the perils of

Hello! I have graduated now. As such, I shall be posting about lots of stuff in the coming days, like pictures from Singapore, where my family and I travelled recently for a vacation and graduation gift. All that in due time. I must tackle things sequentially, starting with the events that transpired the day of my graduation. For a while, I'd been fretting about where to eat after graduation, considering that my family will be flying in from CDO. I wanted to go somewhere unique. Sambokojin (in Eastwood) seemed like a good choice because they had a promo where graduates could eat for free. They were hard to book for dinner though, so we decided to go there for a graduation lunch buffet. It was the first large-scale buffet that my family has ever been to (except me and my mom). Dessert is always my favorite part of the meal. (Note: I'm not a marshmallow fan unless it's smothered in chocolate.) The aftermath: We taxi'd back to my condo afte...

The last day of regular classes is tomorrow, which means that right now, every imaginable milk tea shop and coffee place in Katipunan is filled to the brim with caffeine/sugar-fueled Ateneans. I have two tests tomorrow, an orals for Philosophy and a long test for Physics, and I'm panicking so much about how I'm going to prepare for them both that here I am, not preparing for them at all. It's pretty ironic how I always get the urge to write the night before an important exam. Sometimes, I literally just sit in front of my laptop with nothing to do, and I find it hard to write a decent sentence. It's times like this, when my brain knows that it's in for a night of getting jammed in the butt (yeah, my mind has a butt), that I write. Now look at this picture of a drawing of Rap saying "baby monkey." This is really all he did yesterday, I don't know why. Okay, I better get to work now. Final stretch, guys! Sotto smells like eggs

Arrived early for P.E. class this morning with just the best surprise ever waiting for me at Manang's. Thank you Tita Tet! :D  At 10:00 I went down to the swimming pool behind the covered courts. It's a very very lovely location for a pool, tucked away where the school becomes a forest. There were only nine of us in my class. Amazing. The last time I was in a class that tiny was for Chinese in grade school! Anyway, as with most first meetings, nothing happened in this one. So we got dismissed early, and I returned to Manang's to enjoy some Fancy Chocolate. <3 History class came at 12:30, and seeing all of my block in a class that wasn't a science subject seemed unnatural. I felt a little disheartened too, because I didn't particularly enjoy the last non-science subject I had with my block: Sociology and Anthropology. UGH. (Recitation counted as a really big part of our grade, and what happened was people were getting points for pointless questions. Or ma...

      Super long weekend! Woohoo! A lot of my dormer friends actually went home. While I would've jumped on the first plane back to CDO had I the opportunity (and the great amount of strength that jumping on planes requires), the weekend in Manila wasn't too bad.       Saturday        On an impulse, I paid a visit to Cafe Xocolat, the inconspicuous little shop right across Box O' Rice, a few steps from my dorm. At the entrance, I was surprised at how un-cafe-like the store was. It looked a bit like my lola's house before it got renovated. Part of the cafe's charm, I guess, is that it used to be someone's actual home. The inside is wonderful as well, but I will not go into detail; you must visit it yourself. (Oh, and the food was delicious. A bit pricey, but worth it.) I wish I had taken more pictures, but I didn't wanna look like a cafe' n00b. Ugh. How pretentious of me :|        I finished reading...

            Yesterday, Block XX had its required INTACT (Introduction to Ateneo Culture) exposure trip to Bagong Silang, the largest barangay in the Philippines. Because we're Health Sci majors, yesterday was only the first of numerous visits we're going to be paying to Bagong Silang as part of a five-year partnership with Gawad Kalinga aimed at improving the health system in the barangay. Our mission was to educate the kids a bit about healthy habits.             I loved every bit of the trip. It takes a bit more than an hour going to Bagong Silang from Ateneo via jeep. (Ateneo provided us with three jeeps, so there quite a bit of leg room. Ateneo also provided snacks for us and the kids!) Thankfully, the jeep ride was fun fun fun. We sang songs the whole time!                       When we arrived, we were split into three groups and given a small tou...

