Aaaarrrgghhh talo si Pacquiao!!!! ;-\

Where you just want to sit down and dream

This picture was taken hours before it rained. Good thing we were there to 'capture' this moment. Ah, clarity.
(The guy in red must've thought we're stalking him...)

OK na, 'te!

After taking some pics of the Sunken Garden, Rye, J-anne and I fooled around with the cam, and had our "vanity" pics (as usual). Three Main Lib kids (those who often follow you and say, "'Te, penge ng pagkain" or "'Te, palibre naman") helped us get a "good" shot. Excerpts of our conversation with them:

me: (to the ML kids) Tignan nyo kung gitna ha....
ML Kid 1: Opo ate...
me: OK na ba?
ML Kids: (all three of them, with thumbs up) OK na, 'te!!!

And so I clicked.

Here's the result:

Gitnang-gitna, di ba???

Makes Graduation More Real... and Imperative

Floating Sensation

flow-teeng sen-say-shen
physical state after sleep starvation, usually accompanied by mind emptiness, impulsive drinking of cups and cups and cups of coffee and sudden bouts of hunger, concluded by a paranormal activity (i.e., finding yourself asleep anywhere without you knowing it).

I'm not holding my breath anymore.

Yes, we've managed to pass our second draft, but that doesn't mean we've finally overcome our thesis struggle. Hardly, considering that our second draft was more like our real first draft, and of course, our third draft would be our actual second draft...well, you get the flow: our thesis would be a grand third draft!

But of course, Nina and I would jump ahead and would Flash-like work on the revisions for the third draft so that our thesis will have Ma'am Mateo's stamp of approval in it.

This means more floating sensations to come.

C'mon, interpret (or whatever you want to say about) this!

Solitaryo

Kinakalawang na bakal

Inaanay na kahoy

Buhok na nabaon sa pintura

Yerong tumatakip sa kaanyuan mo

Paghampas ng hangin

Sa halama't puno'y

Ninais ko na ring

Pati yero'y liparin

Ako'y nanatiling

Umaasa, tumitingin

Ngunit kahit ano man ang gawin

Ako'y nanatiling

Nag-iisa,

kasama ang solitaryong hangin.

My heart is crushed

I just can't help it. I'm going to share this with you, otherwise I'm gonna burst into tears. I promised myself that I'll never cry at ANY Oates novel again. But this one's really a crusher. Argh.

Exerpt from "You Must Remember This" by Joyce Carol Oates:

Mid-May Felix telephoned Enid for the first time in months. To tell her he was getting married.

He wanted her to be the first to know--before the woman herself knows, he said.

He wasn't going to tell her who the woman was and she wasn't going to ask.

They weren't on the phone long, perhaps ten minutes. There were pauses, stretches of strained silence, Enid tried to muffle her sobs, she didn't want him to hear her cry and he wasn't going to acknowledge he heard her cry or guessed it or wished for it. Why hadn't he died, she was thinking. Beaten in a tavern down by the docks, beaten savagely, his wallet taken and his clothes ripped half off him even one of his shoes thrown into a toilet....

Now he was asking how she was and Enid said the usual things and he said he'd heard from Lyle she was going away to college to study music in the fall. If she ever needed money--
No, Enid said carefully. I won't need money.
If you do, said Felix, just let me know.

Why hadn't he died.
Why hadn't they both died.
Why hadn't they.


To put things into context:
Enid is 18 years old. Felix, 30-something.
Felix is Enid's uncle (or half-uncle, since he and Enid's father are half-brothers).

Tragic.

Work, work, puro na lang work!

Now that we have finished the first draft of our thesis and it seems that, yes, I'm going to graduate after all, I can now ponder things that would inevitably come up after graduation.

Like employment. To work or not to work (immediately after graduation, that is)? I have friends who've waited until July or August before they started looking for jobs, and this, for me, is a good idea. Why work when you have all the free time to take a rest, have a vacation anywhere? But after attending the UP job fair, the pressure to find and have a job immediately greatly increased. Though I want to give in to my gluttonous need for rest (sleeping, watching, eating, and wow--reading--all day), every day from hereon until April is an opportunity for my parents to tell me that I'm finally graduating, that though I'm not expected to help out full-time, I'm at least expected to help out in any way I can (sounds vague, right? The operative term here's "help," which could mean anything from paying up utility bills to supporting my sister's college education). I don't mind helping out, because that's what I intend to do anyway. I guess they just have to give me time to adjust to my new 'life' before the full weight of responsibility sinks in.

Plus I'm not optimistic about my chances of finding work. Nakakainis, the way recruiters would stutter when they hear the course "Communication Research," realizing that they don't have job items for that course, or worse, they don't even have an idea what CommRes is all about. I remember talking to a call center employee, inviting us to apply for them. When I told them my course, he looked so surprised, he only said, "Oh, you can apply as a call center representative, blah, blah, blah..." Grrrr. Sabi na nga ba e. I left him there, sorry na lang at nagpahalata siyang di niya alam course ko.

Last Monday, I went to Makati with Jenica and Joanne for an employment exam for Accenture. Funny how the exam made me feel like a high school student taking a college entrance exam. After the exam, which took almost 2 hours for us to finish, the three of us ate lunch at Glorietta, and had a blast laughing at our silly answers to some of the questions. Who would've thought that words like 'stationary,' 'extraneous,' and even 'adroit' would become oh-so-difficult items in the test? And I really dig the flow chart exam, or whatever they call it. We're hopeful, but not that hopeful. We're hoping we'd make it at least up to the first or second interview. Sana.

Sometimes the pressure is not so much about applying for work, but having work instead. After graduation, who among the twenty- or thirty-something companies you have given resumes to would actually call you for an exam or interview? And who among these companies would actually hire you? Gaya nga ng sabi ni Jo(anne), "pa'no makaka-apply ng trabaho e wala pa ngang tumatawag sa mga companies na binigyan natin ng resumes nung job fair?"

Hay, magtanim na lang tayo ng gulay.