Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Not Another College Day
The master
o empty inside.. That's what I am now that this jam-packed day has already come to a close. I'm so damned tired that I simply want to just lay in my bed with my arms and legs spread across my abode's breadth. But of course, I can't do that because in life, slacking off is a sin. Therefore, I need to do something just to satisfy the psychological need of defeating idleness. But what happened today that made a twisted man twirl?

"..slacking off is a sin."
Sociology of Slums

In our English class, we were required to watch this old film entitled Insiang in the UP Film Center. It was a movie directed by the late great Lino Brocka with Claudia Koronel playing the title role. I watched the movie with some of my English blockmates. We were separated into two groups of three and barely made it in time. Thus, we ended up standing the whole length of the movie.

Basically, it was a movie about living in slums. Insiang's mother, Tonya, played by the late Mona Lisa, has this concubine named Dado, the typical big bossman of the whole estero. Noteworthy is the fact that sprinkled along the movie are scenes wherein Dado, played by someone familiar yet unknown, and Tonya go flirting with each other which consequently ends in bed. Of course, what old movie about poverty would not include a plotline wherein the concubine goes for the daughter? But the story doesn't end there.

After Tonya found out that Insiang was raped by Dado, the asshole Dado defends himself (after surviving the throw everything but the kitchen sink scene) by saying that Insiang lured him. Therefore, Tonya scolded her daughter which then leads to Insiang eloping with her boyfriend the afroman Bebot, played by Res Cortez who was then buff and beefy. Unfortunately, the eloping ended with a disaster when Bebot got what every man wanted, a hefty serving of female juice. Thus, at the break of daylight, he ran for cover before the poor Insiang can wake up.

With no where else to go, Insiang went back home. Like a good mother, Tonya accepted her daughter as if nothing happened. Everything seemed to be back to normal until the night Dado "confessed" her love for Insiang. She then accepted Dado's insistent demand for unrestricted access to her "goods". Imagine, after Dado finishes "working" with the old hag Tonya, he would then move to fresher grounds, namely Insiang's, totally beyond Tonya's knowledge.

If that twist wasn't enough. There came a point wherein Tonya noticed Dado's absence by her side when she wakes up at midnight. Suspicion arises and when she confronts her daughter, Insiang professes their affair saying that she too loves Dado. Tonya becomes infuriated by this, and when she was home beyond Dado's knowledge, she stabbed him in the back while he was frisking Insiang.

The story ends with Insiang visiting her convicted mother in jail. There, she confesses that she really never loved Dado and that she only said that to Tonya just to make her mad which will lead to her killing the diabolic Dado. Then, the biggest twist happens, she tells her mother that she loves her.

The movie is a typical story of the empoverished urban areas. Beyond the story of deception and much lust, I liked the revolving subject of the movie - a woman trying to earn the love of her mother. This movie only affirm that old movies are unearthed treasures we should all learn to love.

Guidance Testing and Heights

The day's ordeal doesn't end with Insiang. I had to go back to the Ateneo to take my late guidance testing because I was sick during the regular testing date. Before I went to the testing room in Berchmans, I dropped by the Gabay room to nominate the org's freshman representatives. Of course, I won't disclose my nominations but I was surprised to see myself in the list of the nominees.

The guidance test was one heck of a finger wrenching activity. It was a 400+ item personality test answerable by yes or no. The questions range from simple - "Is your father a good man?" to weird - "Do you see people or animals that others don't see?". Whatever result I get, I don't care. All I know is that I'm a little happy because I was able to seat beside my crush for about an hour- Pam Imperial..

So after I finished the cursable guidance test, I headed straight for the Heights Formalistic Talk on Poetry. Heights is my literary org. In the talk, which was half-finished when I arrived, was very enlightening on how to do the New Criticism. We were able to criticize a poem which is incidentally about sex. I really like Heights. Therefore, I won't include it in my list of orgs to leave - Guidon, AMS, and maybe ADS.

Life. Give me a break.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

The Day from Hell
Might as well blame this guy
n college, there is this certain week wherein the whole universe seem to conspire to make your life as miserable as trying to finish Penelope's web. Every college student in his or her right mind has this disastrous week in some point of his or her life. It may be as rare as the blue moon or as regular (shet!) as the rising sun. Nonetheless, it is as certain as death and taxes. It also comes in different shapes and sizes. It maybe the week wherein you have three long tests and a midterm or simply the deadline of three 4-page essays with some drafting, postlab, or accounting on the side. This is what college peeps call the hell week. But in my world, there is no need for a week to raise hell, a simple day will do. Tuesday.

"..life as we know it is just a big piece of cr*p.."
Am I stupid enough to call a seemingly harmless day hellish? Hmmm.. You be the judge of that.

The day begins at around 5:30 am when my body tries to outbid my mind into sleeping for another ten minutes, since I slept really late the night before. This simple act of self-mutiny would often result into a one-hour addition to my beauty rest. But waking up at around 6:30 is not a good way to jumpstart your day, specially if your first class starts at 7:30 am!

Ok, so I'll skip the gorey details of preparing for school and go straight to the more morose. My first class is a three-hour long two-unit subject going by the name of ECE 21 or in layman's terms Engineering Workshops and Practices. So what's so bad with a little bit of soldering tiny pieces of metal circuity into a copper plate, a little bit of metal bending coupled with the knowledge that you'll never get a 90 degree angle, a little bit of drilling while hoping that you place the hole right where you want it to be, and a little bit of a grumpy old man called Mang Sonny in between? (Silence)

Ok, so what if I just started my Tuesday with a little manual work. Not much of a big deal if you think that Math 18 isn't your next subject. Disregarding the dismal fact that there is a long test every two weeks, Math 18 is a f*cking difficult subject. All my life, I see myself as an able math student. But now that I'm taking Math 18 and seeing my long test scores play between the letters of the compact disc, things suddenly aren't the same again. Now, after accepting the fact that I suckin Math (sob sob), I have decided for myself that I should study the subject for at least two hours a day. That's whole lot of time considering my study habit since elementary is equal to nil.

Let's say that I have already bypassed 4.5 hours of shittiness, do you think it's over? No no no no no... After a much-deserved 1.5 hour refresher, I dive headfirst to the colorful world of Fil 11, where everything is a construct. Hmm... Sounds like a catch phrase.. For another hour and a half, I have to put up with this fat guy who has to convince thirty students that life as we know it is just a big piece of cr*p created by capitalists, thieves, clowns, and priests. He babbles on to the point wherein he even admits that what he is doing is one piece of social construct and further down the line, there will come a point wherein I will actually like his subject. From scouring the whole campus for clues of its traditionalism to discussing to the class the importance of a boy named Og Uhog, I would do anything for him. Man! The things I do for an A...

So my day ends after an hour of ping-pong - a good game which I just learned this sem wherein I may rank as the fifth best player out of 30 in our class simply because the other 25 just horse around. A day that started from 7:30 am and ended at 5 pm is more than a lungful for me. Well, it may not sound that bad but living through it is a totally different story.

College is funny. Here I am, sitting in my bed, pressing the buttons in my keyboard while these fingers should be scribbling stuff like "f((f)x)= (x+3)/(x-2), find f(x)". I suddenly felt the wisp of stress and the whips of boredom at the same time. Uh! Oh well, I'm already in college and there's no changing that. All that's important is that I lived through another hell day and that's enough to wake me up the next day, hoping that I was already dead.