A Break-up Letter


I never expected I'd be writing you this letter. We've had six years of wonderful memories but I'm afraid it had come to the Read more

Welcome to the New Yoshke.com


New look. New attitude. New experiences. Honestly, I had been neglecting this blog the past few weeks because of my awfully hectic schedule. Work had Read more

Sometimes We Burn to Live


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," Read more

Judging By the Cover


Our office is just a stone's throw from where I live. In fact, all I have to do is cross EDSA and voila, hello Read more

Fireworks, Hormones, and this Blog Post


You remember last week when I told you I found it difficult to blog since I met you? Since we became a couple officially, Read more

Do They Read Blogs in Heaven?


Whenever I say that the earliest memory I have is the accident wherein I had my left arm somewhat toasted, I lie. My earliest Read more

Unusual Breakfast


Here we are again. In the usual corner. Usual table. Usual diner. Usual time. And most probably, usual meal. I'm getting tired of this Read more

Top 10 National Stereotypes


Heaven is where the cooks are French, the police are British, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by Read more

EDSA


It could have been a horrible Saturday. I was in the passenger seat. It was a bit raining. Normally, EDSA gets on my nerves. That's why Read more

Why Nursery Rhymes Are So Violent


A few months ago, I was teaching my 4-year old nephew some nursery rhymes with a DVD. After a lot of singing, he slowly Read more

Top 10 Worst Things to Say During Sex


Sex is the art of love. It must be done in the most enjoyable and most satisfying manner. This act of love of two Read more

The Promil Kid Drops the Bomb


Of all the living things created by God, I love my nephew the most. I call him the Promil Kid. He’s the cutest thing. Read more

Emo

Twice I Heard Death

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, Personal Life |

I was 10 when I heard it for the very first time. No one would look after me at home so my mother brought me along with her across the street to the a neighbor’s. She was one of my mother’s bestfriends. My mom offered a crying shoulder and a helping hand to the family. As my mother did some chores in our neighbor’s kitchen, I was left wandering around the house. In the living room of the house was a bed — a deathbed — and in it was my mother’s friend, trying to catch her last breaths. Two of her children, both in their 30s, sat by the bed as they moved their ears closer to her mouth. She was finding it difficult to utter even the slightest syllable. I remember thinking to myself how weird she sounded. I concluded that time that it was the sound that dying people make. It was the sound of death.

Outside, on the porch, was the youngest of her children, Ate Lovely. Of all the three siblings, I liked her the most. She was kind, friendly and spirited. It was a surprise to see her on her knees, begging in front of a man with a hat on. I had never seen him before. Like her siblings inside the house, Ate Lovely, too, was crying. And she let out a train of please’s while holding the hand of the cold man with a hat on, who could not even look at her even for a second.

“Please po, please,” she pleaded. “Pumasok po kayo sa loob kahit sandali lang.”

The man with a hat on gave no response other than a slight turning of his head away from the poor woman.

“Kausapin n’yo lang po,” Ate Lovely continued. “Parang awa nyo na po.”

My mom found me standing at the doorway and invited me to try the dish she cooked. Ate Lovely was still weeping. So were her siblings in the living area. They stayed like that for more than an hour.

As I passed through the living area on my way out to play, I saw the man with the hat on enter the house and sit beside my mother’s bestfriend. The man, too, moved his left ear closer to her lips, awaiting words. But the words did not come. She was too weak to even control her lips. All three siblings gathered around the bed.

The man removed the hat, held her hand, and said in almost a whisper, “OK na. Wag mo nang isipin yun. Wala na sa akin yun.”

And then it happened. The sound of death stopped. The sound of loss followed. She was gone.

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Chestit Rojden Den, Plamen!

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, Friends, Personal Life |

What’s in Bulgaria that is well worth a visit?” I asked a friend when he suggested that I visit Bulgaria after telling him that my ultimate dream was to tour Europe.

For the longest time, Bulgaria had no significance in my life. Back then this East European state was just another country to me. I knew that its capital is Sofia. I could correctly identify it on the map. But that was all. When I said I wanted to visit Europe, I meant Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Italy. Not Bulgaria.

