the perils of

Yesterday, my family set out to a local fish vendor in Cogon to replenish our supply of aquarium fish. We did this because all of the aquarium's previous inhabitants have slowly died out, reducing the dynamic hotbed of aquatic life that was our aquarium to a depressing glass enclosure of wet decorative stones. So yeah, our fish all died. But this is not to suggest that we are bad fish owners, for they all seem to have passed of natural causes... Except maybe for the last guy. The last of the goldfish had inexplicably lost its will to live. It spent its final days stagnant at the bottom of the aquarium, somberly awaiting death instead of happily floating around in the water as goldfish are wont to do. It's pretty sad. And what's sadder is that after it died, the water in the aquarium was emptied, leaving just a pile of small stones, which mosquitoes apparently enjoyed laying their eggs in. Gross. Anyway! Proceeding with the story. The fish vendor lady in Cogon kept he...

          I went to Syagit 2012 last night, and I only have one non-blurry picture to show for it:          For those who don't know, syagit is "scream" in Bisaya. I don't mean to say that to "syagit" is to "scream in Bisaya." The Tagalog counterpart of syagit is sigaw, and its English counterpart is yell, or shout. You get the picture.          But that's not important. Syagit 2012, the event, is a fiesta away from home for people who are from Cagayan de Oro and are now in Manila. It happens every August, during the actual fiesta of CDO. And it's always organized by UP Kagayhaan, which is this org in UP for people from CDO. Pretty specific, right?          On the plane coming here I sat next to this girl named Christine (or is it Khristine, or Karen) and we actually spent the whole flight talking. (It was the first time I'd ever had a real conversation with a stranger o...

Second sem grades came out today, and I did better than I had hoped! Hopefully all the hard work I put into this semester will be enough to get me into the Dean's List. Then I can get out of doing the dishes today heeheehee Yeah, I'm back home now. I have been for about six days. That means I've got a little over a week of vacation left, but I don't mind. So far it's been going fine. Like yesterday, I finally tried my hand at cooking. Well, if frying luncheon meat and making an omelette counts as cooking. Okay  it's no fine dining, but I bet Rachel Ray started out frying meatloaf and eggs too. (The fact that the best chef I can name off the top of my head is Rachel Ray should give you a good estimate of how much I know about the cooking world.) Anyway, last Saturday, my block threw Deo a very late birthday surprise (his birthday was back in November) at The Mind Museum in Taguig! It had opened just that week. (Click any photo to enlarge!) We all put on De...

Tomorrow it will be exactly a month since my last entry. I think this is the longest I've gone without writing. That's just out of pure laziness; I have not been busy. Apologies to the multitude of people who read my blog. Here's a new entry to appease the two of you. It's 1 AM and I'm at home (as in home home, not in the dorm) browsing through girly blogs. A visit to  www.pusheen.com  became a trip to this adorable online store . And when I had finished browsing through everything there, I remembered how mesmerized I was by Tricia Gosingtian 's fantastically female posts and I paid her site a visit. So much girly. My theory about girly-girls is that some are simply born beautiful. That some girls just emerged from the womb with a full set of clean, polished nails and lush, permed hair. That when led blindfolded into a closet, they will be able to sniff out the trendy clothes and leave the more "unbecoming" pieces untouched. I am not one of th...

NSTP re-orientation at eight in the morning with the entire Health Sci batch! :) And Lafi! n_n Went around the photocopying places in Ateneo to get readings for stuff. GRAHHH photocopying is so frustrating, and I'm not even the one doing the actual copying.  Lunch with Jeth, Jules, and Cheryl in the caf. Jules actually opened up a little of himself to us today.  Checked out a unit in Berkeley. It had a really amazing view! But it was pretty darn tiny. And hot.  That's Katipunan on the left. You can see part of Ateneo. (Click to enlarge!) Bought a Cell Biology book for Bio class. P2,100 at Mind Movers. Colored glossy paper. Mmmmmm. I also heard this book will come in handy during NMAT season. Went back to Ateneo to do more errands. Mostly photocopy-related stuff again. Grr.  Went to Moonleaf and sat across the Freedom Board that was full of lame, "Faye wuz here 11-11-11 =))" kinds of notes. Why do people use Internet smileys on paper, anyway? I drew...

       According to my laptop clock, it's 1:08 in the morning, and here I am, online and sprawled out on the bed in this very awkward and highly uncomfortable position, writing a blog entry and balancing my laptop when I should be asleep and dreaming about nice things that are preferably unicorns. Run-on sentences are becoming my thing.      2010's coming to a close. I would like to make a comment on how my year went, but my mom always tells me to be careful of what I say, because other people have had an awful year. I don't want to hurt their feelings, or make them feel any sadder, so I will refrain from 2010-related discussions. Anyway, I think you can get a sense of how the year went for me by reading through all the lame things I have posted on this blog, even if I haven't exactly been writing every single day as I had originally intended to.     Do I sound somber or what.     Here is an ugly picture of a beautif...

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...

So this was the scene earlier in the dorm. Architect de Guzman, the man who founded Dormitoryana, passed away last Saturday. Today, a Mass was held for him right in the dorm lobby. I never knew the guy personally, but he must have been a lovely person to have created such a wonderful home for us probinsyana (and city) girls. I love my dorm. I know what I said about it being a terrible place to live in at first (I've expressed my disdain for it in some of my earlier blog posts), but now I'm sure that I've picked the best place to live in in all of Metro Manila. The rent is cheap, the people are delightful, and a walk to Rustan's is like a walk to your own kitchen. (The dorm's prayer room, by the way, is a must-see.) I've also come to find that despite the tiny corridors, the gaping hole in one of the walls, and the strange-looking mirror out in the hallway, there is no place in all of the big city that's cozier or more homey than this humble little r...

