looking at my blog...

i was looking at my blog, and it still has a ways to go. i want to have a pic or at least some kind of pattern right up on the title as well as have a pic on my profile. some of the few things i still have to learn.

well still have 3 months to work on it till classes resume, that is unless i do decide to take summer classes. yun lang.

just a of a rant, if you may actually call it one.

the weekend

it was a good weekend, got to hang out with friends here in new york. was rather nice that one of us who moved to d.c. was able to spend sometime back here in new york. thats one of the reasons for the get-together. second would simply be that we enjoy hanging out and catching up on how each one is doing. it had been sometime since we were all able to go out as the group that we were.

also got to spend time with relatives. eventhough i ended up sleeping wasted and tired, i ended up feeling great the next day. i guess there is really is something different being with the people you care about. you tend to really try to forget the rest of your problems so as to not tarnish the moment, since pretty much most are aware that you rarely do get-together if ever.

im back now at my apartment, and again im facing my room which is still in a state of chaos. i guess in some ways, i really have no intention of putting it all together since it does give me something to do. thats the problem now that im done with classes and with frances not being here. ill admit that i really am not as productive. but that will change. i will set that tomorrow will be a new day and things will be accomplished. hehehe! what a bold announcement. hopefully i do keep my word.

well eto na muna, have to get back organizing my old notes in their binders.

an article about marriage

i remember reading this article a long time before
and until now, it still is a great read.
hope you all enjoy reading it as much as i did. =)

PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved.

But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage.
Something about the closure seems constricting, not
enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what
it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes
possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not
want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married
for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever,
or just because they thought it was the logical thing
to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners
became embittered and petty in their dealings with
each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at
best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a
lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could
not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such
a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples
who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence.
They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon
each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It
was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible.

How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many
years of sameness, so much irritation at the other's
habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us
seem unable to even stay together, much less love each
other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well.

There is something to the claim of fundamental
compatibility. Good people can create a bad
relationship, even though they both dearly want the
relationship to succeed. It is important to find
someone with whom you can create a good relationship
from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see
clearly in the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the
way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the
thousands of little things by which relationships
eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to
see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual
fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves
sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual
attraction in order to see what is on the other side.
This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts.

Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt
to get to know each other apart from their sexuality.
But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of
unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps
them from having any normal perception of what life
would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to
become long-time friends before they realize they are
attracted to each other. They get to know each other's
laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each
other at their worst and at their best. They share
time together before they get swept into the
entangling intimacy of their sexuality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall
under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately,
you need to look beyond it for other keys to
compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter
tells you how much you will enjoy each other's company
over the long term.

If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not
at the expense of others, then you have a healthy
relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of
surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can
always surprise each other. And if you can always
surprise each other, you can always keep the world
around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no
laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based
only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over
time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world
tends to turn you against those who do not share the
same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based
on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the
world in a way you respect. When two people first get
together, they tend to see their relationship as
existing only in the space between the two of them.
They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the
overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing
obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages
and grows, the outside world becomes important again.
If your partner treats people or circumstances in a
way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to
grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals
with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love
her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be
careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal
with the world around you, eventually the two of you
will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries
of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and
practicality, and the real life of the heart resides
in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the
mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while
the other is drawn only to the literal and the
practical, you must take care that the distance
doesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you
each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by
yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts
that we will not betray and private commitments to a
vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in
love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable
parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her,
you will find yourselves growing further apart until
you live in separate worlds where you share the
business of life, but never touch each other where the
heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small
leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily
failures that leaves so many couples bitter and
unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have
chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the
real miracle of marriage can take place in your
hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a
miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.

There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation.

Transformation is one of the most common events of
nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon
becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love
becomes a child. We never question these, because we
see them around us every day. To us they are not
miracles, though if we did not know them they would be
impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make.

Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins
to flower. We cannot know the flower that will
blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom
will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the
wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite
willing to accept the reality of negative
transformation in a marriage. It was negative
transformation that always had me terrified of the
bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It
never occurred tome to question the dark miracle that
transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I
was unable to accept the possibility that the first
heat of love could be transformed into something
positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful
than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in
was the power of this passion and the fear that when
it cooled I would be left with something lesser and
bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like
negative transformation, it results from a slow
accretion of little things. But instead of death by a
thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of
love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings,
two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses
come together and share a view of life that passes
before them. They remain separate, but they also
become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a
closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This
is not to say that there is not tension and there are
not traps.

Tension and traps are part of every choice of life,
from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers.
Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt
that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and
exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that
it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and
be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen,
against all odds, to become one. Those who live
together without marriage can know the pleasure of
shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the
marriage commitment that deepens that experience into
something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush
into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith
and it contains within it the power of transformation.
If you believe in your heart that you have found
someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have
sufficient faith that you can resist the endless
attraction of the road not taken and the partner not
chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace
the cycles and seasons that your love will experience,
then you may be ready to seek the miracle that
marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of
a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the
time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.

-----------------------------------------------------------
A beautiful piece. Pls pass it on specially to the
young people who are starting to get into relationships
or are in a relationship.
It would save them a lot of heartaches and bitterness
down the road.

