Why little boys should stay little



I've been hanging out with my 4-year-old nephew Aidan a lot, and it's been a joy because he's at a good age- basically, the age where he still thinks spending time with family is great. He's been more affectionate of late, and always looks for "Tita Nis" (his nickname for me) whenever he gets home from school. Earlier this evening, he said "I love you, Tita Nis." So, I said, "I love you, Aidan." Then he said, "I'll tell you how much," as he pulled my head to whisper in my ear. "I love you forever."

I wish I could record such moments so that in the future, when he doesn't think I'm so cool anymore and refuses to hang out with me, I can hold him to what he said. (Like I actually could, right?)

The Long Way Home

I only have a few more days left here in the US, and I am feeling somewhat apprehensive about going home. There are so many adjustments to make, and I am not sure how the re-assimilation process will be. The biggest change I am dreading is having to go back to work again at ABS. My life here has been almost like a two-year vacation- no bosses, no co-workers, no office intrigue. Life as a student has been awesome and almost idyllic. Despite my bitching about papers and projects, I would take that life any day over the daily grind of work. (But only if I still received an allowance.)

The Inexplicable Allure of the Bad Boy

I've always had a weakness for bad boys. A cursory look at my dating history will show this. A long, long time ago, I dated a long-haired photographer who was into shabu (though he said he was over it at the time we were going out), got into bar brawls, and got into a major car accident which resulted in him staying at the ICU for over a month. I remember that he got into another bar brawl complete with chair-flinging AFTER his accident while he was still recovering from his wounds. He's fine now, though he bears a lot of scars from this accident.

I dated another heavy drug user after him, and this one would describe to me the effects of different kinds of drugs, from mushrooms to coke to acid and some other substances I'd never even heard of. If I remember correctly, he eventually checked into rehab. I find bad boys very intriguing, and like a lot of women, I feel myself irresistibly drawn to them.

I recently met a guy who seems, so far, to be the baddest of them all. He has big scars running down the back of his head, because he was shot there. In fact, the bullet is still actually lodged inside his head, since the doctors said it was too tricky to remove it. He was heavily into meth (aka shabu) in high school. Missouri is the meth capital of the US, and apparently, living in a small town (he's from the middle of Nowhere, Missouri) makes you so bored that you're almost obliged to contribute to the state's number one product.

Anyway, I've kept in touch with this guy since I met him at a party. Recently however, he's been harder to get a hold of, because he got arrested for a DWI (driving while intoxicated) and has to serve jail time for five weekends. He also has to render community service on top of this. He chose to do time because in that way he can get his license back more quickly. If he had not agreed to, he would have had his license suspended for a whole year. In a place like Missouri where public transport is practically non-existent, that would have meant his virtual immobility.

It's been very interesting to know someone like him. His world seems to be far removed from mine, and asking him about his life is like experiencing his bad boy existence vicariously. He has become a friend of sorts (he seems to not have any real friends), and strangely enough, I will actually miss him and his rather uncouth ways when I leave the US.

Getting to know him has revealed much to me about a slice of American life that I otherwise would not have been exposed to. I've learned a lot about middle America and how young people navigate their way through it. It also doesn't hurt that he carries with him at all times the programmed-in-the-DNA air of the bad boy. And this is something he doesn't relinquish at all, not even for a minute. Which makes him all the more attractive, of course.

A very brief entry on the awesomeness of JT

I'm talking about the new-improved Justin Timberlake, of course. Not the Britney-Spears-dating, all-denim-wearing, long-curly-hair-sporting version. Actually, I just like one of the songs from his album "FutureSex/LoveSounds", which I have been listening to repeatedly. "What goes around, goes around, goes around, comes all the way back around..." This former Mouseketeer certainly has a great way of rehashing and imparting Hindu/Buddhist/barbershop wisdom. Even he believes in karma.

Grades, grades, grades

When I started going to school as a kindergartener, I didn't care about grades. Who did at that age? All we cared about was playing, making new friends, and maybe getting a stamp of a star on our hand to show to our parents when we got home. Then came prep, grade school, high school, and college. All those years, I still didn't care much for them either much to the chagrin of my parents (Maybe if they still gave out star stamps, it would have been a different story).

Decades later, though, this changed. Don't get me wrong, I didn't necessarily change my poor study habits practiced over a lifetime (Cramming has become hardwired into my system). I just CARED more about grades. Maybe it's because I'm in a different country, and so had some desire to prove that Filipinos can hold their own in the first world.

Well, I am very happy to report that I got invited to join the Kappa Tau Alpha journalism honor society. They only invite people with a GPA of 4.0, so I was glad that recent upheavals in my life did not adversely affect my academics as might have been expected. Pasensiya na sa pagyayabang. I know my friends and family will be very happy for me. I was just very excited about this, and it's the first academic goal that I've really been wanting to achieve.