Discipline

 A hard word that.  Discipline.  We are all creatures of habit.  We tend to stick to our daily rituals and routines including what we do when we wake up.  That includes the bathroom rituals, maybe cleaning the teeth, passing water or whatever else. That includes coffee or tea or a big breakfast.  For some that includes daily meditation or even a quick run around the park to quicken the muscles after a short period of hibernation o what you might call a well-earned rest.  

Writing however is a discipline I would like to break into but it has always been in the backburner. It has never really materialised although there have been spurts of creativity which I wish would be part of my daily rituals.  I have even revived a writing course that I have put aside and abandoned some years back.  I paid some $100 to be put back on the list.  I was going to submit assignments, read more, write more.  But sadly I didn't even touch the materials and the projects I was supposed to do.  That's just arrant laziness or procrastination, a protracted one.

Many sad stories abounded during the covid pandemic. Many people stayed home and avoided crowds.  Many lost their jobs.  Many just got stuck at home being challenged by the deafening silence after turning off the dreaded television which became boring after a while.  Mind you there were a few good shows, mini-series to watch even with a number of free trials like one month with Prime, three months with Binge.  But after a while I seeked out something else, wanting to do something more challenging in the area of graphic design, photo manipulation, video creation; getting expertise in some new skills.  

But really in the back burner is writing.  That's one thing I really want to put in front or at least put it at equal par with the other interests.  So this typing right now is an exercise maybe to jumpstart the process.  Let me see how far I will go with imposing some discipline with the use of some courage.  Somebody defined courage as doing the thing you don't want to do.  So maybe with this courage I can have discipline which then translates into routines which become rituals.

Moving along

When 300 words disappear because of touching the wrong key on the keyboard, I feel disappointed.  What a waste surely.  That was surely going to be a great blog post.  But not to worry now.  I have to be moving on because moping about it is not going to do anything positive.  All those thoughts and ideas are not really lost.  They're still there. The words are still there beckoning to be reincarnated into words and letters that grace the screen. They can still be conjured to life.  They're still somehow stored in the brain.  They might not come out exactly as before the meanings will still be there.

Having said that, I will let the lost words find refuge in the world of the dead for now and just move along a different direction until I'm ready to revisit them.  I remember a lady who had been typing along for an hour in the library of Canada Bay. She was disheartened to know that all her work is gone after the computer decided that her time was over and signed her out.  I suppose she didn't heed the warning to save her work.  Oh well she did save in a way viz. saving a Word document every now and then but the computer really meant to save it in an external device like a USB because when the computer signs you out, all your work in the temporary files are lost forever and no tech support gurus can bring them back to life.  She was complaining to the library staff but they couldn't help her.  I also explained to her that there was ample warning that the computer would be signed out.  The amount of minutes left for you would even be displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen,

So I had a similar lesson.  But I'm moving on along.  Time is precious.  Let us continue with the task of creation and not be bothered and stopped by a small mishap.  Life goes on. Move on along.

Making the bluetooth keyboard work in Messenger with Samsung Note 9

I mentioned before in the previous post that I have started using a bluetooth keyboard to use with my Note 9.  I also mentioned that this particular keyboard I'm using, a Logitech K480, seemed to be working for SMS messaging, Facebook posts, Viber and so on but not quite for FB Messenger.  I don't know how it would react with the other Messenger-like apps and I had no inclination to try out the others.  I thought there must be a way to make it work. 

The problem is when you try to type something in Messenger, you normally would touch the text box and it would open up the text box and the digital keypad and type your stuff in and press the paper airplane symbol to send up your entry.  Now for some reason when you do this in conjunction with your bluetooth keyboard, it accepts only one character and closes the text box and you would have to repeat the same process again.  So it would be okay to do that if you were only typing something like OK or NO, something short.  If you were going to type in an entire phrase or sentence, this would be time-consuming and annoying.

I have scoured the internet for possible solutions.  There were suggestions of clearing your data and cache for the Messenger app or uninstalling and reinstalling your app or contacting the Messenger developers or trying another Messenger-like app.  None of this appealed to me and I didn't try any of them.

What I did was just to play around with the app, using my keyboard & my phone which uses Android version 9.  I tried different function and control keys perfunctorily which took me to different undesired places.

