ANSABEH NI EX? (25 thigs about me according to him)

Someone whom I knew for only 2 months thought and assumed that these are the things that could make me happy and texted all these to Nani. Both of us just laughed at this at that time knowing that we can last for years even without this. Some of the things here are true, while the others ...uh, no, definitely not me! Nani let me keep the note though and often times refer to this whenever he wants to "bully" me XP

I saw the note today at the back of a book and I thought I'd re-write and somehow do some corrections on it :)



*I put here his ORIGINAL and UNEDITED version while the bold and italized texts is how things (really) are, specifically with Nani*

1. Let her talk. She always claim that she is timid but let her talk and start to listen and you wll think you were a part of the adventure because she talks in detail.(WE both talk one at a time and WE both listen one at a time too.. I guess normal people refers to that as having conversations? And there's no need for me to make Nani feel that he's included in it, because he's really there when most of the things that we talk about happened)

2.Give her a rose. It is her dream to receive a rose from a man she loves.(Just thought about it now...We have been together for 26 months now and I haven't received any flower from Nani yet. But guess what, I am ok with it!)

3.Aways send her SMS. No matter how unimportant the content of your message, it will make her smile. (Definitely a no! I don't even text often...and If I do, it's only for me to make sure if Nani is safe. But as to what he is doing, or who are the people that he's going out with? No I don't ask that.. He voluntarily introduced me to his friends and he always let me know in advance what his plans are (whether its about his work or if he's going out with his friends. So why would I bug him about the details when I already know he's busy or having fun?)

4.Always tell her that you love her. She will always ask you why so make a list of reasons. You can recycle or paraphrase your previous reasons. She just want to hear from you that you love her. (Again wrong... I only asked Nani once.. I don't even remember his reasons now..I know he can be trusted, so why would I ask him about it every time? And one more thing, I am not a retard. So why would I want to hear recycled reasons everytime I ask?)

5.Talk and plan for your future wedding. She is a nature lover so plan your wedding so that it will be located where there are trees. Don't worry how to do it or think of the budget because she is willing to adjust. She is happy and satisfied as long as you are his husband.(As long as Nani is my husband.)

6.Name your future babies together. Don't include your ex gf's in your future baby's name.(Oh yeah, we do this sort of thing to amuse ourselves...most of the time...and since we're only having fun, no we don't mind if it's a combination of Nani's name and of his ex's... Sometimes I am even convinced that the resulting name is beautiful. But then, again I know that nani is not insensitive and knows his limitations if the time comes that we will be naming our future babies, for real!)

7.Don't tell the truth. Don't admit that your legs are shaking in front of her mom. Not because you want to look macho but it will make her comfortable to bring you again in their house.(No need for this advice. Nani is most welcome to stay and spend the weekends and the holidays with us. He even gained the trust of my lola who never trusted you.)

8.Always tell the truth except in number 7. Some of the things you will say will hurt her but it will gain her trust and she will also start to tell yoou everything. Telling her the truth will remove her fears and will make her more at ease with you.(Nani is an honest man...from the beginning till now. So there's no need for this advice)

9.Play with her younger brother. It will make you feel closer to their family. At the same time give her a glimpse of your future happy family together. (I think Nani naturally loves my little brother that everytime I come home without him, he always ask "Ate, where is kuya Nani?")

10.Read her paperworks. She is good writeer and thus encourage her to write more. Just forgive her handwriting. (Yes I am really a good writer, Thank You)
11.Make her realize that she is beautiful. She thinks that she is ugly because of some of her imperfections. Prove to her that she is beautiful inside and out. (Nani already did the moment he said he loves me).

12.Bring her to a place where she can sing because she has a beautiful voice. Or simple ask her to sing. Buy her musical stuffs if you have extra money, to encourage her more. (I can sing much better now even if he don't spend anything to buy me those stuff. Nani's music is already curved in my soul. Chos!)

13.Let her wear your shorts or shirts. It will make her feel closer to you. (At least this one is correct!)

14.Don't restraint or be hinder to anything she loves to do. She is very creative and will always do what she think is right. (Nani has always been supportive.)

