The Journey. It’s Mine. [Raine’s Mom, Problogger, Techie-wannabe, Wheelchair-Traveler]

and since the party was just next door…kahit naka-pambahay puede na! he he he.

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…doing freelance work at home

…blogging to stay connected with old friends and meet new ones

…an ex-research chemist

…blogging for a living

I’ve always not cared about blog stats. Even if this blog is embedded with an invisible (free) statcounter tracker, I never used the tool to worry about how many people are reading this blog. I just check it from time to time just to get an idea on where my readers are coming from or if I really have more than my loyal commenters.

My Google Adsense account, after two years have barely 20$ in it - so that pretty much say a lot about my blog monetization efforts here. I am after all a network (pro)blogger. He he.

Anyways, I just checked the recent visitor activity of this blog via statcounter and I am quite surprised to find out that this blog has turned into landing pages of a many google and yahoo web and images searches. Key words like “bicol words”, “what does magayon mean?”, “legazpi”, “gubat, sorsogon”, “lubi-lubi”, “why did Gabby Concepcion leave the Philippines?” somehow make it to this blog. However, words like “bicol lady waiting for love” and “sexy bicol filipina looking for fun” do as well. Imagine who’s putting in such key words to search the net?!

I would like to believe that the filipina-mail-order-bride days are over. But during my net-cafe-just-to-get-online days, I was shocked to realize that the Filipina-looking-for-foreigner-BF phenomenon has just been brought a notch higher, with internet chat rooms as a tool encompassing Filipinas of all ages, from the twenties to the fourties - of all shapes and sizes with one thing in common - very long black hairs - a trait that apparently the prospective BFs look for in a Filipina (isn’t this old notion?!).

While I have no qualms about meeting a decent guy online (I know quite a few who found long lasting fruitful relationships from meeting their husbands/partners online) I am not going to exert that much effort by hanging out in all chat rooms there are like it is my bread and butter. 

One time I overheard a young lady (a college student at that!) while chatting with her cyberspace “boyfriend”. ”Okay I’ll turn around and show you my butt but you have to put that money in my bank account like you promised!”  Afterwhich, my jaw just dropped and thought ” Oh my God, is she serious?!” and “what the heck I am doing here blogging like a machine to earn money to feed my family?”

That been said, I am not acting like some bigot here, judging that “kind of Filipina”. After all, I live in a place where there are more Filipina japayukis than Filipina domestic helpers, and more plain housewives than college graduates who’ve worked after marriage. I just think that Filipinas (especially these Filipinas from small-town barrios) should get out of the mentality that the only ticket to go abroad and live a better life is marrying some (retired, old) foreigner with (lots of) money.

They should stop demeaning themselves and finally realize that there is more to being a Filipina, to being a woman for that matter and that life abroad is not always that land of milk and honey we were taught in the colonial days and that not every foreign man comes with money and he doesn’t even have to be old and retired!

There are way too many options these days to go out into the world and get out of our poverty-striken, humble origins. Like getting an education or doing some honest work to put yourself in school. C’mon ladies, gone are those days that provincial Filipinas should be married by age 18 and should have a bunch of kids by 25! Gone too are the days of young daughters as payment to some landlord that her parents owed money to. (meron pa bang ganito?!) Sana wala, this is year 2007 for crying out loud not 1807! At may internet na nga sa Gubat!

Filipinas are strong and sweet, honest and courageous and are inteliigent women of the world and all that good stuff are made of. That’s what Filipinas are!

Here I go again…talking non-stop about my growing boy. Well I really can’t help it especially that I am just too happy that we got over the first- few days of school without a glitch, without tantrums throwing up and that sort of stuff.

Alas Raine is happy and confident once more to be left in the company of others, in this case, his school with a bunch of kids his age. (Actually he already was last year, except when we were stricken by typhoon milenyo he was sort of traumatized that any house or building can fall down. So he opted to stay at home with us than be left in school with a bunch of “strangers”.)

[click photo to enlarge]

I’m crossing my fingers that he’ll continue on with the rest of the semester and get on with the succeeding ones. I’m positive he will this time…I just told Raine before he left today that if he continues with this attitude, he’ll be graduating college in no time…and that I didn’t have to work. LOL! I am sooo paranoid. He just gave me the sweetest smile and his automatic “okay mommy!” with a thumbs-up sign.

Actually I am just glad right now that Raine is excited about something else - like going to school and talking about his classmates, how cry-babies they are - than bugging me about silly stuff and being such a cry-baby that he is, sometimes it’s more like “over-acting’ than it really is. He he he.

