a-dreaming-fool

[a-dreaming-fool]

Food Writing: QC Circle: Food Park!

It's often that I go to Quezon City Memorial Circle. But today, I got the chance to, with my classmaes, and it was rather pleasant. Going to an unfamiliar place is quite an exciting experience. With everything so new and fresh, the exploration was thrilling – especially in trying out the food.

Lunch time arrived, and my stomach began to rumble. It was time to eat. We walked around, searching for food stalls – until we were met, to our delight, an entire section of the park full of food! Looking around, it was mostly, true Filipino goodness: the silogs, buko juice, tusok-tusok (street food); a smell so familiar and nostalgic, reminding of memories as a child, when my parents used to cook meals and not order delivery. And it was all at prices below a hundred! So cheap!

I looked around and found one stall selling two ulam; or dishes with rice, at the price of fifty pesos! I’d say that was a good enough deal! There, I chose chicken curry and chopseuy as my food – two of my favorite Filipino dishes. The plate was warm in my hands, the smell strong: the sharp scent of the curry, and the scrumptious steam of the vegetables and of the rice. My tummy was growling like a predator preparing to pounce on its prey. And indeed, I did.

The chicken was easily sliced through with my spoon, although a bit boney; its sauce thin but with the right amount of spice and salt. Its accompanying carrots and potatos made it even better, adding in a bit of softness and color to the dish. Meanwhile, the chopseuy was even brighter! Full of greens, yellows and oranges; some soft, some hard, but most of all: edible. Some vegetables I don’t eat, but all of this, I did. Both dishes went well with the rice. The meal wouldn’t have been complete without it.

Overall, it was a good meal. I was most certainly satisfied; the fifty pesos very much worth it. I enjoyed the homey, Filipino vibe of the place, and especially of the food. QC Memorial Circle is indeed the place to go for a solid, Filipino food experience.

[a-dreaming-fool]

Travel Writing: Spontaneous Trip to Sleepy Tagaytay

I used to be excited for Christmas. As a kid who believed in Santa Claus and in the magic of this holiday, I couldn’t help but be. Back then, we spent Christmas together with my cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents, all together in one home at Cavite. Our parents would wake us up when Santa Claus finally arrived, and my cousins and I would go downstairs – and there was the dining table, lined with delicious dishes, and the Christmas tree, now suddenly piled with presents. But the last time we did that, I was probably five years old.

Years later, that’s no longer the case. My parents separated; traditions changed. My brother and I would spend Christmas with our father and our grandparents at Cavite; New Years’ with our mother and her side of the family at Pampanga. And as the years passed by, as my brother and I grew up, our parents weren’t waking us up anymore. We don’t wake up to have Noche Buena anymore or to open our presents in the middle of the night. We’d do it during dinner or before bedtime.

One time, when we were going to do this, I protested and said: “No, wake us up tonight! We’ll eat and open our presents then!” But he just shook his head, more tired than exasperated. I guess I can’t blame him; he was working at a Call Center at that time, and my grandparents were simply too old to wake up past midnight. But I still felt it: felt the magical flame of Christmas extinguish within me, the spirit of it die out. That’s it. My childhood has ended.

But I can’t say that I’m not hoping it will come back.

It was Christmas Eve, 2015. Once again, I was in Cavite, at my grandparents’ home, with my father and my brother; and it was already past eleven in the evening. We were all hanging out in my grandparents’ spacious bedroom, the adults snoozing away already, and my brother and I, playing with our respective gadgets, like any other pair of mature teenagers. Perhaps, in a way, I was waiting for the clock to hit midnight. It was Christmas, after all.

So, I did; and when it arrived, I opened up my phone, sending messages online and via text, to family and friends. Then, I turned to my present family: greeting my brother, waking up my father and grandparents with a kiss, hug and a soft “Merry Christmas!”

Then, all of a sudden, my dad sat up. “What do you say, if we go out tonight?”

My brother and I perked up, eyes wide. “Huh?”

“Sounds good!” my grandfather said, rising to a seat on the bed. “I know a place in Tagaytay where we can eat – assuming it’s still open.”

