For miles around, I believed, there wasn’t a finer sister than my eldest sister, Manang Easther. She was made of a different stuff and was everything we three younger girls were not everything we ever wanted to be. I was proud of my Manang Easther, and my greatest frustration was that I could never be quite like her.

She was special in every way, but I thought the most special thing about her- the one thing that I secretly coveted most- was her creamy, almost flawless skin. The slightest insect bite had the most devastating effect on us younger girls. We were plagued with skin rashes and allergies which festered, leaving their ugly, telltale trademark stamped on our arms and legs. It was nothing unusual; really, every other kid we know suffered the same fate. But not Manang Easther. She always managed to escape unscathed from the hordes of fleas and mosquitoes that accompanied our childhood. Or, if she did get bitten, it didn’t show.

Slant-eyed and light complexioned, she could have been a Chinese mestiza, and sometimes she was mistaken for one. When she was in grade school, there was there program where she was perfect for her role as a little Chinese girl. For the occasion, Mother made her a Chinese collar and a pair of pants which looked like pajamas. I can still see her braided pigtails and bangs that reached down to her eyes, and hear her voiced as s bravely recited her lines. “My name is Ah Wang. I’m a little Chinese girl. I live across the sea.”

The three of us younger girls-well, we were regular brownies, and no matter how hard we tried, we never succeeded in making an impression.

Manang Esther never had a problem with her weight. She could feast all day and not put on an extra, unwanted pound. She was always trim and slim; unlike the three of us who struggled endlessly and hopelessly to attain some kind of figure. There was a time I took to wearing a secret, tight-fitting waist band to give me a little shape. All to no avail .It gave me nothing but a deep, dark ring around my middle. The doctor who did physical students told me to stop wearing it.

She had a high cheekbone and perfectly formed of teeth. Her favorite snack was balikutsa (candy made from molasses which she was an expert in preparing) but I don’t think she knows what it feels like to have a toothache. And while we younger ones suffered the rounds of tooth decay, dental fillings and extractions, she was smiling with close-up confidence all the time, Me, I had crooked teeth and refrained from smiling. When I did it was with a painful self- consciousness.

As if all that was not enough, Manang was taller than the rest of us. She’s over five-four. I am barely five-feet two, my sister Eunice is a bit shorter, and Merli is less than five.

She was just the right size, the right shape, and the right color while we younger three were mostly the wrong. Queen Esther, no less, or the beautiful swan in a brood of ugly ducklings.

“If there was a long list of the great things Manang knew and could do, there was an equally long list of the simple things she couldn’t do.”

Well, she could have been somebody else’s sister!

The differences between Manang Esther and the rest of us transcended the physical. She was smart, too, and possessed a lot of skills important to growing children. For example, she was an expert in catching dragonflies by the tail, or stealing the shy mimosa leaves before they could fold up. She knew the very places where we could find firewood and guavas or kamachile at the same time. She could play “Manang Biday” on a little, one-octave bamboo xylophone by hitting its keys with a couple of dried bettlenuts fastened at the end of two sticks, and she was often asked to do so during homeroom programs. She knew a great many stories about giants and kings, fairies and ghosts, aswang and mangkukulam, and she spent long hours spinning tales for us as we sat in the flowerless flowerbox in an upstairs window waiting for the moon to rise.

When it did, she’d sneak us out of the house, down through the window and over the bamboo fence, to play patalunton with the neighborhood children in the street. But first she had to teach us to fix our beds just so, so that should father decide to conduct an on-the-spot check, he would find us “asleep” in our designated places.

If there was a long list of the great things she couldn’t do. But it never occurred to us as a lack on her part then, only as difference. A difference which only served to set her apart from the rest of us ordinary mortals, making her even more special to our eyes. A difference we believed inherent in her birthright.

She couldn’t go upstairs or downstairs alone at night; it was S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) the one of us younger ones would be in tow. “Come and hold the lamp while I look for my thing,” she would say.

She couldn’t go to sleep at night until she’d personally checked and double-checked the wood stove to live coals. One night while father was away on a trip, she poured a whole pailful of water into a few dying embers; the next morning, mother could not start a fire.

