on the Right track

and so ends my microsoft musical adventure. yesterday

it was so much fun seeing the kids playing with stuff and laughing at and with us. kudos to kakki and everyone in bluerep who pulled it off despite the not-so-effective technical people who set-up the lights late and whose sound system had lots of dead spots thereby delaying the technical dress rehearsals.

but it was fun to see everyone busy making flowers or tying styroballs on strings or taping crepe paper strips together or wearing a tiara plus a wand or coming up with a lion costume or dancing inside a box as a box or jumping on top of wooden planks like a giant keyboard or misplacing a t-rex on the wrong cage making it eat the other animals in front of cute adorable dont-show-them-drops-of-blood kids.

i know most of them did more tiresome stuff than me, but i was so exhausted after the show that after dinner i went straight to bed...

...and overslept.
so i cut all my classes today and played with my now-2-year-old cuzn who just got back from his 2month vacation [i miss him lots, he can speak more stuff now, cute cute cute]. had lots of rest then went to power plant to celebrate his birthday again. the place was once again great but just a piece of advice: don't eat at kaya. this korean restaurant which seems like a fine dining place but actually is very fastfood-y. food wasn't that bad but a lot of other places are betterrr.

went home late and sortof prepared for accounting. i'm starting to like being in nerdmode, although technically i wasn't cause i incurred lotsa cuts already. but i wanna be in nerdmode in the coming weeks and i hope to reap lotsa benefits. my God will help me! woohoo

lisnin to "make love listen to the music... i like to party... like everybody does" song
sortof readin my life expectancy healthspan calculator results
feelin kinda rested refreshed rejuvenated.

hapBday miggy. pic

HAPBDAY MIGGY! HAPBDAY MIGGY! HAPBDAY HAPBDAY HAPBDAY MIGGY!

greatLy gratefuL

today has been the sweatiest day of my entire ateneo life.
sweatier than my pe101 mile long run or running around campus for orsem tours or sifting sand under the heat of the sun for gawad kalinga.

thanks to the unbearable heat which lasts until around 7pm. soon after you hear thunder and see the clouds piling up and all of a sudden, rain falls so hard you'd think the heat wasn't that intense minutes earlier.

thanks also to fencing. yup, fencing- the pe class people dread thanks to the eeky masks that you'll share with each other. but im buying bea's mask so i'm spared from the eekiness. thanks bea, and i hope her jacket fits me as well. but i'm totally not spared from straining my knees thanks to retreat, advance, advance, extend, lunge, on guard while your knees are bent. but thanks to the tap dancing class going on behind our fencing class, everything [the heat, the smell of your schoolmates, the pain on your feet and thighs, the sweat, the idea of entering oh-so-boring accounting class after] seems bearable.

thanks also to commuting, which for jeepneys is 2pesos more costly than last week. but thanks to that long mrt ride from quezon avenue to shaw blvd and a smile or a greeting from a complete stranger every now and then, everything [having to wait 'til the next stop, the dust, the heat, the thought of being caught off guard by the rain, having to push your butt cheeks on a really full vehicle, the thought of being mugged again] is bearable.

special thanks to my fan, my hankies, the fact that you can cleanse your face with your facial wash whenever necessary, people who think everything [things worse than what i think are bearable] is bearable.

and ofcourse friends. friends who will lend me their books and stuff [thanks maan for your psych book and to krikri for your math book and to ria for your accounting book even if i'm not getting it anymore]. friends who let me play sim city and sleepover their place, thanks rj, sare, nickson. friends who will watch ateneo blueREPERTORY's mr80%.

BlueREP brings back the crazy comedy everyone is sure to enjoy!!!

"MR.80%"
a cOmedy abOut beiNg stRaight, gAy, & faKiNg it!

June 23, 24, 29, 30 7pm
June 25 and July 1 3pm and 7pm
Ateneo Rizal Mini-Theatre P1OO only!!

Tickets available at the DOGHOUSE!
Or you can text SWEET-- 09174495377

Atenean freshies, watch mr80% and see the fun BlueREP has to offer!!
And to all our beloved friends celebrating MANILA PRIDE WEEK,
WATCH OUR SHOW!!!

