Three Minus ER
---
Once upon a time, there was a boy who was abandoned by his father at an early age. His mother used to be a clever businesswoman in town engaging in small-scale lending and residential construction business and then selling the units to prospective buyers through loan arrangements. Unfortunately, the abandonment devastated his mother so much that she stopped all her business endeavors and decided to become a labandera instead.
The sudden life change was a big blow to this boy, who is used to the adequate life he was enjoying when his family was still intact. Now that he had no father to support him, his mother and his young sister, the boy stopped going to school in order to financially support his household.
This boy did all kinds of menial jobs. Being in a town close to the fishport, he became a cigarette vendor and then a newspaperboy. When he got older, he found a job at the fishport as a boat maintenance worker whose job is to scrap away the rust and the barnacles forming under the boat's hull.
However menial this boy's job was, he had a talent - his gift of language was so impressive that during the Martial Law years, his works inspired many of his colleagues to stand up and fight for their rights. He became a militant activist, who fought the government side by side with some of the prominent Reds personalities of today.
In this underground organization he met a moderate student leader who hails from the University Belt. At an old age of 28, she was still pushing for a revolutionary change of government based on Socialist principles and ideas instead of having a decent work. Their common fight became a cause for a common bond that soon lead to union. This boy eventually marries the lady who is almost a decade older than him.
I am their first offspring.
Many years had passed. The lady gave up the fight and became a school teacher. The boy, believing that a revolutionary government is still possible fought way beyond most activist of his generation would carry on. The only event that lead to his turning point in life was the Mendiola Massacre of 1987, where a militant leader like him ordered his entire unit to a suicide face-off with government armed forces.
A decade had passed. He became a beat reporter in several tabloid newspapers. After several years of being in this career. He was presented an offer from a newly established newspaper to become their colummnist. His promotion was so swift that in a matter of several years, he became the vice-president. However, being on top had its price. As far as I remembered, everytime he comes home at night, he cusses on some person he is talking on the phone. This violent cycle prevailed for a year until he decided to start his own tabloid that would soon shake the foundations of Journalism in the country.
He created the first all-bare smut Tabloid.
As a mediaman, he understood the risk he had to take in order to present the facts - whether such facts were twisted fabrications or absolute truths. He knew that his growing number of powerful enemies who were very eager to silence him might vent their frustration on us instead. So our role was to become a mere shadow so long as he is connected with the organization he had just started.
In the high, lonely world he used to live in, there was this lady who never left his company. Through thick or thin, she was there to lift him and prop him up when odds were against him. For some reasons, this lady believes that redemption is assured so long as he stays with my father. Eventually their friendship lead to a much closer relationship until romance bloomed between them.
She became the long-time mistress, the bane of my mother's existence.
For the longest time we were kept hidden away from the limelight, this lady became the star; the queen overlord of the tabloid empire this once poor boy had created to cover up for his past pains in life.
As I grew older. I was asked to follow his footsteps and take up a journalism course in a Catholic University. I did what he asked and little by little, the people who followed him began to acknowledge me as their successor.
My father was still a columm writer when I entered college. He writes about his insights about national and local politics and current events. People praise his writing style and his ability to stir people opinion. But he never wrote about us - his family - even in just a single issue in his years of stint in this career.
However, there were bits of anecdotes he wrote about us - individually. Such rarity prompted us - who gets a 10-second national spotlight to cut such columm page and preserve the little anecdote as souvenir.
---
One summer of 98, I had just graduated from high school. Realizing the prospects of heavy workload in college, I remembered writing a letter to my dad begging him to buy me a new computer since my good, old 486 would not allow me to play newer and resource hogger PC games. Of course, I never mentioned my real motives for asking a new PC and he never replied to my letter either citing indifference to my request.
However, weeks after I gave him my letter, a househelper cut out my father's columm dated the week when he recieved my letter. It turns out that he used part of it as an allussion to his topic for the day in his columm.
I never mentioned what I discovered and the entire wishful desire to have a new computer was buried under heaps of problems and controversies that came out months after. However, nobody knew that I kept the issue where he first... and probably the last time he mentioned me to his readers.
Looking back, he wrote a columm about me as a representation to the changing times brought by a new technology that was just gaining foothold in the society then. Many many years later, when the technology he had forsaw has finally become part of everyone's daily life, his story would be retold by the same person who once asked him a piece of technology that would become the key to his immortality.
---
From: Remate Tonight
Date: May 30, 1998
Columm Title: Viagra 2
o0o
Ngayong tayo ay magkaroon ng anak na lalaki ay madalas nating itanong sa ating sarili kung ano kaya ang kanyang iniisip.
Sabi nga ng commercial; what's on your mind?
Kamakailan ay natuklasan natin ang kanyang pinapangarap. Nagsalita siya habang nanaginip.
Marahil ay ito rin ang laman ng utak ng mga kabataan sa ngayon.
Ano iyon?
Pentium 2 300 (MHz),
32 MB-RAM
1.44 MB FDD
2.0 GB HDD
2 MB Video Card
SVGA Colored Monitor,
with server
Ayon sa kanya, kung ibig niyang makipag-usap sa kanyang kapwa kabataan ay mayroon silang chatline, kung ibig niyang sumulat ay may E-mail, at may strategy games siyang pinaglalaruan na "laro umano ng may utak."
Siya umano ay naka-on line
Tang'na, weirdo na talaga ang mga kabataan!
