Now, however, I’m slowly getting an idea. I don’t know exactly which is the main culprit, if it’s the operation, or the hormones, or the drugs, or the post-op pains, or the fact that we didn’t have it our way, I’m not quite sure, but andrea has been feeling down a lot lately. And it’s not so difficult to understand why.

I’m doing my best to cheer her up, and take loads of chores (household and baby chores) off her hands. But, unfortunately, nothing seems to be working. Her frustrations with painful breastfeeding, the operation, and everything else is playing tug-of-war with her affections for the baby. I can see it in her eyes every time anika would refuse to sleep after having suckled for more than an hour. She feels so much pain and yet she refuses to let anika drink from the bottle. It’s a constant struggle and I can’t help but feel depressed too seeing her the way she is when she’s struggling.

Hang in there, ny! I’ll always be here for you and mateo and anika.

Recently, I came across someone who has been investing in gold. He started his investment when he decided to buy gold coins. It seems that among the numerous investment products in the market, gold is one of the most important and solid choice. According to him, gold is a pretty safe investment even during economic crises like what is currently being experienced almost everywhere. Aside from having high returns, it’s value is not likely to decrease with time. I can’t help but think that buying gold jewelry for my wife might be a good investment after all.

Many people choose to buy gold coins because unlike other investment products, the price of gold is relatively unaffected by the economic crisis. Even a quick look at the history of gold investments will show that gold preserves its value over time. When you invest in gold, you don’t get a paper saying that it has this much value. What you get is your actual investment. Also gold is recognized to be valuable regardless of which country you are in. So lately whenever I think about investing I might just buy gold instead.

So the following morning, we left the house at 4 in the morning and traveled to Katipunan where they agreed to pick us up. Afterwards, the rest of the trip seemed like photographs and bits and pieces of broken conversations because I fell in and out of sleep during the ride to Batangas.

It was around 10 in the morning when we got to the beach (which was surprisingly unoccupied by lots of people). We had an early lunch before spending the rest of the afternoon inside the room asleep. When we got around it was already 4 or 5. Everybody went swimming including the little kuya. Everybody took turns accompanying mateo and making sure he doesn’t get knocked down by the waves while wading in the water. It was relatively fun and the little boy was surprisingly enjoying himself.

After dinner, andrea and I tucked mateo into bed. When everybody else was asleep, we watched around 3-4 episodes of LOST till midnight. And that concluded our first day.

We didn’t plan to swim the next day, so mateo had to be accompanied by the others. I thought our last day would be a little boring since we had nothing else to do but sleep and then pack our things for the ride. However, at around 10 in the morning, dolphins appeared near the coast and started playing around the area where we were sitting. Andrea, mateo and I were so ecstatic to see the wild creatures out there that we couldn’t stop looking. It was an unexpected treat indeed because it was the first time for me to see dolphins in the wild.

Without meaning to, this whole unexpected vacation turned out to be a memorable experience. I sure hope we’d have many more like it.

The first nine units I took were with an online university like Western Governors University. I realized that it was very convenient to take up an online degree with these online universities. WGU is particularly promising as an online university because their program is competency-based which I think is a must for an online university. Unlike other online universities where a student’s passing grade is dependent on the number of hours spent online, WGU uses the passing or successfully completing of assessments of various kinds to determine the student’s progress. With a university like this, I might even consider taking an additional online degree altogether.

Because you see, aside from the challenge of making children understand and enjoy understanding the lesson, teachers face the difficulty of behaving like models – the very personification of ideals such as truth, fairness, knowledge, objectivity, and rationalism.

I guess the difficulty springs from the fact that teachers, regardless of how ideal they’re trying to portray themselves to be, are human. And being humans, they, we are not exempted from mistakes, biases, and emotions. God knows how hard we try to become fairness and perfection personified. But the thing is, no matter how much effort we give, we are bound to show faults and shortcomings.

We can sometimes be hasty, nearsighted, overzealous, overly sensitive, overly devoid of emotions, too involved, or completely detached. We can’t help but commit errors, overlook a few things, or sometimes even misjudge a certain person or event.

We are all subjected to these things despite the fact that our profession entails us to be perfect. It’s a very difficult responsibility and a very costly one too because whenever we do show humanity by committing mistakes, we’re not the only ones that pay for our mistakes. Other teachers, the parents, and of course the children too suffer for our mistakes.

It is our curse. It is our burden. It is what makes human teachers.

You see, even though cancer cases are, statistically speaking, typically fatal, there are certain types that give you more than a painful death. Colon cancer, for example, depending on stage, can make you suffer from abdominal pains, constipation, irregular bowel to no bowel movement at all, and so much more inconvenience. Compared to other types of cancer (that are often painful when metastasis has already been reached), colon cancer makes you undergo so many other things that are not just painful, but also annoyingly bothersome. (And I’m not even talking about chemotherapy yet.)

Colon cancer, similar to other types, is hard to detect at an early stage. Usually, the symptoms are observed when the cancer has already progressed which makes it harder to prevent. However, unlike more common types such as lung cancer (whose prevention method usually just involves staying away from the carcinogen), it can be addressed by taking in natural supplements or colon cleansers like bowtrol.

Anyway, whatever the case is, colon cancer or some other type of cancer, I’d still rather not get any.

Now, there are several gaming  consoles to choose from. The more popular of these are XBox from Microsoft and Playstation from Sony. They’re more than just gaming consoles. Their latest renditions allow users to connect to the internet, watch movies, play music, read DVDs, or even store information. This is why parents such as I, are finding it harder and harder to resist the temptation of getting one for the kids. Unlike before, it is so much more difficult because there are so many things you’re saying no to once you reject  the idea of these game consoles.

However, no matter how you look at it, no matter how reasonable they seem to be, gaming consoles will always carry with them risks of distraction or even addiction. They will always have the potential to ruin studies (by destroying study habits and concentration), cause dispute between siblings, or sometimes even affect budget (not only because of the initial cost of the unit but also because of electricity bills).

I’m just so glad mateo has not reached that age yet. I still have some time to decide whether we would allow him to have one or not. Until then, he’s sticking to books and toys.