But there was one thing that worked.  I pressed longer on the initial text box, not the one that pops up when you touch it, but the one before it.  So if you already had other previous messages to/from the other person/group, you would still be seeing those messages and the text box below.  I pressed longer on that text box until a symbol like a blue TEARDROP appeared.  When that happened I could then type normally as I would be in FB or SMS or any other text-entry app.  But I had to wait for the TEARDROP.  Mind you this is in Android 9.  I don't know if that is the same reaction for other Android versions but I would guess it would be similar.

So there... a simple solution born out of a little bit of patience.

Using a bluetooth keyboard for my smartphone

I seriously want to challenge my new Samsung Note 9 to be my writing machine on the run.  I had lost my Note 10 sometime back.  That one had a special keyboard I could use specially for writing.  But the Note 10 after a big drop decided to die.  Well not straight away.  The display went berserk and I couldn't even guess what was being displayed nor could I respond in any way. 

I had the option of perhaps buying a refurbished Note 10 which would cost me around $300.  For the same price I could also buy a small netPC which will be used for the main purpose of writing on the run.  So two options were there.  But there was another one since I bought the Note 9.  And that was to buy a bluetooth keyboard to connect to the Note 9.  So I bought one for $59 from JB Hifi.  The ticket price was $69 but I was charged $59 only.  Maybe there was a discount for the item that day.  I didn't even dare ask as the cheaper price was to my advantage.

I tried to connect to the keyboard.  I had problems initially with connecting but eventually after scanning devices from the Bluetooth settings, I was given the chance to connect by entering a series of numbers on the keyboard and voila I was connected.

I proceeded to test my comms apps.  Facebook worked.  I was able to post a longish entry in a FB page.   I was able to respond to comments etc.  Viber worked.  No problem there - quite straightforward.  Just click on the text box and type on the keyboard.  Messenger however failed dismally.  It seemed to accept one letter in the text box and then it closes the text box.  I could then not really type in the text box without repeating the process of opening the text box, entering one letter, then opening the text box again and entering the next letter and so on.  So no good.  I still have to figure out how to make this work.

My next step will be to find the best app I can use for writing.  Research is still under way.

Friendship

There are many types of friendship.  There are friendships that commenced from time immemorial, from childhood, which seem to persist despite the unremitting passage of time,  There's always that link although they would sometimes be tenuous that you'd wonder if any link exists at all.  I remember my friends in the tenements somewhere in Manila.  They were real childhood friends.  I was grafted into that little society when I wasn't even half a year old.  Many friendships were bonded there, forged in the playtime in the neighbourhood.  There were street games like patintero which is like a block and chase game which never was my favourite but it did pass the time.  There were card games using comic trading cards which we called Teks.  Maybe that word was derived from Text for the cards almost invariably had text bubbles in them.  Every now and then we'd play hunting using our slingshots to strike down little birds.  Somehow we had the damaged bird cut up and defeathered and roasted over some makeshift oven using paper, dried grass, and twigss for fuel.  We also needed some rice and we, little kids, would hang around the rice store and manage to steal a handful of rice which would then be boiled in a tin can.  Then the party begins although the bird itself for its size would never really be enough.  It was just some adventure shared among friends. 

As we hit the teenage years, I said goodbye to my friends, because we had to move to a place farther away.  Eventually my friends found themselves living in the USA or Canada.  Those friends are gone but not quite because there are ways to get in touch, mostly by email.  I would receive birthday greetings and I would send mine.  Some photos may be shared.  So there still is a link, tenuous though may be.

Then of course there's social media, a platform I have not yet employed to connect to the childhood friends.  I have actually for a considerable time ensconced myself in a bubble in FB, connecting only to my children and their children. The time perhaps has come to open up to this world of possibilities despite social media inanities.  As we grow old I suppose it is good to be like children again.  Didn't Jesus even say that being a child is our ticket to heaven (Mt 18:3)?