Nawala na ang mga curacha sa kanilang isipan.
o0o
---
Once upon a time, there was a boy who was abandoned by his father at an early age. His mother used to be a clever businesswoman in town engaging in small-scale lending and residential construction business and then selling the units to prospective buyers through loan arrangements. Unfortunately, the abandonment devastated his mother so much that she stopped all her business endeavors and decided to become a labandera instead.
The sudden life change was a big blow to this boy, who is used to the adequate life he was enjoying when his family was still intact. Now that he had no father to support him, his mother and his young sister, the boy stopped going to school in order to financially support his household.
This boy did all kinds of menial jobs. Being in a town close to the fishport, he became a cigarette vendor and then a newspaperboy. When he got older, he found a job at the fishport as a boat maintenance worker whose job is to scrap away the rust and the barnacles forming under the boat's hull.
However menial this boy's job was, he had a talent - his gift of language was so impressive that during the Martial Law years, his works inspired many of his colleagues to stand up and fight for their rights. He became a militant activist, who fought the government side by side with some of the prominent Reds personalities of today.
In this underground organization he met a moderate student leader who hails from the University Belt. At an old age of 28, she was still pushing for a revolutionary change of government based on Socialist principles and ideas instead of having a decent work. Their common fight became a cause for a common bond that soon lead to union. This boy eventually marries the lady who is almost a decade older than him.
I am their first offspring.
Many years had passed. The lady gave up the fight and became a school teacher. The boy, believing that a revolutionary government is still possible fought way beyond most activist of his generation would carry on. The only event that lead to his turning point in life was the Mendiola Massacre of 1987, where a militant leader like him ordered his entire unit to a suicide face-off with government armed forces.
A decade had passed. He became a beat reporter in several tabloid newspapers. After several years of being in this career. He was presented an offer from a newly established newspaper to become their colummnist. His promotion was so swift that in a matter of several years, he became the vice-president. However, being on top had its price. As far as I remembered, everytime he comes home at night, he cusses on some person he is talking on the phone. This violent cycle prevailed for a year until he decided to start his own tabloid that would soon shake the foundations of Journalism in the country.
He created the first all-bare smut Tabloid.
As a mediaman, he understood the risk he had to take in order to present the facts - whether such facts were twisted fabrications or absolute truths. He knew that his growing number of powerful enemies who were very eager to silence him might vent their frustration on us instead. So our role was to become a mere shadow so long as he is connected with the organization he had just started.
In the high, lonely world he used to live in, there was this lady who never left his company. Through thick or thin, she was there to lift him and prop him up when odds were against him. For some reasons, this lady believes that redemption is assured so long as he stays with my father. Eventually their friendship lead to a much closer relationship until romance bloomed between them.
She became the long-time mistress, the bane of my mother's existence.
For the longest time we were kept hidden away from the limelight, this lady became the star; the queen overlord of the tabloid empire this once poor boy had created to cover up for his past pains in life.
As I grew older. I was asked to follow his footsteps and take up a journalism course in a Catholic University. I did what he asked and little by little, the people who followed him began to acknowledge me as their successor.
My father was still a columm writer when I entered college. He writes about his insights about national and local politics and current events. People praise his writing style and his ability to stir people opinion. But he never wrote about us - his family - even in just a single issue in his years of stint in this career.
However, there were bits of anecdotes he wrote about us - individually. Such rarity prompted us - who gets a 10-second national spotlight to cut such columm page and preserve the little anecdote as souvenir.
---
One summer of 98, I had just graduated from high school. Realizing the prospects of heavy workload in college, I remembered writing a letter to my dad begging him to buy me a new computer since my good, old 486 would not allow me to play newer and resource hogger PC games. Of course, I never mentioned my real motives for asking a new PC and he never replied to my letter either citing indifference to my request.
However, weeks after I gave him my letter, a househelper cut out my father's columm dated the week when he recieved my letter. It turns out that he used part of it as an allussion to his topic for the day in his columm.
I never mentioned what I discovered and the entire wishful desire to have a new computer was buried under heaps of problems and controversies that came out months after. However, nobody knew that I kept the issue where he first... and probably the last time he mentioned me to his readers.
Looking back, he wrote a columm about me as a representation to the changing times brought by a new technology that was just gaining foothold in the society then. Many many years later, when the technology he had forsaw has finally become part of everyone's daily life, his story would be retold by the same person who once asked him a piece of technology that would become the key to his immortality.
---
From: Remate Tonight
Date: May 30, 1998
Columm Title: Viagra 2
o0o
Ngayong tayo ay magkaroon ng anak na lalaki ay madalas nating itanong sa ating sarili kung ano kaya ang kanyang iniisip.
Sabi nga ng commercial; what's on your mind?
Kamakailan ay natuklasan natin ang kanyang pinapangarap. Nagsalita siya habang nanaginip.
Marahil ay ito rin ang laman ng utak ng mga kabataan sa ngayon.
Ano iyon?
Pentium 2 300 (MHz),
32 MB-RAM
1.44 MB FDD
2.0 GB HDD
2 MB Video Card
SVGA Colored Monitor,
with server
Ayon sa kanya, kung ibig niyang makipag-usap sa kanyang kapwa kabataan ay mayroon silang chatline, kung ibig niyang sumulat ay may E-mail, at may strategy games siyang pinaglalaruan na "laro umano ng may utak."
Siya umano ay naka-on line
Tang'na, weirdo na talaga ang mga kabataan!
Nawala na ang mga curacha sa kanilang isipan.
o0o
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