IN MY LIFE

[Refurbished edition from December 4, 2012 at 8:40pm]

“There are places I remember

All my life, though some have changed

Some forever not for better

Some have gone and some remain…”

I timidly smiled when these lyrics from a cell phone nearby played within my hearing range. For some of those words brought joy, and some gave pain.

I was then sitting early this morning like Forrest Gump on a bench at the bus stop beside Miagao Catholic Church while waiting for the bus bound for Antique. But unlike Mr. Gump, I never had the courage, talent and skill to talk to a total alien about shrimps, war and friendship, much less my own love story.

Several people sat with me on the bench, some were mere bystanders but most of them were fellow commuters. I tried to start some talk with an honest sneer but when I only got a curt reply, I took it they wouldn’t talk to strangers.

As I glanced to all passersby I felt like a virtual unknown in my spot, though I managed to smirk to some familiar faces who also smirked back.

Many years ago, in that same spot but without a bench yet, I felt like a superstar which would shine for all eternity. The same with what was felt by everyone else, since everybody knew everybody, at any given time of any day. You only greet people with a nod, wink and comedic distortion of lips, or your body. Or making cute faces if and when their names temporarily escaped your memory.

As I looked back, also literally, at the church behind me, I couldn’t help but remember the times we, as young children then, raced against each other to reach the top of the bell tower. Every time there were weddings or a funeral, we'd run, unmindful of possible slip, especially the bold and brave among us, those who were a total stranger, or clueless, to the word danger.

And more danger posed when curiosity started to reign over, that was when we reached high school a few more years later. For while others below rubbed their knees on the floor we were up there burning weeds like a normal experimenting teener.

It was also up there when, as we threw our panoramic gaze around as innocent kids in band, we first suspected there were other life forms outside Miagao and possibly more beyond.

We had only dreamed then of life's chocolates in boxes and everything sweet. Now I’ve proven Forrest Gump was right: we'd never know what we're gonna get.

ANOTHER FEATHER IN HER CAP

(A blast from the past:  posted on December 1, 2011 at 2:45pm)

I’m basking in glory upon learning this week of recent milestone of our beloved princess in the family.  Despite insurmountable odds stacked against her, still, she managed to hurdle them successfully.

And I’m unequivocally vocal about a daily tight schedule, no, tighter, of daunting tasks of a struggling ordinary blue collar worker.  Which collar actually turns brown or black at the end of the day, depending on the type of task assigned to him first hour of sunray.

I’m so happy for the princess,  yesterday I dreamed about giving her eternal financial succor all by myself, but it turns out that until today I end up instead at the receiving end of such planned perpetual help.

Santisima!

But that’s life.  And most of the time, life is what we make it.  A dream would be proved useless if we just plan and won’t build it. But there are some of us who just hope that life would be like a drum of chocolates or a jar of cookies. That though they may never know what they’re gonna get, they’d expect whatever would be picked, like a rose by any other name, it’d still be smelled as sweet.

Human experience has taught us that nothing in the world beats hardwork when it comes to success.  After we did our part and not leaving everything to chance, we’d learn to accept things later regardless of what dreams may come.

How do I fare compared to thee, Oh Princess? Let me count the ways.

You’ve gone places, while I remain misplaced.  You reach success still a sacred feminine, while I still remain a scared masculine.

In filling out personal data sheet now, you’d be writing thereon an entry “M.A.,” while I would still matter-of-factly scribble in mine the tediously pathetic “N/A.”

(Congratulations, Ne…)

TRUTH AND FICTION (“NOT ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD”)

[Originally posted on November 8, 2011 at 2:04pm]

                              

‘Twas a very tight gridlock last Friday night. I’s inside the bus on my way home. I saw vehicles of all forms and sizes from both directions pushing and shoving each other, each one raring to gain an inch in every opportunity at the expense of another. The heat was inexplicable. I guessed the aircon was full blast yet the coldness caused by that machine was no match for the collective warm bodies of the earthlings, each one eager to reach home early thus unmindful of the bus’s standing-room-only.

