things i pretend to have learned this past year

although a lot of new and oftentimes exciting things have happened to me this year, the totality of it, as i recall, was still very boring. or maybe that's just me. in the tradition of putting off all fresh starts until new year's, this post will be a recap of some things which i have found to be significant during the last 12 months:

i. graduation

there are only two things that come to mind at this point - that i was the only guy onstage whose mortarboard was on crooked, and that i wrote one of the best graduation speeches in recent memory. well, that's what ms padua thinks anyway. it's the thought that counts. this was also the time during which i first figured that having pictures taken isn't so bad after all.

ii. the stupid-ass sfa secretary's [whose names escapes me right now] taking me off the dlsu scholars' list

well this turned out to be more my fault than hers, but the title is catchier as is. the irony is that she did something similar ["and yet somewhat different"] to frytz. i had no doubt that i was going to dlsu, what with the summer camp and everything, but benilde really tempted me for a while back then.

iii. s15_d_best!

a lot of my friends both zobelian and otherwise have complaints about dlsu [hey, who doesn't?] but mostly it just boils down to their not getting along with their blocks. lucky me, then. although s15 can hardly compare to senior g [come one, what's two terms compared to eight years?], the noise levels at least are delightfully familiar. oh, and long live cooperative learning.

vi. chami's guitar

i've always maintained that a person needs a hobby or he'll go deaf, blind, and stupid [although i know at least one hobby that supposedly does that to you anyway] so a special thank you goes out to chami for entrusting her guitar to me. i've become better at it ["good enough" is the term i most often use] so that's a fulfillment in itself, plus the fact that playing a musical instrument gives you an additional 10,000 pogi points.

v. hating-gabing uwian and lalabu

"too much of a good thing can be wonderful." i wouldn't buy a shirt that says something i don't belive in. life is just too damn short. the same goes for lalabu. i don't think i'll ever forget either the warm fuzzy feeling of gin-soaked camaraderie or the stupidities uttered by frytz within the walls of room 1611. and if i happen to, that last bit's safely tucked away in the archives of this blog, and in a text file on my hard drive. no escape, frytz. btw, is it just me or do people really speak better english when they're hammered?

vi. pakshet teachers

it's only in college that i've experienced a seething hatred for a teacher - or two, to be more accurate. i guess it never got that bad during my secondary education since we could always go crying to our advisor [or if the advisor was the problem, to our former advisors] but there's none of that now. at least the length of time we spend with individual teachers is shorter. hmm... although i never filed a grievance against sikyu or nailed a 95 thesis to reshley's door, i don't feel angry at them anymore. it's either that since i never have to see them again, i've let go, or that for the moment i am distracted by levi's latest incompetence, sombitch that he is.

vii. excellent teachers

i met a few in zobel but for now, at least, only one college professor has inspired me to follow in his footsteps [mabuhay ka, sir bart!]. what i like about the teaching profession in general is that academics is perhaps the least important thing taught. outlook and values are more what i look at to emulate. but i'm satisfied that these teachers are few and far between - it's like waking up at 3am and suddenly realizing that a good song you haven't heard for a long time is playing on the radio. you don't get that feeling with overplayed songs.

viii. my first regular-income job

there's something uniquely satisfying about having other people learn from you. sure, being a know-it-all, that happens to me a lot, but i never tire of the feeling. especially now, when i'm teaching one of the few things i don't have to exert much effort in. i would have preferred to have handled the brighter kids, more like a thesis consultant than a tutor, but que sera sera. my stint ends on tuesday, since classes start the next day, but i will miss the students, definitely my fellow teachers, and most of all, i will really miss making all that easy money.

well that's it i guess. i suppose i should leave you with a few words of advice, since this entry has been all preachy anyway. i don't know if i've typed this out before but it still rings true so here goes: never let academics get in the way of your education.

happy new year.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 12:27 AM
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on the third day of christmas

i just realized that it was christmas eve on the day itself. i somehow had the idea that i had a week to go. well there's no helping it now, seeing as it's passed and all. my theory is that christmas spirit is psychosomatic - you think it's there so you feel all giddy and whatever but once you realize that it isn't, it's gone. ditto for being excited on your birthday.

