The University of Pila






having spent four semesters (not taking into account the summer classes) in my school is enough for me to dread what i'll be going through later. enrollment na naman! panahon ng umaaribang pilahan and never-ending waiting for me to be enlisted in subjects then at the end of the day eh pababalikin ka lang the next day dahil closing time na. i don't know what the reason is why luck seems so distant with me, enrollment-wise.





i remember there was a time when i was so literally sick that i asked my dad to go with me despite the fact that i'm already in college to do all the pila stuff for me. that was the only time he understood why i wasn't following the order of minor subjects in my curriculum. he's so makulit kasi when it comes to our academic stuff. he transforms into this obsessive-compulsive type who wants everything in black and white. it's a good thing though since i really learned how to value my education and their efforts. believe me, he's the person you'll least want to mess up with when it comes to studies!





let's get back to my enrollment angst. i never had the chance to get all my subjects via our university's computerized registration system (crs). where can you find a school wherein in spite of the online-based system of enlistment, some students still take a minimum of three days to enroll? sa peyups lang ata yan. there was also a time that i went back and forth the crs office to our college a couple of times because they couldn't find my form 5-a. i have also experienced the 'lotto' type of enlistment - draw lots of id's then if you're lucky enough to be picked, the slot is all yours! needless to say, i was never fortunate of it. sadyang malas lang talaga siguro ako during enlistment time. i hope i won't go through the misfortunes later. i'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Remnants-of-Vacation Days






ha! i figure i could actually afford not to use the internet for a week! i think i really deserve the 'wow!' i heard from a lot of people. haha. :D my summer classes are over. nothing much, i'm just enjoying my last days of summer 'coz i know i'm gonna be facing the hardships of some major subjects this coming semester, plus a dreaded prof whom i'm not gonna be naming here. hehehe. too bad i'm not yet completely block A-fied.. i still have to go through the perks of manually enlisting my management accounting subject. arrrgh.





for the past week, i did nothing but watch dvds. oh not really, i also did the cooking stuff here in our home. believe it or not, i can cook! and i'm still learning and loving it. haha. trivia: i cooked my first ever real dish when i was twelve. that was a so-sarap pinakbet. thanks to my grandma for teaching me how to cook it the ilocano way.





so there, back to my dvd-freakness. i had my alias marathon - the first two seasons, that's like 40+ episodes! get this, i was able to finish it in two-and-a-half days! haha. thanks ivan for lending me the dvds. i have to buy my own alias season 3! it was so bitin. i so detest michael vartan that i'll be watching monster-in-law just because of him. haha. plus, i also watched 10 movies, mostly foreign language films. xempre, all dvds from quiapo. hahaha. i did a lot of laughing here. weird.





to the foreign language movie freaks out there, check these out: www.foreignfilms.com and www.imdb.com

RANDOM THOUGHTS...






have you ever thought of this:





what if juan tamad discovered gravity nang malaglagan siya ng bayabas? edi pride pa ng mga pinoy yon...





come to think of it... isaac newton was also bumming under an apple tree when an apple fell onto his head and then he discovered gravity...





kung ganon, eh bakit wala man lang tumawag sa kanya na 'newton tamad' or 'idle isaac' or 'lazy newton'? hehehe...





oo nga, fictional character lang si juan tamad.. pero kahit na... i'm sure that a lot of filipinos epitomize juan tamad. kaya lang kasi, the problems with filipinos most of the time are: we don't know how to create a beautiful ending, we often succumb to our weaknesses, we always depend on others, and we always come up with poor excuses to justify our immature actions.





pansinin mo na lang ang history natin. oo, i am so proud of our history. kaya lang napansin ko, bakit mas ine-elaborate sa mga history books ang death march, ang fall of bataan, at kung ano-ano pang pansamantalang pagkatalo ng pilipinas when we were being colonized. bakit hindi binibigyang pansin ang mga nagawa ng gay revolutionists? bakit sobrang few lang ang nababanggit about the heroism of Tamblot and Bangkaw? their homosexuality is not an excuse for their heroic actions to be eradicated in our history. meron naman tinatawag na gay nationalism 'di ba?





one more thing, bakit pa ba natin pinagtatalunan kung kelan ba isinulat ni Rizal ang 'Mi Ultimo Adios'. it's funny kasi, would it do our country anything good kung mapatunayan na december 26 at hindi december 29 isinulat ni Rizal ang kanyang huling poem? tataas ba ang GDP and GNP at magkakaroon ba ng price rollback dahil dito? hindi naman 'di ba?





