Long...

I have a few more loose ends that's good for another post... it's all good, though.

.:Embarrassing:.

When someone gushes over you in front of over a hundred people and this person is both older and of the same gender, you do tend to feel embarrassed...

Sila ay mga nagpapakadalubhasa sa Pilosopiya at hindi rin magtatagal, magiging mga guro na rin sila. Kung kaya't kahit malaki ang klaseng ito, kaya naman dahil parang tatlong guro naman ang humahawak dito...

By the time Dr. Ibana introduced Camilo and me to the students as his teaching assistants, we already felt like an applause was going to happen, and mercifully, none came. That would've been the end of us. Heh.

.:Pot, Meet Kettle:.

It just occurred to us that we are paying ridiculous amounts of money for the Comelec to do nothing!

– Senator Aquilino Pimentel, referring to the occurrence of 0 votes in the canvass of Yemen, in spite of Comelec having spent money to send people to gather votes there.

That's entertainment for you. The very same man who has tried to stall Congress into not counting the votes at all is now telling the panel that Comelec is being paid to do nothing. R-ight. And what do we call his attempt at roadblocking the will of the people?

I was watching the proceedings of the canvassing, and it was glaring how the lawyers of the respective candidates would protest whenever a particular COC was to be opened if it was to the detriment of the candidate they represented, and how these same people gushed over the authenticity of a particular COC if they knew that it would be to the favor of their client.

Wonderful.

.:Unforgettable:.

IF I were gay, I wouldn't go for Peppy in the first place. I'd go for Robbie. He has that rugged and manly look... why the Hades am I talking like this?!?

Sigh...

Bonding with Ate Jess in some limited capacity does yield a lot of memorable stuff... that was even worse than saying I need a boyfriend if in case I wanted a new car for myself...

Zig and Mikko had a bunch of funny jokes between them, though. Something about flicking a lighter ten times (Mikko had this look on his face while he was cheating it.) and some Erap joke about Maceda being gay and Erap asking him to prove otherwise... yeah, it was fun.

Gawd, I ended up drinking coffee in the morning because of it (I don't drink coffee...) just so I could stay awake (I ended up sleeping at around 11... oww. I wake up at 4:30.)...

.:Tough Boarding:.

Yesterday was a rough day, though thankfully, Yahoo is now at 100 MB of memory. That's good. Really good.

It's not that I was making lots of bloopers, but the chatroom in WAVE yesterday was filling up and fast in our first hour, which was really unusual. We had around 10 people chatting with me, and then suddenly, the Yahoo Network just seemed to grind to a halt for about an hour or so as it upgraded right before our very eyes...

Still, it was all good. Anne and I had fun plugging the parlor that worked on her hair (Part of an ex-deal...)...

Anne: Don't you see the difference with my hair?

Marcelle: Shinampoo mo lang iyan?

Anne: No. I had this done at... *mentions parlor*

Marcelle: Oh, fine. So now you're making me inggit because my hair isn't as good as yours.

Some people dropped by the booth as well, and it was a huge distraction, as one of them had the gall to ask us about our paycheck, though I still have no idea about mine, truth be told.

I had to rush to class afterwards, and once again beat the clock to make it to Fr. Ferriols' class on time...

.:An Old Sense Of Humor:.

Someone asked me what the difference is between the students then and the students now. Just one that I noticed: their handwriting keeps on getting smaller. One time I was having a checkup with my physician, and he was telling me to write on a piece of paper. I asked him why. He told me that if my writing shrinks steadily as I write from left to right, then I have Parkinson's disease. I told him that it probably means that a lot of my students have Parkinson's disease...

– Father Roque Ferriols

This man is making it difficult for me to load rev out of his class. I wanna stay!!!

.:The Bosconian At Heart:.

I spent a good deal of time (After shopping for Chico's gift...) in my high school alma mater, Don Bosco Mandaluyong, yesterday afternoon. I met up with my senior adviser, then had a nice chat with one of my favorite technical instructors, Mr. Navarro, whose fondest memory of me is when I dropped my V.O.M. to prove its durability, and then how I burned my first transformer for Shop class... still, it's nice to hear from him.

Mr. Averilla gave me a bit more pressure as well, as he kept on telling me that he doesn't think it's going to be the least bit difficult for me to attain a Doctorate because he knew from the start that I was, according to him, “brilliant”. Okay. If he says so... I told him that I hang around geniuses like Sacha Chua who remind me I'm not that brilliant, and then he goes...

Oh, sure. They know their computers like anything. But can they build a transformer? Can they even dare to challenge you in your strongest suits? Everyone has their own specialties. Hindi mo naman linya ang Computer Science, so okey lang iyan...

True, true. He's now the external relations officer of Don Bosco, though. He got promoted out of the B.E.D. already. Impressive.

And then, I had a nice, long chat with Fr. Eli Cruz, SDB, as well. We had a nice discussion on Philosophy, as being a priest, he naturally knows quite a deal about it as well. He liked my idea of talking about Philosophy through pop culture, and I allayed his fears by telling him that I won't do pop culture because I want to do away with the classical texts, rather, I want to do pop culture to lure the less inclined to Philosophy into the classical texts...

We also talked about stuff like Luis Geronimo's travel to Vietnam as a teaching volunteer, Fr. La Guardia, who is apparently a brilliant man (Methinks he's not teaching this sem, so I get his cubicle in the meantime...), and how he said that he wasn't the least bit surprised that I'm in Philosophy now, although he wasn't too surprised I'm still within the realm of communications as well. He realized how pop culture in film and the Philosophy found within it melds perfectly to bring my two disciplines together.

He even offered me to rewrite some articles for some special pamphlet they're working on. Whether or not I get paid for it, I know I'd try my hand in it. I do believe it's the least I could do.

I'm glad he's the rector now. He's one of the nicest people I've ever known, and I know that if I were a priest, I wouldn't be anything else but a Salesian.

Met up with a few other teachers as well, such as my adviser, Ma'am Ting Flores, who was gushing about the stuff I was up to... ah, well.

I also got to speak to Ms. Rivero on the phone that night. Mrs. Ramos, her close friend, gave me her landline, and she is my absolute mentor, no question about it. No matter how good my college teachers were, they didn't mold me. Ms. Edna Rivero did the hard work for them. Which explains why I have such a high measure of respect for high school and grade school teachers, although I doubt that I'm adept enough to do what they do...

I felt justified with how Mrs. Ramos put it... that I am “finally getting what I've earned after all the things I went through from high school”. I do believe I am. It's not really success, and it's definitely not failure. It's just what I deserve, and that, to me, is more than enough.

Hearing Ms. Rivero after all this time was good for my heart. I can't help but be grateful that I got to speak to her, and I'm so glad that I was in good hands throughout my high school, in spite of all the adversity. Without them, would I be the least bit receptive to my college instructors? I sincerely doubt it. For the record, my first teaching experience was for English class under... you guessed it, Ms. Rivero. It may have lied dormant and was only reawakened in my latter college years and now, but we know where that inclination to teach came from...

To all the people of my high school alma mater, I give you all my heartfelt thanks. I hope that my meager actions have somehow made you people feel that somehow, you've done a good job in making a marked difference in the life of this student of yours.