She couldn’t eat fish, big or small, without almost always managing to get a bone stuck in her throat. Several times we had to summon our nurse-neighbor, her namesake, to remove the offending fishbone. Other times we took her to Manong Fred, who was a suni (born with his feet first). Peering with his one good eye into my sister’s wide open mouth lick his thick, short fingers, touch them to the afflicted throat, and the pain would vanish just like magic. Sometimes our cat, Kuning, did the magic trick. Father would take Kuning and rub its paw on Manang’s throat. But our favorite trick was our simple, homegrown, tried-and-tested remedy of secretly slipping a fishbone on top of her head. Someone would hand her banana and a glass of water, and after she had washed down a large, half-chewed chunk, the bone would be gone. We done it countless times, she knew and would automatically reach a hand up to brush the top of her head as soon as it was over. On one occasion Father had to take her to emergency when the combined efforts of Kuning, our nurse neighbor and Manong Fred, as well as our secret method of deboning , failed to bring relief. One time we had malunggay fruit for viand, but no matter, she also managed to get a bone in her throat-a malunggay bone, no less!

One fairly simple thing she couldn’t do was run a sewing machine. We had lived with sewing machines as far back as I can remember (my father sold and repaired them), and we girls learned early and easily to operate one. But not Manang Esther. She’d try again and again but just couldn’t make it go; the machine would keep going back and forth. Well, we younger ones could very well end up being seamstresses, but-no,-sir-definitely, not her!

Another thing she couldn’t do was to take a “no.” Once while we were living in Baesa (Caloocan) and didn’t have money to spare for beauty parlors, she asked me to trim her hair. I didn’t want to do it because I did not have the expertise. But you don’t argue with Manang Esther. So I did my best. When she got a good look at my handiwork, she was so mad that started screaming and pulling my hair. She never trusted me to cut her hair again.

But she did trust me to do something more important, like going to the library at the Manila Central University where she was a medical student to do a research job for her. Wearing her white uniform and her student ID, and, in spite of my fear of being found out, I felt like a million dollars. I kept hoping some of my friends would see me as I waited for a jeepney outside, but, unfortunately, no one was around.

Manang Esther seems to stay forever young. To entertain my husband and me while we were visiting in the US, where she and her family had gone to live, she took us to the casinos in Las Vegas where we tried inserting a few nickels into the slot machines, just for the hang of it.

“There are five whole years between us, but when she introduced me to her friends as her younger sister they accused her of kidding”.

There was a sign which read, “Minors Not Allowed in Casino,” and a guard who had been intently watching approached her. “Excused me, Miss, but are you 18?” he asked. “Oh, yes, I’m more than that,” she replied, blushing lightly. She was all of 40!

There are five whole years between us, but when she introduced me to her friends as her younger sister they didn’t believe her. They accused her of kidding.

When it was her turn to come visiting not too long ago, I had the chance to see her in a different light, but nonetheless special. In spite of the differences between her and me, and between her world and mine, I found out what we do have common interests. These commonalities must have been there are along, but I had probably concentrated too long and hard on the differences nothing else seemed to matter.

One common interest is love of God’s out-of-doors, a passion born out of our lifestyle while we were growing up in Artacho. As children we climbed the hills, roamed the woods and swam in ditches and rivers, and my heart is still out there. I have yearned for the excursions of my youth, but neither my obsession. There is the river a little distance from our home which I look at with longing each day we drive past, but my suggestions-sometimes pleadings, other times naggings- to go for a dip have invariably fallen on deaf ears.

The first thing Manang Esther asked me to do during her brief interlude with us was to accompany her to the hills, which I was only more than happy to do, naturally. On her last day, it was a bit warm in the afternoon and I asked her-tentatively, not wanting to impose, fully aware that she has a well appointed swimming poll and a jacuzzi in her backyard-did she want to go to the river?

Of course she did!

“Why did we not come here earlier?” she said as we soaked in the cool, clear, sparkling waters and contemplated the woods and mountains that surrounded the place. “I could stay here forever.”

I smiled secretly I could, too. Manang Esther may be different, but at heart she is very much like me. The 30 years she has lived in the US as a medical practitioner might have been reordered her life and her wardrobe, but not her soul. The next time she comes to visit, I know where I’m going to take to her: to the kamachile woods to gather kamachile fruit. I’m sure she’d love it.

Well, she could have been somebody else’s sister, but, you see, she’s mine. And am I glad!

