Here's To My Sister

You know how things can get so busy sometimes, that not only do we forget to connect with ourselves, but also forget to connect with the people we love most? People like our spouses, our children, our parents, our friends. I mean, we may see them, but we don’t necessarily take time to connect with them. We often tell ourselves that we can make it up to them once our busy schedule slows down. Funny thing is, our schedule never slows down. We really have to schedule our most important priorities first. We should make time for each other. – It’s obvious, but any relationship without any face time is going to have problems.  You shouldn't have to fight for a spot in someone’s life.  Never force someone to make a space in their life for you, because if they truly care about you, they will create one for you.

Personal Story

It was my birthday. Suzy was my college classmate and closest friend, someone who I’ve always admired for her grace and kindness. When we graduated, we both moved to US. As we continued into new chapters of our lives as adults, we saw less and less of one another. Over the years, we’ve settled into a comfortable routine of calling each other twice a year : especially on my birthday and her birthday *smiles*.

After giving me various messages on my Facebook, she slightly said genuinely, .Hi sis  happy birthday  awsan daka nandin  ala maganswer eh  enjoy your sis  iloveyousomuch.

I stared at my monitor, poleaxed to react, and trying hard to hold back my tears. I smiled with sincere gratitude in front of my computer. 

“Wow! What a gift!” I thought. 

The Best Gift of All

It became clear to me that one of the best gifts we can give someone is appreciation and an 
open communication to express that appreciation. It took her two minutes of connecting with me and I was shaken-up for days. I felt more energetic, more positive and unusually calm.Sometimes, it’s the ones closest to us who we take for granted, unintentionally of course. Ironically, those closest are also the people whom we love most. When our lives become hectic from chasing after one task to the next, it is really easy to miss the simple gifts we are graced with everyday.

Harry Potter

I was browsing through some recent acquisitions at the bookshop then suddenly I notice this handsome face on the cover of a magazine. A guy who looks like he's out of a Gillette commercial, oh my! it's Harry Potter! So, I ended buying this magazine and I forgot about my agenda that day.

Bullet Magazine has a wide range of topics including Harry Potter and his farewell to the character that made him so famous, but also about true love and full-frontal nudity.

NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream Reviews

NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream in Milan is a rosy color. It’s very creamy and opaque. What you see in the tube, is the color you get. It is some kind of magical lip paint cream that glides on so easily, and once it dries, it stays put on your lips. It doesn’t settle into fine lines nor does it dry out your lips. The finishing look you are left with is a smooth, soft matte color. The formula is lightweight and silky with that touch of a silicone feel but nothing uncomfortable. It’s everything you want a matte lip color to be! If you’re looking for a matte lip color that won’t dry out your lips, you have to try NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream!

I wore this for hours without touch up and that was after eating and drinking. I will say that for lighter shades you will need to apply thickly to prevent streaking. I love that I don’t have to wear a lip liner with these. It didn’t feather or bleed at all. Other than just being an amazing product, it also smell like a butter cake ;) (not overpowering scent).

I made this article for my sis Jenny Canlas.

Rice Porridge

Recently, I am trying to incorporate iron-rich foods into my diet. This Aroz caldo is one of the simple Filipino dishes that I’ve made. There is really no need to introduce Aroz caldo as this is probably one of the most well-known.

Ingredients

1 ½ lbs chicken, cut into serving pieces

1 ½ cups uncooked rice

34 ounces water (about 1 liter)

2 tbsp fish sauce(optional) or 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 cup onion, minced

4 pieces hard boiled eggs

1 cup scallions (green onions), minced

2 knobs ginger, julienned

3 tbsp safflower(kasubha)

1 tbsp cooking oil

1lemon

Cooking Procedure

Wash and drain the chicken,which is cut into small pieces
In a pot, heat the cooking oil then saute the garlic, onion, and ginger
Dash-in some ground black pepper
Put-in the chicken and cook until outer layer color turns golden brown
Add the fish sauce or 1 tsp salt to the soup and mix it with your spoon. The amount of salt depends on your taste, so use more or less as you like  and uncooked rice then mix and cook for 1 minute.
Pour-in the water and bring to a boil
Stir occasionally and simmer until the rice is fully cooked (about 30 to 40 minutes)

Ok, now time to serve!
Take the porridge out of the pot, transfer to a large plate, and put it on the table to serve
Put-in the slice hard boiled eggs
Add the safflower for additional color and aroma
Serve hot with garlic, minced scallions, shitaki mushrooms, and lemon.
 Share and Enjoy!

