Two involve great ideas about love and relationships–Best Years (2010) and Finest Love (2009). Another two help in spiritual warfare–The Growing Darkness (2009) and Nefarious Movements (2010).

Please the Pamphlet page to see their covers. If you want to order autographed copies please visit this blogsite: http://zliteratus-books.blogspot.com/. You can also get more information about the content of these works there.

Visit http://zliteratus-books.blogspot.com/ to order signed copies

A Compulsion to Buy Any Thing

The first time I had a glance at the word “oniomania,” I thought it refers to a compulsive disorder of eating excessive onion. With the advance of psychiatric science and the curious way head conditions are getting their names, who knows that onion-eating already got its own share of disorders.

Oniomania, alright, is a psychological disorder. But it means a compulsion towards buying; that is, a continual urge to buy things, any thing. It is the dream of retailers, the frustration of minimum-wage earners.

The interest in compulsive buying grew since the 1970s. Clinicians observe that excessive buying is a regular feature in certain mental illnesses. They wonder whether they must regard this phenomenon as a sign of times, a symptom of an underlying psychiatric illness, or simply a part of a distinct psychiatric syndrome. Well, I thought, it might be an understandable sign of a highly commercialized time.

Two Dutch researchers, JA Boermans and JI Egger, took time to review studies of compulsive buying from 1966 to 2008 (August). They found out that this chronic, repetitive behavior occurs mainly among women, and can be classified as an impulsive-control disorder. They however found no definitive explanation for the condition. “The most successful treatment results,” they reported in the  Dutch Journal of Psychiatry (2010 issue), “seem to have been achieved using behavioral therapy.”

An earlier study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Jan 1994) noted that a typical compulsive buyer was a 36-year-old female who had developed the compulsion at the age of 17, and had resulted to adverse consequences in their head and relationships. The study conducted by psychiatrists from the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) revealed that the purchases were usually clothes, shoes, jewelry, or makeup. Oniomaniacs also suffer from a lifetime of anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, and eating disorders.

Well, it will be hard to tell who among the mallers have this compulsive buying disorder. But it is wiser to be aware with our own buying behavior. Is it a compulsion rationalized as needing to buy this thing and that? Or, do you know exactly a rational justification for picking up an item and going to the cashier to have that plastic swiped or those bills off your wallet?

“Mr. Poor Richard” Benjamin Franklin has this advice: “Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.”

Published in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 21 April 2010, and posted in SunStar Network Exchange on 20 April 2010. For more BREAKTHROUGHS articles, please visit Breakthroughs Today [http://breakthroughstoday.blogspot.com/]. 

offroads cycling

May it be over mountains (off roads), country roads, or on racetracks, cycling as a recreational sport is definitely more amazing than you might think. It tones up your muscles, increases your metabolism, perks up your energy level, and allows socialization with fellows of similar recreational interest.

Because your body is fuelled by the food you eat, cycling often referred here in the Philippines as “biking,” helps increase internal movement of stored energy sources like body fats while strengthening the sinews of your muscles.

Cycling generates the needed power through the thighbone and the shinbone. The thighbone provides the leverage that allows the shinbone to move. The main muscles at work in cycling are the quadriceps and hamstrings in the upper legs, and the gastroenemius and soleus in the calf–together contracting in rhythm to produce the pedaling action.

In this recreational activity, your muscles draw on stores of glycogen in the body and convert them into energy. At the same time, you are able to use both types of muscles in the body–fast-twitchers and the slow-twitchers. Fast-twitch muscle fibers are used in making quick and  fast movements like in sprinting and quick ascents. Slow-twitch fibers are used for long rides of moderate intensity. As recreational bikers, as opposed to sports cyclists, you can exercise both.

Cycling also drives the body to seek foods with better nutritional contents. Off the bike, recreational cyclists tend to go for a lot of vegetables and fruits, excellent sources of carbohydrates that create energy.

Most cyclists agree that cycling not only improves their physical health but their mental outlook as well. A sense of accomplishment and a feeling of independence and control are shared by every cyclist.

Cyclist is not simply a recreation or a sport. It is a passion! And passion drives life!

This article appears in Sun-Star Sunday Edition on 11 June 2006, print only.

shoot me if you can

Those who love playing software games on their personal computers (PC) or online games in internet kiosks will find the new trend in electronic gaming very exhilarating–pervasive gaming!

Pervasive gaming took electronic games into a new level…that is, on street level across barangays, towns, and even cities. This location-based games use not only new technology but also focuses on the simple fact that it is more fun playing as a team than on your own.

