When the heart is light again!

When I see the “ Lucky Me instant noodle” commercial of the little girl enthusiastically greeting people she meets “Good Morning!” I would smile because I realized that for quite a while already, I have been doing the same. Oh okay, oftentimes it would just be the tamer version of greeting “good morning”… not really to the point where you feel like jumping or stretching your arms wide open as you greet but just a happy greeting with a matching happy smile…

I don’t exactly know when I started feeling lighthearted and extending my good morning greetings to more people but I am glad that the heaviness has finally lifted from my heart.

I have cried for quite a while that sometimes I think I am going nuts for being misty eyed even when there’s really no particular thought in my mind that triggers it.

Does it mean that I wasn’t functioning well while this was going on?

Not really!

Everyday I try to start with a new day. I use my cell phone as my alarm clock and the sound that wakes me up is my voice telling me that it is a beautiful day, some affirmations plus a “so enjoy the day!” finale.

I do my stretching and simple exercises in the morning before preparing myself for work…

I am doing well in the office as I get things done and I can think properly…

I join the girls in lunch and share in their discussions including the telenovelas they are watching and listen to their showbiz gossips since I rarely watch talk shows… well I don’t really have to since some of the girls do it well… I mean delivering the stories….

I interact as I always do with the people at home. The kids—the toddler nieces and nephews still turns me into a playground when they feel like it. I listen to the telenovelas the people at home are watching while having my supper and sometimes stay in the couch too and watch with them…

At night I am able to sleep...

So nothing has really changed… everything is still the same… but somehow I realized that I am not just deciding on being happy…of feeling okay but that I really feel good! Lighthearted! And I can’t help myself from uttering a prayer of thanks…a prayer that just doesn’t come from the mind and the lips but one from that comes from the heart!

Life is good especially when your heart is light again!

Dorn Therapy

I accompanied my boss in Makati to have a healing session with Thomas Zudrell, a German married to a Filipina who is propagating the Dorn method of healing in the Philippines. My boss has been complaining of painful back that I told her about the Dorn treatment my mother had yesterday.

My mother’s posture is really bad that there is now a lump on her back… a few more years and I think the lump will be a big as that of the Kampanerang Kuba (the hunchback chuchbell ringer). I have been convincing her for a long time to have it treated but she always says NO. However, yesterday, I was finally able to convince her to have Dorn Therapy with Thomas Zudrell who also gave me a treatment last year because of the pain on my lower back and shoulder.

My mother does not ask much from me but she is very hard to please! However, this time she did not complain. She was satisfied with her treatment, she felt relieved of the pain and the lump on her back has flattened a bit. She is keen on doing the exercises given to her and really thinks it will help. My Boss was also satisfied with the treatment. I think it also helped that Thomas did not just do the procedure but also explained the procedure all through out the session so that the treatment was very casual and relaxing.

If you are going to have a treatment it will be best if you have someone with you. The procedure is done mostly on your spine… your back… so you won’t be able to see what’s being done but another person could appreciate the “before” and “after” look of your back. Of course you’ll be feeling a lot better after the treatment but knowing the Filipinos attitude of “to see is to believe”, it will be best to have someone witness and give you moral support on your after treatment exercises.

Actually Dorn is not just for bad Back but is good for a lot of other pains and ailments that is directly and indirectly connected to the spinal column… you may think that it only involves a few illnesses but you’ll be amazed at the ailments that can be treated by Dorn. I think you name it and they have it in their list which goes from A to Z (oops no, I checked and it only goes up to W).

Dorn practioners believe that pains and a lot of ailments come from a misaligned spine and legs and unlike chiropractic it is a gentle treatment since you are mostly moving while the procedure is being done so your muscle is more or less not resisting the force. Actually the procedure is simple but you will have to follow simple exercises at home to ensure long-term success.

If you insist on doing the same wrong things like crossing your legs, stretching the hip joint more than 90 degrees with knees turned inward, bending your back while lifting heavy objects and other wrong postures eventually you’ll start feeling pain again.

Thomas Zudrell feels confident of healing and says that if it doesn’t work that there might be some other psychological factors behind the problem and one of them maybe that the patient doesn’t really want to get healed because he gets more attention when he is sick!

Now that’s really something to think about!!!

I am sleeping with somebody!

For the past four nights, I have been sharing my bed with a small guy.

It feels different since I haven’t slept with somebody in a long time!

Even if I live with a big family, they let me have my room and my bed as my sanctuary… my space where I could be alone… but now my 6 year old nephew is sleeping with me. He doesn’t really eat much of my space but still it feels different.

