sneaky preview

that trip to bohol was short but was just great.
[i'd probably speak of the entire holiday break the same way]

and i managed to sneak myself away twice for me-time.
you see, i was not only with family but with cousins too [cousins who i just discovered can really really really sing well. like really] and we were quite a lot. like we managed to occupy half of one of those floating restaurants in loboc river.

managed to check out a centuries-old loboc church alone while they were feasting on tarsiers and souvenirs. it was three stories of old old stuff. and those windows with squares, i just was staring at them. and by old i mean i-think-this-floor-aint-strong-enough-to-support-me old.

managed to check out and dip in the latest addition to bohol beach club while they were playing tag in panglao's fine fine sand. to have the pool all to yourself with a glass of long island iced tea and what i thought was a snake. i had to explain to the lifeguard why i was alone, then we talked about bohol living and why it ain't so bad.

i asked this to some people last night: why do we have to leave it to see it?
that's 'cause that question popped up within so many different contexts all throughout the trip, even after [when i was checking out cebu straight from the port without taking a bath for 24 hours and having to dine with the most beautiful friends in the world at ila puti, which is so fucking good you just have to try it]

yes, i had to tell everyone that i haven't had a bath since that pool all to myself the night before, guess i loved it so much.

anyway, the question raised some conversations including sir ariel's "...but that's if we get to see it after." or aaron's "...or else the wait is forever." he was right on the letting go part, and i think it also has a going through part.

because i honestly was disappointed with some of what i saw in bohol.

like churches restored disrespectfully [or so i think, 'cause who dictates what baclayon people have to let go of and will they still see the church if they let go of why we went there the first place]

like caves poured with cement ['cause i know we have to spread the love and let more and more people see the beauty but do we have to let go so much just so more people like me could see it]

not making much sense. probably i'm still surprised with how beautiful the many people and the many things are that i haven't seen for two years at least.

'cause my next question would be: would it have been as beautiful if it weren't two years or if i didn't leave at all?

those year-old previews were there for me. i'm happy they're more beautiful each time i get to see them. and maybe they do have to be that sneaky.

lisnin to Kokomo
sortof readin Ms Cebu 2007. the young and the beautiful
feelin kinda aww-ful

lusut diri tumoy

that's bisaya for straight here to the edge
or something like that.

it's steamed rice and bacon wrapped siomai at harbour dimsum straight from the airport. and it felt real real good to be back. it still does

where starbucks donuts are filled with chocolate and are at a lower price
where jeepney fares are tad cheaper
where seeing national book store and realizing the guard's exactly the same person two years ago refreshed tons of memories
where bumping on old friends is way better than opening gifts
where everything sounds harder but sweeter for the strangest of reasons
where it's home.

i find a lot of places home-y but nothing beats cebu.
and tomorrow it's bohol.

bliss

lisnin to little kids laughing
sortof readin Morleau-Ponty
feelin kinda sweet.

appreciate once more

posted in i love scihi
[now just replace all the scihis with whatever it is you've chosen and learn to appreciate]

You never really leave scihi.
You take it with you.

It’s sappy and mushy and corny, I know. But observing myself take zoology tests or science and society tests or calculus tests, even finance and accounting tests in Ateneo, there’s a lot of scihi in my taking them.

I’ve never visited the school since I graduated, I might do so this Christmas break. But I hear a lot of feedback, straight from my brother, from my mom, from teachers, from other students, from alumni. Most of them stress how things have changed.

Well I don’t really think so. Maybe not yet.
I hear there are a lot of disappointing things but I do hear things to be proud of too. Especially when we widen our comfort zones and look everywhere else.

What I really want to say is this: work and make love with the people and the things you don’t like. Seriously. Because what really saddens me is hopelessness, and that only during college do we get to really appreciate what we’re going through in high school.

A lot of people fail because they fail to appreciate both what’s pride-worthy and what’s disappointing. Worse, we pick the wrong careers, the wrong schools, and fail everyone else.

Maybe scihi isn’t much. But that’s not the point and believe me it never is.
The thing is we chose [deliberately or thanks to older people] scihi and it seriously is one of those oops-no-turning-back kind of choices. We could only do so much.

I think the people who win are those who do what they can.
Even with this much.
Now I can and want to win
so I’ll take scihi with me.

