the perils of

Many years ago, I begged my mom to buy me this really big and heavy Jane Austen book. In my memory, this took place in the National Book Store at SM, but I don't know that for sure. My mom had hesitations about making the purchase since it was expensive, but when I explained to her that it was really a collection of 3 Austen novels ( Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , and Persuasion ) and therefore worth the money, she acceeded to my demand request. So that night, I set to work trying to read the famed  Pride and Prejudice.  I was not a reader of classics, so I really wanted my first to be special. I affixed small, neon strips of paper next to sentences that I liked. Whenever I encountered an unfamiliar word, I looked it up in our big dictionary (yes, the old-fashioned way;  hindi pa uso ang Internet noon)  and wrote it down on a Post-It. Needless to say, it was the most effort I had ever  put into reading a work of fiction. Alas, my young and fee...

         Hello! I've got a lot of cool stuff I want to blog about (Sagada, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro) but this post has been quietly sitting in my Drafts for some time, just waiting to be published, so I'll start with this.          In case you didn't know by now, a lot of colleges in the Philippines are shifting the academic calendar from June-March to August-May. Since Ateneo de Manila is one of those colleges, for the first time ever our year will start in August 2015, and our second semester will end in May 2016. Which means that basically everyone in an Ateneo de Manila school (from grade school to post grad) is going to get a four-month break this year! Well, except for the seniors who graduated this year, because they're headed straight for unemployment (mehehehe).            So if you asked anyone from Ateneo what they've been up to, likely you'll get an answer involving the word "bum." Sometime...

" Looks like someone went too magis on birthday cake." This was one of three greeting cards that I made for design class. The catch was that I had to pretend like Ateneo hired me to design greeting cards for them. Yeah, I know the caption sucks.  This is probably the first time I've ever actually illustrated something from scratch. Most of my previous work I based off pictures from the Internet. So this is a design milestone! Yay! In other news, I've been meaning to read The Great Gatsby for a long time now. But I couldn't get my hands on a copy. The library's sole copy was missing, and it's too expensive to buy from bookstores (it sells for like P600. There was a version that was less than P300, but that was the freaking movie cover book. I avoid movie cover books). Anyway, fortunately for me I found a copy that was only P90 at the Zeitgeist book sale in Ateneo! God bless you, book sales. 

I just finished reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood . I loved it. I'm not about to write a review of it, but I just wanted to write for the sake of releasing these weird feelings of... I don't even know. Melancholy? Shock? Joy? A little back story: I've been searching for a cheap copy of the book for some years now. It goes for around P600 (if I'm not mistaken) at Fully Booked (and presumably, in all the other commercial bookstores). It only occurred to me last week that I could borrow it from the Rizal Library. Which I did. On Friday morning I found myself by my lonesome, what with all my friends at immersion and all (yeah, the few friends I had just had to go on immersion on the same day). It was the perfect time to get started on Norwegian Wood, but I had just finished Abundance of Katherines the night before and I didn't want to move on just yet. (I like to take breaks in between books to let the first one soak into my mind. It's sort of like...

Last night I went to the launching of Manila Noir , an anthology of stories told against the backdrop of (yup you guessed it) a dark and sinister Metro Manila. The book is the result of a collaboration between various Filipino writers, the most easily recognized one probably being the likes of Lourd de Veyra. And it was edited by  the  Jessica Hagedorn. Jessica Hagedorn isn't one of my favorite authors of all time, but when I received word that she would be coming to Ateneo, I just had to be there to have my three-year-old copy of Gangster of Love signed. I had read the book to fulfill a requirement for Lit class under Max Pulan, and I loved it. It was all sorts of twisted and funny, and after reading it I was certain of one thing: Jessica Hagedorn is one weird chick. Anyway, at the end of the talk I was lucky enough to go home with a freshly-autographed old copy of  Gangster as well as a pre-autographed and newly bought Manila Noir. National Bookstore was selling c...

