The UAAP Finals Experience and Why You Shouldn’t Miss It

Five years is long enough. The FEU Tamaraws have been starving to tear the gold away from Ateneo’s clawed grasp, and they just came too close last year. Almost tasting the succulent but elusive crown, practically salivating, the Morayta cagers are far too famished not to give everything they’ve got, and more.

I was a freshman when the former King Tamaraw, Arwind Santos, led FEU to its 19^th title. Like any geeky freshman, my singular goal was to finish my first sem with flying colors. I had no interest in school organizations, even FEU Advocate, and much less interest in UAAP’s basketball. I did care about volleyball though, I was an avid Shakey’s V League fan and it was a post-Michelle Carolino season back then. Until a classmate, who has a future in sales, did a hard sell and got me to buy a ticket for Game 2 Finals against the De La Salle University’s Archers.

And it was a very exciting, exhilarating and, as I have learned eventually, elusive experience.

For some Tamaraws, they consider me lucky to experience a championship within my four-year stay in FEU. It’s like one of the checklists of being enrolled in a UAAP school, experience a championship year.

Since then, I have always wanted to go to Araneta and support my alma mater, but the realities of being a student nurse made Araneta a distant luxury. Blame me for being seemingly suicidal; I took the FEU Advocate exam, qualified, only to shave off more hours from a regular day. As I took the publication’s role seriously, perhaps more seriously than my own studies, I needed either a Saturday or a Sunday to rest and survive the coming week, pulling me further away from Araneta.

Classmates would have the idea that being in the publication meant required presence during the UAAP games. But I was not a Sports writer, I was under the Features section, which meant a handful of wanted, and unwanted, second-hand information from photographers and writers who cover games. I forgot who, but an Advocate batchmate (meaning we got in at the same time) once did a play-by-play account of a game. I blocked the words and an exceptional game analysis, from a fresh student journalist, not because I wasn’t interested but because the level of enthusiasm is intoxicating, and it was excruciating for me to listen when I wanted to be there myself.

Fast forward five years, and I found myself nostalgic of FEU’s Game 2 against La Salle. This time, I wasn’t in general admission (sounds like being admitted at the hospital), I was at the lowerbox beside another Advocate batchmate, a former Sports Editor, during the recent, controversial FEU vs. La Salle game.

And I took in everything that my senses fed me.

The Tamaraws’ territory has greatly improved we don’t just occupy gen ad to a gold-spotted lowerbox anymore. The horde has marked patron seating as part of their territory. Students wear their school colors with pride, and ‘just-in-case-FEU-loses-I-won’t-be-associated-with-the-school’ type of shirts are close to extinction.

Triggered by ugly game officiating (trying to control myself here), the Tamaraws were engaged in high-pitched verbal brawls against, well.. everyone else. My friend was acting like she’s not going to need her voice to answer calls later. She was standing and pointing to people on the court like she was the team coach. (I was ticked off by the officiating, not the La Salle's players per se)

As Cawaling was injudiciously sent off by an infuriating referee, my friend, and probably like other girls of our horde, acted like they were Cawaling’s girlfriend in anger. Others were screaming as if part of an activist movement, the picture only lacks placards and slogans with ‘Justice for Cawaling’.

As the horde erupted with contempt against a presumed orchestration of callouts, the team walking out after the first half, the Tamaraws still emerged victorious, crushing the Archers’ dream of making it to the Finals. Now, FEU is closer than ever to bringing the gold back where it might’ve, or should’ve, been since last year.

And we’re not going to miss it.

As early as the game’s conclusion, we already made arrangements on how to get our tickets for Game One. Two or three former Advocate staffers, and two current members, lined up for the tickets at FEU, reaching the end of the line only meant lining up again to buy another ticket until they had enough tickets for the number of people we hoarded to watch the game.  Eventually, the cashier got to know them, and wondered when they would stop lining up. They ended up making friends with the cashiers, which is a great achievement, I may say, since I’ve heard and experienced cashiers’ ire when doing transactions.

Like any telenovela, it is always a must to watch it until the end. We all expect a happy ending for the Tamaraws. Which is the same for other Tamaraw supporters who did not study in FEU at all, they are devotees by mere UAAP fanaticism. We are this year’s main protagonist, tayo ang bida, amidst a league of heroes.

UAAP is where heroes are made, but I guess for us Tamaraws, our heroes are made in Morayta, and UAAP is just one of their battlegrounds.

See you at the Coliseum! 

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JK Rowling. My Inspiration

The fuse of my circuit, the matchstick of my flame, the diesel of my engine, the switch of my light and the ink of my pen.

This is Joanne Katherine Rowling's commencement address at Harvard University. Another boost for my meek and meager might with pen - ultimately one of the things I stand for and against.

read this to the end. You'll be inspired.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

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Yam's Goodbye To You

Here's Miriam "Yam" Morales's rendition of Michelle Branch's Goodbye To You. Yam has the voice and looks of a recording artist, probably even better than some who already are. Who knows, she might be the next (high-pitch voice) Pinoy Pop Superstar! (Shoopershtar!)


