To Minor or Not to Minor

... that is the question.

Well in any case, here's the low down on my minoring plans for the next three sems:

(1) Use up my two Free Electives on Spanish2 and Spanish3 (Yes, yes. I am considering a Hispanic Studies Minor) and overload the second semester of my Senior year for Spanish4
(2) Take Cross Cultural Communications and some other ME elective whenever possible.

Sembreak Conundrums

And so the patterns begin once more. Not that I'm complaining though, I love the free time. Don't you? If anything, I feel amazed at how late I can wake up (after going through a sem where my standard getting-up time falls between 6am to 7am). Also, there's that huge unmoved collection of books for pleasure reading, 5 kilos of unopened plaster of paris for my latest sculpture, Chopin's nocturnes resting on my dusty piano, some charcoal and an untouched sketchpad. But alas, sitting on my bed, still half-asleep, I feel neither the inclination to move any other muscle than the ones I use for typing out this entry, nor the desire to do anything but watch How I Met Your Mother re-runs. haha *Sigh.* Such is the lazy bum I have become, and what, it's only been like two weeks?

Of late though, a number of certain things have caught my fancy. At the forefront of these would be SEO, or search engine optimization. And man, have I been punching out articles for it like a madfellow in the past few days. So much so that my daily schedule seems like this: (1) Get up at noon, (2) Eat, (3) Churn out 3 to 4 hubs, (4) Exercise, (5) Chat or hone my piano chops, (6) Eat, (7) Do 5 to 6 more hubs, (8) Sleep. How lovely. Well, I really hope I finish a hundred hubs and get my first 10 dollars soon (meaning within sembreak at least). haha. In addition, as previously stated, I've been dabbling with sculpture, oil painting, and the like. Gotta get the artist vibes rolling, you know.

Kidding aside, here's a breakdown of some of the stuff I plan to do in the remainder of the sembreak.
1. ASLA (Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly)
2. Visit the Luna/Hidalgo paintings again in the Lopez Museum as well as the National Museum
3. Reach a hundred hubs on hubpages (and earn!)
4. Get started with niche building on blogspot
5. Finish one decent plaster sculpture and do one painting
6. Finish Don Quixote!
7. Become a Math Tutor? (c/o Ma'am Irene Peralejo)
8. Finish Chopin's Nocturne in Eflat
9. Re-learn how to drive
10. Take the bus, get lost in some province, and attempt to find a way back home with 500 pesos and an ATM, with penalties for every withdrawal. (c/o Mara) haha

Officially SMEG

Cheers to the impracticality of impossibility,
To spitting at the face of improbability,
To the death-defying and delirious,
To restless nights and wistful hope.
Cheers to the impassioned battle against overwhelming odds
To the tears of anguish and monumental comebacks,
To the power of the Will and One Supreme Effort
To this rough road, and boulders seemingly insurmountable.
Cheers to prayer,
To tenacity,
To the undeniable power of the human spirit
Which makes heroes of men,
And pulls from the depths of hallowed darkness,
Our steadfast dreams to light.

-October 15, 2009

I Miss You Dad

I wish I could have one last chance to have that:
one last evening car ride,
one last conversation,
one last driving lesson,
one last laugh,
one last man-hug,
one last pat on the back
one last lecture
one last handshake
one last opportunity to play music for you.

If only I could see you right here,
And not just through photos anymore.
If only I could hear your voice again,
Not from some video cam,
But Live.

If only I could hold your hand
Like I always used to as a boy
Than as a 19 year old
Desperately clinging on to the memory
Of the warmth of your voice.

Perhaps I would have done this or that differently.
And maybe perhaps this life would have been easier to deal with.

The Futility of Fail-Safe

No more back ups. No more excuses. None of these excessive inhibitions. These last few weeks of school will be nothing less than history-in-the-making, nothing less than my absolute 110%. From now till the last day of school, I am fully committed to owning my academics.

