"Today this could be the greatest day of our lives...
Let's make a new start...
Before we run out of time...
And the world comes alive..."
- "Greatest Day," Take That
Let's make a new start...
Before we run out of time...
And the world comes alive..."
- "Greatest Day," Take That
Prelude to February 20
The minute I woke up at 8 a.m. today, I had every reason to end my day tired, worn-out and up-to-my-hair-roots harassed. The night before, I had fallen asleep while studying for my MedJur exam. The last thing I remember was lying on my bed. After about a while, I found myself flat on my pillow. I turned to check the clock and I realized it was 3 in the morning. I had spent the last two hours lying on the reviewer my friend Cha made. So much for the fables surrounding paper-to-brain osmosis! I panicked and resumed studying until 5 a.m. when I realized I couldn't keep my eyes open. As I switched the light off, I swore to myself I would never do that again.
Preliminaries
For the past week-and-a-half, the first thing I do when I walk out of my room is to make a phone call to someone in a hospital room. "Hi Lolo," I greet him. "How are you feeling today?"
There are good days and the not-so-good days. The past couple of days would fall under the latter category. My morning surprise came in the form of his cheery voice when he said "Good morning!" So today was apparently a good day. I asked him how he was doing and he excitedly related to me how he was able to get a pass from his doctor to go home even if it was just for half the day. I asked him why and his answer made me laugh: "I miss Sam." Sam, ladies and gentlemen, is my grandfather's dog. "They wouldn't let me bring him to the hospita." Now with a dog like Sam who doesn't bite except when you're within a two-meter radius of my grandfather, that was a bad idea.
I grabbed my phone off the dresser as I raced to the bathroom. I was meeting up with my classmates in the university post office by 10 a.m. for a class assignment. As I looked at the screen, I noticed a small warning which came up. The warning said "Memory full." Arrrrgh! My phone, like most Nokia N-series units, has this memory problem which strikes at any given time. And today was another one of those days. Drat! The worst part was that although I could usually fix it, this time it didn't seem to be the case. I couldn't even delete anything without it saying "Not enough memory to do the operation." ARRRRGGGHH! I was gonna be late for my 10 a.m. appointment! So I called my classmates and asked them to move the meeting time an hour later. I tried to work around the phone and later I got desperate so I plugged it into my computer. As I played around with the folders, I realized that two music files found their way to a folder in the phone memory. The files were barely 5MB in total but I had a feeling they acted like a memory plug, sort of like a cork stuck to an inverted wine bottle. So I erased the two files and lo and behold! My alleged 9kb of free memory leapt to 35MB! The genie has been released from the lamp!
Maybe that genie was the happy genie.
Post Office
I got to school by 11 o'clock. I parked near the university grocery and walked towards the post office. This class exercise was out to get us how to use the registered mail system for sending ("filing" to the Court and "serving" to the opposite party) pleadings. Inside the post office were my classmates and the rest of the people in the class.
To be honest about it, it was only my second time to send anything through the post office. When I was younger, I used to send letters through my mother's office messenger. In this day and age of email, the opportunities to sing that Karen Carpenter classic were almost verging on extinction. But still, when the lady behind the counter swirled the envelope around some sort of machine for the stamp, we all went "Nice!" It was hilarious but we were actually being wowed by the technology of yesterday! We happily filled out the pink registry cards and paid the postage. The lady behind the counter was getting cranky and was half-screaming at us, telling us to hurry up because it was break time. I didn't hear her but I did note the wall clock said "11:30." Maybe it was the old-timer feel or the sound of papers being shuffled or the sight of glue being swatched on envelopes. Although there was nothing significant or difference about the goings-on inside the post office, I found myself smiling.
Food
Before heading back to the college, Cha and Anton had a hankering for fruit shake in a stall near the post office. I walked with them and waited as they made their selection. When they went inside to pay, I stood outside with my half my face exposed to the sweltering heat of the sun. I watched as more people lined up to buy shakes - mango-banana, strawberry-mango, watermelon...all kinds of permutations of fruits. Someone beside me was crushing ice. The blenders started to make more whirring sounds. I stared at the strawberries. Maybe it was the coolness of the crushed ice beside me or the sight of the strawberries or the whirring. Although there was nothing significant about the goings-on in that stall, I found myself smiling.