And here's the lyrics to Goodbye To You:


Of all the things I believe in
I just want to get it over with
tears from behind my eyes
but I do not cry
Counting the days that past me by

I've been searching deep down in my soul
Words that I'm hearing are starting to get old
Looks like I'm starting all over again
The last three years were just pretend and I say

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I love
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

I still get lost in your eyes
And it seems like I can't live a day without you
Closing my eyes till you chase my thoughts away
To a place where I am blinded by the light but it's not right

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

Ohhh yeah
It hurts to want everything & nothing at the same time
I want whats yours and I want whats mine
I want you but I'm not giving in this time

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold on to
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

We the stars fall and I lie awake
Your my shooting star 


Enjoy!

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Volleyball coverage

I just came home from The Arena at San Juan City. I covered the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) vs. Far Eastern University (FEU) game in the Shakey’s V League. This is my first time to actually bring a notebook and jot down every minute detail that’s worth mentioning in an article. Instead of howling, screaming and cheering along the crowd, I was taking down notes! (as if I don’t have enough of that during lectures)

FEU’s performance during the match was neither high caliber nor weak. When I first watched the Lady Tams play back when I was still in high school, and still playing as an open/quick spiker for the Doves, their weakness was lack of variation with their offense.

I recall Rachel Ann Daquis unleashing strong wallops against De La Salle University (DLSU) but the Archers remain undaunted despite vigorous attemts. Aside from the fact that the Archers’ line-up then was very strong, FEU’s play was too readable. The play executed by the younger Daquis was consistent—too consistent. Her spikes were strong but the problem was the predictable trajectory, making it easy for the opponent establish a prepared reception. This is the prime reason why she was shadowed by the likes of Balse, Carolino and even Pimentel back then.

Pimentel, on the other hand, is a cross-court spiker. Given her height she usually spikes above the block formed by her opponents. During the early half of the V League, Pimentel was unstoppable. However, after the preliminaries, DLSU put an end to Pimentel’s reign. It was when the three-man block of Carolino, Saet and Hernandez was formed. Carolino being a high jumper was the most effective blocker against Pimentel’s height. This reduced the over-the-block spikes from the tigress. Cross-court spikes has one special attribute that open spikes don’t have, it’s the ball's side rotation. Since cross-court’s are most often hit on the side, the ball has a different rotation which provides a side-track bounce after hitting a block. This was Pimentel’s foundation and the prime point collector for UST. DLSU’s answer to that were Saet and Hernandez who were usually alongside high-jumper Carolino. With the three’s high percentage of blocking Pimentel, the cross-court pointer was reduced or rather nulled. And the three was tagged as La Salle’s Great Wall of China.

Balse’s spikes have evident follow-throughs. This is the closing of the fingers after the palm hits the ball. This style provides the down direction of the tri-colored ball. Balse’s follow-throughs were just flawless. She was the only one who was able to break the strong block of Laborte, then Philppine Sports Commission team, and of Saet, Hernandez, and Carolino of DLSU. Balse was unquestionably Carolino’s rival during that season. If Carolino’s spikes are fast, hers was strong. Carolino was also a hard hitter but Balse’s strength is of higher grade. With Pimentel unable to break La Salle’s three-man block Balse stepped up, together with Bernal. Despite the strength, Balse’s spikes was one that Penano, La Salle’s libero, is able to receive well.

Michelle Carolino’s fame was ignited during that season. There’s no question why she was awarded MVP. She moves fast, jumps high, and is able to vary her offensive strikes. Carolino’s spikes have three traits: these are; direction, speed and strength. Another lingering quality is intimidation. I did not include it above because not all players are affected by this. Carolino’s high jumps can cause intimidation, imagine her above you, about to hit a ball that could replace your head. Her spikes’ direction is unpredictable to the opponent. She has the ability to place her shots well.

This is what improved in Daquis during the last UAAP season. Variety in attacks is essential for any game. If your moves are read well by the opponent, it reduces the pointing power of your attacks. Speed…need I say more? Strength in spikes is not caused by hard hitting alone. Since Carolino is adept in carrying her weight when jumping she can also transfer this to the ball.

Watching FEU play earlier, they were able to maintain the variety in attacks which was not present in their play long before. Semana, former Lady Tam captain, specialized in variety. Daquis was also able to add this flavor to her attacks. Her spikes also became faster and damn well stronger. This change dealt the UAAP championship to FEU. These were retained with the current Lady Tams headed by Morada. But the problem is exactness of their attacks. The Lady Jaguars of Recoletos initially had to cope with FEU’s game. This is why FEU attained a 2-1 set point lead against the Cebuanos. However, by the fourth set, the Lady Jaguars were already able to read the play of the Lady Tams. Cabanag was effectively blocked during the fourth set which is not the case during the first two sets. She launched two cross-court spikes only to be set perfectly to a strong Sabas. Morada bombarded the Lady Jaguars but to no avail she was blocked effectively more than once. Gonzalez had to try harder to get her attacks through compared to her easy pointer down-the-line spikes during the second set.