But something happened.

Six years ago, I hit rock bottom. Weeks before my college graduation, family problems and friendship issues had all caved in on me and I did not intend to get out of the rubbles. We’ve been to that place, the rock bottom. This hard, dark place might look and feel different to each of us but our reaction is always the same regardless — seek help. Hitting record lows emotionally is bad enough. But it is not “being there” per se that kills; it is the realization that no friend is there to lend a hand.

Every morning, waking up was such a chore. At night, though I was more alive, I felt like a zombie. It was during this time when I always found myself alone in more ways than one. I would sit there, try to blog something, and log into my web accounts. I would just stare at my friends list, wonder which of them would understand me, and find no one. That was the point when I just cried for help. Luckily for me, someone answered.

In 2006, I met someone online by accident. Online friends were not new to me. As a blogger, I develop friendships with other bloggers even before I meet them. But this online friend was not a blogger and he was not from here. At the time, he lived at a provincial town in a humble country in Europe. I don’t remember how we got virtually close but there was something about him that I found welcoming and comfortable. He spoke good English. He was very goodlooking. He made me laugh every time we talked. Although he lived on the other side of the planet, he was my constant companion.

I was not the kind of person who would find refuge in a stranger. But I needed someone to talk to — no matter how physically distant, no matter how virtual. Many times I had considered myself pathetic or desperate for having a friend that I had not even met personally. But eventually I realized there was nothing wrong with being able to share bits of my life with him. After all, I needed to get up and get out of that dark place.

Single-handedly, he pulled me out of it.

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She Who Shines

Posted on by Yoshke in Conversations, Emo, Friends, Personal Life |

She came walking slowly towards me, sat beside me and introduced herself, “Hi! I’m Astrid.” Her name means “star.”

“I’m Yoshke,” I replied. Reluctantly, I shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.” The whole thing was totally weird to me.

It was the moment when, I think, she and I truly became friends. I wouldn’t say we became inseparable since then but I missed her every time we were apart. From then on, we became distant companions. Although we lived miles away, I knew I could rely on her any damn time. She would text me whenever she was around and she would always invite me to an afternoon of enjoying street food. Or just a day of doing nothing at all.

She’s like that every time. She appears whenever she feels like it and I can always expect her to constantly flicker in and out of my world. She’s like a friend from an alternate universe. She’s a flicker of joy. Every moment with her is short, is sweet, is a recurring dream, something I always look forward to and enjoy when it finally comes. She’s the twinkle every dreamer, who has been endlessly watching a certain star, waits patiently for.

She and I seldom get in touch but I always make a point she’s one of the first to know whenever I experience a sudden surge of emotions — when I’m down, when I’m extremely happy. And even when nothing happens, I send her a random, sometimes almost empty, message just to let her know a dreamer is thinking of a star.

One time in Puerto Princesa City, on the way to Crocodile Park, we were in a trike and sat silently next to each other. “I love this,” she uttered. “Do you remember this one scene in Pulp Fiction?”

“Which scene?” I asked, intrigued.

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Farewell, Friendster

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, Friends, University, Vanities, Web |

I’m so tempted to ask Friendster “What took you so long?”

Friendster has become irrelevant for many people and many of us expected it was only a matter of time before they announce to wipe out user content posted on their site.

Well, the day has come.

A part of me is mourning. Although I have not logged into my Friendster account since, like, forever, I still like the idea of having my profile out there for my old friends to see. I can say that Friendster was the first full-blown social networking site that I joined. I was a college sophomore then, the latter months of 2003.

Looking at my Friendster profile, I realized just how much I had changed. My Friendster profile is like a portrait of the old me, with testimonials reinforcing that image. It contains my previous dream of becoming a diplomat, my past ambition to become a filmmaker, and my obsession with fire. (Of course, it wasn’t an exactly accurate portrait. Coz if it were, I would’ve found the words ass, bitch, damn you, pathetic loser, wuss, lunatic all over my testimonials section. LOL.)

