100 Days in China: Dreams do come true

“When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are.

Anything your heart desires will come to you.

If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme

when you wish upon a star as dreamers do.”

Hitting two birds in one stone? That’s not the right phrase for me. Setting foot on Quanzhou back in December 2017 broke all that negativities that I cannot return to China during my own expected time. It was a plain wishful thinking never in my life I could have predicted. And setting foot now on Beijing broke all that prejudice that I can’t fulfil even one of my travel bucketlist in the nearest future.

100 Days in China: Welcome Back

“Don’t tell me I’m dreamin’, ‘cause if I’ve been dreamin’, I don’t ever wanna wake up.

So in love with this feeling, tonight I’ll be sleeping, sleeping with my eyes wide shut.”

It wasn’t my first time to fly solo. Whenever I do, it makes me feel I’m an adventurous person. As most passengers were, I was also excited and nervous at the same time. A lot of “what ifs” coming in. But adding to the formula of my emotions was worry. I was worrying about the work I will leave behind, you know the grades and school year finalization. I tried to amuse myself by talking to OFWs (yes peeps, THIS introvert talked to strangers) as we wait for our turns at the immigration clearance. Worrying suddenly disappeared when everything was starting to get real upon entering the passenger waiting area, lots of Chinese people are there and Mandarin + Hokkien conversations filled the place, no more Filipino words can be heard.

I opened up the pages of my passports (the old and the current one are bonded together for Chinese visa application process). I looked at the stamps and tried to make a chronology of events since my first flight out. September 2010, July 2011, August 2011… March 1, 2013. Wait, what? March 1, 2013! The exact time of the year five years ago, I was a junior at college back then. I never knew five years later I will be back! Oh Thank You, Lord!

100 Days In China: Prologue

You can call me “King of Wishful Thinking.” Like everybody else, I tend to wish for a lot of things to come true. But I would not be “King” if there’s nothing worth noting. I make it a habit. I do it when I get bored, when I check exam papers, when I wander around Manila, when my excretory system works in the CR, among others. I wish for things that may happen, and I also wish for things that have no chances of even existing.


One night last year, I dreamt of being back to China, the setting was in the school canteen, I conversed in Mandarin, I wore winter clothes and the people I am talking to were from other countries who can speak Chinese as well. When I woke up, I was happy. I saw myself back in China at least in my dreams. Those were the times that I felt dead tired because I worked twenty-plus straight days (Saturdays and Sundays were not in my resting programs yet) my only time for rest is going home, eat and sleep. So seeing that in my dream gave me some reason to get over negativity.