More Food
Cha and I went upstairs to our Genders classroom to start studying. After about half an hour, my tummy started to rumble and I began to regret not buying myself that shake. I took some money and walked out of the college building towards the library, heading for one of my favorite food joints in school which served pasta, pizza and chicken. There were a lot of students crowding around the stall. I ordered pasta in mushroom sauce and chicken and sat down on a concrete bench and started to read. More people started coming and the empty spaces on my left and right side were soon occupied. The heat of the noonday sun was turning my back into a waterfall. The smell of pancit canton filled the air. I continued to read about stuff like "True Victorian Love" and writers' other name games until I got my order. I walked back to my college building and took the stairs to my classroom. Cha was still reading when I sat on my chair and started eating. Maybe it was the coolness of the room after a relatively long walk in the noonday sun or the smell of chicken with mushrooms. Although there was nothing significant about the goings-on in that classrom (or in the way my pasta and chicken tasted), I found myself smiling.
The rest of my day went by as planned - review with Cha and Dahlia by 4 p.m., class at 6 p.m., a sit-down exam by 8:30 p.m. Perhaps everybody's tongues were all a little too tired from all the memorizing and it was easy to start mispronouncing words and names - like "ibidence," "fillure" and "Pascuashio," for instance. For three hours in class, we talked about fistullas, cholycystecomies, cyanosis, curretage and all other words which we don't meet in a legal dictionary. My classmate Chris even sounded like a medical student as he rattled on about typhoid fever and antibiotics...and our teacher noticed. Maybe it was the occasional laughter or the slight nervousness as we flipped from page to page of our notes. Although there was nothing significant about the goings on in that class - except perhaps for Chris yakking about Chloromycetin and antipyretics in one breath without getting his tongue twisted - I found myself smiling.
Calling it a Day
Today was my regular run-of-the-mill day. Nothing significant or nothing momentous happened...except perhaps when I availed of cheaper gas along Commonwealth Avenue (a seven peso difference from the gas station near the place where I live) which gave me a full tank at a much lesser cost. I'm still hungry as I type this and I downed my last Oreo last night and I'm too lazy to walk across the street to go to the convenience store.
Maybe the universe just conspired to give me a shot of endorphines for today.
Maybe the band of killjoys are out on vacation.
Or maybe, just maybe, I am getting good at letting go - and that's why I'm smiling.
The minute I woke up at 8 a.m. today, I had every reason to end my day tired, worn-out and up-to-my-hair-roots harassed. The night before, I had fallen asleep while studying for my MedJur exam. The last thing I remember was lying on my bed. After about a while, I found myself flat on my pillow. I turned to check the clock and I realized it was 3 in the morning. I had spent the last two hours lying on the reviewer my friend Cha made. So much for the fables surrounding paper-to-brain osmosis! I panicked and resumed studying until 5 a.m. when I realized I couldn't keep my eyes open. As I switched the light off, I swore to myself I would never do that again.
Preliminaries
For the past week-and-a-half, the first thing I do when I walk out of my room is to make a phone call to someone in a hospital room. "Hi Lolo," I greet him. "How are you feeling today?"
There are good days and the not-so-good days. The past couple of days would fall under the latter category. My morning surprise came in the form of his cheery voice when he said "Good morning!" So today was apparently a good day. I asked him how he was doing and he excitedly related to me how he was able to get a pass from his doctor to go home even if it was just for half the day. I asked him why and his answer made me laugh: "I miss Sam." Sam, ladies and gentlemen, is my grandfather's dog. "They wouldn't let me bring him to the hospita." Now with a dog like Sam who doesn't bite except when you're within a two-meter radius of my grandfather, that was a bad idea.
I grabbed my phone off the dresser as I raced to the bathroom. I was meeting up with my classmates in the university post office by 10 a.m. for a class assignment. As I looked at the screen, I noticed a small warning which came up. The warning said "Memory full." Arrrrgh! My phone, like most Nokia N-series units, has this memory problem which strikes at any given time. And today was another one of those days. Drat! The worst part was that although I could usually fix it, this time it didn't seem to be the case. I couldn't even delete anything without it saying "Not enough memory to do the operation." ARRRRGGGHH! I was gonna be late for my 10 a.m. appointment! So I called my classmates and asked them to move the meeting time an hour later. I tried to work around the phone and later I got desperate so I plugged it into my computer. As I played around with the folders, I realized that two music files found their way to a folder in the phone memory. The files were barely 5MB in total but I had a feeling they acted like a memory plug, sort of like a cork stuck to an inverted wine bottle. So I erased the two files and lo and behold! My alleged 9kb of free memory leapt to 35MB! The genie has been released from the lamp!
