Buhay Bangkok

It’s Good Friday today but here in Bangkok, it’s business as usual.

 Some of my memories of Good Friday:

1. Having a picnic at the ‘karayan’ or river in my father’s hometown in Ilocos Sur. Most Ilocanos are Protestants. While the rest of Catholic Philippines stay indoors shunning bathing as a part of penitence, Ilocano Evangelicals spend a quiet day at the river bank, catching freshwater fish and having lunch under the shade after a dip in the cool waters.

2. The world will end soon, or so my young mind thought on that Good Friday in the early 80s. We spent the Holy Week in Ilocos Sur (as we usually did when I was a kid) but before we left, there have been reports in the media that all the planets would soon be in alignment, supposedly a rare cosmic event. There was talk of the world (as we knew it, most likely) coming to an end when that happens, what with the supposed gravitational pulls of all nine planets tugging at each other when the alignment occurs. As I said, I was a kid then, and didn’t have much access to reliable scientific data to know that it was not that simple. This was reinforced by all those TV special programs shown during the Lenten season with millenarian and apocalyptic themes that were shown only during Holy Week, and you can imagine how scary things looked on that year’s Good Friday. I remember telling myself: Hey, not yet please! I’m still too young! I want to enjoy life first!

3. Penitents whipping themselves. It was the mid-80s, we just moved in to San Pedro. One of the churches there has the Santo Entierro as its patron saint. This is a lifesize replica of a dead Jesus soon after he was brought down from the cross. Naturally, the feast day was Good Friday. The highlight of the event was the procession of penitents from the church to the highway, around the poblacion then back to the church. Afterwards, the penitents were to go to the river and take a bath. Folk belief has it that once they emerge from the river, their self-inflicted wounds would have healed. These penitents are all male, dressed only in pants, their backs slashed by razor blades, blood flowing as they flogged their wounds with homemade whips. According to folk Catholic belief, this was a sure way of expiating their sins of the past year. It was an awesome sight, for a teenage boy, these long row of men, wearing hoods over their heads, trudging in the procession under the hot summer sun, whipping their wounded backs, sweat and blood flying with each flick of the flog.

Three months of silence…That’s a long time. I must’ve been quite lazy to jot down even a word here in my own blog. I read somewhere that one technique of maintaining a blog is to…well…maintain it. Post as often as you can. no matter how trivial or even senseless. It’s supposed to be better than coming up with a Pulitzer-winninge essay and posting it in your blog every year. Which, I think, is what Onic and Marvic have been doing with theirs. Something I find agreement with. It’s not easy to write, you know. Writing something sensible, I mean. It’s like carrying a child to term and delivering it, with all the accompanying pain and pleasure. (Now I’m just talking in a figurative manner here, alright? I haven’t been pregnant. Ever.).

Still, I feel disappointed every time I check my blog stats and see a long flat line, meaning nobody’s been checking my blog, which is fair because I haven’t been updating it either.

 And now I’m pecking these words…most likely senseless ones…just so I can fill in the gap that three months of silence have made. I’m not even going to edit these strings of words and phrases hastily and intuitively put together, the way I have done with my other blog posts.

 Three months…Three months…Let me see now…

Okay, so we went home for a brief visit. It was a hectic two weeks in December. No time to even ring the few friends I have left. Just had time to spend with my parents and siblings, and my wife’s parents and siblings, and their respective families. Sheesh, I didn’t even get to enjoy  our trips to the malls, what with all the Christmas rush and hustle and bustle. Just the same, I really felt good spending the holidays, however brief, at home, and not in a Buddhist kingdom.

Then just as the smoke and stench of gunpowder began to settle, we were back at the airport for the trip back to Bangkok. Back to the saltmines, the sing-song chatterings of my officemates and the isolation of being the only Pinoy in a Thai company.

And then Paulo and I observed our birthdays last month. I felt good giving him that AWE Striker. I still remember how happy he looked when he woke up on the morning of his birthday to discover that I had that toy vehicle brought in  from Manila just in time for his 8th birthday. Of course, I got my own AWE Striker too.

 March brought changes. For the better, I hope. My wife got accepted in Mahidol University-International College. It’s really a big deal, for among Thailand’s dozens and dozens of universities with international programs, MUIC is among the best, if not the. Well, her salary is icing on the cake, and for the first time after two years, she’ll be getting a higher pay than me. No tinge of insecurity from me, though. Anyway, the spirit of conjugal property is alive and well in our marriage.