partyphiles from the obscure college

after the prelims, my students get their much-deserved break so how do they better celebrate the end of headsplitting exams than through simultaneous christmas parties?
here are photo-ops from said parties, from top to bottom: educ freshmen, educ sophies, and educ seniors. i miss on the third year's celebration but what the hey, they're here.:)

ati-atihan before the up lantern parade

before catching the lantern parade in the beloved pamantasan ng pilipinas, i went to the anak ng dyosa's place to visit the wake of his late grandmother. owing to the lack of eventful things, i.e. wailing relatives who scream rhetorical questions like "bakit mo kami iniwan?!" or gamblers who vulgarly argue over sakla and lucky nine, i, the host, the prinsesita ng dyosa, and my other students jacky and arvien settled for bingo playing. we had an agreement that losers will be streaked in the face with talcum powder (my original suggestion of charcoal fell on deaf ears). with the accompanying picture, do the math.

recurringly breathless up in antipolo

my friend nina invited me to her NGO's christmas party up in antipolo hours after my calamitous attempt to catch alpha phi omega's oblation run in up diliman campus. she told me she hasn't seen the oblation run in years, either, and confessed that she hasn't gone to any up fair ever, not even during the undergrad. i asked if she would watch the lantern parade, and she lamented that that, too, shall come to pass unwatched.
when we reached her colleague's resthouse tucked in the woods of an underdeveloped village sitting atop the mountain, the paradisal place reminded me of pristine olongapo. i half expected bats or monkeys to swoop from tree to tree. when the cityscape we had just left behind came into view, we were breathless: the multicolored lights sparkled like precious gems in a black jewelry box. luz' residence, meanwhile, is a combination of the abode mentioned in isabel allende's "an act of vengeance" and that in professor jing hidalgo's "the art of understatement." the three-storey white house even had a library that was like mine: the books are arranged according to the geographical region to which the authors belong. as i picked up jorge luis borges' labyrinths from the shelf containing pablo neruda's, juan rulfo's, gabriel garcia marquez' and laura esquivel's works, a lovely young lasallian guy appeared and briefly took my breath away.
what transpired after the elegant dinner was the more interesting thing during the night. former senator leticia ramos-shahani, among other advocates of the feminist movement in the philippines, was there to thank and welcome isis' outgoing and incoming executive directors, respectively. the motif of the women's messages was, to me, amazing: women should not waver in their role in nationbuilding. hay, i love men, and i love women too!:)

a hair's breadth of catching the up oblation run

time and again, the annual oblation run by the alpha phi omega created a buzz of multimedia proportions that had me, rr, albert, the anak ng dyosa and the prinsesita ng dyosa rushing lunchtime toward the up diliman campus despite the grumbling of our stomachs, impatiently requiring us to fill them first before our eyes. after a million cabs that ignored our flailing arms in the middle of tandang sora, one promised to bring us to palma hall fast, but not fast enough to get us on time. by the moment we disembarked near the faculty center, some lucky girls were already walking away with their prized possessions of long-stemmed red roses, which the naked runners traditionally give away. i calculated that we must have been five minutes too late, so i just contented myself by staring at the numerous cute men around, since there was still a crowd gathered at the AS stairs raving about the spectacle. nothing compares to fusing political statement (the fraternity's bold tradition was originally aimed at making an anti-Marcos stand) and controversy (the bold statement is not only figurative but literal--how's that for the morality and national police?) anyhow, here are pictures of my companions' sweetness and defeat, hahaha.

welcome to the christian world, johannes!

for the second time around, i will be a compadre to my best friend irish, so i woke up early to travel to my home province of nueva ecija. her second son johannes proved to be as charming as his big brother jolo. he's the latest addition to my elongating list of godchildren. which reminds me: when do i come up with my list of people to give christmas gifts to?