Driving with a Goat

I was 18 years old when I started to drive.  After a few days of learning to drive a jeep from  a driving school in Manila, and a quick practical test of parking (with the examiner standing from his office and looking out at the car park area), I managed to get my first driver's license.  I only still had my probationary license at the time, which looked just like a docket of no consequence but it gave me the privilege of  being able to drive the streets of Manila and even beyond.  On my 18th birthday, I did just that, driving beyond the outskirts of Manila. I drove with my family from Tandang Sora to small town in Bulacan called Bagombong if I remember right.  My parents'  godchildren Uding and Paniki lived there out near the rice fields.  We went there to obtain a goat to kill for my birthday.  Yes, caldereta would be nice.  The whole family was with me in the jeepney we bought.  Well, not quite the whole family because my brother Sammy didn't come for some reason now forgotten.  The jeepney looked like a common one with rainbow colours and plastic frills which swayed vigorously in the wind as you drove.  It seated probably 12 to 14 people.  It wasn't new by any means but it boasted of one thing - it had a Mercedes Benz engine and it consumed of course Diesoline.  I supposed that made it stand out albeit not it an obvious way.  My dad would always boast about it - "That's really a Mercedes you know."  So I was proud to drive it that day when I turned 18 and I was the one behind the steering wheel of a Mercedes Benz jeepney.  We got a goat of a good size and I could already see it cooked despite its helpless gaze behind those thick-lashed eyes that seemed to know its day of execution. We left Bagombong with the extra passenger.  We crossed the town of Novaliches on the way back to Tandang Sora.  Not too far away from Novaliches, I in my audacity and overconfidence overtook another vehicle in front of us.  Coming from the other direction there was another vehicle which I believe to be a jeep.  I quickly got back to the right lane but my front left tyres met with the other vehicle in a kind of  menacing kiss.  My quick move was not quick enough and our jeepney ended up swerving 90 degrees to the left.  Then I suddenly stopped - just in time.  A couple of inches more and we would have all fallen into a cliff about 20 feet deep and killing myself and my family and the unlucky goat.  There was a lady in the other vehicle who got a little bit hurt.  My parents spoke with their passengers to arrange things and make things right.  Driving is indeed a privilege and with that comes also a responsibility.  After this event I didn't drive again for a while.  I didn't even get to convert that temporary license to a proper license.  It wasn't until about 8 years later when we were already in Sydney that I got a proper license.  I made other mistakes driving after that but the episode with the goat is one that clings to my memory like superglue.  I'm so glad and thankful to God that I didn't end up ending the lives of my family.  Had that accident turned into a tragedy, only Sammy would have been the lone survivor at the age of 13.  God had other plans. Was a lesson learnt?  Yes.  Don't drive with a goat.

Not thinking about life

Here I am sitting in the Top Ryde food court, having gobbled a bowl of wonton noodles.  I am not even thinking about life.  I am just living it.  Even in the simplest pleasures or even displeasures, morsels of life can be found and experienced.  We sometimes think that we can only be happy during big special events.  Life is not a series of big special events but a continuous stream of experience.  In that stream there is always the invitation to an awareness of something greater, something we might miss out on altogether because our focus is always on the external.  The cleaners have taken away all evidence of my wonton noodles and the tray they were on.  On deeper reflection, that tray is still there, still hugging the gray and sombre table.  The memory still hangs there and commands its own version of reality.  And so with the many personalities that we have met in the past, those we have not seen for a long time.  They still linger although perhaps most of the time hiding behind screens of obscurity.  They too have been part of my life.  One time or another we have shared moments and in those moments were encounters with life itself.  I'm not thinking about life.  I am living it now.  It breathes and thrives in me.  Those encounters breathe and thrive but it is best to let the deathbringers die.  They corrupt the soul, invade the spirit, punish the body, redefine what you'd know as you.  The best way to live life is with someone else.  We are meant to give of ourselves.  It is the only way.  Holding back means holding back yourself and brings you closer to death.  The taste of the wonton noodles still imposes itself on my taste buds, undaunted by the washing down of a can of the dreaded Coke.  I guess I am still living the experience of the wonton noodles, gone might they be, all external traces obliterated.  So the memories persist, the good ones better do.  They have their part in defining me and destiny. I have memories of my long-lost sister.  Where she is I do not know.  Just the other night a vision of her came to me.  She was staring at me giving me the impression that we will soon meet.  After many years, it can still be possible.  Hope remains as the living breath continues to serve its purpose.  This morning the rains came and then abated.  I went for a walk with my two 3.5 kg weights down towards the Parra River.  Then the rains came again, gently patting my hoodie as I swayed the wet weights. Memories go and they come back gently patting your skull as you sway through life.  They remind you that they are around.  They have not been completlely obliterated.  They have not been taken away by the cleaners.  They breathe, they live.  Life is not just sound and fury.  Life is....

