A Fork in the Road

A Fork in the Road

Friday, September 18, 2015

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To paraphrase John Lennon, life is what happens when you're busy making plans.



I've always considered myself a planner. As someone with a type A personality, it's not uncommon for me to make lists and as a writer, content plans once became an everyday thing. I find it hard to accept when things don't go according to plan, even when that's expected, even when I do have a backup. I mean, why can't everything just go smoothly, right?



This year was no different. When 2015 started, I had this grand plan to #gofurther, to take a huge step and make a great change in my life. It was more than a career change, it was a dream, a goal, a leap towards what I wanted my life to be like. When I resigned from my job last year, I was so motivated and starry-eyed, eager to jumpstart something and already imagined a one-track turn of events. Because when you dream, dream big, right? When you go on a journey, you must be positive and look at what you want to achieve, and must have a mindset that you can overcome the obstacles and trials and you will triumph in the end. Right? I wanted to be a success story. But I forgot that success stories don't always happen overnight. Or even over a few months.



It is more painful when the hurdles thrown at you come from someone who's supposed to have supported and laid out a good future for you. Oh you don't know how much I want to spill everything here and share my sordid story, but recently all I wanted was to escape and shut everyone out. I'm still finding it hard to accept that things have turned out the way they did. Especially because these days, everyone's social media accounts are glossed over, branded, and seem staged. I mean, people can throw hate at you just because you're this gloomy person ranting/venting/calling for help, and it's raining on their filtered/VSCO'ed feed, so they scroll down and move on.



I'm rambling.



When midyear hit, life happened. Things happened so fast that it felt like going inside a tornado and coming out alive. Yes, I survived, but it felt like everything I had was eaten and taken away by the twister I didn't know how to start over. Even now I can't believe what happened happened.



But I've also gone through so much that I've learned life has a way of sorting itself out, and all I need to do is put my trust in God that this is just but another bump in the road that is my life. I'll be honest, I kind of feel bad and admit that I've been a bad Christian, or at least, not as good or obedient as I was years before. I let my faith drift away from me, I clung onto things that I shouldn't have clung to, or maybe I trusted myself so much that I forgot to ask for help in a higher power and maybe this is just a slight slap in the wrist to remind me that I am not in control.



My experience in the last few months (after what happened happened), and reading beyond the usual websites I visit also reminded me that I am just one person in this world, a world with billions of people living lives I know nothing about, experiencing hardships worse than I am going through, and that I should stop thinking the worst of it. Yes, there are still dark days, days when I feel like it's too late and I can't reach for my dreams anymore, when I see other people's journeys and feel so alone in mine, but those days end.



Then I wake up and decide to begin again.



These days I face people who have nothing to their name, whose days don't revolve around hashtags and smartphones, but in toiling land and literally sweating their backs. These days I face people whose hands are so rough from working, whose skin haven't come across expensive lotions (or any kind of lotion), with wrinkles and spots that are visual testament to the hard lives they live. These days I talk to citizens whose only wish is to extend the life of someone they love.



But these days I also come across people who fake diseases, who scam people and make up sob stories just to get money they will feed their family (of nine or twelve), of people who take advantage and turn assistance into dependence.



I am now in a place where suddenly the problem of not having a perfect Instagram feed seems feeble, where celebrities and trending topics don't even cross people's minds, and realizing that a designer purse some people covet can feed an entire village. Isn't it curious how we can live in the same zip code and lead polar opposite lives?



Don't get me wrong, I've always been aware of the disparity between the rich and the poor. But it's different when you come across it every day, when you literally hold the thing to get them through the day's survival.



It's September and before we know it, it'll be 2016. I don't know what the world has in store for me in the year to come, but right now, I'm trying to learn the art of being still, of understanding and accepting where I am at this moment, and that being here doesn't mean being stuck here. I just have to appreciate the view.

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A Confession Fourteen Years in the Making

A Confession Fourteen Years in the Making

Saturday, August 29, 2015

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Fourteen years ago today, at 6:05am, my Dad died of lung cancer. I was sitting by his bed, singing him songs, and my cousin Anna was with us inside the ICU. Since midnight of August 29, after pulling the plugs of several apparatus connected to his body, he had been revived four times, and that fifth time was the last. When he flatlined, I ran outside and called everyone. They all went inside, cried, and said their goodbyes. I don't remember exactly what I did after that, but I remember leaving the ICU, still wearing my Girl Scout uniform from the day before, and using the stairs to walk around Manila Doctors Hospital.

The day before he died, I was still in school, preparing with my classmates for a Filipino play called "Dula sa Plaza Miranda" (incidentally about a policeman) where I played a market vendor. My cousin Jane called me on my cellphone and told me why we weren't at the hospital when my Dad's condition was already deteriorating. Even at that time, I hadn't really comprehended my Dad's condition. Weeks before, when he laid in bed at home, I was oblivious to the slew of people coming in and out to take care of him. I was busy being a teenager.

