About three hours earlier, I sat with my butt freezing to numbness inside my second floor classroom. I hate this classroom because the aircon vent (and I am NOT a big fan of aircon) is aimed straight at my face so I usually have my jacket zipped up to my neck as if I were in the Andes whereas my other classmates complain about the room being a bit too warm.
But today I did not seem to mind as I sat on my usual spot, unmindful of the fact that in lieu of my "real lunch" with an occasional extra helping of rice was a hotdog sandwich, tortillas and a few helpings of chichacorn courtesy of Marge. I was CHEERFULLY reading case after case after case and I swear I felt alert. I guess I was just having a good day. Despite three hours of sleep.
Marge and Lora then went into teasing mode. "Kaw ha. Is there something you're not telling us?"
I knotted my forehead. "Uh...my cousins are here?"
Last night, I had dinner with a bunch of relatives from my dad's side of the family, one of his brothers and his sisters and some of my cousins. I see Denise almost yearly (which is cool!) but Jennifer and Stephanie I have not seen in about ten years! Stephanie I barely recognized because she had grown so tall although she was still skinny and gorgeous. Steph is now 22 and is about to earn her degree in music education, I think, whereas Jenn is 24 and now working. Jenn no longer had curly hair but was still as pretty as ever. She's getting married next year to her longtime boyfriend Jonathan, the thought of which has yet to sink in. My cousin's actually getting married?!
After dinner, we sort of overstayed...taking picture after picture after picture. I think we had one taken with just us cousins - Denise, Jenn, Steph, Michael, Joanna, Dorothy and me.
I decided to spend the night with them in my aunt's house in Fairview. We somehow settled spontaneously into the living room like fireflies in the dark - Denise, Jenn, Steph, Michael (who did opted not to go home just yet) and me and we just sat there talking and giggling, talking and laughing, talking and eating "one-year old Pringles." I would glance on my watch every so often, knowing I had cases to pore through upstairs but I could not resist their company. Who could? The thing about my cousins and me is that we do not see each other everyday and we live miles apart but once we're together, it would seem as if we were next-door neighbors. Michael said he was willing to bet I would not be able to study then Steph volunteered that she could help. "I know what mens rea is," she said with her eyebrows raised mischeviously. Denise, who was hearing impaired that night for a reason I would rather not mention (ask Tita Val), thought she heard something else and looked at Steph with disbelief, saying "You did not just say that." Jenn then let out the loudest laugh in the world which got the rest of us snickering...and snickering...and snickering.
Later I had to excuse myself because I really had to study. I heard Michael and Denise fiddling with the gate padlock so I went downstairs to say goodbye. The house was finally quiet so I settled back into reading the last few cases before I was to get some shut eye. Steph walked in to my room to say good night and told me not to study too hard. A little bit later, when I was meditating, Jenn dropped by and gave me a hug. Later, when I had turned down the light, I thought I heard Denise open the door of the room.
Maybe that is why distance does not matter when it comes to my family. We somehow always manage to stay in touch.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Around the World in Less than a Day
The minute the school bell rang at 12 noon yesterday, I dashed out of my 3rd floor classroom as if my feet were on fire. I had been itching to hear that bell ring for two whole hours and now that it did just that, I was all too happy for words. My morning started out just great.
I woke up an hour late that morning, all thanks to a nice chilly morning wind blowing into through my window. I made a mad dash to the bathroom and whisked through my usual ceremonies and breakfast like The Flash who, for those who do not know, was the same actor who played Dawson's father in Dawson's Creek. Whatever.
I got into a taxi right outside my building and requested him to drive me to school. He was cheerier than me which made me feel, well, cheery also. Along EDSA, right before we got to Cubao, cars were piling up on the northbound lane. The cheery cabbie knew a shortcut so he took that route and managed to get me to school with fifteen minutes to spare. That made my "maraming salamat po" all the more worth it.
I did not manage to read all the assigned cases for that day but I was not frazzled because I believed I was not on deck yet. The thing about being in the second semester is that you now know the professor's style for recitations. There were still a couple of people who did were not called for the first round so open season was far from all our minds. So the class's lethargic atmosphere was shattered in silence when our professor called my classmate Giulia to recite. She had already been called for the first round. Forty pairs of eyes ricocheted all over the room in sheer panic. It's open season once again!