I looked at my grandmother. She grinned. And that was it. I couldn’t contain it anymore. Jumping and grinning and shrieking, “Yes, yes, yes!” – it was like I was going back to being a child, eager for some adventure. Eager for the magic of Christmas.

Tagaytay is a nice place; a place known for its cold climate and for the fact that it sits right above a freaking volcano, the island of Taal Volcano. It’s an active volcano too, which is hard to believe with how dead it looks.

I’ve been there a few times when I was younger; usually to eat at some fancy restaurant for some fancy social event my grandparents had to go to. It was half-provincial, half-city, with its elite restaurants and condominiums; vegetable and flower markets in the street – almost like another, bigger, warmer kind of Baguio; a place tourists would settle for, when Baguio was already full.

The drive going there was packed with jittering energy. We played Christmas songs the entire time, singing along with them while occasionally talking about random things. I didn’t think these old folks had the energy to have this kind of fun; all exhilarated at this spontaneous road trip. It was refreshing to see.

It was even more refreshing to see Tagaytay past midnight. Streets were empty and painted black, tinged with occasional glow of an orange streetlight; and when we brought the windows down, the wind was biting cold. The whole world has gone quiet on Christmas Eve.

We arrived at the restaurant my grandfather was saying. It was pitch black.

My grandfather cursed. It was stupid to think any restaurant at this hour and holiday would be open. “Let’s look around,” he said. “Maybe something else is open.”

It was a real road trip now. We drove forward, passing by more closed stores and restaurants and a few gas stations, until finally, we spot an open restaurant – literally open, with hardly any walls to enclose it. I don’t remember the name now, but I can recall that it was Filipino, with a chicken and an egg as its logo.

We all exchanged looks. This worked, we supposed.

And it did. The place was chilly, having lacking walls, but the food was warm and simple: roasted chicken with java rice, and some local biscuits. My grandfather chatted with the late-night staff; most of whom were Tagaytay natives, working late for their family, even on Christmas Eve. But all of them seemed happy that day, not bored or sad at the fact that they weren’t with their families. As a group of staff, they seemed like a family already.

After this strange but simple Noche Buena, the old folks now tired, we drove back home. This time, the journey was quieter. No more music, just silence, and the hum of a moving car. I couldn’t say I wasn’t disappointed with how the trip went: we didn’t get to eat at the place we wanted, and we couldn’t go further to explore more of the sleeping Tagaytay. But the fact that for one night, I felt like a child again, delighted me more: the rush of adventure, the thrill of doing something new – on Christmas Eve, nonetheless.

Going to bed that night, I felt a sense of peace. Maybe our Christmases were never going to be like those in my childhood – and that’s okay. The fact that I was surrounded by family, by people I love and who love me, was magical enough.

[a-dreaming-fool]

Literary Reportage: Human Refrigerator that Restores Lives

It's a good time to be alive, but what if the only way to stay like that is by being a piece of frozen meat? If you were given the chance to stall the death of a loved one, would you do it? This has been the struggle of people ever since and science has an answer to it - body preservation also known as cryonics.

It's both horrifying and amusing to think that immortality is one step closer from our doors. In fact, a lot of people with terminal illnesses have already tried the experimental concept hoping that they would one day wake up, healthy. It's a risk, but for them, "why not?"

For Sahatorn Naovaratpong, a medical engineer, it was the tragic fate of her daughter, Matherine, that made him hold on to this possibility. At the age of two years and two months, the child was diagnosed a very rare condition of brain cancer called ependymoblastoma after not waking up one morning.

Matherine's persistence to live was what drove her parents to fight for her life.

"We decided against this cancer. We may not beat it, but her life can lead to a further step of mankind to overcome cancer in the future," his father stated in one of his interviews.

Before officially dying, the little Thai girl had a duel with the grim reaper. After the discovery of her 11-centimeter tumor in the left part of the brain, she was immediately brought to surgery. There, the surgeons drilled her skull to remove the tumor. She had a really tiny chance to live, but this courageous warrior woke up after a week or so.

