Birthday Dinner

It was my Tita Little's birthday today. My mom and I trooped to her house for dinner. I was a little bit disappointed that my youngest niece (so far) Yana was not there. The last time I saw her was in June, a few weeks before I left for school. When my sister was home for her sem break about a month before, she was raving about how rambunctious Yana had become. It was even evident in her vocabulary.

I hung out with Nene Loida and (Atty.) Manang Gracious. The little kiddies were missing and we had no one to chase after. A little bit later, Lance and CJ arrived. CJ looked so pretty in her pink dress. Naturally she didn't recognize me. The last time I saw her all she cared about was sucking her thumb. Now she couldn't get her eyes off my Minnie Mouse t-shirt and was particularly hellbent on grabbing my robot wristwatch. She wouldn't even let me carry her! So I spent the rest of the night pestering her till she yelled to no end. Her murderous gaze drifts past the camera lens. If she could bit my fingers off, she would...except that she doesn't have a lot of teeth yet.

Atty. Gracious took some pictures using my cellphone. Perhaps she had too much lechon that Loida, Manang Joy (CJ's mom) and I ended up looking ethereal.

Last Week

Sem break has officially started. Time to rest my worn out little bones and shut my baggy little eyes. Though I will still be doing some school-related things while I'm here (just think thesis), I think I will get to spend more time with my pillow for the next three weeks.

I got home last Friday. My eyes were puffy for a lot of reasons including lack of sleep. I was dead-tired, given that my last week of school was immensely gruelling for the reasons enumerated below. This was how we looked like a good one week before:

Just so you know...the food on our plates is courtesy of Albergus, not Hen Lin!

No picture to serve as a testament to our horrible transformation but a description of the experience should lend enough details to send your imaginations puffing.

1. The weekend: Attended last Info Eco class in the morning. Was home about two hours past lunch. Remaining time was divided among three subjects: Business Intelligence, SIC and Advanced OS. Encoded about 3,000+ records for my data mining project for Business Intelligence. Began work on SIC documenation and reviewed for Advanced OS exam.

Breaktime from 9:30 PM onwards...my last glimpse of Mars!

2. Sunday: Attended church to ask for forgiveness (blame Mars and Chen Ling's "charming hipline") and request for Divine Intervention for stormy week ahead. Finished data mining analysis tests. Reviewed for Advance OS. Continued working on SIC documentation. Began drawing up schedule so I coul go on class trip to Tagaytay and not miss my morning flight on Friday.

3. Monday: Went to school early to test HR System for SIC but didn't get to do that. Spent the morning switching online photo albums and polishing SIC documentation. Back in the lab by 1 to do testing but had to stop since server was switched off at 1:30 for exam use. Toyed with SIC documentation and later studied for Advanced OS. SIC system still bug-filled.

Jostled with Ortigas yuppies at 6 pm for slot in almost-bursting MRT. Inseparable from OS book an hour later. Minor seizure attack at about 8 after spotting Ryan Agoncillo during Krystalla in between mouthfuls of sinigang. Studied for Advanced OS till 2:30 am.

4. Tuesday: Advanced OS test left me with temporary brain damage. Spent two hours imagining what could possibly be the difference between NFS3 and 4. Dragged my bag and steaming head out of the room with the thought that if I were a guy, I would have become an expert in "pambobola" by now.

Ryan Agoncillo sighting restore brain capacity to former glory.

Eyes glued to laptop till early morning for BI project and studying for BI exam. Last CD I listened to before going to sleep: the Love Ko 'To CD which came with the Jasmine Trio.

5. Wednesday: Lost all hope about getting to go on Tagaytay trip. Printed BI data mining project and two papers. Lugged limp body to school to do SIC tests. Shoulder about to break due to laptop weight. SIC system still incomplete.

Took BI exam till 9 with Jasmine Trias still crooning "pamparampampam" in my head. Headed to masters lab at 9:20 for SIC. Visited Mini Stop across the street at 9:30 for some popcorn and water. Spotted Hiram shooting (the ABS-CBN vans are such a giveaway). No sight of Kris Aquino's cleavage. News of Hiram shooting down the street made almost the entire male population disappear into thin air (one word was heard: "Heart").

Exchanged telenovela trivia with Leigh who worked a few computers away from me. Worked till 12 midnight while singing along to Smokey Mountain songs. SIC system still unfinished. Dags about to pull her hair out. Promised to go to school early the next day to finish SIC system. Too sleepy to feel nervous.

Raced down the stairs from the 4th floor of uber-dark school at 12:15 am. Just a way for overworked grad students to loosen up....by scaring each other nuts. Pats was not the least bit amused. Got home at 1. Slept on and off till morning.

