Lust for Life

Oh I wish I had a boyfriend
I wish I had a loving man in my life
I wish I had a father
And maybe then I woulda turned out right
But now I'm just crazy
I'm totally mad
Yeah I'm Just crazy
I'm fucked in the Head
And maybe if I really tried with all of my heart
Then I could make a brand new start in love with you

Oh I wish I had a sun tan
I Wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine
I Wish I had a beach house
Then we could make a big fire every night
Instead I'm just crazy
I'm totally mad
Yeah I'm just crazy
I'm fucked in the head

And maybe if I really tried with all of my heart
Then I could make a brand new start in love with you

...
totally mad

Legion

*Don't worry, I won't spoil :)

OMG! I never saw this trailer until tonight. We watched Legion today, and it really is my type of movie: zombies, survival, with guns and all. *Left4Dead* The angels and biblical undertones are a plus! Swear I screamed through it. Wooow :D

Basically it's an apocalypse movie. If 2012 plans to terminate life on earth as we know it through crashing waves, Legion terminates everyone through being possessed by angels.. All those scary gimmicks above, yes, they're from angels (counter-stereotypically). God has lost its faith in humankind and the future rests on a baby that these angels want to kill. So it kind of symbolizes Christmas with horror and treachery.

What stuck in my head during the movie, was when the angel Michael said after the first wave, "That was the test of our strength, the next will be the test of our weakness," and indeed they were attacked by their weakness. The battle came from within and when they give in, it manifested terrible consequences. When you see the protagonist in a situation where he or she is being tested you just want to scream out "Beware! That's a test! Oh no it's a trap!" right? Haha. I was thinking if a lot of those happen in real life.

It also made me think about God. What if, just what if, Jesus came down to earth against God's will? I remember what I learned during a sharing about Christ's crucifixion: Jesus said, "Father, why have you forsaken me?" And it was believed that God turned his back for a moment from Jesus because He was filled with sins--our sins. See, in the movie, Michael disobeyed God's orders to terminate humans, in fact came he down from heaven and cut his wings. And twisting the verse, if God is against us, who is with us? Haha. But then it all goes back to what He taught: mercy, faith and love. If that was cheezy, see this movie's version of cheezy then! :D I wanna watch it again! :D And Angel Gabriel was hot :)

Quantity > Quality

"Large classes means fewer teachers. Fewer teachers mean more items. More items mean more money in the bank. More money in the bank means more interest. More interest means more savings," -Chancellor Luis Velasco *Materialistic approach.. Did he mention he was talking about a state university??*

I've seen the NO TO LARGE CLASSES IN UPLB fanpage in Facebook and thought it was pertaining to just hating the set-up. When I studied there last school year I had a large class in PE 1 (lecture-type PE), NASC 6 (Nutrition), ECON 11 (Macroeconomics), MATH 11 (Algebra), etc. Those subjects are divided into Lecture and Recitation classes. The lecture class are large classes where they actually teach, and then they divide us into recitation class, where we pass exercises.

The prof to student ratio is 1:160-250--imagine a long hall or big auditorium full of students and a professor with a microphone. Usually, instructors use Powerpoint presentations to deliver lectures, making lessons seem like accumulated reports, and very book-based. Students have to rely on handouts all the time. The lecture professor doesn't know your name, if you understood or if you really existed because you're a mere name on the class list! How do you get all 160-250 students to think critically, pay attention, communicate ideas and get involved in discussions, how can you effectively educate, in a large class?

No amount of creativity or tricks can aid the lecture professor to maintain the same regular-sized class quality of educating with a large class, that's the truth. So who were they fooling when they said "the test implementation of the large lecture class scheme (LLCS) in select subjects reveals that class size does not affect student performance"? Next semester Chancy Velasco is planning to implement the LLCS in all GE subjects in UPLB. Students are known to take GEs for granted, and now they will take for granted it more, ironically making the RGEP objectives even harder to reach. The attendance rule is usually what keeps students from absenting themselves in a large class, and they should know this. The quality education each student receives suffers. Whatever happened to their standards?

PS. I heard Chancy Velasco is planning to run as UP President in the future. Good Lord.

yes, it's me

"always tell the truth, and you never have to remember what you said" -t.l. osborn

**

slowly, slowly, i'm trying to become honest with myself..

today a churchmate arrived from negros, and he bought with him lotsa seafood! :D we were at the as steps, underneath the stars and all at 9pm, eating shrimp, crab, prawns and squid rings sometimes with our bare hands. how amazing, i never felt so good, so secure, so happy.. :)

i photocopied an article that i published in the newspaper and had some of them read it. the artic was entitled drunk, and to have it read by my churchmates was rather embarrassing.. but i'm not embarrassed. i'm trying my very best to be honest with people. i hate keeping secrets because it always catches you off guard. mom has read it too, and because of that she's been kidding me that there will be no alcohol on my debut. HAHA. okay, i couldn't argue. i asked the woman in my church whom i respected about her opinion on the article, she said that it's okay, that it's refreshing to write about something i could call "dirty-honest". another one asked me if i think i did the right thing of writing about something i'm not completely proud of to tell a reader and i said yeah, and i mean it.. i'm proud of it not just because it has my name on it but because it's something.

sometimes i think that out of all the things that could be written, why the hell did i pick drunkenness? why not election, poverty or crime? it's not very flattering on my part. at first glance the narrative didn't have much social relevance, compared to what else is written in the opinions section where it's at. but i believe that it's real and it's part of what i am, and a part of the youth i should say. someone who hasn't been drunk before would be satisfied to hear about it, and someone who has experienced it might relate to it. it works both ways. "ah ganon pala" and "ah ganon nga". the best of youngblood book contains the stories of the youths who learn from experience instead of abstract concepts. in literature class we talk about love in concepts, but all the time i'm wishing that someone would share his or her story of love and relate it to the literature! we just had to talk about realities.

i also apologized to someone today. the apology was long called for but i didn't think that it was necessary until i came face-to-face with the fact that it's still an issue in my heart. i'm not at peace with it. thankfully the person replied. i'm glad we talked virtually. pride is something you should lose if you wish to be true. i'm on my way. no more back-talking, private blogs and negative presumptions.