15.Watch movie together. No matter how boring or cheesy the twilight series, she wil enjy it as long as you are together. (I really enjoy watching movies whether I am alone or with anyone. I sometimes get angry at Nani whenever he falls asleep at the middle of any movie that we see together, may it be in big screen or in his laptop...but in the end, I guess it's just fine with me...at least he came to see it with me. And it don't matter if it's drama, comedy, action or horror... I am just happy watching a movie. )

16.Eat at KFC. She loves twister. Actually she loves eating with you. (I really loved twister then, sorry! hmmm it's been such a long time since I last ate that.I might as well visit the nearest KFC store one of these days...)

17.Always bring water. She is always thirsty and want to drink water. So make sure you know the location of the cofort rooms of the places you re going to visit. (If I remember it right, this was written two summers ago...so yeah, definitely I was always thirsty at the time.)

18.Always ask what is her dream. Listening to her dreams will make her feel that she is important and at the same time you will gain knowledge on what is in her subconscious mind. (False. It works the other way around. Tell me your dream and If I am somewhere in it, I will know that I am important to you. On the other hand, I think Nani doesn't tell me about his dreams either...because he talks about his plans..our plans..)

19.Don't watch mix mrtial arts competitions or any violent stuffs together. She will remember the beatings that her fathe did to her. (Not applicable anymore).

20.Always call her by your endearment name. Don't call her sweetheart or honey. Make it unique. (Nani came up with Malko even without this note. And nope, again I don't mind if he calls me by my name or by our endearment name. What concerns me is how true his feelings are.)

21.Don't get irritated when she compares you to her previous bf/crushes.She does not have an intention to belittle you. She just want to realize that she loves you whoever you are. (No need for comparison. Nani is way much better.)

22.Fetch her at the bus terminal or bus stop even if you are busy doing important things or rushing paperworks that have deadlines the following day. (I am not always Nani's priority but he always make sure he can adjust his sched and attend to my needs after he' s done with his job. Or he always make it a point to inform me beforehand of his plans so that I can adjust to him as well. )

23.Spend the new year's eve with her family and go to the grocery store together and buy food for the medya noche. (yeah, for two years now, it has become a tradition for the both of us. We spend Christmas in Nueva Ecija and New Year in Laguna.)

24.Buy her a book or download ebooks for her. She loves to read. (Nani's mom and siblings are readers too and they let me borrow some of their books. We also go to bookstores whenever we are at the mall).

25.DON'T LEAVE HER FOR SOMEONE OR SOMETHING. (We've been together for 26 months...and as of this moment, I am secure and confident that he's not going to leave me for someone or something anytime soon. So thank you, but I guess this advice just don't apply. Nani is NOT like you. )

Nani's family is also not well off...and I am completely trusting him that no matter what, even if we get poorer than what we alreay are right now, he will never left me.

BECAUSE UNLIKE YOU, HE WON'T LEAVE ME FOR SOMEONE WHO MIGHT GET HIS FAMILY OUT OF POVERTY. UNLIKE YOU, I KNOW THAT HE WON'T DROP ME IN EXCHNGE OF SOMETHING LIKE AN OPPORTUNITY TO GAIN HIGHER POSITION OR MONEY...I am just thankful that at least, you are brave enough to TEXT and ADMIT those things.

Maybe under your present situation, you'll say it's just an alibi that you just made up. No matter what, I will always believe that it was your real motive. Why? Because from what I remember, you said you were supposed to court and hopefully marry the daughter of your school's VP..(For your nanay to finally experience the luxury of life and to fulfill your own dreams) But I guess things didn't work out as you planned them... and maybe that's how you ended up (pretending good enough) head over heels with your current gf (who shouts money and world tour) who is obviously a much better pick..

it's just sad that she's so clueless..and I guess too submissive and (really) head over heels for you that she can't hardly see the trap you set for her...

I guess I'm out of words to say and I am not very good at praying but I am only hoping that God will save her from you. Because I think she's kind and deserves a better man than you are.

.

