at the airport

A man beside me is holding a magazine, hoping that whoever needed to see it would glance his way. Patiently, he holds it up while scanning the sea of faces flowing his way, checking if one would flash a hint of recognition. “Ayun siya, para nang Amerikana!” I hear another excitedly call out. Floating on top of the giggles and high-pitched conversation is the distinctive sound of happiness. A part of me feels I could share the hope and happiness of these strangers that the corners of my lips turn up for a smile. I’ve got a great vantage point from where I am—at the greeters’ area. It affords me a ringside view of the faces of the arriving passengers that suddenly light up at the sight of their loved ones.

Though my presence in this place is business-related [to fetch a Thailand-based author slated for a weeklong speaking engagement], I don’t want to let this moment slip by uneventfully. While waiting for my own passenger to arrive, I still want to see the world around me spinning. And then I started my wondering. With every cart of baggage being wheeled out, a story of life is being written. The long-haired teen sporting a backpack with white buds on strings glued to his ears, might have a life sprinkled with adventure. I see a young mother, with a 3, maybe 4-year-old in tow while a younger boy was nestled in her arms, and wondered if hers is a life of contentment and domestic bliss.

I’ve been to many airports—from the most sophisticated where overhead trains could take you from one terminal to the next, to the most simple where signs are still done in crude, handwritten lettering. But whatever its location, there’s something about the air in the arrival area in airports that smells and feels the same. Maybe it’s the fragrant smell of hope, and the fuzzy feel of love.

For don’t you think that the airport’s arrival area could easily be named as the happiest place on earth? What with every reunion it has witnessed—lovers who endured months, or years, of loneliness can now revel in each other’s gaze and embrace. Families once separated and limited by geographic boundaries can now experience the warmth hardly simulated by a thousand phone calls.

And last night, at the airport, the lines of a new song aptly played on my ears:

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in, it takes you in for good
When love takes you in

I’m beginning to like airports. Not the runway, not the duty-free shop, not the departure area. The best spot in all airports in all of the world is where travelers are embraced and whispered, “You’re home.” Yes, you're home.

when the answer is silence

Is there a divine blueprint stacked somewhere in heaven which details the course each of our lives must take? If we pray—hard enough, long enough, fervently enough—will a scroll magically fall down from the sky, land on our feet, and then reveal a message that will erase our uncertainties about the future and make us grasp the present with the firm grip of courage?

I could ask a thousand and one more questions and still get an answer not different from what I got the first time I asked: the deafening sound of silence. Cloaked in the fine linen of mystery, silence can alternately be disturbing and calming, induce fear and hope, appear as black and white.

So how does silence reveal itself to me: as friend or as a foe? Does the answer of silence to all of my questions rattle me? Do I stomp my feet in impatience or wring my hands in despair? Or can I take silence as a companion and realize that silence can purge my ears of the unintelligible ramblings of the world and its litany of worries and woes?

Here in my room, where the hands of time seem to be frozen and the boundary of the Milky Way is confined to my room’s four corners, I distill my thoughts. Revel in the sound of silence. Waiting. Praying. Patiently hoping that it won’t be long until silence is dislodged in my heart by what would best take its place—the sound of a still, small Voice.

The "G" word

geek:’gēk/:noun:1: a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake;2: a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked;3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity [computer geek]

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I can’t be a geek. It’s bad for the reputation. The geeks I know are the underdogs in B-movies whose glasses are as thick as windowpanes, with hair rarely visited by a hairbrush, and with a social life confined to the front and back covers of a book. Okay, so I'm not willing to wear the tag. Yet another thought challenged my initial apprehension: But who says we can’t break the stereotype?

And so ended—with minimum struggle—my stint in the geek denial stage which lasted all five seconds (though it necessitated a confirmation from a “greater geek” who answered my “Am-I-officially-a-geek-already?” question with a simple, and relatively painless reply: need u ask?? :-B).

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Today I accompanied Jenny, a Mac-user, to one of their monthly mac gatherings. They might not make a people-power crowd but what mac users lack for numbers they make up for passion. Mac-using geeks (there’s that word again) intently listen to the speaker/forum moderator as if he was teaching them how to survive WW III. But then again, if they were willing to give up a weekend afternoon to be sitting in wooden blocks at the Powerplant Mall, is it any wonder how they could stay glued to the seminar?

However, my friend and I had another agenda: Can we wi-fi and surf? Scouting for a hotspot, we zoom in on the outside tables at Figaro. But before we order anything, first things first: does it have signal? It does! Two 12 oz. iced tea please!

And so after folders of music and picture files were shared, a Q&A discussion on some websites took place, and all the battery power was drained (mine), we sipped the last drop of our drink and felt satisfied with our virtual victory. [On the left is an evidence of my satisfaction. Thanks for the picture, Jen!]

Yes, Merriam-Webster. You can call me a geek.

Finding "the one" in (cyber)Promised Land

The Promised Land seemed so near—an MRT ride and a hundred or so steps away from our Mandaluyong office. Initially, I wasn’t sure if it held what it seemed to promise for me but I was hopeful. There was bound to be “the one” for me somehow. You see, it was my first time to buy a brand new computer, a laptop, and a thousand butterflies were dancing in my stomach.

My six-footer technical guru Aleks (who multitasks and acts as my voice coach and pianist in some instances) and I trekked to Cyberzone in SM Megamall. It was a Friday night and there was a midnight sale ongoing. We expected the two-kilometer mall to be bursting at the seams. Thankfully, we arrived before the people frenzy began.

All I wanted was for it to be white. I didn’t care if it had an expandable memory or if it could write DVDs or if it could accommodate multiple USB ports. Sounds Greek to me, really. Call me simplistic, or better yet, call me naïve who is fixated on a color [At least I still had enough sense to ask somebody else to act as my common sense!]. Aleks would laugh at me when he would see me obliviously walking past the non-white laptops which didn’t deserve a nanosecond of my time. In retrospect, it was like me looking for shoes: “I need brown shoes,” which eliminates all the other hues in the color spectrum. Going back to the laptop, we finally found the one I liked—a Taiwan-made Twinhead 12.1” notebook with features that seem excellent for its price. And needless to say but I’ll say it anyway: It’s white, shiny pearl white. I’m one happy camper.

Over dinner, Aleks asks me what name I’ll give my newly-purchased gadget. I laugh and answer, “I haven’t named any of my things before.” But then again, why not? I’ll be spending days and nights with this piece of machine I might as well humanize it. “Do you want it to be a boy or a girl?” he asks. “A boy,” I answer. I mull it over and after a quick trip to the restroom I confidently state my laptop’s name: “April Boy.” With a silly grin on my face I explain, “Well, it’s a boy and I bought it in the month of April.”

And so the next time I hear “Di Ko Kayang Tanggapin” over the radio, you know why I’ll be smiling.