walking through fire and ice...

For the past few weeks...months even, I have done my part in helping the household shave off a few Pesos off of our electricity bill. What I do is, when my sister has work, I stay in the our room for the alloted eight hour period during which our air-conditioning unit is turned on. After the eight hours are up, I then transfer to my parents room where I flop down to sleep. I usually stay up late and do most of my computing at night and just leave my laptop open to download stuff when I switch rooms. This is also the main reason I agreed to the whole eight hour thing because I keep my laptop on for days on end. (Feeling a little guilty...)

Suffice to say, I end up having to be in the same room as my dad for prolonged periods of time. Mind you, everytime we are left at home together, he usually goes to the billiards hall, if he doesn't, I lock myself up in my room. That pretty much sums-up the kind of relationship we have. Surprising to say, we have exchanged more words during the past weeks than we had for an entire lifetime. My dad loves to stay up late as well and we end up watching late night news and expose/special features (both local) as well. Our political stands don't mesh well to say the least and I find that I actually enjoy the late night discussions cum debates in connection with the news we watch. It's also surprising that I'm watching local television again. My TV viewing range is just between channels 22 (Discovery-the original one) and 51 (Hollywood channel), only venturing to lower channels to watch news but channel 16 (CNN) is as low as I would go.

Now, I find myself bombarded by questions. It's been so easy living my life spurning my father for being his usual self but it seems that my impression of dad is being challenged at a very basic level. I find myself confused and I end up doubting my decisions. I am aware that my father and I are completely different persons and I have even gone as far as saying "I am NOT my father's son." - in the figurative sense of course!

We can't choose our parents and we just end up with who we have. Living in this hoopla of filial statistics and probabilities, we just come up with ways to make our living arrangements more..."liveable". I for one have no final say on the matter (I used to have one but I'm rethinking my position.) and will continue to duke it out with the questions plaguing my saturated head.