Another Saturday Morning

It seems to be another Saturday morning.  But I don't hear any of the kookaburras singing their signature songs.  The railtracks have been quiet although the coal trains probably roared throught the night unheeded by my sleepy ears.  In the summer heat, the whirring of the electric fan becomes a tolerable noise in exchange for a cool electric breeze generated by the dusty blades.  A bald man on the street carries a sack in royal blue but my curiosity remains feeble as my fingers prefer to poke at the keyboard albeit at a snail's pace.  I wait till the henna-amla on my head has done its quiet process of tinting my hair to a reasonable dark hue to make me pass for a younger person as the natural grey can shock the senses, not much mine but everybody else's:  it pronounces age without equivocation and even less hesitation.  Anyway as long as somebody tells me that I should be doing this, I can only surmise that I would keep the henna-amla routine part of the monthly ritual.

My kids'  recent fascination with dogs have brought distant memories of the pets we have kept in the family when I was younger.  I remember as a kid myself when were living in the tenements, we had a cat which my Dad lovingly called Dolores.  Now that's a mouthful to call a pet with such name - three syllables.  I have this belief that pet names should ideally have 1 syllable only, two at the most but three is too much.  Dolores was a real house cat.  She trained herself how to go to the bathroom and relieve herself.  The drain in the shower only had a hole with no cover.  Dolores would position herself  on top of the hole.  I thought this was clever that I used to pee in there myself instead of using the toilet bowl.  I thought that it was a way to conserve water.

We had various dogs when we lived in Novaliches.  We had a small short-legged dog whose name I cannot now recall.  She was some half-breed of some sort.  Anyway she was too pretty one day she was just gone dognapped by some evil neighbours.  Some friends from down the valley gave us a runt who we named Mimi.  She was the sweetest dog I have ever known.  From the little runt that she was, she grew to be a normal-sized mongrel although with a pointy muzzle and that eternal cute-puppy gaze.  She had a few litter over the years, most of them were given away to neighbours and friends.  The only one I remember of her brood was a male dog we called Ali short for Aligabok (dust) because his hide was dusty grey.  He was a wild one so he was always tied.  He was a good guard dog and one of the terrorist dogs in the neighbourhood.  I remember seeing him humping his mother one day so he also had some incestuous puppies out of that encounter.  One night Mimi came looking real sick, vomiting and all that.  She was probably poisoned.  We tried to save her by giving her milk and encouraged her to vomit some more.  But alas she died.  She was buried in the front lawn.

We also had a crazy dog called Purog if my memory serves me well.  He was crazy 'cause he liked biting.  He would bite me from time to time although not seriously.  One day he killed the neighbour's turkey.  We had to do what the unwritten rule expected.  We killed him and cooked him, sharing sumptuous meal with the disgruntled neighbours and with a few friends over some Tanduay rum or jungle juice.

This is just another Saturday but it is a Saturday to remember some of the good things we have shared with animal companions.  Sometimes they can be better friends than the human kind.  I wish I could have a pet but the current living conditions will not permit the luxury.  So I will just enjoy my kids'  pets whenever I get the chance to see them again, perhaps one Saturday.

