A FULL LIFE

aRGHH!!! At last the culminating event for my seminar has come to pass...here's a picture of the last series of lectures that I gave at the Chapel...I miss my blog...my work has kept me away from my musings for quite a long time due to the many things that I needed to attend to...I was tempted to write a quikie blog but I rather chose not to...cause its been quite a awhile since I have written a longer story...about my experiences on our life...anyway here it goes ....

When could one say and lay claim that that one had lived a full life?…I haven’t really given this much of a thought on that until my dad’s birthday last January 7, 2007….He was born in January 7, 1927…so he’s 80 years old now…I could not even see or imagine myself to be still alive at that age…the way I see it my dad has lived a full life or has completed a full circle in terms of living in this world he has had three wives including the present one…had 7 boys with the first one (that’s with my mom) til my mom passed away in 1982…1 boy with the second wife who left him too in 1986 and the latest son last 2002…me and my siblings are all boys…yup…all boys.and as usual of me I always tell my dad to take it easy cuz he is already old and somehow….My dad’s a resilient hard headed guy…I just told him not to leave the house all by himself because he’s already that old…but no way…this guy just wants to go out and visit friends at that age as if most of his friend are long dead and gone..I admire his perennial visits to my mom’s grave at least twice a month..She must have been the love of his life and In my mind those 2 or 3 hours spent in the cemetery make me think that he must have a morbid death wish of some sort longing for the day that they would both lay side by side in our cemetery plot of our family...how sweet of him to see it that way…but I could see that his body is slowly giving away and he spends a lot of his time sleeping 80% of the day…he has diabetes and a heart condition but this adventurous soul of 80 years doesn’t just want to lie down… last night we talked and nonchalantly he told me how over 60 years ago he has place his marbles and cast his luck on a plane trip to the Philippines from Hong Kong…My father is a mainland born Chinese who grew in the outskirts of Guang Dong (or Canton, China as that was spelled a few years back)…he has three brothers and two sisters and a half sister from my grand parents…My granddad or my father’s dad died in the early part of the Japanese Invasion of China…my dad said that he was killed by the Japanese and they have no clue as to where he was buried or exactly where he died..the world turn upside down then when war in its path of confusion and chaos..my dad would always say that we love war movies so much as children but we never experience the horrors of one.…that was around 1937 – 1941…my father’s family were refugees from China during the war…they cross over to the British colony of Hong Kong in 1945…together they all fled from China with the surviving sons and daughters with Grand Mother to Hong Kong to start a new life there…my dad found a job in an enamelware factory during his early 20’s…He was offered a new job opportunity to come to the Philippines and be a part of a pioneering technician’s team of people wanting to establish a new enamelware factory in Manila…In a group of 6 expatriates they flew by DC-3 to Manila to start a new life here in 1947…what prompted my dad to leave the place where he grew up to seek adventure in a foreign land still boggles my mind up to this day…each time I ask him he would just say that it was just his decision to leave during that time with no particular reason…maybe it was for the adventure or plain wanderlust…In his new environment he couldn’t speak the language in Manila and he had to learn Tagalog…He took up Photography as a hobby and really studied hard to the point of making a Dark room to process film and taking still landscape photographs and developing his own films…but I guess it was just his way to meet people here as a photographer..he must have been using his camera as props to pick up girls then...while his real job as a supervisor in a factory .takes up most of his time…and in those days …it was the 50’s baby boomer times…To earn a living as a technical consultant in enamelware making these were those tin cans and plates of the 50s technology…he was teaching the local work force on the techniques of enamelware making…I could also remember that He even has vintage box type cameras of that sort in his collection of cameras…it was in the early 1950’s that my dad met my mom…my mom was a sales clerk at a store when they met and fell in love…my mom is the youngest in the brood of 9 siblings and she is the favorite because of being the youngest…she is a young barrio girl from the province working in the city…she must have been that special because my mom decided to elope with my dad…and during those times it was a real difficult time for them because of the unpopularity of inter racial marriages…my mom went to live with my dad against the wishes of her family…anyway my mom and dad lived together since 1951 and got married only 1971 after bearing all my dad’s children…my mom truly loved my dad…even in his philandering ways…but that‘s another story .