my job's going fine. great, in fact, mostly because of how i've bonded with my fellow teachers. an excellent sense of humor, all of them, and manyak to boot. they don't believe in too much information either. the pay's not bad either - i got a 500 peso christmas bonus on my first day [after nothing more than interviewing two prospective students] and teacher cleofe [it seems i've contracted that disease where out of habit you refer to your co-educators as "teacher so-and-so" even when there aren't any students around] tells me that mr jun banaga [who spearheaded the project] is very generous with the paychecks. well he hired me in the first place so that's a sign already.

i almost gambled away my money though, and to my own mother, no less. she challenged me and my sister to a game of korean cards [a lot of fun, if you're into games that require both logic and luck], winner take all. luckily i had the intuition to fold right before she won.

since i have nothing better to do, i'm repeating diablo ii this vacation. i told bj that i would be taking a breather, but i just couldn't resist. i'm halfway through act ii, which is fast considering that i started two days ago and that i've decided not to use any waypoints [my usual tactic is exploring one area at a time, saving in between].

i've thought up a number of interesting plots for stories in case i get bored and want to write [right, as if that's ever going to happen]:

a. right before boarding an elevator with two friends, you get a premonition that the cable's going to snap and you're all going to die so you convince them to take the stairs instead. after a lot of arguing the three of you take the stairs but after only a few steps they both trip, fall, break their necks, and die anyway. the elevator lands safely of course.

b. you and a few friends get drunk, two of whom are girlfriend and boyfriend. you still have a crush on the girl, while the guy is your best friend. the girl gets drunk and announces that she would've picked you instead if only you weren't so damn torpe then falls asleep. your best friend is, of course, suddenly sober.

c. you introduce your girlfriend [if any] to your friends and she falls for one of them. he's not interested in her at all but since she now has eyes for him only, she breaks up with you and well...

d. you're a closet queen and one day you gathered up the courage to call a gay dating service. your blind date turns out to be your friend [or teacher or whatever]. no, this is not and never will be a yaoi lemon. asa pa.

or i could just learn a few new pieces on chami's guitar instead. for once, i've got a lot of time, and absolutely nothing to do. this is obviously the calm before the storm.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 5:55 AM
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happy holidays... well, for me anyway

despite gilderoy's best efforts, i'm still a dean's lister this term, with an average of 3.028. to elaborate, the percentage grade i lacked in compro2 to get a 4.0 was 0.02 and still he only gave me a 3.5. maybe if i had 'followed directions' in the finals, i wouldn't have incurred that minus five. maybe.

we celebrated the end of the term and bj's birthday with [what else?] another round of lalabu and frytz got drunk. i'm serious this time. i even wrote down his more quotable interjections:

"may tape ako? teka may tape kayong lahat! astig, may tape! teka 'di ko matanggal... may tape ako sa noo... 'di ko matanggal... haha astig!"

"ano, dalawang beses na akong bumagsak ng compro1? pa'no 'yun? shet, sorry talaga... basta tutulungan n'yo ako ha...?"

"spell 'guitar'? g-u-i-t-a-r. ha, mali? ano 'yung tama? g-i-t-a-r? oo nga 'no... mali pala ako..."

"'god guides the humble...' ano, explain ko? e 'di ko ma-gets. bobo 'yung nagsulat. bobo."

"ay, si jerwin... si geric pala nangingisay... batuhin ko nga."
[at this point we had to physically restrain him to prevent him from bashing geric's skull in with a jar of bible verses]

"teka ba't ang sakit ng fuck you finger ko? ah, dumudugo! dumudugo... 'wag mong hawakan! mauubos lahat ng dugo ko sa katawan!"

"ilan na lang ang chips? one... two... three... four... five... six... seven... eight... nine... times ten equals 90. 'tig ilan tayo? 75. anong 'bakit'? kasi nga 3am na..."

"pa'no malalaman kung even ang nNum? 'sus! syempre 'pag nNum modulo nNum equals zero. 'pag prime? e di 'pag nNum modulo two equals one!"

"bakit tatlo 'yung picture ni jesus sa kaloob? eto nga 'yung 'three persons of god' kaya tatlo si jesus. one... two... three... four? bakit apat? 'wag n'yo na lang pansinin 'yan, feeling jesus lang 'yan..."

