stream of unconciousness

holla!  its been a while since i’ve posted an entry here.  blame it on civpro i guess.  but here i am, so we all know what that means…i dropped that shit like an ant-infested burrito.  heheheh i’ve sort of made peace with my cowardice with the thought that i’d hate myself exponentially more had i stayed on, failed, and got kicked out of school.  all you psych majors out there can call it sourgraping, but just to keep me sane and my ego in tact, i’m going to call it: "the right move."

with newfound freedom, i…

i saw my friend ej’s play last week at the camp aguinaldo theater.  he was playing romeo in romeo in juliet.  the play was ok, but what made it extra interesting and what kept me glued was seeing my friend on stage acting out shakespear.  dam!  what a trip.  when it was all over and the actors were taking their bows, i couldn’t help but give up a jologs "yeeeuh!!" when it was his turn.  screw crowd etiquette, mah boy’z playin lead!!!  hahahaha eege, if ur reading this, much props!  and cool love scene dood…i could tell you were wearing black boxers underneath the tights though hahah

i’m writing this right after UP Law beat PUP in conflicts of law kanina.  it was our first game as defending champions, and it was a thriller.  we won by 5 points i think.  it started out pretty slow for us, our offense was stinkin up Arellano gym the first couple of minutes.  i guess we weren’t used to the tempo.  we were up against friggin energizer bunnies, running all over the place, slapping at the ball every opportunity they could, KICKING us even when THEY were taking jump shots (this ain’t yo lunch-break and we ain’t in the docks u friggin fuck)….  we were forced to run despite having two 6-plus-footers on our side (giving us an advantage in the post).  in the end though, we were just too big for them down low, as aman put it, the paint was a no-fly-zone today.  but, again semi-quoting aman, i think the bottom line was just that our players had too much heart and pride to lose in their first game as champs.  dam that was sweet.

on that note, i’d like to quote gene hackman’s character in "the replacements": "greatness, no matter how brief stays with a man."  shiat, doesn’t that push a button?  i can still remember playing in my first game as part of the high school varsity team in westbridge.  it was against the saint vincent ferrer seminary, we won, i had 4 points.  i can still remember how i scored them, and the subsequent high fives and pats on the ass i got from teammates like ram yoro, basketball GOD during those days.  right after the game i felt like michael friggin jordan, i was the baddest 12 year old in the world.  the team ofcourse won by atleast 12 points, and the points i scored were hardly spectacular or crucial to the win, but still, they were the game winners as far as i was concerned. 

man, if only everybody had an outlet that presented opportunities for those small voctories that do so much to the self-esteem.  there would be a whole lot less insecure, overcompensating mofos in the world.  after all, why would you feel the need to act like a tough guy or mr. know-it-all or like a an ass in general, when you friggin: SCORED 4 POINTS IN YOUR LAST GAME , BESTING YOUR PREVIOUS RECORD OF 0! (holla!) , or, QUALIFIED FOR ‘TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPOIONS’ IN VIDEO JEOPARDY! (i’m yo daddy!) hehehe seriously though, i mean it.  sometimes i feel the need to have these things to hold on to in those instances when i feel like a total directionless bum (especially in law school).  bad recit?  bakit mam, ikaw kaya tanungin ko about stuff i’ve spent my whole miserable life studying: how do you get 30 lives in contra?  (up up down down left right left right b a b a start on the opening screen BIAAAATCH!  sit down, your an embarassment to this college)  …failed a course?  fuck it, basket nalang sir, pustahan ng grade.  …without them i’d probably either be crying myself into a fetal position in the shower every night or a gun-toting wannabe gangsta.

dam, i bet all you educated folk think i’m a total mental case.  i’m just telling it as it is.  so there, now everybody  knows the secret to my swagger, I SCORED 4 POINTS AGAINST SAINT VINCENT FERRER SEMINARY WHEN I WAS A HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN.

sigh, 3 days till christmas vacation.  it feels a lot like the last three days of exams though.  the classes i have to go to are the ones i’m up for recitation in, so this is hardly the time for me to sit back and wait for time to do its thing. 

times like these i miss the dorm.  i particularly miss having my friends around, people who make an ART out of passing time.  whether it’s playing  2 on 2 basketball with the green plastic trashcans in our rooms; playing cards with the day’s loose change; or just lying in bed and staring at the ceiling asking eachother deep, life-changing questions like: "what if you were the last two people on earth and the survival of the species dependend on it…"

sigh, off the top of my head, 2 things that i’ll always miss about the dorm.

