the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

For my last birthday retreat, because it was too much stress to go on my usual international trip, I stayed an entire weekend at a Catholic retreat house two miles from house to produce this:

 #writing in #sunstarcebu again after almost ten years!! :D And funny enough, it's the first I've ever done with internet access, so I could actually verify historical facts through Google and geographical features using Google Maps haha! This one is on last year's #birthdaytrip to #follybeach #charleston #southcarolina, which I never posted about before. It was truly a stunning place for #photography. I have lots more #sunset shots that didn't make it here. It's not literary, but it's a start! #nofilter #nature #outdoors #fall Published on August 31, 2017 What do you do when you long for the sea and you’re thousands of miles away from the nearest tropical island? You head south to the Carolinas. It was almost December in Washington DC. Most of the leaves had fallen from the trees outside my office. The days were getting shorter. And there I was, busy chasing after deadlines just as I had for the last twelve months. “You need to get away,”...

to celebrate a new year, the first complete poem i've written in more than two years since i left for Europe....

9 November to 21 December 2009. November 9 to 20. First birthday in Davao in 14 years. November 21 to 22. Joint birthday trip to Puerto Galera with Jemi. November 23 to 26. East Asian Seas Congress, Manila. November 26 to December 19. Dumaguete, thesis research and Philippine leg with Rich. December 19 to 20. Alabang with Baculios.

21 to 23 November 2008. After a horrendous week of coursework deadlines (gave a presentation on the 19th itself, stayed at the library till 5 a.m. that night to finish my chemistry paper due at noon the next day, woke up early on the 20th to proofread my paper, reprint and submit, then practice for another presentation at 1 pm), I finally got to properly celebrate the last year of my 20's on a tour of different villages along the English Jurassic coast (a UNESCO World Heritage site) in the county of Dorset. This year, though, I had the improbable (and ironic) surprise of actually having a classmate who's exactly my age. We found out we had the same birthday because we were groupmates for that presentation we had on our birthday :P So what's the probability of celebrating your birthday with someone exactly your age? Very small, I'm sure, and probably never again, so this was a rare gift. Because we both had all our November deadlines over last Thursday, we decided to do...

lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia to be published on 24 November 2007   SOME THINGS COME without being called. Like cats. And love letters. Or, happily, a precious poem writing itself in the middle of a crazy, hectic week.   This past year opportunities have been dropping onto my lap, unexpected—people who turned out to be the very ones I needed to meet at just the right time, trips to the remotest places I’d always dreamed of going to, but never thought I’d reach for lack of funds and logistics. Opportunities, too, for sources of income, at the times my own funds were running low. Certainly nothing short of miraculous for somebody unemployed and studying full-time.   It’s been Murphy’s Law turned upside down. Everywhere I turn, things fall neatly into place. It’s perhaps what they say about all things working together for good for those who love God, or the universe conspiring, the fates converging.   To what do I owe this seeming reversal in fortune? ...

Rating: ★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in December 2003 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) When I was four years old, I knew exactly what my future self looked like: twenty-something and striding confidently in a power suit, breezing through the world, totally unfaze-able. Even then I knew I wanted to be independent, career-minded, everything that epitomized the “working girl” motif of the 80’s. Twenty-four was the ultimate grown-up age. When you’re four years old, twenty-four sounds like a good time to settle down, get married and be a perfect mother to three adorable kids, all the while holding that top position in a Fortune 500 company. I don’t know why my standards demanded that Adulthood come so early. Maybe it was growing up as an eldest kid mostly around adults. Maybe it was having ...

November 19, 2006 – Agan-an, Sibulan, Negros Oriental. What better way to spend a birthday than to try skimboarding for the first time? The wind was so strong, the board banged against my lower lip and front teeth while I was holding it. But it was SO worth it. *that's cebu island there in the background =D note the raised pinky finger all throughout. hehehe. bakla talaga ako!

  when i was younger, i used to make an inventory of all the gifts i got and from whom. now that i’m older (and we do get fewer gifts, don’t we, if at all =), i count how many people greet me, sort of as an indicator of whether my friends have also increased in number along with my age. my standard is that the number of greetings i get by phone and text should be at least equal to my age. last year, it was off the scale—too many friends ;-)   this year’s birthday index:   ADVANCED (day before) = about 2 or 3 texts ON TIME =   25 texts, 1 call (only! tsk tsk) **first greeting from my father (who says he doesn’t believe in birthdays anymore since shifting religions) at 00:05:47 **weirdest hour award goes to my former boss who sent a greeting at 03:51:55 BELATED (day after) = 2 texts, 4 calls   i guess that’s good enough, even though i didn’t quite hit the number on the day itself.   actually, i didn’t have the usual “rite of passage” feeling this year; didn...

