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Last Wednesday, I attended the monthly Augustinian formation for all the personnel in our University. I came in late that afternoon because I was busy fixing some errands for the intramural last week. There were no classes the whole week, but there are lots of activities in the campus, so all personnel are all busy just the same. Plus, I was appointed as one of the coordinators for the Ginoo at Binibining Kalikasan (Mr. & Ms. Environment) that Thursday and happy of the result because our department’s male rep won the Ginoo and our female contestant won a special award (photos and stories will be posted later).

Anyways, the Wednesday event coincided with the Feast Day of St. Monica on 27 August. She is the mother of St. Augustine. St. Monica is the patron saint of wives and mothers. Since I am now currently teaching in a Catholic university being ran by Augustinian Sisters, attendance to the Augustinian formations is a must. This monthly assembly may sound boring, but I appreciated the talk about St. Monica and I know many mothers and wives could relate to her life story and will be inspired by her faith.

St. Monica is a wife to an adulterous pagan husband known for his temper and she had a difficult mother-in-law living with them. Hmmm, sounds very common even nowadays, right? St. Monica could have been a nagger and a bitter daughter-in-law, however, she refused to be but rather prayed hard for her husband and monster, este, mother-in-law. According to her life story, although his husband Patricius had a violent temper, he respected St. Monica because of her devoutness. Over time, because of her meekness, humility and incessant prayers, Patricius and her mother-in-law were converted to Christianity and the relationship of the couple developed into a warm, spiritual one.

St. Augustine was her first born, whom she learned was living an immoral life. She chose to stay close to her son and prayed and fasted for him for 17 years! Eventually, because of her persistence and not giving up on him, St. Augustine and some of his friends were baptized to Catholicism. Soon after St. Augustine converted, St. Monica become ill and she knew her life was near the end. She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.” St. Monica died that same year St. Augustine was baptized.

When I heard of her life story, I remembered my nanay. Nope, my father is not abusive, actually I never heard them fight and they never shouted at each other (or at least I never saw even one incident when I was growing up). I think, their relationship is perfect and I hope Albert and me can emulate that. But like St. Monica, my nanay was not liked much by my tatay’s sisters and my lolo because she never even finished her elementary while my tatay was already a math teacher when they eloped. Though my father said my lola was always good to her from the very start. Eventually, my aunts and lolo were able to accept my mom because she’s really good-natured and she never fought back against them.

Similarly, being a mother myself now, I could feel her hardships in raising us. I know it’s hard to raise 3 kids and surely, there were many problems along the way. Whenever we had family problems specially financial, I never saw my mother become bitter and I never heard her complain. Even in many difficult situations, she could even manage to smile and see the good in everything that’s happening.

Growing up, my problem was my nanay’s problem, too. And she always prayed for me and all my other 2 siblings, specially when we were all going through many difficult times. She may not always hear the Sunday mass regularly, but she often went to church to pray and had her novena. My nanay passed away in 2004, aged 53, but I know she’s fulfilled like St. Monica when she died.

I think all of us, not just mothers and wives, should be like St. Monica. Of course, we all are in different circumstances, but whatever is the status of our lives right now — whether we are in a difficult relationship, we have a wayward child, or any problem/difficult person bothering us — St. Monica showed us that non-stop faith will transform anyone to a better person and there’s no impossible endeavor to persistence and faith!

GOD BLESS EVERYONE!

Are you embattled right now? Having some crossroads? Life has lots of problems, yeah. But how we deal with them makes the difference. Does worrying makes our problem a little less? Of course not! Rather, we are putting more lines into our face - wrinkles! So how should we deal with our problems?

I just found the answer - be a COFFEE! Yes, you read it right, BE A COFFEE, not drink a coffee! How? Watch this nice presentation on motivation. I came across this very nice powerpoint while browsing for motivational slides that I could show to one of my classes. I am so glad I found this one and I just can’t help but share it will all of you, too.

Ooops, after you watched it, I hope you could tell this to yourself when some trouble comes your way:

I AM A COFFEE, THE HOTTER THE WATER, THE BETTER I WOULD BE!!!

I really love this song by the Eraserheads. This was really a hit during my college days, around 1989.  I tried to learn how to play the guitar by playing E-heads songs, but I am not really into playing instruments or even have a musical ear.  So to make the story short, I didn’t learn to play guitar! Also, Eraserheads was the only band I saw in concert in 1990.  The concert was held in the university where I am teaching now.  It’s a premonition I guess, that 18 years later, I will be a professor there.

Anyways, I really love this song because even if the melody is simple, the lyrics really made an impact to me back then (and until now - I still know the whole song by heart).  In particular, the first stanza continues to inspire me specially during hard times:

Lift your head, baby don’t be scared
Of the things that could go wrong along the way
You’ll get by with a smile
You can’t win at everything but you can try.

We go through different problems and sometimes it seems there’s no way out or everything just always go wrong that all doors have closed.  However, if we just face all our problems with a smile (even if it’s so hard to smile when we’re problematic, right?), we could face our problem on a different perspective.   If we just take a deep breath, try to smile and have an optimistic outlook, what seems to be a heavy problem, could be dealt lightly because we would be more focused on finding the possible solutions to our dilemmas.  Of course,  faith in God is also the number one armor - because God doesn’t give us problems we can’t handle.  If that’s the case, then that’s enough reason for us to smile despite adversities, right?

Going back to Eraserheads, I am glad that Ely Buendia survived his heart attack last year, and more glad that the E-heads will have a reunion concert this August 30 at the CCP open grounds.  All the original members will be there to perform all their other hit songs like Ang Huling El Bimbo, Toyang and Alapaap.

Ooops, before I end this let me remind you, start your day WITH A SMILE!!! For sure you will have a whole nice day!

The pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt together with their newborn twins are so adorable, aren’t they? The twins, named Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, are cute! Of course, all newborns are sooo cute, but I am always amazed and wondering where do these Hollywood celebrities get their kids’ names?

But aside from being a doting dad, Brad Pitt is apparently also an Olympic boxer to join the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics? I came across this article from Inquirer.net and got confused at first because I never knew that Brad Pitt is a boxer (although he portrayed a disgraced boxer in the upcoming movie ‘The Fighter’) and an Australian!

Ok, so this is a different Brad Pitt - not the Holywood star! Well, this guy from Melbourne is already getting the spotlight not just because of his Hollywood namesake, but also because he’s actually a good boxer. Even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Victoria Premier Steve Bracks visited him while training for his impressive 2006 Commonwealth Games debut.

Anyways, I find him charming, like the Brad Pitt we knew. For those wondering how this boxer Brad Pitt looks like, here’s his pic that I got from the official site of the 2008 Australian Olympic Team:

I hope you like my new theme! Still ‘orangey’ but, I think the whole theme is more neat compared to the other one, which I used for quite sometime already.  So I thought I need to have a fresh layout.  Hmm, I am still not feeling good about the 0 PR, well, maybe because I wasn’t posting much lately.  Since I am back to square one (or zero?), the best way to start is to have a new theme.

I hope you like this one! :D  I am still tweaking it a bit, so don’t be surprised if there would be some chaos.  I hope I could finish all the tweaks and setting up of plugins soon.  Meanwhile, I would like to leave you with some points to ponder about life and living it to the fullest: