UP Naming Mahal... Going Back To Our Roots

Since I came back last August from my trip to the highlands up north, I could not help but count the days until that day when I will be reunited with my dear old Alma Mater - the "hills that have been my home" during my college years, and of course, with my dearest friends whom without, my memories would just be a big black void.

Last Thursday, I cut my working hours short to catch the 1:15 coach that would take me to Baguio for this long-awaited moment. The bus ride was something between a torture and a craddle of peace as I rummaged through my thoughts for those memorable years which sadly, seem too elusive for my dingy memory. Torture because I just couldn't wait... I was staring out the window half the time, anticipating to witness the transformation of the lowlands to the majestic and overwhelming mountain ranges that signal that, alas, I was there. So near. So close to home.

Proud Alumnus

Action Commitment Solidarity!

Now, that was something that surprised me. I never considered Baguio my home or at least I never pictured myself living mi vida in this place. It's too nice, too unreal for me since I am used to the chaos called Manila. But after this trip, I found myself pondering upon a very different perspective. I thought, I could belong here. Somehow, I think I could.

Upper Canteen

We used to hold our BC 107 (?) in here

It was past seven in the evening already when the bus stopped at the PNR station. Without any pauses, I grabbed a cab and headed straight to Don Henricos in Session Road to meet my friends (Tiki, Kat and Jang - the last two are my Baguio poster parents... hehe.. and I haven't seen or talked to Tiki in ages!) for dinner. It was amazing how hearts were poured out and how words overflowed almost as if we never parted ways and half a decade of zero communication was put aside between Pizzas, fries and tap water.

Dinner at Don Hen with Tiki, Kat & Jang

The Alumni Homecoming was on a Friday. The familiarity of the school was really overwhelming that nostalgia came flooding in as soon as I saw Oble, glorious and never-changing. It was one of those moments when you want to just squeal and jump around and speak in a high-pitch excited tone regardless of who you are talking to. Registration started earlier than planned and we were among who were first in line. The registration fee was not bad at all considering that for Php500, you'll be given Lunch, PM Snacks, Dinner (and a supposed) After Dinner Snacks, a kit complete with souvenir items like T-shirt, key chain, program, IDs and some other things.

With our kits

With my terror teacher Sir Jimmy Fong... hehe

With 'Manang Mane'

Despite the fact that only very few showed up in our batch, the atmosphere was too festive; it didn't provide any room for mopping and complaining. After all, a lot of alumni came - mostly oldies whose student IDs go as far back as 1960-somethings. There was this group of men (batch 70s, i think) who came in pack, complete with 'uniforms' proudly displaying the insignia of their Fraternity. Something like that really makes me all excited. Me and my batchmates were saying in ten years, we should plan something like that - going in full force complete with matching jackets or shirts or some stunning clothing piece.

Batch '98 (kami na 'to pramis!)

The rest of the first day was spent eating, selling Tiki's merchandise, roaming around the campus, taking lots and I mean LOTS of pictures, spying on alumni eye-candies and (at least for me) fighting off the urge to hit someone (i wouldn't tell) Me and my friends decided to stay and ditch the Torch Parade. But the hilarious part was that Kat and I ditched 'Oblation Run' for a quick fangirl moment with Jericho Rosales who was singing his heart out in a mini concert in a make-shift stage beside the Convention Center. Tsk...

Oblation Run

Fireworks by Beta Sigma Fraternity

The program continued on until a little after midnight with singing, dancing, monologues, a skit with the Kidlat Tahimik, spying on our favorite professors and lotsa jumping due to the very very cold weather.

Our school, our pride =)

As we sang 'UP Naming Mahal' which signaled the end of Day 1 of the 'Alumni Homecoming', with that chilly breeze seeming to hum along with us, I realized how much I truly love my school and how thankful I am that I did not push through with my plan to transfer to Diliman during my Junior year.

***

More stories on my next entry. I am insanely sleepy right now and my left foot injury is not making it any better...

A nasty nasty 'prayer'

I was still feeling bad about work and as I was typing this, I thought of that one 'quote' I read from a bookmark in Bibliarch which I vowed would be my mantra now and forever. It goes something like:

MAY THE FLEAS OF A THOUSAND CAMELS INFEST THE CROTCH OF THE PERSON WHO SCREWS UP MY/YOUR DAY AND MAY THEIR ARMS BE TOO SHORT TO SCRATCH THEM. AMEN.

Haha. Sounds like a prayer to me. I can't help but smile when I think about it. So, whenever I feel bad about someone or I am just plain irritated, I muter this silent 'prayer' and I can't stop laughing afterwards. Bad, I know. But hey, just a little something to lift these dark clouds and silence the roaring thunder inside my head.

