stream of unconciousness

i hate politics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i swear to God, if estrada gets off through pardon, i’m going to lose ALL faith in the Philippine justice system and most especially the Executive Department.  you motherfuckers should seriously think about what you’re doing.  it’s bad enough you give estrada special treatment  by letting him stay at his tagaytay resort instead of a prison cell like everybody else, now you’re thinking about letting him off like nothing happened?  fuck.  i KNOW people are feeling sorry for him for getting caught even if he wasn’t stealing as much as everybody else, but CMON!!!!  that’s not an excuse, he’s OLD, let him be at peace with the fact that his death in prison will serve as an example to the rest of the filipino people and future crooked officials.

Gloria arroyo, you are an embarassment to the Filipino people.  you make us look bad, you make your father look bad and you will forever be known as yet ANOTHER ass-kissing politician holding on to power like some desperate thief running away with the loot even when the entire police department is on his ass.  you’re sick, you’re greedy, you’re going to hell.  NO, BELIEVE ME, you are.  don’t give me that "it’s for the greater good" crap, or, the "end justifies the means" machiavellian bullshit, you are doing WRONG to save your OWN ass, you KNOW that and history will never forgive you for it.  You just set our political credibility back by a hundred years.  congratu-fuckin-lations you short ugly bitch.  oh, and learn how to smile, frodo with a vagina

4th year baby, what?!?!  i can’t believe i made it this far!

anyway, la lang, it’s been a while since i’ve posted. i want to atleast be able to look back to this blog when i’m 80 and not hate myself for not posting something when i was in 4th year. hehehe  that is ofcourse if i don’t hate myself more for actually thinking people care what i think about events of my pointless existence.  right now, i’ve resigned myself to what karra said about people blogging, i think it went something like, "yeah, by nature pretentious naman talagang mag blog eh, the fact that you think people actually want to hear what you say, that’s pretentious in itself"…but i think it ended with something like "but hey, we’re not forcing them to" hehehe karra, if u remember what u said that fatefull day i told u i was thinking of ‘blogging’ din, feel free to correct that quote.  but thanks for the advice, 3 years and some months later, i look back and am dam glad i have a semblance of what i always wanted to maintain, a diary.

it’s been raining the past couple of days.  thank god!  i miss typhoon season.  where the hell did it go this year?!  the punk stood us up.  i mean after all those years of consistently getting here on time, and doing it’s thing it just upped and left us high and (literally dry).  have some consistency man!  after milenyo, u think it’s suddenly time to retire?  or that u have to catch ur breath?  i’m not saying you whip out another super typhoon, but atleast fill up our dams and cancel some of our classes. 

why i like it when it rains:

1.  it’s cooler

2.  clean car (um, sortv)

3.  it’s dark, not that it sets the mood for romance, but that it keeps me from squinting my already tiny eyes (no tint on car)

4.  it’s an excuse to stay in bed even after snoozing ur alarm 6 times

5.  like the sound of it falling (helps me sleep)

6.  like the sound of the cars passing through the puddles, dunno why

7.  like getting wet in it, feels like being 6 again

8.  the sight of the homeless people standing under drain of the gutters, taking a bath.  have you guys seen this?!  man!  definitelly an experience.  they look so happy doing it.  and it makes watching them doing it such a joy too.  it’s like a fresh start (literally and figuratively) for them.  i dream of one day handing them a comb, a razor, some fresh clothes and deodorant, then telling them to go look for a job.  i’m serious, i’m not being mean.  i’m sure these guys clean up well, theyr just down on their luck.  oh, cept for the really messed up ‘rugby’ dependents, those guys are just friggin scary.

9.  u get to make rain angels in the puddles

yeah, i’m running out of reasons, basta sarap pag umuulan.  i’d choose a gloomy rainy day over a hot sunny one any day. even when i’m on the beach, doesnt keep me from doing any of the things i normally do anyway(ok, cept getting a tan).  or even when i play sports (cept for basketball, ball bounces funny)

ok yah, the basketball team didn’t win this year.  sigh, heartbreaker.  i dont want to get in to the details of the game coz its just too painful to relive.  we lost both of the games we played in semis.  we had a great regular season, but we just couldn’t keep it together to win the big ones.  not to take anything away from ateneo and beda though.  they were worthy oponents.  in the end, you just have to resign urself  to the reality that you can’t always win every game.

