Of Fools and Hidden Truths

This is a story told by Momiji Souma, a character from Fruits Basket.

The Most Foolish Traveler in the World

You see... Once upon a time, there was a foolish traveler who had gone on a journey.
Why was he foolish? Well, because he was fooled by everyone he met!

"Please, some money for medicine...?"

Everywhere he went, people made up all kinds of sad stories to tell him, and the traveler fell for every one of them.

"I have a sick younger sister..."

"I don't have money to buy seeds to plant in my fields."

Pretty soon, his money, his clothes, even his shoes had been cheated away from him.

But the foolish traveler was always glad to help. And he always told the people the same thing.

He said: "I wish you happiness."

But by this point, though, the traveler was completely naked, and with nothing left to cover himself, he decided to leave the main road and travel through the dense forest, where no one could see him...

But soon, he was discovered by the goblins that lived in the woods. The goblins wanted to eat the traveler's body, so they begged and pleaded, and used
kind words to try and trick him... Of course, the traveler was fooled.

First, he let the goblins eat one of his legs. Then an arm. Then more and more... Before it was over, all that the traveler had left was his head. He'd even given his eyes away to the last of the goblins... And as that last goblin was eating the traveler's eyes, he turned and said

"Thank you, traveler. In return, I leave you this present."

What the goblin left was a slip of paper, with the word "fool" written on it. The traveler couldn't see it. He didn't know what it was. Even so, tears began to flow down his face.

"Thank you," he said. "This is the first present anyone ever gave me. I'm so happy. I'm so happy. Thank you."

Even without his eyes, he cried and cried, great tears of joy. Then, the traveler died, the smile still on his face.

And that's... the end of the story.

Right after we heard that yesterday, all of the other kids in class started making fun of the traveler. But, while they did that... I closed my eyes and thought about him a little bit longer... I thought about how he had given everything away, until all he had left was his head... and how at the end, he still cried for joy as he said thank you... And then I realized... Ah, I feel so sorry for him... See? Loss, hardship, things like that? You can't only focus on them... The traveler didn't... He never thought about his own troubles at all... I imagine that it probably does sound really foolish to some people. But not to me. I don't think he's foolish at all. Even though other people probably think he was being tricked? I don't think he was. I think he
did exactly what he wanted to do... I think... More than anything, he just wanted to make other people happy.

Why did I quote such a story? Because I am that foolish traveler. I work practically shortening my lifespan to earn money but it almost always gets lent/duped/vanished. And like the foolish traveler, I don't really mind because it makes me happy and blessings do arrive.

---

Truths

The truth is so hard to see when you ignore the signs and simply believe in people. Oh how fucked up relationships and people can be...

Sage, Firefox and Bloghopping

You like to visit blogs, but usually waste time visiting all of your bookmarked links with so less of them updated. Alas! A wonderful and simple solution:

Sage

You can use it to find feeds from sites then add them as bookmarks. Then when you feel like reading blogs, you can use it to check if any of your bookmarks have updated their blogs. Quick and easy.

See Your Doctor At Least Once A Year

Against a lot of odds, it happened at last. It was a long awaited and overdue meeting. After almost a year I got to meet Chari again… er, Dr. Charisse. It was brought about by Murphy knocking on her door at the start of the year: her desktop pc went kaput and she couldn’t use her flash drive on her old laptop. After installing the usb driver for Windows98, spybot scrubbing and installing firefox, the laptop was ready and willing to serve its master again :P.

Sorry for making you watch “First kiss” chari! It really was kinda dragging. I don’t remember why I seemed to like it, maybe its because Ji-Woo Choi is extremely delicious >:P.

Hehe. Here I go again with my Photoshop wedding fixation :P

Post Storm!!!

A lot has happened since the last time I posted due to the generic excuse of being too busy or wanting to do justice to the event/post. So here I am in bulacan on Christmas day, typing on yomiko and hoping to be able to catch up on my writing.

Between what is right and what is easy...

I've already established that my body can not survive on prolonged periods of stress, but here I am falling into that situation all over again. Be it for better or worse, I have made a decision and submitted my resignation from Cube and will be officially out of there by January 19.

I did think about it well, but I still question that decision up to now. Was it the right decision, the easy one or absolutely wrong? Was it wise or was it foolish?

December 29 night out:

It was a tense and stressful day for people in the office. It was uncomfortable enduring comments like 'buti pa si bmac', when my path ahead is just as unknown. So the people wanted to drink their blues away and we ended up drinking at Masas bar in greenbelt.

I felt so pathetic for getting woozy after 2 bottles of strong ice. But I'll wave that away and blame it on lack of sleep :P

December 23 night out:

After Christmas based celebrations in the office, it was time to go on a night out with old friends: pips from SAL. First batch were me, tseri, richie and m's for dinner at Fish & co. then drinks at Tia Mare. Joining us later were Mayk, Ren and Chau for a piyok-fest at Red Box. It was fun catching up and talking about plans, misadventures and rumors.

Search for gifts

It was a hard and daunting task to look for gifts to give away this Christmas. It took me 2 passes in 2 days to scan all the shelves and displays to look for ideal gifts. Good thing Mika is there to supply me with secret items as level 2 gifts and I found nice hair kikay kits to give out. Chose 2 good books to give to my inaanak Sophia(which I haven’t delivered btw).

ePLDT Xmas Party

Its was a Matrix-themed party filled with drinking and dancing. Filled myself up with san mig lights and danced like a crazed person.

Infocom Xmas Party

My first company xmas party so I tried to enjoy it though at the back of my mind, I was already planning to leave. Didn’t win any of the prizes so it wasn’t complete for me…

Third ‘official’ GodChild

DualView!

Due to the demands of a project I’m working on, I took the monitor from my older pc and set-up rebirth as dual-view. Now my desktop real-estate space is 2560x1024. So now I have Mac flash and word side by side to improve my development speed. I still have to fight against my own laziness though :P

November Baguio Trip:

On the second long weekend my officemates and I went on an expedition to baguio to get away from the busy city life. Tseri and Ther had most of everything planned out like where we stayed and allotments for food & drinks.

To make a long story short: Ukay, Grotto, Minesview, the Mansion, Buy, Drink… Drunk, Poker, dishwash, Movie, Drink… Drunk , Cook, went Home. Bow

Need for Speed Most Wanted:

I used to be addicted to NFS Underground to the point that my fingers grew in-growns. One of my officemates suggested that I download Most Wanted which I did. It took me a weekend to figure out how to make it run properly but it was sure worth it. In a nutshell, its NFS underground 2 and NFS Hot Pursuit combined. The main goal is to defeat 15 of the best blacklist racers in the city to get back your car that was cheated away from you. Of course it involves clashes with the local police, fighting against their best drivers, roadblocks, spike strips, SUVs and even a police helicopter. The new version includes stunning graphics, a wide array of cars and incredible challenges. Its not much of a stress reliever because you’ll probably stress yourself out trying to win. Grab this title if you love to race or just screw up police cars :D

Jewel in the Palace:

Call me jologs but having watched a couple of episodes with my mom, I could honestly say that his is a good series. I also pitied my mom losing sleep having to wait for it to be aired everyday. I eventually decided to download it from the net… a staggering 18GB download. Now the only problem is my mom is still losing sleep… watching up to 4 episodes(4 hours) a night. Bohahahhahaahahh.