I was profusely perspiring at the time, hoping against hope I might catch in time my uncle’s dinner treat at the sea foods resto 300 meters away from my domicile.

I was fuming mad.  Irritated and impatient about the bus’ minimal speed. I refrained myself from urging to pull out the driver from his seat and drive the shuttle myself. Good thing as if on cue, he suddenly floored his right foot causing the bus to pick up speed. But likewise, my anger did still accelerate.

Then I saw the one, through a rear-view mirror, sitting at the right side of the driver, to be an extremely privileged and well-endowed individual. If you could imagine someone who is a cross between Catherine Zeta-Jones and Megan Fox then you know what I mean with that gal. I would’ve mistaken her for a Caucasian had it not for her St. Paul U uniform and natural tan.

Ah, St. Paulinian beauty, at one time in my life, you’d had me. 

You had taught me a lesson I would always remember. You had taught me so well never to judge a book by its cover.

I could still vividly recall that one morning when I rode a PUJ and sat right behind the driver many years ago. At the time, at something I was so angry also. Praying I’d beat the eight o’clock since I was still in my freshman year on the job or so. Thus, everytime the driver stopped to pick up every living thing along the street, I was tempted to slap the back of his head if not choke him for a minute. 

Then all of a sudden, a corn-haired St. Paulinian coed with a stunning angelic face embarked in Molo plaza. Right at first glance, I could sense in her the true sense of femininity of a well-bred traditional Filipina. Anywhere I looked at her, the way she moved and gave a Monalisa smile, I could describe her in only two words: prim and proper. Ah, the one thing of which a Filipina of old was known for: “Mahinhin,” super!

She was sitting right in front of me so I’s compelled not to take my eyes off her and her captivating beauty. She was holding her big nursing book close to her chest. The hem of her fine checkered skirt was securely wrapped around her knees. She firmly held her straight shiny long black hair to her right as if to deny an adoring male seatmate to her left to have a taste of the blossoming heavenly scent. 

As I tendered to the driver my ten-peso bill, I was tempted again to pay for her fare. After all, regular fare at the time was one peso per head while seventy-five cents were a student privilege. But of course, I cut the urge, lest I’d be misunderstood.

I was still in the middle of my adoration of her when she tendered her one-peso coin to the driver. Quick on the draw, I picked the coin from between her fingers that I myself would give it to the driver. When she smiled as she said “thank you” I wanted to think she was not a St. Paulinian but an Ivy Leaguer. Or someone who was bred in the 1950’s thus apt to be called with the “Golden Girl” moniker.

My heart was full with excitement when the driver handed back to me a twenty-five centavo coin change for the Golden Girl. And of course I swiftly received it and tenderly tendered it back to her. 

After she took it from my hand with her right thumb and forefinger while the other three were stretched out like a peacock’s feathers, she gracefully swayed back her hair, tilted her head leftward, and put the coin in her right ear.

That instant, another cliche was recalled: “Not all that glitters is gold.” 
****

THE WORD

[July 24, 2012 at 12:18pm]

Being one of only few if not the lone guitarman in the “tambayan” along the street of North Kirayan during the 80’s, I had to choose familiar music having easy chords to strum like the melodies of the Bee Gees.

And “Words” was one of the Gibb siblings’ songs which fellow “tambays” loved to sing in disarrayed unison if not the fullest of volume. Most notably at the time was my buddy Damy who would shout its chorus with his mouth an inch away facing my nose, out of tune, unmindful of his alcohol intake’s smell and fume.

“Words don’t come easy,” as another love song says, which veracity thereof I could certify personally being a long-time word-scrambling if not word-bereft or wordless “torpe.” I remember having courted a fellow teener exasperated obviously of my Mafia-like vow of omerta everytime she was in front of me.

