Though it may be true half of the time, “sports unite nations” is mostly a cliché that had been utilized to the hilt through the years; at times just to add theme to a sporting event and then nothing more, like school graduation ceremonies, they always have to have a theme etched in cardboards with close parenthesis and pasted on stage foregrounds.

But this time, sports can actually unite a nation, even for just a moment. When the Iraqi national football (soccer) team clinched the Asian Cup last night, Shiites in southern Iraq went to the streets to celebrate the win by a team composed mainly by Arab sunnis and a lone Kurdish player. And all over Iraq, it was observed that general violence were absent for nearly a day. Now that’s sports not only for unity, but also for peace in a place where peace is but a strange idea.

Let’s talk sports. The 12-man Philippine basketball team is set to play at the FIBA Asia Men’s Championship tournament starting at 5:00 P.M this day, tousling with the much improved team from Iran. Thus, the so-called Philippine Olympic quest to send a basketball team to Beijing next year begins.

We have always known how China and South Korea had been lording basketball in the Asia region and generally, our team have played so laggardly against their tall and more agile players, losing by an average of 20 points. 20 points is huge in basketball and losing that much is often embarrassing.

But now, it is a little surprising to see a Philippine team that is not only so quick with their court movements but also can shoot from long-range as often as a winning team wants. Their performance in the recently-held William Jones Cup in Taipei had been surprising to say the least as they exhibited newly-found swiftness and accuracy from the field and defeating South Korea in the process, the very team that had caused a major heartbreak when we lose to them upon a late shot in the dying seconds in Busan Asian Games of 2002. Maybe, our quest of establishing a stronger presence in the basketball scene in Asia has improved by leaps and bounds.

Only there is an issue with the composition of this new Philippine basketball team as it is membered heavily by fil-am players like Danny Seigle, the very young Gabe Norwood, PBA Rookie of the Year Kelly Williams, Mike Pennisi and Asi Taulava. Read this very lively discussion in Boxing Scene. Ang tanong, dyahe ba na magpapadala tayo ng isang team na me halong fil-americans sa Tokushima? In my mind, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. If other Asian teams have a problem with a Philippine team with Filipino Americans on the roster, then they should have no business in trying to qualify for the Olympics or the world championship where real Americans such as Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan would be playing.

The only issue in my mind this time is the usual lack of height of the Philippine basketball players, despite the inclusion of meztisos from America, where in the game of basketball would still be might for a shorter player, even if he can shoot at will, won’t hit even the net with a hulking opponent putting up a huge umbrella-like defense in front of him.

But the Olympics would always be there or the world championships. If not now, there’d be always a next time and with a quicker team and more fluid offense, hope would always be high.

I have not minded yesterday’s SONA by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo although I was aware of it as early as Friday last week. This is somehow very unexpected of me since in years past, I have always been mindful of every SONA speech given, even as early as the Aquino administration. In fact, I had made it a point often in the past to be at home near the time when the speech is about to begin. But this year, I just woke up this morning and as I logged in to surf for the news, I was a bit surprised at myself upon realizing that in fact, yesterday afternoon, when President Arroyo had given her SONA, I wasn’t mindful about it. I could not easily explain why upon such realization, I felt some weight taken out of me, like a thorn snatched from my inside, just like perhaps how one alcoholic feels on the very day he or she had finally kicked out excessive drinking (a bad habit), or any drinking of any alcoholic beverage for that matter. That is, I felt lighter upon realizing that for this year, I haven’t got already the inclination to watch a speech that many says is merely full of promises, but empty in action.

So this year, I felt like I kicked a bad habit and did not watch the SONA live for the first time in more than a decade. It used to be that SONA watching had even became some kind of a ritual for me, like bird-watching or whale watching, making sure every time that I’d be home early in the afternoon and cancel whatever itineraries I have, those that weren’t ultimately urgent, and I would fix myself a sit in front of the television, and the boiling water always constantly heated and reheated for an afternoon tv watching marathon with mugs after mugs of hot black coffee, anticipating how the whole nation would be glued for an annual speech many says is merely full of words but empty in action, and seeing in my mind’s eye the costly gowns the ladies would be wearing, like it was Oscar awarding night, and how the men would be clapping at every pause or slow respite in the president’s oral masturbation, or how they would pretend to be clapping.

