Family

The Vanishing Coins

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Yoshke in Family |

Mystery solved.

I intentionally left several P5 coins on the side table in my room, pretended to be asleep, and kept half an eye on them. For months now, I had always found myself looking for missing coins around the house. I entertained the idea that an unseen, paranormal force hiding inside our house’s walls was responsible for the coins that seemed to disappear from where I left them. I even considered seeing a doctor because I thought my usually reliable memory was failing me. But that all changed when I decided to set up a trap to catch the culprit.

After almost thirty minutes of waiting, my nephew, whom I fondly call the Promil Kid, entered the room and watched TV. It wasn’t long until he noticed the coins on the table and pocketed them as if they were his own.

I was shocked. For the longest time, what I liked most about my nephew was that he didn’t care about money. Unlike most of the kids in my extended family, he never did approach me and ask for money to buy something. Honestly, whenever I tried to give him cash, he would just look at me and not take it. He’d rather be given food.

That was then.

Apparently, he is now very conscious about the value of coins and what it can do for him. Right after taking the coins, he went out and I followed him to his room.

“Hey, hey,” I said, “why’d you take those? Those are mine.”

“Not anymore, Tito,” he reasoned. “You left them on the desk.”

“That doesn’t make them yours.”

“Please?” He threw one of those I-beg-you-Tito look, which works all the damn time.

“Sure.”

My nephew then took out a giant piggy bank (more like a giant baby bottle bank) from under the bed. It was so heavy he had to roll it on the floor. He could not even lift it up or move it around if not by rolling. One by one he inserted the coins into it. Looking at his savings, he flashed a satisfied smile.

“Is it already P10,000, Tito?” My nephew was eager to know.

“I don’t know. You need to count them.”

“There’s too many coins. I can only count up to 100.”

I joined him on the floor, opened the piggy bank and began counting. It took me more than an hour to finish.

“Eight thousand pesos,” I excitedly told him. “Where’d you get all this money?”

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The Promil Kid and His Bull Story

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Yoshke in Family, Videos |

Here’s a video of the Promil Kid, my nephew, narrating what he had just seen on Animal Planet. He found the show compelling and entertaining enough that he was so excited to share with me the whole story. It was about a bull and hmmm… Actually, that’s all I understood. All I heard was bull, bull, bull! I can only take so much bulls in a conversation.

Somebody transcribe this thing and tell me what actually happened to the bull! Wahaha

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The Promil Kid’s Love-Hate Affair with iPod

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Yoshke in Family, Humor |

One of the things my nephew, the Promil Kid, loved about me was that I had an iPod Touch. At the time, I would always let him play with it since I have an iPhone and we would only meet every month anyway so I figured, “What the hell? Here, play, go.”

In fact, he spent more time with the iPod than me. Or even when we were together, he was still playing Angry Birds or Tap Tap Ants or Drop Chicken or whatever new game I had. So it wasn’t a surprise that whenever I would come home (every month), the first thing he would say to me was “Tito, iPod.” He probably loved it more than me. Haha.

Boy-Meets-iPod Stage

“I SLASHED THE HELL OUT OF THE WATERMELON!!!”

That was what I heard my nephew shouted after trying to play Fruit Ninja on my iPod Touch for the first time.

Yoshke: Hey, you can’t say that word!
Promil Kid: Watermelon? Dada says it all the time.
Yoshke: Not that, “hell!”
Promil Kid: Why not?
Yoshke: It’s a grown-up word.
Promil Kid: Hell, hell, hell, hell…
Yoshke: That’s bad. If you say that again, you’ll go where bad boys are sent to.
Promil Kid: Where?
Yoshke: That place that is not heaven.
Promil Kid: Where is that?
Yoshke: Alright. To HELL!!!
Promil Kid: Whatever.
Yoshke: Where did you learn that word anyway?
Promil Kid: Tito, duh? You say that all the time.

And then he started mimicking how I act when playing and losing — eyes squinted, brows met, fist formed, and mumbling “What the hell?!”

The Will-Do-Anything-For-Love Stage

A repost. I was in my room watching National Geographic when the Promil Kid entered.

Promil Kid: Tito, can I watch “Monsters vs Aliens” on your iPod?
Yoshke: Uhm, no.
Promil Kid: Please?
Yoshke: Hmmm, last night, you said you love your mommy and daddy and Nanay (my mom, his grandma) more than me. And now you want to borrow my iPod? No.
Promil Kid: I didn’t say that!
Yoshke: Yes, you did. You said I’m your fourth most-loved.
Promil Kid: I said third. Mommy then Dad then you.
Yoshke: Sorry, not good enough.
Promil Kid: Second! Mommy then Tito!
Yoshke: Shut up, I’m watching TV.
Promil Kid: FIRST! FIRST! I love Tito the most then Mommy then Dad then Nanay!
Yoshke: That’s what I’m talking about. Yay!

