At first I didn’t know what to do with them. Holding newborn Andrei for the first time was scary for me; he’s so tiny and fragile I thought I might break him. It’s the same with Adeline, except by the time she was born I already knew how to hold an infant properly. It’s baffling how human babies start out small, delicate and helpless, doing nothing but sleep, feed, poop and cry, and then grow up to become the most ferocious predators on the planet.

Fast forward a year and a half. Both babies are now toddling rugrats, always getting in the way, prone to screaming and tantrums when something doesn’t go their way. Oh, but what charmers they both are. Andrei is a little rogue with an impish smirk. Adeline is a little princess with a ready smile and a twinkle in her chinita eyes.

I have no doubt these two kids will grow up beautiful. Their parents and my parents are seeing to that. Both are showing signs of being headstrong and stubborn, two traits we all have in common in our family. Both seem to have a streak of independence in them as well. As far as I know, Andrei hates being interfered with. Adeline, on the other hand, will only reach out for help in walking and moving about when she wants to be helped.

When they are in the middle of a tantrum, I find myself losing patience and wishing they would soon grow up so it would be easier to make them behave and understand acceptable behavior. But when they are laughing and at play, I wish they would stay young and innocent, their laughter crisp, clear and uninhibited.

I don’t know what the future holds for these two children, the next generation of our family. But I pray that they would grow up strong enough to withstand the challenges that are sure to be in their way. And I hope they grow up secure in the knowledge that they will never be alone, that they have each other and that we – their parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts – will always be there for them.

For our annual mother-daughter trip this year, my Mom and I decided to fly to Legazpi City in Albay to see the Mayon Volcano. Mount Mayon, with her nearly perfectly shaped cone, is aptly named. Her name is derived from the phrase daragang magayon, a Bicolano term meaning “beautiful maiden.” She is considered to be one of the most stunning volcanoes in the world.

The thing with Mt. Mayon, though, is she’s notoriously shy, almost always covered in clouds. I read somewhere that it’s a lucky omen if she shows herself to a traveler with very little cloud cover. So when we arrived in Legazpi City last Monday morning, Mom and I became giddy upon seeing the volcano with barely any cloud covering. Too bad we couldn’t take pictures because the authorities at the Legazpi International Airport expressly forbid it for safety reasons.

We soon found out that the daragang magayon is a tease. So for three and a half days, we drove all across Albay for glimpses of Mayon’s peak, dragging along my Aunt Baby and my cousin Olga, both of whom live in the area. Our first stop was the Mayon Planetarium and Science Park in Tabaco City. It was a very cold and downcast morning, so it was no surprise that Mayon was fully shrouded in clouds.

The best part of the visit to the Planetarium is getting to climb down a steep set of stairs beside a cliff. It was fun.

The weather got significantly warmer and sunnier when we got to Kawa-Kawa Hill in Ligao. Unfortunately, climbing to the top of that hill proved to be too much of a challenge for me. The path up the hill is designed as a Via Dolorosa or Stations of the Cross. Whoever came up with the idea for that path took its being a way of sorrows way too literally – the path’s incline is very steep and there are no handrails.

Soon enough, I was out of breath and feeling dizzy, so I let my companions go on up the path and leave me behind at Station Three, with them for company:

I recovered after a while and decided to go after my companions. On the climb to Station Five, I got on the verge of fainting. I only willed myself to reach the resting spot at Station Five before blacking out. It was the first time I ever blacked out in my nearly 37 years on this earth, and it’s not funny. Thank goodness I had water and food in my bag. After a big gulp of water and a few bites of sticky ube-flavored rice cake, I gingerly made my way back down the hill. Later, my mother consoled me with this picture of Mayon:

The last stop for that day was the Cagsawa Ruins in Daraga. The ruins were the remains of a church built in 1724, buried when Mayon erupted in 1814. Views of Mayon standing proud with the crumbling remnants of a bell tower in the foreground are perhaps the views of Mayon most familiar to the public, often seen in postcards and paintings of the volcano. We definitely had better luck of seeing the volcano’s peak here.

We played peek-a-boo with Lady Mayon in other parts of Albay. Here she is on Wednesday morning at the rooftop of RMJ Apartelle, the place we stayed at in Legazpi City:

At the Embarcadero de Legazpi, the mall/boardwalk at the city’s harbor:

Behind the Kapuntukan (Sleeping Lion Hill):

From the viewing platform at Daraga Church:

And from the top of Ligñon Hill:

On the last day of our trip, Lady Mayon finally stopped playing games with us and showed herself in her full glory, with only wisps of clouds about her.

