Ethics 101

I had a good's night sleep, used the aircon and forgot everything for a night. No formulas or analytical problems on my mind, not even the simplest of terms running through my head. Just pure blissful slumber. You learn to value such nights when on most, you're up running countless numbers and terms until your brain can't forget them.

I went to pay my long over due electric bill. Don't ask me why it's late. Ask me why incompetent cashier ladies can't accept the payment of my bill. I had to go to the Meralco office, close I know but still a hassle.

I took my route through PGH (a shortcut most take) and ended up in Taft. Half a minute out, I feel someone tugigng at my scapular for the second time in my life.

I really don't understand my reaction to this situation. My first thought is always that its a game - that some friend of mine is playing a joke on me. My next is usually to run after the guy. It's this second of hesitation - and the physics book i was lugging on my back - that made me lose my life long precious scapular. I tried running after him but he got away. I didn't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

People often dream of the perfect world - Utopia. No diseases, wars, famine or poverty. Everyone living happily and peacefully. I believe this is possible with the proper government. It is possible to adjust our course in evolution, to control the passage of genes between generations and ultimately, to cut off those that are less than desirable.

As for the poverty part? I've lost my faith in them. Sure you get the rare poor child who's willing to work extra hard in school and ends up excelling. But in the end, is that enough to save them all?

Sure they're Filipinos, if you want to argue with the nationalistic/patriotic reasoning. Sure they live a hard life and speak better Filipino than some higher class citizens. But what is more nationalistic, providing jobs for others, generating revenue in the economy and making life better for future generations... or providing cheap disease laden food, a home for hunger/thirst/sickness/criminals/drugs, and over populating the world?

Her Thumb's so Hot right now...

A blog about a birthday for one Joey G, written in the 3rd person.

The story begins in the night of the birth day of Joey in a Silver Ball. He is brought to it as an escort to a Miss Gabbe Olivares who has chosen to wear a black and pink dress on that very night. She knows it's his birthday and sees this as a gift of sorts for him. He sees the ball as a big party for celebrating his legality, proving to be much better a celebration than the alternative, had he not gone to prom. Clad in black and a purple/silver/black tie he wears his buttoniere with pride and walks side by side with his date.

They look first for familiar faces yet see none, realizing that everyone had decided to be cool and come fashionably late. Then a group of girls emerge from the Ladies' Room and greet the two with elegance. They greet Joey a happy birthday and immediately brighten his night, not that it had been bad or anything. Being pulled aside by a friend, Joey is suddenly interrogated by his date and the newcomer on his intentions with a certain friend of theirs. He clears his name and intentions, though they do not believe him but decide to rejoin their friends. Prom pictures are taken and the evening's events unfold.

More and more people pile in and Joey and Gabbe greet others, and others greet them. Familiar faces show themselves and things are going okay. Random people greet Joey a happy birthday. Very random people. People he never heard of before. Strange people and normal people. But none the less, very kind people whose randomness of greeting Joey make him happy.

Prom starts and the two sit down in the very far table, right next to the kitchen yet far from the stage. He meets his table mates, one a face who he has known for sometime but never really talked to, the other three are new faces that he had never seen before. He eyes one of the girl's camera, laughing to himself, by himself, at how funny it is to bring a DSLR to prom. He himself wonders why he had not brought his.

Food comes and the whole table stares at their appetizer, a vomit-green colored cream of brocolli soup with sausages. Then comes the main course of lapu-lapu with spinach, potatoes and a brown mushy sauce. For dessert they have mango crembulee. In his eyes, he had a madly power-mix soup with pieces of meat that nobody would eat from the hotel's breakfast buffet, a 1 month decaying piece of fish ontop of spinach mush and swamp goo, and a cheap dessert that they had decided to label as having mango because they had excess from the fish's sauce.

While waiting for the barkada pictures, Joey once again embarasses himself in a very awkward situation that goes as such.

Enzo and Claudia : JOEY!! Haaapy biiiirrthdddaaay!!!
Joey: Aww thanks!! Hey, (looks at girl) happy birthday to you too!
Claudia: Whaat? It's not my birthday!!
Joey thinks : *shit, she's not Yona pala..* says: wooppss... (looks away)

Prom unfolds and we must fast forward to the after prom in Cold Rock in greenbelt.

Coming late, Joey and Gabbe are last to order their ice cream, Cookies and Cream with cookie dough for sir and Irish cream with cookie dough for the lady. While the team of Cold Rock were preparing the ice cream amidst their strange stare at the overly dressed customers, a well known friend of Joey,Betina, requests for his audience outside. They speak of urgent matters that may not be disclosed under penalty of death. Soon their presence is greatly missed and a messenger calls them back in.

