Entries for August, 2007
I feel so empty now that the Harry Potter series ended. I miss the anticipation. It's a great fill-me-upper.
Last July 27th was probably my unluckiest day ever. Enough said. I don't want to remember and relive it all over again, do I? Pfft!
Marion and I are going to visit Nouriza on Friday. Finally!
Lily is having a birthday/sleepover at Woodland on Saturday. I'm still deciding whether I'll go or not though I already said yes to Lily. It would be nice to hang with high school friends again. Clariz will be there and I miss her tons. Speaking of Clariz, we saw each other at Shop-O last week, I think. She was with Dominic and I was with Lace. All I could say was, "So you're really a nurse now?" which was the same thing I texted her. I run out of things to say which was embarrassing. How moronic of me! That made me realize how far apart we have become in the last two years. Oh, well. That's life.
My dad is reassigned to Basilan today. No more free rides to school. I kind of got used to it, to him. At least, he's happy about it.
I got to visit Ebay PH for Che. Ta!
{ book } The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
{ mood } chipper
I don't know if my mom's death anniversary is today or tomorrow. How pathetic of me! My relatives are a bit disappointed--wait, no--they're near furious that I don't visit my mom's grave regularly. What's the point?! It's just a pile of decaying matter. My mom's gone. I refuse to call a box of bones and whatnot, mom. Besides, all I do when I go and visit her is cry and I've had enough with crying. I feel that they think I'm not sad or grievous enough for my mom. They're shallow to think that sobbing hysterically or daily visits to a pile of bones is the grandest show of mourning or love. If there's someone who's saddest to see my mom pass away, it's me. After all, it was always me and her against the world from the very beginning. There's nothing like losing a parent--a mother. You never stop mourning. You just learn to live with it. Sometimes, the idea that she won't be there anymore creeps up and you just lose it but you have to move on because that's all there is to do. When I lost my mom, I felt I lost the reason to achieve and make something of myself. It was only then that I realized that so much of what I wanted to have, I wanted to have for her. I dreamt of the day, we could get away from all of it--from the past that hurt so much and from the present that is as volatile as ever. She was enough for me despite that fact that we were just getting by. She was proud of me, period. Regardless, whether I be on top or not. My mom was my everything. She was always there. It's hard to move on knowing that you are left all alone in the journey. Now that it's only me, I lost the meaning of living but I still go on with it because somehow I'm hoping that someone will come and make the journey worthwhile again.
I miss you so much. I love you. Always. ♥
{ book } My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
{ mood } melancholy
Ai-Love-Amor | 5 hollered back
Well, I'm slumped with school work and my dad's turning a deaf ear on my plea to have a computer here. It's so illogical and piss-worthy.
My dad came here (Zamboanga) yesterday. They had a high school reunion out of nowhere because some of their classmates from the States went here on late notice.
Hear! Hear! to Cheryl's latest blog entry. I shouldn't have attended Law yesterday too. It was dull and boring as usual. Law isn't really a class, it's more like reading sessions. And we do KNOW how to read.
I can't say I'm doing fine at school. I'm just trying to get by each day until midterms. I'll see the results and try to salvage what I can so I won't flunk any subject. School's terribly redundant. I'm not learning anymore. That's what school's suppose to be for, right?! Fr. Moga said school is leisure but I'm not having fun anymore either. It's too humdrum as years pass. Bloody bugger!
I've changed my layout and went gif-crazy. I know it's too much but I'm trying to own up to having a blog. I'll tone it down later. I'm still figuring things out. This CSS thingy is hard. Thanks to up4grabs/biey for the layout.
{ book } The Thirteenth Tale
{ mood } apathetic
This is the first PostSecret Video. Please visit the site for the next one. There are new posts every Sunday. The link is on the sidebar. Enjoy!
They made a remake of "Il Mare" (it's the Lakehouse). They're remaking "My Sassy Girl". It's infuriating! Have Americans lost their creative juices?!
The first lap of the midterm examinations is over. I have three exams left (Philo, RS and Math 123) for Tuesday. Plus I have three requirements to pass: a book report for Philo (I'm doing Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom), a simplex table and sensitivity analysis and a PowerPoint presentation of the graphics method of linear programming for Math 123. Whew!
As a tribute to the film "My Sassy Girl", the Korean version with Jeon Ji-Hyun and Cha Tae-Hyun, here's a video of Pachelbel's Canon as played by the majestic George Winston and a clip from the movie.