DON'T miss this wonderful production you will never forget! Hurry while school is just starting! Good seats await those who reserve early.
Tell all your friends!

HAVE A GREAT 80% WEEK!!!
THANK YOU

first weeks first

first week was hot.

and every day from school i need not force myself to sleep after all the walking around and talking blabla. but this week made me more excited of this semester. meeting my new teachers and my new blockmates, such fun.

my asian history teacher reminds me of jb who talks of "his zone" and makes his subject quite interesting considering he has a monotonic voice. my filipino teacher reminds me of the stereotypical terror teacher with the thick glasses, the i-know-i'm-right voice and the i-am-very-funny humor, which is not very funny. my accounting teacher reminds me of my dad's friend and, like many of our father's friends, talks as frequently about unimportant stuff as about important stuff that you can't quite determine which one is important and unimportant anymore. my psychology teacher ends each sentence on a high note, literally. my science and society teacher reminds me of my asian history teacher back in highschool only thinner. my fencing teacher reminds me of gays i see in shang. my law teacher reminds me of no one, but there are times that he looks like my accounting teacher which is weird.

but they all seem to know a lot about what they are teaching. so i'm pretty sure i'll learn a lot this sem.

met up with rach and rj for gateway after class for a movie. but the lines were so long we decided to watch in eastwood. but it takes a lot of time to get there so we decided to watch in shang. but the lines at the mrt station were so long we decided to eat at burgoo. and we stayed there for the longest time playing pants and mash and any other game we can play with crayons that it was too late for a movie.

nice nice week.

here's bad bad news from ananova:

Mugged three times in an hour

A German man who was mugged in a night club was mugged again two more times while waiting for the police.

Reiner Hamer, 27, from Oberhausen, lost his wallet containing £120 and his mobile phone when three men attacked him in the toilet of his local night club.

He called police from outside the club using a friend's mobile, but while he waited for them to arrive he was approached by three other men, who stole his watch and cigarettes.

As he leaned back against the wall to recover, another five men approached him and again threatened him, stealing his jacket and the last of the small change.

i was mugged three times in two years. my life ain't that bad.

lisnin to Lauryn Hill, Marvin Gaye, Snoop Dogg
sortof readin thirdByte corp.'s consulting contract
feelin kinda great. just great


and oh: special thanks to the driver of jeepney number NWB 643. he returned my 50 centavos. filipinos ain't that bad. we're all just stressed at times.

brand New

a little bit funny.

being a good friend that i truly am, i failed to register rj for his classes this second semester. so we did it today and we were both surprised when it turned out breezier than how my registration went.

school was suddenly alive again. and everyone new to my face was a freshman. hordes of them. i heard some people say it was so hot today because of their number. all i knew was that it was hot today. unbelievably hot. thanks to my fan, kay's umbrella, two scoops of ice cream and some gale every now and then, the heat became bearable.

it was real nice seeing old friends, old blockmates, old schoolmates who i haven't seen last summer. entered three classes and was real happy to see familiar faces even if i just shifted to this new course.

then my highschool friends decided to eat dinner at UP again. food at chocolate kiss was yumyum and bea was right on the bagoong rice. rach had to deal with this waiter though so her first time there wasn't that nice. but we were all stuffed after and it took a lot of effort to go home. on the mrt, gia and i talked about starwars and geeky stuff and it turned to be a really insightful discussion.

i really complained when i learned that anakin decided to switch sides for his love for padme. what i did not know was what gia told me. what if all along, anakin did it for himself. he does not want padme to die because he loves her, he does not want padme to die because he loves his self. too much.

funny how it sorta matched my thoughts on my other favorite movie, ray! i hope i'd still have time for movies. my accounting prof sure didn't sound like i could.

anyhoo, im lookin forward.

lisnin to The Song That Goes Like This, from Spamalot
sortof readin Gashem Shookat Baksh vs. Hon. Court of Appeals and Marilou T. Gonzales, G.R. No. 97336 for Law21. whew!
feelin kinda exhausted but great. new sem new course new new.

people powerless

our history books are proud of people power.
i am proud to be Pinoy.

many revolutions later, our people still got no power. maybe an ounce, but still not enough to light the very study lamp we use to read our error-infested social studies books; not enough to transport all the money needed to 15 or so regions from the imperial capital through this centralized system some shithead thought would be real cost-effective; not enough to distribute land, wealth and energy to where it is really needed.