The Lady Tams weren’t weakened; they just need to be unpredictable.

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Tamang Pagsagot

There is evident behavior of not giving the appropriate answer to certain simple questions.

Setting: Classroom (FINAL EXAMS FOR NCM)

Ma’am Cambe: You only have five minutes remaining!

BSN 936: Yes, Ma’am!

(After a few minutes)

Ma’am: Class, how’s the exam?

BSN 936: Not yet!

(Correct Reply: "Difficult” or for the wiz kid "Easy")

Setting: CSV Lying-in

Ma’am Bugna: O Medina gaano kahaba ang umbilical cord?

Gemame: Yes Ma’am

Same setting

Ma’am Bugna: O ikaw Mr. Manalang gaano kahaba ang umbilical cord?

Ivan: No Ma’am

(Correct Reply: 55cm-- tama ba? or "hindi ko po alam")

Setting: Advocate Office

Aubrey: ‘Oy edge ‘yung article niyo tapos na ba?

Edge: Kasi si Dwight may production eh tapos si Greta finals

Aubrey: tapos na nga ba?

Edge: Nakausap na nila si sir pero may kailangan pa

Aubrey: eh tapos na ba?

Edge: tapos pwede ba daw gumawa ng sidebar for earthquake preparedness?

Aubrey: Pwede, so hindi pa tapos?

Edge: sige sasabihin ko

(Correct Reply: "Hindi pa po")

Setting: text message

Sender: Wer n u?

Receiver: D2 n me?

Sender: Wer nga?

Receiver: Hir nga me

(Correct Reply: specific location)

Sender: kamusta?

Edge: Who are you po? nabura kasi contacts ko ‘eh

Sender: Ako ‘to ano ka ba

Edge: Huh?! Sino po?

Sender: Ay ayoko na, tampo na ako sa’yo

Edge: ok

(Correct Reply: your name)

Setting: At home, telephone call

Caller: may klase ba ngayon?

Receiver: Oo nga ‘eh ang lakas ng bagyo noh

Caller: tingin ko nga walang klase ‘eh, meron pa ba?

Receiver: baha na nga dito ‘eh ang taas na ng tubig

Caller: dito rin ‘eh, papasok ka ba?

Receiver: Oo...meron kayang pasok.

(Correct Reply: "Merong pasok ngayon")

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A Chance for Stupor

In a rather conclusive manner I'd say that ‘procrastination’ is a student’s worst offense and ultimate crime. Sheesh! If wasting time is a real obstruction of justice, and the penalty is death by lethal injection, then I would’ve died a hundred times over. I don't know if it’s directly related to my temporary ‘drama’ of losing sight of things but damn it does take a higher toll.

   

Well, one of my great sins was committed again yesterday. Forgive me for I have re-sinned. Our case presentation has been pending since last year, before the New Year, and I just finished my part quite unsatisfactorily. Though distasteful, I have no other option but to 'do with what I have' unless I want to spend another gruesome sleepless night.

   

Redirecting to my initial topic, I had the whole day yesterday to bag the presentation. Instead I was doing, ‘sige mamaya na lang’, ‘eto sure na mamaya na talaga’ (I still have time, I’ll do it later, I promise I’ll do it after this’) Seemingly a TV series with unending sequels, I delayed and ended up with a coffee in my hand while fighting off the Zs. And this eventually led to an open-mouthed, hypersalivating and unconscious student (me) on the way to the hospital for our duty.

   

At least now I get to sleep for 3 to 4 hours. Now why am I still typing here?!

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A Life I Used to Want

I never thought that I’d end up admitting that the life I’m living now isn’t what I wanted. I think my grasp of the whole thing is slowly slipping, inconclusively but intentional. Trying to hold a number of things together needs a rather elevated, above average ability of balance—which I believe I possess. It’s like having all of Shiva’s hands.

So where’s the problem?

Interest and loss of momentum. I can perfectly recall that sad Saturday morning during my fourth year in high school. Winning is vital for our volleyball team. We needed to win to compete in the Finals. Unfortunately, we fell short as we have done in our previous games.

We lost the first set with a 23-25 score. Not bad, especially when it a ballooned reception ended that set. It was in the second set that I felt the same thing that I’m feeling now. Nailing the etiology for my present façade is still obscure. Yet, I can identify with that game. We were leading with just one point. The score was 15-14 and it’s our service. All was well so far. Strategy was dancing inside our court. But after we lost the tie with a 15-16, we were pinned. Loss of momentum was the solitary cause.

Comparable to my unwell state, I lost the will to push through. It’s like I’m this dimwit who runs around the fire instead of putting it out. To be honest, typing this blog perfectly depicts my current state.

People who don’t exert too much effort are those who’re, usually, content with what they have. Ambitious and career-driven individuals would push themselves to the limit just to get what they want and get out of whatever hell they’re in. It’s not that I’m satisfied or content. I know I need to be someone more.

But why bother?

I’m living a life that I used to want. Now, I’ll have to do my best to want this life again, ..and I don’t see that happening in the near future, but hey I’ve got to try right?

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