Upon entering, the most unexpected and surprising thing happened to him, placed in his ice cream were sticks of wax and wick that sparkled like fireworks. The joyous woodrosian voices were singing a happy birthday song to him. It was all.. very sweet and he himself did not believe it at first, glancing at Betina with the look of "what? seriously?" who replied with her own glance of "yeah, go look!"

Such a sweet notion touches him so dearly as he blows out his candles. They then ask him what he had wished for before the candles. He had blown out two cakes before that and wishes two different wishes for each cake. The first wish came true that night and so he found it unnecesary, selfish even, to ask for a third wish. He eventually finds out that Gabbe brought the sparklers and had even burnt her thumb while lighten them. Joey makes a comment on that and says her thumb's so hot right now. Yes, he is quite the flatterer.

While the rest of the night does hold valuable events, some things need not be said in public except that the night was an amazing celebration for Joey's birth day. With all the people greeting him and meeting new people, he had not hoped for even a portion of what happened. He goes home to say goodbye to his illegality and embraces the new and dawning age.

Thanks people who made this birthday great for me. To those who texted, FBed, guestbook-ed, went to his party, and greeted him in prom.

Where our memories are made

Today showed the peak of the senioritis epidemic in our class as we transformed the IV-A Andros' Classroom into a network of LAN where sides were picked and the teams played in Counter Strike. Such a game brings out the unity in us as though teams fought against each other, we were all united in forming this network. From the bringing of extension wires so each laptop can recharge, to Luis' Surge Protecting, Dirty Electricity filtering transformer box.

What had started out as doing Term Paper in School evolved to watching of movies during lunch and finally this. This beats the DOTA games we had with the LAN Cable. This is a whole new tech that I didn't know, playing CS with each other via ad hoc (tama ba?).

There was also that time when we played Monopoly on EJ's laptop. Back then we still had a projector in our room so we'd hook it up during lunch and play monopoly. Yeah we never finished the games but it was still fun! The race to own boardwalk and get the most hotels was fun, but shortlives. Even before our projector was brutally stripped away from the IV-A classroom this got old fast.

No day goes by without at least one useless subject and what better to spend our time than with this? I busy myself with sleeping or on the rare occasion, texting, but I have to admit that this is a great idea. For one, it's legal unlike our Class Casino.

Our Class Casino consisted of several pockets of dealers strategically spread out in our classroom for optimum TUS-ing. haha conyo much. Be it black jack, poker, pusoy dos or even speed (anyone.??) we played it. Around 10 + decks of cards were confiscated from our class alone, but it was worth it. Even the n00bs got to learn and the others got better. Besides, poker is all about bluffing and keeping the face. You can learn a lot from being good in poker, it helps in life.

Then there's the time last year everyone got into Rubick's Cube. 3x3x3x3 squares of insanity, we would have several cubes out at one time being solved. It got popular easily and soon everyone was able to solve it. What made it challenging though was how fast you can solve it. Actually i think EVERYONE was into those cubes at this time, the Philippine national cube club of whatever even came to our school one time and competitions were held. Some of those guys were really fast. Some were not.

Yeah our class would get into really weird things. I believe that boredom drove us to find ways of entertaining ourselves and this is where all of our creative juices went to. This is where our true unity lies, not in intrams but in the classroom. Not in English Recitals but in Rubick's Cubes. Definitely not in being clean but in organizing lan games. I'm gonna miss this, college just won't be the same.

Clinging on to these Senior nights

I had decided last night to do something I haven't done in ages, stay up till the sun rose typing away at a paper that I should have finished hours before. I would remember 2nd Year when staying up without sleep seemed new to me and the house at 3 am would scare me. Then fast forward to 3rd Year when I was staying in my grandfather's house and finish my Filipino papers at around 5 am. The thing with my grandfather's house is that the computer is located in the lanai which is kind of "open" area so I get to feel the occasional drop of rain on my shoulder or see a cockroach scurrying across the marble floor. Whenever that happens I would start typing away as if I had just taken a shot of espresso.
This year we had no papers that would take that long to finish so it being our 4th Quarter already I decided to type away my term paper so I can finish in the wee hours of the morning. Oh and another factor that helped me decide to not sleep is that my other friend had to finish his term paper that night cause his defense is this Friday already. So we decided to both stay up and do our term paper, and even though I was ahead of him he was able to finish a lot faster than me cause I suck at writting essays.
The people who stayed up on that faithful night were: Me, Luis, Karl, Kamille V and Armaine, plus other people who were obviously sleeping but left their YM on. At one point in the night I chatted with them because I was taking one of my "chat breaks".
At 0120 hours I got hungry and Luis and I decided to go to McDonalds for a break. I like going to 24 hour places at 1 am... Something about the difference between day time's busy and long lines and the silence of the store in early mornings.
Anyways we went back and kept on typing. At 5 am Luis gave up with fighting against sleep and decided to sleep, I slept a little after that. With xteen number of pages to show for the night, I feel a little cheated that I was able to come up with so little pages given a whole night to type it. But now I realize that it was never about finishing my paper (that's due weeks from now) but more of for the experience, the feeling of working the whole night and fighting against the sunrise. One thing that I thought I would miss until I realized that college would not change me, I would still procastinate and cram in college and I'm pretty sure that my sleepless nights have not ended. But what the heck, last night was about the memories because this may be the last night in my senior year that I will work the whole night.
Call it weird but I like sleepless nights. Workaholic? :|

Disclaimer

I'm going to write this blog pretending people (more than one *cough) reads my blog.