I had maintained the sound of silence to the extent of making my neck huffing like a flying dragon lizard’s just to control my severe cough from exploding. Good thing I did let my fingers do the talking, stop that thought, I mean by using a sign language, to ask for a hot water since the itch on my throat then I could no more contain.

Some people have tremendous command of words like the way Mark Twain and The Honorable JCOR, one of the most eloquent judges in the history of the Regional Trial Court, have, most especially during the latter's brief stint in some Branch lately.

One time, there was a just issued court decision which copy thereof was personally served by someone to that Branch’s resident prosecutor who, after reading the same in full, spewed out some expletives beautifully, cursing the magistrate for forcing her to run to the dictionary.

If there would be nobody to say a word to anybody about Somebody, I tell you, everybody would be going mad and live their lives pretty bad. People need the Word always as “[i]n the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

Still struggling in spirit and under the bondage of sin? Let me paraphrase Joyce Kilmer for you here on FB, my friend:

Posts are made by fools like me, but only God can make you free…

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

(July 17, 2014 at 1:02pm)

After failing thrice in 1997 to watch its version in VHS due to extreme prejudice since I thought it was just an old and obsolete Hollywood drama, I finally had a chance last Saturday morning to see it for myself why highly regarded as one of the best films of all time is the 1943 movie, “Casablanca.”

Now, wanna ask me what can I say, Man? Nothing but four words: I love Ingrid Bergman.

Having glimpse of the past by way of a classic film like that, made during the time when movies were movies and stars were a star, one could only wish he were born in that period to personally witness how lovely indeed those mesmerizing beauties are.

After watching it, I couldn’t blame anymore the majority of film critics and artists who until now still near-worship Ms. Ingrid. By just peeking at her wonderful face you could also hate ugliness like does the Black Widow, who else but someone Imeldific.

However, beholders of creation are not created equal in quality and size as beauty lies not only in the same set of eyes. What’s place miserable and hellish for a plunderer too rich and too wise could be palace to the poor, to say it otherwise.

Some good ole things seem to be a lot better than the best one anyone could offer at present time. They grow sweeter and finer as time goes by, like in a gold-barrel, secretly fermented rare kind of wine.

Like my cellphone that for almost a decade would stick with me through thick and thin although the spare parts are no longer available in the market or in my friend, a Muslim. I had it lost nine times already, unintentionally or deliberately, yet it kept on coming back to me so very often, for the reason that no one’s interested to take it with him.

Like the Scriptures which is the oldest book in the world, far older than anything a man had written since he mentioned his very first word. It outlives its writers but the theme, principle and wisdom thereof—as current as the issues of today—are in one Book where they did hoard.

It’s the same Scriptures that thousands of years ago were admonished by Joshua to be meditated upon day and night by all of the Israelites (Joshua 1:8). It’s the same Scriptures that were referred likewise by no less than the Christ to be searched and studied by all the Jews and non-Jews alike:

“Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me,” as in John 5:39 Jesus simply put. Like what Paul said, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Doing so only makes a man’s faith firm and the believer wise. As to say it like Rick Blaine, and we’ll always have paradise.

CHANGES IN MY LIFE

(July 12, 2012 at 9:11am)

Once more, it can now be told, I am inevitably getting old.

Exhibit A, my wobbly knee.

I had another big scare in my life one afternoon when the Doctors-bound Leganes jeepney I was riding in had to cross the UP Flyover-Infante junction. I was at the front seat hoping the jeepney would be stopped upon approaching the highway crossing by the assigned traffic aide, but he made a sign instead for my jeepney to proceed, pumping his fist up and down, which meant to cross at full speed ahead.

A few years back, I could jump out with no sweat from a running vehicle at minimum speed, which act a man in the street called “haybol,” thus right in that instant, I remembered the stunt, moved out my upper-half body from the jeepney as I studied how to jump through memory recall.

