Journeys of A Wandering Mind

       While walking to work one day, I stopped clear in my tracks.  I saw a couple of kids who were so familiar to me in their school uniforms.  I froze, and then a thought flashed in my mind-I am no longer a teacher.

       It’s been months since I gave up teaching in the city’s best private school and months since I began work as an associate editor in the city newspaper.  It’s been months since I last held a class record, months since i woke up at past four in the morning, and months since I passed the grades for the last time.  And I am not missing one bit of it.

       A lot of my friends ask why I gave up teaching, the "noble" profession.   Ok, I recognize teaching for what it is—a noble profession devoted to the molding of young minds…and a profession that is not for everyone.  How would you perform your duties nobly if you have at least 500 kids in your class records, piles of papers to check, superiors who try to control you and hamper your freedom while expecting you to do things in between?  With a day and a half for a weekend?  I just proved to myself that I can’t.  I might have failed friends and family, but at least I told the truth.  I am not ashamed of it.

       So here I am in front of the computer, typing this.  Although the renumeration isn’t as high as the old job, I feel much better about myself.  I feel free, and I don’t have to go to work with that feeling that the pricipal will be at my back the whole day again.  I get to meet people, talk to grown ups,be where happenings are, and be online all day (hehehe).   Most of all, i don’t have to bring my work home.  I am know what to do here and I am given a free hand on how I do my work.

       So there turns a new page in my life.  I admit that it’s been hard sailing the waters,but then, the ship has to go somewhere, and I am going to find out where the currents and winds will take me.

             Yeah, I admit it, I’m a half.  It’s what people here call a person who is half Maranao and half outsider.  Others have a more genteel (and just as derogatory) term for that: Mestizo or Mestiza (yeah, as if I had a parent who is white).  To many people outside, it’s not supposed to be a big deal.  To me it shouldn’t be, either.  But to others here, it is.

              One of the first things a half Maranao can expect is DISCRIMINATION.  Yeah, you may have chosen to be a Muslim, but to a lot of Maranaos (poor narrowed minded as a lot of them are) it won’t change a thing.  To them whether you pray five times a day or not, as long as one of your parent’s isn’t Maranao, that’s a different kettle of fish.  When it’s a marriage that’s being talked about, this sort of thing sort of pops up in the conversation.  Half Maranaos sometimes end up marrying their own kind or a Christian because they can’t marry a Maranao for reasons that stem up mainly from the biased views of a prejudiced majority.  I can expect the same to happen to me, because as yet, no Maranao (or any guy for that matter) has yet bothered to get acquainted with me.  But I don’t mind. 

         It seems to me that it’s only the Maranaos that have this mind-set.  My Catholic mother side relatives accept me as I am.  The ice is broken because I am at least a part of them and take part of my ancestry from them.  It’s my father side relatives (at least the more distant ones) still are hostile towards me somehow because of what I am.  But I don’t care.  You can take a look at my mobile phone book and see that most of the relatives there are from my mother’s side.  Simply put, a half Maranao is a novelty to his mother side relatives and a creature that’s equivalent of a mongrel due to mixed blood.  Ah, to be considered like a dog!  Ok, so they think I’m a dog? They better watch out because I might bite them someday, hahahaha!

          Anyway so much for that.  I don’t think myself as a half-Maranao.  Citizen of the world is more like it.  Besides, a person’s ancestry is nothing.  It’s what’s inside that counts.

17 days…..17 days more and I will hit my 25th year.  It’s strange but it seems to me that I was just in college yesterday.  Time does fly so fast. 

Ok so 25,25,25.  Hmmm, which means that it’s about time that I re-evaluate my life and review,  throw away and create new goals and dreams.  It would mean that I would have to really plot my life now…as in now.  It would mean cutting down on chat (T-T) concentrating on graduate studies and be more responsible.  It would mean looking for guys who would be good ….ahhh i guess I’d have to admit that I never really had a boyfriend (which makes some acquaintances give me that creepy "are you lesbian?" look).  Look I may not really be looking but it’s ok if i find myself married in a few years.

25….I’ll be 25 but I feel 52.  25 but tired of living.  25 but finding that the world sometimes doesn’t offer you much of a choice.  25 but finding out that you are getting older.

25.  Oh well.  On that fateful day, I guess I’d just have an ordinary day with no fuss, no frills,just the normal thing.