This Blog is an outlet for the random thoughts of an amateur opinionator.
What's an opinionator?
An opinionator is somebody who has power without responsibility, and the ability to spout off on any subject without worrying too much about the consequences of what comes out of the mouth. All you need is an opinion and the opportunity to voice it.
TV is full of professional opinionators. The internet gives the amateur his chance.
> paLimos ng duGo
Author: aLmich
Conversations over lunch time never failed to have interesting topics to write about. Yesterday, as we were having lunch at KFC, Gay, Zelot and Abhi mentioned about an old lady who approached them at Banchetto asking for help. According to them, she was looking for some people to donate blood for a very sick relative. If my memory serves me right, her relative is suffering from Leukemia. I immediately felt bad by the thought of it. How can life be so cruel and unfair? I know I don’t have the right to say these things but I just can’t really help it. If there’s any feeling that has been crushing me lately, it’s being surrounded by poverty. Can you imagine someone saying “palimos po ng dugo”?
11:10am - After scribling some thoughts about what I’m gonna write here and after finishing the layout Mami Abhi asked for, I decided to go home immediately before I start having pangs of conscience again. I think I’m growing morbidly obese over feelings of guilt lately, to the point that some of my friends think that I am developing an unhealthy propensity towards sociological emo.
Being so tired and sleepy, I gave in to my bed’s calling soon as I got home. It was a good nice sleep. I tried to erase all that has been bothering me. The clock struck 7pm and it was time for me to prepare for work again.
As I alighted from the bus to work, I decided to stop by Megamall for breakfast [don't be confused by terms I'm using because I work the graveyard shift]. After so, I bought waffles for my lunch as luck would have it, here comes a kid tugging at my pants. “Kuya, pahingi,” he said. While children can deceive you out of Christmas aguinaldo, they can’t dupe you out of food. Soft-hearted loser that I am who would not at once doubt the innocence of a child asking for food, I decided to buy him three pieces, which he then proceeded to share with two of his friends.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I imagined my younger brother and sister being in those kids shoes. I wont be able to accept that. I walked fast to some corner of the mall, lit a cigarette, and calmed myself. Not being a good crier, I stopped crying after I was done with half.
I’ve always been telling whoever I’m talking to that the real problem here is being surrounded and exposed to poverty like I’ve never seen before. You think poverty is just an invention of cinema or of documentary journalists, until you see people actually scrounging trash cans near fast-food chains not for recyclables, but for food. You actually see people cooking leftovers bound for the trash in tin cans bound for the dump. What makes it extremely heartbreaking is that as you look around, you see wealth. You are privy to affluence so much so that you live it. You see, for the first time in your life, gaps between the rich, the poor, the really really rich, and the really really poor.
You realize you’re sick of it and want to change things, then you realize that there’s really only so much you can do.
So you do what you can, then you realize that you really aren’t doing enough. I’ve always been hearing people “pag nanalo ako sa lotto, kalahati ipamimigay ko sa mahirap”… Seriously? I don’t think so. I will admit myself that I can’t do that. What else can I do? What else can we all do? I feel helpless.
Empathy’s a bastard. GMA’s a bastard!
