sakuralette

sakuralette: small or bonsai sakura hehehe. can't wait for spring. hopelessly wondering when it will come. until today, it is still snowing in my place. spring means new leaf, buds, flowers, colors, soothing sunshine. more accurately spring means done with the 3 papers (minus the thesis), and few more months before take off for home sweet home.

i chose to post the picture to identify my mind's preoccupation these days. (found the flowers in the sidewalk of urasa. they were for sale. bit expensive so i contented myself by taking it home as a pix.) winter can be so monotone tho it is distinctively awesome.

oh spring, come home to me, and bring my girl flowers minus the bees. meantime, content with sakuralette in a pot, real cherry blossom coming in an April spot.

unworded

observation

pix taken in urasa, while waiting for iuj bus in japan, to be young and to be free means low waist for boys, mini skirt for girls. in a very cold winter afternoon, when the olds covered themselves with layers of thick jackets, the girls wore almost nothing from the waist down. these are high school students of todays. so young, so free. i just hope that they shall "remember the Creator in the days of [their] youth before the days of trouble come and the years approach when [they] will say 'I find no pleasure in them...'"

skina

this is my world. standing by, dropping by this place i called "skina" taught me more than the 19 years i spent in school. yes i learned how to read and write in school, i even learned how much is 1+1, but in this place, and with these people (not all of them is seen here), i learned what life is meant to be. he who simplifies life radiates the best smiles.

timezoned

unfortunately (for me? for her? for the other her?) or fortunately (for me? for her? for the other her?) she's not the one. this is just a tribute to our timezone days which happen to be the best days during my manila stay. to grow in time is wisdom and to find time to play is childlikeness. growing without foregoing the other is what i call timezoned - a state of being wise and not losing the wonders of childlikeness. this state is not achieved in the classroom.

thanks to che who owns not the classroom but the timezone.

more on dogs

more about dogs. never mind the thesis. in japan, you can see more people carrying dogs than carrying babies. considered now as an ageing society, japan is facing extinction. spielberg (if he'd still be alive by then) might consider making another potential movie hit (JURAPANESE PARK). i dont exactly know the thesis of having dogs as "babies" rather than having real babies when in fact, well, it only takes a man and a woman...

planning to have a baby in japan requires a lot of cost-benefit analysis, as if it's another item to be purchased in JUSCO. and they end up owning a dog. i maybe wrong. i hope someone explains to me why dogs are dressed, carried, and why beauty and dress shops for dogs are thriving in japan.

i first saw this lady playing with her dog in a sidewalk while they ate together that stick-thing (looks like skinny french fries) she [is] carrying. i followed her for about 20 minutes looking for a good angle without her noticing, though one time she caught me focusing the camera on her as i managed to give her a cute smile which she did not find amusing. won't she like it she'd have a free publication in my new found blog.

bulldogs in japan

dogs in japan are better off than most people in the world who don't have access to potable water. they have cars, they have their own vet meds, barber shops, dress shops, what have you. and to think they don't have to write a thesis on education and economic growth, 20-page papers on philippine politics, foreign aid and poverty, and china-japan relations. i saw these bulldogs yesterday while i was walking in the lonely road of urasa, unmindful of the crammings of iuj students for deadlines. yet it seems the dogs have it all what iuj students crammed for: more food, better shelter, expensive clothing (hey that's basically what we want that's why we spend sleepless nights computing the value of labor and capital as production inputs to increase income) and amenities like car, spa, hair care, health care. are they better off than us?

nonetheless, i still don't want to be a dog in japan.

prologue

for computer non-freaks like me, to blog or not to blog is a question. thanks to the citizens of KL (as in kangaroo [read: tarsier] lover) and bohol who answer the question for me: to blog, of course. in my case, blogging is for someone who has a lot of other things to do but hates doing them and ends up writing an entry in this 14-inch machine. this is better and more fun. takes a lot of courage to finally stand up and say enough for econometrics and time now for what they call nonessentials. nonessentials for them; lack of better things to do for me.

hmmm time now for me to email my thesis supervisor why i am not meeting him today.