(a reblog from my tumblr omg this blog is dead. HAHA)

Haiti

How do you wake up in the morning to find half a million people dead in the other side of the world? As I've read in the newspaper, the population of Haiti is 9 million, and a third of the population -- 3 million -- was affected by the earthquake last Tuesday. And now thousands are feared to have died or been buried, almost similar if not more terrible than what happened in Indonesia in 2004, and search-and-rescue missions have only just begun. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the bold, dramatic headlines was "2012!" even though I do not believe in that expiry date.

Natural disasters, they say, are blind and nature's way levelling-off since no amount or type of capital could securely save you. The poor, the rich, the criminal (inmates reported to have escaped, looting everywhere), the holy (Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot found in the ruins of his office), etc. are at equal risks. According to Giddens, a sociologist, even manufactured risks, or man-made risks that affect the environment, have a boomerang effect on the society that can be as "blind".

Anyway, following the headlines was some sort of good news, as numerous countries and world organizations promised millions and poured aid in the form of goods, manpower, even human expertise from both the East and the West. I bet that in the days to come the headlines would be replaced by some local political news, the world has paused and thought of Haiti today, the poor country in the West. Tomorrow it could be, who knows who?

Love and Lit

I've just been from Lit class. It's actually Lit and Society class and there are some terms we use that we've discussed in minor subjects. Socio is really interesting once it's applied. But when you're on the verge of reading something more "raw" or uninterpreted it's really difficult to understand. :|

Today we talked about Dead Stars, some awarded literature even though it's not that good. It's a hallmark, on the other hand, because it was the one of the first English short stories written by a Filipina. A simple love story, supposedly. There's this guy named Alfredo, engaged to Esperanza. Alfredo is a lawyer, unhurried, boring. Esperanza is prude, modern but conservative, boring also, I can almost relate her to someone I know. Four years of long engagement, the guy meets Julia, stereotypically, a free-spirit, lower-than-their-class girl whom for the first time, Alfredo found excitement. Six weeks of flirting later, Julia learns of his engagement and has to leave. Alfredo married Esperanza because it's almost as if he has to. After four years of average marriage, he visits Julia, and found something: nothing! All those years of thinking of her, yet when he finally sees her the feeling is gone. The story is called Dead Stars for a reason.. dead stars I learned are, well, dead stars whose light is still travelling through galaxies, making it visible on earth even though they're not really there.

This story is just like what the other stories we've tackled before about love (always one reading every meeting): Araby and Reconaissance. Araby is about a early teenaged boy who's intensely and a bit sexually inlove with this girl. He went to a bazaar (Araby is the name) to find something to take home from the girl, and that's when he made his anguished realization that he is used by the girl. Reconaissance is sexual, innocence-stripped-away story, about a little girl, we estimated about 5-7 years old, who peeped through a window and saw an old couple having fun while having masochistic sex. She was shocked, scared, but very excited. I bet you can almost relate. HAHA. Kidding. Somehow that short moment of her life had an effect on her when she grew up. Reconaissance means spying, a term used in war.

So what's the connection between Araby, Reconaissance and Dead Stars? Discoveries about love that change a person. Have you ever made discoveries about love? I can only hypothesize. Let me share what I know so far. You can quote me on this. Haha. 1) A relationship that begins with a joke does not end with a laugh. 2) You can never really flirt with the person you really like. Maybe that's because you want him/her to like you for who you really are, or you're just too scared. 3) A love that intensifies too fast crashes and burns really fast, tomorrow you wake up thinking "Oh it was nothing" but yesterday it was everything.

Too much preaching? Haha. This will add up later on. But for now I'm off to Theories class (No, really). :))

Equilibrium

The picture above is me and my family during January first. We spent New Year's Eve without a single firecracker, and if it was me, I would've whined. We kept wondering "What will we do when the clock strikes 12?" Well what we did was, we sat on the living room watching a movie, there was food on the table and we kept on picking on the food (yunmmm). For some reason everyone was in a good mood, Mom, Dad, me and my two brothers. Midnight came and the explosions outside weren't pausing for even a second, we went out just for a minute to watch some fireworks then returned to eat, listened to the radio and they were playing some dance tunes and the next thing I knew, everyone was on the living room dancing with wine glasses. Sooo weird. :))

In about two days school's going to start again for the last sem of second year. The lesson that I've been trying to learn is to wait. I want answers about my course now. Should I shift or stay? I don't think my course is that practical to take, but I kept thinking this is just my pre-law. And.. I still don't know how to love. Teehee. I know it's cheezy but it's true. I'm not an expressive person everytime.. I need to work on relationships and keep TALKING.

My basic NYR (New Year's Resolution) is to not get too imba, or to have too many of something and too little of another thing. How about school, family, gimmick, org and church at the same time? I really admire those who can be in tiptop, balanced shape all the time. You know those persons who get frustrated but doesn't let frustration take over? Those successful people?? I wanna be one of them. I'm not gonna let 2010 pass without having the best all worlds. So.. off to that Lit novel in Mom's room. Good night!