6. Thursday (last day!): Sulking because Tagaytay trip was impossible. Got to school before 9. Jolted awake by a frightened Leigh because the computer where all our codes were crashed. Shaken out of my wits by Dags who was still stuck at home because documentation wouldn't print.

Started SIC presentation an hour and a half late. Praying CMA wouldn't bellow at us (and he didn't!).

Carried laptop out of the school at 1:30 pm only to be greeted by Tagaytay bound classmates. Had to bite my lip to stop myself from crying. Waved goodbye to everybody and prayed as I walked that I would pass Advanced OS. Had a little "drama session" with Em, Mich and Anna a bit later.

Addendum:

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Four days later...got phone call from Anna and text from Affie. The entire class passed Advanced OS. And...someone made a surprise appearance during Tagaytay trip, scaring the heck out of everybody! Must've been the "mumu" during our little trip from the fourth floor on Wednesday. Pats still was not the least bit amused!

Thesis Talk

It has been a week since my thesis defense. As of this writing, I am in school, waiting for my friend Anna who is bound to start her defense in about half an hour. I got to school before her and when she entered, I have every right to believe I looked exactly like her a week ago. On second thought, I think I looked far worse.

The entire masters class of 30 drew lots for the defense schedule in the latter part of September. There was no premonition of anything awful to happen that day. In fact, I was almost convinced it was about to pass me by as another regular day in my life which would end up unscraped in the bottom of my life's trash bin. So when my teacher Mr. P. called out that the lots were ready to be drawn, I drifted over to him like a zombie. I was half thinking "I studied statistics. What is the possibility of me getting the '1' lot?" I picked out a teeny weeny piece of roughly cut yellow paper which lay strewn on the table like cobblestones. When I opened the piece I selected, the reaction was somewhat delayed, perhaps because lack of sleep had greatly extended the time it would take a stimulus to travel to my half-fried brain. All I remember was seeing a vertical black line and I turned the paper around. WHAT???!!! I actually got number 1??? My brain went from fried to simmering. No it can't be! I just read it wrong. There must be another vertical line here somewhere...or even a little round figure which looks like Humpty Dumpty. But no! In one of those rare moments in my life, I could say I was first in something. I mean, I was never picked first during PE class when we played volleyball or basketball. Between my sister and me, I was not the first to learn how to tie my sneakers' shoelaces. In any activity which involves random numbers, I never got 1...not even when I played perya games or in Bingo! But no, when it comes to the one thing which would virtually dictate my life's outcome in the next eight months...I had to be number one!!!

So what followed was getting my nose buried in front of my computer. I was working on a topic which was relatively new so there were no dusty books yet available in the library to sneeze into. I spent every day downloading new PDFs into the computer and reading them till my eyes ached. Though I love to write, I now felt like I was actually forced to do so. I grew sick of MS Word and I found myself eyeing the little icon which said "Starcraft" on my desktop about a gazillion times. I later on decided to delete it...the icon I mean, not the program! When my written proposal was due a week before the defense date, I found myself doing a dramatic moment (take your pick "Maalaaala Mo Kaya" or "Magpakailanman") because there was something wrong with my paper and I had to undergo a serious perspective realignment. I cried a lot (What an understatement!) but after about an hour I was fine again, typing in front of the computer while munching wafers and playing Utada Hikaru mp3s. Attribute it to a phone chat with my parents and repeated murmurings of "Lord, help me" as I wrote.

Good thing I was able to finish my proposal on Wednesday morning (it was due on Thursday). By that afternoon, I was so tired I could barely lift my butt from the sofa. I just lay there with a pillow and a blanket as I watched Samurai X with my sister, thinking how pathetic Cori was for wasting away because Kenshin left. Later on, we watched the delayed telecast of the Amazing Race and as I witnessed Nicole break down in the bike ride detour, the reception was interrupted all of a sudden. My sister and I decided it was time to end the day and we slept at 10 PM, 4 hours earlier than my usual sleeping time.

Defense happened last week and I was a nervous wreck as I stood in front of Mr. P. I rattled as I spoke and he apparently enjoyed my look of utter fear. The ten minutes I spent standing there with my Powerpoint presentation was almost an eternity. When I was done, I stood there trying to look pensive and controlled when in reality, my insides were like rambled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle mixed with Dinuguan. I thought "Another minute of silence and I will end up like Nicole on that ski slope!" Mr. P cut through my silent scream when he said my thesis was "theasible (feasible thesis)." If I did not have self control, I would have bolted out the door and made a mad dash to the chapel. But of course, it was not utterly perfect. There were still modifications to be made but passing was enough.

