40th Day

But then that's how death is. It turns the mundane important, the trivial unforgettable.

Friday is Bong's 40th day. As old people would have it, that's when the soul is finally freed from being earthbound; finally accepting that he has to go to the light. That's what they say.

As for me, probably because of that old wives' tale, I begin imagining tender moments with Bong: embracing me tightly, earnestly telling me that he is finally leaving and that he'll truly miss me. My imagination is probably just so great it makes the scene so vivid and the feeling quite intense. At times it's difficult to have this movie house in my mind, running those scenes that make missing him more sad, dolorific. 

This morning before going to the insurance agency I was finally able to pass by and visit Bong at his bachelor's pad. What I saw made me cry, really cry. There it was beside one of the vases, a plastic doll of a power puff girl. I suddenly remembered that Bong used to watch that cartoon whenever he caught reruns while surfing the telly. I found it weird, I never liked that cartoon but he just loved watching it, it escapes me why. When I made some trite remarks, he'd just ignore it and switch channels. In fact, I used to catch him watching morning reruns of that cartoon and when he realizes that I am already awake, he'd switch channels immediately. That doll made me remember a tiny fact of my past life with Bong, a simple event that I shared with Bong when he was alive. I've already forgotten that but the doll was a jolt of a reminder. It made me miss him more. 

I learned from Bong's mom that Angie, Bong's eldest niece at 9 years old owned that doll and that a day or two ago, she decided that she would bring the power puff doll and give it to Bong to make him happy because she knew that her Tito Bong loved the power puff girls. Sweet kid. She's the same niece, being the eldest she's the only one affected, who broke my heart when I saw her after waking up, she'd approach Bong's coffin during the wake, rest her head on the lid, looking at her Tito Bong lovingly while she kept wiping the glass pane with her forearm. 

Last night, I decided I should start clearing up Bong's stuff that I've left lying around my toilet. There's not much of his stuff lying around the room, and the few that were are kept fastidiously as was his wont: a pair of slippers and 2 pairs of rubber shoes lined up with mine by the door; some empty shampoo bottles that only he used; his water pick; a D&G cap, his favorite polo shirt that I keep hanging outside the cabinet for me to always see, several pairs of shorts, a few shirts kept in his clothes drawer, and his raggedy stuffed toy dog that he insists on propping up in bed.

I tried to start with the shampoo bottles. I thought I could just easily throw them away. I couldn't. I decided to just clean them up, dry them and put it with his stuff in the cabinet. I will probably just box them and place them under my bed, including the shoes. I tried to remove his waterpick, but I couldn't. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow or perhaps on Saturday, but hopefully not never. 

It's 4:00 AM, there's no more time to sleep. Today is a new day.

One more time

A friend was helpful with her pity party analogy for the sorrow and the grief that come and go with the death of a loved one. The past few days since Saturday, I've been having a bit of a difficult time dealing with my loss.

I miss Bong, I see him in every inch of my room, like an old movie running in a loop.  It was only like yesterday that he was there lying asleep on my bed, brown skin on white sheets while I sit on my chair watching the movies, then a few days back he was brushing his teeth, cutting his nails, tweezing his facial growth instead of shaving, taking a bath, changing clothes, picking up my clothes, choosing my clothes, cooking my dinner, cleaning after I eat, riding in my car or washing it, helping my mom, watering the plants, trying to race ahead of my mom in sweeping the front of the house with the previous night's carpet of blue orchid vine flowers, looking after my dad when mom and I have to leave the house. Bong was in practically every minute of my past so many years. And then the film stops abruptly, I can only hear the flapping of the negative as the reel keeps going round and round. I have to flick the switch off.


Being alone seems so alien to me now. Why is it that I who fall for someone so far and few between, why do I have to lose the person I really felt one with despite our chasm of differences? Why can't I also have the 20 & 24 years (and counting) partnership that my 2 other best friends have? But then again why not? The only, yet shining consolation I have is that it didn't end the way relationships normally do but by force majeure, an act of God, that for mere mortals like me, is unfathomable as the chasm between the reality of life and the immeasurable distance that faith must bridge to a life hereafter.

Is it too much to yearn for the hereafter to come soon so that we could see each other again before I forget how Bong looked or how I felt for him? But then Peachie said that the yearning is nothing more than my grief talking. Sad, don't you find? To be told or to realize that what I feel is merely my grief talking.

