Felicissima

what friends are for?

sounds, like a song huh! seems not related to the subject… hehe…

for the past days, i have been tackling about friends.

friendship.

it is always good to nurture good friends. good friends are our second number one fans… next to the family!

yesterday, i visited tony alimaza, and his family (bing, his wife; and netnet, 1yr & 5 mos daughter.) tony is a bestfriend since highschool, in the seminary- Our Lady of Peñafrancia Seminary, Sorsogon. he was my mentor in all subjects. a good model, i may say. tony earned the best seminarian award. and, surprsingly, me too! only in first year though!… hehe…

i was in first year, and he was in third year. i always compared grades with him. especially in math! we were the seminary contenders then for math olympiad, an interschool math competition. we were the bet of the seminary, plus some others. edu, tony’s classmate, was one. (he’s now fr. edu and currently the rector of the minor seminary. too young to be a rector huh!).

i also competed grades with tony in english, spanish, and latin! subjects, which were thorns among us in highschool! our priest-professors for the subjects were real tough!

fr. arwyn diesta, our english prof, always reminded us, “you cannot be good in other languages, unless you’re good in english.” he always told us to speak english even during simple conversations with friends outside the seminary. english rule then was imposed in the minor. so even in the basketball courts, we could not speak other languages, otherwise, we would pay 1 peso per word during dinner time. every seminarian was tasked to catch violators. it was real fun! it’s how we learned the craft.

fr. ding caindec was for me the best prof in spanish and latin. “unus, duo, tres, quatuor, quinque, sex, septem, octo, novem, decem.” counting latin words, that echoed to our ears. until now!…hehe… he recited them with great intonation and voice exageration. his words, “speak the word according to its language of origin.” so that, “vice-versa” is pronounced as “viche-versa.” it’s a latin word.

as usual, tony and i shared ideas, views about life, principles, politics, philosophies, business, work, literature, etc. sharpening our minds. having mental calisthenics. grinding the ultimate capacity to think and learn new ideas. just as the knife, how sharp it maybe, becomes dull if not being used. so we need to harness also our minds. tony is a friend whom i can battle mind with.

but of course! we had spirits! hehe…what’s a talk without spirits huh?!..;-)

while the night was passing, he showed me his bible. he said it was a gift from his cousin, erik amponin. (erik, was my classmate by the way. he is now a dentist.) i was impressed when tony showed the back page of the bible. in there were printed, all the names in our batch including our addresses. (note, for a batch in the seminary means a class. maximum of 30 students. filtered from all the boys in the province. so the students here are the best. they are the ones who pass the entrance exam.) i do not even know the exact number of our house in the province! hehe!… nice one erik!

our batch:
 
Erickson Amponin, Benigno Del Barrio, Jeffrey Chua, Dexter Co, Michael Co, Kahlil Diño, Rogelio Endaya, Allen Erestain, Roy Estillero (deceased), PaulF, Dan Grefal, Gerald Guevarra, Manuel Gutlay, Mark Guirindola,Ernesto Lim, Edgar Magbanua, Gerald Narvadez, Ral Rocha, Philip Renovalles, Mark Marbella (deceased), Christian  Zaragoza, Joseph Yao

thanks boro tony for the good time. till next! (“boro” is how we call each other. it means brother.)

boro is working in PCSO. supply officer III, admin dept. so guys, if you have kins or friends who have difficulty paying hospital bills, just inform me, and i will refer them to him.

a memento… a bible…

i was browsing for my articles and compositions. but i passed over this. it’s worth sharing. this is one of my collections from e-mail forwards. so i do not know the real author.

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Somebody once told me that “Finding the right person is very hard and very wrong….it is best to be the right person for the one you love and start from here… you’ll always end up disappointed when you set standards and define a “right person” for you.

Don’t rush things…. coz somewhere somehow God is preparing somebody for you.” You can never be perfect… the person you love can never be perfect too…but both of you can be perfect through love and prayers, and your love can be perfect through the both of you. But, no relationship is complete without God….. that’s why we have marriage.. it’s a bond not only between you and your loved one…. but also with God.

Our relationships fail not because (s)he’s not the right person….it’s because we expected too much and we decided on our own. Let God do the work… you may call it waiting time…. but while you are waiting… pray. Let God guide you always… He knows better. No, He knows best. Love is not what you think it is….

Sometimes we mistakenly feel that our first relationship will be our last. Because we are overwhelmed with joy and romance, we forget to learn the meaning of true love. Some are saying that love is unselfish, blind, unconditional or simply denying oneself for the sake of someone very important in our life. Others are saying love is immortal and can never be defined.

when we think we’re in love the first thing we almost wanted the whole world to know is that our love for someone very special can never be taken away from us. We say this phrase: “You are the most wonderful gift from GOD I have ever received…” After a terrible fight or sometimes even a petty quarrel we then say “You are the biggest mistake I’ve ever made for my entire life!!!”. Now, how do you say and spell the word L-O-V-E? Are you really deeply into it?

Nobody can tell what love really is until experience speaks and whispers right into our ears. Most of the time, these love promises “Forever, Till Death do us apart, etc.” would end up “Never” and “We should part ways, I’m no longer happy with you! My love for you is DEAD!!!” Many times we thought after having committed to someone and your trust too drops down to zero degree.

“S/He ain’t the right one. I should probably wait for the right one to come.” But the big question anyone could not answer is “Is she/he the right one?” “When is the right time?” That made us stick to whom we are with. Will you always be waiting for the right person to come and the right time to commit? A big YES is the answer. Don’t be in a hurry to get into a relationship because you can never find love if you insist that you are already into it. Try to find time to really understand your real feelings, to know who you really are and what you really want in a relationship. You’re right, There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but there’s a compatible partnership that goes along with it. If you already knew that you’re too big to fit into a small sized t-shirt, don’t give it a try. You’ll probably break it and pay for the damages you have made.If you knew and felt that the relationship will not last, don’t go deeper into it. You’ll just suffer the consequences and live like hell the rest of your life. It’s really hard to say goodbye though, but you can’t make it any better by just pretending you still have the same feelings. Try to let go and give yourself a chance to live life to the fullest. Give yourself a chance to grow and give your heart a much needed attention.Then you will find that you have made the right decision and you made it all by yourself.

More frequently than not, we all act in a hypocritical manner for some reason. We call it love when we can’t leave someone and see them crying as we try to let go. We are wrong, it’s just pity. We call it love when we’re too attached and think that losing the one we love will somehow make us weak and unable to face the storms of life. We misunderstood, its just that we’re too much dependent on them. We call it love when we give our whole life to them, the wholeness of us and imagined that if they leave, no one would accept us and our past. We are mistaken, it’s just insecurity. But no matter what the definition is, the truth still remains that love isn’t something you can buy nor beg. It is real and existing. You can’t touch it but you can feel it in your heart. You can’t find it, but it will knock before you when you least expect it to come. It can make you the happiest soul in heaven, but don’t forget that it also can make you the most miserable person in the whole galaxy.