share lang..

Posted by inoj at 04:49 AM on December 3, 2004.

imagine the worst things you think about yourself. and then what makes it a lot worse is that, not only do the most important people in your life think them too, but also talk with other people about them and indirectly make you feel bad on how you have screwed things up so bad.

so, what would you do?

me? i'll grab a towel. take a quick bath. fix myself in a span of 5 minutes. grab my bag, book, journal, pen. storm out of the house. go to a fastfood. order a drink. and sit by myself for hours.

bcoz you see.. i'd rather not say anything.

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advanced merry christmas!

Posted by inoj at 04:58 AM on December 3, 2004.

22 DAYS TO GO! Christmas na!

"Yey, all classes are suspended tomorrow!" --- oh great. this would have been a wonderful news to me one year ago. hehe. God bless the Philippines.

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not a good sign.

Posted by inoj at 03:20 AM on December 16, 2004.

this is will be the last. i swear, no more layout updates. hehe. bisyo na 'to. hmm, my blog was left untouched for 13 days.. not a good sign. i guess i'm really not a natural blogger. otherwise, i would be addicted to blogging more than i actually am with these template thingies.

okay. so now i think of the latest events that has happened so that i would have something to write about.. let's see.. hmm.. i guess the latest thing that has happened is... FPJ's death? haha. believe it or not, i hadn't heard of this news until late last night. see how im so outdated? yesterday, my barkada and i were hanging out, watching tv, when suddenly a flash report came on. it was on FPJ's funeral, and i was like, "Eh? Patay na si FPJ?!" and they all laughed at my ignorance. so i asked them, how did he die? and my friends -- my sneaky friends -- thought they could play with me for a while, so they made up stuff to make fun of me. one, FPJ was ran over by a truck after he stepped off a pedicab while they were shooting the movie "Da King meets Da Prince" with his son, Roñan. two, he was assasinated by another policitical figure. three, yesterday morning, FPJ's wife found him dead lying on their bed.

i really thought it was the second one since i thought it was the most believable. hehe. im so gullible.

my sneaky friends never told me what really happened. i had to find out from my friend's brother later that night that he actually died of stroke. Unless that turns out to be another hoax! hehe. i think i gotta start a habit of reading the paper or just watching the news..

just a thought, though.. what if FPJ won in the last election? then legarda (assuming she also won) would have taken his place! hehe, would've been a smart move, if you ask me.

wait. am i really talking about FPJ?

uh-oh. this is not a good sign.

12 reacted

just around the corner.

Posted by inoj at 05:39 PM on December 20, 2004.

birthday blooper.
three days ago, my family and i went out to celebrate my brothers birthdays (for those of you who do not know, i have two older brothers who are twins). and a funny thing happened. we were eating at one of those restaurants where if you let the waiters know it's your birthday, they bring you a little dessert with a candle on top and sing you a happy birthday song. so i asked my brothers if they wanted me to tell the waiter so they could get free desserts. but they told me they don't wanna be embarrassed. so i told them, i wanted the free desserts (it's black sambo, for crying out loud!), so my brother's girlfriend and i called the waiter over and told him it was my brothers' birthdays. he looked at me quizically as if asking, "are you kidding? it's both their birthdays? what an uncanny coincidence!". oh yeah, another thing i think you should know about my brothers is that, they don't look at all alike. they're fraternal twins, see. so, the waiter just nodded at me but i don't think he believed me. he walked away and never came back with any black sambo. sigh. so much for my dessert! hehe. anyway, i was glad our family spent that time together.. it's been an awful while since we last did that. there were a couple of bloopers though which i shouldn't even begin to talk about here, but i still call it a "nice time". and even though, i am really not that close to my brothers, i still say that they're the coolest.

christmas anticipation.
five days to go and it's christmas. and i'm not sure if i feel excited at all. i've always been like this around christmastime and every time i do, i realize how selfish i am in thinking that i should get something special this christmas or at least something special will happen to me when in fact, christmas is not about that at all. it's a reminder of our Savior's birth, a reminder of our God's own selflessness and grace.

hehe. but i do have my wish list ready. i wrote it down on my journal. i remember three years ago i wished a wish which He later on granted.. i wish He does it again this time.

oli impan.
in 2nd year high school, there was this fictional story in our English class that we discussed which is about a boy who was living in the squatters area. the title was "Oli Impan" and the setting of the story was around Christmas time. if i remember it correctly, at the end of the story, their whole neighborhood caught fire, and everyone is in panic, running here and about. but the boy, who didn't know what to do, just stayed at one corner, watching his own house burn in flames, and he just a sang a song which he clearly didn't know the lyrics to.. and it went some kinda like this..

saylenay, olinay
olis kam, olis bray
ranyanbergin mader en chayl
oli impan so tinder en mayl
slipinebenli piiis..
slipinebenli pis..

get it? he was singing "silent night". hehe. cliche as that song is, it's still one of my favorite christmas songs.

m e r r y c h r i s t m a s !

5 reacted

hope for flawed people.

Posted by inoj at 06:10 PM on December 23, 2004.

I want to introduce a new sociological category: failers. That is, people who fail on a regular basis. People like me.

I am a lay pastor of a small, not-growing church. I am not ordained. I am not seminary trained. I was asked to leave both Bible colleges I attended. I am divorced and remarried. On any given day I am capable of being a jerk with my wife and family. I am terminally insecure, which causes me to compensate with bouts of arrogance. At times people irritate me, and I hide from them. I am impulsive, which causes me to say things I shouldn't and make promises I cannot keep. I am inconsistent.