So I gave him my iPod and let him watch the movie in one corner of the room. He had earphones on. Suddenly…

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Sometimes We Burn to Live

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Yoshke in Emo, Family, Personal Life |

Whenever I meet people for the first time, it always happens.

When they start their sentence with “I hope you don’t mind me asking but,” I know they are going to ask about what happened to my left arm. Most of my online friends are not aware that I have a huge third-degree burn covering my left arm almost entirely. I usually wear a coat but whenever I ditch long-sleeved clothes, this prominent scar is hard to miss. It always steals the spotlight.

“I got it when I was four,” is what I usually respond with. I was a sheltered kid. When I was little, my mother would never let me step out of our property. I could never cross our fences and I was happily satisfied playing within the confines of our home and backyard.

One morning, my mum was working and my dad was away for a chore when a cousin Joj came over to play with me. We were both four and he was my constant playmate. Although his parents let him come over to our house, my parents would not allow me to return the favor. That morn, he talked me into doing the great escape. We left our home and walked a great distance to a crowded neighborhood in our village.

It had been an hour and I was having the time of my life, playing with kids in that neighborhood. Taguan. Tumbang-preso. Sikyo. Habulan taya. It was my morning of freedom. My mother wouldn’t know anyway, I thought. A few minutes before lunch, the kids and I decided to play one more game. The game was called Pandakekok. It was a game invented by these kids, based on a popular TV show at the time starring Keempee de Leon and Nino Muhlach. The mechanics of the game were simple. It’s pretty much like your ordinary habulan except when the taya catches you as he shouts “pandakekok,” you sit down like a frog until another player touches you again and then you become human again and start running.

Near our playing area was a deep pit where dried leaves and plastic garbage were being burned. The taya caught me near that pit and so I sat next to it. My cousin Joj saw that I had been turned into a frog so he ran towards me and tapped me so I could run again. The tap was a little too hard, it was more like a push. I was unable to keep my balance and fell right into the fiery pit. The pit was deep and I couldn’t climb out of it.

The next thing I knew, I was lying there, burning. I remember thinking that I should protect my back so I lay on my left side, making the fire devour my left arm and the melting plastic trash stick to it. To say it was painful was an understatement. I couldn’t get up. I don’t know how much time had passed until one of the residents there, Kuya Jim, jumped into the hole, picked me up and rushed me to the hospital 20 minutes away.

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The Giant Disco Ball

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Yoshke in Family, Mysteries, Oddities |

I’ve shared this experience with only a few close friends because I was afraid other people would think I was either a liar or a lunatic. But I swear to God this is true and this happened.

My mother’s eyes were glued to Charito Solis in the original Mula sa Puso teleserye when I left the house. It was around 7pm and I was waiting for my cousin Joj to meet me in front of our house for our nighty jogging. I was 11.

It had been our habit to go out and jog along the road, passing three barangays, go back to where we started and then run another lap. We were both in grade school and our parents were lenient to us as long as we tell them where we were going. We had been jogging every night for weeks that time but that night was different. A strange encounter would put an end to this habit.

Growing up in Batangas, I had an awesome childhood. Although not exactly remote, our barrio was not technologically advanced. The only metropolitan influence that anyone would find in that period was a Jollibee store, the only food franchise we had that time. For the kids my age, running kites, hunting spiders and stealing fruits from neighbors were our idea of adventure.

That night, we were already on our second lap when our jogging started becoming brisk walking. We were on the side of the road that cut across sugar cane fields. The evening was generally ordinary. It wasn’t dark; thanks to the lamp posts. Aside from an eatery, there were no houses along the road in the area; the nearest could be about tens of meters from it.

My cousin Joj and I decided to sit on some boulders nearby and rest. We weren’t afraid because there were big trucks carrying hundreds of sugar canes that pass by every now and then. Besides, there was an eatery some ten meters away. We sat and talked about so many things — our favorite anime shows, his classroom crush, his mother being strict at times.

Suddenly, it happened. We thought the light from the lamp post had turned red and green and had started to dance randomly. When we looked up to check the light, our jaws almost hit the floor. Several meters from the ground was a big, luminous ball. It was glowing and it just floated up there, not directly above us but it was close.

This is a screen cap from the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Horrible remake but this ball look like the one I saw when I was a child. Except it was much, much smaller and it was green and red.