Hello, blogdom. I've just returned from a nice little "dinner" with Raul, who was a year ahead of me in high school and is now a year ahead of me in Ateneo. We talked about some really weird things, and I had a nice time, and I totally did not just accept his invitation to go out because I have trouble saying no to people. Hahaha! Thanks Raul! Last night, I also went out with two of the nicest boys from Cagayan de Oro - Gerard and Jason (I mentioned them earlier, in this post ). We hit Shakey's, failed at Dance Dance Revolution, and then spent the rest of the night talking about our lives from home. They're great people, and hanging out with them makes me feel a lot closer to home. :) Oh yeah, here are a couple of other things worth mentioning: I was at National Book Store earlier tonight, and all of a sudden these two girls just walk up to me and ask me what school I go to. They seemed harmless enough, and so I chatted with them awhile. They told me th...

I guess that I should be updating this blog more often, now that it's sem break and all, and the Internet connection at home is a bajillion times faster than the lame SmartBro plug-in I use in Manila. But the thing is, there's nothing much going on in my life right now that anybody would really want to hear about. For example, would you really be interested in knowing that for my first week home, my siblings and I are devoting our vacation time to finishing three titles in the Nancy Drew PC game series? Or that I haven't been out with my friends at all, and that the first time I've seen any of my classmates so far was today (four days into sem break), by the sheer coincidence that they were playing basketball at school while I was picking up my brother? Naw. Didn't think so. But I guess I should elaborate more on that last part. See, if you haven't already guessed by the depressingly tremendous amount of time I spend on the Internet, I'm quite the home...

It's 8:49 AM according to the laptop's clock, and I'm whiling away the time on the Internet until it's 9:30, when I'll leave the dorm to pick up a box of donuts at Cello's, and then take a taxi to the airport, and then take a plane back home. <3 I'm glad I'm spending the weekend home, even if it is just for two days. It's been a long week for me... Wait, come to think of it, my week hasn't been that stressful, actually. Hell Week's over. These past five days have just been about regular classes and ordinary homeworks. There was that one long test in Chemistry. But aside from that, things have been pretty chill. Like last Thursday, when we had a free cut for Chem! Oh man, that was the best I had felt all week. We were all jumping and shouting and poking each other's ribs when we found out our teacher wasn't coming. (We went to McDonald's afterwards to celebrate with burgers and ice cream!) And yesterday was no sweat! We ...

Here I am, in my dorm. On my bed. With my laptop. Writing a blog when I should be doing Problem Set 2 for Chemistry... But I can't. Just can't. You see, my heart is breaking again. I just miss home so much. My flight from Cagayan de Oro to here in Manila was this morning, at 6:15. Opening the gates of my house, I saw through the leaves of the mango tree in our yard the 5 o'clock sky: dark blue, gloomy, but with traces of sunlight peeking out from behind Sa-ku's house. It was almost the exact same sky I was looking at when I left home in the first place on June 6. Oh, I remember the car ride to the airport on that day. On June 6, I mean. My world was falling apart in the back seat of  the family Vios. Mom and dad were up front, and I was just quietly drinking in all the Cagayan buildings and scenery, as I knew that I would not be seeing them in a long while. I felt like I was going to a place of no return, full of despair and darkness. I felt like I was going...

Hey, guess what! I came to Manila last Sunday, and since TODAY'S a Sunday, that means- I'VE BEEN HERE FOR ONE WEEK!!! Has it already been one week? It's felt like a month. Haha. I'm still counting down the days until I get to go home for Uncle Mike's wedding. 20 days more! Woohoo!  Anyway, to celebrate my still being alive after a week of living in Manila, here's an irrelevant picture of a lolcat! . . . So how's my first weekend here, you ask? It gets a bit lonely when I'm by myself and I've ran out of Facebook notifications to check up on. Haha. But when my cousins are around, it's all good. Well, not really. There's the drinking. This is what everyone's been telling me since I decided to come here in the first place. The drinking. The drugs. The vices. I assure you guys, I won't. Seriously. I really really hate the taste of beer .__. (and, NO, it wasn't my cousins who let me have my first taste - it was YOU, Dad! Hah...

I guess I shouldn't mope so much. I don't want you , the beautiful and handsome members of my family, thinking that I'm having such a sucky time here in the Big M. I can just imagine how your mealtime conversations would take place: Dad: Ahh, look what Achi said on her latest blog post. She's miserable. Cait: Good. Jiggy: WHAT! Diiiich! You think it's GOOD for Achi to be MISERABLE? You're horrible ! Cait: No need to shout Jigs! Jiggy: Ha? Cait: No need to shout Jigs. Jiggy: What? Cait: NOOOO! NEEEED! TOOOO! SHOUT! JIIIIIIIGS! Jiggy: Ohhh Dichi! No need to shout! (To all those non-family readers [if there are any] I should probably have clarified this sooner: I am Achi, and Caitlin is Dichi. At least to Jiggy, she is.) So, dearest family members of mine, I'm fine. Homesick and sad, but otherwise, alive and in one piece. Actually, I'm a lot luckier than the rest of my promdi batchmates, because I'm coming home this July. Only 24 more days to go until m...