It actually started as his punishment. Last Tuesday he hit his cousin just over a Jollibee french fries. She already gave him some and he still wanted more so hit her when she would not give anymore. The chair just missed her eyes by a few inches and I was really mad! It was not the first time he got envious of his other cousins’ foods and toys that he would hit them when they would not give or lend him and I told him he had reached his limit so that he would no longer sleep with my mom until he has learned how to control his tantrums. He was crying and was begging and apologizing to his cousin telling her he would not do it anymore and he was asking help (or should I say compassion) from my mom and my aunt and I told them that no one comforts him. My word goes… he sleeps with me!

Though, I raised my voice, at the back of mind I was really crying for my nephew. I know why he is always envious… his cousins have parents, he doesn’t have one. He was born out of wedlock and his mother has abandoned him. His father, my brother, has sort of also abandoned him. My nephew doesn’t share the name of his cousins nor of his sisters (though I am working on it now... it was not allowed for illegitimate children to bear the father's name in our family code but by virtue of republic act 9255 they now allow it!)

I am sure the older people at home, especially my mom cares for him but his outbursts are just too much that often times everybody ends up scolding him. I try not to scold him but there are just moments, just like last Tuesday that it gets too much!

Anyway, when he realized that my mom and my aunt would not comfort him, he stopped crying and went up to my room with me. I lit a candle in my altar and closed my room’s light, then we talked. I explained to him about what happened and my wish for him to be good… I don’t really know if it got to him… children his age have not really fully developed their reason yet and they are relying more on their emotion… on their feelings!

Actually there is another reason why I want him to stay in my room. I know my mom cares for him but they always fight… even when sleeping they fight since he wets his bed. That’s one of the reason he did not want to sleep with me, he was afraid to wet my bed!

I’ve read somewhere that the subconscious is very receptive when the person is sleeping and it is good to positively talk to a child while he is sleeping. I am hoping that somehow, he realize that we love him. So when he sleeps I would touch him head from time to time and would wake up to let him pee (I brought a plastic container where he could pee) and I would whisper my prayers in his ears.

I know my mom already wants him to sleep back in their room but I am buying my time. Last night, he was the one who went to my room and told me he wants to sleep already. The other night, he wet our bed. He woke me up and we went down to change his clothes then went back again and stayed in the dry portion of the bed… so NO scolding there! Actually I was used before to wet beds… I took care of my grandmother, who was already semi-coma and we slept together. She would wet the bed 4 to 5 times in the night during cold weathers and I stopped using adult diapers since she developed a sore (which healed and never came back!) so wet beds is not new to me… but that was a bit of a long time ago and I would need getting used to… I am a heavy sleeper. When I hit my bed, I already wake up in the morning. This just needs some adjustment to wake up in the middle of the night and let him pee (anyway I already have a container for that) then sleep again… plus I think that in time he’ll outgrow his bed-wettings.

When he feels he is really loved then maybe…

Mooncake festival game

The mooncake festival game is big in our office. The company provides us with the mooncakes which we use to play the mooncake game plus the “Big boss” gave us money (more than P10K) for our prizes in kind. The girls shopped for the prizes, mostly grocery items but this time, they also included “KIKAY items”, that was Jane’s term for the beauty items they bought like powder, face cleansers…what else? (It was a pack but I did not get any since I am not really a kikay…hehehe). The new girls really were excited when they would get such pack!

Actually, we don’t really look forward to the festival but more on the game! The festival is a Chinese festival also known as the mid-autumn festival. It is celebrated when the full moon is as its brightest which is on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese calendar. Though it is a fixed date for them since they follow the moon cycle, it would fall on different dates on our normal calendar but it usually falls on September. So comes August, people in our department would already be asking when it will be. Nobody really knows how the practice of eating mooncake on the mid-autumn festival started but many attributes it to a successful revolt that happened in China through the use of mooncakes.

Since many officers in my company are Filchinese or Chinoys, I have already received real mooncakes from some which is a special kind of sweet cake in the shape of a moon and filled with sesame seeds, ground lotus seeds and the yellow of a duck’s egg. We don’t actually use those cakes for the game since that would be really expensive! Instead, we buy HOPIA from Holland Hopia Factory. It is also a sweet cake with Chinese mark on top but only contains mung been for the filling. They have a box intended for the game, wherein there are different sizes of hopia depending of which prize you are going to win based on the combination of the dice you throw. The box has a packet which also contains the 6 dice and the instruction for the game.

All the people from the other departments had their mooncake game last Thursday, some even had appliances for their prizes (our department always choose lesser prizes so that everybody would have something). We had ours today since my boss was not free yesterday since she also had to play with another group. She is really an expert in the game since she handles it for a lot of people!

