Achieving Happiness

Every morning when I walk from the ferry at Central towards the Shun Tak building, I think to myself, "Crap, am heading towards Mordor again, and I don’t have the freakin’ One Ring with me…."

To paraphrase U2, ‘Monday, Bloody Monday."

My rabbit Herbert (’Herbie’) died last weekend. He was six years old. He was with my friend Walkie at the time. Gad. I feel  depressed about it, but it isn’t as if there’s anything I can do about it.

I loved Herbie terribly much. He was a gift from my friend Sunny. I got him when he was about three weeks old, then in a week he grew so big on a diet of lettuce, carrot and pellets. I let him roam around my room in the former KMU office in Tomas Morato, and he gnawed on 1) the table legs; 2) my new Mojos; and 3) my loafers.

He was a gray and white rabbit, and while there were times when he could be stubborn (I would call and call and call on him and he would just look at me. When I stopped calling, that’s when he’d hop towards me and sit at my feet), for the most part he had a very sweet nature.

Because of him, I appreciated Richard Adam’s ‘Watership Down’ all the more; and I knew that rabbits are really quite intelligent creatures. (Anybody who has a DVD copy of the 1978 movie of the same title? Pahiram naman.)

Gad, I miss Herbert!!

———-

I’m rediscovering Sinead ‘O Connor and am listening to her CD ‘Universal Mother." I loved all the songs in that album when I was in college, but it was a tape copy I had, so all the rewinding took its toll on the tape…

Anyways, I brought a second hand copy from Flow, and again I am carried away by Sinead’s prayers for Ireland.

——

From PDI - POPE BENEDICT XVI is likely to be invited by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to visit the Philippines at their meeting scheduled for today at the Vatican.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye told reporters that the President, who left for an eight-day visit to Europe yesterday, would invite the Pope to visit the Philippines, which just abolished the death penalty.

Ms Arroyo on Saturday signed a law abolishing the death penalty after Congress granted her wish to finally put a stop to the execution of death convicts.

Man, it’s a wonder Arroyo doesn’t spontaneously combust everytime she comes within a foot of a priest or a nun; or within a kilometer’s radius of any Church or Mosque.

She’s such a hypocrite. (What Pope Benedict should do is pray for the Philippines and have the likes of Arroyo, Raul and Norberto Gonzales and Jovito Palparan turn into cockroaches at midnight. )

I am all for the abolition of the death penalty. Under a government like Arroyo’s and under the incumbent economic and political system wherein the law is biased against the poor and grossly favors the rich and influential, the death penalty is being carried out not so much as a deterrent against criminality but as a manifestation of how crooked the justice system is, and how severely lacking it is in rationality and compassion. 

When I think of how many thousands of Filipinos are downed by disease, hunger and poverty and everyday, I can come up with a hundred reasons to wage war. Povery and social injustice are undeniable reasons criminality continues to worsen; but the large-scale corruption and theft of the ruling classes are infinitely worse, and this is what those who fight for genuine social change focus on.

—

When I think about what goes on in the Philippines everyday, I feel like tearing my hair out.

Then I think of what my friend Raymond says - ‘focus on what you can change and stick to your efforts. Don’t bang you head against the wall everytime you hear bad news. Every days brings bad news, so how will that leave you and your head?"

Okay then. I want to bang somebody else’s head against the wall. Like Palparan’s for instance. And Raul Gonzales’.

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