"ano bj, kayo na ni [insert name of his crush here]? bakit? pa'no nangyari 'yon? nilakad kita sa kanya? kailan nangyari 'to? ha, nabuntis mo s'ya!? ba't mo ginawa 'yon!? bakit... bakit... sige... basta bj... alagaan mo s'ya, ha...?"

see, drunk. next time i'm bringing a tape recorder.

bau told me to go to some youth something or the other last sunday so naturally i went, thinking it was a one-shot deal. to make a long story short, i now have to design and implement 52 one-hour cathechism sessions for the youth in our parish. thanks a lot. now i don't have to go all the way to pcj for annoying meetings - i can get annoyed much closer to home.

my dad got me a job teaching english as a second language to korean students. i hope i don't screw it up. anyway today's the first day, so wish me luck. i hope they give me a halfway decent salary, even if i'm only helping for two weeks. i have my own education to think of, you know.

we had our senior g christmas get-together at kris' house [where else?] and this time i was able to stay relatively longer, since i managed to bully joe into driving me home afterwards. this time we had twice as many drinks as food and nobody brought donuts. the ateneans taught me the proper way of playing bridge [for some reason that game never caught on at dlsu] and i taught them the proper way of playing eternal soul, or mafia, or killers, or however else you want to refer to the same damn game. then we walked around ayala alabang for a spell, singing round christmas carols and songs from the sound of music into the darkness. same old same old, except we didn't play heart attack since everyone was too tired.

my apologies for the length of this post. since upsaid was down [oh, the irony!] the past three days, i wasn't able to post the events as soon as they happened. i'm staying put though. what can i say - i like the layout.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 8:12 AM
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"definite kill, double compile!"

encomp2 went ok i guess. i managed to pull off a more or less impressive speech, albeit dripping with kiss-ass [my topic was being 50% indian, 50% korean, and 200% filipino]. hopefully that'll earn me a 3.0 but i haven't uncrossed my fingers yet.

bau recruited me to write the script for our cell's presentation this saturday. i finished early this morning and although i'm not particularly proud of the first draft i have a feeling it'll come out really well. i seriously doubt that i'll be able to attend the practice later tonight, though.

i passed by zobel today but didn't meet as many friends or teachers as i had originally figured. i was able to jam a little with yaps though so it's all good. in addition, i found out that there'll be an lsyc retreat sometime this january and that plans for an lsyc-taft are already under way. no complaints here.

bunny invited me to a semi-impromptu christmas party so paco and i braved two hours of evening traffic to meet up with her at greenbelt 1. it was worth the wait, complete with some more jamming, although honestly not as much as i'd hoped.

i swung by paco's afterwards to watch a little battle programmer shirase. it's funny enough as is, but being a comsci student gives me access to a little inside humor here and there. the bottom line is by the time i got home everyone was asleep and my dad wasn't in his room so i couldn't get in without raising hell so instead i hatched the bright idea to sleep in the car. unfortunately my plan didn't work out as well as i hoped since my mom woke up to turn on the water pump, found me in the car, and raised hell anyway.

at least upsaid's back online. yay.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 1:04 AM
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kapag sisiw ang test, itlog ang grade

before i forget, i would just like to mention the enormous pink signboards on roxas boulevard that warn: "walang tawiran. nakamamatay".

needless to say, i feel like stoning the great rev canlas to death right now. i guess it was my fault for not studying [asa pa] but three pages of absolutely useless bible trivia? come on. what do i care if zilpah or bilhah was the mother of gad and asher? how will knowing the answer to that question help me become a better christian? but on the other hand, it's rev canlas we're talking about - he teaches religion, not faith, so i really shouldn't expect anything even vaguely logical or relevant from the subject.

bj, frytz, and i sought comfort in lalabu afterwards but i really didn't feel any better [not that i was feeling bad in the first place - i just wanted an excuse to badmouth rev canlas]. frytz got hammered [again]. i guess it's par for the course.

i left bj's by 9pm in order to arrive home around 10 and play a little diablo ii before turning in [i'm in act iv, and all set to explore whatever comes after the plains of despair]. but of course that didn't happen. instead, at 10 i was still pacing the pasay rotonda searching for a jeepney that would pass through sucat kanan instead of sucat kaliwa. the first kanan jeep came at 1030. it's one thing to be waiting at home, or in school, or heaven forbid, starbs, but tracing the entire length of the pasay rotonda for an hour and a half is a whole other ball game.