Being Sixteen

I don't have much recollection of when I was sixteen.  It seems too far away in the past with most of the confused memories ensconced in the deep recesses of the mind. Maybe there wasn't much in it.   I was still in high school despising my uppity school mates.  They even had a mock fraternity which they called Alpha Seiko S:a:r:a:o.  Alpha - because that sounded like how fraternities are named ie with Greek alphabet names.  Seiko - because everybody wore a Seiko watch of some sort.  S:a:r:a:o - because they all hanged out in or near the jeepney parked in the school grounds.  Much as I like the Greek sounding beginning of the name, I didn't wear a Seiko watch nor was I ever inclined to ask my parents to buy me one.  I wore a Rolyot watch made in the USSR.  I was probably the only one in the Philippines or probably in the Southern hemisphere wearing a stupid sounding watch like that.  When I showed it to some of my school mates I said it was like Russian Rolex.  They had to strain their eyes as I pointed to the Russian words on the face of the watch.  At that time I could even read Russian.  Not that I understood much of it, but I mastered the Cyrillic alphabet and I would even write some notes using Russian letters.  I was proud of it.  Well my schoolmates were not impressed with my watch; you needed to have a Seiko watch to get some acceptance.  I didn't join their group and I never had any inclination to.  I also didn't like the sound of some initiation rites they would want one to do to be able to join their clique.  Something like doing something embarrassing or suffering a modicum of pain cum humiliation.  So at sixteen, I was probably like the new butterfly trying to squeeze out of the cocoon.  There was struggle and there was some pain.

When my granddaughter turned sixteen, I saw it as a big milestone for her.  Last Saturday, a big party was held to honour her arriving at this important age.  There were many people there who I have  not seen in years.  It was good to talk about some mundane things not going much beyond the general radar of how-are-yous.  With some of the guests, it didn't even go beyond the feeble handshake.  But it was all good to know such and such still lives; we don't really care how you're doing but it's good to know you're still in Planet Earth and somehow there is still a connection between us no matter how tenuous it might be.  Yes, we all serve a purpose hopefully and it's wow that somehow our lives have been in some kind of tangent.  You never know what circumstances will bring us together again.

Seeing my granddaughter turn sixteen, I realised that I had never really imagined to see a day like that and that carried a bit of surrealism with it.  I am thankful for the many years God had permitted me to be in the flesh and living a life here on earth.  I guess she felt that the whole world is out there for her, with grand opportunities, with many permutations of possibilities for directing her life and bring her focus onto.  I was hoping she wasn't as confused as I was when I was at that tender yet mature age with the perennial question on my frowning face:  Que seré?  What will I be?  Whatever it is, "Try to have fun. Otherwise, what's the point?" (Colonel Stars and Stripes, Kick Ass 2).  I was hoping that there wouldn't be an Alpha Seiko S:a:r:a:o or similar crap that would pretend to give colour and meaning to an otherwise bland high school or college existence.  I was hoping that she would find true friends that would help her along the way and that she would do likewise to them for that is what really brings true purpose to our lives, helping one another, building a better world, and realising that beyond this world we know, touch, hear and feel, is a world that's not only better but purer, billions and billions of times more beautiful, a world of untold and unknown perfection. 

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.

Don't think of a pink elephant

It is impossible not to think of a pink elephant once somebody tells you not to think of a pink elephant.  You might even tell it to yourself.  But the thought persists no matter how hard you try. It will only go away when you stop trying. 

It is pretty much the same as with negative thoughts that come our way.   It is not easy to get rid of them.  The first thing you have to do is to embrace the thought and let it gently go away or replace it with another thought. 

The human mind is mysterious.  That is another way of saying that there are many things about it that we cannot explain.  But the mind affects the whole being.  A healthy mind will result in a healthy body.  Postive thoughts promote healing.  Negative thoughts wreak havoc and mayhem. Blessings are positive energy transmitted to another person or other persons.  Curses are negative energy transmitted likewise.  The energy you spend out comes back to you multiplied.  So the positive energy in blessings also come back to you as blessings multiplied.  The negative energy in curses also come back to you as curses multiplied.

Anger, resentment, hatred are all negative energy.  The more you spend them, all the more you are spent.  Love, forgiveness, caring however are all positive energy.  Spending them is always an investment that gives positive returns.

I have always believed that we have been made to experience life on earth so that we can help one another, so that we can all experience life positively, and along the way being happy and healthy and wealthy.  Wherever there is a lack in happiness, health, or wealth and we are blessed with resources to help others, then it is our mission to share that blessing. We do not exist for ourselves but for others.  We make others better persons and in the process we make ourselves better persons and there will also be people who will inspire, coach and help us to be better than we are. 

For life is a process, a journey.  Life is not the destination.  Life is about opportunities to bless and to be blessed.  Be a blessing.  Once you stop being a blessing, your life has been put on a pause or worst it has commenced to die and putrefy.  Come into the light and join the party.