Jandrea...so far

Time to sip chamomile tea... Oh so deliberately Time to really listen to the music ... Word for word, note for note Life, not gulped by the cupful Memories of first love, savored Like watching butter slowly melting on oven-hot rolls Like watching the soft blue of clouds Seamlessly turn to orange And then grey Solace, at the end of day

A day after two students of mine shamelessly conversed during class, sharing something on a mobile phone, I am still incesed with myself for not calling their attention in class.The other day, another student was readimg what looked like a pocketbook while I was talking about job satisfaction and organizational commitment before a class where most seemed to be as engaged as I was in the discussion. Again, I pretended not to have seen the errant act! After many years of teaching, I still don't know how to handle these things! Do I treat them like impolite children and scold them in front of everyone? Maybe if they were rambunctious or insolent, it would be so easy to take this step. But if they were not and they were just showing disinterest in what is transpiring in the classroom? Do I tolerate this form of disrespect, not only for me, but for their classmates who patiently sit through whatever I have to offer in class? The latter option, maybe. Not because I am intimidated ...

I have just realized (and admitted) that I am now at the older end of the generation gap! Twice now, on two separate fastfood establishments, we asked for "cubiertos" and the food servers did not know what they were. When we "translated that to kutsara't tinidor, they met that with what seemed like a  combination of amazement and amusement! One even repeated the word twice, rolling it in her mouth, like she was tasting new flavor of candy for the first time. The other one, an earnest young man, after giving us the utensils asked what language it was from. He seemed delighted to have learned a Spanish word today! Good for him!  Cubierto  - Spanish to English Translation | Spanish Central www.spanishcentral.com/translate/ cubierto utensil, piece of silverwarecoge el  cubierto  con la mano derecha take the spoon/ fork/knife with your right hand los  cubiertos  the cutlery falta un  cubierto , porque ...

I have this crazy notion that the universe has determined that some days are perfect for important events. For a while now, i have noticed that on certain days, my appointment calendar is VERY full while on the spaces for other days, I have nothing written except my daily reminder to pray at a specific hour.  To illustrate, yesterday, June 28, I had two workshops going on at exactly the same time (Don't ask me how i managed to attend both!) and then another activity after dinner. Tomorrow, June 30, I have 2 deadlines for a paper and presentation (There was another one I managed to get out of). And then one meeting in the morning and another one in the afternoon. In the evening, i check in for another activity which starts morning of the next day!  Mind you, I do not set these deadlines and the dates for these activities. The universe hands them in, one by one, on my plate which is already full as it is! Maybe I should shout out  "No more!" to the Great Beyond when...

"You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.  It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake,   to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."                                                                                                           ...

Image from a FB friend When I first set my eyes on Vigan, it was though I was still in a dream. Still groggy with sleep after an all-night land trip, I found myself as if transported to another time. In the awakening light and the clip-clopping of the horses on the cobblestone street, the first thoughts that came to my mind was, "Oh my, I could run into Rizal's Crisostomo Ibarra in these streets!" A little dramatic but what can you expect from a then college student with a student theater group visiting the place for performances in schools in that area. I was of course wrong about running into fictional characters but I was certainly not disappointed about encountering ghosts from the past. We were billeted in a hotel which was a renovated mansion from an earlier century, just what you would expect in a place like this. The girls were given a big room which helped us imagine that we were friends of Maria Clara after a party. In the early morning, I woke up with th...

This is so typical of the what goes on in my brain during most of my waking hours. Sometimes I wonder whether it is a gift or a curse that I can juggle a gazillion of things happening all at the same time. I can imagine the  countless neurons that are firing simultaneously so that I can think about how we can recycle left-overs for dinner while I rehearse in my mind the questions I intend to ask after my lecture in my next class.  How is it possible that I can draft an official sounding letter in the same mental slate where I create a picture of myself in the outfit I will wear to a project proposal presentation?  Should I consider myself fortunate that I can predict how my family's plans will turn out depending on whether they listened to my advice or not?  Should  I just shut up when I can clearly see that the purple throw pillows definitely don't go with those curtains' sickly shade of green and getting that new brand of shampoo, while giving you soft-to-t...