I’ve visited the states not since the year before my son died in 2000. As my son and I sat on the airplane seat on board our flight to Cebu a few days before his death, he begged me to take him to the states the following summer. I hugged my precious boy and promised him I’d take him along because the previous years were spent with the girls choir tour in the US and Canada. It was his turn to be with me.

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Romantic Weekend at Nurture Spa

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nurture spa

My default birthday present for my husband is always a kitchen appliance. I just realized we have all the kitchen appliance we will ever need. This year, I wanted to give him something romantic! So I asked my awesome plurk buddies for romantic gift ideas. The unanimous suggestion was a romantic getaway outside the city preferably with spa pampering. I was searching for the best spa hideaway nearest Metro Manila because my husband hates driving far and I remembered that Claire invited me to visit Nurture Spa a few weeks ago. I totally forgot the Nurture Spa invite until a day before Butch’s birthday.

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UP Centennial Book: Iskolar ng Bayan Gives Back, the Enterprising Way

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imom, Dine, me and Annamanila

I am truly blessed to be part of the yearlong celebration of the University of the Philippines (UP) Centennial through a book launch, Iskolar ng Bayan Gives Back, the Enterprising Way. The book of which I am one of the writers, features 25 UP alumni who have made—and continue to make—their mark in business here and in foreign lands, living up to the UP tradition of excellence and nationhood. The project was initiated by the University of the Philippines Small Scale Industries (UP-ISSI) and the Small Enterprise Research and Development Foundation (SERDEF) where I worked for 7 years before I retired in 1987 upon giving birth to my second daughter.

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Groovy Mama Sez Hai

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Let me explain.


It started when I exclaimed “That’s awesome!” to a plurk. Was it Baddie or Pau who noticed that I said that? I forgot who, but Helga begged that I utter LOLcat words. Lauren seemed visibly “annoyed” that her friends were encouraging me to LOLcat speak. If you don’t know yet, LOLCat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak”, or “Kitteh!”. The truth is I find LOLcat so funny. I love our cats and I sort of speak LOLcat to these furry creatures. I know my limits. I will sound ridiculous at my age to utter LOLCat words.

Many years ago, I believed it would have been far out . Can you dig it?

Being a seventies child, I often heard the word “generation gap” from my high school classmates. It occurred to me that one day I’d be a mother.

I’m not going to be that kind of mother.

I’d “betcha by golly wow” will strive to bridge that generation gap. I was gonna be in the groove of things. I twirled and peered into the mirror as I admired my long, waist-length hair, Hot Pants and neon orange top.

Yup, I will be a groovy mom. I will be their mother and maybe their best friend.

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Mamma Mia! the Feel-good Movie

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I woke up this morning to my husband humming the tune to Abba’s I have a Dream. You know how it is when a song gets stuck in your head. Mine was the Dancing Queen sequence from the movie,
Mamma Mia we watched last night. I loved the movie! I was 19 years old at the time Dancing Queen became a hit and I remember twirling around and around to the music. I love to dance. I could not contain my excitement when Meryl Streep started jumping up and down on her bed. I wanted to dance right there and then. Holding my husband’s hand, I pretended to sashay to and fro on an imaginary dance floor.


Full Dancing Queen Scene – Mamma Mia! The Movie

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