Two points.

I understand Willie’s sentiments just as every Filipino’s feeling towards the passing of the late Cory Aquino.  I understand Willie when he said it’s tough doing the show while the cortege is being aired every traffic report during his block time.  It’s even harder when you have to be groovy and get people wear their smiles amidst the country’s mourning.

But Willie’s actions didn’t earned him respect.  He could’ve done it off-cam, not live.

He already gave his apology.  But as for me, the damage has been done.  Sometimes I would like to believe na lumalaki na ang ulo n’ya. A man in the limelight like Willie should be humble and should keep his feet on the ground.  And I feel so sorry for him when people, again, will talk about the mistakes he’d made in the past.  I think kailangan mo ng mag-guest sa May Bukas Pa. Santino what you think?

There’s a new coffee shop in Davao City called “Coffee Cat” at Torres Street, beside Toryano’s native chicken barbecue house. The place is A-Okay. Their service is A-Excellent. So go and have a coffee break at Coffee Cat!  You can also check their website at http://www.yourcoffeecat.com/

The Motorola Rokr E8 is 6 Gigabyte music phone released by the company in 2008.  It actually comes with a 2 Gigabyte internal memory while it can also hold up to 4 Gigabyte Micro-SD card.  The interface is not your usual Motorola handset’s.  This model, according to what I read, is the only Motorola handset with such different interface, which is for me, a good replacement to V3 as well as the other Motorola handsets’ boring look and feel.  Though Rokr kinda’ lags for a second or two.  Heck!  Who cares?  I love its crisp sound in my ears.  I got a phone and an mp3 player in one.  Plus it comes with a full HTML internet on the go.

For further info about the handset you can check out CNET or the official Motorola Rokr E8 homepage.

Late one afternoon, in San Francisco, I got a call. It was from Cory Aquino, for whom I had written one speech after her husband’s assassination. She said she had accepted Marcos’s challenge in a Snap Presidential Election. I put down the phone, and packed my bags, and reported to her at the Cojuangco Building.

I knew then she was the answer to my prayers. What I did not notice was that the closer we came to victory, which is to say the farther the prospect receded that the Marcos regime would survive, the less I felt the anger inside me. As each day passed, bringing me closer to the day I could get even, the less I felt the need for it as I spent more time with the woman who alone could make it possible.

I did not notice, but I was no longer looking back in anger, or looking forward even, to victory and vindication. Only now do I see. I had lived with my anger so long, only for the day to come when it no longer mattered to me. The only thing that counted was that I was living every day to the fullest, bringing out the best in me—for someone else. A dream I hadn’t had since I was a boy, feeding on stories of chivalry, had been achieved. I was serving a woman who was every inch a sovereign, all the more for scorning the slightest pretension to the role.

I did not realize it, even when I was already in the Palace, by the side of the President—among all her advisers, I like to think, the one who loved her most.

It never again occurred to me that I had scores to settle. And not until today, that I had passed up every chance to get even.

From the moment I came in from the airport and reported for duty, and she gave me in return the same smile she gave me on her deathbed, I never noticed… Not when I was with her in the campaign when she corrected me for not looking at the people I was waving at… Nor when I was with her in the presidential limousine looking intently, for her benefit, at the crowds at whom I waved… I never noticed anything. Except that I was with the only person that I would ever want to be with.

I certainly never noticed that I had left my anger behind. I don’t know how it happened. Except that Cory Aquino ennobled everyone who came near her. I have tried to say it publicly but never could finish. If you saw me as I felt myself to be, anyone would fall in love with me. I saw myself in that hospital room, a knight at the bedside of his dying sovereign, on the eve of a new Crusade, oblivious to the weight of the armor on his shoulders for the weight of the grief in his heart.

And because she always doubted my ability to be good for very long… Indeed, when my wife told Ballsy that I prayed the rosary at Lourdes for her mother’s recovery, Cory said, “Teddy Boy prayed the rosary? A miracle! I feel better already.” Because she doubted my capacity for self-reformation, she made it effortless for me by being herself. I did not notice that I was doing right by serving a woman who never did wrong. I am not sure how to take this moral self-discovery. It is so unlike myself. But if it will bring me before her again, I am happy.”