"fans na fans mo ako, juday!" and other occurrences in posh trinoma

maalaala mo kaya's christmas episode featuring judy ann santos was already airing when i reached trinoma to bond with former colleagues. even as i joined my friends in the dining table, i couldn't get my eyes off the tv phone where the story of a poverty-stricken mother named anita was unfolding. my friends understand: they know that i am "fans na fans ni juday" so they let me spend a few moments of devastation as the widow decided to feed her children with pesticide-laced food. i felt glad that the episode did not disappoint as expected in such a way that people who received my promotion would not dare poison me because i made them watch a terrible show. truth to tell, the program succeeded yet again in airing a poignant episode about how desperate times can drive people to desperate measures.
i could have been an extra in that episode and acted with juday in the ricefields scene. weeks after i asked my friend ruel to let the two of us meet juday in the taping since he wrote the episode's script, the scriptwriting was transferred to shugo and when the taping was in the works, ruel and i were dead busy doing our respective duties to human civilization. i would soon learn from awestruck fans that juday's guesting was being heralded through the promising tv trailers.
after the heartwrenching boob tube engagement, i returned to earth and realized that my hong kong-based friend rhoda was in town for christmas. welcome back, dhang! thanks for the multicolored wallet; just seeing you home safe and sound was more than enough. this made me miss other friends like melanie, canifer, claudette, carl, kuning, celia, ad infinitum who have since joined the diaspora. i'm posting our picture here in case jopay fails to upload the digital photos (one of which jopay considers the best shot--and only half of my body was captured!) asap. please don't confuse the hairy creatures for my colleagues riza, rhoda, leah and jopay!
p.s. jopay sustains her capacity as the group's quotable quote machine aside from donna and leah. i caught her saying, "baka magsara na ang mall," pronouncing the last word "mol." she challenged me to tell her the correct pronunciation, saying "sige nga, sige nga!" but mmk's bottle of pesticide was still fresh in my mind, so i shut up.

comte and the emergence of sociology

During the French Revolution, which began in 1789, France’s class system changed dramatically. Aristocrats suddenly lost their money and status, while peasants, who had been at the bottom of the social ladder, rose to more powerful and influential positions. The Industrial Revolution followed on the heels of the French Revolution, unfolding in Western Europe throughout the 1800s. During the Industrial Revolution, people abandoned a life of agriculture and moved to cities to find factory jobs. They worked long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay. New social problems emerged and, for many decades, little was done to address the plight of the urban poor. However, it was during these turbulent times that social sciences, particularly sociology, would be born.
Auguste Comte, the founder of sociology, looked at the extensive changes brought about by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution and tried to make sense of them. He felt that the social sciences that existed at the time, including political science and history, couldn’t adequately explain the chaos and upheaval he saw around him. He decided an entirely new science was needed. He called this new science sociology, which comes from the root word socius, a Latin word that means “companion” or “being with others.”

din

The wait is luckless
In a heart’s unopened gate.
To fall deeper and reach nowhere is
Harsh, like thousands of feet trampling
My head, limbs, body
Hence the distance,
Lest the risk of settling for someone less,
Without questioning the desired leap of faith
For the unfaithful and faithless.
The gravity of torment crushes me.
In my heart occurs
The most horrible stampede.

trekking the road to serendip

My long-time student Papapao referred to me a schoolmate who is a teammate of his girlfriend Sari. The schoolmate asked if we could meet over the weekend at a café along Katipunan, to which I agreed. One never knows how destiny follows its designs; what one expects as a casual meeting turns out to be something that’s bound to change one’s life forever.
Contacting me was a different story altogether. After just having met me toward the end of the previous semester, Papapao would have his phone inadvertently busted, in the process losing the phone memory. He had to contact my other student Jel to ask if I changed digits; Jel informed me so I reached Papapao right away. He told me the case of the schoolmate who needed his thesis edited.
And he was there, inviting me to come over to his table. Flashing his pearly-whites, he laid down his problem. He went on and on in flawless English, discussing his objectives, describing his theoretical framework. I readily understood what his work is—it is tangential to my favorite discourse on giving voice to the marginalized—so I had ample time to profile him. His facial hair, his wavy crowning glory, his mestizo features—all these invoked the tender poetry of Neruda. It was with great effort that I restrained myself from stopping him from enumerating his survey respondents’ collated answers so I could recite “Ode to a Lemon.” I would later learn that he appeared here, here and here.
Indeed, life has a strange way of throwing people into each other’s path. One meets an inspiration at some regular crossroads, and while the object does not even have inkling that he has launched focused group discussions, dramatic biscuit sales increase or blogposts, the subject begins to live a life that has entirely altered its dreary course.