The sphere was unlike anything I had seen before and unlike anything I would see in the years to come. It was big, maybe as big as a studio apartment or a bedroom or maybe smaller. Yes it was big but too small to be an alien spaceship based on the usual representations.

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Test Mistakes, Angry Birds and the Promil Kids

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Yoshke in Family, Humor |

It’s 2011! A lot of things have changed. But I know of one thing that has not changed a bit — the annoyingly cute antics of my niece and nephew. My nephew is now 7 years old and my niece 4. I was fortunate to have spent the better half of my holidays with them.

The Good Cola

My niece Natalya came home with her test results. She’s currently the second top student despite being the youngest in class. My brother, her dad, was disappointed to see that she made a mistake in one of her exams. What bothered him most was that the item to which she gave the wrong answer was quite easy. The direction asked them to encircle food items that were good for them.

Natalya encircled the bottle of cola. Her father confronted her.

Brother: Bakit mo binilugan yung coke?!
Niece: Eh hindi naman bad saken yung coke di ba?
Brother: Bad nga! Bad yun! It’s not good for you.
Niece: EH BAD PALA EH! BAKIT MO PINAPAINOM SAKEN?!??!!

Startled, my brother answered, “Pag madami, bad!”

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The Promil Kids Hit Hong Kong!

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Yoshke in Family, Travel |

My mother doesn’t travel. The farthest my mother had reached was Lucena City in Quezon. She had never boarded a plane or a ship. We used to be extremely poor. We literally experienced “magdildil ng asin.” I remember eating just rice and cooking oil with a little bit of soy sauce for our full meal.

But because my mother worked hard, our lives began becoming more comfortable. She supported us until my siblings and I finished college. And now that my life had been so good, I promised my mother that I would take her on a trip out of the country every year. Starting with Hong Kong.

But this post isn’t about my mother. As soon as my niece Natalia and nephew Yoshke (I gave him that name) heard the word “Disneyland,” I knew I won’t be alone with my mother. They just “had” to be there, the Kids insisted.

So off we went went and my sister tagged along, too. It was their first time to travel abroad so we were so excited.

Anyway, the trip was AWESOME but it felt like the universe was trying to spoil our trip. Haha. We were prepared for the cold but not the rain. When we were at the Hong Kong Ocean Park, the first thing we did was buy cute panda raincoats.

The whole weekend we were there, it was raining. It did not stop until our last night, making it harder for all of us to explore the city. Not to mention that there was constant fear that the two kids with us would get sick while we were there. But we managed and regardless, we still had a blast. Our priority was that my niece and nephew would enjoy so my personal plans were quickly set aside.

Niece smiling for the camera while on the bus on the way to the hotel from the airport

Niece and nephew at Adventureland (Disneyland)

Waiting for water squirts. They loooove playing with water.

It’s hard to travel with kids. There were a lot of places that I wasn’t able to set foot on because the kids got tired easily and my sister and mother were not confident they could find their way around the foreign city by themselves. They needed me to be with them all the time. I’m not saying kids are a burden when traveling; there’s absolute joy just seeing genuine happiness in their eyes. I’m just saying that I will be back. This time, no kids. LOL!

But here are some more of their pics.

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The Other Promil Kids

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Yoshke in Conversations, Family, Friends, Humor |

I have been receiving a lot of emails about the Promil Kid from my readers. If only my nephew could blog, I think he would create his own (which is just right since he has been outshining me here on MY OWN blog, LOL). Or, when he reaches the right age, he’ll ask for his share of whatever I earn from this blog (which he will never get).

Anyway, whenever my friends and I meet, they always ask how my nephew is doing or whether there will be any Promil Kid posts anytime soon. See, he’s stealing my friends, too! That kid is evil! And the worst part is, he doesn’t know it!

Most of the time, my friends would also tell me stories about the little children in their lives. You see, most of us know a Promil Kid. It may not be my nephew but I’m sure you know a smart, know-a-hell-of-a-lot kid. And I never get tired of listening to stories about clever, cute and sometimes rude toddlers! Here are some of them.

PROMIL KIDS ARE VISUAL AND BLUNT.

Mind you, visual + blunt isn’t really a pleasant combination. Take my friend Dane’s little sister for example. A couple of years ago, at the start of classes, her mother came to class only to find out that the little girl was not there. Panicking, she looked for her all over the area and found her in another Kindergarten class. Asked why she was there, the evil kid answered, “Eh kasi yung katabi ko, tulo yung uhog! Kadiri!”

She was brought back to her original class.