Playing the game is really noisy since you shout everytime you get a combination that has a corresponding price plus the others also shout and laugh a bit when you don't get a prize! The main prize is not taken immediately since your winning combination could be beaten by others so that you wait till the game is finished. There were 4 main prizes for our games (since we had so short a time to play it and my boss decided to just had one round and include all the prizes.. we can’t play long since she had to leave early plus we would create too much noise for the other departments). So anyway, I got the wining dice combination 5 times which is not really easy…but the combination I got was lower than my first and you retain the last combination you threw. In the end, I got dislodged from the 4-prizes when Weng threw a combination of 6 fives! Well, she had been having bad throws throughout our game and when she finally got it we shouted and embraced. She said sorry when she realized I got dislodged but i told her it was okay what is more important is the game and fun we had anyway and I had lots of other prizes to take home aside from the HOPIAs, it was like I went to the grocery store for free!!!

We will have to wait another year for another game but for sure it will once more be a noisy, happy event!

Amazing wires

It has been almost a week since the telephone line in our neighborhood has been busted thus no internet connection for me at home.

One of the wires flared up in one of the electric posts that is near our home and it almost caused fire in the neighborhood. Good thing only the wires were affected and most of them were telephone wires.
The electricity was immediately restored the day of the fire but it is taking time for the telephone lines to be restored. I heard that they are going to relocate it already... far from those other wires! Well I don't don't really wonder why they would decide that since those wires are not just octopus wires but a spaghetti of wires going in all directions! They said that there would be NO fire if only telephone wires were there but several illegal electric wires passed through those (unfortunately very rampant in our place) and an overload probably caused the flare.

Those wires are really dangerous! You hope something could be done about it. You could complain but even the utility companies are finding it hard to fix the problem there... they'll cut the illegal lines and the next day they are all back again...

I wish I had magic...

Nope... i won't really fix the wires... the wires could easily be fixed by the utility companies.

Instead I'll make all those people putting the illegal wires stay in one small place full of wires.. that just one false move and they'll go BOOM!

Ha... that will be the day!!!

PS... the office was dismissed early because of transport strike... good thing is i was able to make a post since i can't do it at home... but i sure hope people will end these kinds of activities... they are not really productive :-(((

Volkssporting... volksmarching!

I talked with someone who was into volkssporting.

I asked, what’s that? Some kind of sports involving a volkswagen???

Turned out to be a German derived term for Popular Sports (ahhh.. isn’t a volkswagen supposed to be people’s car or popular car.. dumb of me!)

It is a safe exercise in a non-competitive environment wherein you choose the kind of sport you want to engage in, either walking, running, cycling.

The most common is volksmarching which is usually 10-k walk which is usually hosted by clubs which select a trail for safety, scenic interest, historic areas, natural beauty and walkability. So you just don’t walk any route, you follow a set trail which is pleasant or interesting place to walk.

They usually provide a book or maps which have trails and they would even have questions for you to answer like "who is the statue in the corner of this path and that?" (guess to check if you really followed the path since you stamp the book on the place you visited. I’ve actually seen this concept in a zoo I visited in Australia wherein they gave us a sort of passport and we stamp the logo of the animals we visited).

I think it is a good concept not just for fitness but also for tourism. It will be nice if the local governments here could set up trails covering the landmark of the cities (that will be easy in Manila since there are many landmarks there now). They would provide (even sell) maps or "Path books" for the people then set up booths in the landmarks where they could get their "book" stamped… there should be foodstalls of course and souvenir items—they have to make money afterall! In return they would have to ensure the cleanliness and safety of the walkers/tourists.

I think that would be better than what we have now for volksmarching.

I realized that we have our own version of volksmarching. It is pretty common nowadays! It is popular but unfortunately they are not "non-competitive". Our People march are march of protests… the rallies in EDSA… Liwasang Bonifacio.. in Espana… really unproductive and irritating!

Ahh come to think of it we also have our own version of volkssporting…I am sure the "tong-its" and bingo lovers would know it…

Sunflowers

My niece pointed to some sunflowers with big golden yellow flowers on the road and said in matter-of-fact voice that they face where the sun is. I smiled as listen to her. I was thinking that sunflowers are flowers of summer and here we are on our rainy season and still would see sunflowers blooming! It suddenly made me remember my childhood when I used to see a lot of sunflowers lined in the University Ave. of UP when I would visit an aunt there.

They were tall, big and wild! I was really fascinated looking at them since I don't get to see flowers that big... and so many of them. Then they remove it. They changed the flowers there. I guess they were gone for a long time but now they are back as I read in some of the pinoy blogs. I haven't passed that Avenue in a long long time so I would not reeally know but I think the flowers there are not as many and are not as alive and big as the ones I saw when I was younger.

Anyway, I wasn't smiling just because of that memory. I was also smiling because I thought it was a treat to see a sunflower on a rainy day! And you couldn't really say that those sunflowers are facing the sun as my niece said because there is no sun :-) but maybe like them, we should feel inside of us where the sun is even if we don't see it! Yeah... I think I smiled because it suddenly made me think that there is always hope...