ang mito ng paglikha sa laot ng kawalang-katarungang panlipunan

Naglipana sa mundo ang kawalang-katarungang panlipunan dahil sa tunggalian sa kapangyarihan sa pagitan ng mga lahi, kasarian, uri, paniniwala at iba pa. Dahil sa tunggaliang ito, namamayani ang kahirapan, taggutom, abuso, karahasan, digmaan, at iba pang kanser ng lipunan. Hindi ito ang mundong inibig likhain ng Diyos. Hinangad Niya na iba-iba ang mga lahi hindi upang kamuhian ng isa ang isa kundi maging espesyal ang mga lahi sa pagkakaiba. Hinangad Niya na magkaroon ng babae hindi upang pangibabawan ng lalaki kundi upang maging kabiyak sa maraming bagay. Hindi Niya nilikha ang kapaligiran upang sirain at abusuhin ng tao. Hinangad Niya ang likhain ang tao hindi upang gamitin ang isa’t isa para sa mga makasariling layunin kundi para maging katuwang ang isa’t isa sa pagpapayabong sa ganda ng mundong inukit ng Diyos mula sa Kanyang kamalayan.
Makabubuting balikan ang mito ng paglikha ng Diyos sa daigdig upang mapaalalahanan na lumiliko na ang tao sa kanyang obligasyong pangalagaan ang mundo bilang pinakamatalinong nilikha. Paalaala rin ang mitong ito tungkol sa walang habas na paghahangad sa kapangyarihan ng tao samantalang kinukurakot na ng hangaring ito ang moralidad ng tao. Dapat na maisaisip ng tao na sa wakas ay Diyos lamang ang tunay na makapangyarihan kaya hindi tunay na kabuuan para sa tao ang pagkakaroon ng dominasyon sa kapangyarihan sa loob ng lipunan. Sa halip na palawigin pa ang kawalang-katarungang panlipunan sa patuloy na pag-walang-bahala sa tunay na pagkilala kung sino talaga ang May-kapangyarihan, dapat nang gisingin ang tao sa ginagawang pagpapahirap sa sarili sa lumalalang kaso ng karalitaan, karahasan, digmaan, terorismo, eksploytasyon, pagkamuhi at iba pang sistematikong pang-aabuso sa Pilipinas man o sa buong daigdig.

mcdonaldization, hollywoodization, coca-colonization, ad infinitum

The introduction and advertising of Western goods affect cultures of the Third World by way of the imperializing impact of these foreign products toward the consumers of the country of their destination. For one, local products tend to be frowned upon when the globally popular Mcdonald’s finds its place in the community. Likewise, films imported from Hollywood are likely to be patronized than the ones made locally. There is also the ubiquitous presence of the universally favorite Coke from the high-end urban hubs down to the most far-flung Philippine barrios. Even before globalization as we know it today became in vogue, the importation of Western products has been an imperialist policy inasmuch as the colonies in the Third World may become the dumping ground for and profit source of their excess products.

As may be gleaned from Noreene Janus’ “Advertising and Global Culture,” just the mere promotional stints on all forms of media already infiltrate the local culture, imbuing the consumers with the thought that anything “stateside” is equivalent to the proverbial true, good and beautiful. In effect, not only do local goods suffer less and less consumption to give way to the domination of Western products, but also do transnational advertisements that are being plugged more pervasively become increasingly harmful to the accepting community that obsesses about alien items they cannot buy. The latter even compete with local tourist attractions, such as when the biggest McDonald’s in the world opened in Beijing and not a few tourists set their sights to it more than their intended destination, the legendary Great Wall of China. The imperializing effects have even rendered some Third World natives into thinking that they need to have access to such goods, without much thought about the crystallization of colonial mentality foisted by advertisers in their midst.

daytime epiphany

The sun freshens the mountains and the grass
While the cool winds blow the scent of nectars
It is as if the beloved were still around
Although the single star in the sky says he’s not.