Players not only play on foot, they also may travel by car, boat, or even airplane. One of the team members can stay at home on a PC monitoring “enemy” locations and the rest confron the opponents on the streets and in any locations the game may lead them. Most of these games use cell phones as transmitting tool through text and multimedia messaging. And many countries around the world have caught up with these street games.

In Korea, the game “Shoot me if you can” is getting very popular. This urban game is like playing a shooting game online. But this time the gun is not the computer cursor or a toy gun but a cell phone with digital camera, and participants shoot, or take pictures of their opponents. The pictures have to be sent via multimedia SMS to the opponent’s team. Players need to know very well team work, tactics and their real urban environment.

One very popular game in teh United Kingdom is Love City. The goal of the game is to form triplets (called “Menage a trios”) by sending “text-messages of love” to other players. The messages can be received when players move between mobile phones. Players who initiate such a triplet are awarded avatars (known as “offspring”). A first test game was launched on April in the cities of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby.

Other popular pervasive games available include Frequency 1550 (Netherlands), Pac Manhattan (United States), NetAttack (United Kingdom), and Day of the Figurines (United Kingdowm).

This article appears in Sun-Star Cebu on 15 November 2006.

montiel knockout interview

The morning sun outside Rajah Park Hotel across the Fuente Osmeña Circle shines the brighter but the heat is not so severe yet. Talking to WBO (World Boxing Organization) Super Flyweight champion Fernando “Cochulito” Montiel, despite communicating through an interpreter, was fun. Here is this guy who apparently enjoys his own lot in life. An occasional chat with his trainer-manager, Manuel Montiel, Sr., and three more Montiels–Pedro, Eduardo, and Montiel Jr. allowed us a glimpse of a family closely bound together by blood, fun, and boxing. Fernando is the youngest sibling in the brood. Pedro is the eldest.

Zosimo Literatus (ZL): Have you been in the Philippines before?

Fernando Montiel (FM): No. This is my first time to come here in the Philippines. And I love the people here. They are friendly.

ZL: How do you find the Philippine climate, particularly Cebu, compared to Mexico?

FM: I love Cebu. It is not so hot here. In Mexico, the temperature is at 45 degrees.

ZL: How do you preoccupy yourself during your stay here in Cebu City?

FM: I go outside to that circle from across the hotel (Fuente Osmeña Circle) and jog. Today, I jog with Pedro.

ZL: How did you get introduced to the world of boxing?

FM: My father introduced me to boxing. I grew up with boxing all around me. My father was a boxer. My brothers are boxers. All the 12 men in my family and relatives are all boxers. I fought in amateur boxing as early as five years old. At a very young age, I’d already gone to Japan and the United States to fight in the ring.

ZL: How would you describe your family?

FM: My family loves fun. We are very close as a family. We love to sing, and we love to dance. My father is very good in playing guitar.

ZL: What does the name “Cochulito” mean?

FM: Father has been called “Cochulo” since he was still young. When I came up, he called me cochulito, which means “little Cochulo.”

ZL: You look slim as you are. What is your health diet?

FM: I love Mexican food, seafoods, meat, and sushi.

ZL: As a sportsman, do you focus on boxing alone and on no other sports?

FM: I also play football, basketball, and baseball. But I focus on boxing as a professional sport.

ZL: Before leaving Mexico on your way to the Philippines, what did you fellow Mexicans wished for you?

FM: They said: “Have faith in yourself. Don’t lose your belt.”

Laughter and cajolery peppered the conversation with Cochulito and his family. It is a unique privilege to have talked to them and share such fun over breakfast. Unmistakably, they enjoy themselves as a family. Winning or losing defense of his championship belt yesterday does not diminish the fact that he has something wonderful to share to the world.

This article appears in Sun-Star Cebu Sunday Edition on 25 February 2007. 

candlelight in the dark

“Your voice of white fire,” goes the poem Full Consciousness by Juan Ramon Jimenez, “in the universe of water, the ship, the sky, marking out the roads with delight, engraving for me a blazing light my firm orbit.”

Light cannot be truly appreciated without the darkness. The light needs the darkness, and the darkness needs the light. The dark is light enough, says British writer Christopher Fry.

To appreciate darkness, we need to look at trouble with fresh, faith-filled eyes. No one can gather the courage to leap into the dark, to wade into the shadowy chapters of life, without the genuine faith we Christians must be familiar with. It’s like walking down the blinding darkness of the night, with only the day’s memory burning in our hearts to guide us.