Disclaimer: Persons, Places and Dates may vary according to your intellect. For the sake of my sanity and safety names shall change though facts and events shall stay structurally the same. Ayt? ayt.

So from now on most of my blogs will have changed names and stuf because I want them to.

I wish I had Bulimia nervos

Then it would make everything so much clearer. Then I wouldn't have to keep all this shit inside of me. Then it would all be true.

Everyday I eat more and more, I can't help that I need to eat so much. I need to consume, to absorb, to understand all that is placed in front of me, even those hidden in the far corners of the fridge. There seems to be no end to it all as if there were some black hole brewing within me. When I'm done eating that which has been set before me I still have that insatiable hunger that drives me to keep moving. I open lids, pick locked doors and look under boulders until I can find satisfaction for that moment at least. Everything, anything, anywhere. I can't stop my self from eating even if it hurts. Yes, the hurt that comes with a bulging stomach pressing upon my skin, stretching it in ways that will leave marks.

When the battle for my control has been lost I see the sins I have done through its terrible wake. Ketchup stains, dried rice on my shirt and a breath smelling not too dandy. Once I come out of my eating rage I am filled with depression and need to extort the poison from my body. Two fingers would surely do, and I would bring it all out. Wait, did I just say two fingers? No no no no. I ain't gonna get myself into that type of social class. Hell no, no way, nu-uh.

I cannot wait for my body to naturally absorb and burn it all. Natural? haha that's just some idea that people make up to feel better about themselves when they know that its the drugs that keep them from malaria and dengue. that its the drugs and the nicotine and the chemicals that keep them this happy. no, if we kept things "natural" we'd going at each other without stop. There's no way I'm sticking with natural.

I would bring it all out into this world. Like a baby struggling for air that gets sick of his momma's uterus. There's no further need to keep it inside, the taste has been tasted and the feeling has been felt. And as the vile and the acids see its first light, so shall the world witness the liquids that I encase within. Out in the open, it would be as it is. No longer hidden by recipes and decorations.

I wish i had bulimia nervos. Then the world would see what it's like keeping all this shit inside of me. Then I wouldn't have to keep all the secrets and problems and darkness inside. Then I wouldn't have to walk around pretending to be fine when maggots are eating me from the inside.
Then there'd be an easy way out.

....

just joking! I wouldn't have it any other way. It's the secrets and deceit within that keep things interesting.

Snow

How cold does it have to be before you can't tell the difference between hot and cold water? Before seeing your breath mist up becomes a usual scene? Before leaving any liquid in your car = ice cubes in the afternoon? Yes people this is the miracle of snow.

It was Christmas day when we left our cosy Danville house for a 4 hour ride up north for Lake Tahoe. We stopped by in several pit stops along the way and it really amazed me that our gas would deplete so quickly. You see we were traveling on the expressway American style. 8 lanes for one direction, not much traffic, no cramming into tight spots just you and the open road. With that factor given how can you not keep a steady 70 miles (not km) / hour rate? In exchange for that feeling of freedom and speed we depleted our gas resources quickly and had to gas up quite a few times.

One interesting place that we stopped by is this gas station where I found a Barack Obama key chain. The cashier man was quite friendly and when I went to purchase my newly found treasure we talked. It was quite sad when he mentioned that he had no problem working on Christmas day because his family lives somewhere else and he's been alone for sometime already. Christmas day was any other day for this poor soul. That just tore me apart and I felt sad for him that he had nothing to look forward to at the end of the year except for freezing weather and another month's bonus. But it isn't any of my business so I didn't say anything anymore. After stocking up on provisions and restroom breaks we headed out for Lake Tahoe.

I must confess that most of the time in the car I had my headphones on and my iPod playing movies, so I did not pay much attention to the scenery outside, even though it was pitch dark. But later in the night my cousin who was driving did shout out my name and exclaimed "It's snowing!" And indeed it was, with snow flakes slowly drifting down like white insects descending from the night sky. I stood in amazement as I saw this natural precipitation float down for the first time in my life.

In the following days that we stayed in our log cabin and went snowboarding I learned a lot of things about snow. It could melt and refreeze to ice and hardens. It doesn't taste that very good. You can jump into it and come out all white. Basically snow was fun. And very coooooold.