cruising the marikina riverbanks

rr and i agreed to cruise marikina not for anything else but to meet ma'am aileen, our erstwhile math major colleague, who is now affiliated to a computer university somewhere in the metro east. we scoured the bookstores first in the neighboring mall before proceeding to the newly opened sm marikina, which rr claims as "pang-mayaman." when ma'am ai encountered us, she brought us to the ihawan overlooking the river. the place was abuzz with people of sorts and service was deplorable for its slowness, but the food comprising barbecued chops, roasted milkfish, skewered squid, hot bulalo soup and fried eggplant with bagoong condiment lifted our spirits. stories, too, were endless. not bad despite the relative absence of eye candies.:)

of birthdays and barges

one my junior english majors, criselda, is celebrating her birthday and because her class is special to me, i must go despite the lack of sleep the previous night. i ended up slumbering like a baby in the sofa in the midst of my students' rendition of aegis' "sinta," "basang-basa sa ulan" and "halik." apparently, stones were hurled onto cris' house' roof, to which the ever calm celebrant responded by saying, "birthday ko po kaya 'wag po kayong mambabato."

but this youtube entry will hopefully never turn you into a bato. my friend obet prodded me into checking this out after i complained that the manang next to me was so obstrusive while chatting with an indian online that she bombarded my eardrums with pronouncements like, "are you hear me?" "i'm chat to you," "my husband, they have a girl. she' a playboy, you know!" if it weren't midnight in the cafe, i would have made a scene by smashing her webcam.

to the delusional

Neither my power nor my potential
Can guarantee what impossible good
You are demanding of me—
Do not wish for whims
Beyond my reach,
I am never superhuman
As you think.
I tried so hard to meet with might
Your standards for which I spurred;
But it vividly came to me
That I alone cannot change the world.

normalized beings: breaking into the mainstream in twilight

Vampire stories sell. Whether they are in the form of a literary classic like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, film adaptation like Anne Rice’ Interview with the Vampire, or hero figure like Blade, tales of bloodsuckers spark the interest of people with irrepresible penchant for horror.
Twilight falls under this category, and more. The cinematic version of Stephenie Meyer’s first of her four-novel saga is not only a vampire story but also a teen flick and a romance rolled into one. For such a formula, the movie is expected to mimic its novel basis in becoming a bestseller. In fact, even before its recent release, the movie is already a hit for its well-hyped trailer and its popular soundtrack.
Truth to tell, the plot is nothing out of the usual supernatural movies in which the creature’s secret is just waiting to be revealed. Twilight sees 17-year-old Bella Swan’s (played by Kristen Stewart) homecoming to the sleepy town of Forks, Washington to rejoin her father Charlie (Billy Burke). She has no problem adjusting to her new academic environment, but her challenge comes in the form of her mysterious schoolmate Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) who rescues her from a running truck which he halts with his fist. When she and her handsome classmate become closer, she discovers his family’s secret: that they are vampires. However, his family’s bloodsucking characteristic does not stop her from falling in love with him.
Movies with characters who try so hard to fit in a world that rejects them are comparable to real-life experiences in which certain people are shunned no matter how they exert efforts to blend in the society. History is a living witness to the continuous discrimination on the basis of race, class, sex, creed or whatever else. These marginalized sectors are represented in the movie by the vampires whose true identities had to be repressed for the sake of not being ostracized by the community. They had to make their respective personal sacrifices if only to integrate themselves in the mainstream. Often, life is not even enough to gain a fuller access into the society, because the sacrifice cannot overcome the social bias. Such is the sad case of vampires who cannot be fully normal, or of discriminated people who remain second-class citizens vis-a-vis the society’s dominant groups.
Respect for and acceptance of people of all sorts may be the key to addressing the problem of social injustice that is encountered in real life and that is, in a way, symbolized by the kind of regulated living of the vampires in Twilight. It takes more than one Bella to do the respecting and accepting—it takes every one of us to work for the realization of social justice.