1.  brownouts - want to learn cuss words in different dialects?  go to cervini 2 seconds after the power goes out.  after recovery though, and accepting the fact that your going to have to retype your unsaved philo paper when the generator kicks in, you feel a pleasant vibe going around.  it’s that calm feeling you get when everybody else is not doing anything.  with exception to the die-hard nerds who light a candle and continue studying, the rest of the dorm unite. whether it’s the yelling out of repressed feelings of love/lust in the direction of eliazo, or the giving of a "bading si _____" shoutout in the direction of the quad, or the sitting around in the hallway, singing along with the guy playing the guitar in the floor below you, one can’t help but feel connected to everybody else.

2.  days when classes are cancelled - imagine: dormers staying up all night on a school night, as hyper gerbils on x.  no it’s not the coke, it’s not the red bull…it’s ironically, the rain outside.  the dormerest of dormers have developed a third … ear, if you will, for weather that has the potential to suspend classes.  the party usually starts at around 3 am when it is STILL raining from earlier that evening.  happy faces pop into rooms with lights still on and remind people of how many hours its been raining non-stop.  receiving the happy faces are the even happier faces saying "we know!", after a goofy ‘i’m so happy i want to dance’ dance, it’s on to the next room for our selfless weather men…

at 5:30 am everything is silent, as everybody is listening to the radio…finally, the announcement is made, it is then translated, and echoed through the halls of cervini: "walay klase baiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!"… and what does everybody do to celebrate after?   sleep until 5 pm. 

sigh, if only college could’ve lasted longer…

DISCLAIMER: religious issue

i went to mass today.  right after paying my QC mmda ticket for cheating (and getting caught) color coding last week, i rememebered what day it was and decided to pay my respects to the virgin mary.  so i trekked on foot to sacred heart church just in time for the 1200 mass…

during the mass i was feeling pretty good about myself for braving the rain and the pollution to go to church.  i got a good seat by the middle isle since i was extra early, plus this cute girl with a cast on her left leg was sitting 2 pews in front of me.  ok, so i never got to see her whole face, but lets just assume she was cute.  heck, a girl with the confidence to limp to church on a rainy day with a cast covering her entire leg ALONE deserves to be cute.  anyway, that’s beside the point of this story…

anyway, everything was going great until the homily.  maybe it’s too much critiqueing of supreme court decisions in class, or just the rust that’s collected on the religious side of my brain from lack of use…but the priest made me want to stage a walkout mid-sermon to make a point.  no i am not a heretic, i actually consider myself a relatively religious person…in my own right; but this dude left me slack-jawwed after every sentence.  basically he was talking about how God can only do good, and nothing bad can come from him.  he was saying that it was totally wrong to say ‘it was god’s will’ whenever something bad happens.  the last straw though was saying that DEATH was not created by God, and only man is responsible for it’s happening.  (all together now, lil john styleeee…)  huWHUUUUUT???   duuuuuude!!!  what the hell are you talking about??

first of all, DAWG, u mean to tell me my grandfather’s dying of a stroke was against God’s will and has its roots in a fault of man?  who?  was it HIS faul?  you mean to tell me the people who died in the holocaust was just one big SIN and nothing more?  they died coz some prick sinned, and they had to pay for it??  i accept the fact that God does not take pleasure in our suffering, but to say that hes just sitting back watching it happen and cringing, like a Lasalle blowout of Ateneo is just crazy.  whatever happened to ‘God is everywhere’?  or the fact that without the bad in this world, there would therefore be no way to do Good, therefore making free will a joke.  This is ofcourse a divine MYSTERY in itself, why does God allow bad things to happen?  well, apparently, that priest had the answer and whipped it out on the congregation:  GOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.  smart dude, you just totally confused all the kids in that place.  now how are they suppose to pray and ask for God’s help when the main man himself, the big kahuna, the big priest-daddy himself says: bad people do bad things, and God can’t do squat.  take a bow dumbass.

secondly, you mean to tell me we’d all live forever if there was no sin?  i swear he said it!!  death is beacuse of man, not God.  He said God can only create life (in line with his thesis that God can only do good) and can’t take it away.  He SAID THAT!!! And NO i did not take it out of context…i was unusually attentive today.

sigh, so there’s my daily gripe.  no i haven’t lost my faith, i just realize now what my Catechism teacher was talking about when he said that priests are human just like you and me.

oh!  and thank you God for giving us the day off (no labor)…..