OMAR KHAYYAM, a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer, was born at Nishapur, in Khorasan, about A.D. 1050 and died about 1125. Khayyam means “the Tent-maker,” and it is probable that Omar maintained himself by the craft until the sun of fortune rose for him. He was in youth a pupil of the most famous philosopher of Khorasan; he and two of his fellow-students entered into a compact that if either of them rose to fortune he should share it with the others. Nizam-ul-mulk, one of the three, became in time Vizier of the mighty Alp Arslan, and his successor, Malek, son and grandson of Togrul Beg, the Tartar founder of the Seljouk dynasty. He devoted himself to study, especially of astronomy, and when vizier undertook to reform the confused Mohammedan calendar, Omar was one of those to whom the work was confided. The result of their labors is thus described by Gibbon; “The reign of Malek was illustrated by the Gelalaan era; and all errors, whether past or future, were corrected by a computation of time which surpasses the Julian and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.”

Of his Rubaiyat “Stanzas,” only one manuscript, written at Shiras in 1640, exists in England ; it contains one hundred and fifty-eight quatrains, the first, the second, and fourth lines usually, though not invariably, rhyming together. About two thirds of this manuscript was translated into English by EDWARD FITZGERALD in 1872. A superb edition of this translation was published in 1884 at Boston, in a large folio volume, profusely illustrated by Elihu Vedder; the illustrations occupying some ten times as much as space as the text. If we could conceive of the Greek Anacreon and the Roman Lucretius combined onto one being, we should have something like the Persian OMAR KHAYYAM. Of him and his poem, Mr. Fitzgerald says:

“Having failed of finding any Providence but destiny, and any world but this, he set about making the most of it, preferring rather to soothe the soul into acquiescence with things he saw them than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be…I have arranged Rubaiyat into a sort of Ecloque, with perhaps a little less than the equal proportion of the ‘Drink and make merry,’ which recurs over-frequently in the original. Either way, the result is sad enough. Saddest, perhaps, when most ostentatiously merry; more apt to move the sorrow than anger toward the old Tent-maker, who, after vainly endeavoring to unshackle his steps from destiny, and to catch some glimpse of tomorrow, falls back upon today (which has outlasted so many tomorrows) as the only ground he has got to stand upon, however, slipping from under his feet.”

Mr. Vedder arranges the quatrains somewhat differently from Mr. Fitzgerald, whose order we follow:

Selections from the “Rubaiyat”

I

Wake! for the sun who scattered into flight

The stars before him from the field of Night,

Drives Night along with them from Heaven, and strikes

The Sultan’s turret with a shaft of Light.

II

Before the phantom of False-Morning died,

We thought a Voice within the Tavern cried,

“When all the Temple is prepared within,

Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?”

III

And as the cock crew, those who stood before

The Tavern shouted, “Open, then, the door!

You know how little time we have to stay,

And once departed, may return no more.”

XLI

Perplexed no more with Human or Divine,

To-morrow’s tangle to the winds resign,

And lose your fingers in the kisses of

The Cypress-slender minister of Wine.

XLII

And if the Wine you drink, the lip you press,

End-in what all begins and ends-“Yes!”

Think, then, you are Today and Yesterday

You were-Tomorrow you shall be not less.

XLIII

So when the Angle of the darker Drink

At last shall find you at the river-brink,

And Offering his cup invite your Soul

Forth to your lip to quaff-you shall not shrink.

XLIV

Why, if the Soul can fling the dust aside

And naked on the air of Heaven ride,

Were not a shame-were not a shame for him

In the clay carcass crippled to abide?

XLV

‘Tis but a tent where takes his one-day’s rest

A Sultan to the realm of death addrest,

The sultan rises, and the dark Ferbash

Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.

XLVI

And fear not lest Existence, closing your

Account and mine; should know the like no more

The Eternal Saki from the bowl has poured

Millions of bubbles like us-and will pour.

XLVII

When You and I behind the veil and past,

Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last,

Which of our coming and departure heeds

As the Seven Seas should heed a pebble cast.

XLVIII

A moment’s halt – a momentary taste

Of Being from the well amid the waste –

And lo! the phantom caravan has reached

The nothing it set out from. Oh, make haste!

XLIX

Would you that spangle of Existence spend

About the Secret – quick about it, friend!

A Hair, perhaps divides the False and True,

And upon what, prithee, does life depend?

L

A Hair, perhaps, divides the False and True;

Yes; and a Single letter the clew –

Could you but find it – to the Treasure-house,

and, peradventure, to the Master, too;

LI

Whose secret Presence through Creations’s veins

Running, quick-silver-like, eludes your pains.

Taking all shapes from Fish to Moon,

They change and perish all – but He remains

LII

A moment guessed, then back behind the fold.

Immured for darkness, round the Drama rolled,

Which, for the pastime of Eternity,

He does Himself conclude, enact, behold.