Maybe it’s her way of bidding us goodbye and a safe journey back home to Manila. Whatever; Mom and I are sure to come back to see Mt. Mayon and visit the spots we missed in our visit to Bicolandia. So much to see, so very little time.

If you want to learn how to communicate with other people on the Internet, forget about Facebook or Twitter. Instead, you should play a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game.

MMOs are rich microcosms where you’re guaranteed to meet people from many different walks of life and living in corners of the planet you may not even have heard of before. People whose cultural, educational and financial background, probably even race and language, are nothing like yours. And if you’re stuck in a guild or alliance with them, you have no choice but to work with them so you can advance your character (also known as “toon”) and enjoy protection from hostile players in your game world.

Unfortunately, when a pack of total strangers is forced to work together for the good of the guild or the alliance, one thing is bound to come up: guild drama.

Guild dramas are a force of destruction.

Guild drama is as old as the Internet. More often than not, it is the product of clashing egos, poor communication among guild members, and lack of initiative on the part of the recognized guild or alliance leaders. Unless resolved, guild drama is a destructive force that will eat away at the foundation of the guild and cause it to crumble.

Thankfully, there are ways to prevent guild drama from happening. There are also ways of nipping it in the bud before it corrupts the spirit of teamwork in the guild. How to survive and deal with guild drama is a lesson I think would be useful to anyone who works, plays, or does business online.

Lesson #1: Anonymity doesn’t give you the license to be rude or hurtful.

MMOs are inherently anonymous. Even though there’s Facebook, the people you play with in MMOs won’t know who you are unless you tell them. And the truth is as long as you do your bit for the guild, they don’t give a crap. Thus, within the game world, you can be anyone or anything you want to be.

However, the fact that you’re shrouded by the cloak of anonymity doesn’t give you the right to forget your manners. Anonymity doesn’t give you the license to be rude or hurtful to other people, whether they’re in your guild or not. Behind the blood elf or the orc or the dwarf you’re playing with is a real person who deserves to be treated with decency. So don’t be a douchebag or a drama queen. If you can’t say anything constructive, don’t say anything at all.

Lesson #2: Never make assumptions.

In your guild, you have a role to play no matter what your rank is. You could be the guild leader, the raid master, the forum moderator, the lead healer, the guild cook or whatever. Whatever your place is in the guild, make sure you really understand what you’re supposed to do for your guild. Not only that, you should be able to communicate clearly to your guild mates how you’re going to do it.

Making unsupported assumptions about your role in the guild is a dangerous thing to do. Let’s say you went to your guild’s scheduled 25-man dungeon raid as the primary damage dealer. If you focus on killing everything in your path instead of dealing with the big boss as you’re supposed to do, your team may end up wiping out. And if your team wipes out, you will end up getting wiped out too.

Lesson #3: Your guild mates’ alts or personas are no concern of yours.

Most MMOs allow you to make more than one character (alt) so you can explore the whole gamut of the game’s mechanics. Whether you choose to roll multiple characters or stick to your main toon is your decision. The same applies with your guild mates.

So, if you find out that your guild mate who plays a mage is leveling a warrior as an alt, it’s really none of your business. Don’t ask them about their warrior stats if they don’t want to talk about it. Don’t push your offer of help if they’ve expressed that they don’t need it. Don’t force them to spend more time on their mage character when it seems that they’re enjoying their warrior more.

Once they decide that it’s worth their while to share their stats with you, accept your help, or spend more time on their mage instead of their warrior, they will do it. The most you can do is to list down the benefits of doing what you ask them to do and encourage them to do it.

Lesson #4: Ask and you shall receive.

More often than not, players in the same guild look out for each other. They are usually more than willing to lend their assistance because they know that helping guild mates level up and get better gear will play to their advantage in the long run.

However, you can’t expect your guild mates to guess what kind of help you need from them and just give it to you. You have to ask them first. If it seems to you that your guild mates are more likely to help someone else in the guild than you, don’t pout or sulk about it. Ask for help when you need it.

Lesson #5: Always keep your cool.

In MMOs, not everything will go your way. The loot you wanted to get out of a raid may not drop from the boss. Or you can lose the roll for it and the gear could go to someone else. Or you can lose a bid for a shiny piece of equipment at the auction house. Or someone may tell you that your tactics suck and you’re the worst mage/warrior/healer they’ve ever met.

