Achieving Happiness

  It’s raining very hard outside. The horizon has completely disappeared — no more demarcation line separating the sea and the sky. Everything is charcoal and gray, and I feel my mortality keenly as the cold and wet assert themselves.

I feel like wilted lettuce in a refrigerator vegetable bin. It’s so freaking cold. I’m glad I won’t be in Hong Kong by the time winter starts. I wouldn’t be able to bear it on my own. I suffer in cold weather, and I always feel sorry for myself. I never seem to get warm enough. Showering, in particular, becomes a method of self-torture, even when there’s a heater.

————–

So Arroyo’s allies have succeeded in killing the impeachment process against her. Wow, big surprise, am so shocked…

But something good still came out of the entire infuriating and exasperating exercise. People are even more exasperated, and the true character of the so-called ‘democratic processes’ of the incumbent illegitimate regime and the corrupt and bancrupt economic and political system it represents is being completely exposed.

So long as the class character and class loyalties of the people in the positions of power in government remain unchanged, there will never be any genuine social transformation. At least none that will work in favor of the poor and exploited, and none that can even hint at heading towards the achievement of justice and lasting peace.

Anyways, I have ceased to be surprised. I was not even upset. I just shrugged and said to myself "Ang kakapal talaga ng mukha ng mga lecheng walanghiyang walang kwentang kongresman na yan na pawang mga palamunin ng sambayanan at salot ng lipunan!!!’

There. I was compeletly calm. My temperature didn’t rise the slightest and my ears maintained their natural color.

————–

At the risk of wrecking my teeth, my complexion and my, um, body weight , I’ve become addicted to Poppycock gourmet popcorn. The Watson’s shop closest to the office (it’s in the other wing, actually) is selling the stuff at 30% off (the wretched sweets are not cheap, darnnit) and.I. Could. Not. Resist.

The labels state that there’s 0 trans fat (the kind of fat that the body doesn’t absorb and keeps) and I hope that’s true because I’ve been stuffing my face with popcorn the last few days.

——–

In the meantime, in the news, a Russian scientist/mathematician has solved a most complicated puzzle called the ‘Poincare Conjecture’ (Don’t ask me what it is. I don’t know what it is, I can’t even begin to understand it, and all I know is that Will Hunting in that movie which starred Matt Damon and Robin Williams was also able to solve something also confounding.)

News like this makes me feel like uniting with the rest of humanity and saying — ‘why can’t we all just be friends?!’

"While luvvies, cooks and cokeheads line up to share their views on everything from Aids to Zimbabwe, Dr Perelman seeks only to be left in peace. While fat cat bosses of failing companies award themselves million-dollar bonuses, Dr Perelman is content with a hard job well done. He is not alone. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is one of many who chose to keep their brilliant lights under bushels."

Genius Grigori Perelman shuns fame, lives with mum and is a fine example.

He looks like someone who lives in a box begging from strangers. The truth is hardly less downbeat: unemployed Grigori Perelman lives in penury with his mum in a St Petersburg flat.

Yet Dr Perelman is the latest star to adorn the firmament of celebrity. At lunchtime today, it was announced that he had declined the Fields Medal, the ‘Nobel Prize’ of mathematics. Dr Perelman is a shoo-in for the $1m reward, awarded by the American financier and maths enthusiast Landon Clay, for solving a century-old problem known as the Poincare Conjecture.

Will the champagne lifestyle go to Dr Perelman’s not insubstantial head? Will he reveal top tips on topology to a wide-eyed reporter from Hello? Unlikely. Few expected him to turn up to today’s award ceremony in Madrid. As for the $1m reward, he seems to find this as thrilling as the prospect of talking to the media. As he told one reporter: "I do not believe anything I say can be of the slightest public interest."

It is a statement that reveals Dr Perelman to be that most elusive of people, a genuine celebrity with no interest in celebrity life.

We should all celebrate the paradox that Dr Perelman’s failure to appear today is glorious proof that such people still exist.

————
I just checked out a few of my high school classmates’ Friendster profiles, and it’s turned out that most of my high school mates are married with kids.
I’m married and I have kids. Well, they’re not of the same species, but heck, I love them as much as if they were homo sapien.
I have a fear of having children. There.
It makes me feel nauseous, just thinking about having and raising children in the Philippines, given how terrible the economic and political conditions are. I don’t think I (or my husband) will be able to give our kids the same kind of upbringing my own parents gave me and mys sister. We were pretty sheltered, and we were made to believe in the innate kindness that MOST people are supposed to have.
I believed in that. I used to.
Until I discovered all about how the country is run, by whom and what sort of values are actually being perpetuated in the world outside my parents’ house.
Sheewiz. I can’t even take care of myself. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to take care of another life that’s totally, completely and hopelessly dependent on me.
Aaaargh.
But then I would so love to have kids. We’d be friends, and Kim and I would take them to the ballet and the museum (like what my parents did when we were growing up! We went to watch Swan Lake, the Firebird, Giselle, the Wizard of Oz; look at the dioramas in Ayala Museum …) then we’d get all their clothes from the ukay-ukay stores in Cubao; and then we’ll paint their rooms and put up literary posters and those of the Beatles (or scientists, those idolzied by their dad) and black and white photos of life in the Movement…

But the Philippines is in such a terrible state right now, and children are so precious and fragile.
It’s clear to me that the leaders in govenrment and all those corrupt officials and the butchers in the mercenary military care nothing about children and what kind of country is being passed on to them as the days progress and history unfolds.
Everyday the Philippines is recreated and reborn, and the transformation is always worse than the previous day’s imaging and essence.

When we were kids, we watched tv programs were honesty, kindness, compassion and truth were always highlighted. Cooperation. Sharing. Tell the truth. Admit when you’re wrong. Be Friends. Say Sorry.
I would like my children to inherit a country where life truly matters and the values I learned from the television programs I watched when growing up.

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