You Want A Peace Of You?
In my Jan. 06 episode entitled “Call Me Placido” (click here to review), I received the following comment:
Mugen said...
Hope to follow your footsteps McVie, I'm one of those having troubles living a single life.
* * * * *
Dear Mugen,
I wouldn’t wish anyone to follow my footsteps, for your path is for you to tread and my path, mine. But maybe the following can be of help to you and all those having trouble living a single life.
Paradoxically it’s easiest and hardest at the start. Easiest because that’s when you’re at your gung-ho best, surest of your decision and still most optimistic that living a single life is the right thing for you at that point in time. Hardest because you’re at your most clueless, helpless and, when loneliness hits, it hits at its sharpest.
But think of it this way.
Reduced to its simplest form, a lover is someone who basically a time-filler, someone whom you’ll devote your time, effort and undivided attention to the detriment of other things or people who may also compete for your time. He is someone who will take up several hours away from the 24 that you have every day.
That your lover is an important and significant time-filler is undeniable. Therefore, one must find a worthy replacement to this important, significant time-filler.
Family is the first and most obvious group of people who come to mind. Friends are also a group deserving of your time and effort. Depending on your capacity for altruism, you can go beyond the people you personally know and embrace strangers. Devoting your time and talents to people in need can be a worthy endeavor.
Or why limit yourself to people? How about pandas, tarsiers and other species in danger of extinction? Or stray, abandoned dogs and cats? You can even focus your attention to causes; instead of things, you can embrace grand themes.
Cultivating your relationships with family, friends and falcons can be rewarding. But I think the most important person in this state of singleness is someone we most often forget to be best friends with: ourselves.
I believe that if we are best friends with ourselves, then the question “Who’s worthy enough to fill up my time?” will always have a ready answer. It’s not selfishness; it’s self-preservation at first and eventually, self-love.
(Insert the George Benton original or the Whitney Houston cover here.)
As time goes by, bouts of loneliness will sting less, linger less and occur less frequently. Plus you will learn how to cope better, find ways of distracting yourself.
And you will learn to be at peace with yourself.
In the end, I think that’s one of the best gifts one can give to others and to oneself: “Peace be with you… and me.”
(Now if you will ask me if I have achieved peace with myself, my honest answer is: far from it. But every day is a gift and an opportunity to work on me.)
Friday, January 09, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Cruisin’ In Loboc
This video was taken during our evening cruise down Loboc River. One can also dine in one of the floating restaurants and take a river cruise during the day, but at night the weather is cooler and the ambiance more relaxing.
We had dinner first, then took the cruise, and capped the night off by watching a performance of the Loboc Youth Ambassadors Brass Band. The video of the brass band will follow soon.
Call Me Placido
Even though I’ve stopped making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago, I’ve decided to teach myself to “go placidly amid the noise and the haste” of relationships this year.
If I’m rejected, busted or unrequited (yet again), I will not let it affect me too much. But with matters of the heart, one can never tell; if it cannot be avoided, then I will not let wallow for longer than a week. It took God seven days to create the world and rest; why not match Him in making my world placid once again?
As far as possible, without surrender, I will be on good terms with all persons. But I will avoid those people who rejected, busted or kept my feelings unrequited; they are vexations to my spirit. So even if they are the ones who’ll reach out to me in friendship, I will be friendly to them but will not be friends with them, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than them.
I am a child of the universe; therefore, I might as well send my love to the universe instead of tiny individuals who do not deserve my time, attention and obsession.
And I will be placid even if I remain single while every one else around me is coupling or breaking up. I will be gentle with myself, with the ones positively lost in the giddy early days of romance, and with those who are going through excruciating heartbreak. Whether it is clear to me or not why I remain single, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
With all the breaking up, infidelity and broken dreams, being single is beautiful. So I will be cheerful. And I will strive to be happy.
(with much apologies to Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata”)
If I’m rejected, busted or unrequited (yet again), I will not let it affect me too much. But with matters of the heart, one can never tell; if it cannot be avoided, then I will not let wallow for longer than a week. It took God seven days to create the world and rest; why not match Him in making my world placid once again?
As far as possible, without surrender, I will be on good terms with all persons. But I will avoid those people who rejected, busted or kept my feelings unrequited; they are vexations to my spirit. So even if they are the ones who’ll reach out to me in friendship, I will be friendly to them but will not be friends with them, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than them.
I am a child of the universe; therefore, I might as well send my love to the universe instead of tiny individuals who do not deserve my time, attention and obsession.
And I will be placid even if I remain single while every one else around me is coupling or breaking up. I will be gentle with myself, with the ones positively lost in the giddy early days of romance, and with those who are going through excruciating heartbreak. Whether it is clear to me or not why I remain single, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
With all the breaking up, infidelity and broken dreams, being single is beautiful. So I will be cheerful. And I will strive to be happy.
