prison


i never really had a problem with my attendance. my mom made us go to school ALL the time. nothing was that big an emergency to stay home for.
slight fever? tempra.
family member passed away? he's dead already. he can wait after class.
brother in the operating room? you're not a doctor. come after class.

going to school became so ingrained in me and my brother that, in a conversation we had recently, we both discovered that neither of us had ever really cut in our lives just for the heck of it.

but then saturday afternoons + extreme classroom heat + long drawn out lectures = me gazing out the window towards the sunken garden and wishing that i had what it takes to cut that darn frigging class.

the visitation of the gods

part of my job includes visiting practicumers in their various schools and watching them execute their lesson plans. in the first semester, it's usually a cushy job: i rub elbows with little tisoy boys and girls in overly expensive pre-schools whose yearly tuition fees are enough to cover my five-odd years in law school, i sit in nice airconditioned classrooms, and meet with teachers whose faces grace society pages every so often. in the second semester, however, i am thrown to the public school system.

oddly enough, the public school is an interesting place to be in, moreso i'd say, than your run-of-the-mill preschool. i've found out that kids are kept at home by parents at the start of the year so that they're not made to clean classrooms. i've learned that teachers have identified the "rich" kids in class and milk them for all they're worth during programs. i've realized that the seat of honor turns out to be the teacher's table and that if you're there, you'd most likely have the only electric fan aimed at you.

i also found out that my favorite pancit bihon costs only ten bucks a plate if you buy it from the canteen. it's also not true that they don't sell junk food and softdrinks because they do. there really is a row four and a section one. there are teachers who have dedicated their entire lives to lording it over other poor hapless teachers and there are teachers whose idea of discipline is to throw a sandal across the room.

sometimes i wonder if i did the right thing in sending my eight practicumers to the public school system. three to five times a month i share their burden with them: i wake up at four to be in their classrooms by six to observe them, i sit with them in tables tucked in stairwell corners because there are no actual faculty rooms, i hold my breath when passing by bathrooms that have yet to see a janitor. sometimes, i count the remaining days left with them, crossing off one difficult day after another, knowing that one day, the experience will end.

for us it will, but for the kids who are stuck in that system, it may never will.

and that's the saddest thing of all.

shoe love

it called out to me from the bottom rack. a guy would've simply said that it was just another pair of black pumps and given the number of black pumps in my shoe rack, i had no need for them.

but no. they were, in my eyes, very lovely, and they were going to be mine, mine, mine. i had only a slight bit of a problem. i couldn't afford them.

never one to let money come between me and my shoes, i devised a way of getting them that involved convincing my only girl cousin to want them as much as i did, then telling my grandmother how lovely it would be for her only two granddaughters to have the same pair of shoes, and smile prettily while showing them off to a bevy of relatives who were in town for lunch. it wasn't long before two very happy twenty-something girls had a mango paperbag slung over their shoulders, said paperback containing one very beautiful pair of shoes.

and let me tell you why they're simply divine. check out the picture to your left. you will see how they're not just black pointy pumps, they're black pointy pumps with a hot pink insole. yep, hot BARBIE pink insoles.

now, if you're one of them metrosexuals and say, "well, that's been done before and there's nothing really new with cute-colored insoles," check out the underside of the shoe. yep, they're the same hot BARBIE pink too. and it just keeps getting better.

see, they've also got this nice simple detail on the side made up of cute velvet flowers. if you don't really like the nice velvet flowers, you can always wear pants. but, if you love nice velvet flowers, well, they're there.

and given vertically challenged me and definitely not vertically challenged him, the 3 1/2" sexy stiletto heels are definitely THE thing.

of course they made my feet hurt like crazy when i first wore them. and of course you couldn't walk very far in them, much less drive stick shift. you couldn't do a whole of things while wearing them like go shopping or run errands. you might get cranky after an hour of trying to stand prettily in them while chatting with your date.

i agree, they're not the most practical things in the world. and yes, i agree, the money could've been used in a better way, like paying off car debt.

but still.

shoe love. yep, shoe love reigns.

rosa <3 shoes, especially new mango shoes. just don't expect to see me walking around in them.

thesis rest

the defense was supposed to have been today but since i turned it in late, i had to reschedule it.

as i said before, there's absolutely no rest for the weary. i was resigning myself to just letting it be, leaving the submitted work as it is, if only because i had spent a lot of money having it printed and reproduced and bound. to hell with the defense, i said, if i'm not cut out to earn that master's degree, there's always law school, right?

