What would you do if your kid suddenly comes to you and asks "What is sex?"

I bet that would hold any parent unarmed. Though it's somewhat expected, parents seem to be never ready for this talk, no matter how much books or Internet articles they've read. Still, no matter  how awkward, they  answer the best they can and often, their son or daughter would get it and just back away. This is what usually happens when a teenager brings the topic up.

However, what would you do if an eight your old asks you that question?

Yes, EIGHT years old. That seems too young to even have the slightest spark of sex in the brain, right? Regardless of age and innocence, Julia Sweeney's adopted daughter one day asks her mother the dreaded question.

Julia's response? Complete and total honesty.

While having dinner in a restaurant, Julia's daughter discusses frog reproduction with her because it was a school requirement. She explains that the frogs lay some eggs, they hatch and turn into tadpoles, then finally, into frogs. Only trying to correct her, Julia adds that it's only the female frogs that can lay the eggs and the male ones only help in fertilization.

Confused and surprised, her daughter demands to know how exactly does this 'fertilization' work. Julia, trying her best to be honest, replies by saying that sperm cells from the man's penis would fertilize the egg by having the penis go through the woman's vagina.

It sounds like a really serious (and sensitive) answer for an eight year old, but Julia's daughter gets it. With disgust in her tone, she clarifies that both parties have to be nude for it to work, and being quite innocent, she expresses that a man and a woman must NEVER be together without clothes.

Julia tries to clear the muddle she's gotten herself into with pure truthfulness by saying that yes, a man and a woman can be together naked if they were much, much older than she was. Her daughter then accuses her of doing it in the past, and to that, Julia had to say yes.

Further into the night, her daughter grows more and more curious about sex and how it works. Questions about people having sex in public started rising so Julia just stuck to her original plan and answered the truth.

Once they got home, their cat makes an appearance so Julia's daughter asks if the same sex process for humans also apply to cats. When she got an answer of yes, she couldn't figure out where the legs went and how they...well, did it. To answer her more pressing question, Julia suggests the Internet where they watch different cat mating videos on YouTube.

Totally sucked into it, her daughter innocently wonders if it applies to dogs as well. Soon, dog mating videos were on their screen. After a couple more videos of dogs uh...hooking up, Julia's daughter asks if there were any videos of humans having sex on the Internet.

Probably stunned on the inside, Julia simply retorts by saying that people would never do such a thing, although in reality, everyone knows that that's not the case. When her daughter didn't press on the human sex videos,  Julia narrowly missed shooting her daughter into the world of Internet porn.



While some parents still retort to lies to answer their children's questions, teenagers or otherwise, I like Julia's style of explaining the sensitive topic of sex. Bringing the truth out in the open was a good choice in my opinion, because let's face it, kids would know about it sooner or later so it's better that they get the right answers from their parents than the more disgusting version from a friend.

I wish my parents did the sex talk this way. When I was a kid, I've heard the words sex a lot of times in school already, so I tried asking my parents. Like most unarmed and totally unprepared moms and dads, they tried to get the topic out of my head so I went to look for answers elsewhere. My classmates seemed like a good source so they gave me the answers I assumed were correct.

As I got older, more words seem to add to my vocabulary. Virgin, virginity and rape came up so once again, I tried to squeeze some information out of my parents. Again, they brushed the topic off so I looked it up in the dictionary.

Well, at least the dictionary actually gave me answers. They're better than what my parents gave me though back then, I didn't really get what the hell "untouched or undefiled" meant. Still, I made do with the definition and never asked my mom and dad what virginity meant again.

The topic of rape, however, was a different story. I heard it on the news once because of some wack job trying to rape animals. I asked my mom what rape meant and she surprisingly gave me an answer. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I got what it meant.

I know all parents differ in their parenting styles, but this is probably the best sex talk I've heard so far. Sure, it may have happened in such an early age, but again, it's better to have the birds and bees with mom than with your horny classmate.


An Awesome Disaster by e.viray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.anawesomedisaster.blogspot.com.

Man was this assignment hard.

I know it may not show, but I love food, as in LOVE food. Anything edible, you name it, I can and I will eat it, so choosing only a couple for this list was probably the hardest decision I've done so far.

