From Paris to Florence: An Awesome Summer!

15 days. 6 cities. 1 family.

It was an awesome summer indeed. Exhilarating, yet each moment brought memories for keeps, especially for the kids, I believe. It was a tightly scheduled two weeks, starting from Paris, then Versailles, and then flying to Rome and the Vatican City, and finally riding the Alta Velocita to Florence and Pisa.

Alice and I felt we need not take guided tours (primarily to save budget), and so, we planned the family's summer holiday on our own: doing and re-doing the itinerary, reserving flights and booking hotels. We even bought tickets to sightseeing areas and museums online prior to our travel and downloaded iPhone travel apps to assist us when we arrive. Such is the beauty of technology.

To top it all, everything went according to plan... not a single hiccup along the way. And thus, we learned a very good lesson on our first venture to Europe as a family: everything is to be done online.

We stayed in France for 6 days, in Italy for another 7 days. The remaining 2 days we spent in flights to and from Europe. 'Twas a good time really, for all of us.

We're already planning to go back...

Again, 'Time of Our Lives'

We've really come a long way as a family.

The family relaxing under the Tour Eiffel after a day's roam...

I'm talking of the quintessential family bonding, the kind like the family going out of town, spending countless hours with each other doing different activities (in this case, long walks and tours), and not of the serious stuff. More specifically, I'm talking of the two weeks the family recently spent in Europe, hopping from one selected city to another, most notably Paris (follow link for photos) and Rome (click link for photos). Sharing these moments, and the whole experience with your wife and kids  indeed produce overwhelming emotions. It was, I would say, an opportunity of a lifetime, one which I wouldn't have second thoughts of repeating given another chance. Our experience was an opportunity for more time together, for sharing more happy moments together, even for testing the "limits" of each other (especially the long walks in long hours in the heat of summer), which added spice to the already beautiful story we're weaving. It was indeed time for memorable moments, interesting individual and collective accounts, great experiences, even lessons (which hopefully could find their own stories in this blog in the coming days).

It was, again... the 'time of our lives'.

Inch by inch

Tony D' Amato's inspirational speech from "Any Given Sunday"...

I don’t know what to say really.
Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today.
Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble.

Inch by inch, play by play, till we’re finished.

We are in hell right now, gentlemen...believe me... and we can stay here
and get the shit kicked out of us, or...
we can fight our way back into the light.

We can climb out of hell, one inch at a time.
Now I can’t do it for you. I’m too old.

I look around and I see these young faces and I think, I mean
I made every wrong choice a middle age man could make.
I, uh…. I pissed away all my money, believe it or not...
I chased off anyone who has ever loved me.
And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know when you get old in life things get taken from you.
That’s, that’s part of life.
But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff.
You find out that life is just a game of inches.
So is football.

Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small.
I mean, one half step too late or too early, you don’t quite make it.
One half second too slow or too fast, and you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They are in every break of the game...every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch.
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us, to pieces for that inch.
We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.
'Cause we know when we add up all those inches,
that’s going to make the fucking difference between WINNING and LOSING,
between LIVING and DYING.

I’ll tell you this...
in any fight, it is the guy who is willing to die who is going to win that inch.
And I know if I am going to have any life anymore,
it is because I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch
because that is what LIVING is...the six inches in front of your face.

Now I can’t make you do it, you gotta look at the guy next to you.
Look into his eyes...
Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.
You are going to see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team...
Because he knows when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same thing for him.

That’s a team gentlemen... and either we heal now as a team,
or we will die as individuals.
That’s football guys.
That’s all it is.

Now, what are you gonna do?

42

This one's originally from FB's Notes. I am taking the liberty of re-publishing it here, as it describes an important occasion in my journey...

(by Rolando Jun Lontok on Saturday, April 23, 2011 at 11:27pm)

The day started frantically.

Lacking sleep due to our attendance in the previous night’s (Good Friday) celebration of the ‘veneration of the cross’, both Alice and I woke up late. I managed to start the vehicle 10 minutes before official office hours, wondering how the heck I would navigate the morning’s rush hour traffic from our place to the office. To top it off, while trying to drive a little faster than usual on a supposed ‘special day’, we were forced to stop momentarily on the roadside when Alice’s phone started ringing and both of us realizing it was in her bag at the back of the SUV. Thinking it probably was her boss, I fought the urge of just continuing to drive and don’t mind the ringing phone. I learned long ago not to mess with the commander-in-chief, especially in the morning of the first day of the week. Anyway, thanks for a ‘slow’ morning - unusual for a Saturday in this part of the world - we were able to reach the office just in time.

After reaching the office, the phones started ringing... both my office landline and my mobile. And they kept ringing. Again, unusual for a Saturday morning.

There was a call from the central QA Department from the Ministry, requesting for another visit in preparation for our organizational audit which will happen in three weeks’ time. Another call from the ISO consultant, still trying to dangle that juicy contract from the management. Still another came from the Administration Department, telling me the driver’s ready to bring the documents needed by the Audit Team. This last call suddenly made me realize that I needed to print some more documents, pack all the CDs being requested, and put them in a special packaging I bought the day before, which I realized I left in my car! Fuming silently, I went back to the parking area. 39 degrees of an early summer didn’t help, and I started breaking sweat even before it’s 8:00am.

The initial salvo subsided. And so I thought...

The boss called, asking for a report on what happened about the work I did overtime during the weekend. I told him everything’s completed and already sent to the auditing team, and that I was just finalizing the program for the meeting to be held tomorrow, including the presentation needed for that event. While at it, the ADAFA started calling... once, twice... I thought he called four or five times, asking for the status of this and that project, requesting me to send him copies of this and that proposal/quotation. Why is this happening today, of all days?

Anyway (again), everything’s finally completed and done in the afternoon, and I finally got the chance to check on the LMS for the current postgraduate courses I’m attending, and also managed to upload some new posts there. Moreover, I was able to read several pages from the textbook of one of the courses in preparation for my forthcoming exam. I also successfully downloaded the papers I requested for the essay I am planning to write.

And then, it’s again time to go home. (One thing I really, really like about working in the Middle East, is that, however hard you work on a particular day, at the end of the 7th hour, you have to pack your things and rest.)

At home, I tried to read more of the required readings, but dozed off instead. I just thought, well, I’ll give the kids the day off, and just continue with their homeschool tomorrow. It is afterall Black Saturday today.

I woke up about 8:00pm. After five years in this region, I already acquired the local habit of dozing off in the afternoon and getting active again afterwards, until midnight. The first hour after waking up is usually reserved for FBing, and this day is not an exception. Today being my birthday, I did not bother cooking dinner for the family, Alice had that covered today.

I still tried to cover several pages of that pesky required readings.

And then it’s time to sleep again... I realized, due to the chaos of the day, that I forgot to say my daily prayers in the morning, the ones I normally do after reaching my office. I made it a point not to forget that tomorrow. Missing that twice in a row would be unacceptable (not for me, but for HIm).

While looking at the man in the mirror just before going to bed (just immediately after writing this piece), I could see that beyond the dark rings in his eyes, the long, salt and pepper hair (I don’t know for the life of me why I chose to wear it long , especially now that the temperature is starting to rise. Mid-life crisis? Hmmm), and the chaos of his normal work and family life, there is serenity and peace within.

I am happy.

Today I realized:

Today, I realized that even in this age of Facebook and Google+, the plain old blog will always be an important part of me (if just for the sake of letting loose my rumblings, then so be it). Thus, I am breathing a new life to my old and reliable 'life notes'... (hope we'll have fun here, eventually).