Grey Skies | Silver Linings

Predicting the future. Special mention goes to my high school English teacher, Sir Joseph. Thank you for this assignment nine years ago. Several weeks back, my mother showed me a piece of paper she found in one of her house-cleaning escapades. It was a sheet of intermediate pad with the familiar small, slanted handwriting on both sides, save for the red marks from my high school English teacher. I told my mom I've seen it already—of course, because I wrote it, but nine years have passed since then. What I meant to say was I saw it again just a couple of months ago, while rummaging through some more papers in my mom’s clinic looking for something… important. I don’t know. The minute I got hit with that blast-from-the-past, I completely forgot what I was looking for in the first place and started re-reading my juvenile attempt to predict the future. I remember that homework so well: the teacher asked us to write down (in English, as always)  what we thought we would be te...

For a country that prides itself as "developing" and "progressive", I find it quite odd that the way we fellow countrymen talk to each other, the way we express our opinions and offer our differences - in other words,  civil discourse - reflects neither development nor progress in any way whatsoever. Our conversations these days tend to go one of many different ways: We don't always ask the right questions - we beat around the bush too much. When the right questions do get asked, we usually give the wrong answers. Our truths are either relative or invented - there is no objective Truth anymore. To that effect, our truths are now based on how we feel. There's no effort anymore to think things through and analyze, either to try and understand it or to come up with a single argument against whatever it is we disagree with. Instead, we dismiss it entirely on the basis that "It hurt my feelings," or "I was offended," or "I di...

I don't know what it is about the Japanese culture, but I find that they're an emotional people. They're not exactly the "heart-on-my-sleeve" type, but they do manifest their emotions externally. And it is most evident in their works of art - the words to their songs are a little sadder, their cartoons are a little deeper, and their television shows and films are little more provocative. And so when my brother recommended this movie to me a couple of days ago, I couldn't help but feel somewhat validated: I have since watched this twice. And I am not ashamed to admit that in both occasions, I ended up with sweaty palms and cold feet. From time to time I would turn away from the screen so I can avert my eyes from just a split-second of some of the morbid scenes, only to end up seeing another one when I look back. (There were plenty in the movie. In some ways it was reminiscent of Mel Gibson's "Passion", save for a younger cast, a more ...

"I love those type of friendships that don’t require a lot of effort. We may not see each other as much as we want to or talk as much as we used to, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re friends no matter what. They can do their own thing and I can do my own thing. What’s important is that whenever we do see each other again, we can pick up right from where we left off without making it awkward. Any friendship that works out like that is a friendship worth having." My good friend replied with this quote in one of our online conversations when I apologized to her. I hadn't talked to her for a very long time before that chat and I felt bad about not catching up with her as often as I should, so I said I was sorry. She didn't respond for a couple of minutes, perhaps busy rummaging through her old online posts, until I was finally "forgiven" through elaborate prose. And so all was well. Knowing her, she might have just laughed the whole thing off. But lat...