Friday, July 13, 2007

What True marriage Is

This is actually an email attachment sent to me by a friend. It is called "Article of Love" written by Jim Paredes of Apo Hiking Society, a famous Filipino musical band in the Philippines. I am not an avid fan of Apo, but I love mostly of their songs. Anyway, back to the topic...

Just want to share Jim's article titled "Article of Love" which talks about the essentiality and what true marriage is. It's a nice article, and a very good stuff for married couples as well. For those who are still single and planning to settle down, it is a very good foundation ahead of you.

Subject: ARTICLE OF LOVE by JIM PAREDES of APO HIKING SOCIETY

Change in Eternally Beautiful Humming in my UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes
The Philippine STAR 11/05/2006


Exactly 29 years ago on Oct. 29, Lydia and I walked down the aisle. She was 20 and I was 25, both of us wide-eyed but so sure of ourselves and our decision to stay together forever as we plunged into matrimony. We were sure, the way young people tend to be certain, that it was going to be an adventure. But little did we know that it was going to be a big one, probably the biggest one we'd ever know. Getting married is like signing a blank check. You have no idea how much it will cost you. You are committing an unquantifiable amount of material and emotional capital time, money, patience, sacrifice, and an infinite number of things you have not even begun to imagine that you must deal with eventually.

Many of them are real minefields as Lydia and I, like all couples, soon discovered. There are the in-laws, kids, expenses, the balance between career and family life, personal habits, sex, jealousy, etc. There is also the process of arriving at a "negotiated settlement" on how to deal with things like getting along with each other's friends, child rearing, spending habits, religion, hobbies, and how much "independence" the partners should be allowed. The institution of marriage, as we inherited it, was very complicated.

One of the things I found out much later in our married life is that there is a difference between a love affair and a marriage. A love affair has a dynamic that is different from a marital bond. Generally, love affairs are not meant to last. They are meant to have a beginning and an end. Why? Because they are about two separate people bonded by romantic, oceanic feelings of what seems like love. They live for the intense feeling, riding it as far as it will go and split up when the thrill is gone.

Marriage, on the other hand, is the experience of life by two people as a couple. Many times, new couples discover that they are not an easy fit, as Lydia and I discovered early on. That's why in a marital relationship one must necessarily give up big parts of himself/herself to the union to get a payback. While one may still want some privacy and independence, one cannot have them without a large dose of a shared life. From the start until the end, marriage is about two people experiencing one and the same lifetime.

It starts with romance and the sexual thrill of being with each other, but you can only count on those for so long. Anyone married for more than 10 years can attest that there are times when the attraction which seemed so strong when you first laid eyes on each other as single people can be non-existent for long periods. Viewed from the perspective of a love affair, that is certainly not a good thing. One may feel like the journey has reached a stretch of uninteresting flatlands. The joyride is over.

But from the perspective of a long marriage, this is simply a hiatus of sorts, or may even be the first signs of a qualitative the way one loves. It can be disconcerting at first but if you stick around long enough, the picture starts to get clearer. While gone may be (from time to time) the breathtaking highs and exhilarating moments, something else may be happening. Author M. Scott Peck put it so well when he wrote that "the death of romantic love can be the start of true love."

In our early years, Lydia and I felt that being married meant we had to do something dramatic all the time to keep it going. But as we got older, the doing often gave way to just being. Where before, love had to be "proven" by the sparkling diamond on her finger, or the great trip abroad, or the special dinner with wine in some plush place, love in our 29-year marriage feels no compulsion to prove itself as dramatically. Having long walks, conversations after dinner, holding hands during long drives, snuggling in bed or just simply being together sometimes without even talking, have often taken the place of all that. While sex can still be as great as ever, the truth is, as an older couple, we have discovered other ways to remain interested in each other. There is not only comfort but magic in the "ordinary," as one realizes that love can be expressed in simply caring or supporting each other's steps towards personal and spiritual growth.

One of the big recent highlights of our journey as life partners was Lydia 's big cancer scare three years ago. We felt so helpless as we tried to deal with the fear of losing each other. But we took it on as a couple. As far as we were concerned, we both had cancer. Those were days of great emotional upheaval. Ironically, they were also moments of calm and assurance. Even as we cried about it, we also learned that we loved each other enough to willingly suffer together because, paradoxically, by doing so, we eased each other's pain. This may sound flippant, if not cruel, but looking back, I can say that if I could only guarantee survival, I would
recommend cancer to everyone because of what it has done for Lydia and me. It has been such a rare opportunity to meet and accept unconditionally the hard-to-take faces of love that we often run away from. Yet when we bit the bullet, we opened ourselves to greater depth and began to see the face of the Divine in the other human being we had chosen to love. Only then did we realize that all the suffering made sense.

In the end, the very suffering we undergo turns into something eternally beautiful.