Speaking of testimonials, I’m saving the ego-boosting vanity posts (aka testimonials) here on my blog.  And my reaction today as I backread. And just a heads up, every time you see the words kind, mabait, cool, note that it’s sarcastic. Hahaha.

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Sometimes We Burn to Live

Posted on 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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Hiraya Manawari, Hiraya Manawari…

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, TV |

The Holiday season is over. And if there’s one thing I’m really thankful for, that’s a chance to finally watch daytime TV. You see, I only get to watch weekday morning and afternoon shows during Christmas break and it’s something I enjoy immensely. However, I couldn’t help noticing how local morning programming had changed through the years.

Today, Ben 10, Spongebob Squarepants, Mr. Bean and anime heroes lead the kiddie programs broadscast in the morning. As much as I love Spongebob and Ben 10, I am saddened by how locally produced educational TV shows have gone extinct from free TV. Lucky are we who belong to the generation growing up seeing Batibot and ATBP. Lucky are we who had that chance of singing along to this song every morning of our childhood:

Gusto kong abutin ang tayog ng ulap.
Gusto kong sisirin ang lalim ng dagat.
Gusto kong akyatin ang tuktok ng bundok.
Tuklasin ang hiwaga sa puso ko’y bumabalot..
.

It’s a shame Hiraya Manawari is not being shown on a major TV channel today. It would have helped my Promil Kid niece and nephew develop a good sense of right and wrong. It would have helped them appreciate lessons about respect, love, discipline, honesty and other values — things they will hardly learn from Mr. Bean and company.

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Pagbabago

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, Love, Personal Life |

It was a Tuesday evening. I was walking down the street with a box containing a cake in my hands. It was her favorite.

I stopped in front of her house. Turned to the door. Stopped. Lifted my left hand to knock. Hesitated. At last, I mustered all the courage to make that gentle, reluctant thumping sound as the knuckles of my hand hit the door. It opened. She was there standing in front of me. She was pretty. She was young. She was my girlfriend. We were both 19.

She invited me in as I handed the cake to her. We proceeded to the dining area and she opened the box. There was an obvious delight when she opened the box and saw what was inside of it. She was slicing the cake. “You want some?” she offered.

“No, no. I’m good.” I never liked sweets. I thought it was a misleading taste. Sweetness, I thought, was the taste we use to cover the bitterness of many things. I hated candies. I wasn’t crazy for chocolates. Cakes? Thanks, but no, thanks.

“Still hating cakes? You haven’t changed a bit,” she smiled.

“Er, about that. I have something to tell you.” Finally, I was about to say it. I didn’t think I was ready to admit what I was about to reveal for I, myself, had not accepted it. What I had to say back then started an agonizing evening filled with many “why’s” and “how’s.” There were some tears. There was some consoling. But thank God it ended with much understanding. That’s exactly why I fell in love with her in the first place. She had always been there to offer support and be my leaning wall. It’s just that this time, although she was still there for me to lean on, I felt like it was about to crumble. She was about to crumble. It was my fault.

We never talked since then.

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Yoshke is Evil | The Couple on the Bus

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, Personal Life |

This  is a part of the Yoshke is Evil series, in which I will narrate incidents where I thought I was inconsiderate, insensitive or evil. This incident happened a few months ago and I’m still not over it.

image courtesy of www.cabq.gov

I love taking the bus at night, especially when the roads are almost empty. That’s why one time, after a night of shopping and conversations over coffee with my friends at Trinoma, it was my default choice to take the bus.

I made my way out of the mall through the Mindanao Exit, walked along North Avenue, crossed the overpass to EDSA and waited for a bus. After two sticks of cigarettes, one finally stopped. I hopped in and chose a seat among completely vacant rows at the back of the bus.

In that part of the bus, there were just me and a couple — a man and a woman. They were seated opposite me. They seemed like they didn’t know each other as they were occupying the end seats and there was one seat between them. Seated closer to the aisle was a man. The man looked like a laborer, a construction worker. He was dirty and was carrying a big bulky black bag, which was on the floor. He was thin and he looked like a drug addict. I even joked in my head and though that this was the type of man you would expect to just stand and declare a hold-up. I laughed secretly and scolded myself, “God, Yoshke, you’re being too judgmental. Not because he looks like that doesn’t mean he’s gonna do something bad. Bad, bad Yoshke. Stop it.”

