Anti-gay Ugandan bill

I thought the Ugandan bill that gives the death penalty to homosexuals was a joke, until one of my friends linked to a petition site and I got wrapped up in the whole thing. I'm just... it's coming from both sides, really. On the one hand there are the ultraliberals that make me want to just sit and stare at the walls, depressed at the state that humanity has come to--that it's okay to be abortionist, that it's okay to treat divorce as casually as any old break up, that it's okay to show things on tv that you can't watch with your family without blushing and wanting to close your eyes. On the other hand there are these extreme conservatives, who want to protect the "cohesion of African families" by extending the criminalization of homosexuality, including and up to the death penalty. Who want to uphold ideals by sacrificing human dignity and freedom.

I do believe that there are plenty of things that damage the family as a social unit. I believe that the current climate of promiscuity has contributed to this--leading down a slippery slope of teenage pregnancies, increased abortion rates and sexually transmitted disease, child pornography, human trafficking, and the like. Society has made all of these things, to some extent, acceptable. Do I wish they'd disappear? Sure, because I can't stand to see holy purity and prudence stepped on at every turn, and to see marriages breaking up easily because people knew from the very beginning that there was a way out.

However, as a Catholic, the most basic premise of my faith--and here no sane Catholic will contradict me--is that people have free will; this freedom, not license, comes with responsibilities and the knowledge that you are free to choose, but whatever choice you make will have consequences. I have the choice to turn away from God or to fall in love with Him, and it is a personal choice; nobody can force me, and I won't let them; more importantly, I can never force others to believe in the same things, primarily because of freedom, but also because faith itself is a gift and not a fruit of coercion. Another consequence of this freedom is that I must respect the choices others make; I might disagree with my classmates on the RH bill or similar topics, but I would be the first to defend their right to make their own informed decisions and to express them. I might not be comfortable with homosexuality, but I would never ever ostracize or penalize somebody for their sexual orientation.

Others brand Catholics as extremely close-minded, along with all those hot-blooded other Christians, all set to smite those who do not match their ideas of what is good--homosexuals included. But if you really studied the Catholic stand on homosexuality, you would see that actually, Catholicism is one of the few religions in the world that truly respect a person's freedom and his ability to make his own choices. Whether these choices are misguided or not is a matter of moral truth--and the consequences of our moral decisions will always be there--but that doesn't change the fact that each person comes equipped with intelligence and will, both of which can be educated and enlightened, and that each person has an inviolable dignity.

Christianity is a religion of love. It bothers me that we should be branded as haters, and sometimes with good reason--because we can be overenthusiastic and self-righteous and defensive, feeling that society is beating us down on all sides. I know because I've been there, and sometimes I can still be all of these things. But what matters, before anything else, is that I and my fellow Catholics should remember charity. To fight for our beliefs--to picket, if necessary--but to know that there is a line we can't cross; we can only do so much; to cross over to violation of human rights is to contradict our own objectives. Charity before anything else, understanding before anything else.

It's a good reminder for me. And it would be good to remind the legislators at Uganda, too.

A visit to the pulmonologist

On the plus side:

I'm off the steroids. I might still have asthma, but it's pretty controlled.

On the negative side:

While I was walking in, he told me hi and asked how I was, before looking at me more closely and saying quite bluntly (though nicely), "Are you gaining weight?"

AAAAAARGH.

A late entry

From March 27, 2011.

It’s raining where I am. Tomorrow (Monday), we have a huge exam (that may determine whether I’m to make it to third year med school or not) and on Tuesday we have two more—medical jurisprudence and a comprehensive exam that encompasses the entire year. It’s all a bit much to take in and over the weekend I did experience a few moments of sheer unadulterated panic. But the human body can only take so much worry. This morning, having gone to mass and having shooed home a beloved friend who came to spend the night and study with me, I went to a coffee shop near the bay—not so near it that I’d smell the water, but close enough to be feeling the breeze. I tried studying there from about nine to twelve, but was getting nowhere. I was struck with the brilliant idea of cutting my hair, and called my mom to ask if she thought this would be a good idea; moments later I found myself in a tiny salon a few streets away.

I’ve never gotten a hair cut for fifty pesos before. Somehow the sheer cheapness of it made me even giddier as I sat there, watching the scissors snip away more than a year’s attempt at growing my hair out. Where it reached down to the middle of my shoulder blades, now it’s barely past my chin. I find it kind of glorious. It does make me look a bit fatter, but I do think I look five years younger, and that’s enough. I went to another coffee shop by the bay, sitting out on their terrace, and watching the rain fall really gently and silently. Everything smells like grass after rain and where I’d usually find it a bit distasteful, I couldn’t stop breathing it in today. Everything is peaceful.

Only two days left til the school year. How can I not be excited, and how can I not want to step into a small oasis of calm in the middle of all the panic?