The next day, the exact same thing happened. She was missing and they found her in the other class. My friend’s mother said, “Di ba sabi ko sa’yo, dun ka sa kabilang room? Bakit andito ka?”

The girl responded, “Eh kasi yung teacher ko AMPANGET!!!”

PROMIL KIDS ARE REALISTIC!

Don’t ever mess up their reality! One day, the little sister of one of my friends was having a Science exam. The teacher specifically instructed the children to color living things brown and non-living things yellow.

This Promil Kid went home with one mistake, something that she could not accept. She was pissed.

When her mother checked where she went wrong, she realized that the girl colored the grass green and not brown.

“Bakit mo kinulayan na green? Sabi sa directions, pag living things, kulayan ng brown!”

The kid answered, “Eh sa kulay green yung grass ko eh! Pinipilit nyo ko na kulayan ng brown eh kulay green naman talaga yung grass!”

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The Road to Death

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Yoshke in Family, Public Affairs, Rants, The World |

This is our home in Batangas. And this road in front of it is part of the national highway connecting the Batangan towns of Lemery and Balayan — also known as the Road to Death. This part of the road in the picture is just before the crossing that connects this highway to another highway leading to Tagaytay City in Cavite, and if you go farther, Manila.

Given these facts, you can just imagine how busy it is. When I’m home, I always have to close the windows tight so the noise could not distract me from doing my usual activities comprised mainly of watching TV and err… watching TV. Open the window a little bit and your viewing experience is ruined. This explains why almost every room in our house is air-conditioned.

But the noise is not what makes this part of the road earn its name “The Road to Death.”

The noise is tolerable. It’s been there before us so we have no right to complain. What’s relatively new is the long island in the middle of the road. It was added to this wide street perhaps four years ago, making both of its sides narrower. What they failed to install in addition was a light post. You see, at night, this little road island is invisible. And because it is part of the national highway and may even be the only part of the highway in 5km radius with a concrete island or anything protruding from the ground, motorists are always caught off-guard. Ergo, ACCIDENTS.

As a matter of fact, every time I spend the weekend in our Batangas house (which is every three weeks), I always witness road accidents in this area. The culprit — you bet it’s that damn island. Most of the time, motorcycle drivers fall victim. Sometimes, bigger vehicles. I have seen a truck carrying hundreds of chickens tumble over here. There was even an incident where a truck containing inflammable content having the same fate — my neighbors were all in panic.

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Sundays with the Promil Kid

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Yoshke in Conversations, Family, Humor |

Guess who’s back! I’m finding it hard to blog about my nephew, the Promil Kid, lately because I rarely see him. He’s staying at my parents’ house in Batangas and I only go there once a month. Anyway, enjoy.

image courtesy of www.cartoonfaces.net

AGNOSTIC KID

The Promil Kid is in a difficult identity situation right now. And years from now, it will require a big decision. You see, his mother (my sister) is a Roman Catholic while his dad is INC (Iglesia ni Cristo). So he goes to church twice a week. I’m agnostic so I couldn’t care less. One time, I was preparing breakfast when he walked in to the kitchen and had a small chat with me.

Yoshke: Where are you going?
Promil Kid: I’m going to church.
Yoshke: But I thought you already went yesterday.
Promil Kid: That was Mommy’s church. Now it’s time for Dad’s church.
Yoshke: Aah, I see.
Promil Kid: Tito, what’s your church?
Yoshke: I don’t have one.
Promil Kid: Huh? Why not?
Yoshke: I’m agnostic. I don’t go to church.
Promil Kid: You’re what?
Yoshke: AG-NOS-TIC
Promil Kid: So in your church, you don’t have to go to church?
Yoshke: Yes.

The Promil Kid then walked away, proceeded to the living area and sat down on the couch. He just stayed there. Minutes later, her mom came down from her room and found him there.

His Mommy: Oh, why are you still here? Your Dad’s waiting for you outside!
Promil Kid: I don’t want to go anymore!
His Mommy: Why not?
Promil Kid: I’m agnostic.

I was already eating my pancakes when my sister threw me a what-the-fuck-did-you-just-tell-him look. “Well, he asked,” I said as-a-matter-of-fact-ly.

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About Yoshke

On May 31, 1985, tragedy struck when 41 tornadoes hit Canada and the US, leaving 76 people dead. At the same time, a doomed couple in the Philippines were having the best orgasms of their lives. Nine months (280 days) later, a healthy baby boy was brought into this world by normal delivery. That was exactly a week before Microsoft had its initial public offering.

Today, Yoshke Dimen resides independently in Mandaluyong City. He got a degree in Film from a university in Diliman but is now pursuing a career in Social Media.

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