Entries in “life”

Oct 04 2006

Musings from the Desert

Emails from Iraq

Photography by Jayel Aheram.

I am not really sure what the date is today. I think it is the 4th of October and Wednesday, but I could be wrong.

You might have questions what is it I am currently doing in Iraq. Well, my unit is in charge of this base’s security. We man the defensive positions around the base’s perimeter as well as go on frequent patrols to make sure that the enemy is not setting up positions amid the many sand dunes and hills that surround this miniscule base. Dangers to this base is limited, but of course not exclusive, to infrequent mortar and RPG attacks. Infrequent, because patrols done by previous units in charge of security have done a successful job of neutralizing enemy positions that do crop up around the base. It is now up to my unit to keep that up.

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Oct 02 2006

Greetings from Iraq

Emails from Iraq

Photography by Jayel Aheram.

Greetings from the Cradle of Civilization!

At the moment, the place I will be in the next seven months does not even come close to the word “civilization.” More like “a-giant-ate-a-tent-factory-and-had-diarrhea-right-here.” Ooh! Ooh! There are some places in here where the “sand” is not even sand. It is just giant mounds of dust. You step into it and you sink and it goes POOF all over the place. Just DUST. It is crazy. It is just powder all over the place.

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Aug 08 2006

Race Relations

Childhood as a Mestizo

A young Jayel Aheram. He worries about many things, but race is not among them.

I am a half-breed. In fact, I am more than a half-breed, I am a mongrel. I was born to a Filipino mother and an American father. She was half-Spanish, part-Chinese, part-Tagalog, and part-Ilokano and he was Caucasian of indeterminate origins. Maybe he had Cherokee blood in him, too, or maybe not. I used to joke that I have the best of all worlds in me and that becomes apparent when people attempt to guess my ethnicity. Their guesses run the gamut from Arabian to French to Venezuelan.

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Aug 06 2006

The Color Purple

Origins of a Color Preference

Jayel Aheram as an anthropomorphic cat. Art by my sister Janan.

A long time ago, I was browsing through my blog looking for an excuse to make even more redundant and unnecessary edits to the template. I was trying to brainstorm ideas of what to write about and was suddenly struck at the sheer purpleness of the entire blog (the original version of the blog used to be all purple and did not include Armanth). Yes, my favorite color is purple. Yes, “Aheram” is purple. And yes, the theme and layout is based on my old Purple Hell website. There is no surprise that the blog’s theme is based on my favorite color. There are plenty of web sites that reflect the webmaster’s favorite colors. But I do wonder, how did my favorite color which is reflected in the blog’s theme became purple?

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Aug 05 2006

Armanth

The 200 Dollar Stuffed Toy

I had this crazy idea of creating a blog for my stuffed tiger Armanth and telling his story. Most of it will be fiction, but still based on some facts. I took plenty of pictures of him wearing his clothes (he has about 200+ USD worth of clothes, shoes, and outfits) to use on his blog. My awesome digital camera made perfect shots every time.

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Aug 04 2006

Playtime

The Games I Used to Play

Most of what I remember from my childhood was that of school and playing after school. The former was filled with classmates and friends and social things, the latter devoid of it. What I did in school usually stayed in school and it did not spill over to the home sphere (after school). A few times, my classmates visited me at home and it was awkward to say the least. I was not comfortable then in the idea of mingling my home life with that of my school life. Not that I was shy, hardly in fact! I was outspoken, talkative, outgoing, vivacious, and in trouble with my teachers most of time. This kind of dichotomy between school and home was voluntary in part, because I never needed to meld the two together. School was fine if it stayed in school and I was perfectly happy not having my classmates play with me out of school. This pattern of behavior (of separating school and those who make it up and after school) continued until high school, when the merging between the two spheres of my life became inevitable.

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