A book and the beach.

So, it's been a while since I've had an update. Thanks to all who took the time to greet me on my birthday.

As for what's happening around me, I finished a book "Just Like You." I was engrossed at it, I read it in two days. It's an autobiography of a woman named Toni who would later become enlightened in her quest to find her true self.

She was candid, and her writing was clear regarding the thoughts she had in different parts of her life. I could relate what happened in the early parts of her life, but the later ones--the ones where she met her teacher and she became enlightened--not as much. It felt like there was something else in what she was talking about that I have yet to experience.

Anyway, an interesting thing she said about was about her first marriage. She basically left it and asked for a divorce, because she married her husbands for the wrong reasons. According to her, during that time she wanted to find an escape from her unloving family and thought that getting married was her ticket from it.

She got out alright, but the longing to be complete was still there. This struck me in a lot of levels. It tells you a lot of things about life in general. (1) You cannot force someone to be happy with you, even if you give them what they want--marriage, happy family life and such. How many times have we heard stories of people looking for something or someone else after getting married?

And (2) when someone leaves you, it's not personal. She left her husband because she was looking for something else, and it wasn't the husband's fault. That married life was just not what she wanted.

Ok, that's that. I'll probably talk about this topic in my next updates as some of the things that are brewing inside my head becomes clearer.

On to some fun stuff that happened two weekends ago...

I've had the good fortune of knowing some good people in my current work place. They're Indian nationals, but they're very friendly. Last week, 4 of us went to a beach called "Black Beach." We were joking ourselves and laughing on our way there because it's a clothing-optional beach.

When we got there though, the first thing that caught us was, in order to get to the beach itself, you have to walk down from a cliff. The make-shift walk way was steep and 3/4 of a mile long!

It was a nice view. Kind of reminds me of the view you get in Tagaytay when you look down at the body of water around Taal Lake. It's kind of like that, but imagine, there's a walk way down so you can actually go down if you like!

When we got down, we walk the length of the beach. At this time, the sun was setting, and you can actually notice it moving beyond the horizon. To me, that was so cool! You can see the sun actually moving! Of course it's not very fast, and you have to look for a minute to actually notice see it moving, but that was cool nonetheless. I know I know, of course the sun moves. It's easy to imagine it from the mind's eye, but to ACTUALLY see it, it's so cool!

One of my friends, removed his sandals and folded his jeans so he can waddle in the shore. I followed shortly. "What the heck, let me try that anyways" I said. "It's just a pair of jeans." So I went to the water with him. We were feeling each wave as it comes over. My jeans would get wet at the bottom half, and it was fun like hell!

We watched as the final sliver of the orange sun hides itself below the horizon. What's left was the orange hue of the sky near it. I've never seen the sunset in Manila Bay. But I sure damn miss it now.

After that, we decided to climb back up. It was a very tough climb. We had to stop 5 times, in our out-of-shape software-engineer (gorgeous) bodies. My heart was beating rapidly at each stop, it felt it would jump out of my chest.

After reaching the top of the cliff, I took one last look at the now dim beach below and we headed home.