I’ve always kind-a wondered (and sometimes hated the fact!) why I am an only daughter and eldest to three rowdy boys.

When Raine came, I finally knew why…

If you were Raine, would you miss a father you never knew when you have the love and care of the three greatest uncles in the whole world? After all,what you didn’t have you wouldn’t miss, right?

In photo from left to right:

1. With doting Tito Ye - here, shaving Raine’s head at home. Gerry (my youngest brother and younger of the twins) is (among my brothers) the most patient to baby-sit and attend to Raine. He doesn’t mind giving Raine a bath or even wash his bottom if necessary.

2. With bickery Tito Nat. Of course Raine’s life will not be complete without his love-hate-love relationship with his Tito Nat. Geonard (Gerry’s older twin) is the rowdiest of my brothers. He plays guitar in a band and my most “hated” because he is the typical teener: lazy, care-free and can’t watch TV and play music without the full volume. But Raine bonds with him with his computer/video games and guitar playing and basketball and other boy stuff.

3. Raine’s Papa Gary is his lolo-in-the-making: best father in the whole world! My brother Gary (oldest of the three and only a year younger than me) is a seafarer. He is currently on board a Japanese bulk vessel. Guess what?!…Papa Gary calls Raine at his every port stop, he spends more call time with Raine than he does with his almost-3-year-old son. Gary is, in my book, the ideal father: he leads by example and disciplines with a lot of love. I am just too grateful Raine has him to look up to as a father figure.

Happy Fathers’ Day Papa Gary…

…and Happy Fathers’ Day to all the fathers out there!

My Lakbayan grade is C-!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

…and I will bring Raine with me, wherever. Promise!

Abby, take this test. You’ll probably mark the whole map!

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** my european friends’ nickname for the Philippines (instead of ‘Pinas).

Tina tagged me and well, I guess i have to sort of spit out the reason why I picked Rainier for my son’s name. I am warning you now, the story is soo corny! He he.

Well…first of all, he is supposedly the son of a “King” and so I thought that (when I knew I was pregnant) if I will have a boy, he’s going to be the “Prince” and so Rainier was the first name that automatically came to my mind - for Prince Rainier of Monaco.

That and the fact that most of my professional life, the German influence was so huge.

But the common/newer German version is actually Rainer (pronounced RIE-ner) and as explained by my ex-boss (all my ex-bosses were German!), Rainier is actually French pronounced the French way (heck I can’t even write how it is pronounced, by I guess you know what I mean!).

So when my pregnancy ultrasound confirmed that I was having a boy - Rainier he became. Otherwise, it would have been a coin toss between Kristine and Katherine - my two favorite girl names in the whole world!

[Raine’s second name: Brando - is what the “King” wanted to name him. Agreeing to it as Raine’s second name was one of my meet-you-halfway moves back then. Silly me! But you know what? I kind of warmed up to the Brando after all these years. Rainier Brando has a commanding ring to it, it is so masculine. Raine doesn’t like it very much though, if you ask him these days what his name is, he will answer with Rainier Gamat Brando - putting Brando in the very last because it’s his less favorite name which actually makes some people think Brando is a surname! Maybe I’ll just have to get married to somebody-Brando then we’ll be all set? Bwehehe.]

Anyways. Rainier is such a tongue-twister especially the way Filipinos pronounce it - pronouncing it as it is written: R-a-i-n-i-e-r. Imagine rolling tongues with all the rrrs.
So, together with my housemate then (Ging), we decided on the nickname Raine (i just added the e to distinguish from rain the ulan) - influenced by watching re-runs of Friends on TV.

(Remember that episode when Ross and Rachel were discussing names for their coming baby girl? Ross actually didn’t want the name Rain.)

So there. Raine. After all, in my personal life, when it rains it pours - and Raine will always remind me of that.

What about you, what is the story behind your children’s names? I guess they’re far more profound than mine. Ha ha ha!
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By the way, Prince Rainier of Monaco died last year at age 81.

According to Behind The Name, Rainier is the French form of Rayner (pronounced Ray-nur): from the germanic name Reginar, composed of the elements ragin “advice” and heri “army” - a name brought to Britain by the Normans.

Alas I am a year older. (Maraming Salamat sa lahat ng greetings na natangggap ko: SMSs, emails and even Friendster messages!)

BUT…except for back pains and the additional bulges in the wrong places…it still feels a lot like 25. After all, I stopped counting there.

I would have wanted to post a new photo of me (possible titles: fat fab at 34) but my hair needs a “make-over”, here comes those curly locks that i am not too fond of. Heh.