***
The "long" weekend did nothing great for me. My Lord Voldemort-personified of a... ermmm.. how do you call it... errr... boss (?) haunted me on my supposedly worry-free rest day/s. I received an email which was a cross between a 'nag' and a 'i'm-concern-so-go-move-your-ass-for-your-sake' litany from the dark lord and I must say, it didn't do me any good. Dang, I was petrified! Does he really expect me to do some magic? =/

I'm happy though that in-between my sanity lapses, I'm still able to think and act like a person. (I think... I am still here, writing a supposedly candid and innocuous blog). I still laugh when I need to and I can just shrug and flare my nostrils when the situation turns ugly.What makes me sad though is that, when you feel like really talking, you turn around and you can't find no one. So, there, keep your thoughts to yourself and experience the wrath of your delusions.

Again... mantra... mantra...

1015 (late post)

I was so caught up with work that I forgot to post this one yesterday...

1015am on a Wednesday

My day just started five minutes ago and I am really not proud of it. I slept late as usual and I hate this but it will definitely sound like a rusty excuse, but I was caught up in a terrible terrible traffic. My morning routine to work is usually a physical and mental torture. But as a colleague says, traffic is no excuse. This is Manila for Pete’s sake! Even people here go arse-to-arse!

A large part of my being late is the fact that at 1am, me and my sister just went out of Greenbelt 3’s Cinema 2, along with hundreds of other fanatics who couldn’t wait for one more day to watch ‘Twilight’. The advance screening was at 11pm and since we were too eager to see Edward Cullen (swoooonnn!) in action, we forgot the time.

This is one of those days when I feel like rolling in my bed the whole day, with a book in hand not wanting to care about the world.

Anyway, I feel like a zombie these days... I get up every morning, doing the same routinary things but I feel like I don't (or can't!) breathe. My mind is reeling like crazy and blank at the same time. You know that point in your life when you just feel so suffocated and numb with how you live your life and you can't help but make a face whenever you think about how much of it is really worth all the effort? And there is just NO ONE to talk to? Just no one.

Blah blah blah on a Saturday

It's a Saturday afternoon and I'm here in our office, almost ready to go home. I'm still waiting for this last darn email to get outta my outbox before I can finally shut this laptop down. I'm so ready to go home and I'm itching to watch some Korean movies (haven't really done it in quite a while and I'm missing it) =)
I wanna watch this.
Anyway, I've tons of untouched Korean movies and telenovelas on my book shelf at home and I can't wait to finish them all. Now's the time.. since I've been pretty much productive today at work... I thought I earned mi-self a nice reward. =)

The 'Rovilson' Encounter

Seriously. In a span of two weeks, I got to meet my 'TARA' (The Amazing Race Asia) Season 2 crushes... hehe... Met Rovilson in a presscon I attended tonight =)

The guy's really nice, down-to-earth and very talkative... hehe! Me and my big mouth, I almost mentioned how disappointed I was because they didn't win... but of course, I was able to bite my lip and shut up. Cool dude. =)

Goodbye AQ?

Is this really it?
Am I saying goodbye to this baby?
I guess 2009 will be somewhat different without it.
But what the hell, it's not mine.
But why don't I feel sad at all?
I am trying to weigh my feelings.
I want to be sad about it.
I seriously wanted to be. But I just can't.
Instead I am *blank* like this _______
I can't say I am happy either.
AQ and me.. we went quite a long sh*tty way together.

More updates very soon.

Poclita

I haven't seen this girl in God knows how long and I really appreciated her effort last weekend to come all the way down to Makati to see me... after all, she owes me.. hehe...


This is Pocla (not her real name) Haha! She's one of my closest girl pals in college and despite the fact that we're just an hour away from each other (she lives in QC), we don't see each other often. She's so lazy.. doesn't want to move her a** around that much (or probably not) but I don't know, she says she's always busy..

Pocla is the girl 7-11 personified... As Jackie Chan puts it: Her 'mouth never closes'. She's so talkative that sometimes, you just want to shut up and listen.

Starstruck: Marc Nelson (hayayay!!!)

Whoa... I remember it was a total turn off for me when Marc Nelson was a no-show at the 'Walk the World' activity the last time and I was almost convinced that I was through being a fan.

But NO!

When I saw him at Powerbooks (Greenbelt) earlier tonight, I almost hyperventilated. Sheez, I was starstruck, along with my friends. Thus, this: =)

Me, Marc, Tere & Gelai

He's soooo... err.. what's the word? Cute would be an understatement... =)

Compluvcations

What is so complicated about love?

I have a number of theories that I would rather keep in my head but my fingers are too itchy that they worked on their own to translate them into something that I could look back to when I’m half immersed in that sh*thole. Pardon the curse; I am trying really hard to avoid that but there is nothing more agitating than the talk about l-o-v-e. Well, agitating can be two ways-the heart-thumping, heart-pumping, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep always happy feeling and the opposite of that – plain misery.