still, sometime in the middle of admin law and with the prospect of just reading up on domicile, personal relations, and nationality for private international law, i realized that i couldn't let a lousy paper bear my name and pass it off as a thesis right? especially not when i wrote the damn thing while running on adrenalin and around three hours of sleep only in five days.

i may be good, but i'm not THAT good. (okay, mahangin na ba?)

that giddy feeling

few things in the world equal the feeling you get when you realize the object of your affection loves you right back.

one is discovering 500 bucks you didn't know you had on your messy bedroom floor.

another one is being reminded of a free cut your teacher announced last week right smack in the middle of i-haven't-slept-for-so-long-i've-forgotten-how-that-feels-like week.

and THAT is the reason why i am alone, in a quiet office with *free* internet access, illegally eating my absolute favorite bacon-egg-cheese sandwich while posting this.

*bliss*

twins again

i'm 26. he's 26, today.
we're both addicted to animal crossing and fried barbecue from our lola.
we both went to UP, although he went to manila and i went to diliman.
we both had misgivings about not going to ateneo.
we used to wear matching outfits.

and in spite of fights, shouting matches, wrestling matches, i love him.

some kids wish for little sisters, i never did that. i loved my brother. although i'd spit at him when i'm pissed and i'd get the larger piece of porkchop to piss him off.

some kids wish for big brothers, i did that, sometimes. but now he's bigger than me and he does act more mature most of the time, so i guess i got my wish.

when i look at him i believe that someday, he's going to make some girl happy. for now, we'll just have to settle with girls. yep, he can make all of them happy.

26 years ago i stopped being the baby when you came into my life. can i just tell you i'm glad it was you?

same time last year*

i surprised myself last saturday when i realized that i didn't even notice january 16 pass. it came to me that i had gone through another january 16, but this time without much brouhaha. it could be because i'm under extreme pressure. it could be cause i jsut haven't thought about it for a while.

but hopefully, i wish it were cause i am finally able to say i'm over him.

see, january 16 would've been our fourth year together. we could be married right now, or at least planning too. we could be probably more bonded than two people could be, finish each other's sentences and know each other's needs without the other having to say so. we'd know little important things about each other, how he's forever hunting for irish spring sport and how i don't drink coke at all.

and last year, in spite of the fact that i was happily in love, or so i thought, with someone, in spite of the fact that i felt i had finally found someone who could've matched the love he used to give me, i felt my heart breaking into tiny pieces when january 16 rolled around.

i guess you're never really over someone until one day you just realized that, hey, it's been a while. and when that day finally comes, you breathe a sigh of relief. you've waited for this day to come, prayed about it, did everything you can short of getting a concussion to jolt that memory off your mind's instant replay. you try to ignore favorite restaurants and significant places. you avoid clothes that were once your favorite simply because he liked them too.

and you pretend. you pretend, not only to yourself but to the world, that everything is fine. and one day, you wake up, and realize you haven't pretended for a while.

you've moved on.

and THAT is the greatest feeling in the whole wide world.

*bundi's post got me thinking. but if you're looking for an edsa dos post, better go there, not here.

no rest for the weary

office now.

and miles to go.

my head has yet to hit a pillow and not think that it has to leave it again after half an hour.

i've seen the sun rise and the moon rise and mcdonald's still closed.

i've eaten way too many meals at mini-stop.

it may never end, but hopefully it will.

little ms. crammer cramming for the cram of her life

jay once told me that the saddest thing is when you lie to yourself.

he said that to me when i lied about my thesis.

and the sadder part is that i've been lying to myself about it ever since.

however, faced with the impending deadline of my life, a deadline which might change the course of my next year and a half, i decided to face all the little white lies i've been spreading around and got down to business. i buried myself under tons of books and papers and bonded with my three-and-a-half year old laptop like i had never before.

i typed and edited and cut and pasted and wrote and rewrote.

and i'm still not done. in fact, i may have to start from scratch again. the monsters i've created have become bigger than me, bigger than i can manage.

come monday, i might find out that i've failed everyone who believed in me, i've failed everyone who trusted me and my little white lies.

but i would've failed myself even more.

cause now i know for sure that jay was right. lying to yourself is the saddest thing in the world.

update!
it's half past eleven now and vanessa and i are camping out at work. so far, the guards have not kicked us out yet. i've got an easy writing rhythm going on here, and there's comfort hearing someone typing on the computer across me. we've stuffed ourselves silly with pizzas and squid balls before settling in for the long haul. there's k-lite over the internet and quick internet access. i hope the guards forget about us, i hope we get a lot of things done before we crash at around five this morning, and i hope this will be all good.

no pictures, yet.
no inspiring/funny/cute/happy/love-filled posts, yet.
no lengthy discourses on the meaning of life, yet.

