Been sick for five days since Saturday. After my six-month struggle and cure with TB, kuya JM got something worse. I got asthma.

Apparently I got it from all the dusty books and magazines I kept in my room all this time. What's a guy to use to entertain himself at home when his room's got no TV, an old boombox with a defective tape player, no CD player and no computer? Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I should just go out on gimmicks in place of reading the February 1980 edition of Reader's Digest or Popular Photography.
***

Erik's turning nineteen today. I gave him volume 3 of Lone Wolf and Cub, an old manga that's probably Rurouni Kenshin's grandpa. Bloodier and more visceral without that morality crap. He loved it.
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To my honest surprise, PEFORTS (PE 4: Team Sports) is making a basketball fan out of me. I used to regard it only as something I should watch and not play. Looks like my lay-up shot's getting better, too.

I feel a surge of Filipinized blood coming into me...
***

Turning nineteen myself in three days' time. A lot of things have happened since my last birthday: graduation, college, the World Trade Center snafu, the Zen barkada...but all that takes a back seat to what I think is the best thing I've done while eighteen. I actually became a better brother to Bianca.

Lately we've been doing things I never thought we'd ever do. Just last night I skipped studying for an Accounting quiz to help her with her class' movie promotional materials --- leaflets and posters. (Yes, my sister and I had to shoot movies for Filipino class in De La Salle Zobel. Call us the school of the infamous "new rich" and the children of stage parents. My HS teachers don't fucking care.) Before all that we bought flowers, crepe paper and had her photos developed. We were together all the while. And after that, we watched the PBL finals.

Must be getting better at this brother thing.