(with much apologies to Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata”)
Monday, January 05, 2009
Pink Bohol, Part Two
Panglao Island is connected to the mainland by two land bridges. The whole island is a beach lover’s paradise, with resorts one after the other on all sides. Bohol Beach Club may have the best-looking beach front, but for me the more famous strip of beach is Alona Beach.
Mini-trivia: yes, it was named after Alona Alegre, a Filipina actress who shot a movie with Fernando Poe, Jr. on that particular beach back in the 60s. This strip is also the most happening place on Panglao Island, with rows and rows of resorts, restos and recreational pubs. Because here is where you’ll find most of the foreigners who visit Bohol to enjoy the beaches and go diving or snorkeling.
I was able to see the nightlife along Alona Beach for the first time ever on this trip. At around dinnertime most of the establishments place chairs and tables along the beachfront, and they display lots of fresh seafood for you to choose and have their kitchen cook it in any way you like. By around 8-9pm, the same establishments morph into bars, and the music shifts from an easy tempo to a more driving beat (here, rock and roll is still king). There is a bar with a disco ball and lots of blinking lights, but they also have a game area, and the crowd that particular night (Tuesday) was quite straight.
I sadly realized: there’s no decidedly, purposefully gay-friendly bar here!
So I brainstormed with Onai and his friends to come up with the very first ever gay-friendly bar along Alona Beach: the Pink Tarsier!
The music will be all-dance, with some trance house on slow days and techno-house on weekends. All the bartenders will be cross-dressers, and the waiters will have to be good-looking hunks. Every top-of-the-hour, the cross-dressers will stop bartending and break into a lip-synch number.
We’ll have cocktails named Kahlua Hills, Bakla Yon Church (with a mix of mompo), Peanutty Kisses, and of course the house specialty Pink Tarsier, a concoction so powerful, one shot and you’ll be clinging on to the nearest person available. All cocktail drinks come with a cute, cuddly pink tarsier stuffed toy hanging on to the straw—no tiny umbrellas allowed.
All the employees will wear Pink Tarsier t-shirts, with different themes per night. On Madonna night, the t-shirts will have Madonna song titles: Express Yourself, Papa Don’t Preach, Material Girl, Give It 2 Me. On Abba nights, it’ll be Abba song titles: Mamma Mia!, Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight, Take A Chance On Me, Knowing Me Knowing You, Does Your Mother Know, Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All—and so forth and so on.
There will even be a massage parlor (with extra service) on the side. It can provide extra income to the waiters during off-peak seasons.
It’ll be the liveliest, most colorful bar in the whole of Panglao! (That is, unless the Archdiocese of Tagbilaran and the conservatives of Bohol gang up on us and close us down!)
P.S. – I told you, my being here with the family has made me quite wholesome, hehehe.
Mini-trivia: yes, it was named after Alona Alegre, a Filipina actress who shot a movie with Fernando Poe, Jr. on that particular beach back in the 60s. This strip is also the most happening place on Panglao Island, with rows and rows of resorts, restos and recreational pubs. Because here is where you’ll find most of the foreigners who visit Bohol to enjoy the beaches and go diving or snorkeling.
I was able to see the nightlife along Alona Beach for the first time ever on this trip. At around dinnertime most of the establishments place chairs and tables along the beachfront, and they display lots of fresh seafood for you to choose and have their kitchen cook it in any way you like. By around 8-9pm, the same establishments morph into bars, and the music shifts from an easy tempo to a more driving beat (here, rock and roll is still king). There is a bar with a disco ball and lots of blinking lights, but they also have a game area, and the crowd that particular night (Tuesday) was quite straight. I sadly realized: there’s no decidedly, purposefully gay-friendly bar here!
So I brainstormed with Onai and his friends to come up with the very first ever gay-friendly bar along Alona Beach: the Pink Tarsier!
The music will be all-dance, with some trance house on slow days and techno-house on weekends. All the bartenders will be cross-dressers, and the waiters will have to be good-looking hunks. Every top-of-the-hour, the cross-dressers will stop bartending and break into a lip-synch number.
We’ll have cocktails named Kahlua Hills, Bakla Yon Church (with a mix of mompo), Peanutty Kisses, and of course the house specialty Pink Tarsier, a concoction so powerful, one shot and you’ll be clinging on to the nearest person available. All cocktail drinks come with a cute, cuddly pink tarsier stuffed toy hanging on to the straw—no tiny umbrellas allowed.
All the employees will wear Pink Tarsier t-shirts, with different themes per night. On Madonna night, the t-shirts will have Madonna song titles: Express Yourself, Papa Don’t Preach, Material Girl, Give It 2 Me. On Abba nights, it’ll be Abba song titles: Mamma Mia!, Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight, Take A Chance On Me, Knowing Me Knowing You, Does Your Mother Know, Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All—and so forth and so on.
There will even be a massage parlor (with extra service) on the side. It can provide extra income to the waiters during off-peak seasons.
