Wishing for a Second Chance at Love

I was reading the 2012 Christmas card letter of a relative yesterday. In her letter, she was informing everyone that her divorce from her husband after 27 years of marriage became final last September. Along with the divorce, she was happy to sell their former residence although it was at the depressed California real estate prices. However, she was happy to move to a 2-bedroom apartment in the same town where her husband and two adult kids had previously resided.

For the sake of this posting, let me call this relative Andrea. Andrea was devastated after the divorce, but managed to get a job that she enjoys currently. She has been in this job for over a year now and just got a promotion. Although the pay is not that great, the job helped her gain her self worth and be financially independent from her former husband. During her marriage for 27 years, she was a full time housekeeper, although she had a Bachelor of Arts and post graduate degrees.

Six months after the divorce, she started dating, because she was lonely. Both of her two adults children are in college. According to Andrea her dating experiences had been very painful and not satisfying at all. The guys she had dated are not marriage material at all. Some of them are jobless and also divorced or widowed. Some of the guys Andrea had dated are about the same age as she is (low 50's), but majority are in their 60's. So as of today, Andrea search for a second chance for love have not been fruitful at all. I do hope however, that Andrea can find love again in the near future.

I have a second relative who is now ready for a second Chance for Love. For the sake of this posting, let me call her Lea. Lea's husband died of cancer last year at a young age of 51 years. He left an 8 year-old girl and a 47-year old widow. Lea so far had managed to cope up with the demands of raising a child alone and working at a senior level position in the State of California. I do not know how Lea can managed her personal situation, but I thank the Lord, she seemed to be living a normal but again a lonely life typical of a young widow living in a small city.

Lea's problem with regards to dating and finding a second chance for Love is the lack of men who are as accomplished as she is in terms of employment and personal accomplishments. With a pre-teen child, complications of getting married the second time around is more likely to occur for Lea. Indeed her chance for happiness and fulfillment is small, but not hopeless. I am however, praying and hoping, Lea gets a second chance for love in the near future.

My dear readers if you have a friend, relative or know of men (40 to 65) looking for love, stability and commitment, I highly recommend my two relatives above. Both Lea and Andrea are good looking, smart, highly educated and accomplished women in their late 40's and early 50's. My e-mail is in this blog if you need more details.

My Favorite Quotes on Gardens and Gardening

One of my hobbies when I am in the Philippines is to do some gardening, both actual and by mouth. If you do not know the term gardening by mouth, I do not blame you since I coined that phrase. It simply meant that I have a full time gardener that I order and do most of the hard work in the garden. So my mouth is the one that do the gardening and not my whole body which is getting older every year.

I have a flower garden, a vegetable and a fruit orchard at the Chateau Du Mer in Boac, Marinduque. My flower garden has more than 50 varieties of orchids, 10 varieties of bougainvillas, 15 varieties of hibiscus and around 25 varieties of euphorbias and cacti. My fruit tree orchard has more than a dozen of tropical fruit trees. Among my favorite fruit tress are the mangoes, bananas, papayas, avocados, lanzones, cashews, star apples, chicos, sugar apples, rambutans, guayabanos and of course coconuts.

The following are 13 of my favorites quotes on the subject of gardens and gardening
not including the head picture above. The number one quote by Monet is my most treasured quote in the list below.

1. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”
― Claude Monet

2. “A weed is but an unloved flower.”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

3. “The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

4. “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.”
― Thomas Jefferson

5. “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.”
― Thomas Jefferson

6. “Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.”
― Eudora Welty

7. “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.”
― Alfred Austin

8. “You're not a gardener, are you? So perhaps you don't know that once a garden is established, much of good gardening is about removal rather than planting, honing what you have to produce a pleasing effect, sacrificing the particular for the good of the whole. Gardening is a creative pastime, but the result is always a work in progress; unlike a painting or a piece of music a garden is never fixed in time. ("In The Garden")”
― Rosalie Parker, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21

9. “All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

10. Gardening is the purest of human pleasures. -Francis Bacon

11. I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden. -John Erskine

12. Gardening requires lots of water, most of it in the form of perspiration. -Lou Erickson

13.