So, why the heck am I talking about love then? I guess I am still high about that Friday night conversation with my ‘sponges’ (or was it the other way around? I was more like the sponge that night!) Warning: There is 97.9% chance that you’ll be reading stuff that you have probably read a gazillion times or seems so oddly familiar even if they’ve never even happened to you. These are my thoughts; words that have been swimming through my brain mucus in the last 72 hours. Thoughts that seem to haunt me for fear that they MAY also happen to me. (I could only hope not). Some, I’ve experienced myself and wanting nothing else but to bury them in the deepest nooks of my memory.

I would like to make a disclaimer. Although these are not totally crazy thoughts that just came popping in my head but somehow part of a sickening reality, I did not intend for the arrows to hit some of you, my dearest friends, straight through the head (or heart?).Pardon my being direct; sometimes my words cut like a butcher knife but I believe they can also shake you off your slumber. I’ll only give a few:

Case no.1: A girl falls in-love with an (pardon this…) ‘ugly’ guy. That’s not even the catch yet. The ugly guy is committed to someone else and has Titanic and the size of that iceberg it hit combined for an ego. Forgive me for being so blunt but who are we fooling? Their breed really does exist. The poor girl is not only blinded by the circumstance but is also acting all crazy and stupid and just… well, stupid. You’d think the guy drugged here or fed her some sort of an herbal tonic that would easily delude her senses that there wouldn’t be anything left. The girl, despite being told by the people (and even the signs) around her that the guy is too wrong for her CHOOSES to overlook the fact that the guy indeed is jerking her around. The rest, well, is up to that girl if she ever wakes up from that stupor.

Case no.2: A girl falls in-love with a very good-looking guy that is too good to be true. Don’t get me wrong, the guy seems to like the girl. Again LIKE the girl, not love. Nothing more. This is pretty much like case no. 1, except that he’s someone that is a little hard to let go because of the very simple fact that he’s an eye candy and he seems very nice. But he has’t got the balls to move a step forward because he’s just not the type and it might ruin his reputation. The girl, on the other hand, is hoping desperately for more.

Case no.3: A girl meets the ‘man of her dreams’ or SO SHE THOUGHT. The first meeting was okay… actually, more than okay… it was a blast! You were laughing your heart out all night and he was laughing just as hard; you felt so pretty and he made you feel so pretty; you felt like a princess and he’s the noble stead that you have waited for so long. You were thinking to yourself: “This is soooo it!!!” The night ends but the ‘kilig’ moment continues. He’ll text you goodnight and that he’s had a blast. But then, the following day, there is nada… nothing… na-uh. No text, no ‘hi’, no ‘hello’, no ‘how’s your day?’ and there are about a million things whizzing in and out of your head. Then towards the end of that day, you’ll get a ‘Hi’ from this guy. Excited, you’ll reply in less than half a minute. But you’ll get toasted waiting and waiting and waiting for an answer that wouldn’t just come. This is the part where you’re acting all lunatic, looking at your phone every five seconds, muttering incoherent pieces to yourself and whining to whoever’s within your 5 millimeter radius. He’ll reply alright but not till you’re almost crazy and paranoid. And this torturing predicament goes on and on and on every single day.

Case no.4: A girl falls in-love with someone that for some reason she just can’t be with. Well, I don’t know. This one’s too general. It could be that the guy is to be fixed for an arranged marriage (or is already taken!), or that he is gay or that he’s a vampire for all we care (sorry, still high with ‘Twilight’) It could be that the guy also likes you but is also aware of how things seem so impossible between you so he doesn’t make a move. But when you’re together, you just know that hell, there really is something and sometimes, you forget all about the ‘compluvcations’ and enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes, you think about fighting the odds and is so sure of it until you snap back to reality. Sad, right?

Case no.5: A girl falls in-love with her bestfriend. By that I mean, that person who knows your deep, dark secrets and who’s used to seeing you as nothing but an outlet or a sponge or someone to tackle and annoy and say harsh things to because he knows you wouldn’t get mad or if you do, you’ll get over it because he is very certain that you couldn’t last a day without talking to him. You pretend to not care and tell him how stupid he is. You confide in him all your guy problems secretly hoping to get him jealous or react anything that would give you the slightest hint if he is. And yet, when he talks to you about the girls that he likes, you pretend to listen when in fact (a) you’re not and you’d rather talk to your shoes, (b) you’re really listening , scooping up details about your potential competition while planning to sabotage whatever it is that could happen between them, or (c) you’re listening and hurting a lot but you’re not going to do anything about it. Very cliché, right?