Salle

We sat in the Strasbourg salle-à-manger arguing the question for half an hour.

In the Philippines, I attended the elementary school in La Salle Green Hills, which had a big private campus. I often liked lunchtime by myself. After eating my packed lunch, I would play in the playground by myself. I would imagine that the ground was molten lava, and I would avoid it with the steppingstones and playground apparatus.

I remember my art class in my private school La Salle Green Hills in the Philippines. There was a blonde British teacher there who spoke English, not Tagalog. It was difficult for other people to understand her accent.

In my Metro Manila private school of La Salle Green Hills, for elementary, we students wore a white collared cotton shirt and khaki shorts, as a uniform. In higher grades, there were long pants. Each student had a name tag with only the family name, and other students addressed one another with just the family name.

In my Metro Manila school of La Salle Green Hills, our gym of St. Benilde was like a big flying saucer.

I was a "Roman Cat" as a child in the Philippines. I was Roman Catholic, at least, nominally, as many Filipinos were. For me, the religion was decorative. I knew a few memorized prayers. I rarely did the rosary. But I had several rosaries, and one was glow-in-the-dark white-green plastic! My school, La Salle Green Hills, was a large private Roman Catholic school. I had my first communion at my school. I attended my cousin Jojo's confirmation in a UFO-shaped church in the University of the Philippines. My Roman Catholicism wasn't deep metaphysical and philosophical like my Animism-Buddhism in my current years, but Animism-Buddhism subtly attracted me since childhood. I've seen Buddha statues and Nature has fascinated me since a child.

Greg and I, both Filipinos, talk at the Lulu Island café this morning of the 20th of August of 2022. I tell him of my visit to the dried mango factory estate owned by my friend's relatives in Cebu, Philippines. There was a big house near the expanses of the dried mango factory. There was a games house. The auntie looked like an affable Chinese Hispanic. My friends and I ate mangoes every day. I tell Greg of my stay in Japan, where I frequently took the trains and subways. He mentions "bullet trains." I tell him that the PRC now has bullet trains. I tell him of Spanish-looking classmates with very long full names in my private school of La Salle Green Hills in Metro Manila. My classmate Julio lived in a big Spanish-style mansion with a garden driveway through the middle front. That look inspired my childhood dream that I told my mother about a "big house on a lot with a highway in the middle on an island." Oh, maybe, it was from James Bond.

Some sci-fi buff friends of mine think that all I need is sci-fi as an exercise in understanding reality through irreality, something I have been doing since reading Dr. Seuss imaginary books in Grade 1, in my private school of La Salle Green Hills in Metro Manila in the Philippines. I analyse that it may have been originally Dr. Seuss books that encouraged me to pursue the sci-fi imaginarium throughout my life. Some sci-fact buffs, however, incline away from sci-fi, which they may think is childish, frivolous "hypotheticals." I also believe in sci-fact, with which, dwelling in sci-fi, I become more stimulated. I am inclined both to sci-fact and to sci-fi, and if I had to select a spiritual path, it would be Syncretic, leaning towards Eastern and Indigenous traditions, but not necessarily dismissing other traditions. I am open-minded. For many like me, reality is not enough...

This 21st of May of 2025 is a sunny, yet cloudy, day. I went walking in the morning to Tim Hortons café to enjoy an Iced Coffee with oat milk. The other day, I tried their pink-looking Pineapple Dragon Fruit Frozen Quencher. 'Twas more like icy candy for me! Later in the morning today, I went walking to the Roman Catholic church on St. Albans Road. On the way, I gazed at the big purple-bloom Empress Tree, near Bowcock Road. The blooms are starting to fade. In the big worship hall was a small class of little boys and girls, dressed in uniform, students practicing bowing at the altar and oration at the microphone. They looked like mostly Filipino kids, this time. It reminded of my private school days at La Salle Green Hills in the Philippines. Even then, our liturgical language was also English, as here on Lulu Island. It was despite that our household and street language was Tagalog. In the 1960s, the Church globally changed the liturgical language from Latin to the vernacular language. I remember my Thai Buddhist Temple in Vancouver—Wat Yanviriya. The wonderful liturgical language was Pali. It was the language that made the temple stay magical! We learned meditation, which is what I do in the church on St. Albans Road. I try to go when the big worship hall is mostly empty. At home, I try to learn more Esperanto vocabulary.

Your local fencing salle is a good place to relax and unwind and let the cares of the day take a backseat for a while. Meeting someone on the fencing strip, blade in hand, can become your only concern for two or three hours a couple of times a week.