"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect.
It means you've decided to see life beyond the
imperfections. So, don't say you're happy because
everything is alright. Be happy because everything
sucks but you're just fine ..." -BeRNaRd,,

taken on april 27, 2005

we're engaged!!! it took me time, but i finally learned how to put some pics up

finally figured it out

it took me sometime, but i finally found out how to start putting links up on the side of my blog. from how long it took me, i can be sure that i really wasn't meant to do anything that involves writing commands and other stuff on a console. i would rather face a math problem that do it again. though inevitable, i will end up doing it again since there are more stuff that i want to put up.

well right now, ill say that ive been a little bit inefficient. this summer, i should have started researching or downloading articles related to my dissertation, but still not a single page has been found.

though i will say that i have been productive since i have been going to the gym more regulary. hopefully, ill be able to reach my desired weight. hehehe! i won't annouce how much i currently weigh, but maybe if i achieve my goal, ill post it out there.

former posts from my friendster blog

this might end up being a long post, its simply the old posts that i put up in my first friendster account. ill do them in order of my posting.

procastinating

procastination is simply what im doing right now. i should be working on my econometrics review sheet. but i guess not.
hahaha!

will try to write again.

May 08, 2005
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one more test

well 2 tests down and one more to go. you would think that maybe i would get a start reviewing for that class of mine considering that i haven't seen a single page of my notes. been too busy preparing for my econometric theory II class which really didnt help. math II wasnt that bad, tedious but not at all difficult. unfortunately, i have this bad habit that i really dont go over any of my work. cause i knew that it didnt look right that i had a fraction for an answer but i didnt bother anymore finding the correct answer. im pretty sure that if ever the deduction will be extremely marginal. still its a bad habit of mine.

interesting, im actually using this blog. hehehe!!!

May 10, 2005
====================================

stuck in an airport

well what can i say. the subject pretty much sums it up.

right now, im stuck in newark airport. i should be in seattle already waiting for my fiancee to pick me up with her uncle. after which we will then drive up to vancouver to meet her parents who are visiting as well as attend a graduation. it really has been a rough day. finished my finals yesterday (im officially done for the semester), i still havent slept since i had to help my hon pack her stuff since her flight was at 6am as well as go out for drinks with a fellow grad student who is moving to utah.

so i havent slept, i was on standby already for two flights and still no luck getting on a flight. hay..... and though i try to get some shut-eye, you always end up waking up startled and wondering whether or not you had missed being called for the flight you are waiting for.

well right now, i finally got in touch with franny. she arrived na in seattle. now we're trying to consider the various options we have on how i can be able to get seattle, more than likely ill just take a one-way flight going there and just take the same buddy pass back.

i better end this entry for now, since my laptop battery is about to die on me. hope my luck changes for the better.

.......

May 13, 2005
====================================

on my way back home.

hello, right now, im in seattle on my way back to newark airport. i actually was able to find a way to the west coast. i ended up purchasing a new ticket from another airline at another airport. so i ended up commuting roughly 3 hours to get to the other airport. it was a great flight, unfortunately i couldnt get a single wink of sleep. so guess what, when i got to seattle, i was a asleep the whole time i was on the car driving to vancouver. it was really a long day.

right now, im sick. i have a dry cough, sore throat and runny nose. nonetheless it was a great experience getting to meet my fiancee's relatives. got to meet them finally. rather unfortunate that my stay was rather short, but what can you do. i have to get back to work.

its going to be a lonely 3 months, since franny is going back to manila for the summer break. well at least she'll be able to making preparations for our wedding next year. i expect to have a large phone bill the next few months. hehehe!!!

their starting to board the flight already, i better log out na muna... keep your fingers crossed that i get on it (though im rather confident since its not a full flight).

May 16, 2005
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my trip

it was really great getting to go to vancouver, ill admit it was such a pain to get there. but once i was there i really had a great time.

meeting all the relatives, and her parents as well (who were in town for some business) really was a refreshing feeling. instead being surrounded by fellow classmates where pretty much all you discuss are theories and formulas, it was great just talking about general stuff and simply enjoying the city of vancouver.

it woudl have been better if i were able to spend more days there. unfortunately, i still have to earn a living which means i have to get back to teaching.

well eto na muna. im still a little under the weather. hopefully another nights rest will be enough.

May 19, 2005
====================================

....

well, it has been awhile na din since i last wrote an entry. looking at my past entries i usually write every 3 days. but i guess ive been a bit preoccupied or rather lazy to try and put some of my thoughts together.

first things first, its been a rough few days. having to get re-adjusted not having my honey with me here in new york. i know its weird since ive lived here all by myself for almost 3 years alone and after spending a few months together i feel a bit insecure in some ways in managing things again in my apartment. i know this feeling will fade away in a few more days. i just need to get myself back into a mentality of having to do everything again, such as groceries, other errands etc.

secondly, i realized that when i first put this blog up i had planned to use it as place to record the results of the various surveys or tests that i take online. and looking at my blog, i have done none of those things. hehehe! i guess now that im officially a bum since the spring semester is over, i could start doing that. along with other errands which ive been delaying to do.

hmmm... i have other stuff on my head, but i guess it would be better if i let the idea "simmer" (if i may borrow the term from marco) before posting them.

May 25, 2005

little prince test

You are the fox.


Saint Exupery's 'The Little Prince' Quiz.
brought to you by Quizilla

my vancouver trip

here are some pics taken during my extremely short trip to vancouver. i had such a great time, unfortunately there was no way i could spend more time. i was there for only 3 days. hopefully, i will have a week to go around the next time i visit.


aj, franny & me


me, franny, tita aida, tito kiko, tita mimi & tito gil

late midnight snack at pugsley's

just hung out at pugsley's with our friend prabud who was going to leave fordham to transfer to Utah. we went out simply because we were hungry and it was too late for us to cook! we were there from 1am - 4am.


franny, leanne, prabud & me


leanne, franny, me, & prabud