Informer, you no say

that’s who I’m gonna blame

a licky boom boom down

Detective man said Daddy Snow

I stabbed someone down the lane

a licky boom boom down

Police than come and

they blow down my door

One him crawl through my window

so than they put me in the back

of the car at the station

From that point on I reached my destination

Now the destination reached

was the East detention

where they whipped out my pants and

looked up my bottom

-  who DOESNT miss this song?!??  hehehe

ok, so things don’t suck as much anymore.  it’s not that they don’t, i just choose not to let it get to me:)  bring it!!  hurt me!!  (cut to legless Lt. dan on the perch of the jenny in the middle of the hurricane screaming "is that the best you’ve got?!??!")  i also realized how pathetic i sound whenever i complain about life hehehe…i don’t want to have to get in to a car accident to realize how small my problems really are.

news, hmmm, wala.  christmas is around the bend.  sigh, here we go again remeniscing about how great christmas used be when we were kids.  back when it didn’t matter what you got, as long as it wasn’t clothes, your eyes’d light up after that first glimpse of what was inside the box.  i remember the time i was around 5 years old (yes i still remember), my ninong forgot to send me a christmas gift, and just dropped one off at the house two days after christmas.  guess what it was…a mini swiss army knife!!!!!!   cabroncito!!!  it had the cool leather case and everything, i felt like the coolest kid in the world, imagining the jealous faces of my classmates on the first week of school…

seatmate:  "i got quick-kick for christmas!!!  he’s soo cool!  YO JOE!"

me:  "i got a military-issue swiss army knife, wanna see me use the biggest blade to slice the black rubber connecting your g.i. joe’s torso to his pelvis and legs really thin so the damn thing’d snap when u try to make him do a roundhouse?"  "no?  then stop stealing my goddam crayons during art you little punk"

ahhh, but the moment was brief.  my dad sort of confiscated it saying i was a little too young to be playing around with the dam thing (coincidentally, that ninong was his friend).  too bad.  I NEVER FORGOT IT THOUGH.  see, almost 2 decades have passed and i still remember that gift.  i’m sort of excited to get little kids gifts now.  i want to be that cool uncle/cousin/friend who doesn’t give money or plastic soldiers (ahhh, the neverending quest to coolness).  form now on, the younger the recipient the more money im going to spend, invest in the future, i always say.  ok, so i DONT say that…i’d like to start tho.  so there, i’m saying that now.

i’d give him something really special, like a lebron james rookie card in a glass case, or a classic earaserheads CD, or a year’s worth of MAD magazines bound in one book…something he might not appreciate right away (or his parents won’t let him play with yet); but”ll dig up from his closet like 15 years later on a boring, rainy November day, and wonder how he could possibly own something so cool and valuable…then he’d ask his parents, and they’d say "your tito al gave that to you on your 6th birthday, don’t you remember??"  then he’d put on his jacket and pick some flowers from his mother’s garden….and visit me.

i hate this semester.

yeah, i know what your thinking, coz i’d be thinking it too:  "stop being a bitch, kung ayaw mo eh di drop out."

that’s not the thing.  i’ve totally committed myself to staying in school, in fact, i’m appreciating it more and more with each semester that goes by, the thing is, this particular semester is dead set on getting me kicked out.  no matter how much time i put in to school, it never seems to be enough.  and i’m not talking about not being able to read each case twice, i’m talking about not being able to read the last 6 cases of every assignment.  it’s just too much.  allow me to elaborate:

1.  a class with a professor that expects you to MEMORIZE the provisions in her outline.  NO, not get to know and apply, MEMORIZE.  memorizing a poem is easy, make it as long as you want, memorizing a shopping list is doable… but legal provisions that for some reason, love commas, and long running sentences, with complex sentence construction, and awkward word selection, which seem to just go on, and on, and on, much like this one… - i find it nearly impossible.  on a good day (enough sleep, relaxed atmosphere), i can average 40 minutes per provision.  thats atleast 3 hours of every time you study for class na (3 meetings a week), ok lang sana if thats it, but the thing is memorization is apparently the bare minimum in her class, cases ka pa…(id also like to note that this professor is notorious for failing HALF of her classes…lucky me this class is 5 units)

2.  every saturday we have 2 three-hour classes.  the professors here are really pleasant and fair, but the thing is, they give you atleast 20 cases each, yes, each.  and this is where the fair part comes in…if you dont read the case, no excuses, no saying ok, ill just call you again and study harder…it’s: take your medicine like a man.  also, i’d like to note that they call at random, and nearly half the class gets called every meeting.  that means, yup, no immunity at all from having recited the week before.  so everyweek is recit-level study.

3.  as for the two other classes, these are our only relatively manageable ones.  except for the fact that one of them is also the ‘you can be called every meeting’ type… they are both pretty ok…that is, if you look at them singularly.

4.  …put all of these together, and cram them in to a week…that’s a different story.  like i said, it’s the perfect storm.  u spend the weekdays worrying about your scary 5 unit subject, and when that’s over with, you still have 40 cases staring you down. 

i know that professors and the college in general just want to make great lawyers out of their students, but i think a line has to be drawn somewhere.  it’s easy to say ‘all of this is for your own good’, because seriously, who would dispute that?  but to make inhuman demands from the people you are suppose to be mentoring is bordering cruel na.  one of my favorite teachers once said, there’s more to life than law school…sadly, for me, i’ve learned that with a schedule like this…it’s  a choice between living a healthy, well balanced life and flunking out, or condemning yourself to a colorless existence for a chance at surviving the semester…ironically to relive the torment all over again when another semester begins.

honestly, i don’t know if this is the life for me.  law school was actually fun and interesting at one point (holla at professor disini, labor 1), now it’s become an uninspiring chore.  THERE, i’ve found it.  the reason why this sem sucks so bad is because there absolutely no time to step back and think about what you are learning, your just learning it as quickly as you can so you can vomit it out during your next recit…after that you move on to the next subject.  proof of this is the fact that i actually  ENJOY the 2 relatively manageable subjects discussed earlier.

i’m pissed today. hope things are better tomorrow

(btw, some teachers say: "you’re here in law school to study"as a generic answer to any complaints the students might have, i agree, but what i feel they’ve forgotten  is the fact that "law school" extends past the halls of malcolm, it’s become the most important part of the lives of their students…i feel they should realize the enormous power they have in affecting the happiness of their students.  dammit, treat us the way you would’ve wanted to be treated as students)

classess have started.  and wouldn’t you know it…ANOTHER 6-DAY SCHOOL WEEK.

this sucks.  during pre-registration, we were put down as having only 4 days of class, with tuesdays and thursdays off.  I kept bragging to everybody that i was going to put up a ‘poker night’ every tuesday evening, sigh, at this rate the only time i’ll ever get to enjoy the coolness of having a weekly poker night at my place is if i quit school and run an underground gambling ring.  yeah, i got that from boiler room…

if the schedule wasn’t bad enough, we also had the misfortune of having one of our favorite teachers replaced by one of the scariest profs in the universe(…ity) (by reputation).  i was actually a bit psyched to hear about it in the beginning, hearing william wallace rallying me to bravery in my head.  but now, 2 days from our first meeting with the prof, all that’s left is the desperate shout of "freedom!" and the sick sound of intestines being stretched.  i hope she isn’t as bad as everybody says she is.

so there it is… all i can do now is man-up and hope for the best. 

hope everybody else is enjoying life!

in words of sublime…

Life is too short so love the one you got
cause you might get runover
or you might get shot

sigh, so it ends.  back to school on wednesday.