And when my mind yelled “Action,” I quickly jumped out of it for once as on the running pavement I took a glance. I had a sheepish smile of victory after I heard my own shoes sounded “taka-tak-tak-tak” on the asphalt as if I just did a perfect tap dance.

I may have made it but there was a price to pay. My feet went numb thereafter and it hurt my knee.

Exhibit B, my eyes which are now gloomy.

I honestly believed then I’d have my first reading glasses when I’m sixty, but like other mortals I’ve had it just barely past forty. It’s precisely so hard once your eyes depend on something else just to regain twenty-twenty. It’s truly a big deal if you’d mistaken something because your eyes would fail. It could cost you the truth, or worse, even your life itself as well.

Just like a boy who was initially intrigued by a poster inside an optical clinic he visited which poster as he read said, “God is nowhere.” He told the optometrist about it as he wondered if the latter was an atheist, and the man adjusted the boy’s goggles until he correctly read the words as they should be: “God is Now Here.”

Like a blurred vision of that boy and his own sunglasses, just a little readjustment of heart and sight in this life is what we only need.

A NURSING STORY

[Tinkered edition from June 11, 2012 at 7:59am]

When I was younger, so much younger than today, okay, I mean when I was sixteen exactly, I dreamed to have a nurse for a wifey. It started when a nurse-wife of a friend requested my Nanay to let her two college junior OJT friends who were nurses-in-the-making for a brief board and lodging in our modest residence then.

As a typical full-blooded Ilonggo, my folks did welcome them wholeheartedly. I think I had already narrated here my then-secret crush story regarding “Aubrey.”

I always have a firm belief since then that the purest among them all is a nursing profession. From the start, my only basis for it is their spotless, Tide/Ariel washed and shining white uniform.

And so far, only once did I remember that somebody tried to successfully stain such belief unwittingly, and that was only when a Lady Gaga look-alike nurse wore conspicuous flaming red undergarments for all the world to see.

Yet still, that single faux pas of one could not completely shatter my conviction for the whole white ladies’ gang. My full respect for their heavenly suit and pursuit avocation will always remain even after a thin swan or a fat lady sang.

It’s simply because most of the people closer to my heart were or still are in that profession which has one if not the most expensive college studies and preparation in the country. The most abused lot as, if not compelled to be called for call centers where they rest only when nature calls, they’re the milking cows of hospitals hiring them with minimal wages and salary.

A nurse is the most caring and daring pro because her calling demands her to be so. I should know, I was hospitalized in 2000 due to what they call then “na-impatso.”

But the most embarrassing moment I had as a patient was when I was admitted a coupla years later due to orchitis, an ailment involving half of two worlds of men near their pride in patrimony. During the initial ocular inspection by an intern physician, an attending lady nurse made a mistake in furthering her scrutiny which caused the ‘patriot missile’ to dutifully rise like in a flag ceremony.

Had it not for some ice cubes to the rescue, a great scandal would have erupted in Don Benito. All because of a nurse and her over-eagerness to help and to perform the sworn task she had led. I’m recalling it as I sing a song of the Bee Gees: “And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from the things that I’d said…”

BACK TO BASIC(?)

(June 11, 2012 at 11:31am)

I am totally supportive of the Dep-Ed’s latest decision to shift medium of instruction in public schools from English to native tongue in all localities. That way, the basics could be understood immediately that someday a phone conversation between a concerned citizen and the PNP won’t be like, “Hello, Police! Police this is?” to which the PNP curtly replies, “Yes, please, police this is!”

For how can a pupil give a correct answer to a question when in the first place he could not understand instructions? Instructions are always officially a part of an examination and we all know that the mother of all stupidity is assumption. That’s why there are many kids who flunk the exams, as they just assume what the question meant and they couldn’t understand.

I am a product of a vernacular instruction as when I was in Grade One Section “Sara,” although we had a textbook in Hiligaynon, we were taught in “pure cow’s milk” Kinaray-a. And I could still recite some unforgettable dialogues from that book’s main characters Lino and Nita, such as, “Ay, pakâ, pakâ, galî, há! há! há! há!”