But most of all, I thought my Dad was invincible. To me it was just a phase, a battle he would conquer. He was only fifty-five. Yes he smoked, but he had clear lungs during his annual X-rays and was at the forefront of the PNP's health campaign, showing up in his jogging gear and running at the camp's quadrangle. But the disease took everyone by surprise. Stage four, and the doctors gave him only five months to live. Still, he was my Dad. Dads don't die on their young children.

My Dad had his wake at the Camp Crame Multi-Purpose Hall. It was almost immediately filled with flowers three times over, and the people who worked there said they never saw as much flowers from the past wakes held there. A lot of politicians and famous people went, including then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and the Hall was always filled with people. But more common people went, those whose lives were helped and touched by my Dad. I remember not sleeping, because I didn't want to dream of my Dad. Everything was too fresh and so many family drama was happening which I just didn't want to be a part of. My cousin Kuya Allan from Cabuyao said he remembers me being interviewed by radio stations talking about my Dad. I also asked Ate Nora, his longtime secretary, to prepare his CV and provide it to the media. I remember making sure the chairs were always arranged like so, that there were enough food to feed the visitors, and that they weren't bored because I remember my Dad saying during a PTA Conference at the INC Tabernacle that after two hours being confined in an area, a crowd gets agitated and may start to get unruly.

During the week of the wake, I had a debate competition to attend to. Looking back, maybe I shouldn't have went, but maybe my family thought it would help with my grieving, or I probably told them I could handle it. It was held in Collegio de San Juan de Letran in Intramuros, and I was the team captain for our school. I talked to the opposing team captain (who would later be my UP Pep Squad teammate, he was a drummer I was a dancer), and I think we discussed who should go first.

It was a disaster. The debate was different than what I had imagined, and I thought I was a lawyer arguing a case before a jury. So instead of talking about my argument at length, I became tired and instead dumped a stack of papers by the panel of judges, which included Teddy Casiño. Obviously, we lost.

After the debate, I asked our driver, my uncle whom we called Kuya Jojo, to pass by the INC Central Complex because I was going to pray inside the Sanctuary. After exiting the compound, instead of going back to the car, I hailed an FX and got inside the front passenger seat. The driver asked me where I was going and I told him to just follow the car in front of us, thinking it would go to Camp Crame because it had an Iglesia Ni Cristo flag sticker on its back compartment. He asked, "Paano kung sa kamatayan tayo dalhin niyan?"  (What if that leads us to death?) I answered, thinking we were indeed going to my dead father, "Eh doon naman talaga tayo pupunta." (That's exactly where we're going.)

I gave him the one thousand peso bill (a bill given to me earlier by my half-brother and the only money I had on me) to shut him up. He took a turn on Visayas Avenue, and offered to pay for my meal. I began to feel afraid and told him I was going down. I got down in front of the Montessori school and right across (where the Wilcon Home Depot now stands), there was a small carinderia (eatery) called Aling Christie's. Actually, I don't know if that was really the name, it's just what I remember gravitating to because at that time, a woman called Christie from Chicago was being talked about by my family at the funeral. I took it as a sign and crossed the road.

I went inside and the family who owned the eatery immediately took me in. It was raining, I was alone, and maybe I looked lost. I was wearing a turquoise floral printed top and skirt, a beige windbreaker, and  a set of diamond ring and earrings that my mother made me wear for the debate competition that morning. I don't think I had my phone with me. I was lost.

They made me eat rice and Tinolang Manok. And then they asked if I could call someone. Instead of calling my family, I called the only landline that came to mind. I dialed the landline of my grade school friend who, without thinking twice, asked me to hold still and wait for him. He came several minutes later, and together with his cousin/nephew, drove me back to Camp Crame. Sitting at the back seat of his car and seeing lightning strike as we passed by East Avenue, I told him about the nearing Judgement Day. Talking to him about it years later, he told me he had been worried.

He didn't go down to the Hall anymore, and when I walked back to the wake all my relatives were fussing all over me for having gone missing. I didn't look at them, I just closed my eyes and let them lead me to the dressing room where the relatives stayed. They were all forcing me to either go to sleep or talk to them about what I was feeling. I did neither.

A eulogy was held the night before the funeral, and I spoke before the public. I told everyone what a good Dad he was to us, how important it was for him to eat together as a family despite his busy schedule, and a late-night talk about resting your mind, in between gulps of warm milk and bites of hot pandesal (which he probably bought from that certain bakery along JP Rizal in Makati). I was still wearing my Girl Scout uniform at the eulogy, up until the funeral the next day. I don't know why I did that, and now I cringe whenever I remember it, because I should've dressed more appropriately, in white like my Peña relatives, or black like my Laygo ones.

