have you ever...
-moved out of your house and lived on your own?
-paid your own rent?
-paid your own bills whether they be for electricity, water or other utilities like the net or a landline?
-paid for your own tuition
-paid monthlies for a condominium you bought?
-paid monthlies for a 2nd-hand car you bought?
-paid for your own gas money?
-drove your way through insane traffic on stickshift to fetch your parents from the airport when they fly in to visit you or drove them back for their return flight?
-paid for your own ticket home during the holidays or long weekends?
-paid for your brother's weekly grocery?
-bought your brother/mom/dad something expensive when there was no occasion just because you saw how much he liked an item?
-paid the monthly for something your brother bought?
-paid for you brother's gas or bus ticket?
-footed an expensive restaurant bill when your family comes to visit or when you go home to visit?
-paid your parent's credit card bill?
-lent your parents large sums of money even if the little voice in your head says that there's a great possibility that you won't get paid or if you would, it won't be anytime soon?

not that it means anything, but i don't think many people my age would have said yes to half of the things on the list. most of the people i know that are my age still live under their parent's roof, drive a car their parents gave them or are driving their parent's car and the only form of bill they pay is their own credit card bills or phone bills.

i'm not comparing simply because anyone who really knows me knows that i don't get a kick out of it, much less put people down so that i could just feel better about myself. this post, more than anything, is more for me than anyone else. to remind me that although there are some goals i set myself that i still haven't reached, there are some that i already have and there are some that i have reached even if i didn't set them. my dad, though he doesn't say it much knows that i have grown up to be a successful person. i sometimes think that the reason he doesn't say it is because he thinks or perhaps as a parent, knows that i can go further. that this is just the beginning. well i don't know if i'm going to find myself in a plateau soon, a steady climb or god forbid, a descent. whatever the next year brings me, i hope to outdo myself. make myself proud and more importantly, make my parents proud.

Part of your world...

For most of my childhood, I dreamt I was a mermaid. Courtesy of course, of Walt Disney who animated perhaps my favorite of the many delightful stories weaved by Hans Christian Andersen. This December, it should feel like coming home.

I'm bringing my Prince Eric with me for a fee of Php350. Considering how deathly scared he is of swimming, it's good that underwater worlds now have 220-degree curved acrylic walls that serve as safe walkways for the hydrophobic.

Halloween at Tiffany's?

Many European cultural traditions, in particular Celtic cultures, hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world, and when magic is most potent. I don't know about spirits making contact with the physical world since I have never believed in such, but there might be a ring of truth to the latter claim. Magic indeed, was at its most potent that night, at least for me.

While it started for most, a 4-day long weekend in the working calendar, it marked for me the number 3. '3 years of happiness and love' as Cy put it in the gift card that was held by white ribbons against a turqouise little box that was unmistakably and distinctly Tiffany & Co. An engagement ring? No. It was an exquisite piece of a necklace, the centerpiece was a spherical 8 laid out horizontally. The figure, that marks none other but eternity.

I am, like always when Cy does such things, at a loss for words in my delight. Indeed, it has been the 3 years that Cy has succinctly described. But there are minutes, days, years more of it to come. Happy Hallow's Eve my l**e, to an eternity to more of it. :)