It’ll be the liveliest, most colorful bar in the whole of Panglao! (That is, unless the Archdiocese of Tagbilaran and the conservatives of Bohol gang up on us and close us down!)
P.S. – I told you, my being here with the family has made me quite wholesome, hehehe.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Phat’s Entertainment
My aunt has the phat-est Christmas toys this side of, err, Bohol. Her sisters in the States gave her the toys you’ll see below. I never knew I had relatives who were gangsta.
Word up, yo!
Santa Ho-Hoes
Gangsta Penguin
Santa Out-Of-The-Box (This one isn’t hip-hop or gangsta. I just included it just because.)
Word up, yo!
Santa Ho-Hoes
Gangsta Penguin
Santa Out-Of-The-Box (This one isn’t hip-hop or gangsta. I just included it just because.)
Pink Bohol, Part One
“The boys are on vacation right now, so the action is in the barrios.”
Onai’s friend told me this. He was a statuesque dude-looks-like-a-lady’s man, whose deep timbre voice was the dead giveaway.
I knew I was going to be in Bohol for a total of 17 days, but it never occurred to me that I’d be spending 2 weeks and 3 days without having sex with someone. Even in the self-help department, I’ve dramatically cut down on beating myself up. Not that I was consciously abstaining; for some strange reason, my being with the family has cut down my libido in some way. Call it the Wholesomeness Gene.
So when I hooked up with Onai and his friends a couple of days before the New Year, I was curious where they get their action here in the island. After all, they grew up in Bohol. I’ve been here more than ten times already, and only once did I have an encounter. I was eager to learn more.
Apparently, the boys who would sometimes play with the members of the other team are mostly students (especially from the maritime school) and the drivers of the habal-habal (those big provincial tricycles). The best time to be a “fisher of men” is when the boys are in their classes. Since they’re on vacation in their barrios, they could be found playing basketball in the town plaza. Or you could take a late night ride on a habal-habal, instruct the driver to proceed to some quiet road, and there the passenger gets to ride the driver.
But here’s the rub: what sells here in the provinces are the girlie boys. Straight-acting or even straight-looking gays rarely get noticed. Which for me makes sense: a girlie boy approximates a female, and having sex with one is a less threatening thought for a mind of a provincial nature.
However, there is a time-honored tradition to hooking the guys, and it involves a lot of alcohol and a fellow girlie boy. First, invite the boys (especially if they’ve just finished playing a sweaty game of hoops) to a drinking session—you pick the tab, or offer at least several rounds. Next, make sure that a fellow girlie boy who knows these boys are with you—he serves as the mamma-san who can advise you who among the boys will take the bait and who to avoid. Going there alone is not advisable if you don’t know the boys; they could just take you for a ride and drain you of your resources without draining you of your, eherm, you know.
After hearing all that, I thought: “Ay, haggardness!”
There must be a better way to boost the gay scene here in the land of Chocolate Hills and tarsiers.
(to be continued)
Onai’s friend told me this. He was a statuesque dude-looks-like-a-lady’s man, whose deep timbre voice was the dead giveaway.
I knew I was going to be in Bohol for a total of 17 days, but it never occurred to me that I’d be spending 2 weeks and 3 days without having sex with someone. Even in the self-help department, I’ve dramatically cut down on beating myself up. Not that I was consciously abstaining; for some strange reason, my being with the family has cut down my libido in some way. Call it the Wholesomeness Gene.
So when I hooked up with Onai and his friends a couple of days before the New Year, I was curious where they get their action here in the island. After all, they grew up in Bohol. I’ve been here more than ten times already, and only once did I have an encounter. I was eager to learn more.
Apparently, the boys who would sometimes play with the members of the other team are mostly students (especially from the maritime school) and the drivers of the habal-habal (those big provincial tricycles). The best time to be a “fisher of men” is when the boys are in their classes. Since they’re on vacation in their barrios, they could be found playing basketball in the town plaza. Or you could take a late night ride on a habal-habal, instruct the driver to proceed to some quiet road, and there the passenger gets to ride the driver.But here’s the rub: what sells here in the provinces are the girlie boys. Straight-acting or even straight-looking gays rarely get noticed. Which for me makes sense: a girlie boy approximates a female, and having sex with one is a less threatening thought for a mind of a provincial nature.
However, there is a time-honored tradition to hooking the guys, and it involves a lot of alcohol and a fellow girlie boy. First, invite the boys (especially if they’ve just finished playing a sweaty game of hoops) to a drinking session—you pick the tab, or offer at least several rounds. Next, make sure that a fellow girlie boy who knows these boys are with you—he serves as the mamma-san who can advise you who among the boys will take the bait and who to avoid. Going there alone is not advisable if you don’t know the boys; they could just take you for a ride and drain you of your resources without draining you of your, eherm, you know.
After hearing all that, I thought: “Ay, haggardness!”
There must be a better way to boost the gay scene here in the land of Chocolate Hills and tarsiers.
(to be continued)
Friday, January 02, 2009
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