it’s not as bad as i expected though.  people probably expect me to go into a litany about how much going back to school sucks mossy barnacles, but honestly, i have to say it’s a welcome burden.

this break made me realize that when you have nothing to do, you seem to stick out like a sore thumb.  to your friends, to your family….it also makes you an incredibly easy target for nagging and nit-picking.  (better to just APPEAR to look busy and stressed…you’ll stand out less)

to your friends:  you’re this constant annoyance who asks them to go out and drink in the middle of the workweek, or the dude who always has to have ONE LAST ROUND of beer or ONE LAST STICK OF YOSI before calling it a night.

to your family:  your this useless parasite who doesnt do anything but eat and sleep during the day and go out at night.  it also reminds them of how little you actually matured from your days as a high schooler.

conclusion?  well, i guess you have to have a healthy level of pain in your life in order to be a kosher member of a community.  ergo, having a ’sembreak’ is only fun for everybody, when everybody else is blowing off steam from the ‘previous sem’.  i don’t think there’s such a thing as having the time of your life because your buddy is on holiday…  of course this could be unique to me since i spent the sembreak away from where i go to school…

nah, it’s just growing up.  growing up has made ‘my friends’  no longer automatically synonymous with ‘my classmates’ or ‘my officemates’ or people you see a lot…it’s made friendship more meaningful.  the fact that you still take time out to accept eachother’s invitations and sacrifice sleep to give way to a friend’s longing to extend the gimmick- means that your friendship is just as strong it was when you were all ON THE SAME BOAT.  it’s stood the test of time so to speak.  the only thing that binds you together now is your past and ofcourse your friendship, there’s no pressure at all to make the effort to meet up, BUT STILL you do.  i think that’s just super duper:)

so thanks to all mah people who took the time out to ‘celebrate’ my sembreak with me hehehe  and to those who i wasn’t able to meet up with, summer nanaman!!  and to those who have a time-oasis of their own this sem, i promise to save up on cuts for such events!:)

3:30 pm, havn’t had lunch yet, still a little cotton-mouthed from last night, and just spent the last 4 hours watching "undeclared" from my brother’s stash of obscure-sit-coms-of-the-past, while guzzling down yesterday’s leftover bottle of (lukewarm)coke.  Isn’t sembreak the life?!?!

"Undeclared" came highly recommended by a friend of mine.  It was only out for a season, then got cancelled - my friend says it was just bad timing, 911 was still fresh when it went out, so i guess that totally ate up their ratings.  Sayang.

Basically, it’s about a group of friends in their freshman year in college, and their life as dormers…  WATAFUCKINCOOLCONCEPT!!!!  The reason my friend was so excited was because he was a dormer too (3 years ahead), he said i’d totally get it.  And i did!!!  From the first day - meeting your dormates, up to them breaking up with the girfriends they left at home, to setting up ‘casual’ ‘tambay sessions’ with the hotties from the girl’s dorm without trying to make it look too obvious.  DAM!  Pasok!  Anyway, it was definitelly worth 4 hours of my life.  You all should watch it.

What they DID miss out on though was the nightly battle of wills during dinner time.  Believe me, there’s nothing harder than to get 8 lazy, enboxered dormers out of bed to put some clothes on for the trek through campus to get to the restaurants in katipunan.  Usually, the hungriest ends up literally dragging the rest out of bed, or handing them their towels and bath ‘buckets’ to jumpstart them into activity.  Why don’t they just eat on their own you ask?  Well, that’d just be bad dorm etiquette.  The simpler reason though, it’s just more fun that way!  Sigh, good times, good times. Ehem, scuze me, um, think i got something in my eye…

Okay, enough remeniscing, i havta get something productive done…yah, i think lunch is sounding good right about now…(the funk soul brotha, check it out now)

it’s over!!!!  ka namit!  kalami!  ansarap!  …delicious!  hahahha

After getting to school before 7am to beat coding yesterday, i had to wait another 11 hours for my date with sir labits.  all of this would have been fine, had i SLEPT THE NIGHT BEFORE.

