ive got a nano

ive got a nano, a nano-enterprise. as distinguished from micro-enterprise. and that's the reason why i havent been blogging as much for the past two months.

a few months back, ive been entertaining the wild idea of having a small business on the side. ive always been such a corporate guy, ive wondered if i could actually handle a SME (small medium enterprise). it was also a way of helping out people by providing employment ('give a man a fish and he eats for a day....')

opportunity landed on my lap, a heaven-sent. turns out a colleague's sister wants out of her retail business. and just at the right time, i offered to buy her rights and assets. it's really a tiny, tiny enterprise, hence the nano-enterprise. it's a little diner somewhere in qc.

right at day one, i got involved in the business. since it was existing, there were some steady clients. all it needed was some renovation, additional working capital. and i started to get my feet really wet into it. i supervised the renovations, with its two million little headaches (part of cost-cutting is micromanaging). buying the hardware materials, handing out the arawan sweldo. oh my.

then it was the purchase of the dinnerware, utensils, kitchen stuff. it was onwards to quiapo to really get good quality bargains! i haven't been there in a long, long while. now, im there almost weekly! and there's makro! never thought id actually be one of those I see standing in line with huge packs of groceries.

it's all so retail. and lately, after the blessing and all, things are picking up. i spend free time just supervising and serving clients. im meeting new people, with their own stories. hmmm. i think ill start another blog about their kwentos.

such different paradigms: the corporate mega-enterprise and my nano. it's my incubator for face-to-face market research on neighborhood consumer behavior. and beyond that it's me experiencing a new set of people again. and some of them are quite attractive. hahahaha.

ff ballroom

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cc & his faith

mgg just posted our latest fabcast "homosexuality and religion". i invite you to listen to it by going to mgg's blog.

im re-posting an entry from last year, exactly on this topic:

my faith explained
march 27, 2007

its palm sunday. we begin Holy Week, a defining week for Catholics. it has put me in the right mood to be introspective. moreover, something about the comments on my post "feasting and abstinence" made me think - what is my "faith"? what do i believe in? funny but i have never tried to put this down into words, largely taking 'believing' for granted. (what do you take me for, granted?)

I believe

- in God, a Father to me, to all of Creation. Benevolent Creator. I believe in some power much, much greater than me. I cannot believe that all the happens in this world are by accident. There is logic, there is order though the wisdom of this may be beyond me to comprehend. And that's why I call it faith.
- in Jesus. The Father's Son. He is my Teacher. He is my Lord. Through the New Testament, He teaches me to live a better, more fulfilling life. Very difficult at times.
- I was born this way... made this way.. gay, for a reason or for a host of differet reasons. Foremost is to take care of my parents in their twilight years. the least I could to for all the sacrifice they made for me.
- that though the Bible is explicit about homosexual behavior as sinful, I believe that the sin lies in sex and sexual behavior devoid of 'love', purely for passion, or recreation. It is not so much the gender of those involved but the attitude behind the act. I should be treating people as people, as human beings. I fail to treat them right if I have sex with people I do not even love.
- that when i love, i should ultimately love in all faithfulness.
- that reconciling being gay with being catholic may seem like an oxymoron. but the ability to hold two opposing truths is a sign of deepening maturity. i liken this to the dual nature of light. do you know that light behaves like a wave and a particle? and these two aspects of light are truly incompatible, irreconcilable. and yet light behaves in both ways.

love! valour! compassion!

ive wanted to watch this old film (1997). i guess because this is one of the more popular gay-themed movies then. finally, somebody lent me a copy. salamat!

friends spend holiday-weekends in a beautiful house by the lake. couples mostly. i get snapshots of their lives, their infidelities, their fragile egos. funny how spending time together brings out all these issues. and often, there are confrontations, violent ones. and i find it weird. ive spent endless weekends with my friends. we've never turned dramatic or confrontational. maybe its just us. or is it pinoy not to 'rock the boat'?

a mildly entertaining film, a celebration of gay friendship (as if it was so different from straight friendship). poignant when they talk about AIDS and the way the film ends.

recommendable only because of jason alexander's portrayal of an HIV-positive. and the nudity. =)

haiku-like post

we saw each other again. finally no animosity. and no mention of the past. sure, it was still strained.

then i hugged him from behind. kissed him on his neck as i felt how nice it was to hug him and kiss him once again.

he made the peace sign with his right hand. and i made one, too.

i was also wondering how on earth to tell everybody that we were back together, after all the acrimony. but who cares? i was happy to be with him again.

then i woke up. it was just a dream. a dream of ex.

pic by worldwidet. showing the peace sign formed by the clouds.

wish i was there...

i just finished listening to mgg's fabcast with the closet badets. i should have been there. but i already made some plans. sigh.

but it sounded like they had fun, poking at the generation gap! buti na lang pala wala ako dun. =)

seriously, there were two thought-provoking questions mentioned that stimulated my cc mind...

if there was an event or an experience when you were starting out as a gay man which you could change, what would it be?

i should have had sex with my high school boyfriends. yes, i didnt have sex with them. the most we got to was french kissing. funny we were so pa-tweetums then.

oops. context muna. back in high school in an all-male school somewhere in manila, we badets (then) were the ones being pursued by the straight guys in the school! in an amazing twist of fate, it was considered 'cool' among the guys to have a 'syota' na bading. (the guys included the hottest jocks - the captain ball of the basketball team, the football team - the corps commander of the CMT, etc) so we felt like girls being wooed by the guys. and we had our pick. i had 2 relationships then. but the sad consequence of being treated like girls is the stupid notion that we WERE girls that had our LIMITS - i.e. NO SEX! i myself went as far as french kissing and hugging. and that was an accomplishment for me!

i had two really cute boyfriends then. i wish i had sex with them.

is there a happy ending for gays?

tony responded to this closing question by saying that happy endings are gender neutral. i agree ideally. but this question remains central to a lot of gays only because of the innate social biases against being gay in most societies. handicap, kung baga. whether we like it or not, we felt those biases growing up. in my extremely permissive high school as mentioned above, i still felt persecution from the other guys. i still grew up being teased and taunted. and i hated that feeling. and that didnt make me happy at all.

happy endings then may be a pipe dream for some us who continue to be persecuted because of who we are. what is ideally a question for everybody becomes particularly poignant for us who feel disadvantaged right at the start. and this is an experience we share with other disadvantaged groups... color, creed, disability.

but having said that, my response: happiness is not found at the end of the road, it is found along the way. which is very similar to what mgg said. it is the journey that matters. you HAVE to be happy and peaceful now, as you go your way being gay. and there a zillion reasons for being happy.

yun lang. =)