cousin edwin "gapo" returns to dust

In the mid-80's, Edwin was deeper into New Wave music than I and he had managed to get a pretty decent Walkman. He ecstatically came to me one night and he made me put the earbuds on with Modern Talking in full blast and he went: "'Yan Ever 'yung stereong-stereo na paghihiwalay ng sound, pansinin mo 'yung chorus: ""In my mind, mind, mind, mind.. In my soul, soul, soul, soul..'"


edwin was my my mom's little brother's firstborn in a brood of six boys, he was half a year my junior, we grew up together in valdefuente but our differences in a lot of things failed us to become close

O!O
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edwin and i cheated death late in 1994 when, together with 4 or 5 equally dead drunk buddies, we miraculously survived a car crash that was so violent the witnesses swore the vehicle rolled over twice before it rested on its top

O!O
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edwin was so glad when i took him as one of my daughter Semenelin's godfathers in September 1996 that he insisted on having us ride his run-down car to the church and back, he did not bother doodling in anything romantic opting instead to cruise the easy life of single blessedness

O!O
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edwin survived numerous and serious gunshot and stab wounds throughout his adventurous, albeit short, life but it was a killing kind of anemia that did him in last sunday, january 7 (curiously enough, edwin's father, Kuya Ed, survived the carnage of Jolo, Sulu in the 70's while serving in the then Philippine Army, as a boy i saw several of the bullet-bruised helmets he kept as testaments to his close calls with death, he died of tetanus in 1984, not from an infected bullet wound but from toothpick-inflicted gum injury)

O!O
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Edwin Puno Malgapo (1971-2007)
...pinsan, kalaro, kumpare, kainuman


...sleep well and tight, quietly rest..

Wolfgang, Cast Of Clowns

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