i hope i can survive the impromptu speech activity in tomorrow's encomp2 class. after the relsone fiasco, i'll need to.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 11:19 PM
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of course i'd rather blog than study for relsone

the introds test was paduific, as expected. 55 items, multiple choice, complete with "shade e if the correct answer is not among the choices". over 100, which meant two points per number and never mind that we were given a ten-point headstart. at least frytz and i had more or less the same number of e's so that restored some of my confidence after the test. i did remember to bring a calculator this time, though.

formdev was the expected givaway as well, but i made the unfortunate mistake of not double-checking the examination time. assuming that it was 8am like all the others, it wasn't until i was halfway to school that geric texted me that it was in fact at 3.30pm. that didn't bother me much, since we were bound to end up at bj's sooner or later anyway so it might as well be sooner. one thing's for sure though - for the obsessive-compulsive gamer [like myself] final fantasy x is not worth the trouble.

since the difference between the biocom1 test and the announced course card distribution schedule was only one hour, i deduced that the finals wouldn't have any bearing on the course grade so i didn't study for that either [but then again, i wouldn't have even if they did] and luckily my hypothesis was correct - the test was no harder than formdev's, and i even walked away with a 4.0. biocol i got a 3.0 but i'm not worried since the course is only one unit and i probably deserve even less for being late all the time and not submitting some activities. jerwin got a 3.5 though, so that pissed me off for a minute or two.

had lunch with saul and anna. saul insists i got jealous at one point. whatever. he and i later spent the afternoon and most of the night at kris' house. didn't think i'd miss that so soon.

if a man could be two places at one time i'd be with you

a touching sentiment but impractical. i'd be with with my friends from zobel and my blockmates if it were possible. then of course malate and fbb if i had other options, although i'm sure saul would beg to differ.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 11:38 PM
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the good, the bad, and the ugly

i got a 2.5 in peteams! it sounds low but i would've gotten a 2.0 if not for dean's listers getting an automatic 4.0 in attendance [for me, a 1.0 otherwise] so i'm ok with that. in biocom1 as long as i pass the final exam, i'm guaranteed a 3.0 but i for one never take a test just to pass. plus, it was vince's birthday blowout so we [too many to mention] had a few beers at the green place then a round of counter-strike at the venue. it goes without saying that frytz got drunk again. this is under "the good" because it allowed me to rack up a few more kills than he did. yey.

rev canlas again unleashed his brand of brainless argumentation on s15 during another graded recitation [i have no idea why he still calls them that when he knows perfectly well that nobody has yet gotten a grade from reciting other than 0.0], this time victimizing bj, frytz, and jp. i was willing to take a shot at him myself but luckily we ran out of time. i say luckily because just listening to him i already had half a mind to shout out "'wag ka ngang boblards!" and who knows what else i might have said [or done] if i had put myself on the spot. frytz posted more or less the complete story on his blog so you might want to check that out.

yahoo messenger is again declaring me perpetually online. how annoying. hopefully that'll be straightened out when i upgrade my os and reinstall all my software. yaps tells me that microsoft is withdrawing support for windows 98. this is obviously a marketing ploy to force people to switch to windows xp. you can already tell how bad it it is from the name: xp [like the smiley]. or perhaps it stands for "xtra problems"? who knows. i reiterate - it's microsoft. and on a final note getting down at the lrt's edsa station i saw a relatively large sticker proclaiming "greg alcera pag-asa ng masa".

wtf.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 8:30 AM
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take two

some things i forgot to mention in my last post:

i. brother ceci

last friday was the culminating activity of our formdev class: a talk with a lasallian brother [dan dan dan!]. bj and i were thinking "here we go again..." but he turned out to be a very good speaker and his talk was one of the most enlightening and entertaining sixty minutes of my life. i've finally seen the point of taking formdev.

ii. invader zim

one of the best-drawn and most-thought-out cartoons i've seen in a long while. 'nuf sed.

iii. diablo ii

i downloaded a character editor to unsocket a rune i had put into one of my socketed rare items by mistake. nothing more, i promise. well, at least not until my level lets me equip a breath of the dying hehe.

iv. englone

jerwin is pestering me to edit his essays for englone. no biggie on my part, just the irony that one of the reasons why i opted to skip ahead to encomp2 was to avoid editing my classmates' essays. owel there's no such thing as bad utang na loob.