Anyway, my little school boy is raring to go to school and we’ve said goodbye to his old look.

NO more skin-head…mommy please!

…and Raine is going “back” to school. Yeeha!!!

That means four hours uninterrupted work at home. He he. (ang sama ano?!) But really it will be healthier for Raine to hone his socialization skills - which is rather not very good because he has been interacting more with adults since after typhoon milenyo when he sort of dropped out from his nursery school.

While at home though for the past semester, I’ve encouraged Raine to do some school-like activities just so to lessen his TV and “bilad-laro sa araw” times (i.e. browsing books, coloring and writing). But mind you I am not strict at all, I am soo lax in this department. From the very start I haven’t really forced Raine to write or recognize all the letters correctly or count in descending order correctly all the time, all at once — mainly because I am not too patient (tamad!) and because I believe that learning should not be forced. After all Raine is just 4-and-a-half, why would he be pressured?!

Besides, I cannot even remember how my parents taught me (us) to write. Only that we were surrounded with a lot of things that will familiarize our young minds with the letters, numbers, shapes, colors and lots of pictures of stuff interesting to pre-schoolers. At age 6, i was raring to go to grade one, then I got accepted despite being underage and only had a year of prep school behind me.

AND…growing up in a big retail-wholesale-grocery-store (Chinese-owned, where my parents used to work and where we kids grew up) helped a lot with simple math, writing and especially reading. Everyone told me that from the moment I could read letters, i would read any scrap of paper I could get my hands on. (kahit brown-out nagbabasa. mula daw sa karton ng kung anu-ano hanggang sa mga dyaryo’t komiks na pinagbalutan na ng kung anu-ano!)

Well I can already see those signs in Raine…BUT at the moment, he is at a scribbling/coloring frenzy. All the pens and pencils in the house have been running out of inks and leads, drawings/scribbles can be found anywhere, as in anywhere. Scraps of papers aren’t enough sometimes, inks/colors somehow find their way in pillow cases, bed sheets and even Raine’s arms and legs! Ha ha.

But since he’s starting school again on the 14th I am just making a kind-of review and see how far he is at writing his name (he prefers writing shapes, trains, cars and buses than writing his name!). So I just always write his name in all caps in a paper i could find (this time ang natagpuan kong puede na lang sulatan ay ang mga karton ng katol) and just keep telling him to follow suit.

So far this was the closest he could make to writing his name:

Actually, this is a lot better, other versions looked a lot like chinese characters!

We (I) rarely go to malls. Even before - it is not my usual “tambayan”, unless I will watch a movie, buy something really important or wanting to eat at a fastfood/restaurant that doesn’t have a branch nearby. That and the fact that most of my life I’ve been living as far away as I can get from big malls and big cities. (palagi, sasadyain talaga ang mall) He he.

As long as there is a big, nice grocery/supermarket a few minutes away - masaya na ako — which we actually do have now in Sorsogon City with the recently opened LCC Supermarket.

(Well if going to a big mall is a “rare treat”, that experience makes it the more fun and you wouldn’t mind splurging on your money. At least with me, that is often the case.)

So when it’s time to shop (as in shop galore) for some decent shoes and clothes (which I do rarely, mga twice or thrice a year lang!) - that’s one reason to hit the mall. Down here, it’s more than an hour away to Legazpi City where there is a Pacific/Gaisano mall - more like the smaller SM’s.

Yesterday we went (my fifth time since I came down here April of last year - that would make 3x last year and 2x this year) - not for shopping galore though but to accompany Raine to watch Spiderman-3 which has only shown 2 weeks ago in Legazpi City. Tomorrow (Monday) the cinemas will change movies, so we really had to go yesterday - otherwise Raine will not be able to forgive me. He he.

So we spent the day “malling” and I enjoyed the boys lose themselves over video games, I had to go back countless times to buy tokens. I swear I’ve never been to any mall’s amusement/game center, but yesterday I enjoyed watching Raine having fun and having the ride of his life. Aside from shooting a few hoops, he chose all the car-driving related games. He is after all car-crazy. That and Spiderman-crazy.

Spiderman-3 highlighted Raine’s Saturday. He kept saying “ang saya-saya ko mommy” until he fell asleep in the bus on the way home. It was all worth it even though we missed the last jeepney trip from Sorsogon to our house - we have to hire a tricycle instead and paid five times the normal fare.

All that for Spiderman 3: Raine’s second movie experience. Guess what the first one was? Right…Spiderman-2!

Pero ang saya ng anak ko hindi mababayaran. And that is all that really matters.