The next few moments were stressful for everybody involved in it, including Sahatorn who described all that happened as an "emotional roller coaster." In a span of a year, Matherine underwent 20 chemotherapy sessions, 12 brain surgeries, and 20 radiation therapies. This led to her losing 80 percent of her left brain.

"We noticed a power struggling for life in her beautiful round eyes. Finally, Einz [the child's nickname] was able to stand up on her feet again and could see from both eyes, as if she had survived from brain cancer. Couldn't help wishing she could go back to her normal childhood even with only a single right brain," Sahatorn continued.

She was a fighter, as she outlasted most of the patients with this kind of condition. Unfortunately, it was not enough to keep her alive. In November 2014, face and muscle paralysis doomed her.

"That was when we knew it was the end," the dad said.

In 2015, her body was preserved in Arizona and is awaiting technology from evolving to be the newest inspiration of humanity.

Their family agreed to doing this and they decided to consumer the service of the organization named "Alcor." They are the world leader in cryonics, a system used to describe the preservation of bodies. Because of this, lives can stop progressing and remain how it is now.

"The first day Einz was sick, this idea came to my mind right away that we should do something scientifically for her, as much as is humanly possible at present. I felt a real conflict in my heart about this idea, but I also needed to hold onto it. So I explained my idea to my family," Sahatorn uttered.

"Matheryn had something special about her from the day she was born. She communicated with her love more than the other children, always wanting to be part of our activities," he continued.

In the future though, her parents stated their interest in preserving their bodies to be with their daughter, then safe and healthy, finally.

Will body preservation be the newest emerging technology that may cure numerous illnesses or not? This is the big question. Whether we think that Matherine's parents are doing this because they fully and sincerely believe in the concept or not is up to us. However, one cannot deny the frightening yet comforting existence of technology to our lives. If it will help or destroy us, only time will tell.

[a-dreaming-fool]

Profile: The Arithmophobia of Dr. Lulu Medina

Dr. Lulu Medina is known, in the world of psychology, as the president of EMDR Philippines (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a worldwide organization with branches in various countries that promote the psychotherapy of the same name to treat victims of trauma. Meanwhile, in the University of St. Thomas, she is more known as an undergraduate and graduate professor of psychology, chemistry and food technology. It is because of these academic achievements that she is seen as a woman of great success, with an ever greater, golden heart. But in my life, she is simply my grandmother – my grandmother who sucks at Math.

Lulu is a warm and competent woman, with kind and youthful features for someone of a little over sixty years. (“That’s what happens when you’re exposed to students for forty years,” she said.) But when you give her a mathematical problem, her educated mind will cease to function. Her heart will begin pounding; palms sweating; thoughts jumbling. She’ll shake her head, spouting words that tumbled over each other, embarrassed and nervous. By the time she admits she is ineffective in solving mathematical equations, she would also begin to explain why.

It was during her third year of high school. She was the president of the class, a trusted student with excellent grades – until one day, a letter was sent to her Mathematics teacher, stating some harsh and critical criticism about the teacher. Lulu never even saw this letter, but her Math teacher claimed that it had her signature. (“Which was ridiculous,” she said. “Tanga ko naman kung nilagay ko pangalan ko ‘dun.”) Needless to say, the letter reached the principal and her mother, but Lulu wasn’t punished. After that whole ordeal, her Math teacher would come into class, sit down and give everyone the death stare. During that quarter, she had failed Lulu in class. But by the end of the year, thanks to her supportive mother and tutoring, Lulu still passed.

It was a small but stressful experience, haunting her until today, as she grows nervous around numbers. Even when she knows the answer to a mathematical question, somehow, her mind is still blocking it from her. She’d have to be extra focused to respond. “Perhaps I need to experience EMDR myself,” she’d joke. Although she knows how even little, stressful events like that can have a long lasting impact on an individual and their life, she also knows it shouldn’t stop anyone from being themselves and from living their lives.