v. kapâ

although i pride myself on reading tab very well, i have very limited skills in tabbing out songs myself. to date the only song i have tabbed out more or less accurately is l'arc-en-ciel's perfect blue. somehow though, i found the chord pattern for clair marlo's 'til they take my heart away so right now my sister is sick and tired of hearing my rendition of it. hopefully i'll be able to figure out arkarna's so little time and owesley's good old days sometime in the near future.

vi. the sleeping forest?

can anyone correctly identify from what game or animé this track is from? i had thought that it was the theme of the sleeping forest from final fantasy vii but after playing through [with hack characters] i discovered otherwise. relevant comments are very much welcome.

that's it for now.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 10:25 AM
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"putang ina ka, hindi ako lasing!"

i can't remember anything important that happened last wednesday or thursday. that's what happens when you put off updating your blog. in any case except for that killer second long test in biocom1 [which i'm assuming happened on thursday], most of the blogworthy events happened on friday, namely the finals in encomp2, which i obviously failed since i had no idea that there were going to be any, and my going home on a weekday before the sun set for the first time this term.

that second event merits a bit of elaboration: everyone else went to get a massage at some spa in robinson's. not my thing, so i politely declined, although i must admit to getting more than a bit pissed off when they didn't try to persuade me otherwise. instead i went home and had myself a diablo ii marathon, finishing act ii by 5pm yesterday. unfortunately, as of now i am severely dissatisfied at what i've got to show for my trouble, both experience- and item-wise. i would've taken two, but the canyon of the magi is just too annoying to repeat unnecessarily.

a lucky break for me was getting invited to alisa's birthday, held at alda's in malate, where lacey had a little too much jägermeister and got horribly drunk. well at least drunk enough to refer to me as bj then alisa [within a five minute period] and to give money to a beggar, saying "eto bente, pambili mo ng noodles". i was still able to keep an eye on her until she got home [bj, lacey, steph, and i took the same taxi], even if she was driven right to her front door, which she insisted was "sa bungad lang". which reminds me - to the stupid-ass taxi driver: if you feel that you should get more than what the meter says, don't use the damn thing in the first place. going back, i should mention that geric and frytz were simply victims of bad timing.

i may update this post if and when i remember anything else worth noting from last week. otherwise it's 4am so i might as well say goodnight. or good morning, if you are pilosopo, like most of the people whose company i enjoy immensely.

either way,

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 4:29 AM
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winners and losers

i'll tackle the losers first:

last sunday i caught an episode of ang dating daan wherein they were bashing the show ang tamang daan. if you've been watching the local channels lately, you would know that ang tamang daan's sole purpose is in fact to bash ang dating daan. at this point in time, i'm more supportive for ka eli since as i'd mentioned in a post way back, i simply can't stand the argumentative fallacies of ang tamang daan. not that i think either of them is completely in the right.

another major loser is our professor in peteams, whom we all affectionately refer to as "sikyu" or "amazona". i'm guaranteed a 2.0, unless i can perfect the written finals. in this situation, witty posts about her don't help - ah, but breaking her back in three places with a softball bat... i feel better just thinking about it. a kodak moment happened just yesterday when a student of hers wearing an "i'm with stupid" shirt stood talking to her for quite some time. too bad nobody wanted to get close enough to take a picture.

s15's first interblock basketball game was last night and although we didn't win literally [we lost by three points, rather] i don't feel bad at all. if you either win or you learn, i'm happy to say i didn't learn anything from this experience. s15 is still the best.

i'm thinking to create another blog just to house quiz results. what do you think, saul? in the meantime i guess i should mention that i posted two in the la corporación blog.

and on a final note, for those who can relate, i just finished act i and have two uniques, two set items, and three rares. don't get it? get diablo ii.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 7:19 AM
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batangas and coffee

just got back from batangas. kudos to bj for one of the best weekends i've ever spent away from home. charades, jamming, videoke, lalabu, and restroom chismax - what more can you ask for?

i will be here
when you feel like being quiet
when you need to speak your mind
i will listen
and i will be here
when the laughter turns to crying
through the winning losing and trying
we'll be together
'cause i will be here

we even played a round or four of three-on-three basketball and i managed to sink a few. not bad for my first serious game.

the other half of the title refers to this link. i believe it speaks for itself.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 8:39 AM
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