Cebu is in trouble nowadays. Vigilante killings hit our streets without a glimmer of hope in bringing the executioners to justice. The air of graft and corruption breathed through the doors of government offices. The heat of politics and the cold eyes of discrimination burned restlessly in the halls of government and business institutions. Amidst the pain of betrayal and intrigue we face every day, we can pick up the pieces and bring the light of our own goodness to shine forth.

In our small way as we work to gain our keep, we are like solitary candles that keep light burning. We keep our affairs as clean as we can honestly do. And start to bring light to our own individual darkness so our light can shine brighter for others to have courage. No need to brag about our light. Simply, be the light. Bragging is our darkness pretending to be our light.

Once candles get lighted and personal darkness conquered one at a time, the combined light these candles bring will lighten Cebu in a more astounding way, more pleasing to see and live in for our children and their children. Darkness can become a source of richer light.

In his letter to Jose Antonio Gonzalez in 1977, the late senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. reminded us: “There are two ways of spreading the light: either be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Cebuanos can be either.

We need only to look at the sky, appreciate the pay of light, shade, and darkness, and decide how we too can be light in the darkness of our communities. Or simply light that one candle that you are, and soon we will see other lights as others learn to light their own little candles, emboldened by that little candles that you keep burning in the night.

This articles appears in the Sun-Star Cebu Sunday Edition on 19 March 2006 as “Light Darkness.”

SRP at Dusk

Working all day long saps the serenity and the stillness of the  mind. Weaken the mind, and you eventually break the body.

Deadlines coming, long lines of waiting clientele, interpersonal frictions, politics, customer complaints, irritating nitty-gritty piling up–these are arrows of distress that robs us daily of that closeness to ourselves, to Nature and to God that lead to myriad physical and mental illnesses.

The rat race in Cebu’s workplaces is getting faster. Relying on a weeklong vacation in some expensive resort in a faraway island or country may not be enough. We are about to face the truth that serenity is a daily experience to immerse into. Not knowing it, we yearn for an opportunity to escape to serenity. Though the invitation had been there, we missed it, having assumed there is none. But there is.

I discovered these escapes while driving through the deserted early morning stretch of Mepz (Mactan Economic Processing Zone) from an overnight teambuilding activity in one delightful resort in Lapu-lapu City, and while regularly driving through the South Reclamation Project (SRP) from Talisay to Aduana almost every day.

Apparently these escapes are available only to early risers and late leavers. The Mepz escape is available until 5 a.m. Driving on it is like driving in a windy mountain (but concrete) trail with the soft darkness partly cloaking the huge industrial buildings around. By 5:30, jeepneys and service vehicles have taken this route and the noice of their engines won’t allow the joy of nature’s silence in a cool morning air.

The SRP escapes are available until 5:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. At 5:30 a.m., you can feel the fresh chill of the early morning wind that will brush your face gently and chill your body. At 6 p.m., SRP has diffused already the warmth of the day and started to take on the chill of the night breeze.

A drop, alone or with your family, in a 24-hour fastfood for a coffee or hot chocolate and a breakfast before proceeding to work might be what you need in a week’s work. If you are with your wife, family or friends on the way home from work, you can bring bits of food and drinks and enjoy a fun conversation or simply sit silently along any part of the road stretch and review the week in your mind.

These escapes may not be available to everyone. But anyone can design a way to enjoy these bounties of nature nevertheless: Take your motorcycle off, or borrow a neightbor’s, for the drive before breakfast, take a taxi up to that stretch of escape, etc. It is worth the added resourcefulness.

This article appears in Sun-Star Cebu Sunday Edition on 5 November 2006.

The Best Rambo Movie Ever

Rambo 4: John Rambo brings home realities of this world that Catholics and other Christians may have to face and deal squarely: (1) the brutality of war; (2) the moral dilemma faced by those who were forced to engage a brutal regime in warfare in order to save innocent lives; (3) the limitations of nonviolence against an evil that never hesitate to take lives of innocent people; (4) the awakening of a person’s call to violence albeit on the side of the good; and (5) the deep yearning of regaining home.

The brutality of war. The film proposes that Christians need to find their calls for service in a place in war. Whether they are truly called to risk their lives to bring medicines and the message of Christian faith (as espoused by the missionaries) or simply recognize their human limitations and do what they can reasonably within that limitations without risking their lives senselessly (as espoused by John Rambo).

No direct answer has been provided by the movie. The decision of the missionaries turned out to be a misplaced and headstrong commitment to an unrealistic ideal which brought them to the edge of death and sexual molestation (as in the case of Sarah). The mission apparently failed to even save the lives of the people they ministered. And their work seemed too early to matter in the religious life of the villagers themselves.

