Part 1: My Bucket List

Admit it, sometimes there are random questions in life that can simply be answered by yes or no but would left you dumbfounded and you end up processing that question at the back of your mind. The simple question now becomes your life's biggest puzzle. It would struck realizations in you, left a hole in your heart to fill in and worst make you wonder and ask the 'what ifs'.

One petty usual question that my friend had asked me during long breaks in the office was 'what's the craziest things you've done so far?'. Uhmmm... I never had an answer to it even after I spent hours pondering that question. Until I realized, I never did do crazy things because of my uptight upbringing. Just thinking of violating the house rules and how doing these foolish things would affect me made me feel jumpy and on edge. I never dated when I was in high school. I only started dating (with the only man I'm dating for years now) when I was graduating in college. Cutting classes, beer-drinking, smoking, late night outs or parties with girls, giggles and boisterous laughter in the street were never my thing. Not that I would like to do those stuff if given a chance to go back, but I've always been rigidly conventional that I had realized I never did live a life of fun experience! That my life had been oh-so-boring. That if someone would asked me to write an entry about the funniest and craziest things I had ever experienced, I'm pretty sure I could not even list one!

Considering that I'm gaining my years and on my way to mid life, these questions had me on thinking, make me want to do more, to dream big and explore life, its other options and possibilities that I never even thought of before.

For the past several months, I've been mentally noting down things that I really wanted to do and haven't had a chance, a time and a drive to do it. Please don't expect extremes because I know It's a little too late for me to try extreme stuff. I'm not a risk-taker and I don't want to strangle my life with complications if ever I step out of my boundaries and limits which include and not limited to beer-drinking, smoking and going out with stranger.

Here now is my top ten wanna do list (in order of difficulties, 10 the easiest and 1 being the most difficult). I am targeting to accomplish all, except for some that requires budget, in two months. The countdown starts today, Sunday September 25, 2011.

Why the two months time frame? Because I am only free and single within the next two months. So that means the item #10 on my list should be marked as crossed:

10. Take two months break of being a girlfriend

9. Go to a movie house and watch a date movie alone.

8. Take a bus somewhere south with no definite destination and alone (I live north of Luzon that is why I choose to go South).

7. For just once, I want to know how it feels to get drunk. Super super drunk. I just need a trusted girl friend to accompany me. So I need an accomplice on this one :)

6. Watch sunset on a Saturday -- and alone again!

5. Have a retreat -- I never done retreat for over 10 years now.

4. Have my own fashion statement -- i can do this but I need to change my wardrobe. Changing my wardrobe would mean 'money' so it might take a while before I could achieve this one.

3. Volunteer work -- I've already inquired at our local church, maybe I could assist at kid's Sunday service.

2. Learn another language, Japanese or Spanish maybe --- this has monetary value, I could only start working on it within two months but it would be impossible for me to achieve it within the 60 days period.

1. Spill out something on someone. This is my top 1, the most difficult and I'm not sure if I have the guts to do it. But I will keep it on my list for now. If I never had the guts to, then I will take this bungee jumping at SM mall as replacement -- I noticed only teenagers are doing this bungee jumping, I wonder why no adults are trying it?

So there it goes, wish me good luck on trying my list of some-not-so-foolish-things compared to yours :)

P.S. I have changed the title to make it more appropriate. And right now I am having second thoughts on doing my top rank! I'm not talking about the bungee jumping. I realized my top 1 may not be smart at all.

What's Next?

It is the first of January 2011. And I'm feeling sleepy but I cannot bring myself to sleep without shedding my first thought of this year.

Another year had slipped off. 2010, once been welcomed with great joy and expectations, is now a part of history. 2010 has been extremely remarkable for all of us Filipinos.

To name a few, the global financial crisis felt sometime of 2008 which brought mass layoffs to a number of companies somehow had been lessen if not ended in the year 2010. This is something positive though there still lots of jobless college graduates that contributed to a high unemployment rate.

The ex-President's death on year 2009 had helped increase political power to her son, now President Ninoy. Filipinos were united to elect someone they believed can be trusted, who exhibits concern with Philippine government, someone who will going to act on better governance and to lessen if not totally eradicate corruption. The 2010 election I believe is the first time in the Philippine history where no cheating was done on presidential position. Take note, presidential position only.

The poverty that most indigent Pinoy have been experiencing is no less but greater than the year before. But thank God that the same Ondoy tragedy that caused deaths of hundreds of Filipinos in the year 2009 did not reoccur. Though there are lists of natural disasters from the different parts of the Philippines, Filipinos still live through great extent of survival. And not to mention the hostage-taking happened near the Manila city hall, just off Rizal Park leaving Philippine lambasted with critics, another blow to an arising success of Philippine tourism.

Come 2011, what's next?

We have our own sets of expectations and goals. Renewed hope? Yes, new year restores our mind sets, leaving negativities with the old year. Renewed people especially politicians? How I wish we will have.

I'm still here...

Hey guys! I know that you are really wondering why I'm not showing any hint of existence in the blog-sphere. Sorry guys but I have so much going on right now, work work and work with some life's problem here and there. Don't worry guys I'm still fine and can still keep up.

But sure I'm checking some of the blogs I'm following especially ricademus and weezer, reading a bit of your posts but unable to leave some comments.

Nothing much is going on with my life right now except that just recently our first nephew, my parent's first grandchild died :( I actually had drafted a post of our misery but decided against it. It will just bring bad memories each time I read it. I don't wanna prolong bad vibes.

Anyway, good luck to all of you guys! This is just a quick post, got to work. I've got to conduct knowledge transfer session today with the company's newly hired QA

What a writer needs

This has been the longest time I was out of blogging - no new post and no blog-walking. I know some of you may wonder why I haven't got any updates on my blog. I so wanted to post a new entry but found no sensible topic to talk about. I've had my several moments when the inspiration struck but thoughts were just drowned by urgent matters at hand - workload and deadlines. And when I had the chance to sit and finally put thoughts into writing, my mind would go blank. I was only seeing white spaces. I was trying hard to look for words to describe my intent of writing but just like a blind man, I felt like I was groping in the dark.

There will always be days that a writer needs an inspiration from one musing to another. Sometimes, that inspiration comes from unlikeliest situation. My main source of reflections are people around me, my past and daily experiences and some reads from inspirational books. But when an inspiration is suppressed without me acting upon it immediately, it eventually dies down and so is my enthusiasm of writing sometimes comes with it.

The reason why I started blogging was not only because I wanted to enhance my skills in writing and improve my vocabulary. It is more of an exercise of clarifying my mind of negative thoughts, focusing on positivity of every situations while extracting viewpoints and new ideas from my every reflection.

Whenever I sit down to write, I always ask myself the purpose of my writing. If someone reads it, will they get insights from it? Will they learn something new from reading it? After reading, will they also have their own reflection? Whenever I post some rantings, I don't feel any ounce of achievements from writing down my raves. That's not the kind of composition I wanted to accomplish. I wish to be a creative writer who never run out of ideas.

This is me ranting and I have came up with this post because of my current inability to write down thoughtful topic. But I hope that you also find this one informative.