Pinoys should be proud of people power.

it gives all of us more than enough bragging rights for dear old democracy. it stopped some deluded lady from gathering more than enough shoes and some fat guy from gathering more than enough mansions... and wives. it placed into office more than enough government workers that the government itself can't afford its self anymore and brought more than enough red tape to last until the nth generation. it stopped years of destruction so we could all start from scrap again.

the good news is we have started again. we started from crap again.

crap because the news anchor screams at you when you want to know what's going on, the very reason why my generation does not want to know what's going on. crap because we can't afford to make those who have to pay the mind-blowing price pay. crap because we were happier as a nation when some boxer of ours defeated some boxer of theirs than when we had new set of public servants. crap because it seems so hopeless and then some optimism in you tells you that we can start again but you end back in square one where you still think the whole thing is crap.

wether we agree or disagree on jueteng legalization or value added tax or who the real president is or the next public transport fare hike or that homer simpson is smarter than all of us because he's still living the life despite the yellow skin it doesn't matter. what matters most is that we think about anything with enough decency not to drag our feet onto the streets, hands holding some poster with a written-using-some-marker-you-wonder-how-you-were-able-to-afford-the-marker message, mouth dry for yelling what the up-front-with-the-megaphones guy is telling you to yell, head nauseating for skipping some meals and staying under the heat of the sun plus all the eardrum-beating noise.

i am proud to be Pinoy.
i am not proud of people power.

and if you see me on the streets, hands holding some poster with a written-using-some-marker-i-wonder-how-i-was-able-to-afford-the-marker message, mouth dry for yelling what the up-front-with-the-megaphones guy is telling me to yell, head nauseating for skipping some meals and staying under the heat of the sun plus all the eardrum-beating noise...

...then the Philippines is a first world country full of sung heroes, neighborly greetings on the street without a single security guard ready to frisk your waist or a single bullying foreign company as it has become the only superpower in the world.

power, less is not always more.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

deedlee doO

it is 10pm and i just got home.

microsoft rehearsals with bluerep were so much fun. laugh laugh laugh. my jaws hurt. seriously. thanks to whoever thought of exaggeratingly smile while doing the whole magic to do act. but it helped. my thanks are sincere words of gratitude.

'cause i need cheering up, i don't seem to look happy all throughout the thing. not happy enough. the homie needs to be happy. but im starting to love my character now. i don't know if "actors" have to love their roles but im starting to on this one. the one on that trumpets play, i never really loved, up to now.

anyhoo, kakki was right when she said i am learning lots of stuff from bluerep. and tonight it was the Whisk. i mentioned it here before and tonight we had to perfect doing the whisk. all i know is that i was too dizzy to note how many times i TRIED doing the whisk. such fun

hitched a ride home with kenneth's car. and i must say kenneth's a really funny witty guy. hehe funnier than will ferrell! hehe talked about movies on the way home and learned about the primer, some movie about some box.

speaking of movies, will ferrell just said he's doing a movie with dustin hoffman, stranger than fiction. something to look forward to, i think...and he plugged Bewitched with nicole kidman all in an orange suit orange pants orange tie.

clockwork orange, pom said on the ride home that it was good. arrived home headachy, a really heavy head [not migraine-y, but almost as painful] and now it feels better. me zzzleeping

lisnin to the tonight show! and watching. with jay leno AND will ferrell
sortof readin movie showtimes at clickthecity
feelin kinda heavy but real happy

cold play cold

just got home from nickson's place. at antipolo, yes. some place so far it felt like we were having a tour at around 10 in the evening. it was the three of us again. met nickson's really perky mom, twas fun. every playshopper's mom/parent seems to be really fun to be with.

and i must say nickson's got one fine place. he's got a house all to himself. we were up till 3am. such fun

makes me miss my mom. she just arrived in cebu today from iloilo. she told me she had a great time. also reminded me to be safe always and just give the phone when some robber wants to get them. hehe i just informed them bout the woohoo incident.