No, scratch that. Now that I'm being honest, I dressed in my Girl Scout uniform because in my mind my Dad made me join the GSP because it was the closest I could be to being a policewoman. When he was still alive, sometimes while walking around the malls we'd just break into a march and he'd lead our little pack saying, "Left, left, left right left..."

At the funeral I was in green, complete with the pink and white scarf and the black belt, with a Discman hidden inside, tucked in my underwear, the earphone cords discreetly wired inside my dress. My Dad's remains were first sent to the Makati City Hall, where he was honored for having been a Pulis Makati for a good part of his career.

Then he was interred at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani.

I remember after the funeral, we all went back to Camp Crame, changed our clothes, and went to eat at the Barrio Fiesta on Edsa. I  was wearing a teal and white henley top with a cat print, a teal skirt, and navy blue suede sandals. One side of my sandals was missing a sole but I went ahead and wore it anyway. I don't remember what everyone was talking about, I was busy staring at nothing in particular, letting my thoughts percolate inside my head.

When my Dad died on August 29, 2001, my Kuya Anton was 16 years old, I was 14, and our younger sister Juliet was only 9.

Nobody thought to make us go to a grief counselor. Everyone was too busy fighting about the money.

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Topaz Horizon x Bobbi Brown: Eye Make-up for Girls with Glasses

Topaz Horizon x Bobbi Brown: Eye Make-up for Girls with Glasses

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

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I was one of the lucky few who won a slot at Frances Sales's Topaz
Learning Workhop for girls with glasses last Saturday. The workshop was held at
the Bobbi Brown branch in SM Megamall.

There were seven of us in the class, and we were taught by Bobbi Brown's
Training Coordinator, the lovely Tamara Pineda. While she was explaining each
step, resident make-up artist Jerome applied it on Frances, who was our host
and model for the day. The talk lasted for less than an hour, but we were given
a bonus, what any make-up lover or make-up newbie would die to have: a free
trial/makeover! This workshop was so much fun and more than what I expected.

My best takeaways are putting your face on doesn't have to take up
too much of your time, definition is key, and that just because you're wearing
glasses it doesn't mean you have to skip applying make-up on your eye area.

Then, using Bobbi Brown products (great investment I’m saving up for to add to my
arsenal), Tamara explained that applying your eye-make-up can be divided into
three easy steps: applying corrector and concealer, defining your eyelids, and
drawing your brows.

The most important thing to remember upon starting is to apply your
skincare before applying any make-up on. Prevention is key so in this case, you
must apply your eye cream, serum, and moisturizer. Then you apply your
foundation. Now we can begin!

1.  Your
eyeglasses highlight the shadows under your eyes so it’s important to correct
and conceal. There are two shades to choose from, if you have fair complexion,
go with the bisque. If you’re a morena, go for the peach family. Apply the
corrector first then layer with concealer. 

What’s great about
Bobbi Brown’s concealer kit is it includes a pale yellow setting powder, which
you apply after the corrector and concealer. 

2. Next are your
eyelids. Remember not to put concealer on your eyelids because it causes
creasing of the eye shadow. Apply a primer instead because whatever you put on
top of it becomes longwearing, which we all want! 

Then, using the Bobbi Brown eye shadow quad, use the light shade all over the
eyelids to highlight them. The other three shades of the quad are mid-tone
brown (to create depth), taupe, and dark (for dramatic effect or liner shadow).
When using colored eyeglass frames, don’t fight their color but instead enhance
them using your make-up. This makes people look at your face and your eyes, and
not be confused with your color frames on.  

Most important tip: define the eyes with
the liner. What Tamara recommended is putting the mirror just under your chin
and look down while applying your liner to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Then use a waterproof mascara for your lashes because sometimes the mascara
smudges your frames especially when your lashes are long. Curl your lashes
before applying the mascara, girls!

3. Last are your
eyebrows. You know that eyebrows frame your face, right?  Sometimes just
stepping out with your brows on can let you get away without any other hint of
make-up. Get your brows shaped professionally, and remember to not use a black
eyebrow pencil! Choose one that's at least a shade lighter than your hair. Then
using light, feathery strokes, draw your brows from the inside out. With an
eyebrow brush, brush your eyebrows in an upward motion, never down.

Et voila! You’re ready
to seize the day because you just got your face on! Thank you so much Topaz
Horizon and Bobbi Brown for this very enlightening workshop. I'm so happy!

So what did I do after getting all prettified? Went on
a date, of course! And, just to add mileage to my Bobbi Brown face, I had my ID
photos taken too. 

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