after much thought, I am finally getting a tattoo..

..tomorrow, at 1PM. Just so you know. Move over king of pain! The design here. Here.

 

King Of Pain - Sting

solo flashpacking in Boracay

dirt cheap. myBoracay trip at less than Php6,999.00 4 days/3 nights


the strip, all 4 kilometers of fine white sand and clear water, all yours.


front row seat to the best beach in the wOrld


this is what rush hour means at white beach, Boracay


paraw




dirt cheap!

At less than Php6,999.00 (4 days & 3 nights) inclusive of airfare, studio unit (studio for its size, mid-range pension house for its amenities) accommodation at station 1, all meals, all fares and whole day island hopping.

But hoy! Hold your horses. Don't get too excited. What gives? Planning and adventuresome spirit.

(I just arrived and my head is spinning from the seemingly endless trip back home. the budget breakdown laters.) UPDATE: expense report now ready here, thru this link:
flashpacking Boracay

Meanwhile, here's the first batch, hot-off-the-grill. A baker's dozen out of 600 photos..

a monastery in the age of touchscreen

the relevance of a monastery in the age of touchscreen, sunscreen, facebook and ipod

Many, I suppose, are afflicted with compulsive facebook and/or multiply syndrome. I mean how many of us grab any chance we can get to check facebook or multiply any given minute? (and now with iphone and its applications, checking these sites can be done heartbeat after hearbeat). Minute after minute to check what one is doing (in the loo) or what one is up to after being dead bored in the last 30 minutes or where one plans to go in an hour. These social networking sites, if one happens to still get his hands on a newspaper and really read the paper (in my generation, who buys newspaper anyway when many a site update news in real time; but if we do, it's either the Saturday paper for weekend party updates at sundown or Sunday paper for job hunting), can make or unmake a techie, build or rebuild friendships, create or break opportunities or worse, in the news not so long ago, these sites become the centerstage for one kiddo who ended his life for the world to see (I'm not sure though if it was a social networking site. i'm too lazy to google it). May his soul rest in peace.

The idea of keeping ourselves updated makes us also vulnerable to keep everything public, therefore easily accessible. Some, if you notice in many youtube anonymous comments, goes beyond propriety and unto the harsh reality of digital mudslinging and washing dirty underpants in public. Who can stand these verbal, rather digital assault? The stress level of this generation was never imagined in our grandparent's time. On the other hand, the demands in workplaces in concrete jungles can be as toxic as it can get. And for the most part, spa, mindless sex and what-not are all but temporary relief.

Though I am not saying the monastery offers one eternal solution in this modern age but in this age of touchscreen and online dating it has become a refuge for the heartbroken, an unwed pregnant woman and many urbanite souls who wish to take a walk away from lala land--and gallivant inside the hundred hectare property where peace and quite and good food (for the body and spirit) are well-prepared. Though not as disconnected from the world as you might think (stop thinking it's warped in medieval period. the monk I know has a cellular phone and email), you will feel transported to a place where peace and quite and good food is enjoyed by all.

You just let silence speak to you, and if, at any rate, it becomes deafening, you can always have someone to speak with--the Benedictine priest, the monks, the kitchen hand, the gardener and if you may, God inside or outside the adoration chapel.

I came there to experience what most people who have visited the place rave about--a very solemn dawn mass with a heavenly choir singing. But in the end, it was not what I was seeking after all. In there, I found my peace and sense of self even for just a couple of days. I surrender myself to a life of prayer in the tradition of the Benedictine monks. I hate to admit it, but the silence that spoke to me from the hills of Bukidnon made tears well up my eyes--and flowed endlessly until I feel a certain feeling of lightness.

What the guidebook didn't warn me is that I'll fall in love with the place the moment its perfect rhythm pumps into my system-- so hopelessly in love I'll be coming here for an annual self-retreat year after year after year.











it's not what you're thinking...(whilst waiting for the pealing of the bell for Misa de Gallo)

Benedictine Monastery

Monastery of the Transfiguration
Barangay San Isidro, Malaybalay, Bukidnon




By the time Malaybalay City wakes up to the chill of a December morn, I was already at the yellow box waiting for a Valencia-bound multicab. Manong the receptionist--who is from San Isidro where the monastery is located--back at the inn gave me directions and habal-habal rate from the highway to the Church of the Transfiguration--the church is the last project of the late National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin. After a series of adventures and misadventures, I was already two barangays beyond the junction.





Here now is the reason why I decided to spend two days and a night and a dawn mass (with the renowned Bukidnon Boy's Choir singing) inside this hundred hectare property in the middle of nowhere. The uber-friendly rate--hold your breath--of Php600.00 daily (it's actually called donation; and includes your room and three board meals, two snacks and 24-hour free-flowing coffee; meals and coffee all prepared by the blessed hands of the Benedictine monks) is beyond me.

More on breakfast with the monks next time.