I hope Anna does all right. I'm going back there in a little while when it's her turn. Actually if I had my way, I would want everyone in the class to pass!

Ain't Going on 30 Yet

When I was in high school, I watched movies every weekend. It was a great way for my parents and I to spend Friday nights and relax. I never missed a single good movie. As a matter of fact, when my classmates would ask me if I have seen this movie or that, my answer would be more often than not a "yes." This has changed a lot since I went into graduate school. The last movie I saw was Spiderman 2. What's even funnier is that I was forced to watch Spiderman 2 by my younger sister. What was worse than having to endure the overly-sugar-sweet-enough-to-make-me-puke movie was my sister tagging me as weird because I yawned more than the number of webs Spiderman spun. I can still recall her voice pounding at my ears "You didn't even find that romantic at all? What is seriously wrong with you?" Oh no,the image of red-haired Kirsten Dunst running off into the New York sunset wth pigeons flying off into the sky, arms full with her heavy wedding gown as she dashed towars Peter Parker's apartment (This can't count as a spoiler now, can it?) gave me goosebumps...and almost hurled me into the theater's loo. Don't get me wrong...I don't have anything against Kirsten Dunst or romantic angles. I liked the fact that the movie was full of simple lessons which people oftentimes overlook. I simply have everything against the romantic element of the movie. Haha don't get me started on the scene where Spiderman made a web for MJ to rest on after he rescued her from Mr. Metal Octopus with Schizophrenia. The night will never end.
So why did I simply not see another movie to rid myself of the horrible images that watching Spiderman 2 forever imprinted in my mind? I simply did not have the time. Everyday I was in a constant, cosmic battle for supremacy not only with my computer keyboard...but with my alarm clock as well I had papers to submit, teachers to please, quizzes to study for, overflowing trains to squeeze into...not to mention, nymphomaniac passengers to avoid. I see movie posters pass by me everyday and I think "That I wanna see" but then I end up not doing so. In contrast to my high school status as Joan Rivers of movies, I now even had difficulty remembering what a movie theater looked like inside.
But all this changed two weeks ago. That week had been one of the worst in my entire life (thesis, nothing more) and I practically felt spent and worse than a worn out bongo drum. My mom called me and ordered me to watch a movie or else she would get really mad with me. Now how many daughters can get as lucky as I am? And to think that I adamantly refused! But due to parental pressure, I sallied forth to the mall with my sister in tow. We saw two movies that day. The thrill of sitting on the soft chair with popcorn beside me and seeing faces a hundred times as big as mine was relieving that yesterday, I saw another movie again. So for two weeks, I saw three movies - the Nicholas Sparks novel "The Notebook," Jennifer Garner's laugh-out-loud flick "13 Going on 30" and the Tom Hanks starrer "The Terminal." "The Notebook" was a pretty good film and I admit I watched it because I wanted to see how they were going to butcher one of my favorite Nicholas Sparks novels. The cinematography was good but it was too passionate for my taste. However I found little tears rolling down my cheeks whenever the scene shifted to the aged Noah and Allie in the same way that the book reduced me into a little pink marshmallow. Laugh about it but those scenes made me remember Mamang and Papang, my late paternal grandparents. Though the movie was not exactly torta, it lacked the emotional depth and immortal quality which could only be effected by the words of Nicholas Sparks.

If I dismissed "The Notebook" that easily, the other two movies have stuck on my head like dried gum on a sneaker's sole. It's been a week since I saw "13 Going on 30" but it still keeps on coming back to me as if I had last song syndrome.

If Spiderman 2 made my sister think I was a total loony, "13 Going on 30" would have utterly convinced her that I fit well in straightjacket. When we went to the washroom after the movie, she started pointing at my now sagging eyebags and howled horrendously. I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw that Jennifer Garner had morphed my eyes from little pockets into huge sacks. My sister was having a fit and as she pointed her wrangly fingers at me she said "What is wrong with you? You have sniffles because of a comedy?"

Jennifer Garner makes 30 look good!

