Mental Fragments

This is what my officemate-friend told me today. I just turned 25 and its kind of weird ’cause don’t see myself that I’m quarter century old. Although I started to take life seriously at an early age (being the eldest child), I still can’t confidently say that I can take on life’s challenges.

But I’m improving! These past 1 and a half years for me has been very good. I’ve done many things and started to take charge of my life. I’m now thinking of making my own path and not just going with the flow. I feel more confident now and a ton better than a few years ago when I was depressed. Here are some of the things that I learned and accomplished within the past 1 year and a half:

- Started this blog to share my thoughts and feelings to other people
- Started learning playing the drums and performing before hundreds of audience
- Toured around the Phil. (Boracay, Cebu, Bohol, Palawan)
- Started handling people and dealing with clients at work
- Not taking myself too seriously (though I still have a long way to go)
- Rewarding myself and not feeling guilty about it
- Rediscovered my relationship with HIM

There’s still much to improve and these are my goals for the coming year:

- To be better in drumming
- Write songs for our band and hopefully a gig (Tugtog tayo Chistmas Party ha!? Wala pa tayo band name!!!)
- European tour (sana matuloy na)
- Determine what I really want to do with my life
- Open up to other people and improve my relationship with my family and friends
- Find that special someone
- Learn to live independently
- Be a better leader
- Deepen my relationship with HIM

My priority now is to be closer to God and hopefully with His guidance this will not be just a temporary feeling. This will keep on reminding me that everything I do should be for His glory.

The Lebanese government is caught in a difficult situation between Israel and the Islamic army Hezbollah. It’s been 5 days since Israel started bombing Lebanon. They are targeting Lebanese infrastructure (airports, ports, roads, etc…) that they believe the Hezbollah are using to get arms from Syria and Iran. The bad thing is that civilian casualties can’t be avoided since these infrastructures are located in densely populated areas. Israel is also enforcing a naval blockade so that on vessel can go in and out of Lebanon.

My mom works for the Philippine Embassy and they are in full alert right now. As of the moment, there is no way to evacuate our OFW’s and the embassy workers out of the country. To protect our OFW’s they relocated them into a Church for safety. Yesterday, my Mom, brother and my cousin left their place to relocate to Jounieh (city north of Beirut) to join other people in the embassy. They said that probably they won’t have internet access there so our communication will be limited to cellphone texts.

Then late last night, my Dad and I were watching CNN and BBC to get the latest updates. The headline at that time was that Jounieh was bombed. We began to worry about them. My Dad texted them to check their safety and we only got a reply early this morning. Thank God they are OK! To tell the truth, I was not really worried about their situation there until last night.

Please pray for the safety of my family and all our countrymen that are caught in the violence in the Middle East. I hope that the situation will not worsen and go back to normal as soon as possible.