well, i guess this is just a testament to my slackerhood.  i studied 5 days for that exam, and yet i still managed to leave just enough uncovered material to save for the night before to deprive me of sleep.  not that i COULD sleep even if i tried though.  i remember looking at the clock at around 5 am. and i telling myself i should atleast get an hours worth of rest…

while i was lying down though, all the information i had shoved in to my brain the days before suddenly started dancing around and having a party in the relm of my thoughts, confusing  my brain into: "AUTO-TEST MODE."  hahahah  ever had that??  when you know you know something (like an enumeration of the different classifications of property), but you suddenly have the undying urge to TEST yourself on it?  GOD!  that’s the worst!  needless to say i didn’t get that much sleep, ZERO to be exact, i was just about to doze off, when i realized it was already 6 am…bummer

when i got to school, i was the first person parked in the student area (first student in school, HOLLA!). i got weird looks from the security guard "what a loser" he must be have thought, going to school in his dust-graffitied car at 7am during the break.   i got a stick of winston in my system (that sounded wrong) before len - fellow property warrior for the day, arrived.  i was happy to see len, but the smile on my face was because len was part of WINLAW, who had an orgroom room in the college with huge couches i could rest my bones on.

i got around 30 minutes of sleep on their couch, it was suppose to be an hour, had len REMEMBERED that i modified my request from a 30 minute to a 1 hour wakeup call.  by that time, sharry and miles were in the room narin. 

Have you ever had 3 concerned females wake you up to finish studying?  NO SNOOZE BUTTON THERE.  worse than my mom i swear, atleast with my mom i could reason with a little and sneak an extra minute or two of shuteye, with these guys, it’s like the hunchback’s incessant ringing of the bells of notre dame.  "al!  gising na!" "al aral kana!"  "huy al  10 na"  "al !" "bahala ka al!" "ikaw nag pa gising ha!" heheheh 

(i totally appreciated it though, dont get me wrong.  so thanks sharry miles and len.)

and so the day unfolded as it did.  and cesar passed by around 2 hourse before i was to go in, to wish us all luck.  the hour of wait before the exam was the worse.  i swear to god i’ve never been in that much pain.  it was like what cesar said that day:  the anticipation of death is worse than the death itself.  SERIOUSLY it was the worse wait for MY LIFE.  WORSE than when i got myself tested for aids after i slept with that transvestite hooker in Bali! just kidding hehehe.  never even been to Bali

and, so there it went.  just like they said it would be.  sir went easy on me.  most, of the time.

hehehe,  the "you passed" after the conversation and sometimes embarassingly boneheaded answers to perfectly valid questions….was SWEEEEEEEET RELEASE.  i wanted to do the asereje in sir’s office, but like what my blockmate anna said in her blog, i had to get my ilonggo heini outathat room before he changed his mind.

the night, after dinner and a couple of beers with fellow warriors-of-the-day and supportive blockmates and their purrty cousins(kalin!  Sta?), i remember lying in my bed, just before dozing off thinking, so this is how it ends,  the epic 2 week agony that was finals.  these really our the days of my life…

psyche!!!!!  hahaha watafaaag!!!!!  sensitive shiat,  i was like, I’M THE MAN!!  you got punk’d - 2nd year first sem!!  i’m awesome!!!  hehehe  can’t wait to get my drink on for the next 2 weeks!!! so friends out there, you know who to call when you need a weekday drinking buddy.

everybody enjoy the beak!

last two tests!!  i’d like to say it’s all downhill from here, but sadly the "test of tests" still stands in the way.

our finals for property is oral.  it’s one of those things you’ve heard stories about, looked up, but don’t exactly know how to prepare for. 

if property could be likened to one big tidal wave: start of the sem would be an innocently mild rumbling below sea level (seaquake), midsem it gains momentum at about the time ownership is discussed, and days before orals…that’d be about the time you’d see people running for the hills in their boxers at 5:30 am in the morning.

sigh, i hope we all do ok. 

funny story: before a test, a group of people in class would always make it a point to ask st. jude to intercede in their prayers.  i was part of this silent circle this morning, it was only today that i realized what he was the patron saint of….lost causes.  hahahaha nice one guys, way to give ourselves that extra confidence boost before a big test.

i think it helped though. as badly as that torts test violated me, i kindv expected worse. 

prayer…the ultimate lubricant