[a-dreaming-fool]

Biography: Malala Yousafzai: Heart of an Activist

Malala was only a fifteen years old, Pakistani girl, about to go to school, when a Taliban gunman stepped in her school bus and shot her in the head. But she survived.

On the twelfth of July, 1997, Malala Yousafzai – a name meaning “grief-stricken,” named after a poet and female warrior from Afghanistan – was born to Ziauddin and Toor Pekai Yousafzai, parents of a lower-middle-class family, in Swat Valley, Pakistan – a quiet but favored tourist spot, known well for its festivals during the summer. With two younger brothers, Khushal and Atal, she studied in a school called Khushai Public School founded by her father, Ziauddin, whose diplomatic and humanitarian work in educational activism has brought her much inspiration. This peace in her hometown ended, however, when the Taliban arrived.

The Taliban, self-proclaimed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a political movement of Sunni Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan. Essentially extreme religious nationalists, they have become a major threat to much of the Middle East and its governments, as they’ve waged war in Afghanistan with suicide bombings and other attacks, and conquered some areas of Pakistan – including the hometown of Malala.

As the Taliban has a strong belief that girls and women should not be educated, and thus, have no right to education, they began to attack all-girls schools in Swat Valley. On September, 2008, an eleven-year-old Malala delivered a speech at a press club in Peshawar, Pakistan, to a media-filled audience; entitled: “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” It was the first day of a long journey of educational activism.

During the latter part of the year, Aamer Ahmed Khan of BBC wanted to do a more detailed coverage on the developing influence and control of the Taliban in Swat Valley; to show how ordinary citizens live under these dangerous circumstances. To do this, they concluded, a young girl living in those conditions could blog anonymously about her life and experiences. They fell in touch with Ziauddin in this search for a young girl, but no one was willing, as it was seen as too life-threatening for the children by their families. Until, finally, Ziauddin suggested his own daughter – Malala. It was a unanimous agreement from the editors of BBC. However, to secure her safety, BBC made sure she wrote under a pseudonym. She chose, along with her mother, the name “Gul Makai” from a character in a Pashtun folktale.

In the early days of January, 2009, her first blog entry was published in their local BBC, BBC Urdu. She would write them by hand on pieces of paper, then submit them to a reporter, who would scan and send them attached to e-mails. More blog entries were posted, following her thoughts as the military arrived, commencing First Battle of Swat.

After bombing hundreds of girls’ schools, the Taliban released an edict stating that girls are not allowed to go to school after the fifteenth of January, 2009. This brought an air of uncertainty in Malala’s school. The school recommended that the girls come to school in their casual wear, not in their uniforms, just to be safe. Additionally, fewer and fewer girls showed up, their families afraid of the consequences from the Taliban if they did. On the final day of school, and the first day of their December break – with no announcement from their principal on the date of the resume of classes – Malala and her friends looked up at the building as though it was the last time they’ll ever see it.

Once the ban took place, more schools were destroyed in their area. In her blog, Malala said that she and her friends were still talking about homework and examinations as though they were still going to return to school after the break. The optimistic were hoping they’ll be able to by February, but not too many shared the same thoughts.

Unfortunately, by February, girls’ schools were still closed. Uniting with these schools, private institutions for boys chose to stay closed as well, until the ninth of February, at least. When this day arrived, the Taliban only allowed girls to attend their primary education classes, which were co-education. Seventy students attended, out of the seven hundred who enrolled. Girls-exclusive schools, however, remained closed.

There was much gunfire in the streets. Her father comforted her, saying, “This is firing for peace,” as he had read in the newspaper that the government was going to sign a peace deal with the Taliban soon. However, later on that same night, when the peace deal was being announced, another round of stronger gunfire began outside.

Three days later, Malala was able to appear in their national current affairs show called Capital Talk, speaking out against the Taliban. Another three days after, the leader of the Taliban announced the lifting of the ban on female education, and that girls will be allowed to attend their classes until their exams on the seventeenth of March, with the condition that they were their burqas, a long outer garment worn by women to fully cover their head to their shoulders, transparent only at the area of their eyes.