I was getting panicky. I HAD ONLY READ UNTIL ROBBERY and not a good deal of reading at that, except for the first half of the articles on that felony! I thumbed through my book nervously, figuring out what I could do. The thing about this is I do not usually come unprepared for class and I am really bad at cramming so I was a virtual wreck. So while I began reading my notes, my teacher began to call out for opinions from my other classmates. I figured out a way to diminish my liability. I actually volunteered for the first time in my one and a half semester stay in law school.
With that thought thrown out the window, I was down the road once again to meet Em in Pasig. A week before, Em and I had received a text from Lei, one of our friends from college and Em's flatmate for five whole years. Lei had a knack for organizing outreach programs for children in depressed areas and she would usually involve us in it. The last one I attended was on December 2005 in a public school somewhere in Mandaluyong. That was our last December in college and I remember we were all discussing our career plans. We somehow made this undocumented promise to still do this after graduation. On my way to meeting Em, I began to think about all of the people who were there on that last outreach activity and what they were doing now. All of a sudden, I began to miss my old university.
I was then on the familiar road to my former school. The corner pastry shop where Em and I used discuss our papers with our Literature professor had now disappeared and a convenience store now stood in its place. The small grocery where I used to down instant cup noodles in between my evening MS classes was nowhere in sight. It was replaced by a new restaurant. The food row and our favorite burger joint across my school were no longer there. In their stead, I saw galvanized sheets, propped up like a mini Trojan wall. All this in two years.
I looked to my right and saw the third floor bay windows of my school where I holed up for five years. By those bay windows were a cluster of phone booths I would use every so often to call my mother whenever I felt depressed or scared. Near the cluster of phones was the fire exit where Anna and I sobbed like banshees in between mutterings of "Pano pa tayo papasa?" when we failed our first exam for Philosophy of the Family.
I looked to my left and saw Em crossing the street. Behind her was a familiar sight - the coffee shop where I had my first and last taste of espresso in a desperate bid to stay alert for my APS exam. It was the same coffee shop where we planned out Anna's surprise 18th birthday party. It was in that coffee shop where I used to meet a bunch of girls from a cellgroup in my school. Somewhere inside that coffee shop was my favorite chair where I would usually sit because it gave the best vantage point for me to spot a professor that I had the biggest crush on almost all throughout college.
Em and I now made our way to Paranaque for the outreach activity. Lei had given us directions on how to get there although Em was stil worried we would not make it there in one piece. Little did we know we were headed for an international tour. Right after we got past SM Bicutan, our around the world adventure began. All the streets there were named after countries and they were not the usual countries, mind you! There were the usual ones like France and Unites States but there were also other streets like Aghanistan, Somalia and Ethiopia. I immediately began to have visions of some beauty pagent where a contestant introduces herself and proclaims in a loud, shrill voice "..and I come from from France...Paranaque!" We made a left in Russia and by the time we were looking for Saudi Arabia, I was just ready to hurl. Em had stopped to ask a guy "Where is Saudi Arabia?" and I was snickering like mad because before I could be smart alecky with her and interject "In the Middle East," she had corrected herself and said "Saudi Arabia Street." Things got even more hilarious when Lei's text said "In Saudi Arabia, go to Wales." Now THAT was new!
We finally realized we made it to a different subdivision when we saw a new set of street names - Felicity, Joy, Happiness.
We should have realized it was a sneak preview of something better.
Lei had asked someone to fetch us because the way to the school calle Sibol was rather tricky. While we stood there, Bundi came bounding towards us. I was glad to see him and he is one of the few guys I know who could say all five sylalbles of Em's three names faster than just saying "Em." Okay, maybe I am exaggerrating a little bit.
We soon made our way to the school which was nestled deep within a squatter's area. We walked past mud, puddles and jagged rocks, barely clothed and barefoot children running around, clothes strung across a clothesline which could swat your face if you were not careful and men without shirts and women in curlers milling around a battered TV set. At some point, we walked past mini vortices of buzzing flies.
Don't get me wrong, I am used to places such as this but a feeling of awe and disbelief never fails to hound me whenever I visit a new area of a similar nature. It's as if a whole new world existed in here, undiscovered and unknown to the outside world. It's as if they were living in a different dimension, just parallel to ours. An hour earlier, I was thinking about pastry shops yet in here, I even doubted if bread, or rice for that matter, often made an appearance on dinner tables. Two hours earlier, I had been interrogated on crimes against property. So what should I make out of this? Crimes against humanity?