I could also recall such omnipresent proverb “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” dictated by the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos to be posted everywhere in every school particularly in a “paseo.” The country’s sole ailment then was lack of discipline among men, “sosyalismo” and “komunismo,” but I was enlightened after the Pinoys told Marcos pointblank that the real problems actually were “Misis Mo” and “Ikaw mismo.”

I’m happy that we are treading on the straight path of decency and order again. Judging from those indictment left and right of past abusers of power they now know there’s such a thing as crime and punishment.

The public in general would gradually realize that Abe Lincoln was absolutely right in describing democracy as a whole. That real power belongs to the people as it is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

LOVE ACTUALLY, AGAIN

(June 11, 2013 at 4:24pm)

Whether or not you are authentic romantic, love is always an endless topic. A topic of which man has two choices: love it or hate it. The way a lover’s explanation varies.

In this lovely world love is truly more complex than anything. The reason why The Four Aces sang it in closed eyes that it’s a many-splendored thing. Take it from me, it’s the most enduring. One may forget it for a while but it’ll always keep on returning.

Like the fleeting memories of love featuring old friends in school in the photo below, not above. I rolled down in laughter yesterday upon seeing it for the first time when from cyberspace I had it grabbed.

I’m still amused with our faces and poses there because while I think majority in us were still asking then, “What is love.”  Little did I know then that one of our classmates present there had a child along she tagged, a fruit of her labor, wonderfully made in love.

One of my most feared in life is when the time comes the past would catch up on me if not it did already. Truly, we can never undo things we did then thoughtlessly unlike what we normally do with mistakes with our e-gadgets today.

It’s pretty scary even to imagine when someday, heaven permits, in your high school seventieth anniversary, you found yourself one of only two present but you’re so aghast you could not found her face anywhere in memory.

And you would play along for a while; engage her in a light talk, hoping her name would spark eventually. However, no matter how hard you tried, nothing in your brain about her in there making you so mad inside.

Finally, exasperated as you face the truth, and since you both knew you’re octogenarians you admit to her your memory loss. The scariest part there is, when you ask her name in your most gentlemanly gesture, she would tell you straight from the heart, her soul’s so sure, that she was once your girlfriend and you never had any closure.

Ahh, the childhood’s foolishness, the sins of the young and promiscuity of the youth. Just when you think you had them all wrapped up, they haunt you back, you're "lucky" if you're just shot in the foot.

It’s because you thought what you have had spread abroad in the olden times through good or bad were already the so called true love, and one rising above. Forgetting that despite those things you were and are still alive because of Someone Who is higher than the highest, greater than the great, called the Champion of Love.

MULTI-TASKING

(June 11, 2014)

Being a natural one-dimensional being, I salute those persons who could perform multi-tasking. Like Kawhi Leonard who aside from defending Lebron James, he’s also into high scoring. And that makes my human nature tactless enough to ask myself sometimes: Why do those people seem to be too good at doing everything at the same time?

This question popped up in mind too as I take a close look at the photo in the news, featuring the big three senators genuinely beaming wide despite being formally accused. Accused of the crime of plunder, the worst indictment for a robber.

Well, if you’re insistent to know my beef, I’d say, let the courts decide for their case. When you profess to be believer of justice, let the innocent be released, the guilty punished.

Some people are apparently more “lucky” than the others indeed, just like those mentioned elected public officials in the Senate. They are a breed of famous and rich, having alabaster skin and pretty faces, unlike me who would only be described as “tall”(?), dark, and… well, forget it.

They are a race like, wherever they go, whatever they do, they are having their cake and eat it too. They are a rare type of regardless of what’s happening around them, it looks like the word wrong or mistake, or both, to them are clearly alien.