How to cook the garlic (Tustadong bawang)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup garlic, minced
1 tbsp cooking oil

Procedure:

Pour the oil in a pan then turn on the stove
Put-in the garlic immediately (make sure that the oil is not hot enough to fry the garlic)
Adjust the heat of the stove to “low” and wait until the garlic turns golden brown (or medium brown if desired)
Drain the oil and place in a bowl with paper towel or tissue
Mix it with your porridge.


Shitaki Mushrooms

Ingredients:
2 pieces of shitaki mushrooms slice into 1/4 inch thick( wash and drain)
1 tsp of vegatble oil

Procedure:


Pour  the oil in a pan. When the oil is hot enough add the mushrooms and fry for 1 to 2 minutes in a medium heat.

Drain with the use of paper towel.

The Choice To Forgive

JAM COLLINS CAMAYA is a good-natured and attractive woman, but I could see through her eyes and the sorrow in the way she held helself. Though her parents were  successful people who raised her as middle-class in a humble small town, her mother was warmth and lovely, while her father was never home because of his overseas work.

When she met the man whom she passionately love, as if she had wings, and she's flying high in the sky, feeling the wind romantically blowing  through her hair. But that feeling ends when the man she love betrays her, it feels as if she have been dropped like a rock in mid-air. She scramble to grab a hold of something … anything, as she witness her body falling at great speeds, and then shattering on the earth below.  That's how unfair the world was!

She was angry, hurt, confused, scared, and lonely inside but she keeps her cheerful personality. She vents so often that I become her punching bag haha! and I don't regret it. Really! She has tons of insighful and remarkable stories.

Whether we’re talking about breakups, or facing the reality of a one-sided romance, it is painful. So much so that it disrupts our normal flow of experiences, causing us to not function normally.

With so much emotion invested and our identities tied in with these experiences, it’s no wonder that this is the number one topic whenever I have conversation with my friends. . Although the stories were different, the underlying message was universal and one in the same, “I am in so much pain from not being with this person – what can I do?”

Sometimes, the pain of lost love is so intense that it can shake our beliefs about romance and relationships. When these emotional bruises are not understood and have not healed properly, they become invisible baggage that drag with us into the next relationship.  The simple and radical notion that how we react to these hurts is up to us. Is forgiveness can heals the wounded heart?

Forgiveness can reduce stress, blood pressure, anger, depression, and hurt, and it can increase optimatimism, hope, compassion, and physical vitality. This does not mean that forgiveness is ever easy. It certainly wasn't easy for Jam. But forgiveness was something she sould learn to practice, even if didn't come naturally. Difficult it was, Jam's experience is emblematic of many others I've seen.

Jam had mastered the forgiveness. She determined what she did not like about him, which is his behavior and knew in gruesome detail how she felt about it. She told me what a LOUSE he was.

Jam got her first glimpse at an alterate way of living when she started to practice stress management every time she thought of him.

As forgiveness progressed, Jam began to look at her painful experienced and herself what UNENFORCEABLE RULE she was trying to enforce. I reminded her that she would not be so upset unless she was trying to change something that was impossible for her to change.

The biggest change in Jam was the way she turned her grieveances into more positive stories about herself. She talked with pride of forgiving him and learning how to take care of herself. Jam wa a woman who took her forgiveness to heart.

To become a forgiving person, we have to practice forgiving smaller grievances. Then, when a bigger insult comes, we hare ready, willing and able to deal with it. Alternatively, like Jam, once we learn to forgive a major grievance, we can understand the value of limiting the power that pian and anger hold over us the next time we are hurt. No one can make the people in life behave kindly, fairly, and honestly at all times. Waht we can do is forgive the unkindness that comes our way and put energy toward meeting our positive goals. Perhaps the most fundamental benefit of forgiveness is that over the time it allows us to access to the loving emotions that can lie buried beneath grievances and grudges.

In the long run Jam finds her extraordinary happiness ( her true LOVE). As with all things of the heart, there is an ingredient of magic in finding love. There are no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Love is beautiful and unpredictable. The best thing we can do is to start to become the most outstanding person possible. The universe will know when we are ready, and when we are, true love will happen, unexpectedly.

Pay It Forward

Part of  the problem, I think, is that we lack a sophisticated discourse to show appreciation because we are out of practice. It isn't something that comes naturally to most of us.

We like to think that we are our own creators and that our lives are ours to do with as we please. We take things for granted. We assume that we are totally responsible for all the good events that occurs in our way. After all, we have earned it. We deserve it. A scene from The Simpsons captures this mentality ; When asked to say grace at the family dinner table, Bart Simpson offers the following words " Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing." In one sense, of course, Bart has a point.. The Simpson family did earn their own money to buy their food. But on another level, he is missing the big picture. The grateful individual senses that much goodness happens independently of his actions or even in spite of himself.

GRATITUDE IMPLIES HUMILITY, which is a recognition that we could not be who we are or where we are in life without the contributions of others.