the one positive thing about the whole experience though was getting to play a game with ateneo’s drums in the background.  hehehe  i know i’m in UP now, but 4 years of going to uaap games and getting pumped up by the blue babble has programmed my body to release adrenaline after hearing those beats.  in fact, all the atenean players on the team where extra pumped in that game against ateneo coz of the drums.  it mightv seemed like we were mocking ateneo when we’d bob out heads or bounce to the beats, but we were really just genuinely pumped.  it was like playing for the uaap team!  anyway, atleast we have that to look back on.

finals season in law school!  been spending my days playing fifa07 though.  im waiting for my instinct of self-preservation to kick in.  maybe i can find some ateneo drumming to listen to…

oh!  and i watched 300 this week.  twice.  cool movie.  wish i were a spartan.  but man what kepts these guys from being pricks?  i mean, say you’re a 25 year old spartan walking around in athens on a vacation, you stroll around knowing you are genetically superior to everybody else around you (coz of the ’selection’ as a newborn), not only that but you’ve been trained like a little bitch to kill, and you live your life looking forward to …death…in a battle.  what kept these guys from being obnoxous bullies?!  did they have psych classes in sparta to keep the guys from having superiority complexes?  apparently, wikipedia sez they were very noble people.  a theory of mine is that they were so used to fighting in training and in battle, that they might actually miss ‘losing’ once in a while.  like if someone tries to debate with them, they might just concede instead of being a sore loser and kicking the other guy’s ass.

basketball season is around the bend, just want to have everybody wish the UP College of Law Basketball team luck.  do it.  do it. do it.

basketball is probably the only thing that can keep me occupied without being bored for more than 6 hours.  in high school i used to play ALONE, AT NOON, in our school’s OPEN COURT, in my GALA UNIFORM.  for PE we would play it until we HAD to leave (imagine having a class you actually wanted to go to), in college we’de play until the old twins or Jong from the covered courts would literally shut the lights out on us. i don’t understand it.  When it comes to studying and all that, i can hardly last 30 mins…but when it comes to basketball, you sometimes wish it would never end.  thinking about it, studying shouldn’t be that boring! 

first of all, you KNOW you’ll get something out of it.  the effort you put in will automatically have an effect on your academic performance (not to mention, added knowledge, which is always good), so if you’re really greedy, you can study all day, and go to sleep with the cozy feeling of getting a 1.25 in the subject, getting on the honors list, scoring a plush job, making your first mil in your first year as a lawyer, having a yacht…you get the idea.

let’s compare that to basketball…what do we get out of it?  NU-THING…well, a good workout probably.  you get rough hands, calloused feet, have to spend on basketball gear, gym reservations, you get tired and sweaty, you have to buy water or gatorade after…but for some reason people, like me (there are a lot of us), would choose it over studying no questions asked, any day of the week, rain or shine.  coz it’s fun?  what in the hell makes it fun?!?! 

ugh, if someone could find the element to an activity that makes it ‘fun’ and apply it to whatever endevour is the most hassel for people…we’d live in a perfect world.  PERFECT.  if you like what you do, you keep doing it, and you eventually end up doing it really really well.  when you love what you’re doing and do it really well, you’re a happy guy, and happy guys are infectious, your whole family would be happy, parent’s wouldnt beat their kids and spouses.  nobody would grow up to be criminals.  and even if there are still going to be criminals (due to their not having benefitted from the ‘perfect world’ set up as kids), there’s always the application of the ‘fun’ element to them..(meaning they’d be able to get jobs narin and enjoy their lives, not needing crime). 

man, if anybody knows of any study that pinpoints what makes something ‘fun’…tell me, please…that could very well be the key to a great future for me…and for AHLLLLLL the laaaaaahnd.

only problem lang…everybody’ll apply the fun ‘element’ to the most high paying endevours (academics malamang)…if that becomes the case, i’m sticking to being a basketball enthusiast…there aren’t going to be that many of us left by that time…i’m sure society’d be glad to pay us for the function we fill…just to have us around.  a reminder of the old life, back when there were such things as slackers:)

hello world!  3rd year second sem bay-beeee. to all you haters, booyah!  i can’t believe i made it this far, hehehe but here i am:)