I really haven't been in the mood to write lately. I don't know if it's some brain chemistry thing associated with the weather (they say cold weather causes a chemical imbalance in the brain, making people sadder), but I've just lost the urge to type out the entire proceedings of my day for all the strangers on the Internetz to see. However, upon the prodding of certain friends (hi, Rap and Andy), I. Will. Write. After all, the show must go on, and the uncreative blogger must feign creativity. I don't really know what's in it for you, dear reader, but in writing this, I supposedly benefit from the theraputic nature of blogging. And then there's that other thing about my future grandchildren finding this blog and saying, "Oh look, Grandma wrote that!" (Ugh. How creepy does that sound? Hello, grandkids. Ack! So very creepy.) But what exactly do YOU benefit from reading this? You will have wasted around five minutes of your time, that's what. Fi...

blog. blog. blog. blog. blog. blog. blog is to me as;sklrj;klsdffasdjksfdkl; Jessica says I should CAPITALIZE the first letter of every sentence. And I'm like, "Why...?" This culture of blogging escapes me. As I look around at the table, I notice the feeling of superiority that accompanies typing on a laptop while everyone else does other dumb stuff. Whatever it is they're doing. Absolutely irrelevant. Why? Cause I'm on a laptop, brownies*. Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog. Blog. What about vlogs... Oh hey. There goes delightful* AC. Talking about nonsense wonderful* things. Probably calling me a homophobe or a sexist. Now I have nothing else to observe. Hmm... Thinking. Thinking. Wonder how much time I have left wasting Aimee's battery.  . . . Today, Ateneo finally set us freee! Well, free until January 5, that is. :| You'd think that being a very Christian university, Ateneo would have let its students run off by now in order for us to... I don't know, bett...

I'm pretty sure that all the other universities have gotten tired of us congratulating ourselves about the 3-peat, what with all the "Sorry, FEU" fanpages and online hype about the bonfire. But we can't help it. We're a proud bunch.  Make that a proud, and extremely happy bunch, because last night, we got a huge bonfire, and today, we have NO CLASSZ POHWZ!!!  At around 6 PM I ate dinner at Teriyaki Boy with my blockmates. It wasn't my first time, but I was still pretty ignorant about a lot of things - like WTH does sashimi mean. Alyssa was pretty unfamiliar with the menu too, so we ended up having what Tin was having: something guyusomething ramen. Twas good! :D Afterwards, I attached myself to Jason (remember, my high school classmate from Kong Hua?) and we went to Pizza Hut with his girl friends from the dorm, plus Larz (also my high school friend from Cagayan). I'd already eaten dinner, so I ordered their chocolate cake + ice cream. Omnomnom. Do I ...

My Countdown Countdown SEM BREAK'S COMING!!! Can you tell by the huge and gay countdown timer at the top of this post? It's only TWO WEEKS AWAY!!! Goodbye Manila and hellooooo SUBIC! (please) In other news, ATENEO WINS! It's a three-peat! I'd never paid much attention to UAAP games before, but when you're studying in Ateneo, you just can't help but embrace the sports culture. The campus itself is decked out in posters of the basketball players wearing Nike and tarps saying "GO ATENEO BLUE EAGLES!". Even the teachers suspend their consultation time to watch games. In other, other news, I just took what is probably the worst test of my life last night, Mr. Pulan's notorious English 12 critical thinking exam. Ugh. Worst. Test. Ever. I guess that just goes to show what a critical thinker I am. Hurrr durrr. Twilight is better than Harry Potter, durrrr.

[above photos] Chilling in the LS Bookstore with Jhalec, AC, Julian and Cheryl (who took that last one). It was a much-needed break from English class, in which I am not doing so well. It's a good thing I arrived early for class, because I had to go to this 24-hour Internet cafe' along Katipunan to have some readings printed. But even then, I forgot to pick up a copy of Clifford Geertz's Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight , and so spent English class copyless. Which was NOT good, because Sir Pulan asked me about the opening anecdote of the essay (which I had not read, of course) and Deo, God bless him, had to whisper to me a quick summary, which I then told to Mr. Pulan. Very high school, but what choice did I (and poor Deo) have, really. When I felt like I was in the clear, Mr. Pulan asked me to continue summarizing the anecdote, at which point I just kept my mouth shut and hung my head in shame. SHAME.  For Lit class, we had a test on the Elements of Fiction,...