The ballad of Ranma and Akane

My favorite Ranma 1/2 episode isn't at all a special one, and I doubt that anybody else in this world--out of the thousands of fans that still like Ranma 1/2 today--would think of it as a particular favorite. But if I were to have only a half hour to watch any episode of Ranma I think I'd watch this one: Akane Goes to the Hospital.

Because of a classmate, Gosunkugi, taking pictures of Akane during gym class--and Akane losing her balance when she gets distracted by the flash of the camera--she has to spend three days at the hospital. Ranma, who knows that the accident is partly his fault, tries to work up the courage to apologize and to visit her and spend time with her in the hospital, but is foiled by his own shyness and the fact that he and Akane are so awkward around each other that every conversation turns into a fight. But all throughout this episode there's a tenderness and softness that isn't found in most of the noisier, more plot-heavy episodes. This episode kinds of drags the way time in the hospital would, if you were the one injured or if you loved someone who had been injured. Eventually, when friends come to visit Akane and are treated to dinner at the Tendo house (courtesy of Kasumi, Akane's sister), they spend more time thinking of fun things to do at the Tendo house rather than of things to comfort Akane and to help her pass the time. In the middle of all this merriment and noise is the quiet Ranma, who's restless and who doesn't know what to do with himself--who's paralyzed both by longing and fear, but who can't even identify these feelings, much less act on them. He is such a boy.

This blog entry doesn't really have a point. It's just, I identify with a lot of things in this episode, and I think it encapsulates the most endearing things about this series that I grew up with. I even wrote a story once that was inspired by this episode--not that it ever saw the light of day or was read by anybody but me. Ranma and Akane are young, and always will be, but I'm not anymore, and I don't have their excuse when it comes to having feelings I don't know how to deal with. I should be able to tackle my moods and my maudlin sentimentality with greater finesse by now.

But sometimes it's nice to remember when it was okay not to know how :)

Faith for all defects supplying

Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.

Genitori, Genitoque
Laus et jubilatio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio:
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.
Amen.

Have a good Good Friday!

For more

Wait, I just feel like I have to blog about this. Since my grade school friends came over last Sunday I've been on another trip down the rabbit hole of childhood memories. Since I don't remember most of what actually happened, I feel compelled to track down the media that surrounded me then--music and cartoons and other TV shows. It was really wonderful watching my favorite anime, Ranma 1/2, and knowing I could talk about the series at school; it was still showing on RPN 9 and was so mainstream that it wasn't odd for us to know the show. One of the most squee-worthy moments of my early life was when I was discussing with one Sister what song we could sing for a presentation, and I said I was thinking of doing this song from Ranma 1/2 called Omoide ga Ippai (see previous blog entry). Imagine my surprise when she not only readily assented, but even furnished me with a MINUS ONE TAPE. How cool were those nuns? Other than being extremely talented (they wrote all of the beautiful songs for our musical play, Tsuru no Ongaeshi), they were also terribly kind and patient and just awesomely cool.

On a somewhat related note, there is this song from Fushigi Yuugi that I've been singing to myself all these years. When it was showing, I didn't even know the word "fandom" existed, and anyway there weren't many resources like lyric sites or anime information sites back then, so I never knew the real lyrics--I just listened to the VHS recording I had over and over again, wrote down the lyrics as best I could, and, armed with only a smattering of Japanese, to understand some of what it meant. Needless to say I was entirely unsuccessful. It never occurred to me to search for the song using God's gift to my generation, Google. After a few hits and misses, here it is. It's as beautiful as I remember it :)

通り過ぎる　恋人たちの笑い声
胸をしめつける
雨上がりの　週末の午後なのに
私　一人　街を歩く
そばにいたいのに

そんなこと　わかっていたはず
好きになれば　なっただけ
苦しむこと
せつないね　わかっているのに
想っている　あなただけを
こんなに　逢えないときも

どんな時も　一緒にいてほしいなんて
思っちゃいけないと
おさえていた　私の心の声
止められずに
今もあふれそうで　苦しいの

☆私には　わかっていたはず
　愛したって　独り占め
　できないこと
　でも今は　大切な想い
　私だけが　見える真実(ほんと)
　信じて　愛し続ける

Romanized lyrics

toorisugiru
koibito-tachi no waraigoe
mune wo shimetsukeru

ameagari no
shuumatsu no gogo na no ni
watashi hitori machi wo aruku
soba ni
itai no ni

sonna koto wakatte-ita hazu
suki ni nareba natta dake
kurushimu koto

setsunai ne wakatte-iru no ni
omotte-iru anata dake wo
konna ni
aenai toki mo

donna toki mo
issho ni ite hoshii nante
omoccha ikenai to

osaete-ita
watashi no kokoro no koe
tomerarezu ni ima mo afure
sou de
kurushii no

watashi ni wa wakatte-ita hazu
aishitatte hitorijime
dekinai koto

demo ima wa taisetsu na omoi
watashi dake ga mieru hontou
shinjite
aishi-tsudzukeru

watashi ni wa wakatte-ita hazu
aishitatte hitorijime
dekinai koto

demo ima wa taisetsu na omoi
watashi dake ga mieru hontou
shinjite
aishi-tsudzukeru

English translation

The laughing voices
of lovers passing by
makes me get all choked up.