Jim Paredes is a member of the Filipino band
Apo Hiking Society

Friday, July 6, 2007

My Multi-media Accessories & Gadgets

Since I have been into lots of blogs and website makings, it's just good to know that the gadgets and stuffs I have been using have been ever so reliable to me...a good help, from the desktop I use at home, to my laptop, up to my tiniest device I personally use, so that wherever I go, the web is still just around the corner. Just trying to see these stuffs becoming so popular worldwide make me analyze how the world is fastly moving to a much more high tech world, through the use of internet. They are good and friendly as long as they are being used in the right way. Few years ago, I even had no idea about how to operate and handle those multi-media stuffs not until I began entering the worldwide web. I have analyzed you don't have to go too much formal schooling to learn these techniques, huh?



Meantime, I have added more multi-media assistants, and this time I am in the world of music making..geesh! it's not a music composer but a music converter, more on music compressions and other stuffs, etc.



I just bought an MP3 music maker which is really  good. Price is good and you can get it for only $30. Not really bad, because I can still use this to add MP3 music on my MP3 player as well.



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This comes in a CD which is downloadable on your PC. Once you have it, you can convert all your audio CD's into MP3 songs and save it on your MP3 players or ipods or even on your cell phones (as long as it can play music) if you want.
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...and here's my sony MP3/MP4 player which I recently bought in the Philippines. It can handle thousands of MP3 songs, and can also handle videos. You can save at least 2 movies here as long as you have the big memory card in it. (Cute no?) It was really a good idea carrying it with me because I am now having the songs that I like saved in it in an MP3 format which I saved from my audio CD's. Actually, the charger works in the Philippines, but not here since we have a different electric outlets standarized only for US. So, we got to run to a radio shack store closeby to get a US standard charger. It's good it worked!



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Here's my cell phone which is also ipod convertible and a mini pc featured one. It si bulky, and heavy, but when it comes to getting to the internet.."walang katulad"!!! I decided not to do that right now because cingular seems to charge me a bit expensive rate. I'm also downloading lots of MP3 songs in it. Plus, it has a 2gigabyte memory card for more photo handling capacity.



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Here's my bluetooth which is already with me wayback when I was still in the Philippines. It's now 3 years old and still working at its best. I am recommending this one for those who love to download photos or music from their cellphones to their pc's. Why? ...because you don't need any wirings to attach to when downloading. As long as your pc and cell phone is bluetooth enabled, you can send your photos within 10 meters range from any bluetooth enabled PC. Just don't forget to attach that little thing on any pc USB port, and ...presto!!! you're on thego!



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And these are my two thumb drives, which I use to save ALL my music and ALL photos. The black one is 4 gig, while the other is 2 gig. They are convenient to be carried anywhere, and always of course being attached to any USB pc ports. One good feature they have is they are safely carried in your purse or pockets, without taking your CD's with you. Convenient, right?



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And last but not the least, this is the memory card adapter of my cell phone. The memory card is placed inside the adapter then attached to any pc compatible with it. Another option to use just in case my bluetooth is not around, or I am downloading bunch of photos in my pc or sites.



My husband told me one time, "I won't wonder if you buy the radio shack store one time and put it inside the house"! I replied:..."don't you like it??? LOL!



We ended up both grinning...

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Virus Outbreak!

Most tropical countries in Asia including the Philippines are always a good thriving spots for mosquitoes, a common carrier of dengue virus. It usually affects children, the virus doesn't choose whom to kill. Also known as h-fever (hemorrhagic fever), it can also be found in drinking water and food.
Witness this news, the outbreak is in Cambodia:

Monday, July 2, 2007

I Need A Good Sweep!

I seldom get into extensive cleaning into my office room, but suddenly, it just surprised me for being so perky doing a BIG cleaning into it last week.


I got a li'l bit crazy on how I could sweep the floor to scoop all the dirt under my table. Well, I got to use 3 kinds of brooms to sweep the dirt and dust, but either any of them did work well. It was not either a good idea using the vacuum cleaner since it's a wooden floor:


I bought this one in Missouri, thinking it would be a good dust sweeper. It is as hard as a nylon cord and makes a lot of noise when you sweep it over. It can get some lints and just sticks on it, but I still have to remove the lint on it...hassle and time consuming. See that floor? That's my office room floor!


I thought this one was probably better. But it's almost the same as the first one. Besides, this is exclusively for my kitchen.



I ran down into the garage and get this broom as it might help me with a good grip....I ended up hitting my forehead at the tip of its handle. (a witch broom..that is!) I really don't enjoy this job, as much as I ended up frowning, and still dust was everywhere in the room.





Then, I thought of thinking of where to get a conventional broom (soft broom) or "walis tambo" as being popularly called in Tagalog, and is very popular in every household in the Philippines...hhhmmm, actually, I miss using this too! It's been awhile I haven't got hold of my "walis tambo" that I use at home in the Philippines.







This is the broom called "walis tambo" proudly made in the Philippines. Many of these are being made in Baguio City and its handle has actually the name Baguio City. Its bristles are really soft and long, and can scoop all the dirt and dust in a flat floor. A Philippine household seems not to be completely clean without this! So, it's always a MUST for every household. Pretty cool! because vacuums are not that commonly used, not unless your floor is fully carpeted.

Now, I felt better! Whew!