Stick it!

Rodic’s tapsilog. Fried rice, egg and spiced beef. Shopping Center, U.P. Diliman. 

One of the many things I appreciate about Ateneo is how near it is to U.P. Diliman. I could take a jeep outside and arrive in a few minutes (or hours, depending on the traffic). Of course, I love the Ateneo experience and being an Atenean but there is also some space in my heart for U.P. My eldest sister is from U.P. Diliman and our Christmas break was filled with occasional wisecracks against each other’s school. Fun! Now, a lot of my high school barkada go to U.P. and its a relief from all the stress seeing them every once in a while.

U.P. is definitely not an Ateneo, and Ateneo is not U.P. Its filled with a different crowd. I wouldn’t use pros and cons with people because I never believe in subjectivity when talking about crowds. In the photo below, you could see a wall from their Shopping Center, a place I frequent for the kwek-kwek and is known for the abundance of photocopying services.

But this post is not about U.P. Its about the postal office in U.P. As you might have seen in previous posts, I enjoy sending snail mails to my parents in Iloilo City. I am assuming they enjoy it because when we talk about it on the phone, the enthusiasm and silliness in their voices are overwhelming! The postal office in UP is this small building just across to the right of the Kalayaan Residence Hall. Its a rather old hall, nostalgic in purpose and aesthetics (skinny Roman columns!).

The inside isn’t necessarily a pretty place but it works. Its au naturel for something like this in the present day and age. It just shows how the business is striving in a world where a lot of people think IMs, BBMs and e-Mails are as magical as they can get.

Below is a very short video I got of my favorite part from the last time I sent out stuff (a thank you card and a state-of-the-only-son letter to my parents) with the help of a friend.

Run, run, run faster than my bullet

Before college, I usually would spend a boring night running around a nearby university oval (read: Central Philippine University) in Iloilo. Ever since I stepped foot in the Ateneo, I've been thinking about jogging around the campus. Come second semester, I never had. I'm not sure if I was intimidated by the idea of jogging again (the soreness, eek!) or just sloth.

An awesome badge I got from smashrun.com. "I got 5k bitch."

Finally, I'm back to running. I began last Sunday by running an estimate of 9.5 kilometers or 5.90 miles (I use Google Maps to estimate the span of my route)!

I am currently in the library, weighing the pros and cons of getting a haircut later. 

Pros: Hair will no more reroute sweat to my eyes while I jog to "Fire In Your New Shoes" by Dragonette and Kaskade. Could be easily avoided by wearing a manly headband. 

Cons: Having to sit on a chair for a long time while being still - plus the annoying snips of hair that go into places.

ADD ME UP ON SMASHRUN.COM, an awesome and pretty online service I use to keep track of my running. Link!

So far, so tiring

Its been a long time since the last update. I've been trying to interact more with the physical surroundings. I have cut back on social networking. Yay! So here are some photos. Enjoy cause these are all I have.

Above: Bracelets we made out of strings of fabric that came with some of the

baby clothes that we sold during the rummage sale. 

Below: Me helping out with the rummage sale together with my fellow Health Sciences majors.

It was fun and we went over our 'revenue' goal. Yay! My experience

with rummage sales is now above mediocracy, I have a career!

Tickets to the annual mega party of the Ateneo Junior Marketing Association (AJMA). Unbeknownst (lol) to a lot of people, I am a member of AJMA but I was never active because I lost track of all

their activities. I swear, next year, I'll be more active.  BTW, the party was awesome. Really, really awesome.

Before college, I regularly jogged at night to trim the fat and prevent atrophy. Last night, I jogged several laps around the Ateneo and now, I feel so powerful and sexy. "I must jog everynight!", I concluded while appreciating the illusion of physical confidence I earned. 

I'll probably make a new blog post later after I sort things out with my formal postlab which I have been wrestling with since earlier today. 

Too fast

Posted two letters again (correo aereo, postman speak). One for a batch mate who wrote me a high school graduation letter (but I refused to accept it because I haven't made mine yet by that time), one for my mom to update her of my current status. She told me the birthday card and birthday letter haven't arrived yet. Wow. Too fast.

Happy Birthday Mama!

Figure

Dark, brown eyes
Mirrors me!
They speak clearly, words
of sacrifice and love

The lips do not part.

On her chair, facing
to the right, in her eyes
Thought, calm against war.
Hands, scarred but proud.

The cup of coffee
sends a steam to her lungs
She sips slowly and wisely
making hollow the cup

But not less warm!
Her hands around it
thinking ahead, she eyes the sink
And let goes

The air moves slowly
Sharp against the creases
on her body! But she sits
as if she doesn’t know

How much she is loved
I can begin to tell,
But we are against words
as they move the air
around her even more.