angela's mushes

Today, when my English majors’ brightest returned the book I had lent her for her apprentice teaching off campus, I found out a letter tucked between the book’s pages. I’m posting the epistle’s content verbatim. What do I say but thanks, too, Angela! Let me post my reply a little later.:)
***
November 28, 2008
Hi Sir,
Hello po…Siyempre po, una sa lahat—salamat po ng marami. You just don’t know how I really feel…sobra-sobrang salamat po. Nakakatuwa, nakakaiyak (and I’m literally crying while writing this), nakakatouch po na grabe po yung concern n’yo sa amin. Na kahit hindi niyo na kami estudyante, teacher pa rin kayo sa ‘min—anak niyo pa din kami.
Sir, nami-miss ko na po yung klase natin—yung libreng comedy bar (haha)…—nakaka-homesick po talaga.
Alam niyo po kung magiging estudyante ako forever, ok lang po basta kayo yung teacher.
Magaling po kayo as in sobra, hindi lang po magturo kundi pati makinig.
Mas masarap po talagang maging estudyante kesa magturo. Kaya lang po your goddess-like poise proves me wrong—kasi masaya naman po kayo eh.
Salamat po talaga—maraming-maraming-maraming salamat.
Hay…grabe…gusto ko diyan na lang ako sa school, kahit maraming project, assignment, kahit palaging may quiz.
Alam niyo nga po pala natutuwa po akong nandyan pa kayo sa ASAS, kasi nung dati natatandaan niyo po yun? Yung October 10, 2008 haha…yung nireport po naming yung mga stories using postcolonialism and Orientalism. Akala ko, aalis na kayo. Buti na lang po andyan pa din kayo. Kasi iba pa din po yung sa text lang. Natuwa po talaga ko nung malaman ko nung October 27, 2008 na magtuturo pa din kayo.
Sir, salamat po dito sa pinahiram niyo sa akin; nakaka-touch po talaga na kayo pa talaga yung naghanap sa library. Sorry rin po sa istorbo. At siyempre po salamat sa lahat.
Sana po ‘pag maging teacher kami—yung katulad niyo nila Sir RR, Ma’am Cochesa—friend-friend as in super close. Yung mga teacher po ditto, they are treating us nice…the students are good, but most of the time they are not.
I will be so happy if I will be your student again…ϋ Salamat po…salamat po talaga.
Angela May V. Santos
Ahning
2:09:58 A.M.

from carne to carnival

the cruising area in quezon memorial circle may have vanished, but here's the current attraction that's so gay nonetheless for the tiara-like welcome arch. the carnival is a proof that gay and pop cultures can intersect, after all.:)

resembling enemies: contrasting the american and japanese periods in philippine history