Sometimes, it’s that simple.

lisnin to Sexy Love - Ne Yo
sortof readin philosophy yet again
feelin kinda excited. a bit giddy

nobody knows it but you've got a secret smile
and you use it only for me
-Semisonic, Secret Smile

and you have no idea how much thinking of you matters

and they are right,
you never really get to own the best gifts in the world.

and keepReminding

and love,
'cause i bet you it's worth the secret.

nougat no glory

haha it gets lamer.

i used to hate nougat.
i still do.

you couldn't change the past
but the future could be different
and it has to start somewhere.
-Little Children, interesting movie.

i think i've been making bad decisions lately.
no regrets but when you've found less stuff to think about you start to think of the what-ifs, the could-haves, then the oh-wells. and you realize it's Christmas so you better think happier thoughts.

like Cebu.
and a new born baby boy cousin named Charlie.
and musicals pushing through.
and a brother who has grown to be so patient with me.
and old old friends.
and parties plus the less sober moments in between.
and Cebu. i never really thought the place meant so much to me.

maybe it doesn't. maybe i'm just hyping it up so it's cooler.
but it does.

may your Christmases be awesome

lisnin to Catch My Disease - Ben Lee
sortof readin eudaemonism. always thought highly of it. now i'm not so convinced.
feelin kinda glorious. wahehe. been a great year. so far.

to love is to appreciate

each day you realize that there's more to love
there's more love
and that love is good.

well, so far.

here's to less cold Christmases and New Years

lisnin to Angel by Shaggy
sortof readin Crisis of Conscience
feelin kinda weirdly smilingly blessed

marry Christmas

a week to Christmas 2006.

more and more people say that our generation is seriously becoming more of a we generation and less of a me generation. [we and me being different kinds of pronouns make it all the more interesting] it's almost always about us not me anymore.

now really?
smiles.

i've always had a problem with aggregation and i still remember luis and i talking about it relating it to voting or advocating. i often notice how we as groups love brands but as individuals dislike them. and as how i understood Jaron Lanier and his concept of digital Maoism: it's so hard to draw the line, when is it really a collective and not a manipulated propagandized system with the language of collectivism.

but James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds still is correct in saying that the many are smarter than the few and thus the need to establish relationships with one another and thus the need to think we. never me only.

my readings for organizational behavior say so too.
and the people i drink with, sleep with, think so too.
maybe there's more to celebrate for this Christmas.

have a good one and marry it.
pretty much what we want to do with quite interesting people.

lisnin to unknown song that's best unknown
sortof readin Veritatis Splendor
feelin kinda satisfied.

give and stake

maybe i'm pushing it but yeah
there's so much at stake when you start giving.

probably why i never really gave much.
rereading and rereading that, i realize it's not so bad a realization after all.

so instead of simbang gabi-ing [would have been my first] with ryan and lizzie and dani, i am at aids studying finance for my long test in a few hours. me waking up aids in a while, 430am or roughly 10 minutes from now.

God, i have so many to thank you for.

flip, a headline from The Economist:
More evidence that circumcision can slow the spread of HIV
so bawal na supot, laging tandaan.

aaron, all's good never sounded more true.

khalil, next time.

camille, it's funny how you had to share that he's still bitter. hmm. i say it to the world 'cause that's exactly what you just did.

and to all the people who love and who do not love and, most especially, who know when they are or are not loving, you make living and loving a lot more interesting [before i actually typed the 9 words immediately before these bracketed, sudar (aids' condomate) pops out of nowhere and it seriously freaked me out. apparently from another late party, it then led to a really good conversation (one of the coolest in recent memory, seriously) on selfhood to orientalism to impressionist art to sondheim to collective wisdom to disparities to why not a lot of people are always happy. almost 6am plus the right amount of alcohol equals real good dialogue]

lisnin to All Falls Down - John Legend and Kanye West
sortof readin the inquirer
feelin kinda loved. and dance-y

i still think D.O.M. is demeaning. thank you anyway

my Pod

certain songs hit me easy.
worse, i want to hear them all day.
much worse, i simply can't.

and you know how certain songs sound so light and good and easy but when you really listen to them they are in fact so heavy and tough and good. makes you wonder if you should really listen or should you really just live the melody.

music is interesting 'cause we've all got names for rhythm, for timbre, for melody, for pitch, for harmony, for volume. we wish we had all names for all like music so we feel we're in control.

but we don't. and i guess it's a lot happier this way. but we do wish we could cry every now and then. and so we do.

yoda please, my Y-wing.

frustration over indifference, any day

me can't wait for music rehearsals later.
especially 'cause i've had lots of sleep
especially 'cause believe you me yesterday was quite tiresome

yup, even if that kid half my size had all the brute strength in the world.