Her hands are against her
not flailing for grasp!
Instead, she prefers sight
over the contact of touch.

I go hungry but I am not fed
rather I am observed as if
emptiness wasn’t a void.
She knew better for her mind

was the air of thought.

 *an original poem for my mother, still a very raw draft

It’s my mother’s birthday and to make it special, I sent her mail! Who knew the Philippines still had a public postal service? (hysterical laughter)

Not a lot of people know this but if you dig deep enough through her closet, you will find a leather-bound book filled with stamps from a lot of countries. My mother collects stamps!

This is shocking because my mother is a very practical lady. I never thought she would spend her time arranging tiny paper squares in an album. If only I could post pictures of her collection! Its truly fascinating that the first time I saw it, I told everyone in my high school about it. Haha. She kept it a secret for so long, probably to keep it away from my meddling hands.

I wrote her a two-page, personal later. They still owe me one after they forgot about the palanca letter they had to make for me for my pre-graduation high school retreat (they probably thought it was too sappy and unpractical, ha!). Aside from that, I included in the mail a picture of me releasing a paper lantern during UP’s Lantern Parade (I’m from Ateneo but I’m technically cross-enrolled) with details on the back. Just like the one I read about in books!

Of course, I couldn’t let that letter proceed without any self promotion! That would be silly and unlike me so I made a really simple card with her photo and mine while holding up a “happy birthday” sign side-by-side, in black and white with a simple “Happy Birthday, Mama” note below. Awww...

I dropped it off at the PhilPost office in UP (told ya’, cross-enrolled) with a Christmas card I was supposed to give to a good friend at the airport (but thanks to AirPhil for delaying my flight!)

BTW, I am still extremely guilty over almost forgetting to greet my father Happy Birthday last December. I was just too busy and I felt like crap after losing my phone and I was jumping from one homework to another. I would find him a gift and mail it to him, of course, using PhilPost! I’m sure he’d appreciate it. I could even write the date wrong so it would look like my mail just got stuck on its way!

You might suggest using e-mail which involves hitting “Send” instead of licking the envelopes shut and salivating to secure the stamps in place. Brilliant! But the magic from email had been long gone and was returned to the postal office. My parents don’t have e-mails. Well, I made them accounts but they never needed it so know, its filled with promotions from herbal companies.

Wild Beasts Music (with Crayons!)

My first 3 days in school for 2012 has been dealt with and now, let me spend my first weekend!

School has been nice so far and I've been keeping myself busy with schoolwork. Its not only being bored that brings me down, having to stretch every minute cramming and not getting enough sleep  hassle me just as much. Must stay away from them to survive.

Aside from Bohemian Rhapsody asking me to do the fandango, there is this other song that keeps on popping into my head on random parts of the day like a broken radio implanted on my head. Shake it to the right angle and music! 

It's "The Devil's Crayon" by Wild Beasts, an indie band you probably haven't heard of. This song keeps on playing when I put my iPod on shuffle but its alright because although its not a happy song, I felt really lucky when I first found it inside the vastness of the internet.

Definitely will keep it inside my head for a longer time.

"This truly is the devil's crayon
Tracing your shoulder blades
Aglow like rayon
This truly is the devil's crayon
That all his children can use to draw

And we are so many tiny pieces
And we are so many tiny pieces. . ."

Genius! They come from Cumbria, England and they are awesome. Maybe that is why I've been drinking tea lately.

A small garage sale

My sister sorting out the goods

Every single time I go back to our house far north of the city, I make it a point to rummage through the boxes and stacks of stuff we have, certain that I would find something fascinating but not necessarily new. Of course, it's a wonderful thing -- but not if you can't stop finding 'new' stuff. Eventually, the ritual made me realize how much our house resembled an epic archeological dig of a populous village.

Shoes!

I have always wanted to do a garage sale and get rid of the excess stuff. When I was watching a house-keeping show on television (randomly, I swear) years ago, I saw the male host standing on a floor with stuff apparently no one in the house uses anymore. His face was filled with horror while reciting, "You must remember, every time you bring something new inside your home, something must come out to free the space!" That stuck to me because it made so much sense and I promised myself that whenever I start keeping my own place, it would be my rule of thumb.

Boots. These were sold to a young girl. 

The sale went on for two days. No item went over P100. DVDs and audio CDs were sold at one peso per pair, t-shirts were at P2.00 or P5.00. The main goal of the garage sale was to get rid of all our old stuff and turn the storage building into a dwelling again.

We opened December 31 and more than half of the stuff were sold. We continued to January 1 and had everything at "Buy One Take One". At the end of the day, we were a little over than two-thousand pesos and a few cubic meters of space richer. Win-win.