closed for renovations

things haven't been hunky dory in rosa-land recently. i blame the weather, hormones, season 7 of grey's anatomy, and SM withdrawal, not necessarily in that order. in a perfect universe, the PMS-y attitude will go away once ... well, once THAT happens, but this is not a perfect universe. so i'm still grumpy, irritated, extremely short-tempered, and unhappy.

in any case, i've come up with a list of things that'll be imposed in MY life ... up until further notice. you see, i've figured that most of my heartache comes from disappointments, especially when things i'm passionate about just don't pan out (the way i want them ... yes, i am a control freak like that. or spoiled, depending on who's talking. haha!). so without further adieu (i began writing this at 9am thereabouts ... and look at the time now!), the LIST:

1. punctuality is overrated

last sunday, i texted a friend and that friend texted someone else and we ended up scheduling a late lunch together. since i was doing my grey's anatomy marathon, and since i had just loaded up the washing machine, i asked if we could meet up at 1:30pm. they told me to finish my washing later cause someone had to be at a 3pm meeting. so i said okay.

i ended up arriving at 1:10pm due to parking problems. one texted "five minutes" only to arrive 24 minutes later (yes, i am OC about time like that). another one -- no idea whether she was oblivious to the time or what not -- passed by mr. quickie first and arrived at around 1:30 already. no one apologized for being late.

waiting irritates me. waiting without knowing where the person i'm waiting for irritates me all the more. waiting and finding out later that the person was late cause she finished an episode of what she was watching and couldn't be bothered to be early irritates me the most. but, since irritation is the most i can feel for friends i love dearly (all was forgotten as soon as mushroom chicken mushroom was ordered and mozarella thingees were served), i've decided that (1) i will be uber late myself; or (2) i will automatically add half an hour to the appointed meeting time and only arrive then; or (3) i will shave off half an hour from the time i actually have to meet with them and arrive only at the actual time.

maybe this will save me from a lot of "wru?" text messages ... or maybe not.

2. passion is overrated

i am passionate about things. so while i don't cry when i watch movies and i don't feel bad for dismissed employees (pro employer all the way, ha! ha!), when things that i feel passionate about don't go the way i firmly believe they should go, i feel horrible.

horrible as in eat lots of chocolate horrible. as in "i will buy that even if i don't know what to do with it" horrible (hence the bazillions of pillowcases bought over the summer). as in you'll-be-sorry-you're-my-friend-cause-i'll-text-you-about-it-all-the-time horrible. so i felt bad when the HK vacation with my mom and brother got all messed up because they'd rather sleep in the hotel. and i felt bad when i believed management was doing a cop out decision over something. and i felt bad when people in community say okay lang yan when something could've been done better.

so beginning today, i will only be passionate about things that i can control. i can be passionate about keeping the dining table free from random junk. i can be passionate about changing the sheets weekly. i can be passionate about getting to be by 10pm so i get the requisite 7.5 hours of sleep. i will not be passionate about schedules and work-related stuff that are out of my control.

3. indifference is king

i once read that the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference. eventually, i realized it to be true, and i saw how the best way to make someone panic is to show the other person how little you actually care about the situation.

the past couple of months, i couldn't even begin to understand why some people around me could be so indifferent about stuff. they simply didn't care -- i'd discuss with them something that (at least to me) seemed so earth-shattering and they'd say, "ganun talaga dito." the first month, i was all like, "i want to be model employee" and i heard nothing from them except a sarcastic "good luck". worse, i'd see people mocking those who made a big deal out of these things. then it hit me: indifference isn't only the opposite of love, it was a coping mechanism. being indifferent meant they didn't care either way, so if it didn't pan out the way they wanted it to, well, at least, they didn't feel anything about it in the first place. how positively ... astute?

this morning, probably still a bundle of negative energy from all the upset-ness (no such word, but couldn't think of an apt one) of yesterday, i sent this text message to a good friend: i have decided that ... i'll make a checklist of stuff for myself and i'll stick with my checklist for now - no emotions first, no feelings, just pure unadulterated focus on what has to get done. i figured i sort of screw myself up cause i allow myself to be nice, sweet, and horribly invested in things - work, relationships, service. so no emotions first.

i'm not exactly sure how it'll turn out. but maybe, just maybe, i'll be less stressed come december.

p.s. and if the plan doesn't work, i'm hoping that at least the shangri-la mactan thing with tita celia pushes through. i sooooo need a couple of days of just doing nothing but basking in shangri-la goodness.

oh conti's, why are you so konti?

conti's -- that place made famous by mango bravo -- happens to be a comfort place for me and my friends. whenever we feel like eating something special and none of us want to drive very far, we hie off to conti's in bf and eat like there's no tomorrow.

last saturday, i sent out a text message to a friend and told her how i was craving for conti's. her reply: game!

after an hour or so, she picked me up and off to conti's we went. we couldn't figure out what to order (everything seemed to be so expensive all of a sudden) at first until i asked "paella?" and she said "yes!" (as it happened to be her favorite). so we asked the waiter "pang ilan yung paella?" and he said "kasya sa dalawa pag babae" so we were like "perfect!" and ordered that, as well as a side order of gambas.

we chatted but both of us had our minds on the food that was about to be served. first came the gambas ... a teeny-tiny serving of gambas. as it is, the serving platter was tiny ... and the contents could not even cover the bottom of the platter.

oh no, we both thought, this is most likely going to turn out to be a disappointing dinner.

needless to say, our fears were confirmed when the paella arrived.

maybe the waiter thought we had the appetite of birds. or maybe we didn't look hungry enough. maybe the women who generally eat at conti's shun carbs like the plague. but unless we recently had our stomachs stapled and our appetites curbed, there was no way that the tiny plate of paella was going to fill us up.

