Chronicles of Charyl

But for the first time in my life, I just don’t want it to arrive. I’ve always been the Christmas “fanatic”, if I may use the word for the lack of better term. I look forward to the gifts, merry-makings, game prizes, foods, firework-displays, decorated trees, blinking lights, well-lit highways, excited chats and shouts of laughter. When I started working, my list adds the following: more parties, more foods, cantatas, special numbers, bonuses, and cash gifts. So, what seems to be the problem this time? I don’t know. Christmas has just suddenly become so expensive! You know what I mean: Buy gifts for this and that, contribute for parties here and there, and travel everywhere. It has also become so detailed – “What’s our theme for this year’s party?”, “Your food assignment is (that one which sounds European)”, “I hope my manito/a would give me something from (an elite clothes brand)”. Ok fine! What had gone wrong? Had I not ever grasped it at all? Where has all my overwhelmed de...

Just as the country is overwhelmed with joy for the honor received after international television network CNN awarded Hero of the Year to Filipino Efren Peñaflorida, we are then overwhelmed with devastating emotions, after a politician’s family was massacred in Mindanao area, which reflected the dangerous “other side of the coin” of the country that heroes like Efren represented. As if in a playground, the series of events is a seesaw, an alternate of up and down play. Unfortunately, this is the real thing, and not just a child’s typical after-school pastime. I confess I have gone ecstatic to speechless when these details flashed before me. I mean, how am I supposed to react about this, I should describe as, injustice? Shall I be angry because of the self-serving motives of the attack, if indeed proven that it was politically motivated as popularly alleged? Or shall I just focus my thoughts on the less violent ones, (like Efren or Manny Pacquiao’s victories for the nation) that I may b...