The school in Sibol was constructed through the efforts of Gawad Kalinga. Outside, we could hear Lei's voice as she manned the games for the kids. The minute we walked in, we saw faces effusing with the glow of happiness, felicity, joy. Somehow, I was almost back in the world again.
For two hours we had fun with the kids and we enjoyed each other's company - Lei, Em, Bundi, Apol, LJ and me. LJ was in charge of food distribution whereas Em gave out the prizes to the kids who won in the games. Apol snapped pictures here and there. Bundi was in schizoprenic mode - dancing Totoy Bibo one minute and then becoming one of the kids next. I tried to sit on a balloon which did not pop until my third attempt. So I was happy with the thought that could go home and still have that extra helping of rice without feeling guilty about it but even happier that the screams and laughter of 40 kids had somewhat diminished my hearing.
Before going home, we dropped by LJ's place where we had merienda-dinner. She brought out the yearbook and that got all five of us snickering and laughing. The mention of Lei's impending wedding somewhat made us more subdued but it did not last that long anyway. A minute or so later, we were laughing like crazy again. LJ offered to give me one of her cats - an all black half-Siamese which was almost too irresistible but I said I had to talk to my landlady first. I was predominantly a dog person, having had the chance to own a cat only for about a week before it got stolen by the next door neighbor.
On the way home, Em and I enjoyed being stuck in traffic because that gave us more rewinds of the High School musical soundtrack and more time to talk...which should merit its own space in this blog at some point in time...perhaps in February?
That night, as I plopped myself on my sister's bed in her dorm in the other side of the world nursing my sleepy eyes to slumber, I got a text from LJ through Lei: "It's not as exciting as my weekend gimik or poker but leaves you with the same good feeling." I nodded off to sleep, the last thought in my head that today, I had gone around in the world in a record even Phileas Fogg could not beat.
I woke up an hour late that morning, all thanks to a nice chilly morning wind blowing into through my window. I made a mad dash to the bathroom and whisked through my usual ceremonies and breakfast like The Flash who, for those who do not know, was the same actor who played Dawson's father in Dawson's Creek. Whatever.
I got into a taxi right outside my building and requested him to drive me to school. He was cheerier than me which made me feel, well, cheery also. Along EDSA, right before we got to Cubao, cars were piling up on the northbound lane. The cheery cabbie knew a shortcut so he took that route and managed to get me to school with fifteen minutes to spare. That made my "maraming salamat po" all the more worth it.
I did not manage to read all the assigned cases for that day but I was not frazzled because I believed I was not on deck yet. The thing about being in the second semester is that you now know the professor's style for recitations. There were still a couple of people who did were not called for the first round so open season was far from all our minds. So the class's lethargic atmosphere was shattered in silence when our professor called my classmate Giulia to recite. She had already been called for the first round. Forty pairs of eyes ricocheted all over the room in sheer panic. It's open season once again!
I was getting panicky. I HAD ONLY READ UNTIL ROBBERY and not a good deal of reading at that, except for the first half of the articles on that felony! I thumbed through my book nervously, figuring out what I could do. The thing about this is I do not usually come unprepared for class and I am really bad at cramming so I was a virtual wreck. So while I began reading my notes, my teacher began to call out for opinions from my other classmates. I figured out a way to diminish my liability. I actually volunteered for the first time in my one and a half semester stay in law school.
With that thought thrown out the window, I was down the road once again to meet Em in Pasig. A week before, Em and I had received a text from Lei, one of our friends from college and Em's flatmate for five whole years. Lei had a knack for organizing outreach programs for children in depressed areas and she would usually involve us in it. The last one I attended was on December 2005 in a public school somewhere in Mandaluyong. That was our last December in college and I remember we were all discussing our career plans. We somehow made this undocumented promise to still do this after graduation. On my way to meeting Em, I began to think about all of the people who were there on that last outreach activity and what they were doing now. All of a sudden, I began to miss my old university.
I was then on the familiar road to my former school. The corner pastry shop where Em and I used discuss our papers with our Literature professor had now disappeared and a convenience store now stood in its place. The small grocery where I used to down instant cup noodles in between my evening MS classes was nowhere in sight. It was replaced by a new restaurant. The food row and our favorite burger joint across my school were no longer there. In their stead, I saw galvanized sheets, propped up like a mini Trojan wall. All this in two years.