so far the sem has been pretty sucky though.  as grateful as i am about still being around, i can’t kick the old habit of slacking off the first part of a semester.  i think it’s partly because of the schedule i have (as pointed out by sharry).  during the week i only have 1 class with my block, the rest, i’m either an international student or the class is an elective.  i find sharing classes with the block really helps me out.  i mean, it’s almost impossible to ignore the fact that everybody else is studying for the class except you.  this sem i don’t have that luxury since only my saturday classes are with them.  so here i am, 3 weeks in to the semester and still acting like it’s semestral break.  i spend my weekdays either sleeping in the lounge, talking to random people or playing that goddammed ‘alien shooters’ game on the lounge PC.  Cesar beat my inhuman score of around 8 million by a measly 12 thousand…ugh, the one thing i had going for me in law school and he had to take it from me.  dam u cesar bruan, dam you

i realize i almost always blog when i’m pissed or down or something.  im now convinced this is therapeutic:)  helps me sort stuff out and makes me realize how stupid my problems are.  tonight’s one of those nights.

no, i dont really have ‘a problem’.  it’s more, i’m in a ‘blah’  mood.  right now, i feel the only way i can really enjoy life is if i become a secret agent of some sort.  NO i haven’t even watched casino royale yet, this has just always been a fantasy of mine.  NO it’s not coz i want to be like jeniffer garner.  i’d like to be more of an ethan hunt type hehehe you know, part of a team.  for me it’s the best job in the universe. 

first of all, you get to have a secret identity.  very cool.  you get to play a role.  meaning no matter what you do, you don’t have to worry about being ‘true’ to yourself, coz hey, your NOT yourself…everything is business and you dont have to worry about your conscience (ok, fine maybe a LITTLE, in some situations) bothering you.

next, you get to train in self defense, ammunitions, code breaking…all that cool stuff.  you’d be like a modern day ninja with all your training.  man, i wish i was a ninja…

next, chances are, since you’re undercover, your expenses would be subsidized, living, food all that…you wouldn’t have to pay a cent from your salary.  i mean, wouldn’t it look bad if your cover was that you were a wealthy arms dealer from vietnam, but then people saw you eating in some side-of-the-road canteen in you’re $10,000 suit, just so u could save a few bucks?  ofcourse it would, it would ‘compromise the mission’  (and getting to say ‘compromise the mission’ is also very cool in itself).  another cool thing about having the ‘agency’ pay for everything is that you won’t have to worry about wrecking anything, heck i’m sure repairs for the porche is part of the budget.

next, you get to travel a lot!

meet people from all walks of life!

get to carry a gun!

great health benefits!

get to use lines like "i’m going to get you out of here"

ok, so now the downside.  you never really get to meet new friends outside whoever it is you work with.  you can never really have a life of your own.  you always worry about somebody coming after you.  you always worry if your a good person and if people really like you for who you are or for who you’re ’suppose to be’ (naks, deep), you get limitted contact with friends and family…

ok yah, i guess being a secret agent can blow.  sigh.  great, nothing to look forward to in life. 

Oooh!!  a vampire!  now THAT would be cool…you’d get to have like superhuman strength, and you move really fast, and you’d live for like…forever….and you’d be really smart coz your so old…and you get to travel and..

yup, month of my birthday, what have i dont to celebrate?  well, i didn’t exactly have a party or anything, but i HAVE been having scattered impromptu drinking sesssions with some people (to the others, sorry if di ko pa kayo nalilibre).  i realize that september isn’t the best time to have a party when you’re a law student, it’s the month of the bar, so you’ll have major problems getting people to go to your celebration, another reason (main) is that it’s just WAAAAY to lame to go up to your parents and say: "can i have a little extra money this month so i can treat my friends out?"  yeah i know, i’m sure it wont be that big deal to my parents, in fact they might even be happy be happy i even HAVE friends to treat out.  i just dont like the idea of a 24 year-old asking his parents for money to blow on booze and pulutan (ok lang pag 23).  it’s ok if you’re working since, hey, you’ve earned it, do whatever you want with your money; but not if your a student living off your parents for the past 24 years of your existence.  i actually appreciate working people painums more than the usual parent-funded ones.  i mean, these are people who literally worked for the beer you’re chugging.  so thanks, to all you working people who’ve ever bought me a beer.