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A Dose of Reality

Posted on by Yoshke in Blurts, Emo, TV |

First of all, let me ask this: Is it just me or is Safeguard‘s new TV commercial for their promo raffle a little off? It’s starting to make my head itch. I mean, come on, we’re in the middle of El Nino and their commercial seems to be encouraging people to waste water!

I’m trying to find the video on YouTube so I can post the TV ad here. Does anyone have a link to that video?

Anyway, this is the time of the year when I am usually irritated by insensitive TV ads hooked to reality shows. Allow me to talk about them.

AMERICAN IDOL Season 9

Almost every year I hear my friends say “this is the worst season ever.” They said that about Carrie Underwood’s season, also Chris Daughtry’s, and Jordin Sparks’, and David Cook’s. And I was always like, “That’s so not true.” My favorite so far is still Season 5 (Taylor Hicks, Katharine McPhee, Elliott Yamin, Chris Daughtry) and Season 7 (David Archuleta, David Cook).

What can I say about this year’s American Idol? I have three words: WORST. SEASON. EVER.

Especially after this week’s elimination? Gooosh. If it weren’t for Didi Benami, I’d stop watching this show. I mean, Alex Lambert and Lily Scott got eliminated!!? What’s wrong, America?

<insert frustrated sigh here>

Darn. But my love for Didi Benami is greater than my hatred towards the entire season. So I’m still in.

THE AMAZING RACE Season 16

The latest season of my most-loved reality show has been airing for a month already and I am sooo enjoying it. I honestly am surprised why I still love the show when my favorite team never wins (except for Tyler Denk and James Branaman, they’re so hot, I was rooting for them since Day 1 and I almost threw an Amazing Race party when they won).

Last season, I was so in love with Maria and Tiffany but they quit. Season 10 (All Stars), beauty queens Dustin and Kandice got all my loving but they lost. Season 4, Colin and Christie failed to win the race, either. Still love the show, though.

This season, all my cheers and prayers go to the cowboys Jet and Cord. Smart, smart players, I love it. Here’s hoping they win.

And I’m loving Caite. Her boyfriend Brent is a piece of wood but I love her. Hope they make it to the final 3.

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So Long, Green 2

Posted on by Yoshke in Emo, Friends |

It’s still so vivid. One evening in 2007, I sent him a text message, inviting him for a meetup at McDo Philcoa. He said, “Sure. What for? What up?”

I replied, “I dunno. I just missed you.”

A few hours later, I arrived at McDo and I saw him inside waiting for me. I had Chicken McNuggets. He had McChicken, large fries and large coke. He asked me how I was. I said I was great. He asked again why we were doing this. I told him I just wanted to bring back the old days — back when we called our group Bioman. I was Blue 3. He was Green 2.

He laughed. Way before we drifted far apart, we were close friends.

And that night, we stayed there at McDo, just talking about that summer — collecting newspapers and PET bottles from subdivisions, killing time at Vinzon’s Hall, playing games at Sunken Garden, pretending to be Bioman, the music we used to listen to back then, shooting an “Ikaw ang Lahat sa Akin” music video for our film org, and watching “Nasaan Ka Man” with the freshies.

A huge chunk of our time was spent talking about our radio hosting stint at dzUP for Project: Live Sound (Film stuff, Life, and Everything in Between). How they messed up on their first day as DJs. How fun it was. How he would want to do it again.

We even talked about that one time we walked along the Academic Oval while singing M2M’s “The Day You Went Away” out loud.

Yes, it’s so vivid. It was an unforgettable night.

Unforgettable because it was the only night we spent hours alone together. It was the only time I made an effort to revive our lost friendship. It was the last serious conversation we had. The sad fact is, it will never happen again.

So long, my friend. Rest in peace.

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