Even though the rain has stopped
on this weekend afternoon,
I'm walking the streets all alone,
even though
I want to be with you.

I should have known this.
If I fell in love with you that much,
I would hurt just as much.

Even though I know it's heart-wrenching,
I keep thinking only of you,
even when
I can't see you.

Even though
I know I shouldn't think about
how I wish we could always be together

Even now, the voice of my heart,
which I've tried to suppress,
seems to overflow
endlessly...
so much so that it hurts.

I should have known.
I just can't keep my love for you
inside, all to myself.

But now, it's a precious thought.
I believe in the truth
only I see,
and keep on loving you.

I should have known.
I just can't keep my love for you
inside, all to myself.

But now, it's a precious thought.
I believe in the truth
only I see,
and keep on loving you.

It's what I know, but may not always be so.

There were so many things I chose to forget about both grade school and high school that it now seems like a strange blur. It seems I've got very immature defense mechanisms. When something is unpleasant or painful, I choose to forget all about it as much as possible, and to forget the surrounding events too--like a surgeon excising a malignant tumor who also takes out the normal skin around it, just to make sure there are no metastases left. It seems fairly unnatural to remember so little. The thing is, I think I forgot that there were times when I was really happy.

Last night, my friends Timmy, Ginny, Mia and Athalyn came over and we talked a lot. Mia was there for about seven hours and the rest arrived some time after. I remembered so many things that I chose to forget and that I shouldn't have forgotten, and so many of the painful things were no longer painful. And I did experience a kind of mildly vindictive sense of triumph--that I might have been bullied for being chubby and ugly (not that I didn't do my own fair share of bullying.), but that I survived childhood and adolescence, and that while all around me former batchmates are getting pregnant/falling into petty crime/generally living quite dissolute lives, I'm a fairly stable adult.

Not that I feel happy about bad things that might have happened to them; only that, years later, I don't really believe I had, or have, anything to be ashamed of after all, and that the taunting was not a consequence of some fundamental flaws in me, rather a fruit of the cruelty and pettiness of young children. Even my extremely public crush on one of the boys at school, whom I liked for about eight years, is no longer a cause of embarrassment for me; I realized over time that I never really knew him, and that I was just looking for someone to be Arnold to my Helga, and that were I to see him now I could face him with a semblance of equanimity.

What I regret the most is that I allowed some bad memories to get between me and my friends. I forgot that it was the first group I'd really belonged to and that they had actually loved and accepted me--our letters to each other, dug up all these years later, prove that. I forgot that I loved and accepted them too. I forgot lunch time in the canteen when we'd share food and talk about boys and Japanese club (when everyone else in school simply assumed that we were talking about academic things, because we were nerdy like that). I forgot how much fun we had singing karaoke together, how sweet our letters were, how wonderful it was to automatically have someone as your partner or groupmate when the teachers chose to pair us off or force us to work in groups.

And the songs we sang! We were part of this musical play, book and lyrics having been written by the Japanese sisters, about the Fairy Crane (Tsuru no ongaeshi), and the songs were really beautiful. The wonderful part is that we still remember the lyrics. In Japanese club we also had to sing this song called Kimi wo nosete (from the Hayao Miyazaki film "Laputa"/Castle in the Sky) and yesterday, we sang it, complete with different voices, and I was so amazed that we could still do that despite not having sung the song in about ten years or more. When Mia finally uploads the video we took on Facebook, I'll upload it here, too.

The only thing that can really encapsulate everything is this song. We sang it once for a Christmas party. (Another great thing about is that we were all singers.) It's the opening theme from a Ranma 1/2 song--which is not as nerdy or out-of-place as it sounds, considering that this was the 90s and that we studied in a Japanese school. Wasurenai (kono sora wo), wasurenai (kono yume wo)...


Dreading the school bell, we can't help but worry…
Classmates behind me, we can't help but hurry…
They'll catch their breath then they'll say:
"Go-od- Mor-ning!"
Sweet summer grass that grows wild by the roadside..
Starting each day with a smile that I can't hide…
It's what I know … but may not be so.
Casual moments like these mean so much to me…
Treasured times that don't need any key …
In the album of my heart I keep, old times keep like new.
No, I won't forget…How the sky is blue
No, I won't forget … How this dream came true
They're the gentle times we'll share forever, long past all those times are through
Even when I'm sad … days I just don't know
Even when I'm glad … days the tears just flow
Memories of days I'll never, ever let go.