it is raining real hard right now. it wasn't this bad last night. we were at gerry's in makati, having dinner with 12 playshop people plus annoying allan. we had fun, especially when we were saying our goodbyes. sir allan had to wait for us there for 2 full hours, i think he was kinda pissed. i was kinda pissed too.

we were at sounddesign few minutes past 10am. around 8 of us from playshop were there for the voice auditions. we met ate dang, assistant caster. she was so much fun to "work" with. we were recording voice stuffs there and singing and just playing along. she oriented us about being a voice talent and how it's a good source of moolah.

it was sortof a new experience, made me recall our "walang sugat" thing with iii-neon back in highschool. we had to record stuffs at some studio then, haha i miss those times. with py, rexonni, gia, jam, adel, many more.

gia told me of jam's debut's pics. another event i missed back in cebu. ohwell, they all looked like they had a great time, which is really puzzling knowing i am not there. kidding. and adel shared this endless love song by bush and blair. such fun

lisnin to John Mayer, Marvin Gaye, Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog [it's like Ray Charles only female], Lauryn Hill
sortof readin 1-day old emails and conversations
feelin kinda cool, thanks to the weather

nothing pHallic

it's a guy's world.

guys from playshop were here yesterday, our THIRD swimming get-together in one week. five guys plus kim. then aiza followed a few hours later. it was fun seeing kim cook hotdogs while i cooked rice or seeing jerome go loco because aiza arrived or seeing mj see us or listening to anna and jay over the phone. aiza and kim were like one of the guys and were really cool about everything, especially during chikka minutes. such fun

here's something from mcsweeney's, b.r. cohen's annals of science [something the guys who were here yesterday would understand]:

Masculine Sperm, Feminine Eggs
I don't make it a policy to personify eggs and sperm, but reproductive physiologists do. So we'll start that way. If you are one and you're from the '50s, then you probably talked about the bold, daring, macho, strong, persevering, successful—nay, triumphant!—sperm. You were probably a man, too, the scientist, so that made it easier. Your guy, the sperm, would make the harrowing journey into the feminine genital tract in search of an oh-me-oh-my egg floating perilously in the warm darkness, waiting, damsel-in-distress-like, for her savior. The egg was likely blowing the nail polish dry between toes separated by cotton balls, Gwen Stefani on her fallopian iPod.

That's what an egg would do. A personified egg. A personified feminine egg in a culture that defines femininity by passivity, weakness, and subordination.

So, here a competitive sperm would take the challenge. He'd hurl himself, with no regard for his own safety, just no regard, at the egg's seemingly impenetrable coated wall, and struggle, push, struggle, wiggle, until yes, yes, struggle, flex, yes, he makes it. He's in.

That's sex, folks. Was I too subtle?

By the '80s, sex happened differently, and it wasn't just gender-bending glam rockers. What if the biologists aren't all men, and what if this makes people see things a little differently, and what if this changes the loaded language, and what if someone notices that for every "failed" egg there were like hundreds of millions of failed sperm, that over a lifetime men "wasted" a couple trillion sperm while women lost merely several hundred eggs, and so who's the loser now, huh? And what if you looked closer and saw that the egg was pretty damn active, doing a lot of the work, coaxing the sperm, drawing "him" closer, pulling him in, then, shit, then the old personifications aren't very helpful, and maybe they actually get in the way of reproductive-physiology research, and so maybe it matters what metaphor you choose, or have foisted on you, and that's all I wanted to say about that, because I'm no biologist and I was just wondering.

me too. because things change.
it's not just a guy's world. it's for every one.

lisnin to Sasha, John Mayer, Coldplay,
sortof readin 100 years of solitude, again. i have to finish this before school starts, thanks juno
feelin kinda nice and mushy


*plus.
was goin home from ateneo on a cab when the driver suddenly asked:

ano pangalan ng Diyos?/ what is God's name?

and the paranoid-lost-lots-to-robbers-already in me was taken aback. but i had to answer cause he asked again. i said

uhm, God?!

and that's how the driver started his monologue that ended in him telling me about jehovah's witnesses and that i should visit their website.

.org ha, hindi .com were his last words.

felt good talking with him though. i don't know. some of my questions were answered like why some of the Catholic Church's teachings aren't what i truly believe.