But apparently God ensures that these missionaries, or at least most of them, are protected from death. And John Rambo became the hand of God that brutally dealt with the death-dealers in order to save the missionaries. It is a spiritually insightful plot. God characteristically permit even the worst things to happen in order change the lives of his people, this time both the missionaries and John. The missionaries realized that when their lives are threatened they need to fight back with brutality. John Rambo got a grip of who he really was and found himself recapturing home.

The moral dilemma of killing. Rambo 4 presented a strong inevitability that a warrior who chose nonviolence have to contend with in order to save other people’s lives. It is a sound Christian value to offer oneself as a sacrifice to save others’ lives and confront evil headon. The Lord did it himself. John Rambo have to decide to follow the calling of a killing machine, strong and effective enough to rescue innocent civilians from sure death, not for himself but for what is something good (protecting the helpless). Catholic social teaching support this act of sacrifice and of protecting the innocent people.

The limitations of nonviolence. The film glaringly presented the limitations of the philosophy of nonviolence before an enemy that would not hesitate to kill. The primary strength a nonviolent protest is its ability not to provoke violence while working for change. But before an evil that will kill without provokation, nonviolence would result to senseless death, often without bringing the change they seek. Unless a proper discernment towards dying precedes this decision, Rambo 4 proposed that nonviolent groups need to find a more effective means of stopping violence or serving the innocent victims (maybe by rescuing them instead) without having to die themselves. Being headstrong against something so evil would be very dangerous and foolhardy if you have no capability to deal with them. It says that battles at times may be left lost in order to win the war.

A call to violence. John may be reluctant to tread back on the path of violence, but his call to live what appeared to be his call to violence in the service of the good appeared genuine only in the context that God allows it through his infinite wisdom. And John had to respond.

The deep yearning for home. This part of the film deals with the softer side in all of us symbolized by John Rambo. No matter how far a child goes away from where he came from, he would always be yearning to be back home. It also hints on the yearnings of Christians who looked forward of going back home to their Father in Heaven. 

This article appeared in the Catholic Movie Review blogsite on June 27, 2009.

Flirting is the knack of conveying interest.

“If you are a gifted flirt,” proposed the late managing editor of Glamour magazine Mignon McLaughlin, “talking about the price of eggs will do as well as any other subject.”

Any male or female can insist knowing the art of effective flirting. But most can honestly admit there is much room for learning more.

The Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC), a nonprofit organizaton based in St. Clements, Oxford UK, issued a sort of flirting etiquette guide with a main goal of helping avoid flirting with the wrong person at the wrong time and place. It would prevent such embarrassing situations as chatting with a widow in her husband’s funeral, engaging someone else’s girlfriend in a fun and absorbed conversation, approaching a lovely damsel across the room who turned away from your gaze, etc.

Kate Fox, author fo the SIRC Guide to Flirting, cited important rules, which we condense here, to adhere to when flirting with a stranger or someone you knew.

Rule No. 1: Flirting is most socially acceptable at parties, celebrations, social functions, and moderately acceptable in some public settings such as drinking places (bars, pubs, nightclubs, discos, wine bars and restaurants), learning places (schools, collegs, universities and otehr related establishments), workplaces, participant sports and hobbies, and spectator events.

Rule No. 2: If you flirt for fun, you can flirt with about anyone. If you flirt with intent, do so with people as attractive as you and who reciprocate your flirting calls.

Rule No. 3: Flirt through eye contact, interpesonal distance, posture, gestures, facial expressions, touch, and vocal signals. Women should be more careful with flirting signals. Too obvious ones will mistake them for men as sexual availability.

Rule No. 4: Flirt verbally using effective opening lines and turn-taking and by complement-giving, active listening, reciprocal disclosure, and humor.

Rule No. 5: Part with a date arranged or at least your number with a clear interest to meet again.

More specific rules are available in the SIRC Guide (if  you need a copy, please email me your email address so I can send you one in PDF format).

“The first key to successful flirting is not an ability to show off and impress, but the knack of conveying that you like someone,” Fox counselled.

Historian and archaeologist Don Rittner however reminds: “No matter how well you know the rules of etiquette, you will eventually offend someone who doesn’t” It boils down to knowing the rules to follow in a specific situation, in a specific time, and with a specific person. It comes with experience. And it comes with the risk of making the right moves many times.

| This article has been published on 29 October 2008 in Sun.Star Cebu newspaper for the column Breakthroughs. |