transposable element

Wherever you go, I shall go.
Wherever you live, so shall I live.
Your people will be my people,
And your God will be my God too.

Wherever you die, I shall die.
And there shall I be buried beside you.
We will be together forever;
And our love will be the gift of our lives.

We will be together forever;
And our love will be the gift of our lives.

song of ruth was one of the songs played during our church wedding six years ago today.. it held a lot of meaning for me then, poised as i was in leaving the philippines and starting life anew among hubby’s “people”.

as fate would have it, its poignancy is as acute this year as it was then.

look ma, i can do that, too!

i’m not being a snob. if you’ve been sending me emails the last 2 days, well, i haven’t been receiving them. seems like gmail is having server errors.

update: short before midnight, the emails from the last 2 days started trickling in. i think/hope i received everything that has been sent. still, i realized today more than ever how emails have developed into such a basic need. probably not that as much as food or shelter, but a basic need, at any rate.

i have been on a foul mood the whole day, been behaving much like an alcoholic without his booze.

can YOU live without email?

i can barely recall the titles of the books on philippine history we had back in high school: agoncillo’s history of the filipino people and constantino’s a past revisited. i may be able to recall the titles, but embarassing though it may be, i don’t know much about the content. history was not my favorite subject, and even in college, i barely passed philippine history (those who know prof “climax” climacosa of uplb would understand why). i dozed off through most of the lectures.

now if we just had youtube back then:

i’ll give it an F in accuracy, but an A in creativity!

[found thru jmom]

four years ago, just before jan was born, i got a nikon f55 as a birthday gift. the camera has done a wonderful job of chronicling jan’s milestones, especially during the first two years. we would average about 2 rolls of 36 shot-film a month, and the folks back home regularly got a packet of photos in the mail every week or so. i loved the crisp, clear pictures even a SLR-novice like me has produced. it was easy to use, and the photos were simply great.

and then came the flood of digital cameras. i’ve put off getting one for the longest time, because of two main reasons. i haven’t seen a compact digital camera that has produced print photos that were as nice as those churned by my film SLR. and for me, prints are important. despite the significant time i spent in front of the pc, i’m still partial to prints. second, the cost. when digital cameras first came out, 4MP cameras were about €200-300. i thought that’s a lot of money for something i really am not sure i’d be happy with, anyway. over the last year, though, the prices have been dropping at an amazing rate. so i postponed for as long as i could, and hoped it would drop to a price that would allow me to dip into the trenches guilt-free.

that lasted til last month. i was initially thinking of getting a canon rebel XT (which was also yuga’s and jayvee’s choice, i recently found out) because i thought a digital SLR is my best bet to quality prints. however, i wanted a camera that i wouldn’t think twice of bringing with me, whether it’s to a simple walk in the woods or to a wedding. i loved my analog SLR, but it was simply a pain to carry, not to mention, unglamorous. i often found myself thinking, shall i bring it? is the occasion photo-worthy? and i don’t know how many times i’ve said to myself, damn, i wish i had my camera with me. if i got a digital SLR, i’d be saddled with the same predicament. and what worth is a camera that takes perfect photos, if you don’t have it with you, right?

so after a lot of fickling, and a careful study of the consumer report from stiftung warentest, i finally got myself a compact canon ixus55. definitely not top-of-the-line, and not the newest model by any means, but between this and my analog SLR, i think i’ve got the best of both worlds. a film SLR for those must-photograph moments, and the compact ixus for run of the mill day-to-day snapshots.

and oh yeah, for the record, it’s a camera that blogging bought. come to think of it, blogging also partially paid for my expenses during my philippine trip, our weekend at the rhön, and a few other expenses here and there. perhaps, if i scrape enough, it can also help pay for a late summer getaway… hm.

material things aside, what has blogging brought you?

i used to belong to that school of thought common to pinoys that fair skin is (more) beautiful. growing up alongside an older sister with ivory skin, i used to resent having a skin tone euphemistically termed as kayumanggi. i hated it most when we’d visit relatives and my sister would reap compliments about her fair skin, whereas i’d be chided for playing too much out in the sun. playing outdoors might have contributed, yes, but the fact that even 6 years of living in comparatively sunlight-deprived germany, more than half of which was spent fully clothed in several layers hasn’t gotten me any close to my sister’s skin color proves that i am genetically doomed to be brown.

but that perpective changed when i started working in an international community. like many other things, i guess, it seems that when you see white skin everywhere everyday, the fascination wears off and that’s when you start seeing things objectively, the way you really see it, and not the way others would like you to believe.

fast forward a few years and i’ve made a 180 degree turn. instead of lathering myself in the SPF40 sunblock jan uses, i’ve got an SPF 4 tanning oil in my bag. two trips to the pool and my skin reached the color it would take others here the whole summer to achieve, if at all. and i say that with pride and satisfaction, not disdain. afterall, with very little effort, i’ve got a tan 90% of the germs at the poolside would die for (er, literally, considering how they grill themselves under the sun).

now that’s what one calls being comfortable in your own skin!

it’s summer and we’re stuck hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest coast. the next best alternative to the sea? a lake.

out of curiosity, i’m runnning a small survey of sorts over at Let’s Visit Asia.

What part of Asia would you like to visit / visit next / visit again? Why?

Write about it in your own blog (or if you don’t have a blog, email me your answers at ruth AT b5media DOT com) and let me know the link to your entry so I can link back to it. I’ll do a round-up by Sunday, July 16…

Do share your dream Asian trip!

i woke up yesterday just in time to witness the party in berlin. aahhhh… it’s good to be third. much better than second.

2010 könnt ihr weltmeister sein

and this one deserves to be watched til the end:

54, 74, 90, 2010

klose wins the golden shoe, podolski was awarded best young player. zidane still gets the golden ball. i nominate materazzi for the best actor award.

i never imagined i would, but i do feel the pain. i especially hurt for lahm, with left arm still in a cast, face mottled by bruises in varying shades of green, purple and red. and all in vain. gee, i don’t want to be in his mother’s place.

oh well. it has been a 5-week high here in germany. i doubt that that euphoria will be sustained til the nationalmannschaft battles for third place, but who knows? but i hope so. at any rate, i haven’t put away the german flag adorning my window. for me, it’s not about winning, it’s not even about football. it’s about seeing germans partying almost like the brazilians. if it takes a small piece of black-red-gold cloth to extend the party, then i’m more than willing to nail up the whole flat with flags.

meanwhile, while AnP goes to häagen dazs, i’m off to get a tub of ben&jerry’s.

update: lost, but nothing to be ashamed of. fifa website sums up the german papers’ heartwarming commentaries.