The Philippines during the American Era and the Japanese Occupation is a study in contrast. The foreigners present during those times may be similar in being conquerors, but there are basic differences between the Americans and the Japanese that resulted to the disparate appearance of the two colonial periods in Philippine history.
First, there is a difference in the manner of conquest by these two colonizers. On the one hand, the Americans tried to be as subtle as possible in their intent to take over the Philippines after the Spanish colonization. While the Spanish-Philippine War raged on during the turn-of-century Katipunan Revolution, the Americans—a newly-emerged superpower—seemed just to look on, waiting for events to unfold. Inspired by the crumbling of the Spanish Empire primarily in Latin America, Filipino revolutionaries asked for the help of the United States in freeing the islands from Spain. Their plea was responded to favorably, except that the US, by virtue of the Treaty of Paris, had another thing in mind apart from assisting Filipinos to their colonial independence. When the Spaniards were already driven away, the Americans proved to harbor a naked motive of staying for good in order to seize the Philippines as its first colony. The rest of the Americans’ policy involving the Philippines is, as is often said, history. On the other hand, this subtlety was not displayed when the Japanese interrupted the American Commonwealth government in the Philippines at the onset of 1940’s. Forced by the economic paralysis sanctioned by the US upon it, Japan bombed the American state of Hawaii and the Western Pacific Rim where the Philippines is in what turned out to be the beginning of the World War II this side of the globe. When the Japanese succeeded in invading the entire archipelago, they uprooted the American colonial government and laid down their own in the name of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Whereas the overt goal of the Japanese was to create an Eastern-oriented cooperative of countries, the actual goal was to establish a Japanese Empire. Nonetheless, comparably, the Japanese were less subtle in occupying the country than the Americans: the former instituted educational, political and economic policies in the name of Japanese Imperialism while the Americans masked their imperialism with the euphemistic Benevolent Assimilation.
Having mentioned the colonial policies of the two, it is imperative to present the nature of the motive behind these policies. In creating GEACPS, Japan intended localization to happen in East Asia so that the colonies in its empire will look up to the local culture thriving commonly between these neighboring countries. Hence, as part of this empire, the Philippines was intended to be more Oriental despite the influences of two Western colonizers. Filipinos were supposed to learn and appreciate the Asian culture of conservatism, family-orientedness, and the like. Meanwhile, the US’ Benevolent Assimilation intended Westernization of the Filipinos in the effort of producing brown Americans who will look up to Western culture as superior for its modernism, individualism, and the like. The Philippines was intended to imbibe Occidental culture in order to civilize its citizens in American fashion.
The two colonial periods are also different as presented in history. While the American period proved to be more deadly than its Spanish predecessor with its martial policies like the Howling Wilderness of Balangiga, Samar among other military strategies, Western-centered Philippine history textbooks portray the Americans as saviors of the Filipinos for leaving the English language, a Western-style democracy, and American popular and consumerist cultures as legacies—legacies that only honed us to become dependent, colonial-minded breed of people. The Japanese, meanwhile, were not as lucky in historiographic depictions, because the War they initiated in the Pacific caused them to be portrayed as traitors to Americans and the rest of the imperialized Asians. No matter how Japan itself tries to redress and justify its martial causes, Philippine history has remained marked by Japan’s lingering criminality during World War II.
Readers of the American and Japanese Periods in Philippine History, most especially Filipinos, have a lot to learn from these eras of colonization. First is the lesson of trust. The Philippines had been betrayed by the Americans many times during the course of their stay here (and, seemingly, even beyond, meaning now). Right after the flushing of the Spaniards from the islands, the Filipinos expected their seeming American friends to leave as well, having been done with their humanitarian duty of assisting the Filipinos to their colonial independence. However, history has it that they remained to establish American Colonial government. Also, for implementing Benevolent Assimilation, the Americans yet again betrayed the Filipinos for instituting colonial policies that will have far-reaching effects on the Filipino psyche, from colonial mentality to consumerism. When the Japanese succeeded in occupying the Philippines, the Americans ruined again our trust by leaving us to fight all on our own while they tried to defend their country and the US’ allies in Europe. On the other hand, Japan has a hand in betraying the Filipinos too by bypassing the common Asian heritage and conquering the country for its selfish sake of establishing a Japanese Empire in Asia. It seems that Japan put more importance on national pride than in realizing an intercultural community devoid of traces of Western influences.
Related to this lesson is that of the virtue of self-reliance. No colonizer can claim that they know how to save us from our social problems. They are outsiders to our own milieu, so there is no way that they can fully understand how our culture functions. They cannot justify their colonial motives with supposed assistance like Benevolent Assimilation and Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Americans in particular cannot even stand up to their messianic role when they left posthaste with the Japanese Occupation. Hence, Filipinos can only rely on themselves in terms of trying to save their country.
Another lesson from those periods is the brutality of war. Not only does war take away the humanity in both the conquerors to the colonized, but also does it cause wide-ranging issues like racism, poverty and cultural relativism. Not only were Filipinos dehumanized by their American and Japanese invaders with the ravages of war, but also were they treated as racial inferior, were deprived economically and were contaminated culturally. Because history cannot anymore be rewritten, Filipinos still had to cope up from these social ills even with the post-War period.
Despite everything, there is still a saving grace from these periods, because not all legacies from these colonizers are bad. Some of their cultures are not outright detestable, like the American individualism which taught Filipinos to celebrate individuality in spite of the onslaught of collective institutions, and the Japanese nationalism which taught Filipinos that the ultimate sacrifice a citizen can do for its country is to die for it.

reason for being in my saturday class

here's one reason to attend my contemporary american literature unfailingly every saturday afternoon. i just hope that i won't get intellectual constipation for studying too hard for this class in which each person speaks his/her mind out with a thick american accent.