LIII

But if in vain down on the stubborn floor

Of Earth, and up to Heaven’s unopening door

You gaze today, while You are – You, how then

To-morrow You, when shall be You no more?

LIV

Waste not your hour, nor in the vain pursuit

Of This and That endeavor and dispute;

Better be jocund with fruitful Grape

Than sadden after none – or bitter fruit.

LV

You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse

I made a second marriage in my house;

Divorced old barren Reason from my bed,

And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.

LVI

For Is and Isn’t with rule and line.

And Up-and-down by logic I define,

Of all that one should care to fathom, I

Was never deep in anything but Wine.

LVII

Ah! But my computation, people say,

Reduced the Year to better reckoning. Nay,

T’was only striking from the calendar

Unborn tomorrow and dead Yesterday.

LVIII

And lately by the Tavern-door agape

Came shining through the dark an Angel-shape

Bearing a vessel on his shoulder; and

He bade me taste of it: and t’was the Grape!

LIX

The Grape, that can with logic absolute

The two-and-seventy jarring sects confute;

The sovereign Alchemist that, in a truce

Life’s leaden metal into gold transmutes.

LXIII

Oh, threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!

One thing at least is certain – this life flies;

One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies;

The flower that once has blown forever dies.

LXIV

Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who

Before us passed the door of Darkness through,

Not one returns to tell us of the road,

Which to discover we must travel, too?

LXV

The revelations and devout and learned,

Who rose before us and as prophets burned,

All are but stories which, awoke from sleep,

They told their fellows, and to sleep returned.

LXVI

I sent my soul through the Invisible,

Some letter of that After-life to spell;

And by and by my soul returned to me,

And answered, “I myself am Heaven and Hell.”

LXVII

Heaven’s but the Vision of fulfilled Desire.

And Hell the Shadow of a soul on fire.

Cast on the darkness into which ourselves.

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

LXVIII

We are no other than a moving row

Of magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with this sun-illuminated lantern, held

In midnight by the Master of the Show;

LXIX

Impotent Pieces of the game He plays,

Upon his checker board of Nights and Days,

Hither and thither moves and checks and mates

And one by one back in the closet lays.

LXX

The Ball no questions makes of Ayes and Noes,

But right or left; as strikes the Player, goes;

And that he that tossed you down into the filed,

He knows about it all – He knows, He knows.

LXXX

The moving Finger writes – and having writ,

Moves on; nor all your piety and wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half of line,

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

LXXXI

And that unveiled bowl they call the sky,

Whereunder crawling, cooped, w elive and die,

Lift not your hands to it for help – for It

As impotently rools as you or I.

LXXXII

With the first clay they did the last man knead,

And there of the last harvest sowed the seed;

And the first morning of Creation wrote

What the last dawn of Reckoning shall read.

XC

What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke

A conscious Something to present the yoke

Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain

Of everlastink penalties if broke!

XCI

O thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin

Beset the road I was travel in,

Thou wilt not with predestined evil round

Enmesh, and then impute my fall to Sin!

XCII

O Thou, who Man of baser earth didst make,

And even with Paradise devise Snake,

For all the sin wherewith the face of Man

Is blackened, Man’s forgiveness give – and take!

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In the 16^th century journal keeping was so conventional that journals were called “common place books.”Today most people use journals only when something important or particularly memorable happens to them, especially when they’re feeling sad or angry. A sounding board, a calm companion, a repository of secrets and experiences, a journal also provides solitude for reflection. Now let’s explore some other reasons to keep a journal:

• Travelogue. “All of my life should be lived like travel,” a writer once wrote, “such avid attention to detail.” Try keeping a journal when you go on a trip. The act of writing spurs us to be more observant, making places come alive in our memories.
• Dream keeper. Dreams are wispy as smoke and as easily forgotten. Keep a journal by your bed to record your reveries. It’s handy at 4 a. m. when you’re still sleep-befuddled after a vivid dream of a flying-trapeze vampire.
• Common log book. In this day of texting and e-mail,, when was the last time you scribbled a note to a friend? Shared among your closest friends, a journalist is a more intimate way to keep in touch.
• Idea book. Document a hobby, research or a special interest like gardening or renovating a house. Stick flowers and swatches with your notes and ideas.
• Notebook-planner. Brainstorms make your to-do- lists, jot down ideas, set goals and business plans. You’ll discover the most practical everyday uses for the blank pages.
• Creative outlet. Many writers and artist find journals essential to their art, and so can you. Paint or draw on the blank pages. Record images that might trigger poetry as a trove of ideas and inspiration, journals actively encourage our creativity.
• Electric inventory. File your favorite quotes or words, songs, puns, conversations overheard, anecdotes, newspaper, clippings, illustrations, anything you find worthy of note.
• Collection holder. Stamps, souvenir, photos, whatever your pleasure, your collection finds a home in the blank pages of your journal.
• Memoir. Years later you’ll be able to reread your journal and remember who you were, how you’ve grown and changed. And your kids will get to know a different side of you.
• Simply as a correspondence to one’s self. A friend of ours keeps a grateful list, another writes scattered musings when she’s bored. Write freely without self-censorship, confide without reservation-journals turn our attention to little things that matter, give us a deeper appreciation of life. Best of all, it’s private. No matter how embarrassing or banal, no one need ever read it but you.