MY MOM IN HER DAUGHTER'S EYES

It’s May again…a month of numerous celebrations for most of the Filipinos…There’s the annual town fiestas, Flores de Mayo and other festivities that are usually being celebrated in this month.

Also celebrated during this month is the Mother’s Day, which in my opinion, is the least celebrated of all. Although there are already quite a number of advertisements as early as April saying that we should buy our mothers different presents, such as perfumes, jewelries, dresses and cakes, I don’t think that the day is really celebrated in the way that the commercials told us we should. I don’t think a lot of people are actually going out with their moms and surprise her with a beauty and spa treatment in a salon, or if a lot of husbands actually prepared candle-lit dinner dates with their wives…

Maybe it is not proper to assume anything, but honestly we don’t do any of these at home on Mother’s Day. Sometimes we greet her, other times, we don’t. And the day just goes on like any other normal days of our lives.

My mom isn’t a perfect mom (and I don’t think anyone’s mom is). She’s maybe even far from what the majority would call ideal. And my siblings will surely agree if I’ll mention even just this one trait that we all hate about her. Despite all of these, I still decided to blog about her, for a change, as a tribute to her. But because I am writing this because it’s Mother’s Day (her day), it doesn’t follow that everything that I am about to say here are all pretty and nice things. As I’ve said, she’s far from the ideal. And by using the ideal as a standard, I’m afraid there are not a lot of good things to say about mom.

Based from what I am always told, my mom and dad were still in college when they had me. It was my dad who shouldered her education expenses until she graduated from college. She then becomes an elementary school teacher… a tough one at that, before she became a school principal.

Because she’s a teacher, she made me read the alphabet and the abakada at age 3. She taught me how to read long sentences and paragraphs at about the same age too. By the time I reached 6, I was already in Grade 1 helping my other classmates to read on their own.

I can also recall those long hours we spent daily in front of the old 5, 10, 25 and 50 centavo coins along with the other peso bills. Since I still find it hard to add, subtract, multiply or divide at a young age, she made me remember each coins and bills according to its appearance. Then she’ll demonstrate how a piece of every peso coin is equivalent to 4 pieces of my favorite candy and if I only want to buy two candies with it, I should receive one 50 centavo coins or two pieces of 25 centavos, and so on.

Remembering this, I now realized why even if the shape and size of the coins and bills we use are changing, instead of doing the fifty minus eight-fifty math, I sometimes find it easier to count my change and my expenses in the same way. Like when I give a pink 50 peso bill as a jeepney fare, to check my change, I’ll count if I have two 20 peso bill , one piece of 1 peso coin and two pieces of 25 centavos, and so forth.

Unlike most mothers however, my mom also stopped helping me with my daily assignments from school the moment I passed Grade 1 . I don’t know if she trusts my intelligence too much that maybe she thought I have learned how I should study my lessons from the previous school year so maybe she can already left me alone with it. Maybe it’s also because she is a teacher and maybe she thought that the best way for me to learn is to learn on my own…from my own mistakes. Maybe the only wrong thing I can say about it is that she treated me as an adult at age 6 or 7 trying to instill in me the virtue of independence.

So that’s how I get through elementary, then high school then college. She told me that before asking her about something, I should make sure that I have tried doing many things just to find the answers on my own. She told me to use the books and read it thoroughly. She is a teacher and she knows that the answers are always there, just waiting for me to find them. And for those things that can’t be found in the books or from anywhere else, are sometimes the things that I should answer based on how I understood my lessons. Only when I don’t understand a thing clearly that I should finally ask.

True enough, I have learned to work my way through many obstacles in my life on my own…trying not to ask for anyone’s help. I thought for a long time that it’s wrong to ask questions and to ask for help. At most times, I find myself just thinking about the possible questions to ask and when to ask them, but never really get myself to actually saying it. And even until now, I find myself a burden and too weak whenever I am asking help from anyone apart from her, my siblings and my bf.