load has been unbearably light lately.
not because there's so little but 'cause i haven't felt like doing anything productive in the long-term. from march competitions we're joining to january competitions we're organizing to february musicals i'm performing. boo

maybe later.
the uber procrastinator's most fave words.

lisnin to random trance music
sortof readin sustainable rate of growth
feelin kinda relaxed and good to go

um Yoda

you once said: do or do not, there is no try.

but try losing yourself once in a while
'cause it's so fun and cool to pick up the pieces
and put yourself together
and try losing again.

and maybe happiness does require lotsa sadness
and greatness lotsa smallness
and everything lotsa finesse.


boo, i need my Y-wing.

lisnin to Let's Get It On
sortof readin The Other Path
feelin kinda rebuilt.

speak up, Cebu

something i posted in ilovescihi:

Speak up, Cebu

I do beg of you.
This rant will be totally unrelated to the cause this blog was set up for and so I give the moderators the freedom to delete this page for such grounds. I just want to raise an issue that bothers me so deeply.

You guys might have heard of Charter Change, and you might be all too tired of it already or might find it too irrelevant to our daily troubles. As officer of the Ateneo Student Council, I’ve been bombarded with opinions, analyses, whatnot. I share the same sentiments at times.

But I raise this issue and I do so now ’cause if you tune in to ANC ’til 6 in the friggin’ morning you would realize how our congressmen are handling it. Brazen and with utter disregard of the law.

You may have chosen a side already on the issue. Maybe you favor Charter Change. Maybe it is the solution to all our problems. Maybe these men are so enlightened that they know the actual provisions our Constitution needs. But why the haste?

ngano dali-dali-on man ang pag-usab sa pinakaimportante nga balaod sa atong nasud

We were in Congress ’til midnight observing the farce at play and you would easily notice how dubious the show is being run. Whether you are in favor of changing the Constitution or not, whether you like Pres. Arroyo or not, whether you do believe in a parliamentary system or not, it does not matter.

If the very mode of changing our Constitution is dubious, all it produces is a dubious Constitution. We need a Constitution we all could rally behind. We must be particular of the very process that changes it.

Guys, I know we do have a lot of things to think about but I appeal to you, my friends in Cebu to please take a stand on the matter. At the very least talk about it. These congressmen already approved to convene this Tuesday without the Senate. They plan on having a plebiscite soon so we postpone May elections to November. That’s a promise on their part, but observing how they run the game, it’s so hard to believe that there will be any upcoming elections anyone could participate in thanks to this utter disregard of the law.

I for one trust people by default. But I am deeply troubled with what I have heard and witnessed. I am trying to tap my old network of friends and student leaders in Cebu but I beg of you to please talk about it. You, scholars of this country.

We owe a lot to the people who paid for our high school education, whether we like it or not. Let us not do this because we owe anyone anything. Let us do this because it is the right thing to do.

To protect the very democracy we need to survive as a nation.
Bother me at 09157882132 and forgive me for this lengthy rant.

distinguished gentlemen

i had a two year stint as presiding officer of my highschool's parliapro team. it's a team that represents the school in competitions on parliamentary procedures. and thus i do understand when this distinguished gentleman's rise for a personal or collective privilege or that distinguished gentleman's appeal and his fuming for it being objected to.

filipinos are asleep right now and they might get to see this bullshit tomorrow. what bothers me is the sheer brazenness and outright stupidity in how these distinguished gentlemen are acting. those who want to change pinoy rules are displaying their awful motives
those who don't almost are pushing it

perhaps they are distinguished for they need to be set apart from us decent folk.

lisnin to house debates at 130am
sortof readin the fundamental option
feelin kinda bewildered. GARAPALAN AMPUTA

set Free

my kind of weekend

more than public recognition

it is knowing that we could come up with something so unique despite hugely varying opinions. they'll tell me it's but a taste of what's to come.

but appetizers shouldn't be as appetizing.
i might forget the main course

lisnin to a good year
sortof readin theo
feelin kinda whoa-y

when she calls you dude

...then it's a silly infatuation.

my three year old cousin got this catch-a-fishy-with-a-pole plaything where the fishies open and close their mouths as the "pond" is rotating. i think it's a pinoy toy.
well anyway, we both can't seem to catch any fishy so he turns the plaything off and inserts the bait in one of the fishy mouths and turns the plaything on again. then we pat ourselves on the back, or something to that effect.

if only we aren't as enslaved to rules as we are now...

...then maybe i'd be fine with dude

lisnin to kiwi music. thanks ryan. sad story but happy ending
sortof readin scheler on love
feelin kinda loved.