It is true, "13 Going on 30" was a funny movie. Watching it made me think of my years growing up in my maternal grandparents' house. We used to live in a room in the second floor of the house. I would teeter across the hall and after a few paces, I would get to the rooms of my two older cousins who were sort of my older sisters. Seeing 13-year old Jenna Rink conjured memories of Manang Apple wandering out of the house in hot pink spandex, plastic hoop earrings, pola dot stockings and teased hair which smelled of Spray Net...or of Manang Maya plastering her walls with Brooke Shields and Phoebe Cates posters and singing to songs of the New Kids on the Block and Spandau Ballet. When she began dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," I thought about my mom's vinyl collection which is currently gathering dust in the living room. When Jenna's next door neighbor and best friend Matt whipped out his Casio, I remembered my very first Yamaha mini organ which could play anything from Endless Love to (again) Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
As the title implies, "13 Going on 30" is a nice square off of "The Parent Trap" and "Somewhere in Time. Jenna Rink is a few days shy of being thirteen and is in a peculiar age when everything is so confusing that the greatest miracle would be fitting in. She wears retainers and is best friends with her plump neighbor Matt who spends his time taking pictures andd playing keyboards on his Casio. Jenna desperately wants to become a member of a group consisting of the most popular girls in school that she does their homework for them. On her 13th birthday, she invites them to her house for a party. She wears makeup and stuffs her shirt with tissue to get the needed lift, trying her best to imitate the models in the magazine who are described to be "thirty, flirty and thriving." But then the group of poppy girls play a trick on her and lock her up in the closet. As she cries out of desperation and hurt, she wails "I wanna be thirty, flirty and thriving." When she wakes up the next day, she's 30 years old, lives in an upscale Manhattan apartment, has a hockey jock for a boyfriend and works as a fashion magazine editor - the life that she supposedly wants.

At first Jenna loves the attention, the money, the clothes and the career as much as she loves the fact that her lift is now au naturelle and no longer just stuffed tissue. As the movie progresses, she discovers that she does not talk to her parents anymore and has long since avoided contacting Matt. Her relationships lack substance and depth and her ambition has begun to swallow her slowy, inch by inch. Her 13 year old mindset tries to salvage some aspects of her life which she has totally neglected but then there were still areas which were too far out to be pulled back in. Yes, she was thirty, flirty and thriving but still the same lost little girl of thirteen.
I laughed endlessly while watching the movie. But I also cried uncontrollably for a lot of reasons. First of all, I missed being thirteen. I missed worrying about basic algebra or simply getting the volleyball over the net during PE class. I missed gushing over Mark Owen and I missed thinking about whether or not I was going to get through high school. I missed worrying about the simplest things and I missed having enough time to dream and change my mind. Bottomline is, I missed being fearless and carefree.

At age 13. My love for food is very much evident.

Now I am at an age when my dreams are put to the litmus test. The world is now more worn and the challenges are new and intimidating. I have grown to become more careful when it comes to my decisions but the world is cruel to people who want to have sure footing. More often than not, it is a careful blend of foresight and an "I'll cross the bridge when I get there" thought. Now is my time to take action and to mold the world to what I want it to be. The question is, how?
Stories of success hound me from newspapers to the little anecdotes my teachers in university tell the class. The tales are endless and odd in mixture but most of what I get is anything but fancy daisy prints on lace and cotton. It's all about surviving in a dog-eat-dog world where the nice girls always finish last. One of my grandfather's friends gave him a book which he later on passed on to me to read. It outlined the laws of power and I found it in an interesting read because it invoked a lot of details on political history but I barely reached halfway when I put it down and pushed it back in my shelf. The world that I once saw in shades of pastel has now become a tinge of gray. My friend Sue once teased me that I had tendencies of becoming a megalomaniac. True, I can be driven and hellbent especially when it has to do with something I want. This is the world now. Grey. Survive. Hard. Ruthless. Fear. Win.
As those bead of cold sweat form on my temples, a tinker from a music box stirs in the silence and jolts me from my stupor. In the same way that Jenna came to a realization that she had lost herself at 30, I contemplate and say to myself "Do I want to be like that?" Would the chubby thirteen-year old me with thick bangs and a scraped knee say to her 30-year old counterpart "I want to be just like you?"

This is a fun question. If I were asked who I want to look like when I'm 30, I'd say Zhao Wei. Fine, she isn't 30 yet but is almost at that age!


My sister shot me an obvious retort "Hello?! Welcome to the real world!" I am pulled back to the real world again, the image of daisy prints on lace and cotton dissipating in the distance. She is right after all, that the world is cruel, the world is harsh, the world is dark and grey. But she forgets that the world has mornings, the world has rainbows, the world has rain. I want to survive, I want to win, I want to get what I want...nothing has changed. But since I am at this point in my life when I finally am charting my path and actually preparing to get my knees down on muck, everyday I bend down to get my hands dirty, my 13-year old face will always fill my eyes and say "I want to be just like you."

Now don't get me started on Spiderman. After all when I was watching it, I'd bet my thirteen year old self would say "Why on earth are you watching that?"

P.S. It's getting late. My thoughts on "The Terminal" next time.