cleanup weekend

went diving this weekend yahoo! so am back to being my normal sane self again.

i've said it once and i will say it a zillion times more. i love diving. it has literally changed my life. and i hope to continue diving until i'm old and gray.

i was in anilao this weekend for the coastal cleanup. stayed overnight with friends whose diving careers have dwindled to just this annual event. we all have such busy lives that if we just had to choose one weekend in which to dive, it would be during the coastal cleanup.

we cleaned caban cove, the ickiest and dirtiest dive site in anilao. i was lugging my fishnet sack and filling it with shampoo sachets, beer cans, stray pieces of rope, the occasional boot and sandal, and an unbelievable amount of junk food and candy wrappers. amazing the sort of stuff that ends up at the bottom of the ocean. one of my friends even found a one peso coin from the 1980s.

my favorite dive site for this weekend was in steps, a hop skip and jump away from cathedral. it was a pretty shallow dive,about 80 feet max depth. at 60 feet, there was the remains of this bangka that was about 30 feet long and ten feet wide. and there was a little space underneath it where you could swim under. a very cheap thrill similar to that of hole in the wall in puerto galera. and the wall was just like steps, an orderly progression of walls that lead you deeper and deeper into the ocean. it would have been great to have gone deeper but i got cold and it was dark so we all just went back up.

at 60 feet, i found the funniest thing -- a park bench. a cement park bench perched by the side of the remains of the bangka. i simply just had to swim over and sit on it, just to be able to say that i sat on a park bench at the bottom of the sea.

and it was at this dive where i had the most fascinating safety stop. at 15 feet, there were more park benches scattered about! there was even a little round cement park table. so all of us in the group sat on one park bench each and waited out our safety stop. there was even a school of little catfish that was clumped near us and i swam towards them and tried to herd them in one direction. i felt like godzilla advancing on a troop of terrified city people before being squashed to bits. fortunately for me, the DM stopped me from getting any nearer as catfish are apparently very poisonous fish. wouldn't have wanted to end my life as a godzilla impersonator being poisoned to death by a school of one-inch fish.

got my dive, got my buddies, got my new bikini, got my tan, got the ocean, got great viz...life can't get any better than that.

one big fight!

as far as i'm concerned, UAAP basketball season's over for me. what an awful and embarrassing way to end after such a brilliant beginning.

the months between july and september are my absolute favorite months for basketball. this is the only time of the year when i actually like the game and can spend hours at a time watching and talking about the game. this, from the most apathetic person in the world when it comes to sports.

ateneo's basketball team started so unbelievably well. six (or was it seven?) straight wins, effectively sweeping the first round. then larry hurt his knee. and everything went downhill from there. it got so bad that even UP beat them, and the last win against NU was a difficult win at best. unbelievable.

and yesterday's game, oh man. i deliberately chose to go to mass at 4:30 so i would be spared the early quarters of the game. the mass ended exactly as the thrid quarter started and it was such a good start. then it got simply embarrassing after a while. it got so painful that a few minutes before the quarter ended, i switch channels to see what kris and boy were talking about in the buzz.

i'm the lousiest fan in the world. at bad games, i have been caught screaming "i am going to f***ing murder you!!!" at the ateneo players (albeit through the tv screen) when the team does a particularly bad play. similarly, i have been known to yell "rip his f***ing head off!!!" when the game gets to be a bit too physical. i guess i'm lucky that i am forever too lazy to scavenge for tickets otherwise it would be my head that would be f***ing ripped off at the game.

i've been cheering for this team for 20 years -- that's more than half my life. andno matter how much i scream for them and at them, they've only managed to win three championships, two when i was still too young to go to ateneo, and one when i had loooong graduated from ateneo already. it's been more a period of loss than of victory.