Whatever happens, just keep your cool and never take anything personally. Just keep joining raids until you get the gear that you want. If you lose a bid, wait until the item shows up again. If your game needs improvement, go ask a veteran player of your class for pointers. Don’t throw a tantrum on Skype, Ventrilo or the guild chat just because you didn’t get what you want.

There’s so much you can learn about interpersonal communication from playing MMOs. By communicating properly with your guild mates, you can easily prevent guild drama from exploding in your face. And whatever lessons in communication you learn from playing MMOs you can definitely apply elsewhere in your life. After all, guild dramas can happen outside MMOs, too.

Have you been involved in a guild drama recently? How did you survive it?

I often tell myself that I am too old and jaded to believe in Prince Charming. The idea of Prince Charming, in my mind, is only for the naïve, for those who have yet to experience love and its accompanying pain. As old women are fold of saying, a young woman has a set of standards for her ideal husband, against which she matches the traits of her suitors. But as time passes and as each day that comes which sees her as yet unmarried, she crosses off certain standards from her ideal in an effort to fight her biological clock. In the end, she compromises and settles for the first person who meets the very basic of her ideals.

But I am digressing. Anyway, though I feel myself too old and jaded to believe in Prince Charming, my body still cheats me sometimes into actually dreaming of him. Last night, I was so tired that I did not bother to climb the stairs to my room and instead sprawled on the living room couch and promptly fell asleep. During my sleep, I dreamt that someone was kissing me; however, my body told my mind that the kiss was too wet to be a dream. I opened my eyes and there he was, his long pink tongue lolling out of his fanged mouth. My Prince Charming, Sniffy, just licked my face.

Sniffy is our family’s little baby. He is a half-breed pit bull, and he is turning six months old today. He was given to us by one of our cousins, who is into dog breeding.

Sniffy’s entry into our household was met with mixed feelings. We didn’t exactly want a dog in our house, primarily because dogs like Sniffy need far too much attention and care. A dog like Sniffy cannot be fed with just any kind of food. He must be fed actual dog food; no human food allowed. His grooming is also a matter of utmost concern.

Another reason why we are reluctant to take Sniffy in is that we are not certain that we are emotionally ready to care for a dog. The last dog that came to us died.

But Sniffy turned out to be a charming and intelligent puppy. Not long after he was brought to us, he captured our hearts completely. His funny antics and his innate inquisitiveness often brought smiles to our faces. Soon enough, Sniffy became a member of the family and taking care of him a part of our household routine.

Just how much Sniffy means to us was tested two weeks ago. A few hours after he was fed dinner, my mother noticed how sad and listless Sniffy seemed, a strange thing because all afternoon long, all he did was run and gambol about the yard. We all dismissed this as his being tired after all his playing. On the following day, however, he seemed to look worse; he would not eat, he would not drink. If he was forced to eat, he would just vomit it all out. He just lay there in his corner and would not even lift a paw. Only his eyes moved.

This alarmed my mother. The first thing she did on the next day was to take Sniffy to the vet. The vet told her that she came just in time: Sniffy was infected with the parvo virus, a virus that is fatal to puppies if left untreated. But even if it was treated, there was still a fifty-fifty chance that the infected puppy would still die. Sniffy was left at the clinic for treatment.

The week that followed must have been the longest week of our lives. My mother rarely cries, but the very mention of Sniffy being in the vet brought her to tears. Every morning of that week, she and my father would visit Sniffy at the vet. My brothers and I would take turns calling the clinic every six hours or so just to check on our pet.

It was painful. Before our eyes, our roly-poly baby shrank to mere skin and bones. The parvo virus attacks the dog’s digestive system, so Sniffy could not eat. He puked a lot and passed blood as feces. Dextrose and antibiotics, and mayhap our family’s vigil and prayers, kept him going.

On the fourth day of his stay at the vet’s, Sniffy showed signs that he will survive. His puking lessened and he stopped passing blood. On the following days, there were more signs; the lifting of the head, a slightly faster wagging of the tail, an attempt at a howl that turned instead into a moan.

On the ninth day, he was brought back home.

Sniffy is still recovering from his bout from the parvo virus. But he definitely seems on the way to recovery. Though stick-thin, he has begun to run around and gambol about as he used to, and seems to go out of his way to annoy my mother and myself with his antics, done with that tricksy doggy smile of his. And he has taken to licking the face of unwary sleepers sprawled on the living room couch.

I don’t really mind being licked awake by Sniffy. Not anymore. After all, he is my baby, my Prince Charming.