Manila-ed

For the first time since what felt like 20 years ago, I came home. And Home meant the deadly air pollution + P.Gil pirates + glorious Oble in the UPm garden + Rob + sosyal Midtown + wasted and tortured students + icky hospital sidewalk sludge + a lot more indescribable Manila things. How poetic though, of all times I could have visited, I came when Taft Ave. was semi-flooded and when UPm caught FIRE!

Anyways, I had lunch with Faye, Daal, Mame and Gran in the most upscale fast food we could afford (Kenny Rogers, harhar). The conversation was mostly about: first, our insistence to be refunded with the mistake of a KR staff, then underemployed-ness, get-together plans, my attempt at baking (Big Fail), Mikki's Palawan escapade and our theories of arson and how it could be done spectacularly, LOL.

Also, I got my pasalubong from Palawan:

MV Something (couldn't find a name for it). Thanks Mikki!

 

My S630 came back from the Windy City as well, totally beyond legal warranty-covered repair, but possibly worth saving by our native sidewalk gadget experts. But then my cousin was trying to be the best kind of cousin in the world so she got me this to make up for the cheapness of that thing:

That's the actual color as well (credits to The Tech Brief). Cuteness. Thanks to cuz and to the great friend who offered a great discount. My S630 will be as good as new when I have budget for it and will be available to whoever wants to buy. :) (After ranting about it here, I don't think anyone would.)

O Heaven Kissing Hill

That's one of the very few lines that I could remember from my old Alma Mater song (the title of which I can't even recall). What I remembered more was how I almost suffered from heat stroke by standing under the searing UV rays in the sand dunes of that school; just by waiting for the endless ritual of flag ceremony to be over.

So it's easy to understand why I've never itched to visit those sand dunes again. I believed that it was better to wait at least ten years for the full of effect of nostalgia to wash over me the next time I visit. However, I just broke the planned ten-year gap.

Here's the reason: The adopted son of my ninang is graduating from elementary in Dominican next year. He is a smart kid; so they decided to transfer him to a science high school. They got the application, but then the kid was too happy-go-lucky to have it signed to the proper authorities before the deadline and the school had some kind of reputation of delaying applications, so I was drafted by my mom to help. In short, I HAD to see someone I know and have the form signed. (Hence, the private messages on Multiply.)

So Tuesday morning. Around 9 am, the grade school kids were on recess... I came and visited the sand dunes, for the first time in four or five years. Even I never expected how I reacted.

It looks like a freakin' school! A freakin' sosyal private school. The breeze felt a little cooler, because the trees we planted have grown huge. The gym and pool area looked like a resort.

But what was more striking was how the old places looked so new... yet so old. Shet, yung paintings ni Mang Amor nung Grade 2 ako nandun pa. Yung lumang grotto buhay pa. Kahit kumpleto yung pathwalk, I almost tried to walk in the middle of the field under the blistering heat (because the field was calling out to be walked on). Yung high school classrooms: maingay, mainit, amoy pawis. Yung PE teacher namin, fit and jolly pa rin sa umaga. English policy pa rin. The temperature in the building was so alien, I swear, but it smelled familiar (yes, kahit yung amoy pawis).

After a short talk with Ms. Guiao, I headed down the same path and it took me ten minutes to reach the gate. Anak ng tokwa, I just couldn't get over those paintings by Mang Amor. Those paintings always have the same effect on me, whether I waited two or ten years to see them.

-000-000-000-

I have news for the alumni of this crunchy-infested, sandstorm campus: there's a Grand Homecoming next year in celebration of their 15th year. Celebration starts on January 30, with guests Parokya ni Edgar and MYMP. The foundation week commences with the alumni reunion, to be attended by former directresses of the school. However, all the information I have is just the result of an informal conversation so please don't take it as an official invitation or announcement. I'm just giving a heads up so everyone can prepare their post-high school selves. Haha.

Adult High School

I suddenly had a flash of memories about how I was in high school.

