Happy Birthday, Jach!

17-year-old virtuoso pianist. Quezon City

Many moons ago, when I first met Jach, I thought he was shy, quiet, and reserved.

Was I wrong! He likes to be the life of the party and to be in charge. 

Coupled with that extroverted stint is a trait that's baffling and downright confusing but amusing at the same time. Through the years, he has evolved as an amorphous, unclassifiable, and constantly forking dichotomy of contrary personalities.

To wit. 

He certainly has the brains. He seems to know just about everything, so I don't need Google.

Yet conversely proportional to all that erudition is his at-home vocabulary. Jach has a three-word limit to his conversation, not necessarily spoken in sequence, though he sometimes blows his quota with an additional grunt. When I obsess over incidents, parsing every nuance for the possibility of unfavorable outcomes, his is the calm voice that soothes with an, Eh, incidentally his favorite go-to in the hierarchy of his treble word-stock. 

A thumbs up to Mayon, the world's most-perfect
cone-shaped volcano. Bicol, 2020

Also, with his friends and cronies, I'd say he's ET with the heart light on, listening - for hours! - to every ache and pain, emotional and technical. He will travel the distance and defy the spewed ashes of a raging volcano just to meet up with them.

But driving fifteen minutes, a total of 6.58 miles on Morse Road, to Saraga International Grocery for chocoflan is out of the way.

His wardrobe is sparse but he has enough Other Stuff. Like backpacks, walking shoes, and empty boxes. 

Yes.

Empty.Boxes.

I think he has enough of these stacked up in the garage to supply every major city in the country for the next ten years. And that's not counting the empty, used plastic bags he leaves in the refrigerator bins. I cannot fathom how he squirrels away every crate, case, and carton and bestows the gift of immortality upon each of them. 

To his credit, he is a skilled cook who delights with his bistek (beef steak), Peri-Peri infused broiled chicken, pad thai and a not-shabby-at-all lemon bar dessert.

I'm convinced that life, to Jach, is a blank canvas. That's why he throws all the paint on it that he can. He's a funny chameleon who cultivates his small spark of madness to the hilt.

Once, he heard a doctor on TV say that to have inner peace, we should always finish things we start, and we all could use more calm in our lives now during the pandemic. 

Did he take that to heart!

Heeding the advice, he wrote about it, thus:

I looked through my house to find things I'd started and hadn't finished, so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiumun srciptuns, an a box a chocletz.

Yuhaf no idr how feckin fablus I feel rite now.

Sned his to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum

I firmly believe that his guiding principle in life is to make jokes. No stress. Love. Live life. Proceed. Progress.

Need I say more? 

Actually, yes. 

Don't let aging get you down.

It's too hard to get back up.

                  Happy birthday, Jach!

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax. Zoombezi Bay Water Park, 2020