Guangzhou Experience

I will enumerate, in no particular order, the things I did in Guangzhou China that I’ve never experienced back home in Manila:

1. Travel alone via plane to and from Guangzhou (or anywhere for that matter).
2. Lodge in a hospital for 5 days.
3. Sleep in a hospital bed for 5 nights.
4. Spend my 25^th birthday (I’ll never be 25 again on my other birthdays to come, right?).
5. I got to see a live polar bear!
6. I got to see an elephant play soccer, bow, sit and do a headstand.
7. I got to see the largest safari park in China (with 333 hectares of land) and all the other animals I got to see for the 1^st time.
8. I got to bring my own grocery cart in the grocery store.
9. I got to pack my own grocery (w/o plastic bags) in the grocery cart.
10. I got to pull my own grocery cart from the grocery back to the hospital.
11. Heard mass surrounded by Chinese and Nigerian.
12. Sharing a table with a stranger to eat at a restaurant.
13. Ride an ambulance (from the airport to the hospital).
14. The hand & foot spa service of a Chinese.
15. People staring at me because I speak alien to them. Hehehe!
16. Going to Guangzhou’s entertainment place – by the Pearl River. A night of dancing, tai chi, badminton, juggling, biking, roller skating, jogging, dog-walking, etc.

Things I did in Guangzhou I wish I’d do back home:

1. Walk! Walk! Walk…and more walking!
2. Take the subway to go around the city (MRT & LRT for Manila).
3. Get to admire the lighted skyscrapers at night.

Things in Guangzhou that reminded me of Manila:

1. Shopping! Shopping! Shopping…and more shopping in Divisoria-like and Greenhills-like shopping centers.
2. Tea, dumplings and chopsticks.
3. Hand & foot spa service.
4. Chinatown – the food, the smell, the place, the people.
5. The Pearl River reminded me of Pasig River and Baywalk combined.
6. The Almeda’s.

This is my 5-day Guangzhou experience. Personal, unique and unforgettable.

Finding Myself In Me

We are all uniquely messed up. I have families and close friends burdened with the loss of a loved one, lovers breaking-up, familial and financial problems here and there, personal and work issues troubling, even soul-searching and finding one’s purpose becomes more apparent than usual.

This so-called quarter life crisis is really bugging. Now I begin to see and experience for myself the complexities we get ourselves into. The world is testing my character. All those experiences I have gone through in the past suddenly make sense…suddenly gains meaning and value in my life.

After college and getting into a stable job…I prep myself to the next level. Then suddenly, without warning, I’m living in the next level. It scares me sometimes how the responsibilities are passed down to me, and how decision-making can most of the time be instantaneous, that no matter how hard I try to plan and budget, not everything is in the palm of my hands to control. But the funny thing is, in the end, it will all work out, not just the way I expected it to be.

Everything is a balance. True, but easier said than done. Imagine, juggling your time for family, work, friends, spirituality, fitness, entertainment, and what not. Sometimes it’s just too much and it becomes really exhausting that you just want a timeout to sit back and relax. Even that you have to have time for. I think people who have this kind of lifestyle just want more out of life to the point that they want to try everything there is. The bottom line is we are searching for that something that can fill us. We are searching for that something or someone that makes us feel alive.

And sometimes we forget our purpose and meaning because we want to get to that point quickly. We want to get ahead of others that in the process we don’t realize we got ourselves into the rat race. And what we thought was a short cut suddenly became an endless cycle of temporal value, where our “yes” becomes automatic and time is of relevance to how we live our lives. We just continue to want and swallow what we think we can handle. As we live in this kind of cycle, our web continues to grow. Our reach of the world can be found in one tube as we find ourselves living in globalization.

Back to the basics – I miss the experience of having to go through the whole process from beginning to end; I would want to experience living in the moment rather than immediate result or output (although this is subjective). There are just things that cannot be fast-forwarded – like experiencing and living life right here, right now even though at the moment we are at our worst. The beauty of it all is in the journey of life – the bits and pieces of stories behind the book cover.

No matter how messed up we seem to be, we just have to continue to strive to be better than our best. It’s in our nature after all. We have to continue to plan and budget, to work and relax, to enjoy and struggle. We have to make the most of what we have and sometimes more. The more we put ourselves out there, the more we discover not only the world, but also ourselves. We are who we are, and we become what we do – the choices that we make. So just live and be alive for yourself and the people around you because you will not find yourself in others. You will find yourself within you. You are what makes you alive.