I looked to my right and saw the third floor bay windows of my school where I holed up for five years. By those bay windows were a cluster of phone booths I would use every so often to call my mother whenever I felt depressed or scared. Near the cluster of phones was the fire exit where Anna and I sobbed like banshees in between mutterings of "Pano pa tayo papasa?" when we failed our first exam for Philosophy of the Family.
I looked to my left and saw Em crossing the street. Behind her was a familiar sight - the coffee shop where I had my first and last taste of espresso in a desperate bid to stay alert for my APS exam. It was the same coffee shop where we planned out Anna's surprise 18th birthday party. It was in that coffee shop where I used to meet a bunch of girls from a cellgroup in my school. Somewhere inside that coffee shop was my favorite chair where I would usually sit because it gave the best vantage point for me to spot a professor that I had the biggest crush on almost all throughout college.
Em and I now made our way to Paranaque for the outreach activity. Lei had given us directions on how to get there although Em was stil worried we would not make it there in one piece. Little did we know we were headed for an international tour. Right after we got past SM Bicutan, our around the world adventure began. All the streets there were named after countries and they were not the usual countries, mind you! There were the usual ones like France and Unites States but there were also other streets like Aghanistan, Somalia and Ethiopia. I immediately began to have visions of some beauty pagent where a contestant introduces herself and proclaims in a loud, shrill voice "..and I come from from France...Paranaque!" We made a left in Russia and by the time we were looking for Saudi Arabia, I was just ready to hurl. Em had stopped to ask a guy "Where is Saudi Arabia?" and I was snickering like mad because before I could be smart alecky with her and interject "In the Middle East," she had corrected herself and said "Saudi Arabia Street." Things got even more hilarious when Lei's text said "In Saudi Arabia, go to Wales." Now THAT was new!
We finally realized we made it to a different subdivision when we saw a new set of street names - Felicity, Joy, Happiness.
We should have realized it was a sneak preview of something better.
Lei had asked someone to fetch us because the way to the school calle Sibol was rather tricky. While we stood there, Bundi came bounding towards us. I was glad to see him and he is one of the few guys I know who could say all five sylalbles of Em's three names faster than just saying "Em." Okay, maybe I am exaggerrating a little bit.
We soon made our way to the school which was nestled deep within a squatter's area. We walked past mud, puddles and jagged rocks, barely clothed and barefoot children running around, clothes strung across a clothesline which could swat your face if you were not careful and men without shirts and women in curlers milling around a battered TV set. At some point, we walked past mini vortices of buzzing flies.
Don't get me wrong, I am used to places such as this but a feeling of awe and disbelief never fails to hound me whenever I visit a new area of a similar nature. It's as if a whole new world existed in here, undiscovered and unknown to the outside world. It's as if they were living in a different dimension, just parallel to ours. An hour earlier, I was thinking about pastry shops yet in here, I even doubted if bread, or rice for that matter, often made an appearance on dinner tables. Two hours earlier, I had been interrogated on crimes against property. So what should I make out of this? Crimes against humanity?
The school in Sibol was constructed through the efforts of Gawad Kalinga. Outside, we could hear Lei's voice as she manned the games for the kids. The minute we walked in, we saw faces effusing with the glow of happiness, felicity, joy. Somehow, I was almost back in the world again.
For two hours we had fun with the kids and we enjoyed each other's company - Lei, Em, Bundi, Apol, LJ and me. LJ was in charge of food distribution whereas Em gave out the prizes to the kids who won in the games. Apol snapped pictures here and there. Bundi was in schizoprenic mode - dancing Totoy Bibo one minute and then becoming one of the kids next. I tried to sit on a balloon which did not pop until my third attempt. So I was happy with the thought that could go home and still have that extra helping of rice without feeling guilty about it but even happier that the screams and laughter of 40 kids had somewhat diminished my hearing.
On the way home, Em and I enjoyed being stuck in traffic because that gave us more rewinds of the High School musical soundtrack and more time to talk...which should merit its own space in this blog at some point in time...perhaps in February?
That night, as I plopped myself on my sister's bed in her dorm in the other side of the world nursing my sleepy eyes to slumber, I got a text from LJ through Lei: "It's not as exciting as my weekend gimik or poker but leaves you with the same good feeling." I nodded off to sleep, the last thought in my head that today, I had gone around in the world in a record even Phileas Fogg could not beat.
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