Tag Archives: friendship

Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen, The Shadz Loresco Version 2012

Posted in Eureka Moments by

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, writing would be it.

Everyone can write lists, make one: budget, bucket, grocery, names you need to forget (and then highlight them with a black Sharpie, hah!). Journal. Professor Google can point you to studies that can back up the benefits of this habit, whereas I can only dispense advice in the name of nostalgia and hindsight.

Eat, drink, and get married. In any case, stock up on antihistamines. All three can be allergy triggers.

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JM & Kim, December 2012

Travel to foreign places with familiar faces. Regardless of iMaps, you are never really lost beside a friend. Rent in the city– that is, hundreds of miles away from your parents’ house– with your little sister because it orients you with both the dynamics of independent and of collaborative living.

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With Ed, Len, Grace, and Ayesa in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, November 2012

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With Ayesa, Hazel, and Mia in Davao City, December 2012

Let go of unhealthy and open yourself up to new friendships. But keep the ones you’ve had when you were so much younger. Here’s to hoping you and those you lost are now better off without each other.

With Joey, JB, RJ, and Apple at the SEOP Christmas Party, December 2012

With office friends Joey, JB, RJ, and Apple at the company Christmas party, December 2012

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With college friends Ed, Len, Ayesa, Grace, Skee, and Joecyl, December 2012

Love in the time of eczema. When people cut you off in the airport queue or in highly competitive environments (read: work), keep calm and eat chocolates. Sarah Kay said they’re only few things chocolate can’t fix. When you find this to be true, message me on Facebook. Appreciate the advancement of others. Crab mentality is so 1900s. Cram, but only when you have more than 24 hours in your hand.

Visit museums. Better yet, volunteer to tour kids around them. This is a lesson in parenting, or at least in the art and science of running after gradeschoolers when you’re yearning to ogle Monet. Mundane or divine, it’s still one of the best feelings in the world, that is, hugging a child when you finally catch them.

Cry while watching musicals. Eat while zombies are ripping their victims limb from limb. Sometimes you have to balance hard and soft. I’m still figuring out the ratio though.

Do the living and learning in the moment, not at the end of the year when making resolutions becomes a poor excuse for missing a day out of the 365.

Read. Travel. Collect playlists. Don’t be scared to be 25, or that you have been or will be.

Wear sunscreen.

Swim.

And trust me on the writing.

“In my life, writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.”

~ Barack Obama, President of the United States, Time’s 2012 Person of the Year

*****
The mid-2012 version

The 2011 version.

Thanks to Baz Lurhmann and his song.

Livin’ la vida Laiya

Posted in A Moveable Feast by

In lieu of words, which are so elusive this week, here again are some snaps, this time from my recent trip to Laiya in Batangas (highly recommended by a friend). I guess it’s true what they say, when packed with endorphins, who would care about putting together thoughts on paper, or WordPress? Well, some of us would. But I think it’s just different when you live your life out there not thinking if this or that adventure is blog material or merely going down your memory vault. You just live it, and from hindsight you recall it to be fun, liberating, spontaneous, and sometimes, blog-worthy.

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There are tons of photos saved in my disk and device but most of them are not my takes, so even if you have a deep crush on me, sorry to burst your bubble but you can’t just grab those and not credit them to my friends. Hee! There’s this one parasol flying moment I captured though–still lit, but it’s going into the memory vault. :)

 

Letter to Lisane

Posted in The Muse is Home by

*First of five letters from the future self, courtesy of friends

Hello, little lady.

Football (Soccer ball)

This is your future self. I need you to listen to me: whatever you’re going through right now, in five years’ time, it won’t matter. You’ll be a strong, successful woman with a wonderful man by your side and a circle of friends that will test your patience and strengthen your character. But before you get there, you need to go through the pain.

First, I’ll tell you about love.

That man you’ll meet in the football field, the one who’ll bandage your foot–love him, but not too much. He will break your heart and destroy your world–but you will be alright.

That other man you’ll meet in the field — with the dreads and kind eyes — don’t push it. He’s a coward who offers you material things instead of the things you really need. When you break up with him for the third time, let go. I’m telling you, he only seems special because you want him to be so.

You’ll meet other boys, date, and explore. Whatever you do, don’t date that guy you’ll go to a hiking trip with. Five years later he’ll still haunt you.

Second, write. Follow your passion. Play football, disobey your mom, scale the walls, injure your knees. But most importantly, write. Don’t worry about befriending your blockmates — they will never get you. Be a leader, and look for answers. Above all, be ready. You’ll take a shortcut and will fall into a lake. Literally.

You’ll get a job before you graduate, enjoy it. A month later you’ll get a better one. That’s right, fight for your people. Pull the man’s curls and show him that you can’t be pushed around. Take a rest, slow down. You’re already ahead of the rat race, stop running so fast.