i've been stuck in my dorm room since monday evening churning page after page after page of almost-bulls**t that should pass as a mind-shattering, earth-shaking thesis next friday.

my calorie intake has been limited to those that come from hershey's mint chocolate kisses and blue skies. my lovelife has been limited to text messages that contain "argh!" and "i luv u!" and nothing more. i take a bath only when law school calls at six in the evening. i've been a walking zombie.

come back in a day or two. by then i would've cleaned up, be sweet-smelling and pretty again, and this blog will be full of funny witticisms.

but until then, get on your knees and pray for me. it's going to be a tough one this time around.

all i needed was a weekend away from it all

i've got several deadlines that have, well, expired on me already.

forget my little lists with checkboxes beside them.
forget my calendar which i haven't replaced yet.
forget everything but the idea that i needed a weekend with good friends to clear my mind of the debris that should've gone away with 2003.

i fixed everything i had to do friday evening by sleeping at one in the morning. by 730 saturday morning, we were off to our grand adventure. we all met up at a friend's house, way huge bags for an overnight trip in tow, and after a short trip to robinson's starmills (it's not a typo, it really IS mills, and not malls), we were on our mini-vacation right smack in the middle of deadline week.

i taught someone to backfloat, i won on the slot machines, i ate sisig two days in a row, i learned how to jetski, and bonded with my newest set of friends.

it's all good now. after the entire weekend was done and over with, i got a pretty long talking to by jay who said everything i needed to hear, plus everything i didn't.

my mind's clearer now. my 2004 is finally ready to get started.

due to my pathetic camera-to-pc uploading skills, pictures to follow. hey, i got tons of them, including of a fedex plane landing and monkeys on the street, thanks to my lovely, lovely digital cam.

full steam ahead no more

there's a girl named lulette in my batch. she was the girl who could do everything. she was funny, cute, the valedictorian, and had a boyfriend. in high school.

i've always thought that i was the only one who believed that somehow, someway, i can top lulette, until in a conversation with a seatmate revealed to me that for the longest time, she too believed that the race to the top was only between her and lulette.

so, in everyone's life, i guess, there will be a time in your life when you believe you can do everything. and, for the most part, you could.

get into UP.
get into a course i love.
graduate with honors.
get a scholarship.
get a master's degree
get into UP law.

maybe reality kicks in after you hit 25. and when reality kicks in, you somewhat stop believing in yourself. you're not as cute anymore, or you're not as young anymore. all of a sudden things stop being simply amazing. and then you stop believing in superwoman you and start thinking that, hey, i'm only human. and you allow yourself little failures here and there and you let go.

no one ever told me that when you stop believing, you also stop doing.

i've stopped running full steam ahead. maybe it's cause i started thinking i was in way over my head. or maybe i just stopped believing in my own greatest product: me.

forget all the new year's resolutions which include me keeping my things neater or me cutting back on buying shoes.

it's time to once again believe in me.

and maybe when i start doing that i'd be the superwoman everyone -- for some reason -- believes i am.

update!
by some weird twist of fate, some good things happened:
(1) i've been figuring out how to get a whole lot of things done before 9 tonight like finish writing, go to class, go to the gym, go to the grocery to buy stuff, when a classmate emailed that class has been cancelled tonight.
(2) i emailed my mom to let her know how depressed i've been feeling, something i haven't done for the longest time, and she replied immediately, and being a mom, she made everything alright again.

my body's in pain and i've got nothing to show for it

the gym and i have been buddies for a month today and contrary to the trainor's promises (and other gym-loving people out there) that i'll be happier, sexier, and more alive in general within a month of my membership, all i've got to show for it are sore muscles.

well, i did miss out on a lot of gym time over the christmas vacation.
and i did eat way too much barbecue and drank way too much pepsi blue.
and i did sleep more than my usual five hours, plus i took long happy naps that would start at lunch and end sometime when it's dark already, only to turn into actual sleep a couple of hours later.

so, i slacked off. and fine, i do have no one to blame but myself.

so, resolute into winning the boracay bet with jay, i made a promise to myself that from this day onwards, yogurt will be my friend.

i want ice cream? no. yogurt.
i want cake? no. yogurt.
i want chocolate? no. yogurt.

yes, yogurt is my friend.

except that when you want a cheeseburger, a yogurt just wouldn't cut it. and you'd end up eating a whole of of useless stuff until you finally bite into that juicy, yummy, fat cheeseburger.

trust me, i know. only half an hour ago, i betrayed my yogurt friend for a cheeseburger.

