Last week ended on a rather sad note.
Last Saturday as I was getting ready for a day at the mall, I received a text message from a former colleague that another former colleague of ours, and a dear and wonderful friend, Leila Luna-Cacanindin, had just passed away.
Leila had been battling a form of ovarian cancer for about 7 months now. Unfortunately, her body, already weakened by the ordeal wasn't able to last any longer but as narrated by her mother and her husband, she was still being funny and her usual jolly self towards the end. And according to her mom, she just slept and didn't suffer any pain when she relinquished her hold on life early morning of Saturday.
Yesterday, a group of Leila's friends and colleagues (present and former) including myself and Elvie trekked to Tagaytay to pay our respects to our dearly departed friend and console Lei's loved ones.
Our condolences to Leila's bereaved loved ones, including her mother, her husband Obet, and her daughter, Yshia.
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Our entourage to Leila's wake included a certain 4-year old with a knack for asking questions that demand rather hard-to-explain answers.
While Ikai primarily went with us because she wanted to see Ate Yshia (Ikai attended Yshia's seventh birthday last January), she also got to see a a departed person in a coffin for the first time in her life. While she did not show any fear or apprehension, she of course was curious about all that was happening inside Yshia's home.
Before the wake, we had already explained to her in as simple terms as possible the circumstances about Leila's death, euphemizing death as "the sleep you never wake up from". We told her that Yshia's mom is already in heaven with Jesus and that people are going to be sad and some might be crying because they won't be able to be with Yshia's mom. I even tried explaining to her using science -- explaining that the spirit is like the phase of matter gas -- can't be seen and that this
spirit/gas has already went to heaven leaving the solid / body behind.
Arriving home last night from the wake, Ikai got me cornered and peppered me with more questions.
Apparently, she thought that heaven was the rectangular box Leila's mother was in so I had to explain that the coffin wasn't heaven and that heaven was somewhere else. She asked where and I said no one knows (a hard answer to say to a child, mind you). I again tried to explain that sometimes people sleep forever and never wake up and that they leave loved ones behind and reunite with them later on (as in really later on and not just like next week or so)
I believe in the course of that 20-minutes-something conversation I may have used words such as death, dead people, spirit, ghost, heaven, after-life, etc. etc. but I don't think I made the notion of death any clearer to her.
However, when I closed my eyes for a bit, Ikai suddenly shook my arm and said in a rather alarmed voice, "Bakit mo close yung eyes mo, Papa?".
I ended the conversation (before it turned morbid) by saying that things like death and dead people she will understand when she gets older. Ikai started to say why again but I cut her off with a basta and again told her that when she gets older, she'll understand.
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The big red car is missing one mudguard so while in SM Megamall last Saturday, I found myself inside Concorde, the car accessories shop hoping to score a new mudguard.
After a few minutes of going around the shop, I found the mudguards but they had no Innova '07 mudguards on display. I went to a store personnel and asked where I could find '07 Innova mudguards and after receiving a baffled look, he directed me to another part of the store and pointed to door sunvisors and promptly left me for another customer. Egad!
To their credit, they had a lot of customers that time so I guess they were hilong-talilong so I forgave the first chap and proceeded to get the attention of another store personnel. I went to one and asked if they had the mudguards I needed. He motioned affirmative and led me to another area in the store, pointed at the shelf and left. Unfortunately, he pointed to those decorative fiber glass
stuff you could put on your vehicle's hood. What I needed went under the car, not above it.
Seeing that getting the right mudguard would be pointless at that time, I left the store but not before commenting to the lady security guard that their store personnel needed additional training.
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There's a new rig in the apartment.
That was the main reason for the trip to Megamall as we had ample resource to buy a new rig.
But it wasn't a full laptop that we purchased but a netbook, an Asus Eee PC which we scored for a very friendly amount. Albeit, the downside is that it didn't come with an OS so before the 30-day trial lapses, I need to get the netbook installed with a full Windows 7 OS. I asked if it were possible to install Windows XP on it but the personnel at Complink told me that the netbook's drivers were meant for at least a Windows 7 OS. I guess that settled it.
The new Asus is a decent enough machine -- 1 GB DDR3 memory with a 250GB hard disk. It runs on an Intel Atom N450 processor with integrated video graphics. I don't expect to play Sims 2 on this machine but it had no problem running the FB games I play. It's not as fast as I had hoped it would be but then again, the machine does what it's meant to do -- surf the net, connect to wi-fi, and well, although untested yet, I think it'll be able to do your usual MS Office stuff: word processing, MS Excel, and probably Power Point.
For the meantime, this netbook will have to do. We're still looking at purchasing a full laptop but it's not a priority right now.
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A day after writing that I was meaning to buy as my next book purchase James A. Owen's The Search for the Red Dragon, I contradicted myself and bought instead the second installment of The Mysterious Benedict Society.
In all honesty, I already had The Search for the Red Dragon in my hand at Power Books last Saturday and was on my way to the cashier (with my daughter, Ikai, in tow after we purchased a couple of activity books for her) when I espied the second volume of Trenton Lee Stewart's series hawked on the stands at a irresistably lower price.
I immediately looked again at the price of the book I had in my hand -- Php 379 -- and looked again at The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey on the display -- Php 279 -- and after a few seconds of thinking of buying the two books, I sheepishly returned the higher priced book to its shelf. Sorry, James. Next time.
I still ended up paying Php 295 for the Stewart book. Why? Because I overlooked their ad -- they were selling the book for Php 279 if you bought it with a Citibank credit card. Since I bought the book in cash, I didn't get the discount (on most occasions, the promo works the other way around, you get a lower price if you pay in cash).
And here's the clincher ... I found myself at Fully Booked Greenbelt over lunch today and smacked my forehead with my hand in utter disbelief --- Fully Booked was selling the same Stewart book for a freaking Php 280! I've been had!
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Incidentally, Fully Booked also sells the third volume of The Mysterious Benedict Society series entitled The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma at a slightly higher price -- Php 285. Resisted the urge to bring out the wallet and hurried myself out of Fully Booked before my impulsive book-buying self emerged.
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Dreading the weekend traffic to Tagaytay on the usual route?
Take the alternate -- via Aguinaldo Hi-Way.
It's not a shortcut. It's a longer route but it gets you to Tagaytay faster (for now) because you avoid the traffic hassles of Paseo de Sta. Rosa and Nuvali (both ways!).
From SLEX, exit either at Southwoods or Carmona and head off to Governor's Drive. Drive the route all the way to SM Dasma and then turn left on Aguinaldo Hi-way. It's then a straight travel up to the Tagaytay rotunda. Saves you some 40 minutes of travel time and when you drive a stick shift like I do, you would want to avoid the Santa Rosa-Tagaytay road traffic jams at all cost!
It's actually not a new route. It's actually an old route but people have generally by-passed it in favor of the Santa Rosa-Tagaytay Road because the latter is shorter. Unfortunately, like I said, the developments along the shorter route to Tagaytay have compounded the traffic jams that made traveling the shorter route take a longer time.