Pachelbel's Canon in C Major
My Sassy Girl (Jun Ji-Hyun plays the Canon)
{ music } Pachelbel's Canon in D
{ book } The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
{ mood } cheerful
Belated Happy Birthday, On Solitary Confinement! My blog just turned two last August 19th. I was still busy with the midterms then that I had no time to post something. The midterms are over and all I have to do now is pray--PRAY HARD.
I'm writing down my book report which I feel I'm doing a lousy job with. How can you write a two-page essay with something as highly-enlightening as Tuesdays with Morrie? I have to cut down chunks and I don't like that. I feel it betrays the essense of the book. I'm on a book hiatus. I'm flooding myself with pirated DVDs as of the moment. If there were old movies that were available for rent, I wouldn't buy any. Swear! I was looking for really old greatest movies of all time collection. You know Casablanca, Gone With The Wind--the good stuff. I watched An Affair to Remember on original VCD though. It was the only old movie I liked on rent. I also got a DVD of all Hayao Miyazake's movies. Joy! I had a DVD marathon of Korean romance movies like My Sassy Girl (real great story!), Windstruck (funny!), Il Mare (Sleepless in Seattle with a twist), The King and the Clown (fantastic!), My Wife is a Gangster 1, 2 and 3 (love the first movie, the second was okay, the third was cute) and Love Me Not (tragic but lovely). Some of the classic movies I already watched are Singin' In The Rain (romantic comedy cum musical) and The Westside Story (Shakesperean musical).
I already watched A Love Story. It wasn't all that. It didn't deserve the publicity it had. It was very Pinoy--Pinoy in a bad sense, Pinoy as in typical. The development of the story was okay but the end left me dissatisfied. When it ended, I was like, "Yun lang?". I expected a great big wallop for the ending. Oh, yeah. The thing that was quite good is that it removes the stereotype--who the wife or mistress is. In this movie, believe it or not, Angelica is the wife and Maricel is the mistress. Aga and Angelica stayed together in the end like somehow Aga forgot his love for Maricel like it never happened. Same goes for Maricel. Is that really love or some just some overblown infatuation? It shouldn't be entitled A Love Story but Love Is A Joke. The title itself is a laugh. I mean, can't you think a better title than that? Seriously.
{ book } Tuesdays with Morrie
There is that someone in our lives—someone older, patient and wise, who understood us when we were young and searching, helped us see the world as a more profound place, gave us sound advice to help us make our way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. After graduation, Mitch, lost track of this mentor as he made his way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Mitch Albom wanted and had a second chance to see Morrie again to ask the bigger questions that still haunt him, receive wisdom for his busy life today the way he once did when he was younger. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class" on lessons in how to live and the meaning of life. They discuss things about the world, feeling sorry for yourself, regrets, death, family, emotions, fear of aging, money, how love goes on, marriage, our culture and forgiveness based on experience. The following are snippets of their discussions relating simple yet profound wisdom.
In the earlier years of their friendship (college), Morrie shared to Mitch one of the most relatable ideas I found in the book—the tension of opposites. “Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted… A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.” Most of us find ourselves in this situation. I have found myself in this situation a lot of times. It makes us confused because what we think is the right thing to do is contrary to the things we want to do. This makes us wary of our decisions—do we march on, stay still or step back. I feel that the tension of opposites is one of the things that make us human. It is a great proof of our free will—that we have and can make a choice. That choice may not be easy to make but at least it is yours and yours for the taking.
On their fifth Tuesday together, they discussed family. “The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. It’s become quite clear to me as I’ve been sick. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’” In the absence of love, there is a void that can only be filled by loving human relationships as families share. Love is the essence of every person, and every relationship, and that to live without it, as Auden says, is to live with nothing. The importance of love is overemphasized which should be so. Life is more meaningful when you share your love. And where else would love be greater shown and shared than in a family—where multiple relationships thrive most.
On the sixth Tuesday, they talked about emotions—acceptance through detachment. “Learn to detach… You know what the Buddhists say? Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent… But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.” Nothing is permanent in the world. It is useless to hold on to things that you know won’t really last. Therefore, you must learn to detach him/herself from what you experience—pain, grief, etc. In detaching yourself, you are able to step out of your tangible surroundings and into your own state of consciousness, namely for the sake of gaining perspective and composure in a stressful situation. The detachment is not intended for us to stop feeling or experiencing, but instead, to make us experience it wholly, for it is only then that you are able to let go, to detach from a life-threatening experience which render us fearful and tense.