SAY IT

The best way to express your gratitude is by saying “thank you” in person. Do it in private often, and do it in public even more often. There’s no better way to make someone feel appreciated than to say “thank you” publicly.

WHY IS GRATITUDE GOOD?

First, gratitude strengthens social ties and cultivates an individual's sense of interconnectedness.

Second,,the power of gratitude is that it increasesone's sense of personal worth. When we experience gratitude, we understand  that the another person wishes us well, and in turn, we feel loved and cared.

Finally, because we are receptive beings, dependent on the help of others, on their gifts and their kindness. As such, we called to gratitude. Life becomes complete when we are able to give to others what we ourselves received in the past.

It is gratitude that enables us to receive and it is gratitude that motivates usto return the goodness that we have been given. In conclusion, it is gratitude that enables us to be fully human.

Dealing with Asshole Poisoning

When I arrived in Fairfield, Ohio as a 25 year old alien, I was an inexperienced, innocent, ineffective and extremely nervous to my unknown environment. My expereince with the challenge of being alone started last year. At first, I found the solitude unbearable. I can definitely say this wasn't a fun experience, when I have my husband always in my side for some years. Although, it did teach me a valuable lesson about how to enjoy my time alone.

My piece of delight evaporated when a more senior individual ran to my mother-in-law, and said something unpleasant with the intention of hurting me. She secretly and expectedly extracted every ounce of joy I had been experiencing.

When I encounter a mean-spirited person like this, the first thing I think is, "WOW, WHAT AN ASSHOLE!"

No matter where we go, UNFORTUNATELY, we have to deal with people who are negative, people who oppose our ideas, people who piss us off or people who simply do not like us.

There are 6.4 billion people out there and conflict is a fact of life. This fact isn’t the cause of conflict but it is the trigger to our emotions and our emotions are what drive us back to our most basic survival instinct; react and attack back to defend ourselves.

In these instinctual moments, we may lose track of our higher selves and become the human animal with an urge to protect ourselves when attacked. This too is natural. However, we are the only animal blessed with intelligence and having the ability to control our responses. So how can we do that?

I know it’s not easy, if it was easy, there wouldn’t be difficult or negative people to begin with.

ARE NEGATIVE PEOPLE BORN OR MADE?

Yes, some are born that way. There is a strong evidence that no matter what our personality is, we can transform into an animal (our primitive instinct of survival) under the wrong conditions. This happens frequently with shocking speed and intensity when people assume inferiority and power.

FIGHT THE POWER

I've spent much of my last year thinking about how to sustain a humane environment. Based on my learning experience we call LIFE and stories that I hear, I've developed a few lessons.

HURTING OURSELVES

One of my favorite sayings is “Holding a grudge against someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” The only person we hurt is ourselves. When we react to negativity, we are disturbing our inner space and mentally creating pain within ourselves.

ESCAPE IF YOU CAN

The best thing to do if you are stuck under the thumb of a negative person is to get out fast. RUN!

Not only are you at the emotional risk, you are also at risk of emulating the behavior of the jerks around you. Catching it like a disease.

If you can't avoid them, start with polite confrintation. Some people really don't mean to be jerks. They might be surprised if you gently let them know that they are leaving you feeling belitted and demeaned. On the contrary, other jerks are demeaning on purpose, but may stop if you stand up to them in a civil but firm manner.

IT'S ABOUT THEM

I’ve learned that when people initiate negativity, it is a reflection of their inner state expressed externally and you just happen to be in front of that expression. It’s not personal, so why do we take it personally? In short: Because our ego likes problems and conflict. People are often so bored and unhappy with their own lives that they want to take others down with them.

NEGATIVITY POISONS

I’ve found that once I allow negativity in one area of my life, it starts to subtly bleed into other areas as well. When we are in a negative state or holding a grudge against someone, we don’t feel very good. We carry that energy with us as we go about our day. When we don’t feel very good, we lose sight of clarity and may react unconsciously to matters in other areas of our lives, unnecessarily.

WASTE OF ENRGY

Where attention goes, energy flows. What we focus on tends to expand itself. Since we can only focus on one thing at a time, energy spent on negativity is energy that could have been spent on our personal wellbeing.

Negativity isn't just something that only happens to others and can't possibly happen to wonderful people like youu. All of us are at risk.

While I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with negativity, it is something I find myself having to actively work on. When I’m caught off guard and end up resorting to a defensive position, the result rarely turns out well.

The point is, we are humans after all, and we have emotions and egos. However, by keeping our egos in-check and inserting emotional intelligence, we’ll not only be doing a favor for our health and mental space, but we’ll also have intercepted a situation that would have gone bad, unnecessarily.