shut the windows

Shut the windows
the rain may seep in,
for all you know
it wets you all over.
Dry clothes to change
the drenched ones with
may not be at hand
since you get to enjoy
flirting with the rain.
Stop!
Go on with life.
The rain has been unkind
To come then leave you
behind.
Now that it returns
And tempts you to play
Around with pain,
Say “Never again.”

at academia de sta. faustina's english month

this is one moment (no, it's not juday's spiel in fitrum!) wherein i have a time off where i teach and it's because my classmate mary ann (the one in blue) invited me to be a judge along with ma'am rivera (the one in knitted top) and a faculty from st. scholastica's, miss villegas (the one in stripes) in the english-related literary contests in her school. i had a grand time there but details shall come later (i'm rushing to find a hard copy of a raisin in the sun anywhere in this insane metro!). meanwhile, here are the pictures:

he's got the look

this semester, i got to teach general education courses so some freshmen and the sophomores might be scampering to transfer to another class to try evading me, only to find out that i'm still the instructor in the new class. too bad for them who find reading and writing a time-warped lenten season. others say that they actually looked forward to being my students so finally, they get their wish. i felt like having them watch Wishmaster, hahaha.
in one of my small classes, i have this student who reminds me of a special someone back in up film, boyish face and all. last i met the class he's in, i gave a quiz that was labeled "pang-prelim na ito, sir!" earlier in the morning. what happened was, right after i took the pictures below, i caught this student staring at me. i had to stare back but then, he maintained his gaze before his lips broke into a grin. with hemingway as my witness, i shall never stare that way again!

karlo clones on the loose

You have just crossed paths with Karlo midway of the Gymnasium and the track Oval. You even had a short conversation whether there will be no classes or otherwise come Thursday and Friday when the University will be the host to the annual Luzon Science Consortium. If by pure luck there will be none, he has promised to come over to the USSC Office to begin drafting his OSA Student Week narrative write-up as the Junior RSCU Head, uninformed that the report has long been asking to be printed out of the computer software.
Not a few minutes have passed and, to your natural awe, your visual sensory recaptures near the Tau Gamma Park the same old charming human matter you have recently come across with halfway of the Gym and the Oval. Automatically, you sit beside him who has tagged Romualdo along and initiate a dialogue with the two of them. Easy, you are not alone in heavily loathing the spoiled chance of discussing individual essentials in due permission of the sensational tuition fee hike issue. Well, you are just seizing the rapturous moment of keeping Karlo company, but honestly, you do not imbibe my point. Don’t you notice Karlo’s omnipresence in the University (take this literally, in case you hunch that I am citing Karlo’s primal participation in mass daydreams)?
Only a meager sum of celebrated saints has the divine ability of bilocation—appearing in flesh in two different places simultaneously, not unless their apparition is beamed globally via satellite—therefore it is highly suspicious that Karlo can bilocate as well, disregarding his saintly personage. You then resort to a more scientific explanation on Karlo’s presence in the College Annex one time, his showing in the Men’s Dorm #8 another time and a sighting of him walking along the Lagoon a little later—all incidents happening in a relatively brief hour span—and you conclude that he has CLONES.
It is your advantage that omnipresent Karlo has acquired look-alikes performing separate tasking. It follows that you are not necessitated to pay him homage at the dorm on a patterned basis, knowing that you will readily meet one of his replicas biking around the Old Market or another consuming ensaymada with Kuya Bryan at the Marketing Center bakeshop. It also means a reduced risk of missing Karlo every once in a while since all you need is to take a glimpse of the passersby anywhere you are and viola! One of Karlo’s clones is among the crowd. Anyway, who is reading this, a Karlo clone or not?

the man in orange

He thinks it best to wear black
Since all the blue shirts littered the laundry bin
But to his dismay,
The closet’s darkest isn’t even gray
So he picks orange
And the color is fire in the eyes
He seems to exude its loudness
Yet the brilliance artfully belies
His true self—
Handcuffed by hopelessness
Imprisoned within walls of uncertainty
Locked behind bars of loneliness
Languishing in cruel conditions
Of lost love and brightness.