Pop Tarts

http://www2.kelloggs.com/ProductDetail.aspx?id=443

Who knew that some pastry thing inside a silver bag could taste THAT good? Just put it in the microwave for a couple of seconds and boom! Heaven in a plate.  My personal favorite has got to be the s'mores one. Cookies and cream comes in a close second.

Not only does this thing taste good, but it's quick to cook too. Pop it in the microwave or oven for a couple of seconds and you're good to go. Plus, the cover art on the silver packets they come in are pretty awesome...but random. From a Pop Tart karate chopping a toaster in half to one holding hands with a Blueberry flavored one, I've seen it all in Pop Tarts.

What's  not so cool about Pop Tarts, though? Quantity. This box right here has only five packets each. Yeah, sure each packet has 2 Pop Tarts inside, but that means that you have to eat it two at one go. With my ever raging hunger, that's fine. But for the many boxes I've torn open in the past week, yeah,  not so fine with my mother's grocery bill.

http://urbanmixplate.honadvblogs.com/2009/04/28/hana-hou-bizarre-foods-local-style/

Pinapaitan
What would you do if someone asked you to eat a weird-looking dish with a brownish sauce and a chopped towel floating around it? You probably wouldn't eat it, right? Well, that's not the case for me, except of course if it really is a towel cut into tiny pieces. However, if it's pinapaitan, don't expect that bowl to be full like you left in in 10 minutes.

Made out of goat innards and probably some cow bile, this dish doesn't sound the least bit appetizing when the ingredients are named. However, one taste of this baby and you'll be wanting more. That's certainly what happened to me. I was crazy for pinapaitan, feeling ridiculously happy when it was served on the table.

To make me go even more bananas, make the dish spicy by dropping in some sili or peppers.

http://www.pollsb.com/polls/sushi

Sushi 
Oh how smart the Japanese are.

In one bite, you get your carbs, vegetables, meat and sometimes even desert. Does it sound like that bubble gum from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Too bad it isn't. It's none other than sushi!

Wrapped in pieces of seaweed, each pop has sticky rice, cucumbers sometimes, a piece of raw tuna or stir fried beef, a small wedge of mango and some fish eggs on top. Doesn't that sound delicious? For most people, the raw fish and eggs are an instant turn off, but I am definitely not part of that group. My stomach can handle anything, raw or cooked, especially when it tastes this good!

Sushi isn't only delicious, but it allows the chef to go crazy with the dish as well. Cartoon characters like Pikachu can be formed and in another instance,  Van Gogh's Sunflowers was recreated with nothing but pure sushi of course!

I'd love to add more to this list, but my computer is lagging plus all this talk about food is making my mouth water for real. These three are probably the vices I take in the most, but trust me, I eat a whole lot more than this. I'm grateful to whoever discovered food. You are my hero.


An Awesome Disaster by e.viray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.anawesomedisaster.blogspot.com.

Picture this.

A Saturday morning. A huge hall. A PowerPoint presentation. People trying in vain to explain the very concept of, well, sex. Sounds like some sex addicts anonymous session or something, right? Wait, I'm forgetting one very important element.

The sleepy, bored juniors who all have the "I wanna get outta here!" look pasted on their faces.

I know it kinda doesn't make much sense. I mean, it's a sure fire formula for one big heck of an active discussion. Teenagers with raging hormones + the pure and simple topic of sex and human sexuality. I was honestly expecting students to be buzzing with excitement as the guidance councilors at the front discussed "hooking up", "getting it on", and "sleeping with each other".

But instead, what do I get? Very inactive juniors who are all the while buzzing...with their plans to go to SM. I'm not saying that I wasn't part of that group, though. Trust me, I may be sitting there quietly but my mind's been drifting to the magical world of Alessa Gillespie and the foggy town of Silent Hill.

Honestly, though. I can't blame any of us. The talk was all about human sexuality and how to deal with an idiotic boyfriend who keeps pushing you to have sex with him. The standard sex talk topics were kept, i.e., sexual arousal, the genitals, consequences of having a baby this early, blah, blah blah, so the entire session was basically just feeding us information we already knew.

And what do you call something that just informs you already about what you already know? Useless.

So that's how I found the whole thing. Useless.