…so as soon as they got together…my dad helped all my mom’s relatives to get a job at the enamelware factory at the instance of my dad’s influence and job…I guess this whole thing turned the tables on my mom’s relatives who were not in favor of my mom and dad’s getting together…but this feeling were all gone as more relatives of my mom began working in the factory…those were the early days of the post-war era industrial boom… and they all lived in a house rented by my father in San Juan, Rizal which is near the factory….so those were the early years…the eldest was born in 1953…a brother in 1955…another one in 1957…and me in 1959…another brother in 1961…and the last brother with my mom in 1965 actually I had another brother in 1967…but he was a blue baby and died during childbirth…so I think my dad’s a real prolific producer of boys …all those years seem to have went well…except for early 1964 when the enamelware factory had to close down due to financial difficulties….as the factory doors were closing there were other doors that were opening…but the catch was a new factory was to be set up in Cebu, somewhere in the Central Philippines…this is were destiny has brought our family… these were the start of the real trying times…my parents were in their early 30s with a family to feed…just when the factory breathe its last gasp…our family was divided into two groups…my dad with our two eldest brothers were the first to fly to Cebu…the rest of us 4 younger brothers followed suit…I could still clearly recall the night we left Manila for Cebu on board a turbo prop plane…we had dried salted fish and rice for dinner…because money was getting scarce…I guess…on the way to the airport my older brother and me were quite excited in riding a plane for the first time…as we boarded our flight and were seated with the rest of the passengers…I announced loudly on the plane within earshot of all the adults that if the plane will fall down from the sky it will be quite a very high fall from the sky…I can just imagine that some passengers were having difficulty in gulping down their own saliva’s after that..ha ha ha as children I can remember smiling as I muttered those words while my mom told us to shut up… as the plane took off I know that it was nightfall already cause all I could see were many small lights getting smaller and smaller…then we were up in the sky… our youngest brother was still nursing with my mom’s breast milk…without any care us children started playing in our seats…I kept on pressing buttons those that were on the side and those that were up there…I was able to get the seats to recline with a button and I was delighted at the results and told my brother to follow suit…which he did…I gazed out the windows and saw the plane’s wings and retorted to my mom…Hey mom what if the wings fall off can we still fly?…shut up…you scaring everybody out of their seats…I kept on exploring the buttons on the sides…one such buttons would make a light go on and off straight up from the ceiling of our seats…then a smiling stewardess went near us and said you guys could use a candy or bubble gum??? I said I want my candy…my other brother said I want a bubble gum…then the stewardess said okey…as long as you stop pressing this yellow buttons…..okey…we said so she gave us the goodies but as soon as they were in our mouths…we started at the buttons again…okey…we lied…but who cares…playing is better than thinking whether the plane might crash…or so we believe…mom …are we there yet…mom would say shut up and stay in your seats…then the second to the youngest brother made his scene…he was in tears…my mom ask him why???he said he couldn’t stop from peeing in his pants…and he’s sorry…mom said…its okey darling…we’ll change your pants…stop crying and …mom gave me a stern look in the face…and I said I Know mom “Shut up”…. We were really a pain in my mom’s ass…but we got out of that first plane experience…intact and in Cebu…My dad was in the airport to pick us all up…that was fun…it was a new experience for us and Cebu in 1965 was a city that had just started its long climb to urbanhood…All I can remember was that the streets were dark and that there were very few lights and the roads were deserted…I can’t recall whether we had bags or packages . I couldn’t remember but for sure we had those things with us…just couldn’t remember them at all…anymore…I can remember though that we all had a chocolate drink before we slept and spent our first night in our new home inside the factory…all those childhood memories of Manila were coming back to me the next day because for the first time I was in a new neighborhood I’m starting to miss my friends from our old place ..I even can remember this girl that I used to play with…and we were even being tease then…though I can’t remember the face anymore…but we were in a new place now and the start of a new life and adventure…to be continued