Maybe that genie was the happy genie.
Post Office
I got to school by 11 o'clock. I parked near the university grocery and walked towards the post office. This class exercise was out to get us how to use the registered mail system for sending ("filing" to the Court and "serving" to the opposite party) pleadings. Inside the post office were my classmates and the rest of the people in the class.
To be honest about it, it was only my second time to send anything through the post office. When I was younger, I used to send letters through my mother's office messenger. In this day and age of email, the opportunities to sing that Karen Carpenter classic were almost verging on extinction. But still, when the lady behind the counter swirled the envelope around some sort of machine for the stamp, we all went "Nice!" It was hilarious but we were actually being wowed by the technology of yesterday! We happily filled out the pink registry cards and paid the postage. The lady behind the counter was getting cranky and was half-screaming at us, telling us to hurry up because it was break time. I didn't hear her but I did note the wall clock said "11:30." Maybe it was the old-timer feel or the sound of papers being shuffled or the sight of glue being swatched on envelopes. Although there was nothing significant or difference about the goings-on inside the post office, I found myself smiling.
Food
Before heading back to the college, Cha and Anton had a hankering for fruit shake in a stall near the post office. I walked with them and waited as they made their selection. When they went inside to pay, I stood outside with my half my face exposed to the sweltering heat of the sun. I watched as more people lined up to buy shakes - mango-banana, strawberry-mango, watermelon...all kinds of permutations of fruits. Someone beside me was crushing ice. The blenders started to make more whirring sounds. I stared at the strawberries. Maybe it was the coolness of the crushed ice beside me or the sight of the strawberries or the whirring. Although there was nothing significant about the goings-on in that stall, I found myself smiling.
More Food
Cha and I went upstairs to our Genders classroom to start studying. After about half an hour, my tummy started to rumble and I began to regret not buying myself that shake. I took some money and walked out of the college building towards the library, heading for one of my favorite food joints in school which served pasta, pizza and chicken. There were a lot of students crowding around the stall. I ordered pasta in mushroom sauce and chicken and sat down on a concrete bench and started to read. More people started coming and the empty spaces on my left and right side were soon occupied. The heat of the noonday sun was turning my back into a waterfall. The smell of pancit canton filled the air. I continued to read about stuff like "True Victorian Love" and writers' other name games until I got my order. I walked back to my college building and took the stairs to my classroom. Cha was still reading when I sat on my chair and started eating. Maybe it was the coolness of the room after a relatively long walk in the noonday sun or the smell of chicken with mushrooms. Although there was nothing significant about the goings-on in that classrom (or in the way my pasta and chicken tasted), I found myself smiling.
The rest of my day went by as planned - review with Cha and Dahlia by 4 p.m., class at 6 p.m., a sit-down exam by 8:30 p.m. Perhaps everybody's tongues were all a little too tired from all the memorizing and it was easy to start mispronouncing words and names - like "ibidence," "fillure" and "Pascuashio," for instance. For three hours in class, we talked about fistullas, cholycystecomies, cyanosis, curretage and all other words which we don't meet in a legal dictionary. My classmate Chris even sounded like a medical student as he rattled on about typhoid fever and antibiotics...and our teacher noticed. Maybe it was the occasional laughter or the slight nervousness as we flipped from page to page of our notes. Although there was nothing significant about the goings on in that class - except perhaps for Chris yakking about Chloromycetin and antipyretics in one breath without getting his tongue twisted - I found myself smiling.
Calling it a Day
Today was my regular run-of-the-mill day. Nothing significant or nothing momentous happened...except perhaps when I availed of cheaper gas along Commonwealth Avenue (a seven peso difference from the gas station near the place where I live) which gave me a full tank at a much lesser cost. I'm still hungry as I type this and I downed my last Oreo last night and I'm too lazy to walk across the street to go to the convenience store.
Maybe the universe just conspired to give me a shot of endorphines for today.
Maybe the band of killjoys are out on vacation.
Or maybe, just maybe, I am getting good at letting go - and that's why I'm smiling.
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