My walk with Christ is a stuttering, stumbling, bumbling attempt to follow Him. At times His presence is so real I can't stop the tears, and then, without warning, I can't find Him. Some days my faith is strong, impenetrable, immovable -- and some days my faith is weak, pathetic, helpless, knocked about like a paper cup floating on the ocean in the middle of a hurricane.

I have been a Christian for 45 years. I am familiar with the vocabulary of faith and I am often asked to give advice about matters of faith. But I am still a mess. I am light years away from being able to say with Paul, "Copy me." I am 56 years old and still struggling -- a flawed, clumsy, unstable follower of Jesus. A bona fide failer.

That bothers a lot of people. Over the years they have expressed their displeasure with my failings. Some have abandoned me. Some have even written me out of the kingdom.

Not Jesus.

He refuses to give up on me. Sometimes, late at night, when I am just about to give in to sleep, I know I have heard Him weeping for me.

You see, Jesus has a fatal flaw. He can't stay away from failers. He is a friend of failers, a lover of failers. When everyone else has given up, He seeks them out -- the woman who failed at five marriages, the blind man by the pool, who had failed to get his timing down for 38 years in a row; the woman with the blood disease, who failed at giving up; the disciple who failed at following; the fisherman who failed at fishing, the thief who failed at keeping the law; the adulterous woman who failed at moral purity; the doubting disciple who failed to believe.

- Michael Yaconelli.
an excerpt from the book © Rachel Smiles



waah. isn't it a little spooky that i can relate to what this man wrote? People can make me feel different negative things about myself that can totally put me down but Jesus never looked and will never look at me condemningly. He is the best. I love him with all my heart because He loved me first, imperfect as I am, with all His life.

sigh.

Now, i can feel it's Christmas.


It's your stubborn love
that never lets go of me..
I don't understand how You can stay
Perfect love embracing the worst in me.
How I long for Your stubborn love.

11 reacted

the gift of friends.

Posted by inoj at 06:31 PM on December 31, 2004.

i wasn't expecting it but the past few days had been a blast. i practically spent the whole week with my high school friends and classmates who i haven't seen for a long time. it started when i went out with two of my high school barkada; then there were the 'one-on-one bondings' with a couple of my batchmates; then the surprise midnight visits by some more (who i embarrassingly answered to in my PJ's); played pool at this billiard place which used to be our hangout with an old best friend who transferred to cebu right before junior year started; and best of all, through the wonders of text messaging, a reunion was spontaneously organized.

once again, i was able to spend time with one of the coolest group of people i know. it also occured to me how much i've unconsciously missed all of 'em. this group of people were the reason i survived the 12 years of torturous studying in pre-school, elementary and high school. they were the reason i didn't have the guts to study college at another place and the reason why i initially took up Accounting (because there were like 10 of us who enrolled in that course); they were the reason why for 3 straight nights on my first week in college, i was crying, loathing the thought that i have a new set of classmates (and was a little culture-shocked at my new catholic school) and wishing our high school had tertiary level so all of us can still be together even if it meant we had to go on studying chinese, which we hated. it took me one whole year to finally leave high school behind and move on with my life.

so, i was there with them, reliving high school memories, sharing the same old jokes, stories and bloopers we did that we perpetually seem to enjoy, expressing sentiments for our beloved teachers and classmates, and all the long-overdue revelations and confessions, all the teasing, and the what-ifs. i had a pretty good laugh with all of them.

we got all nostalgic and enjoyed every minute of it. But as much fun as that was, things are obviously not at all how they used to be 4 years ago. i remember, almost all of us cried at our graduation ceremony, both girls and boys alike. But now, it's different. we are 64 in our batch but only (approx) 25 people came. the rest were either not informed, too busy, would rather be somewhere else, or just didn't care at all. its a little ironic that 4 years ago, we all only had each other as close friends and now, we're leading different lives, with 2 or more other sets of friends we spend more time with. it's a sad but inevitable truth. i loved my high school.

as opposed to what happend to both their Christmases that they shared in their blogs, (so far) i didn't receive a single tangible gift this Christmas. just a bunch of intangible ones that came in the form of hugs, smiles, 'bonding time', phonecalls, foodtrip and greetings. and the time i spent with my high school classmates is one evidence why friends i go way back are always something to be grateful for, because these were the people i was with embarked on my childhood and early teen year adventures. all of them played a big role on how i am the way i am today.

it has been a special way to spend Christmas this year with my family, cousins, and titos (that i wasn't able to at last year's Christmas), my crazy-wacky barkada from church, my IV friends (specifically, him), my college friends i was just with one hour ago, and my high school friends who i've taken for granted over the years.. i am a different person depending on who i am with, but the common denominator is: each of these friends bring out the best and the adventurous person in me.

i enjoyed every bit of this holiday season rediscovering and unwrapping the gift of different sets of wonderful friends that i had all along.



5 hours to go, 2005 na! yey!
yes, i am excited. the year 2004 has been a little harsh to me, so i would love it if i could just leave it behind. but of course, there were also the good things that i would want to keep with me..

happy new year, everyone!



the CD Gorgeouses!
my barkada in church:
abigail, ina, anna grace,
jamie and ann-ann





plug: visit her blogsite and read the lyrics of a very nice song.

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