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I mentioned before that I don’t usually stay in one place for more than five years.I have lived in New York, Maryland, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.The longest I’ve stayed is where I am now where I have stayed for almost 10 years. Funny how life throws a curb ball at you sometimes but this has been a fun ride.

Today was a beautiful day here on the East Coast. Nice breeze, sunny and just absolutely gorgeous! It reminded me of my days when I lived in Torrance, CA. I was very close to the beach cities such as Redondo, Newport, etc. Since I didn’t have much friends while I lived there (not sure why that was!), I usually go to the beach on Sundays, rent cruiser bikes and off I go. I had the greatest time! There are also lots of pubs in and around these beach cities, so at times I would just park my rented beach cruiser bicycle and have a beer or two. That was the most relaxing thing I could do on a Sunday. Well, for a state where it only rains one week a year – - you gotta find something to do so as not to waste the beautiful weather right? I did exactly that.

The beach cruisers are simple bicycles usually with just one speed. These bikes are not for racing. They are for fun and leisure riding. They are also not expensive so you don’t have to be afraid to leave them in front of the pub when getting a refreshment. One guy started the beach cruiser bike business starting with 150 bikes and has grown his business now to a billion dollar business earning his highest in 2005 with sales of $6 billion dollars. Not bad huh?

So today, it reminded me of the lazy days I had while I was there. Living in California was great – I just hoped I made more friends out there. If I did, I would probably still be there right now. Hmmm – - maybe I still could?

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I have started an annual tradition that my friends and I take during Holy Week.  It was a tradition taught us by the Spanish and a very Catholic Tradition.  It’s called “Visita Iglesia” or the English equivalent of “Maundy Thursday”.  It falls on the Thursday before Easter.  We visit 14 churches and say the Stations of the Cross and we usually do the visit on foot.

It’s not that hard really but the weather in the Philippines during the month of April is quite hot.  It’s still cool here in the U.S. during that time but to visit 14 churches would be too much so we decided to visit 7 churches and say two of each Stations of the Cross per church and we observe it on Good Friday instead of Maundy or Holy Thursday.  It seems to work quite well.  We liked it so much four years ago and this will be our fourth year of observance.  More friends have joined us during this pilgrimage which starts in South Jersey and ends in Philadelphia.

It’s my way of not forgetting our tradition.  I am looking forward to it.

I must admit, I was a little ticked off last Christmas when I planned our big reunion last Christmas. I made all kinds of arrangements to make sure I make it to NYC during Christmas week, purchased a case of wine, brought specialty foods – only to find out at the last moment that no one is going to make it. Come on. I started planning that back in July and everyone said yes. Needless to say, I spent Christmas with only a handful of my relatives. It could have been better. I vowed to never arrange a reunion again.

Guess what, I was tasked to give it another try for this summer. My mom’s birthday is in July and we have always assembled together during her birthday. She was the glue that held us all and I remember nothing but successful reunions while she was living. Since she passed, it has been very difficult. But I will try my best again this time to assemble the family together. I even found a neat giveaway as a remembrance for Reunion 2009. Did you know that you can create personalized keychains for cheap? You can create your own design, add your own picture, and even put a company logo in it if you like. It’s so easy to create. They have hundreds of designs to choose from in different shapes and sizes. Besides, you can’t have enough keychains anyway. I try to separate my keys for my car to other essential keys in the house just because they said that it’s bad for your key ignition if your keychain is way too heavy.

This time, I’m not going to take no for an answer. I need to be successful and will use all the guilt trip I can use to make them all attend the reunion.

There are events in life that we encounter that we believe, we do not deserve at all.  For example – with the Financial crisis, you may have lost your job and as hard as you may think that you don’t deserve it (and most likely you didn’t), it happened to you.  And to those, we wonder why it happened to us.  Is it fate?  Or was it something that we’ve done in the past that is coming back to haunt us?  We probably will never know.

I did something that I truly deserved.  I made a fool of myself and without going into the details, I take full responsibility.  I believe strongly in karma.  It’s in the bible too isn’t it?  Do unto others what you want them to do to you.  What goes around comes around.  I hope that I can learn from this experience and note that we can’t do something without cause and effect.  Every action will eventually serve its consequences.

I need to move on and take this as a good learning experience.