Morrie shared this idea on the ninth Tuesday. “Part of the problem is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it.” Sometimes, the only way to move forward is to slow down and step back. People think that the only way to find the meaning of life is through progress but this isn’t so. Stepping back and reflecting on where life has brought us can help us move forward. It is only by going backwards that we can understand our lives. And it is through understanding our lives (past or present) that we find meaning to it and be able to move on and meet what the future brings.
On their eleventh Tuesday, they talked about culture. “Take my condition. The things I am supposed to be embarrassed about now — not being able to walk, not being able to wipe my ass, waking up some mornings wanting to cry — there is nothing innately embarrassing about them. It's the same for women not being thin enough, or men not being rich enough. It's just what our culture would have you believe. Don't believe it.” The culture is what “they” think, say and judge as true. It is thoroughly inauthentic. We should reject popular culture mores in favor of self-created values. In rejecting the values of the popular culture, we create our own set of mores, which accommodate the physical shortcomings popular culture finds pitiable and embarrassing. I believe that we should not just accept what the culture dictates right away especially when it’s not conducive to our personal happiness. Social acceptance is and should be subordinate to what “I” think and feel.
Morrie and Mitch talked about the perfect day on the thirteenth Tuesday. “As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on—in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here... Death ends a life, not a relationship.” This is my idea of immortality. And it is because of this that I envy teachers. Henry Adams wrote (as cited in the book), “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” If you have affected a person’s life like a teacher has his student’s, what you’ve taught will live on. For example, Socrates taught Plato; Plato taught Aristotle; Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. No one can really tell that Socrates’ influence has stopped because it was passed, it moves on. It extends forever. It is the same if a person shares his life and love with other people. When that person dies, his love lives on.Most of the things, Morrie imparted through the book is more true to us than it is to him. We should do all these things now because if not we are wasting precious time. All the ideas are simple yet profound. We should rejoice in the fact that though it’s hard to make decisions, we can and we have the right to make them ourselves. We should love because it is what life is about. We should not hold on to things that are short-lived and fleeting. We should learn to slow down and step back to take a look at the life we have lived. We should be authentic individuals—not mere puppets to the society we are in. And lastly, we should share our lives and our love; it is the way to achieve immortality. I feel as though I’ve become Morrie’s student by reading the book. The only way to learn and achieve what he imparted is by doing them.
I just finished and passed my Excel Solver for Math 123. If only Math 125 is as easy. Calculus is the Math from Hell. It seems easy at first but when you're already at it, you never get it. It lures you in its maze and mocks you. You get lost and lose in the end. Enough!
I still have the Powerpoint Presentation for Math 123 to do tomorrow. Hopefully, Dad won't make me go with whatever trip he has in mind tomorrow. I don't know if they have arrived yet from Zamboanga. They went to buy a bed apparently. They arrived at the Zamboanga the same time I was leaving.
On my way here (Did I forget to mention I'm at Basilan already?), I was thinking of the news about the place and how the media can exaggerate details. Nothing has changed really. At least not in the part of Basilan I know. It's at though, there's no war being waged near us. I don't know, really. I haven't been here for ages, it seems. I still love my dear Basilan though, very much.
By the way, I got a Multiply account days ago. Here's the link: The Confined
ADZoo, Ai-Love-Amor | say what?
I'm thinking of a hiatus--I just can't seem to figure out what kind. Ha!
I'm deathly hoping for something to happen that will blow me away and make me HAPPY. It seems that the last time I was so ecstatically happy was high school sophomore year--the year before my mom's big C. I think it's pure coincidence. And I am happy, happy. I've got my friends, the Bears, which kind of know now that I write (about them--hehehe) on Tabulas.
I miss traveling soooooo much. If my dad just let me go to the Cebu-Bohol trip with my friends. I miss the hussle and bustle of the metro (Manila and Cebu). I want to go to Siquijor and Camiguin again.
I can't give up Friendster. Just now, I received a friend request from a former grade school classmate. Joshua (Paraguya) left Pilot--our school, after fourth grade. It was sad because you know boys and their friendships. Marvick, Genesis and him we're really tight back then. We still got in touch in the later years, while we were in high school. Now, his close friends call him Chuy2x. I don't recall that. A lot of things have changed but I'm glad that we still keep in touch and remember what we shared and still share.
I dumped The Thirteenth Tale and picked up a Jackie Collins (Lady Boss) to read. It's entertaining and we seem to not get enough of entertainment. American Star is a good story though. HAHA
We already got our grades for Accounting and Philosophy. They're fine. That's that.
Yesterday, only our Accounting teacher showed up. If only we could dropped teachers instead! Hmph!
{ book } Lady Boss by Jackie Collins
{ mood } bored
ADZoo, Ai-Love-Amor | say what?