Tomorrow Box

To help you sleep soundly and well, place a tomorrow Box on your bedside table. It should contain slips of paper on which you can write tasks you have to give up for the day and resume working on the next day, rather than toss and turn in bed mulling over them.

Rejoice at the success of other people. Their success is always your success. Their failure is always your failure.

Never compare yourself with others who are more successful than you. You will only end up bitter and miserable. Worse, you will lose the golden opportunity to discover the many ways YOU can be successful and shine like no other people can shine.

http://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook18.blogspot.com/2017/07/never-dash-off-poem-or-painting-and.html

In this era, real treasure will not be buried in the earth. They will be buried in cyberspace, and entire teams of neo-treasure-hunters will search for them. 

Angelique and J. arrived from college before I came home. They had dinner out.

Had a slice of Aubrey's birthday cake.

Back from the center. Chito is back on day shift again. We bought a pizza for Chevy and Vinci.

Entering Hungry Ghost Month (August 22 - September 17, 2017).

The eyes of a grieving person will always search the distance for salvation.

Whenever you purchase or acquire an item, do not expose or display it immediately. Store it first in a dark place inside your house for seven days and seven nights, allowing its energy to adjust and attune to your house and to the residents' bodies. This is especially applicable to antiques and to magical items.

It is all right to light jack-o'-lanterns during Hungry Ghost Month.

The Wands should remain pointing to the ground.

Never let a sweat-soaked shirt dry on your body, or else your shoulder and arm muscles will ache.

The next time it quakes, the earth will liquefy.

Sprites love it when you hang tiny, colorful swings from the branches of your tree.

Looking back now, I realize that most of the "friends" who came my way were atchays. I'd always wondered why I often got impatient and annoyed with them, and, for a time, I thought that everyone else in the world was like them. It was most difficult to believe that I was right most of the time and to have all these "friends" try to make me believe that it was I who was wrong. It made me a brutally frank person--the only way to get back at them was to tell them what they really were.

At 66 I know better, though I am still a brutally frank person. One has to be, especially when one is a minority. There are still atchays everywhere--in religion, in politics, in education, even in literature and in art.

Back from jalan-jalan at the center. Paid Aubrey's monthly gym fee, bought breakfast cereal and fresh milk, other grocery items, more glasses for our cupboard, and two items for myself at my favorite shop.

Good noon, Cubao!

The clouds are white money envelopes.

It is important to go over taladros, panyos, and medalyones with magnifying lenses to determine, first of all, whether anything has been painted over, revised, covered up, marred, or defaced. Only then can one proceed decoding everything.

Aubrey and her sleepover friends had brunch at 10:00 AM. Three left after lunch, the rest around 5:00 PM. Two of Angelique's sleepover friends left at 8:00 AM, J. after lunch. We gave J. some pizza and cupcakes to take home.

Dinner at home with Angelique.

Aubrey decided to skip dinner and sleep like Rip van Winkle. She'd been entertaining friends for 24 hours!

Surprisingly, the house looks neat and clean, and nothing is in disorder. M.'s cafe waiters broke one shot glass, though. 

I learned last night that Angelique and Aubrey named Cerefina after Barbie's Persian cat, Serafina, in the Barbie movie years ago, but I made the mistake of spelling her name based on how I heard the granddaughters pronounce it.

I enjoyed the chill so much that I wore only two of my sweaters, one each day for two days.

Float a feather when the air is still and watch it land on the answer to your question.

Sunday, Sunday

Must weed out more stuff to give away to neighbors.

Still a breezy morning in Cubao.

Good morning, Cubao!

The clouds are white plates on a dish drainer.

Sat outside at the security guards' second station, under the dark canopies of the trees. Jay and I lit cigarettes, careful to remain hidden behind the main gate panels.

I remember all of the Ambassadors' receptions I had to attend in the Embassy ballroom, before I retired. I would sneak out in the middle of them all and sit inside the dark Octagon, looking across Manila Bay at the Cultural Center and Star City's ferris wheel in the distance. Being alone and sitting in the dark was a great relief. I was already a hermit then. I couldn't stand parties and party-goers for long periods of time.

It is 12:10 AM and Aubrey's party is still in full swing. No one but I knows how it is to have 30 girls in one's house. They're at M.'s cafe, where the party is, but going up and down the house, in and out of Aubrey's bedroom. Seven of them are sleeping over. Angelique's friends are here as well, and one of them is sleeping over too.

I can't go to bed until the party is over. Neither can M.'s staff. They are in their sleeping quarters, in the kitchen, at the main gate, and beside the street. I've been stepping out to check on them once in a while. We must give them some of the food.

This electronic diary is continued from tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook35.blogspot.com.