It’s because they have the capability and talent to do everything at the same time an ordinary mortal cannot do. Like if in the past they could be KBL, LDP and Lakas, PMP or PDP-Laban, who knows, they could be LP stalwarts too.

Just perfectly like Congressman Manny Pacquiao, to me the man who can do anything, any way, anyhow. Manny was formally appointed as head coach recently of a newly admitted expansion team in the PBA. And being a winner in any which field he’d venture into, surely, he can do magic with his wand like a tooth fairy.

I can’t wait to hear how will Coach Pacquiao give instructions and devise plays also for his players when the game is on the line and the time remaining is almost zero. Will he be like the great Robert Jaworski, who, when with his chips a play he would draw, he’d glare to his five men first before touching each chip, saying, “This is you… this is you”?

It’s a must for a man to push himself to full extent of his capacity, yet he must remember that everything that excesses may end up a liability.

Too much pressure is given or like a twin to multi-tasking, hence, Manny the congressman and Pacman the boxer might cloud the judgment of Pacquiao the coach during actual basketball game. Without realizing it, he might come up with these instructions he’d presume as defensive gem, “Use head fake as if it’s the N.G.O. we’re faking, and hit ‘em with a vicious hook or jab-straight in the abdomen.”

Multi-tasking measures our capacity but expect no perfection as we are merely a human being. Only Jesus, a Supreme Being, could perfectly do all of them for all things were created by and for Him (Col. 1:16; John 1:3).

As my fave song puts it, “He heals the broken-hearted, He set the captives free; He made the lame to walk again and caused the blind to see” (Matt. 11:5)

THE JUDGE

(June 11, 2016 at 1:48pm)

This old and timeworn story was told by a Catholic friend when I was still a bubbling, cute (?) teenager. Catholics believe that when a person dies he’s immediately judged by someone named ‘St. Peter.’ And somewhere in the gates of heaven, this he said then was what did happen:

‘St. Peter’ was interviewing the first person in line: “You, what have you done when you were alive?” The man replied, “I was the boss of illegal loggers in the forest. Prosecutors would drop the case against my men at my behest.”

“Quick! Go to that room! The sizzling one that’s colored green. Its heat is prepared for those who against nature have sinned!”

‘St. Peter’ queried the second soul who was unabashedly crying, “Hey, what did you do for a living?” In between sobs, answered the assassin, “Literally and figuratively, I made a killing in killing.”

‘St. Peter’ judged him, “Haste! Go to that room, the smoking one that’s colored red. He paused and continued, “From everlasting to everlasting, the boiling blood will be your bed!”

The third one, an ashamed stunning woman, was vehemently asked too. Shaking in fear, she would respond, “I was a prostitute all my life through.”

And ‘St. Peter’s’ voice did boom: “Hurry up! Go to my room!”

We, as ordinary human beings, intentionally or not, just simply do like that. When we hear and see what we perceived as evil, we would easily judge. We’re quick to condemn other people for the wrong they’ve done. But we’re too slow to know the mistakes we did with our own hand.

I remember what said to us by Jesus: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote of thy brother’s eye” (v.5).

And Paul said we are inexcusable when we pass judgment on someone else, it’s like we condemn ourselves too, for we do the same things either (Romans 2:1). As what was written by James in his rejoinder: “There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who are thou that judgest another?” (James 4:12).

Besides, we must all surely appear before the judgment seat of Jesus. We will receive things according to what we did, be they good or bad (2Cor. 5:10).

REAL LIFE DRAMA

(June 9, 2012 at 1:25pm)

If your life lacks drama and you’re still bored to death and always at a loss on what to do with that life, spend time in the Emergency Room of a hospital, particularly a government hospital, and there you’ll find real life drama of various kind about suffering and strife.

It’s a perfect stage of all reality shows simultaneously showing in all parts of the Earth, where stories of pain and anguish are sure to find and peace and quiet are expected to be dearth.