Thus, I walk that bridge of belief, of faith that there is a time and a place where we shall all meet again, without pain or fear and neither shall there be tears. For if I think not that we shall meet again, then living perhaps would feel like falling into the wakeless sleep of forgetting.

Yearning for it, indeed is just grief talking but I think one of the reasons that I am caught up by my grief a bit more often now is because I am beginning to fully realize the impact of everything that I've lost and that as the days ebb and flow it is only my memory that would keep him alive in my mind and  warm in my heart. But memory fades just like everything else and that makes me sad. As time lurches  forward, no matter how hard I dig in my heels, the grief will lessen but I hope my memory will not, of Bong, his hopes and dreams and comic reliefs, from poympersias to santuryums, bonggangvillas and prinsesesas (a movie, believe it or not), and not the least, for everything that he did for me, for as he always said he rather prove himself by acts full of heart than of words oft said with an empty heart.
  

When Humpty Dumpty Had A Great Fall

Easter should be a happy day but not today while Bong's wake go on. I do not know now which to dread more: my current state of being in an unclarified loss, he is still here but no longer, suspending me in life as if it is still with Bong and yet without him, or the state of loss after burial which would inevitably be as real and as cold as the last trowel of cement thrown to seal his apartment type tomb?

I fear depression rearing its ugly head. I fear that it might set in worse than what I went through when I lost one of my best friends late last year, which now do I only realize coincided with Bong's illness starting to get more difficult to ignore. Only Bong knew what I was going through then, a depression that barely touched the surface, allowing me to keep a face for others while life actually ground to a halt, for reasons I do not exactly know why, otherwise, all my attempts to fight it would somehow have gotten me out of it. It breaks my heart to think if I failed him when he needed me most because of what I was going through then.

I do not know whether grieving more for my loss would be best, hoping that would quickly get me back on the road to recovery. But what if it delivers me on the road to perdition just as fast? Should I hold back then? Would that put the beast of depression in check or would I just be dishonoring the memory of my beloved who taught me how one loves in countless tiny ways that there is no need to say the trite old words that can never encompass all that he did for me and all that I was for him.

It is Easter, it is not happy but it holds out a promise I can hold onto. May it salve my loss, may it sing my grief to sleep.

iPad 2 liveblogging experience

tried to view a keynote once managed to go through the first 15 minutes then off i went clicking on more interesting links and features on apple.com (well, faced with a gaunt Steve Jobs swallowed whole by an austere stage with only a ragtag sofa, what do you expect?). that was a long time ago, i can't even recall what the keynote was all about. nor was i impressed with the snippet i saw.

and why do i talk about my sad first experience with a keynote? blame it on yoda. inspired and guided, he asked his followers a week ago to learn and have fun watching the keynote for iPad 2 set for webcast on 0200 today this side of the oyster. don't get me wrong, i am eager to learn about iPad 2 because it's been in my sights right smack in the middle of the crosshairs as i've been toying with the idea of raising my presentation to clients a notch higher with an iPad instead of a laptop.

so yesterday afternoon, there i was direct from part time teaching, cherishing the days ahead before my next class on Monday, sitting langorously as the light train trudged on with the manila cityside swooping by my peripheral vision. i ponder the precious time that i could devote to so many worthwhile endeavors like selling, calling prospects, setting appointments, if only i can set my fingertips to phone... 

i met the sunset with a light heart and a happy face, i was eager for my 2 hour walk after sunset while listening to uplifting and motivating podcasts but with the setting sun came the rising tide of rain, light like a shower which turned into the unmistakable pitter patter that turns the hours. thus i turned to the tube but instead of being relieved by soothing melodies i unrest, irritated by the whining of the idols screaming like banshees. much more to my distress was the lost chance to listen to my podcasts and be uplifted far from the maddening crowd.

midnight i revisited emails from yoda that i have scanned through when i received them and now i tried to take them to heart. an hour before the presentation i started searching for it on apple.com, finding nothing, i settled for the liveblogging of the event on gizmodo.com & arstechnica.com

it was an entirely new experience, participating albeit passively as i just read the posts, this liveblogging where instead of hearing and seeing apple's keynote on iPad 2 i get to read about it as it is rolled out, getting pictures as the liveblog posts them, reading the side comments of the bloggers, laughing and being entertained with Jason Chen's comments on gizmodo.