I’ll tell you to save, but that would be futile.

Baby girl, the future is hard. You’ll be plagued with problems that range from mundane to gut-wrenching. You’ll witness favoritism, corruption, and lose respect for somebody. But hang in there, things will get better.

Throughout your life you’ll struggle. But I trust you. Five years have passed and I can still look back with no regrets. You’ll do a fine job of growing up. You’ll make mistakes, but will learn from them. And everything that will happen to you has a reason — I know that now.

Last, be open to opportunities. You will say yes in a way that you never thought would positively change your life.

The only thing I wish you did then, and what I’m telling you to do now: go buy trolls. Five years later, you’ll wish you didn’t throw them away.

Love,

Lisane

 

Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen: The Second Quarter of 2012 Edition

Posted in Eureka Moments, The Muse is Home by

If I could offer you only one tip for the near future, swimming would be it. Return to your parents’ house and hit a nearby beach. Swim with a pink bathing suit on, and yeah, swim without it.

When dealing with family, friends, work, weight, and such, use a mind filter. Don’t take in stray stressors, let things flow as should be. Physicists believe that everything our planet encompasses, comes and goes in one fluid motion. When tossed among ass-kissers and bullies, choose dignity, excellence, faith, honor, and grace.

Feeling trapped? Take to the roof deck. Clarify your perspective.

Or hie off to the mountains. Visit a museum. View art with a friend. Take photographs. Preserve the experience. One day you’ll have something to fall back on, in case you’re trapped again.

Watch every sport you can’t play; rugby for one, that ruffians’ game played by gentlemen. Support your country, cheer for your players. Who knows but that from the bleachers you’ll discover a piece of who you are?

Eat and be merry. If you don’t have a comfort food, find one. Explore the metro, or the weekend markets. Make plans.

Don’t begrudge people who play favorites. Life has its own balancing act anyway. Make efforts to extend peace to one and all. Stop swallowing your pride, spit it out instead. That way, you’ll taste life’s flavors at their best.

Scrawl your bucket list somewhere, and tick items off it one by one.

Hear out fellow bloggers. They have stories to tell. But before strangers, listen to your friend, sister, mother, father. They’re a great part of the stories you share.

Never mind failed first dates. Open your heart to love.

Laugh.

Smile, dance, scream, sing.

Meditate in the morning.

And trust me on the swimming.

*****

PS If I could offer you one tip for the whole year, swimming would be it.

PPS The best advice you can offer is the advice that you took.

C’est la vie, but who cares, I’m still wearing sunscreen*

Posted in Eureka Moments by

I, Shadz Loresco, 24, is the perfect case study for stressed-out corporate slaves in their mid-20s (gosh, I’m getting old).

At teh ‘parking lot’ where the trolls and I hold 3:30 breaks :)

One difference between me and most of you, perhaps, is that I can write about it. Haha. I can write and write and write about it, all of it, because that’s what I do for a living: I write and edit, and sometimes proofread (kidding, I proofread all the time :p). And lately I’ve been working long hours despite going to work before 8 AM. My shift runs the typical 9-6. Somebody study me and tell me what’s wrong with me!

A little back story

I’ve come to love arriving at the office and finding myself alone for some 30 minutes or more at our team’s lair. It gives me the freedom to check the Everywhereist, the latest groupon deals, pretty little things like this Diana F+ Black Jack edition, blogs about Bangkok, and Remington facts (part of the creative process, hah!). This week I’ve managed to leave at around 7:30 PM. Even so last night, all the stress of the entire week, and perhaps all the weeks of February, snowballed and snowballed… and I snapped. At one single comment. To be accurate, I snapped and then shut down. Want to study me now?

But it’s just a little thing, I’m not letting it get to me. Well, thanks to a friend who said, “Don’t let it get to you.” (Thanks to my friends, actually, for being all ears when I need to vent out random frustrations in life.)

Cue in now the melancholy soundtrack, ‘cos I’m about to tell you why I’m perfect for your case study, in bullet points, ‘cos I have the slightest want for a loaded revolver (hence, the bullets) now that I think about stress, but life is too short to learn how to end a life so quickly.

  • Oh well, I spend all my money on food so now I’ll spend some on a trip to Legaspi or Salcedo market.
  • I think that there is nothing wrong with me; there’s only me and my moments, where I learn how to live life a little better than before. 
  • Sometimes though I just want to be studied, by scientists, because maybe I’m a savant and I just don’t know it yet. Maybe the left part of my brain is damaged or something.
  • Sometimes life just wants to remind you that it is not perfect, but you can still make plans. : )

* More on the sunscreen