Being a writer was never an easy occupation. You are required to undergo arduous years of study and training in order to produce quality outputs that would please your readers. You will also encounter subjects fro writing that maybe hard for you to relate with. Like this one, writing a post for London limo hire.

For those who don’t have any idea about it, limo hire London is a process in which instead of buying a new unit of limousine, you can just rent it for a certain period of time at a certain price. This is a very good sense of practicality especially now at times of global crisis. London limos are considered to the best for the great service it entails to its costumers. If you try it, you won’t have to regret it for it really entails great satisfaction.

Just hiring or renting a vehicle for your usage for just a couple of hours is much cheaper than availing of a new one. It is not a bad thing, it is called practicality. We have to know that not all of our wants can be fulfilled the way we wanted it to be. If you want to know how you can try it, just click one of the linkages included on this post.

It is inevitable in our daily living that we incur debts only to meet our needs despite having limited resources. Having debts is not a bad thing unless it is not dealt properly. If it is not addressed the way it should be, debts incurred can give you problems that are not so easy to solve. One way of solving the problems regarding debts is through consolidating them.

For those who are not yet aware of debt consolidation, it is the process of putting all of you debts into one single, systematic list for you not to have confusions. It is done in the same manner and process with credit  consolidation to help you rid your selves with your debts and credits properly. These credits might be the result of credit card debt that is done by people to various transactions involving money. Whatever the case may be, consolidating your debts will really provide you a way of getting out of your debt problems.

Whatever the causes of your debts or credits are, you should deal with them properly to have a peaceful thinking. Debt problems are easy to solve if you know how to deal with them properly. You can also seek professional assistance for these particular matters.

Once you become a student writer you will have the chance to voice what you feel, your thought or idea. One of the problems I have encountered in making my column is the title. Then the words “Simple Graph” came to my mind.

Simple means easy, not complex, and easy to understand, while graph means the diagram stating the relationship between the two variables.

Simple graphs mean stating a relation or comparison of the topic being discussed in my column.

…of reality

Many opinions, many justifications but only one thing is true, “the world of reality”.

Being a writer of CAST Chronicle serves as my avenue to explore the world, the real happening inside the university. A lot of excursion will be explored not in place but in the place of reality. Will as student like me or like you make a difference? As I remember clearly, Dr. Jose Rizal said, “Ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan” but will this statement be remembered by us youth? When the mere fact that we don’t know how to deal with the world of dark reality that there’s something wrong going on.

Our college dean said in her column, “that the cooperation with entire student populates and administrations while create a good atmosphere towards the success of the university”. But how can we cooperate to the administration if they don’t know how to cooperate also? We are just only students, a student who is a learner from his environment.

…of hullabaloo

Every department of Pangasinan State University has its own department t-shirt. The Mathematics, Computer Science and ICT has their department t-shirt. What’s the issue? Nothing, I just aim for 5 but they give me 3.

Many don’t understand the meaning of simple statement, may be you will think this way: “The student of the said department doesn’t know how to aim higher.” Or may be this way: “Student doesn’t deserve the grade of 1” but what is the real meaning of “I aim for 5, but they give 3.”

According to the president of Math Circle Club Mr. Faulo Ramos said: These mean that you will be aiming for something worst once you experience the tough of being a student in the field of Technology and Mathematics. This is just normal, but once you overcome all of these getting a grade of 3 or higher than that will do.

Another thought is if you aim for nothing isn’t it is much receiving for the fruit of your hard work, rather than aim for higher will you get failed it is disappointing, and maybe next time around you will not be wake up to face the challenge again.

It’s better to think positive rather than thinking negative. Come to think of it did the President let his constituent down? But then I respect the opinion of each who posts their sentiment about the issue.

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