So, on the twenty-fifth of February, girls-only schools were finally opened. Malala and her friends played and had fun in their classes like before, although only twenty-seven students attended. But at this time, the Taliban was still active. Tension rose between the military and the Taliban, however, and fear of this peace being more temporary than permanent spread in the area. However, soon, the Taliban was no longer as active, and on the twelfth of March, her BBC blog ended.

After a while, a New York Times reporter approached Malala and her father about filming a documentary. Through this, it was recorded that the Pakistani Army arrived around May, to regain control of the area during the Second Battle of Swat. Malala and her family evacuated and separated; she and her mother and siblings staying in the countryside with relatives, and her father going to Peshawar to protest and gather support, criticizing the Taliban at a press conference. As a result, her father received death threats over the radio from them. Here, Malala felt truly inspired by her father’s determined activism, and during that summer, she decided to become not a doctor, as she once dreamed, but to be a politician and to save their country.

Because of this documentary, Malala was already getting much attention from the world, appearing in various radio stations and television shows to advocate for female education. On December 2009, she finally revealed herself to be Gul Makai, the mystery blogger in BBC Urdu.

By 2011, she received a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize of an international children advocacy group, and soon won the National Youth Peace Prize and the National Peace Award for Youth from their prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani. A year later, Malala began to plan a foundation to help poor girls attend school.

Her profile became more public, recognized more and more everywhere in the world. But as it did, the more she received death threats – in the newspapers, sent to her own home, through social media. None of it stopped her, however, and it is because of this that the Taliban decided unanimously to kill her.

It was the ninth of October, 2012. She just had an exam in her school in Swat Valley, and was on her way home in a bus – until a masked gunman entered and demanded Malala to reveal herself, or everyone in the bus will be killed. Malala spoke up, and thus, she was shot in the head – going through it and down to her neck and ending up in her shoulder. Two more girls were wounded, but functional enough to explain what had happened. Malala was only fifteen years old.

Closer to death, she was sent to a military hospital in Peshawar, where she was operated on, removing portions of her skull to treat her swelling brain as well as the bullet in her shoulder. Offers to help her from Pakistani, Britain and Germany came in, but by the fifteenth of October, Malala was sent to the United Kingdom for more treatment. All of the expenses were paid by the Pakistani government.

Two days later, she woke up from her coma and was so far responding positively to her treatment. It was during this time that the United Nations released a petition to support her cause and to demand that all girls will go to school, with the slogan: “I Am Malala.”

But it wasn’t until the eighth of November when she was able to sit up on the bed; a month later when she was finally discharged from the hospital to be rehabilitated in her temporary home in the West Midlands; and another month when she had another operation to reconstruct her skull and was reported to being in a stable condition.

All of this – from the murder attempt to her recovery – were being covered by the media all over the world. People protested against the shooting in Pakistan; many more speaking out, such as the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the former president of the United States Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, and celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie. Over two million citizens signed a petition that led to the first Right to Education Bill in Pakistan.

A year later, on her sixteenth birthday, Malala made her first public speech since the murder attempt in the United Nations to call for worldwide access to education, in front of an audience of more than five hundred youth education advocates from all around the world – the first Youth Takeover of the UN. They called this, “Malala Day.” But to Malala, this day was not hers; it is the “day of every woman, every boy and every girl who have raised their voice for their rights.”

Another year later, she co-received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian children’s rights activist. Malala was only seventeen years old, the youngest Nobel laureate. She was also included in the Twenty-Five Most Influential Teens of 2014 of the Time Magazine.

Later that same year, a militant group of ten attackers called “Shura” was suspected to be behind her attack. They were arrested, and in April, 2015, were sentenced to life in prison by Judge Mohammad Amin Kundi with chance of possibility of parole and release after twenty-five years. Unfortunately, eight of them were released due to the lack of evidence connecting them to the attack.

This does not stop Malala, though. On her eighteenth birthday, she opened up a school by the Syrian border for refugees, to educate and train girls from ages fourteen to eighteen. It was funded by her not-for-profit foundation called Malala Fund. Currently, she is studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics in Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.