but cheer for them i will. i still have forty good years of screaming and cheering left. they may suck, they may choke, they may do one bad play after another, but they are responsible for some of the brightest and shiniest moments of ateneo pride i did not even realize i had. where else can you find a school where, after 13 years of never winning, finally win a championship and as if by some secret signal, draw old and young ateneans to katipunan for an impromptu party that was waiting for 13 years to happen? for that championship, the victory was too big to contain by one's self that we all had to go to ateneo to share in the victory there. magic.

they're my blue eagles and i will cheer and scream for them forever.

go ateneo! one big fight!

no more Bok

Bok died last Friday.

a friend put it so perfectly.

pag namatayan ka ng aso na mahal mo, para kang nawalang ng kapatid.

i think it's going to take more than 19 years for me to like another dog again.

Bok Bok bokokok

i'm not the biggest animal fan in the world. sure i love fish, but just to the point of admiring their colors and pointing out the really freaky-looking ones. fish live in a world of their own, where you are and will forever be a spectator and even intruder into their world.

cats freak me out. enough said.

dogs, well, dogs are a different story. i've heard and read enough about the freaky people who dress up their dogs in burberry sweaters and sit them on embroidered pillows (can anyone spell paris hilton?) most of the time i don't even get what the whole fuss is about dogs.

we've always had dogs for as long as i can remember -- patty, who had eight pups one time which we named after the planets (we didn't name any of them a pluto, too reminiscent of walt disney's dog). boris, the dachsund who'd bark at me when i get home way after my curfew. noodles, a japanese spitz that was the most ladylike of our dogs. she'd sit like a debutante at her coming out ball -- back straight with her two front paws crossed in front of her. baron and blink, a pair of labrador retrievers who were so dumb they didn't know how to have sex.

they were fun dogs -- they lived long lives, barked at the postman, newspaper deliver boy, meralco bill man, and the pizza hut delivery man. but as far as i was concerned, they were just dogs, as much a part of the landscape at home as the santol tree and the gumamela plants. all our dogs but two. and they were both named Bok.

the first Bok came into our lives when i was ten. he was one of those askals that eventually find their way into your home when the askals of your relatives give birth to a bunch of pups and they give the pups away. Bok was a white dog with black spots scattered randomly all over his body. he was just a regular dog but for some reason, he wormed his way into my non-dog loving heart. i've had him for about a year when the accident had to happen. our maid at the time was a bit old and her eyesight wasn't as it used to be. she was pushing the sliding door shut and she didn't see that Bok was in the doorway. poor Bok got his nose caught in the door and the trauma was bad enough to put him in a coma. he was in a coma for almost a week and we had the vet do everything to revive him. and he revived but he was never the same. it was as if he had forgotten all about us and would try to bite me whenever i'd get too close. it was as if he was still really angry at having the door slammed on his face and he remained angry til the day he died.

i went through the usual "i'm never going to love another dog as long as i live" phase that all bereaved dog owners go through. it was 18 years before i loved another dog again. and it was no accident that i named him Bok as well.

i was having one of my black weeks when my mom came home and said "i have a surprise for you." she gave me a ball of white with black spots scattered randomly all over his body. it was Bok all over again. same white fur, same black spots, same askal look and demeanor. and it was this Bok that rescued me and pushed me out of that black place.

Bok's been sick the past couple of weeks. he has heartworm, this pesky disease that dogs get when they get bitten by mosquitoes. so for the past couple of days, Bok has been freaking me out when he runs up to meet me. he runs up to me then suddenly just keels over. the first time he did this i thought he had a heart attack which nearly gave me a heart attack. will just wait for the treatment to kick in. in the meantime, he just sits next to me with his head on my lap, occasionally putting up his paw and asking for a tummy rub.

i hope he gets well quick. i know i haven't turned into one of those dog owners who dress up their dogs in silly burberry sweaters. i've become one of those dog owners who've let their dogs worm their way into their hearts.

how does one recover from a loss of a dog? i wouldn't know. i don't think that's ever happened to anyone yet. you lose a dog, you lose a part of you that keeps you human.