Somehow, I felt like they were underestimating us. Did they really think that we didn't know THAT much about sex and sexuality? I mean, come on. We're TEENAGERS. Stereotypically speaking, we're supposed to be these hormone-riddled machines who often come of as...uh...horny, ergo, sex is the topic we are definitely not afraid to talk about.

So, what went down in the event, anyway? Let's look at the story from the very beginning.

Once you enter the hall, you're automatically commanded to take your seat. Then, once the opening ceremony ends, the sex talk begins. People pay genuine attention to the speaker in front, laughing at her jokes, staring at the PowerPoint presentation.

But that's just the first thirty minutes. By the end of the hour, the fun begins.

Students start lolling in their seats while they try their very best to keep their minds from flying away. The noise starts to rise and the speaker starts to get a little ignored. Cellphones of every model and PSPs start making their way to the hands of the YLA.

Yeah, not really what a sex talk should look like.

When I first heard of the compulsory event a few days earlier, my initial thought was "Human Sexuality? Uh, does it look like we don't KNOW that already?" Then, my eyes saw the date and time. "Saturday? In the MORNING?"

Heh. Saturday morning.

I guess that factor affected the talk as well. Saturday in the student vocabulary means sleeping in, enjoying one day of pure TV and relaxation, and playing the mindless shooting games we never get to play during weekdays. With the hectic schedule LHS has, Saturday even barely seems that way because in the afternoon (sometimes, even the morning), extra curricular activities start pouring down like rain and group activities planned sometime earlier in the week start crawling back into consciousness.

Still, we make do with this hectic supposedly-rest-day schedule. I was supposed to work with my group mates for our Music shadow play and our Filipino survey that day, but instead, my group and I were stuck in the function hall, reading the obvious on the projected screen.

Well, reading wasn't the only thing we did. We watched videos, too. There was one of that Lucky Me! commercial which really doesn't advertise their product much, then there's that home made video about some girl getting knocked up. Last but not least, there was the video of actual birth.

Yes, actual, bloody, baby getting pulled out of the mother's...thing, birth.

For me, it was really nothing. I'm not really disgusted by anything except maybe PDA and Justin Bieber, and with my sister studying to become a doctor, I'm pretty used to the whole vaginal bleeding thing (she shows me her PowerPoint presentations) so it was easy for me to stare at the screen without cringing or even the slightest show of repulse. This was not the case for most people, though.

Everywhere, you can see kids cringing into their seat mates or covering their eyes with their hands. Those bold enough to look at the screen without any cover had their faces twisted into fright and detestation. Moans and expressions of complete disgust echoed through the hall, most in unison. All I could really do at that time was to laugh.

Some, wait, MOST believed that showing the video was completely unnecessary. Well, maybe not COMPLETELY unnecessary. Seemingly, the only thing that can make a teenager really understand the consequences of something is by showing them what that consequence really is, true and uncensored burdens that you have to live through for a long time. Well, OK, maybe that doesn't apply for ALL situations, but for sex and early pregnancy? It most certainly does.

Sensing that we we could die of boredom any second now, the speakers tried to spare themselves from the smell of dead bodies. They asked questions, asking us to answer in the most honest way we can.

Wait, us? More like them.

The kids from the science section just sat there like sitting ducks, listening to all the regular students walk up to the mic and give their best beauty contest answer. Uh, hello! We exist, too! Maybe if they called just one or two of us, they could've gotten the answers they needed. Not the "wala lang" special that the others love to use so much.

Aside from the lectures and the traumatizing (for most) videos, the entire event was practically empty. What a morning wasted.

Sigh. Seriously, are the teachers deaf to our loud and ringing anthems about sex?

An Awesome Disaster by e.viray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.anawesomedisaster.blogspot.com.

I feel pretty bad for President Noynoy. He's trying so hard to please everyone. I don't blame him, though. I mean, what else would you do if you were suddenly elected as leader of a nation because someone backed out of the race and decided that you were fit for the job? Especially when people expect so much of you! So, leave it to P.Noy to try to improve the Philippines, one step at a time.

An Awesome Disaster by e.viray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.anawesomedisaster.blogspot.com.

An Awesome Disaster by e.viray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.anawesomedisaster.blogspot.com.