In every SONA event, I always have that feeling that if someone—perhaps, the sergeant-at-arm on duty for that day or the head security—would take a sack (or sacks) and carry it around the SONA audience—around senators and congressmen and congresswomen, governors, mayors, generals, heads of offices, colonels, tycoons, media bigwigs, pharmaceutical company executives, political advisers, political minions, exporters, importers, university professors, franchise holders, athletes, world boxing champs, actors and actresses, holymen…no…not holymen—and collect all Gucci bags, Rolex watches, Bangkok jewelries, diamonds, Italian leather shoes, Italian leather women’s shoes, Armanis and any other thing that glitters and worn for that day—I have a great feeling that we could pay up about 5% of our international debt right on, at that very moment, or perhaps build-up a huge housing project for ten thousand families, or feed all the hungry children living in the streets—right here, right now….RIGHT ON THE SPOT.

BUT RIGHT NOW—just allow me to enjoy this newfound feeling of being able to escape a bad habit; of listening to a speech many says merely full of words but empty in action.

Five Feet Flat—web designer and chic girl—tagged me for a tag that I have already done before; asking what’s bizarre about me. I’ve done such tagged before ( see this post ) but I won’t be bringing down a sassy girl like Five Feet Flat so I am gonna do a “weird tag” once more, without peeking at my previous “weird tag”. I feel like I’ve got more weird stuff to share. So here it goes:

1. When I was young, younger than the 28 years I’ve lived an earthly life…35 years if I am honest—I like climbing trees that at about 17 or 18 years of age, I had spent afternoons hours and hours atop a ratiles tree, and I felt like I was at home in such high places. My mother once scolded me for this. “What do other people be thinking? My son is an asshole? No, not that way. Is my son a monkey?” I just kept my mouth shut and thought foremostly why should other people care about me climbing trees all the time. It’s not an immoral act and God does not forbid it and besides, why would I care about what other people think? People are people.
2. I drink coffee a lot like I have a love affair with that stuff. In fact most of the time, I kept daydreaming that one day I’d drink that famous coffee that comes from the bowels of a civet cat. Civet cat’s waste as delicious—now that’s weird.
3. I loved Chinese soup almost all the time. At one point in my life, I’ve gone all over the city, even in Manila, savoring every Chinese soup offered and they come in many different names like balbakwa, Soup No. 5, special mami, bulalo, and such and such things. I actually visit frequently this downtown restaurant that had offered what to me is the best tasting beef mami of all time. But you know, I’ve learned through snglguy that in Binondo, a real Chinese soup is offered that I had regretted so thoroughly why I haven’t visited that area when I was there. That now, I kept on putting in my mind, that one day, I’ll have myself a real Chinese soup.
4. I don’t talk too much. I must have probably stated this in my previous “weird tag” but this is the most prevalent unusual thing about me. My father once told me that I am an introvert individual and from that day on, I have exerted enormous effort to be an extrovert person because my late father’s tone—when he was saying that—was a bit in disgust.
5. I love Metallica as well as Billy Holiday—both in the same breathe. This must be weird I tell you.
6. I drink alcoholic stuff a lot. This should be weird for I am aware that decent men and women shouldn’t drink that way. If only there’s Alcoholic Anonymous in our midst. But sadly, there ain’t.

Now the rules say I’ve got to tag other bloggers for this. Culprit? Five Feet Flat.

So Abaniko, Annamanila, Snglguy, Ipanema, Vic; you got to tell us the weirder part of you. I know most of you have been through this. I have been too. So, no exempting justification for all five of you. And remember, you got to tag five other bloggers for this; and you’ve got to let them know you’ve tagged them one way or another. It’s fun I assure you.

Bing of Warmstone asked me the other day about the things I hate. I’ve been asked about the weirder aspect of my being and the things that I adore and I soundly responded to them in this blog. But on things or circumstances that I HATE, I have finally become a bit tentative realizing that hate and anger are never superlative emotions and are meant to be hidden and tucked underneath carpets and behind closed doors, to never ever wash dirty linens in public’s view—as some anonymous guy or gal once advised.