anyway, where was i, so there, a couple of inumans to celebrate my being born.  i used to have a more formal (not attire, i mean planned) birthday celebration, but its been almost impossible the past couple of years.  i WAS able to get some law school people to drink with me though, which is greatly appreciated btw, you know who you are.  i realize that some of you guys don’t exactly share my obsession with drinking and drunk conversations, so the fact that you guys even sat down for a couple of hours to do it with me really touched me….deeply….i’m talking proctologist deep here.  we have to drink more often, i mean, seriously, if we can’t drink when we’re law students, when CAN we drink??  when we’re lawyers?  HAH!  lotsaluck.  When we’re older and more stable?  maybe, but by that time we’ll be having health problems already, and be too scared of dying coz we have a family that relies on the income we generate.  i’m thinking, we drink A LOT while we’re young, LESS when we’re old, and back to A LOT again in heaven (hopefully meron dun).  (cut to 10 years from now in an AA meeting:  "Hi, my name is al (hi al!), i’m an alchoholic")

ok, i gottaget some sleep. before that though, i’m gonna try to list down 4 things i’ve learned in the past 24 years (no im not going to list down the usual, spend time with your family, love yourself, go to mass apcray) :

1.  certain people will NOT like you no matter what you do.

2.  Respect your friends. (don’t make them look like asses in front of other people)

3.  have a sense of humor. (especially about yourself)

4.  have flaws, but make sure they don’t affect other people (it’s ok to be a moron, but dont leave the car running in the garage while ur buddy’s sleeping inside)

last night me, my brother, tatot and herbert decided to have a ‘real meal’.  a meal that’d really hit the spot (harold and kumar styleee)…we were going to have unprocessed, semi-non-commercialized chicken and liempo from Andok’s.  Since the place didn’t have a hotline for delivery, we decided to go old-school, go there ourselves and just get it to go.  the trek went on uneventfully enough, but trouble struck when i was parking.  parking tip#1…DO NOT fiddle with your radio when backing up in to your parking slot…no matter how many tens of thousands of times you’ve done it…you’ll NEVER be able to do it with your eyes closed.  so there, a split second of katangahan cost me a crack in my tail light and dents on my bumper and panel by the trunk.  Dumbass!!

when it was all over though, i couldn’t help but look at the bright side of things and feel relieved that it was ‘only’ the dents and cracks.  had i done something stupid on the road i could’ve ran a red light or something and end up a hood ornament on a speeding truck.  conclusion…having food delivered saves lives.  Always remember to tip the delivery guy…he took on the risk of transporting the food to you.  he puts his ass on the line EVERY NIGHT while your lazy butt stays in the safety of your couch.  much respect.

oh and another tip, unless ur bald, DO NOT light your cigarette on the stove.  i learned this lesson a long time back but re-learned it just a couple of minutes ago.  hey, you know what they say, life teaches you lessons over and over until you finally learn it.

the problem with having coke around the house is that whenever you’re thirsty you end up drinking IT instead of water.  this isn’t right for 4 reasons:

1.  it doesn’t really quench your thirst, it has sugar, so it also kindv dries your mouth up after a couple of minutes…this leads to more drinking (1 of 2 cycles)

2.  it’s expensive, so u wind up spending 12 pesos every time u feel thirsty.

3.  it makes water taste ‘cheap’.  who likes downgrading??

and most importantly,

4.  it has caffeine.  everybody wants to have a glass of water before sleeping right?  well with coke, it’s a sick cycle of getting sleepy, drinking, not being sleepy anymore, getting sleepy, drinking… kinda makes u feel like that donkey in the dessert with the carrot in front of him.

sigh, so here i am, 3:00 in the morning, watching reruns of the shows i was watching just a couple of hours ago.  i just finished the last drop of coke in the house…so now it’s just a matter of time…that IS if i dont break my own neck and die, from a seizure caused by all that damn sugar…

the woe of the undisciplined

today was a big disappointment.

it started out well enough, classes suspended.  but as the day went on, it was just one big let-down.  i honestly don’t know if our culture has any hope at all. 

i was in line at mercury drug around dinner time to buy 5 cans of coke.  i went to the fridge they sold them at and stacked them up barehanded, like round legos.  while lining up behind the only person in line, this woman in her fourties walks in, puts her groceries down with the guard, gets something from the shelves and nonchallantly stands next to the person in front of me.  "she must know him" i remember thinking.  well, surprise of surprises, she didn’t.  she was just plain and simply…cutting.

