Earlier today, Hana had the boys work on a mini-project to commemorate Ninoy Aquino’s death anniversary. We also had them watch a few documentaries on his life, because we’ve always felt that kids should grow up knowing their heroes. And the job of introducing them to personalities they should look up to should not fall on schools alone—parents should let children know about history without the sanitized versions people peddle these days.
Curiously, Kuya Mikku chose to write down this inspiring quote:
The only advice I can give you: live with honor and follow your conscience.
For me though, I find this line attributed to Ninoy to be his poetic best:
A time comes in a man’s life when he must prefer a meaningful death to a meaningless life.
He lived—and died—guided by that exact thought. If only Filipinos lived with as much love and sacrifice for the Philippines.
Here’s a handy tip for Mozilla Firefox desktop users: you can search for open tabs, history, and bookmarks, right from your address bar. Though this is not highlighted as a major feature in their support docs, it is actually very useful.
When starting a new tab (or in your current tab), go to the address bar and start/prepend your search with any of these keys:
% Open tabs
^ History
* Bookmarks
This means typing %gmail will display a list of matching current tabs, allowing you to quickly go back to your GMail window. And because this will also work for bookmarks, it makes the bookmarking feature more useful when you mark you favorite sites and frequently visited pages. While you’re at it, use Firefox Sync and get access to your open tabs, history, and bookmarks from any of your sync-enabled devices.
Instead of simply using your address bar as a Google Search replacement, put it to good use to efficiently navigate your browser. And please, use DuckDuckGo as your primary search engine and limit your unintended privacy leaks.
The last time I got to talk to her was a Friday. She would pass away just four days later, on a Tuesday. That was seven years ago.
That Friday, it was my turn to watch after her during the day. Watching after her though only meant getting to visit her at the ICU for 15 minutes, at a pre-set schedule just a few times through the day.
Around noon, I received a message from the ICU, telling me that she’s been asking for me. She was complaining of pain in her lower body, and it supposedly felt like it was coming from her legs.
The nurses were kind enough to let me in unscheduled, to talk to her. The attending doctor instructed me to purchase a topical painkiller to ease her pain.
I was back not long after and the nurse applied the medication. They allowed me to stay with her though it wasn’t the scheduled time for visitors yet. She said it hardly worked, and she still felt terrible pain. She was teary-eyed so I held her hand to comfort her.
We tried to talk about other things; to distract her from the pain, and to keep myself from my own tears. It barely worked but I felt thankful to share that moment with her. Several weeks before that day, I came to accept the inevitability that there will be fewer of these moments in the coming months before they all become just a memory.
So I tried to pray with her, almost silently. We held hands like that until she fell into slumber, her agony masked by sleep.
The afternoon light was fading.
I thanked the ICU staff for graciously allowing me to overstay as I left. That was the last time I talked to my mother—the last time I heard her voice.
My brother was back by evening. I told him it was the first time our mother got to rest during the day.
I stayed at home that weekend to be with my wife and son, only to learn from my dad and brother that our mother’s condition worsened in that brief span of time. By Monday, she was in comatose and would never wake up again.
My sister flew home to the Philippines late Monday evening with their still-nursing, months-old baby. She only got to see our mother in the ICU on Tuesday. By evening time, our mother was gone.
… a new chapter in Philippine history. June 30, 2022 is the start of a Marcos presidency that has surprised people around the world. What country would elect the son of a dictator who ruled with impunity? Who would elect a man who refused to attend any credible debate during the campaign period, has had no proper education (and lied about it), and never acknowledged the suffering of Filipinos under his father’s rule?
Welcome to the Philippines.
You can’t blame anyone who finds it hard to be optimistic about having Bongbong Marcos as president. His father had a brilliant mind sadly laced with greed and corrupted by power—and where did it take us? Though we can hope that his laziness makes him forgettable and incapable of damage, he is also surrounded by traditional politicians who were never afraid to bend or go beyond the law. That’s the scary part.
Pray for us Filipinos, because we will need it.
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Hello. I’m Markku and this is rebelpixel.com, my weblog. More about me?