Schubert's Ave Maria with the Fan Flute

I like this video because of the flowers in the background. Please note that at about 3.40 minutes of the video is a picture of a blue rose that reminds me of my rose garden at the Chateau Du Mer Beach Resort in Boac, Marinduque, Philippines.

It is time to enjoy a religious music for this coming Christmas season. One of my favorite classical piece is Ave Maria by Schubert. As you know this is the most popular Ave Maria composition. There are several other Ave Maria composed by other composers. The two popular versions are known as the Bach/Gounod and Schubert/Liszt version. Ave Maria is based on a Roman Catholic prayer ("Hail Mary" in Latin)

Schubert's "Ave Maria" is also called "Ellens dritter Gesang" or "Ellen's Third Song". Schubert decided to forego the traditional text and use a German translation of a Sir Walter Scott poem "The Lady of the Lake". It's often sung with the traditional Latin text but that was added by others. Schubert wrote his song for voice and piano, and Liszt who was a pianist and composer, transcribed a piano version.

The Bach-Gounod version is another instance of one composer using the work of another to create his own "version"--sort of. The two composers, J.S. Bach and Charles Gounod never worked together on creating this popular "Ave Maria". Bach died years before Gounod was even born.

Bach had written something called "The Well-Tempered Clavier" in which including "Prelude No. 1 in C Major". Gounod wrote a melody over that prelude and used the traditional prayer as the lyric.

My wife's favorite Ave Maria piece was composed by Santiago a Filipino composer. The melody of this piece is much harder than the above two versions. Other Ave Maria pieces have been composed by Brahms and Verdi and a few other composers of the world.

End of the World and Gangnam Style of Doomsday, 2012

I saw the following video in You TUBE yesterday. Is this a joke or will it happen because North Korea will launch its long range nuclear missiles to the US West Coast? Comments
anyone.

Marinduque versus Guimaras for Retirement in the Philippines

Marinduque-My Island Paradise and Heaven on Earth

Five years prior to my retirement from FDA, my wife (Macrine) and I had to make a decision where in the Philippines, we will build our retirement home, since we have decided to live the snow bird lifestyle in our retirement years. If you have been following my blogs, you know what a snow bird lifestyle is. However, if this is your first time, allow me to explain what the term “snow bird” meant. It is a lifestyle involving the best of the EAST and WEST, both culturally and weather-wise. That is, when it gets cold here in Northern California ( after Thanksgiving), Macrine and I flies to the Philippines where the weather is perfect, cool, and dry with very low humidity. When it start to get hot and humid in the Philippines ( Easter Season), around mid-April, we fly back to Northern California when it is the start of spring and perfect weather. So far we had done this annually since 2002. Thank you Lord!

There are hundreds of places in the Philippines, where one could build a retirement home on the beach. Macrine and I had narrowed it down to two islands, Marinduque or Guimaras Island near Iloilo. Building a beach house had always been my dream and goal in life.

Marinduque is Macrine, province of birth. She finished high school at the local catholic school for girls in Boac, the capital town of Marinduque. Iloilo on the other hand is my province of birth. I finished at the local high school in the town of Barotac Viejo, about 60 Km north of Iloilo City. Macrine's parents had several beach front lots along the western coast of Marinduque at Barrios Laylay and Amoingon.

My father has a beach front lot in the island of Guimaras in the town of Buenavista. After several months of discussing the pros and cons between Marinduque or Guimaras, Macrine convinced me that Marinduque is our Island Paradise instead of Guimaras Island for the following reasons.

1.The proximity of Marinduque to Manila-only 30 minutes versus 50 minutes airplane ride

2.The location, area and physical set-up of the beach front lots. In Marinduque, the beach front lot is about 5 acres, and also along the national road. There is a creek running in the property that flows to the ocean inhabited by fish and crabs. The lot has several full grown shade and fruit trees and more than 100 banana and coconut trees.

