Memento - A Picture Tells A Thousand Words

In Perspective

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Here Comes The Bride
Cebu City

"Hindsight is always 20/20"

Now, almost a week since I left Manila that I realized how things fell into place and how smaller details transpired.

The grand plan was really to celebrate Mama and Papa's 40th Wedding Anniversary. (See them 40 years ago transform to the present in 4 secs :P)

Hatched quietly on the side amongst a myriad of other things that happened in the last 6 months: work, travel, the house transfer, the move, more work.

And so it happened.

Plus more:

- We saw friends and relatives and got reconnected with them. Come to think of it, reconnection is never really the right word because you continue to be connected, albeit from a distance, but when you meet friends, real friends, it's as if you never really left.

- We saw lola

- Mom and Dad, Mitzi's Parents, came down from Davao to visit and be with us. Sometimes you'd think what the secret is with them that they get younger in the province. It must be the fresh air and the new pace in life.

- a 2-day respite from the conundrum of Manila Christmas to be in La Luz in Batangas

- a grand"er" reception in Las Pinas for those who weren't able to attend the Cebu reception.

- a visit to our current advocacy - a Gawad Kalinga village in Visayas Avenue

and

- a meaningful New Year celebration with the kids; both our relatives' kids, our friends' kids but also the kids that have now grown up from the places we loved visiting every Sunday some years back

But you wouldn't think that inspite the unending events I'd still have time to do some quiet moments of my own: walking alone unhurriedly along Buendia (brought me back from my Sales days in Makati); "people-watching" in coffee shops at 1 in the afternoon and seeing office denizens rushing back to work while I stay and gingerly sip my coffee, be in a sea of books in Fully Booked (Mall of Asia) and Powerbooks in Greenbelt, lining up in Citibank, RCBC and BPI, to reactivate stale accounts, get new ATM Cards or just withdraw extra money turned into some meditation time, and so on and so forth.

It even occurred to me that I can live with this. That I can stay here in the Philippines and just be here. Work and do all these stuff: Be with friends at night. Walk through parks despite the polluted air. Listen to the sound of blaring horns of cars. Wait patiently from behind long lines.

Then I realized that God planned this vacation to be this complete to make me yearn for it some more; and now I do.

But as one quizzed us before, "How Do You Make God Smile?"

"How?"

"By telling Him your plans"

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