 I have always been a nerd. I had an unexplainable obsession for learning. I felt comfortable with formulas, numbers, essays and experiments. I looked forward to every release date of the school paper I was once part of. I liked exam days - because I can watch TV during the later half of the day and exams were, well, easy. Then there were all those fun essay-writing contests that I could always be in just because few people wanted to participate in them. Along with the downtime we get from all those extracurriculars, it was ridiculously easy to pass the courses. The only problem I had with grades was how to get higher marks than my friend (LOL), and everyone else for that matter. (And believe me... arrogance aside, it wasn't that hard.) I was used to rubbing elbows with the teachers- be it biology, chemistry, math, or English, even with the prefect of discipline that everyone feared. I don't know how, but it comes naturally. And you know what my most dreaded event was? The annual Intramurals. It's a full week of sports and cheerdancing; and a full week of me clumsily trying please my PE teacher at a sports event I can't play properly.

So you see why I loved college. It was different. I suddenly had less hate for PE only because I get to choose what to do. In academics, passing actually became extremely difficult. I had to cry, lose sleep, faint and literally get showered with acid in the process of trying to get that marginal tres. Professors were at both sides of the spectrum - the hip, young ones vs. the terror conservatives. And there I found my fellow nerds. They were just as weird but cool in our own sense. I even had a whole family in there (hello guys! *waves*). The whole four and something years squeezed the most blood, tears and sweat out of me but it's something
I'd do again in another lifetime (Asus... haha). Come to think of it, laziness set in a lot but I wouldn't have endured traveling several miles everyday if I didn't somehow like going to school diba?

Then there's life after college. It's that fork in the road covered by blinding fog and littered with sharp rocks. I hoped it was going to be like university life (considering that I came from the university that best captured The Real World). But then just now, I discovered, this is Adult High School. Beautiful people are still the head-turners, orange hair and black nails still look evil,  who dumped who and who hooked up with who still matters, gossip is still the lunchtime appetizer and us nerds, are still, the unusual nerds. I know there's a world out there that's better than this. But just like school, I guess I have to get through all this high school-ness all over again before I can graduate to that other world.

I can't help but start this wave of nostalgia. Haha.


So... do you still remember what high school's like?

Do you still remember what YOU were like back then?

Across the Universe

All you need is love. *grin*


I stumbled upon this new movie by Julie Taymor, Across the Universe.

Summary: A dock worker Jude (Jim Sturgess) travels to America in the 1960s to find his estranged father. There he falls in love with sheltered American teenager Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). When her brother Max (Joe Anderson) is drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, they become involved in peace activism.

I'm fond of musicals but what intrigued me most is that the movie is actually a Beatles songbook squeezed in two hours of film. Remakes of their songs, that is. Even before I read the movie info the fact that it was Beatle-inspired was a little too obvious... hello, the main characters are named Jude and Lucy. Lol. Well, watching the trailer I felt thrown back into the '60s again. I have yet to see the whole thing though.

-edit-

I got the soundtrack, finally. :)

If I wanted to die, I couldn't have found a better way.

I'm working with fecal E. coli and three strong concentrated acids namely nitric, hydrochloric, and perchloric acids. Like I said... If I wanted to die, I couldn't have found a better way.

My rats haven't eaten in two days. I hope they're still alive and zinc-supplemented enough 'cause otherwise I'm dead, even dead-er than being exposed to hazardous acids. No one warned me it was gonna be like this though. But I'm alright. I'm not commenting any further.

So I'm blogging but got nothing to write about except senseless babbles. I just miss writing. I think it's been more than a month since I wrote something out of random creative juices. For EiC, it's sad that I've got a lot of notes and drafts that haven't been given attention yet. I still can't believe it's been seven years. Seven years. Of loss, realizations, awakenings, reconciliation, ideas and daydreams. Seven years of writing and drawing. It seems we're never going to get tired of it anyway.

So I guess I'm not dying soon. I'm wearing double masks, nitrile gloves, a lab gown and closed shoes; and working cautiously in a fume hood with a functioning exhaust. Just maybe if I survive this, after seven more years EiC might be a masterpiece.

Forgive me, I'm being overdramatic again. :)