If you’re seriously contemplating about life and death while witnessing around therein all sorts of cries and wailing, you’d realize after all that you’d nothing to be proud of in this life as you’re only a human being. That you’re just a heartbeat away from death, whether you’re a weak specie or a robust athlete.

When the King of kings and Lord of lords would take back the life from Him you had borrowed, it doesn’t matter whether your current health condition’s in the pale blue, yellowish or pink code.

If the weeping and gnashing of teeth of adult patients receiving initial treatment therein could not touch or move a hardened heart of a criminal equally hardened, try hearing the howls of innocent infants and toddlers receiving their first ever I.V. and you’ll wonder why Satan’s not moved by those cries as you continue to listen.

I have this opinion that the finest hour in a parent’s life is when you sit on bed at night staying awake as you watch your sleeping child, your eyes feasting on his innocent face. No other joy could be culled from any given time of silence in your parenting life that would match such moment so precious and priceless.

Thank God for His immortal words of comfort which still teach us to be still, in the midst of trouble, and to know that He is God (Psalm 46:10) who would truly care and feel. Take it also from the Psalmist who was comforted by the rod and staff of the Good Shepherd even when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death and feared no evil (Psalm 23).

The faith which gives us that cup that runneth over is the same faith that could guarantee us to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

THE CLAY

(June 9, 2014)

Like when love is like a roller-coaster, my heart this morning went up and down in Miami and television. And when the smoke was cleared, I felt like among the revelers swimming in South Beach in wild abandon.  But before that, I was greatly entertained too when TV enslaved me this weekend. For two successive days, things turned out as what I wished they should be again.

Two persons, both of whom I root for since the reign of ex-President Gloria, were the cause of my silent euphoria: One is the footloose, claymaster Rafael Nadal a.k.a. Rafa, and the other is the shrieking Maria Sharapova.

I really can’t understand why although I have yet to hold tennis racket since birth in actual game or practice, I have followed the game and a big fan of it since the days of Borg and Connors and Martina, the Navratilova not Hingis.

And the one player that electrified my interest was the young John McEnroe, the mercurial American whose temper was hotter than the sun if not towering inferno. Those were the days when computers and cameras had no HD’s yet in their names, thus when umpires would commit mistakes expect most players to call them names.

And McEnroe was not just calling names, or cursing or cussing, my friend. I suspect he tops the record of having so many rackets to destroy or bend. Well, I can understand his antics being a passionate player, most likely than not that is a among the characteristics of a winner.

But I’m glad an ungentleman-like attitude is now a big no-no in a grandslam and so they penalize heavily those who grumble and whine. They should, as tennis is supposed to be a royal sport, a “sosi” entertainment for families of a king and queen, and, okay, a king’s concubine.

Of the four Grand Slam, I like to watch best is the Roland Garros or the French Open, which court thereof is made of clay. This is a bizarre surface since a lot of champions in the three other slams failed to conquer this in their big dismay.

The reason why I am in awe of Rafa when it comes to this surface since it’s clearly his forte. Judging from his 66-1 win-loss record as of today, you’d conclude in Roland Garros he’s born to play.

Look at the way he demolished again Novak Djokovic, also pretender to greatness, in the final match. Let me say, he did not just beat luckily the Serbian champ, he had him outwitted and outclassed.

Sometimes I ask the skies, the rainbow’s stripes and the star, why did tennis evade me like a plague throughout my existence so far? When at one time, so that my too much passion for it would be relieved, I nearly changed the meaning of RGF, my name’s acronym, into Roland Garros Facurib?

But there must be a reason, a very compelling reason, why I was not given the chance to play the sport much less in a clay court. Perhaps, that’s because I’ve yet to hurdle and conquer my life’s other surface like a version of tennis’ grasscourt and hardcourt.

Or maybe I’m in the middle of the Roland Garros-like game right now, unwittingly. Where the first order of battle is to succeed in conquering the first hard opponent, convincingly:

My own self. Made of clay. (Job 33:6; Isa. 64:8)