THAT fuckin fucker.  i know we should respect our elders, and give people the benefit of the doubt in these situations, BUT DAMN!  (the only form of respect i could muster up was not saying anything and just contented myself to crowding her with my coke-saber while she was paying…and bashing her in my blog)

if in fact she was extremely tired from walking "all the way" from shopwise (5 minutes away-if you’re on crutches), or her drunk wife-beating husband wanted her home right away, or she had some bad oysters for dinner, or whatever justifies cutting in front of the ONLY person in line…she could have atleast had the decency to ask permission!  she couldn’t have missed me!  i’m 5′11, have long hair, and looked like i hadn’t taken a bath and just stayed home the whole day, plus, i was holding 25 inches worth of red cans in front of me.  God of Abraham!  if our elders can’t even pay the simple courtesy of getting in line, how can we expect our youth to?  i pity her kids, i bet they’ll end up in prison before they learn algebra.

i remember in back in grade school, cutting in line was a HUGE deal.  u had to make up stupid gimmiks to do it (what do scissors do?  cut.  Ei, thanks!).  no matter how thirsty you were from P.E., you ALWAYS had to line up for your turn at the drinking fountain, even if it was behind the annoying geeks that didn’t even break a sweat coz they found an excused from PE that day.

this is why the whole ultra stampede happened!!!!!!  fuckin dog-eat-dog, it’s not cool to be courteous to people you don’t know attitude.  may god have mercy on our souls.

as to the more pressing issue of GMA’s "state of emergency" announcement…i’d rather not comment.  politics and all the jazz are just way too gray an area to have an actual stand in.  no wait, pwede pala.  stand ko:  gloria macapagal arroyo is a hypocrite and just another scrub trying to save her own ass but trying to not make it look too obvious.  …but this ofcourse is our general attitude as filipinos, so it wouln’t be right for me to really hate her for….no wait, TAMA, it’s right that i do…coz that would make me a hypocrite…proving my thesis that we’re all self-serving hypocrites.

hope everybody else had a better day.

(i can’t exactly hate the police who beat the protesters, i saw the news footage, those guys were throwing rocks and stuff at them…shit, you throw rocks at me while i’m doing my job, i’ll friggin go rodney king on your kayumanggi ass…)

(this ofcourse is assuming those power tripping mofos didn’t instigate the violence…coz shit, if you start poking me with a wooden stick and ask me to stop exercising my constitutionally protected right to peacefully assemble…i’d fuckin grab a rock and go david v. goliath on ur overweight ass too)

UP lost to UE by five points kanina.  that pretty much put our chances of a repeat at: slim.  i was thinking though, during that solemn half hour after a major loss- when everybody pretty much has DICK to say to eachother and just sits around like jobless immigrants, "i’d rather lose with the guys i’m with than win with another team."

the loss was definitelly a heartbreaker, everybody had high expectations from us, going undeafeated last year, and snagging UP the championship trophy in basketball for the first time since God knows when.  sigh, to have our hopes snuffed out so early in the season like that…that sucked.

anyway, back to my pretentious, i’ma-philosophic-guy "epiphany"… 

the loss blew, but i realized that it’s just one of the sacrifices one has to make to be able to partake in the whole "experience" of being on a team.  remembering the practices, the petty squabbles, the messing around, getting to know the guys, the high-fives, the strategizing, the drawing up of plays, the critiquing of the team’s performance, the drinks after the practices, the dinners after the games and  just the camaraderie in general, are infinitelly more than enough to soothe the sting of a loss.

A bunch of the team had dinner after. and with the amount of goofing around and talking about anything and everything OTHER than the loss going on in the table, you wouldnt’v guessed that the same group of guys was almost in tears just an hour ago.  the loss apparently hadn’t even left a dent.  man! now daz dat bad boyz shiat!  ride together, die together. 

(sorry, couldn’t resist, had to fit that in somewhere)

winning tonight would’ve been great, but hey, losing together, that comes in a close second.

so here’s to all those unforgettable "teams" we’ve ever had the privilige of being a part of, and to the "teams" that currently fill and enrich our lives.

to the team, tough loss, too bad we couldn’t get 2 straight (but hey, atleast we have last year’s championship to keep us warm at night, eh?), to the rookies specifically, RESPECT, we couldn’tv asked for a better group of new guys - we’ll be violently spanking law student butts next year, it’s written in the stars. 

done.  damn, monday na.

"i love to hear a choir sing, i love the humanity to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music.  i like the teamork.  it makes me feel optimistic about the human race when i see them cooperating like that."  - Paul McCartney