Of achievements, nostalgia and Easter

WordPress has been teasing me about it for the past few weeks. I first noticed it when I wrapped up the Tokyo series, and since then, the number inched closer and closer. 196, 197, 198, 199, and then boom.

This post marks thepaoloproject.com’s (once known as the mouthful paolomandingiado.wordpress.com) 200^th.

A photo that captured my summer of 2013, and the festive feeling I have because of this 200th entry. :-)

Yeah, yeah, sure, big deal. Initially, I too thought that it shouldn’t be until I recalled how I so unceremoniously disregarded this lowly website’s first two anniversaries. How dare me, right?

This blog has been a roller coaster ride, which makes sense, given that is about me and my life. It has been a platform for emotionally charged posts by a random self-absorbed guy, a channel that had me getting readers from as far as Madagascar, Liechtenstein, and Venezuela, and receiving e-mails from Russia (!), an avenue where I have met people as grossly interested to travel and gastronomy as I am (you know who you are!), and has been both a source of pain (sometimes) and joy (most of the times). Crazy, I tell you, but good crazy. :-)

Putting things into perspective, I realize it deserves some recognition, even a personal one, considering how it’s evolved from my first entry (which, ironically, was on an All Saints’ Day) to what it is right now. So yeah, this is me gloating about this milestone. Yey to me! *unabashedly pats self in the back*

***

Just this past weekend, I visited my mom’s hometown in Nueva Ecija. It was a different province from how I fondly remember it to be (something I immediately recognized after stepping off of the van), but similar to The Paolo Project, it has made me appreciate how far I’ve come along.

I almost forgot how gooooood fresh carabao’s milk is with hot, steaming rice and a pinch of salt. Yuuuuum breakfast.

Our makopa, kamachile, kaimito and coconut trees have all been cut down, but I was happy these Indian mangoes stayed around.

Reading Wicked on a hammock under a mango tree. Provincial life with a modern Nexus 7 twist.

Gone are the simpler days of sleeping on a wooden bed under the shade of the mango trees, or those playful times of picking the sweetest, freshest siniguelas from my Lolo’s backyard, or the excitement of swimming the river just behind our ancestral house. Everyone has grown up too, so quickly it seemed, that the collective memories of our younger selves almost seemed like they were from eons ago. Thinking about all of these made the trip so melancholic, wistful, contemplative.

Such is life I suppose, ever-changing, ideally (hopefully) for the better. For me, I think it is. I know it is.