Meanwhile...here is day ONE, away from all the worries and cares of the world and deep into silence and SELF and into a life of prayer. For one moment that eventually turned into days, I was at peace with the world and myself; and the call (..should i answer soon?) to the monastic life reverberates once more..and this time it's louder..








If heaven is on earth, this must be IT!

A Peso Short and Kilometers Away from Home

In his two-week backpacking trip to Mindanao, RV Escatron woke up to the sound of surf, got addicted to surfing in Surigao, rekindled old ties, holed up in the Benidictine Monastery of the Transfiguration in Bukidnon to attend the Simbang Gabi which gave him goosebumps through and through (which by far, he considers a paranormal experience), reawakened a call to the monastic life which he thought have long died eight years ago in New Manila, and in Cagayan de Oro City, he met an award-winning literary writer who happens to be one of his favourite poet whose account he stumbled upon facebook and whom he thought had gone reclusive and quit writing poetry altogether in the last 15 years and finally tried to find spare coins to cross the last leg of the trip—the sleepy hometown of his childhood.





I stopped counting the days and lost track of my expenses the afternoon I boarded the Mindanao-bound plane. In less than an hour after the airbus taxied the runway, here I am in the middle of the airport parking area waiting for a lift C had arranged, last minute, whilst I was in the boarding area in Mactan.

The ride from Butuan to a town in the fringes of the Pacific Ocean would take four hours at best. What C did not prepare me for was the four hours would stretch to six when in the middle of nowhere two of the flat tires had to be pulled off the car. And seven hours later, I would have had my first decent meal of the day.

The town of Placer marks the midway drive to Cantilan town, both in Surigao Province. And the rough stretch of road begins here past the Red Mountain’s one-lane road—boulders on one side, deep gorge on the other. On a night trip, these mountains, all in red sans the foliage, glow with restraint the day before full moon.

Two weeks have seen me in a love affair with surfing and break my heart all the same. The weeklong backpacking trip began in Cantilan, off-Siargao island and it stretches to days. But even before I have yet to unpack my things, I have to pack them again to attend Cousin El-el's wedding four hours drive away, past the town of Tandag, in Marihatag town. This sleepy town, still in the Pacific rim, offers me much of the waves and small islands that dot in the horizon. As the bus navigated the snaking road, the waves clashing the shores and the surf lining in the distance reminds me that next year, in the whole length of December, I will ride them again with much control and less fear. Ultimately, water will become my second skin.

(first of 10 parts)

wanted: girlfriend, no ugly

seen in Dumaguete today


POSTED's beside's a main road: how desperate can you get's? hahaha


hoookey. fine. contackin nyo.

my brother, father's son

How do you string words together and slip them into the hands of a person you barely know or a brother you only meet eight, nine or barely a dozen times in your entire lifetime?

He is your father’s son. And at an early age you have already acknowledged that he is. From what started as something of an overheard conversation in your grandmother’s wake—in the days that follow, with your fourth grade sensibility, you begin to shape and reshape the idea that you have a brother, older than you by two years. The kind of brother that you will never share house with because he is from your father’s bachelor’s past. Then that moment when truth falls so naturally, so gently, arrived. Though it escapes you already on whether or not it was your father or an uncle’s words that validates his existence, it doesn’t matter because all along, you wished for an older brother who will make you slingshots and toys from timber and who will carry you on his shoulder when you cross the pea green river beyond the rice paddies to bring lunch to your father who tills the land on Saturdays. But he came into your range rather too late when, at that age, you can already do things on your own.

Then you meet him for the first time. And there is no denying that he is your father’s son. He seems to be plucked straight from your father’s yellowed university graduation portrait. And you begin to get envious because he is handsomest than any of you in the family. But more distinctly, he has the typical silence, the timidity, the temperance—the trademark of your father’s clan.

Year after year, he sits in one corner on a Good Friday afternoon. Year after year, in the background while the priest prepares for the mass, over the mic, somebody always mouths with a voice that cracks for good theatrics, the Seven Last Words of Christ. You want  to approach him, your kuya and squeeze the space with the whole town which only go to church on a regular basis, three times a year—Christmas, New Year and Good Friday. But you, in the end, limit yourself to simple hand gestures and nod to acknowledge the presence of the unspoken, of a space between you, of a ken between brothers. Those were your last memories of him, ten or fifteen years ago. So, one day when your life, by far, takes one rewarding turn, you plan to invite him for a get-together. The date is indefinite. Anytime this year.

But just last week, at the onset of reunions and Christmas parties, he left. And the unsent dinner invitation will sit on top of your cabinet and gather dust. Until the paper turns yellow with age and the print fades with the distant past.

And you want to believe like most kids who console themselves when left with no definitive answer about their loved ones when they die; when you want to wax the glaring possibility of what-ifs; you want to believe—in the midst of grief, of a rainy Saturday afternoon in the middle of one of the twin lakes--that he is now one of the stars you see from the roof deck on a still, cloudless night.

for Kuya Obet who left just when September begins