SADDENED

I wasn’t able to watch Tara Santelices’ story last last Saturday at MMK (Maalaala Mo Kaya) so I patiently watched it at Youtube. I remembered my friend telling me that someone from Ateneo got shot somewhere near their place (she lives in Cainta). The news brought some organizations and bands to raise funds in order to help the Santelices’ large amount of hospital bills reaching into million pesos. But of course I didn’t knew much until I watched her story in MMK, Karylle played Tara’s character. She was in coma for a year, she passed away last July, 2009. Tara was shot in the forehead by a hold-upper who’s with her in a jeepney along Imelda Ave. The suspect wasn’t caught until now. Justice didn’t prevail.

Of course this blog wasn’t timely at all, but I just can’t help but feel sad after watching her story. And to be honest, I felt scared commuting at night, esp.riding in jeepneys. It just annoys me how some evil men can do such, I mean get our things, no need to kill us! I am alarmed, saddened, scared, victims like Tara is no different from me, a young woman with so many dreams. I dream of a place where it’s safe to walk alone at night, a place where there’s no need to be paranoid, but these are too much to ask.

Kids, tell your parents where you are at the wee hours of the night (I should tell that to myself as well). Seeing Albert Martinez and Cherry Pie Picache’s (Tara’s parents in the story) despair over their daughter made me realize that indeed, it’s not easy for a parent to wait for his child to go home. It is a dangerous world out there, and we only have ourselves (and God of course) as protection, so be careful!

Another thing that saddened me is what I’ve watched in National Geographic Channel’s ‘On the Edge’. It featured rhinos, tortoise and lemurs that are on the cliff of extinction. Even if we get to save these animals, do we still have a place for them in the wild? That’s one of the questions asked in the show, and again it saddened me to see forests turned into infrastructures. I saw what Madagascar looks like at present, and whew, the movie is all but a dream land! I love animals a lot, I wanna have a pig for a pet, I adore penguins and I find owls too funny. I fear that one day even dogs and cats are gonna be rare to find. We are searching for ways to discover dinosaurs, to revive the long extinct creatures, but what we don’t realize is that we have so much great creatures today, let’s not wait for them to die in extinction.