so there i was vicariously experiencing the keynote delivered by Steve Jobs, who according to Jason Chen should be a Best Actor awardee for his presentation. and this is what i experienced on this liveblogging

Jobs started his keynote discussing the major successes of iBooks and iTunes, the numbers of downloads, subscribers, and accounts to date segueing into the revolutionary products of apple and their watershed years: the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, and finally 2011: Year of iPad 2.  So it was that Jobs introduced iPad 2 as a mindblowing revolutionary magical product that is faster, thinner and lighter than its predecessor. faster because of the new dual core A5 chip, lighter because it is only 1.3 lbs thus, 33% thinner than its predecessor yet it retains the same 10 hours battery life. and then the doodads - an inventive and really nice folding cover that is not screwed on to but attached and aligned with the iPad using magnets, cameras front and back, and applications like facetime, photobooth, AirPlay to stream over your wifi network movies and music form other devices, the beefed up iMovie and extremely interesting Garage Band that changes the tablet into a veritable musical instrument, correction, instruments! 

truth be told however 3 words are enough to push me over the brink: faster, lighter, thinner. translate those 3 into latin and they'd probably pass off for inscriptions on a seal, they're enough for one who had an iPad deprived childhood haha! i am sure there are a lot of other users and techies who would view the improvements as nothing to crow about, let them milk it in their own blogs. 

and i digress from my task.

let's move on to the marketing side of the presentation, i must admit that the austerity of the stage forces the audience to focus on the  presentation and on nothing else. but considering that the subject of the presentation and how great apple is in crafting its user interface, thus, fantastic slide presentations, i guess if they present in a more handsome stage that won't detract from the presentation or the experience. 

i noticed how Jobs was good at describing how he feels with his product not just how technically great or superior it was over the rest. He kept saying that his product/s blow/s him away, they're mind blowing, revolutionary, faster, lighter, thinner - words that deliver images and feelings to his listeners that no technical information can ever do. and i am not surprised, Ziglar says above all, selling is a transference of feeling.

what i like most in this keynote, is that the slides used keywords only to highlight, focus and lead the attention of the participants. no lengthy discussions unlike this post. features were handled by other key personnel and architects of the applications such as iMovie and Garage band using snapshots of those applications. and these slides show crisp huge images that seem to make the product float above everything else:

    courtesy of Ars Technica

    courtesy of Ars Technica

   courtesy of Ars Technica

     courtesy of Ars Technica

    courtesy of Ars Technica

    courtesy of Ars Technica

then came the price, delivered in a sweeping and difficult to miss statement with a single slide showing that iPad 2 in all its variants are identically priced with their counterpart predecessors. it was hard not to agree with apple's proposition on the value of its products. yes, the resolution may have remained the same but this is a faster, lighter, thinner product that retained its legendary 10 hours battery life, and therefore more valuable than the price it will be selling for on March 11 in the USA and March 25 elsewhere (this pearl of the orient not included).

now, did my first liveblogging experience make me want to buy an iPad 2? Oh yes it did and that happened when Jobs mentioned that there was no price increase. it was like a vindication for all those improvements (mind you however, i've never had an iPad, i'm a part-time teacher and a budding salesman, which is probably why i want one now) and reason enough to push me over the brink, hock the silver, sell the masters to have this doodad. i can imagine how it can change my presentations and help me land some fat cows!

off with its head!

look carefully, there's no blood on its neck.

nope, that's not Marie Antoinette apres le guillotine, but with the same audacity as she who snootily snorted: "let them eat cake" I post my glam shot...dark elbow, darkened lids and all..... and as I do so, I claim my own space in this blog universe. Hail! I-roni-ca Rex! Hail! Divus I-roni-ca!

SAVED! ...as if it was finite space that is always ...going, ...going, ...sold to the highest bidder, the gentleman in the wheelchair.... (cue in musicbox)

yes, the pic is just too huge but for a first blog let it be. in time it might change and become benign. ironic that it occupies more space than my first post. perhaps in time my posts will be more than the face that could launch a thousand insults... yes, from me to yours and vice-versa.

ironic that in my first attempt to blog I stumbled upon a blog title using parts of my names and nickname that is most revealing of my character...forged in the fires of sarcasm, steeled in cold vats of irony. Hisss!

and so my stage is set.