Come to think of it, the feeling of hate is so extant and pronounced in our daily lives that we could not help but recognize it as one fact of life that we could never ever escape from, like the wind we breathe. Without hate, we are nothing. Just like love.

We all know by know that love—as against hate—is one that this world needs, and one that makes the world go round, according to not-so-anonymous guys and gals like John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Boy George, priests, evangelists, imams, monks, rabbi, teacher, lawyer, hermits, bike riding hippies, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates when they were still hippies without bikes, presidents and head of nations, freedom fighters, prize-fighters, poets, essayists, storytellers, sages and pretenders alike, DJ on the radio, the comedian on a late TV show, actors and actresses, madmen and scientists and of course, each and everyone of us, such as I am, for I believe in LOVE and LOVE does make life much more bearable than what it is.

And then of course, by prophets and messengers—most of all, by the Lord Jesus Christ who have pronounced so well to “Love one another like I have Loved you”.

Then it comes now for us to inquire that like the feeling of LOVE, did God have designed HATE to be so part of us and be that profoundly inevitable? Why it is to be and to what purpose or benefit does it brings us? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world without hate and anger, and to love and have loved all the time?

On deeper thought, love, love and everything love could make our world such an unusual place to live in—people always smiling, always laughing, always caring and condescending that eventually, there’d be a time where we would often ask strangers, “Are you talking to me? Are you sane smiling at me like that all the time? Why are you smiling at me of all people?” Get the hell away from me!

Hate eventually becomes a fact of life that had been inculcated in us in order to usher a more balanced and normal existence; to put things into a viable fulcrum, like a man trodding a narrow bridge, to have balance from left or right because too much of weight on the one single side would make him fall into the muddy water below. Just like night and day, without night, Nature would wither by constant warmth, or without day, Nature freezes into complete depletion.

I realize all to well that the existence of HATE in one man or woman allows others to be of caution when interrelating; in order to realize that every man or woman has hate and therefore one should not easily trample upon him or her, to spit on his or her face, for that man or woman has some form of emotion called hate or anger, that if such insults would go unmitigated anytime soon, some repercussion would entail. I have HATE, therefore be of prudence not to ever spit on me. I have Hate, therefore I am.

Of course, Hate is not one sentiment that we should harbor like a child, to ever encourage it, for unreasonable and irrational hate would lead to self-desecration, self-destruction even. We have seen how the hate of one man, multiplied into thousands of blinded soldiers or armed men (women) has caused so much trouble in our world. Perhaps like LOVE, too much of it is certainly an unideal proposition. But if you ask me, I’d rather be loved too much—much too much if possible—than be hated so entirely.

Now let’s go back to Bing’s tag about the things I hate and sadly, I do hate, like the following:

• 1. I hate laggardly men and women who do nothing worthy.
• 2. I hate doing nothing.
• 3. I hate those who are shoddy in their task and duties.
• 4. I hate those who covet the possessions of others.
• 5. I hate those who are highly of unethical conduct.
• 6. I hate having no money (do I have to say this?).
• 7. I hate being harassed.
• 8. I hate being fooled around and cheated.
• 9. I hate noisy people—noise without purpose that is.
• 10. I hate having to do something not of principle or of bad deed.

Perhaps, there are many other things or facts and circumstances that I hate or perhaps some of those listed above could not really be of hate as we know it, but merely by aversion and dislike.

I can list many other things I am sure. But please be assured, I have more LOVE than HATE. At least, I’d like to believe it to be that way.

So what are the things you hate?

By tomorrow or a day after that, as I am estimating in my mind, I might be packing my bags and bundle some important things as I would be heading for some place else, somewhere that I have been to before but somewhere not many have seen yet or have known previously.

I have decided to leave the city for good. This plan had been in my mind for sometime now and I must assure you that this very drastic move on my part is far from being hasty—in fact it is to be done with very deep contemplation and scheming that I have etched in my mind for so long now.

I have learned before how to drive nails effectively into wood and I reckon now that I have learned such task fairly well. My grandfather used to do some carpentry work and I used to have observed him so closely doing woodwork when I was so little, putting in mind every phase of the activity, from handling so tightly the wood to be nailed and towards the part when finally the nail is about to be hammered with reasonable precision, or else the hands would be greatly harmed.