bonding

when i went home for christmas vacation last year, my brother kept bugging me to play a game on his game cube with him. he tried all tactics:

"ate, it's just like the sims!"
"ate, i promise you'll enjoy it. really."
"sige na, try mo lang"

out of the generosity of my heart (really!), i did. and i ended up getting more hooked than him.

for the entirety of my vacation, i'd play animal crossing anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour each day (a daily visit is actually recommended). i'd visit my animal friends, sell my loot, and send "letters" to everyone. it got so addicting that when the "mayor" told us to join all the other animals for their new year's countdown (you can set the game time to actual time), we did.

so while the rest of the 25 and 26-year-olds were out partying, drinking, or watching fireworks, my brother and i were glued to the television screen.

and couting down. with animals.

meet rosa, the ten-year-old version.

when a relationship ends, you usually discard everything associated with it: you throw away old love letters, you clear your phone's inbox, you delete lovey-dovey e-mails, you give away gifts.

and you avoid certain places like the plague. and when it closes down, like aresi did, you feel a certain validation of sorts. OUR relationship ended, so OUR place should close down too.

but when the relationship is still is at its peak, and YOUR place closes down does it mean anything? is it an omen of things to come?

i hope not.

i think i should start wearing a hat now.

i ventured out today with my hair down, as opposed to putting it up every single day since the tragic haircut. i went through great lengths to make sure it looks halfway decent today.

first, i washed and conditioned it last night. i lovingly air-dried it, brushed it, and repeated the lines, "don't move too much in your sleep!" until i dozed off. second, i put in a lot of gunk on it this morning to ensure it stays put, it stays shiny, and its stays, period. third, i whipped out the straightening iron, my old friend, and made sure that the part doesn't become a zigzag at 8 am.

i even drove with my head NOT resting on the headrest.

all these, to no avail.

i've been here since 7 and the two people who passed by my desk both averted their eyes when they said "good morning."

i bet they were thinking, "poor girl, i doubt if her morning was good."

still, the eternal optimist in me is hoping for some miracle. i will brush it in a while and hope that the third person who comes in will notice that i woke up extra early today and made an effort to look, well, human.

otherwise, i've got my clips and rubber bands ready for another day with my hair up.

it's going to be a long three or so months.

bad parlor karma for the entire year

since i had a birthday party to end the year with and jay's family's annual new year's day party to start the new year with, i squeezed into my sleeping schedule some quality parlor time.

the fact that they made me wait should've been an indication. in spite of my brother's instructions to pay the phone bill and buy new year's eve food, and my overwhelming desire to buy a pair of nice sandals, i had my butt firmly planted in the parlor by 11 a.m. now, i've had anything done by this particular branch, but the service at their podium branch (and other branches for that matter) was satisfactory that i had no qualms entrusting myself into their hands. and since the owner was there and she looked quite chic to me, i figured i had nothing to lose.

wrong.

for one, the girl doing the eyebrow threading took forever. as in one hour forever. as in will-you-just-shave-it-if-you-can't-do-it-cause-it's-really-painful-now.

did that stop me from having my hair cut by them? no.

and i came out from that parlor with the ugliest head of hair i've ever sported since i mistakenly believed that i'll look good with kc concepcion short hair. it was so awful that i couldn't go back and have them fix it -- they might hack it all off! it was so awful that on new year's eve i stood in front of the bathroom mirror and started cutting my own hair.

yes, i cut my own hair.

and wonder of wonders, i think i did a pretty good job at it.

now i look halfway human.

-oOo-

cleaning up

after a particularly nasty fight that got started from several text messages and what have you, jay suggested that maybe, just maybe, my foul temper had something to do with the fact that everything i own is one big mess.

my car's a mess.
my office desk is a mess.
my dorm room is a mess.
my room at home is a mess.

people have made me a project. jay cleaned my car once and a student cleaned my desk once.

and so, with the hope of starting the year right (and an excuse to stay glued to the television watching the axn 24-hour marathon of 24) i cleaned out my room.

threw away stuff was more like it.

i threw away old cases. if i didn't read it while i had to read it, it is highly unlikely that i will read them again.
i threw away gifts from old boyfriends. if i didn't stick with the giver, why stick with the gift?
i threw away clothes, and bags, and shoes. actually, i left them outside the house and they miraculously disappeared.
everything that didn't really matter, or stuff i can easily buy again, or things i didn't even know i had to begin with all found their way to the trash bin.

i then changed my sheets, lit some candles i had been saving (saving for what? exactly. that's why i lit them all), and settled down in bed for the last two episodes of 24.

now if only i could do that with my dorm room.