Tag: Personal

After looking for the best way to spend a weekend, I made a last minute registration with Travel Factor’s Conquer Sagada tour. I was a solo joiner. I boarded a bus with group of strangers, all with the same destination. I had minimal expectations during that moment and my primary goal was to, at least, enjoy the trip. Meetup with TravelFactor Staff Without counting our guides, Tikoy and Ron, I first met Steph. I sat beside her while waiting for our departure. We only learned that we’re on the same junket when Tikoy started to roll out the attendees’ list and ... Read more

In a relationship, it requires more than just understanding everything but more importantly to understand the things that don’t make sense at all. Somehow, the only way to make sense of what is going on is to just understand it the way things are, no further analysis. People sometimes pursue so many arguments so as to come up on how things should be understood, forgetting that things are simply the way they are. When we stay longer in a relationship, we find things are getting tougher to digest compared when the relationship is just starting. The longer you stay, you ... Read more

When we are challenged by our deepest fears and frustrations, we anchor on love to keep us above the fears and frustrations we have. Love for our craft, love for our parents or family, love for God, love for someone special, love for friends, love for the simple things, love for everything we have and we don’t have. Sometimes, what we are left of us is the love that encompasses who we are. It starts and ends with that very powerful emotion. When we begin to question our own capability to succeed, we go back to the craft we dearly ... Read more

Ms S, a mother, often made a squabble with his elder teenage sons. Reasons include; scolding them when they came home late or not allowing them to attend friendly gatherings of their age and for not giving them the liberty to decide on their own. One day, the youngest followed the same footsteps of his elder brothers. The feared word war between Ms S and her youngest has broken their home’s rarely attained silence. And then I got a chance to talk with the teary mother… Ms S: Ian, Did I do something wrong? Didn’t they realize that I was ... Read more

We live day by day carrying the consciousness that our individuality may somehow make other people hate or love us. Somehow, it will reach a point that we will begin to care for those people who are willing and brave enough to accept us – for all that we are and all that we can be. We fight for their acceptance. We even begin to trade off certain things for that acceptance we long from them. Sometimes, it leads us to bleed more than we could afford to. But bleeding means less crucial for what we want from these people, ... Read more

There comes a point in our life when you need to say it’s over for you. It’s over for the dreams you want to achieve, it’s over for the plans you have planning for the longest time, it’s over for the times you have been waiting for something to happen, and it’s simply over for the things you love to have and yet you simply can’t. Maybe it’s not about giving up, maybe it’s not about being brave, but it’s simply being humble enough to accept that all things have come to an end; an end for the efforts, the ... Read more

I was born and raised in Negros Oriental and I spent my first 16 years of existence in the province. I finished elementary and high school in a remote but populated village, just 70 kilometers (1 and a half hour ride) south of Dumaguete, Barangay Bonawon. In 16 years, I can count the instances that I visited the city. It was because I had motion sickness, a normal complain for a typical adolescent like me who seldom travel and just spend the most of his time at home and in school. But high school life demanded me to travel more ... Read more

Studying for free and receiving a monthly allowance to finance my school requirements were just few of the privileges I received in my three years and eight months (7 semesters and 4 summer terms) of stay in Ozanam Study Grant Program (OSGP) of Adamson University. The basic requirement is hardwork and the basic tool is patience. Determination is not enough without hardwork but hardwork will not work without patience. Twenty-five to thirty hours of work a week on top of studying hours was really a burden for a chemical engineering student who has no one to depend on but himself. ... Read more

It has been three years since my grandmother’s death. Love has always been synonymous to her existence. I had lived twenty-two beautiful years of my life because of the reality that she had loved me so much beyond words can ever explain. I guess it is the kind of love that transcends through time and yet no words can exactly capture its existence. After her death, I realized that I had so much love for her. And I thought that love will always be for her. Life after her death has been very struggling. I wake up each day relinquishing ... Read more