Mom is also undoubtedly a career woman. Often times (we think) she’s neglecting her obligations to us, just to deliver what is needed of her as an educator. She’s working even after the school hours are over. She’s even working on Saturdays and half of Sundays just to train her students for this and that competition. She spends many (over)nights with the staff of a publishing/printing house to make sure that their school paper will definitely land a place on the Top Ten. Even when we were little, we were used to her out of town trips/seminars/workshops and competitions that could sometimes last for a week. And by the time she came back, specifically from those District/Division/Provincial/Regional/National School Press Conferences, she’s sure to brag few of her new accomplishments and awards. We’re used to it. And personally, the long hour she spent away from us can sometimes makes me sad in the same way that the awards that she’s always taking home makes me happy for her.

I even remember this time, when I was in high school and I tried to join our school paper. In one of the workshops conducted, the schoolpaper adviser read a feature article I wrote then asked me how I am related to her (my mom). I don’t really know then if I have the talent or he just said I have inherited it from my mom upon learning how I am related to her. Nevertheless, I know the awards my mom took home from those conferences, and trusting the schoolpaper adviser’s skills and judgments, his complements had really made me proud of myself.

Now here’s her one trait that I said many will surely agree.
My mom is a nagger. And because she’s a nagger, she’ll surely complain if my siblings and I are not doing the household chores the way she told us to. And I hate it when she’s nagging while I am really about to do just everything that she’s telling me to. When I was younger, I swear I thought that the series of instructions that she’s giving me are too many that it seems to contradict her previous instructions.

And sometimes, I swear, even if I think I am doing it right, she’d still say I am doing it wrong. I don’t know. Maybe mom is a little bit of a perfectionist too that most of the time, every chores she assigned us to do ends up with her doing everything and telling us to leave her alone and stay away from where she is working.

Back then, I can always remember myself sulking at the end of the day, believing that I’ve done everything wrong. I don’t know If maybe I am just trying to justify my laziness, but I think I’ve also come to a point when I don’t want to respond anymore to any of her instructions believing that I can’t do it right anyway…thinking that I’ll just waste my time on it as she would surely do everything I did , her way again.

It took me a long time to accept that no matter how worse I think my mom is, she still knows best. I’ve proved that when I enter college and somehow live on my own.

It’s ironic that when she’s not around to nag and tell me what to do on most of my things, It was then that I’ve learned to keep my stuff in one place as I hear her voice repeatedly on my head…as if it was recorded since the very first day she instructed me how I should do some things and how to store my personal stuff.

And even now that I am working and renting an apartment with my officemates, when I see most of their things lying around in every corner of our place, I suddenly think of home and mom and how she used to remind me that I should learn how to store my things properly because one day, I will live with other people and they might not like my things lying around the room.

I think about mom and thought about hearing her voice telling me to lower mine whenever it’s too late and others are already in their beds.

I think about mom when I’m doing the dishes..when I’m doing my own laundry…when I’m ironing my clothes…when I am trying to cook my own food.

I think about mom and her voice echoes asking me if I am disposing it properly whenever I am throwing away the tissue or the cotton buds or whatever it is that I used personally.

I think about mom and now I understand why she doesn’t want to let us touch or use or go through most of her stuff without even asking for her permission (even if it’s just a pillow or a comb)… I understand her now why she don’t want our things to clatter with her things even if we are sharing the same house..Why she wants her things to be in one place and our things in another.

I think about her on my first heartbreak…how she endured the process she went through when our father left us. I think about how strong she was when she dealt with the pain and the loss in her own way… how she’s trying to continuously raise the four of us even without our dad… and I think about what she might tell me under those circumstances.


I wonder how will my mom react if she would pay me a visit and learn how I keep my things stored neatly in one place and how I usually act just the way she often told me to, yet at home, I am still bounded to commit the same mistakes that she repeatedly forbid me to do.

I see mom now in ways that I don’t understand before…She may not be affectionate, but I know she cares..She’s astute and an achiever and we surely inherited her genes (‘nuff said). She’s independent and sometimes a perfectionist but I know she only wants us to learn and do more good things in our lives

So whether the content of this article is good or bad in her opinion, for sure, parts of this will unleash the Grammar Nazi in her.. However, I am just happy and expecting her criticisms and nagging not because this is her day, but because I know my mother too well…