(incidentally, i must say i was disappointed with the fact that the paella was served on a ceramic plate and not a paellera.)

we ate what little we had. and, notwithstanding the mango bravo that we ordered after the meal (we needed something else real bad!), nothing could have stopped us from making a beeline for ruins and ordering our comfort food:

lumpia and chicken skin for me.

and lumpia and cheese sticks for my friend.

sigh ... finally food landed on our stomachs, and we were satiated.

that said, i think i shall log off now and hie off to ruins ... those chicken skins are calling out to me.

are they the future of the world?

i graduated from college in 1998, a long, long time ago. i remember that during my freshman year, i submitted papers using my portable typewriter since i didn't get a computer until my sophomore year. and even then, when i needed to research something, i remember having to go to the library, and actually use the card catalogue. needless to say, while we had the internet then, it was slow and it didn't have as much stuff as it did now.

enrollment meant waking up at five p.m. and waiting outside the classroom door that will enlist you for that much-coveted subject (hello GE subjects and PE!). and since we didn't have cellphones and text messaging yet, if you end up getting the wrong schedule, or not getting the schedule at all, on the scheduled days of enrollment, well, then good luck in getting in through pre-rog.

despite all these "challenges", i graduated from college. true, it was painless, but at the same time, it didn't kill me. it didn't even send me running to the college secretary's office in despair. on the contrary, i remember that in my last semester of college, i had to go head-to-head with one of my favorite teachers since she wouldn't allow me to take an additional subject (so that i could finish the coursework in time for graduation) because she felt that with practicum, i would not be able to hack it. i teamed up with the college secretary (oh, robinson soria, you were, and still is, the best college secretary, IMHO) and fought favorite teacher's committee, citing this university policy and what not, just so i can enroll.

after graduation, i was invited to teach in this university and while the school's name has been much maligned in UP (i remember friends pointing out it sounded like a beauty contest title), i didn't hesitate to join the university's faculty. and in the six years i taught there, i met some of the greatest students in the world. there was this student who was on full scholarship and submitted handwritten papers since she didn't have a computer. she'd apologize to me for not complying with the requirements but i didn't mind. she was bright, and she put in a looooot of effort. she was good. one of her classmates apparently hated me with a passion cause i was so hard on them, but the following semester, the same student approached me to apologize (albeit indirectly) and told me how she was glad i forced them to do the stuff i made them do cause she knew stuff her other classmates didn't.

a lot of times, i pushed the students to their limits, and the best students pushed back. some students were really brilliant, and it made the drudgery of checking papers worth it. i was proud when i heard about one student making it to UP Law, and a couple of them putting up their own schools. so many have gone on, in such a short time, to be much greater than i am today, and i can't help but be proud of the small part i played in their growth as individuals.

i therefore cannot help but be disappointed when it seemed that year after year, the students i'd get in my classroom "deteriorated" in quality. the first couple of batches rose to the occasion, the subsequent batches went up to the dean to complain. when we challenged them to do something, they challenged us with administrative complaints.

this summer, i'm teaching another course in the university. and guess what, one day after i handed out the reading assignments, the college secretary called me saying the students were complaining since i gave them 9 cases to read.

did i not know that the students had other courses for that summer?

are these cases necessary?

i wanted to tell her, hey, i have a full time job and i have to read those cases too. hey, i don't only have to read those cases, i have to prepare questions so that i can draw out the learning i want from the students. hey, unless the read, i'll end up making them memorize concepts only and where's the learning there. hey, SINCE WHEN DID ACADEMIC FREEDOM MEAN YOU INTERFERING WITH MY SYLLABUS SINCE STUDENTS FOUND IT TOO DIFFICULT?

i restrained myself, and explained that (1) yes they're all necessary (2) i even taught them how to read cases and made a sample digest for them (3) they were given 48 hours to read these cases and (4) its the same as last year's caseload.

i don't know what's going to happen. allegedly 5 or so kids are dropping out cause it's too difficult (good luck, i'll be the teacher again next year and who knows if i'll be even tougher then). i don't know if the dean will have to talk to me about it (uhm, maybe i should fire off an email just to be sure to explain my side).

but there's one thing i do know: i hope that between the time the students complained and the time they make it out to the real world, some big change happens. otherwise, we'd be sending out half-baked children into the real world where there won't be any "dean" to make life easier for them.

*image from www.artsjournal.com

mr. quickie, you disappoint me.

you know how its like - the moment the heel of your shoe gets pudpod or the strap of your bag breaks, you make a mad dash for mr. quickie and they, as the name implies, quickly fix up the broken thing to make it good as new. and so, when something went wrong with my mom's woven bag after two uses, she thought of sending it to me through the balikbayan box, saying "i love the bag but it's going to get destroyed unless something is done with it. services are too expensive here, you ought to bring it to mr. quickie instead."

and so i did.

you know what they said? they can't do anything about it. they don't have the machine that could reinforce the ring.

oh no, that's not what i want you to do, i told the girl. i explained how i'd want them to sew around the ring to reinforce the weaves and that maybe they can put a nice patch or something in the area. she shook her head and gestured to the repairman. i again explained to him what i wanted done and he too said it was impossible.

i went home disappointed. then i channeled my inner mcgyver-slash-martha stewart, got out my sewing kit, and began manually doing repairs on my bag.

it took an episode and a half of csi but i think it's all fixed now. tomorrow, i test run the bag :)