November 19, 2006. What I found in my solitary search for a marine sanctuary. From Bantayan, Dumaguete City to Agan-an, Sibulan, Negros Oriental.

...as cris said. so here are the post-birthday presents that still made it in november, in order of arrival: 1) from jemi - a Jude Deveraux book (about three women who have the same birthday and travel back in time to change their lives =), reminiscent of high school and the classic A Knight in Shining Armor) and a Maya Angelou card 2) from mama (who likes to give in excess) - aside from a balikbayan box of clothes that actually fit me, gummy candy, the november angel , and some other stuff that came in september, plus the bill for my birthday dinner , this package arrived last sunday: a denim jacket, a black purse, clinique lip gloss, birthday candles, other little things, and food (which you can no longer see in the picture) 3) from cris - flowers (with silver dust and beads of water to boot!) that arrived yesterday. the delivery guy even got lost because of a wrong address and started calling all the houses in our compound looking for me. sent from a cebu flower shop, t...

here are the photos to match the birthday journal entry. i don't think i need to explain, but i think i should warn you about the graphic self-portraits =P really, the things you think of doing when you're alone with a tripod and a camera. i tried my best to post only the most decent ones. brace yourselves.

it's just been a week and a half since i found ashley, and wow, her teeth have really grown. and claws, too. the scars on my hands are proof of that, especially when she's really hungry. but we've adjusted to each other better, especially after our trip south for my birthday. surprisingly, she wasn't afraid of the waves, which were quite high last week because of a typhoon somewhere in surigao. she didn't mind the bus ride as much as i did, either. a summary of my birthday weekend: 17-18: took a leave from work to rent a cottage by the sea in south cebu. went snorkelling only three times because of the bad visibility the first two days.  and with a portable tripod and a digital camera with a self-timer, you can just imagine how i spent my time   moon was full, though cloudy. took some long exposures of it with my trusty manual camera and tripod. 19: woke up to catch the orange (this time) sunrise on my birthday  was supposed to go diving on the day itself, but so...

lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia to be published on November 19, 2005     Because this is supposed to come out on my birthday, I had started writing about something else entirely. And then SHE walked my way.   So there I was, taking a stroll after a solitary dinner. I was supposed to be hurrying home to write this column, but I had deliberately gone round the long way, in the hope of bumping into someone I knew. Instead, I bumped into her. She was shrieking on the sidewalk, too tiny to feed on anything but milk. As I am wont to do in these situations, I picked up the filthy ball of fur to return her to wherever her mother was. Problem was, no mother was to be found. Someone had dropped her there, a man on the sidewalk said. She would just die if I didn’t take her home, he said. What else was I supposed to do?   After a quick stop at a convenience store to buy powdered milk, I carried her home, quite appropriately, on top of my “Poetry for the Earth”...

Gene Boyd was buried on my birthday, but I didn't know about his burial until yesterday, when my father told me about it. Anyway, the night before my birthday, I couldn't sleep, so I started writing this poem. I actually started writing a poem with this title, also about sunsets, early last year, but I couldn't finish it. It was gene boyd's death that showed me how it should end. Last night, I couldn't sleep again, I had this weird, weird heavy feeling I couldn't describe. So I decided I wouldn't sleep till I finished this. I slept at 3 am. I'm sure so many have written about him the past week. I only really got to talk to him when we were on the streets during kadayawan , and I was even planning to meet up with him when I go home for Christmas. But that’s the tragedy of life, you never know when the last time you see a person is the last time forever. I’m still disturbed by what happened so I can only imagine what people who spent more time with hi...

first published as lost and found column#12 on November 13, 2004 in Sun.Star Weekend Cebu I�m turning twenty-five in a few days. Reading through my old journals and poems last week, I realized I�ve outgrown writing about philosophical insights and spiritual illuminations. Now all I write about is love, the rollercoaster kind. Really, I wonder where all the profundity went. Throughout high school and for most of college, my journals were full of expositions on the meaning of my existence, questions on the truth about God, an occasional incident with a crush maybe, but mostly reflections on my life. Now my journal entries read like �Dear Diary� more than ever before. The older I get, the mushier I become. While I used to write down lessons from my readings or conversations, now I write about my feelings�how I keep longing for a particular person, how someone really hurt me, how a confrontation has left me angry and confused. I thought I was supposed to grow wiser with age, my ...