Some of my uncles are pretty good too at this kind of work that I would have no doubt that I could do it by myself, hammering nails into wood. By that, I can safely assume that I’d be able to put up a small wooden shelter all by my lonesome when I get to the place that I am planning to go as of this moment. I’ll have thatches as roofs because many have opined how it would help ensure a cooler indoor environement, especially in rural environment. Having thatches as roofs is also one situation that I have been in before, right about the time while I was so young and our family could not then afford a better place to live in, as my father then was just earning his take as a humble mailman. My mother used to tell us stories how my father—who is a native of the far away Province of Tawi-Tawi—couldn’t articulate so effectively the local chavacano (a broken Spanish) dialect being spoken here that in some days, while he was still learning the tricks of delivering somebody else’s letter to somebody else’s house, my mother would come along with him for she was far more proficient in the tongue spoken here and therefore could communicate more easily with the mail recipients and also was more familiar with streets names and baranggay locations here.

Now let us go back to this plan I am presently having in my mind—no reminiscing for now. I really do have a particular place in my mind, one that is far from the honky-tonky noise of the city streets. It is a place near or at the heel of a very prominent mountain known here as the Pulongbato, a stony mountain whose façade is so majestic that it could be seen from any point in the city, from east coast and west coast, from south side and perhaps in some part of north side. It is so strong and mighty like an honorable beast that have decided to sleep for a thousand years and still sleeping as I write now.

Below this mountain is a gushing river and a forest so lush that when years ago I was trekking this area with a number of friends from college, I have almost stepped over a striped multi-colored snake, climbed two small waterfalls, fell from a low cave wall and fell into cool river water, trotted into knee deep gushing water to reach a giant stone in the middle of the river and smoked to my heart’s delight as twilight had enveloped the forest, while the trees slept hummingly like old warriors, and had even eaten eels we caught from a calmer area of the river. Nature is so varied there, and so abundant too.

I reckoned that while I am there, I would ensconce myself in the warm embrace of Nature as Nature would show me a beauty that I have seen before but still looking for since then. I won’t go thirst there for the river that runs through it is so crystalline like diamonds in our hands. And I won’t go hungry either for even sweet bananas—as I remember all too well now—grow so wildly and I bet the rich riverways contains fishes that becomes so scrumptious as roasted on a brimming campfire, and the smell coming from it would just be gorgeously sublime. Out there, there’d be no time to keep up and catch up with. Industrial fumes are of no issue and the crazy sound of rushing vehicles won’t bother me no more. Could this plan of mind work? What do you think?

I had wondered deeply if ever my family would follow me there even if things wouldn’t be as easy in a sense that there’d be no school there, no fastfood to drive-by and order hamburgers and fried chickens. There’d be no education to attain there, and then no occupation to profess. And there’d be no roads to where we could drive our humble car. So perhaps, that small car would have to stay undriven for so long, or for eternity most possibly.

Could I say to them that we could have our own education there? That we can be teachers and students by ourselves? Nature is by itself an education and I can sense that it’d be an education that is similarly worthwhile, if not more propound. But I don’t think I could explain this to them efficiently and sell them the wisdom hidden beneath this idea.

And the air, yes the air there is so fresh that once I had thought of putting them in a bottle and sell it as pure purified mountain air, just like what they do to water nowadays. I have read once or had seen in a television show how in some part of Japan, air or the purified version of it had been contained by some enterprising souls there and had raked in some money for it.

The noise there could be so minimal that often, the chirpings of birds and the momentary shrieks of monkeys coming from tall shrubberies far beyond becomes calming to the senses and it is certainly the best anti-dote for stress and worry that most urban dwellers suffer and that for sure, it is a situation so ideal for those who long for peace of mind so desperately and to those who seek ultimate freedom from anxiety. Long walks in the mountain side would be a luxuriant activity and sipping hot coffee beside a cool rushing water, while the sun is just about to set into the horizon, is not a far-off idea anymore.

Ooops, I just heard City Hall’s siren wailing and it’s about time for me to go and bring my third son Yuri to school. And by the way, I was just daydreaming a while ago and none of the plans narrated here is to be carried out any time soon.