haynako.. if only the filipinos gave one-tenth, or even one-hundredth of the attention they gave on the joey-kris issue to alleviating poverty in our country, edi sana millions of filipinos were able to be catalysts of change.





eto pa, naisip mo rin ba kung bakit up to now eh there are still debates regarding Rizal's being a national hero? bakit ba pinagtatalunan natin kung si Rizal o si Bonifacio ba ang dapat na maging national hero eh samantalang si Del Pilar naman daw talaga ang nanalo nung nagkaroon ng election for a national hero. he was disqualified daw kasi he didn't have a dramatic death. unlike Rizal who was killed by a firing squad, si Del Pilar daw eh nagkasakit at naghirap at nakitira sa kung kani-kaninong kaibigan.





haaay.. kelan kaya aasenso ang pilipinas... pano ba tayo aasenso kung lagi na lang mga ibang lahi lang ang makikinabang sa galing ng pilipino? i have hope in our country. i love my country for it has not forsaken me. i believe in my countrymen much as i believe in myself. hindi ako nagsasalita ng tapos. i'm not in the position to predict what's gonna happen. if in the future i find myself working in a foreign land, i'll forever be sure that i'll go back to my homeland and pay it forward to my countrymen!

A Paradise Within an Inferno






watching movies has been one of the reasons why i've been able to survive a couple of torturous semesters a common peyup-ian undergoes. it's a way for me to release my accumulated stress from staying up too late at night doing papers, reviewing for exams, and preparing for recitations. bad thing is, it ruins my financial budgeting. haha.





i have a penchant for watching films - foreign language and art ones, most especially! i've been advocating original dvd's and vcd's for quite a long time, until i discovered a paradise within the work-your-way-to-get-through streets of quiapo, manila. too late discovery, huh?! don't get me misunderstood. i'm not promoting piracy for chrissake! it's just that i got so tired of waiting and being told false hopes by sales ladies of astro vision, odyssey, and some video stores; that tomorrow or the next week, they'll have available copies of 'cinema paradiso', 'hable con ella', 'il postino', 'amores perros', and a whole lot of foreign language stuff!





i have fellow movie-freak friends who frequent 'dbd, dbd' stores in quiapo for a couple of years now. they've been telling me how extraordinary and rare the selections are, yet it was just very recently that i've been convinced to go there and see for myself! time to settle for bootleg copies.





being the good, or should i say, naive girl i am, i told my dad last night that i was going to quiapo with my friends. tell you what, just for him to hear where i was going to almost ended my much awaited adventure! "kat, magulo doon. i'm telling you, huwag ka ng pumunta doon!" of course, i had to work my charm out. lol. i had to convince him that i was going there with two of my guy kabarkadas so he has nothing to worry about. a lot of convincing prowess, a couple of questions answered... then i won! haha.





come quiapo. i was briefed by my friends with the usual stuff: don't bring your phone, walk fastly, don't open your bag a lot, blah blah blah. i sought for the vendor's help everytime i couldn't see the film i was looking for. my friend just laughed at me and said, "kat, huwag ka nang tanong ng tanong. hindi nila alam yan. ikaw na lang maghanap makikita mo rin yan." forgive me, i have always been an advocate of the "ang nagtatanong ay nagmumukhang tanga ngunit ang hindi nagtatanong ay nananatiling tanga." cliche. enough. i gave up asking without being replied sensibly. i had to work my way out scrutinizing through the racks of superb selections. after a couple of minutes of ceaselessly walking and going through different stores, i ended up buying six dvd's.





i wonder why even if we have institutions tasked to abolish piracy, its rampancy seems to be permanently incorporated in our system. i wonder why no vrb representative ever raided these 'dbd' stores. oh, i shouldn't have wondered! as long as there'll be powerful people protecting this illegal business, it will forever be widespread in our society. and people, you shouldn't put all the blame on consumers. (cge kat, try rationalizing your actions. hahaha). as rational beings, consumers will always prefer more to less, practical to expensive, and even quantity to quality sometimes. without cutting the decaying roots of a system, its branches will always disintegrate. logic lang yan pare, kung walang apoy, walang usok!