In line with this, there are two quotes which perhaps capture what I feel at the moment:

"The real tragedy is the tragedy of a man who never in life braces himself for ONE SUPREME EFFORT" -Arnold Bennet.

"Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light" -Dylan Thomas

OCTOBER 21. 

Do You Fancy These Times

A whole week's worth of suspensions really does wonders in mangling your study habits. Seriously, can anyone focus in now? *Sigh* Well, the break's nearly over, Pepeng hasn't hit its full stride yet (will it ever?), and we're back to figuring out what to do with the homeworks/papers we either (1) didn't do, (2) did, but not completely, (3) lost in Ondoy's onslaught, or (4) tossed into the bin (for those rejoicing at the Optional requirements ruling).

To keep myself busy I listed some of the books I intend to finish reading over the next few days/weeks:

1. The Google Story - check

2. Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers - check

3. Retire Young Retire Rich

4. Rich Dad's Guide to Investing

5. Business Statistics in Practice - uck

I Can Feel the Chestnuts Roasting

I wonder how things will be this Christmas season? Where will we be? What will we be doing? How much would we have changed? *Sigh*... If only we had as much as a second's clue.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack Frost nipping on your nose,
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir,
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.

Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe,
Help to make the season bright.
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow,
Will find it hard to sleep tonight.

They know that Santa's on his way;
He's loaded lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh.
And every mother's child is going to spy,
To see if reindeer really know how to fly.

And so I'm offering this simple phrase,
To kids from one to ninety-two,
Although its been said many times, many ways,
A very Merry Christmas to you 

(photo courtesy of britannica.com)

Is It Really So Wrong to Want to Be an Outlier?

"Strive to find your own voice lads. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are of actually finding it."
- John Keating from DPS.

Ramblings and Chinny Chin Chins: 3am Reflections of an Insomniac

It's both amazing and unbelievable how things seem to fall into place at just the right time. Fortuitous. Fortuitous. Fortuitous. Most people have it at that and thank the constellations for such outrageous luck. It's fortune, most would like to think, and I, both benefactor and recipient, am the fortunate one. To a certain extent I have no qualms about this philosophy, for what can be more beautiful than the elegance of surprise? Or the wonder of that once-in-a-lifetime convergence of two seemingly improbable things, moments, or people?  Or the chance meeting of a girl and a guy sipping lattes at opposite ends of some coffee shop, who for whatever reason hearts have for acting that way, not knowing each other, are still swept away by one another?

You sing thanksgivings to the stars; chug down a solitary SanMig or two for luck and the road; go to bed with a smirk, half-thinking maybe about these incredible encounters with life's randomness; and in the silence of our dreams,... who knows?

But then that gets me thinking. How can an encounter so dear and important to me, be merely ruled by chance? How can the marvel that is my experience be simply reduced to the products of its Time and Space? Surely there must be a deeper and more inherent reason at play.

Take the coffee shop girl and guy for example. Was their connection brought about by being in the same place and time? Why, hundreds of people pass by Starbucks everyday! Perhaps ladies more lovely or men more dashing have passed by and yet the connection shared by the two aforementioned characters is different. Was it because of her smile? Was it because of his eyes? But then again, these people smile and look at their own friends every single day without anything happening, without anyone falling head over heels with them (or so they think).

In short, these lead me to believe that there must be something more to encounters than mere chance. But as to what it is? I don't know. Should I deign to call it fate? I wouldn't be wrong in that respect either. But how can destiny and fortune, two totally antipodal concepts meet eye to eye?

The answer still escapes me.

All I can say though is that while we may never really figure out why these things happen, it is these seemingly transient and fortuitous encounters, these Marcellian mysteries, which make life both uniquivocally tragic and truly splendid.

*A note though: the coffee story is purely hypothetical :)

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

BY THE HAIR ON THE BACK OF MY NECK, I F*CKING MADE IT IN FIN105.

And oh, I'm taking a raincheck by the way on my Philo, OR, and histo exams (as well as Pos, if that's possible).

Now only STAT stands in the way of me and SMEG.

IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING.