transposable element

happy halloween.

to me, though, this year’s todos los santos is more poignant than just halloween, a festivity i never grew up with, and something that to this day, i don’t understand the meaning of and hence feel no real connection to. but all souls’ day brings back lots of memories. because my parents hail from different provinces, we used to alternately head to either nueva ecija, where my mom’s folks are from, or pampanga, where my dad’s clan are. we’d join the heavy traffic along south and north expressway, and endure a long, hot drive from laguna, and join the rest of our relatives for a mini-reunion of sorts.

and then the rituals begin. some folks are sent to clean and repaint the family tombstones. some are tasked to arrange gladioli and baby’s breath into large jars. perhaps some orchids and mums if it has been a good year. oh and of course, the candles. large, colorful, elaborately carved designs, which will later transform into balls of wax children will collect to pass time at the cemetery.

these memories are quite distant now, though. living abroad for the last 7 years, i can’t remember the last time i made the nov 1. trek to the cemeteries. but it’s not like i felt i was missing something. not at all… until now.

i’m thinking of you, dad+. every single day.

sorry for missing in action for the last few weeks. same story as last year. domain name expired, and i had too much on my plate, online and offline, to take care of it. now i’m back, and so many things have happened in the meantime, i don’t know where to start.

“Can I just check those diplomas because I just want to make sure that they are not from some med school in the Philippines.”

a guffaw in the script. pinoys roared. the philippine government joined in the squabble. producers of desperate housewives apologized. several blog posts after, issue resolved, case closed.

what still puzzles me is where such a low regard of philippine medical schools come from? is it because of the reputation of the university of recto? the botched nursing exams? or was teri hatcher’s cosmetic surgeon pinoy?

for the longest time, we’ve tried to distract jan from superhero figures. we considered them to be inappropriate for his age and really, what good would he pick up from them? in germany, it was relatively easy, as there were lots of other options. there were a variety of well-made children shows that didn’t feature violence and fighting as its main plot. yes, he was fascinated with stories of vikings and knights, and we did encourage that, but there was a wide array of films and literature on the subject which were adapted to be suitable even for preschoolers.

whenever we would visit the philippines, though, it has always been tricky to find suitable shows on tv. aside from nickelodeon and disney channel, there was little else to choose from, particularly if you’re trying to stay away from the japanese cartoons all other kids seem to go gaga about. here in singapore, we’re faced with the same problem. power rangers, ben ten, spiderman, batman, teen titans — three months ago, jan didn’t even know them. now he’s obsessed. it is so pervasive, not only on tv, we knew we were facing a losing battle when we implemented a restriction on them in our household.

so fine. we finally gave in. we figured that the more we ban it, the longer it will take for jan to overcome this fascination. give in, treat it as a phase, and hopefully, the novelty will wear off. we still have rules, though. we’re ok with books and comics (jan can’t read yet), but we’re still limiting tv and videos. for his 5th birthday, he got a hero-packed celebration: a power ranger birthday cake, spiderman pencils and stationery, ben ten flip-flops, a transformers robot and a couple of power rangers dvds he’d been eyeing for the last 3 weeks. we were really hesitant with the last item, but he did earn it from a reward chart we have been working on, so there it went.

have we been wimps by giving in? most likely. we can’t all be like superheroes, eh?