lindly following advice I found from a stranger online, I went to National Book Store this afternoon to look for "cheap, twenty-peso review pamphlets" that were supposed to help me with the NMAT. I didn't find any. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing such a thing at National. You lied to me, stranger!        But my quest to find these mythical magic pamphlets was not for naught, for it took me to the less-explored nooks and crannies of NBS. And, in a stroke of serendipity, I discovered the Sale section! It's an inconspicuous-looking strip of short bookshelves on the second floor. If not for this one, medium-sized sign that said "SALE!" in bold red text, you would not have known that amazing deals were to be had here.          And what amazing deals did I find!           Squee! Books! Jessica Zafra is one of my favorite authors. Imagine my surprise when I saw that her book "T...

This weekend marks the last week of classes. I had two exams, one for Biochem and one for Environmental Sciences. I did pretty bad on the Biochem test (well I guess a B isn't so bad, BUT I REALLY WANTED AN A!!!) and as for the ES test, I'll know my scores on Monday. Ugh. Monday. Such a crucial day. It will decide my fate for the next three days, whether I'll be in Batangas with my block, or in school with my ES book. (Speaking of the ES book, why on Earth did the ES department print it double-spaced? Think of all the trees they could've saved with 1.5 spacing. Maybe they were doing it to be ironic.) Anyway. Summer classes are coming to a close, and most of the Health Sci juniors have been spending lots of time creating a Biochem board game. Yeah, you heard me right. For our Biochem project, we're required to make a board or card game involving Biochemistry principles. The project is equivalent to one long test, so you can imagine how seriously we're taking ...

THE END IS SO NEAR. VACATION IS FIVE DAYS AWAY. And instead of devoting my last breaths as a Sophomore to mind-numbing, mega intense studying, here I am in an uncomfortable sitting position in my swelteringly hot dorm lobby, absorbing Wi-fi from the restaurant next door. I don't know why I do this to myself.  Anyway, my life has been a flurry of activity in the past few weeks, starting with my roommate Jean and I finally closing the deal on this new condo unit we'll be living in, starting May.  This is an old ad. We've found our two roommates already! (And I just noticed the typo.) I'm pretty excited. I can't wait to start moving in my stuff. I'll finally be able to eat at an actual table!  Oh yeah, speaking of housing matters, a good number of people have been asking me about dorm recommendations. Sadly I have only ever lived in Dormitoryana, which means I cannot give a fair review about other places. So if you still want to know what it's like here, ...

      Happy Chinese New Year everyone! :D It feels weird having done nothing especially Chinese today, other than eating yummy tikoy courtesy of the amazing  Tin  (who, by the way, would make a totally awesome sophomore Executive Officer for SOSE)! I remember last year, Kong Hua School (my alma mater) went all-out for Chinese New Year. There were free dumplings, egg rolls, and tikoy! Red-and-gold banners were hung from end to end in the Gym, and the entire student populace went to class wearing red.      Ahh, high school. I heard they just made Mandarin classes a requirement this school year. Phew. I graduated just in time then.     This week has been really lazy, even if we did have a long test in Chemistry (which I studied really hard for!). Fencing was cancelled yesterday, and so was Chem. This morning we had a pretty awesome time in the lab, testing for anions and such, and then for Filipino we watched this extreme...

Phew. Finally, I've submitted my Chemistry pre-lab report today. I was up till 2 AM figuring it out (and I only just finished it before Math class at 2 PM!) and now I feel like I can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the aircon and Internet here in the Rizal Library. :) And Math? Well, I'll just put in a little extra effort tonight and tomorrow and over the weekend. The quiz is still on Tuesday, after all. That gives me five days prep time! And I've already scheduled an appointment with Mr. Tolentino, my Math teacher, for next Wednesday afternoon. I've already explained to him that I didn't take up in high school the topics we're discussing right now. He understands. Man, I feel so behind because my blockmates have already learned this stuff - in their sophomore year, at that! But I'm all mellow right now. I've got only three classes tomorrow - English, Literature, and P.E. All in the morning. So the rest of the day, I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... t...