On the other hand my father's lot in Guimaras is small and I had never seen it. In addition, the title of the lot was still not in my name. The lot is also isolated and far from the national road. Another factor against Guimaras is that the island was still under developed( poor roads), although there was a plan to build a bridge between Guimaras and the mainland in Iloilo City at that time.

3.Social Support System: Macrine has lots of closed relatives in Boac. I have relatives in Guimaras but I have never meet them. Most of my closed relatives are in the mainland in Jaro.

4.Last, but not least, I feel in love with Marinduque, its hospitable residents, its culture ( putong, Kalutang and Moriones Festival) and its delicious food ( ginat-an na manok, Kare-kare and ulang-ulang).

For details read my posting "Why I Love Marinduque at http://marinduquemyislandparadise.blogspot.com

Today is 12/12/12! Is this Your Lucky Day?

I hope today (12/12/12)is your lucky day. Did your parents give you a lucky name?

In the Philippines, numbers are either lucky or unlucky. Today, I believe is my lucky day. Speaking of numbers, the following is an article I wrote about the pseudo science of numerology as practiced by my mother-in-law when she was still alive in the Philippines.

My late Mother-in-law had given my wife a formula based on numbers for predicting whether a marriage,a birth of a child or any addition to your household will bring good or bad luck or even death to your family or household. My wife had followed this formula when we assigned names to our four children. I am not superstitious, but I follow it also, because I have witnessed several cases of relatives in the Philippines, that has suffered early death, divorce or sickness because the combination of the baptismal names of the couples falls into the category of CONDENADO ( meaning condemned or death). There are five categories, BUENAS( good luck), DUDUSO ( doubtful), PELIGRO ( danger), MALAS( bad luck) and CONDENADO. I have the number values for the 26 alphabets and the numbers that are suppose to be lucky, doubtful, danger, bad luck and condemned. But my wife refused to give her permission that I divulge this in my blog. But here is the essence of this pseudo science of numerology.

The 26 alphabets are assigned numerical values from zero to 26. Some of the alphabets have the same values. Eight alphabets are valued 12, four alphabets are valued 9, three alphabets are valued 18, and the rest from of the alphabets are valued from zero to 26.

The letters in your Baptismal name is added. This sum tells the numerologist if your number is either of the above five categories. Then the baptismal name of your wife is also added. The sum of your name and your spouse is added. If it exceeds 30, you start counting to 1. If you have a baby, the baptismal name of the baby is added to both husband and wife's total. Any addition to the household, even household help must be considered especially if the maid, cook or gardener lives in your house.

So how will you know if the sum of all the names in your household will bring you good or bad luck?

There is a list of lucky numbers, unlucky numbers, doubtful numbers, danger numbers and condemned numbers. There are 7 lucky numbers among them are 7, 9 and 11. There are eight unlucky numbers among them are 4, 8, and 29. There are 20 doubtful numbers among them are 5, 6 and 27. There are 8 danger numbers among them 12, 15 and 23. There are 8 condemned numbers among them are 3, 13 and 30.

Let me cite a specific example. My name "David" has a numerical value of 30 or zero. From the chart of 5 categories it is a bad number. So my parents did not give me a lucky name. But if you combined it with my wife's name value 21 our total is 21. The number 21 is doubtful. When our oldest son was born we made it sure that the combination of our 3 names is among the lucky numbers of 1,3,7, 9,and 11.

This numerology system is similar but not identical to the Chinese numerology.
For example number 4 is a pretty bad number in Cantonese, for it sounds death, but in this system 4 is a good number. Eight is a good number in Chinese, but a danger number in this system. Both 1 and 9 are good numbers in Chinese and in my mother-in-law numerology chart.

Curious? I am sorry I can not elaborate more on this. My wife says, it will be bad luck to give details of this Numerology Activity that my Mother-in-law had been practicing for years when she was still alive. Evidently, this has been passed from generation to generation and believe to have originated from Spain.

Have you heard a similar activity in your local province in the Philippines, UK or in Spain?.