The Gift of Silence

Sometimes i feel like i'm all alone
Wondering of what have i done wrong.
Maybe i'm just missing you all along
When will you be coming home
Back to me?

There were times i felt like giving up.
Haunted by memories i can't give up.
Wish that i never let you go and slip away,
Had enough reasons for you to stay.

Can you feel me,
See me falling away.
Did you hear me,
I'm calling out your name.
'cause i'm barely hanging on
Baby, you need to come home
Back to me.

Sleepless nights,
'cause you're not here by my side
Cold as ice,
I feel deep down inside.
Maybe i'm just missing you all along
When will you be coming home
-Back To Me by Cueshe

Caveat: I apologize for this post already. Her birthdays always make me feel…cheesy. Or maybe desperate. Whatever. This post is once again in English. I have never been out of the edge yet.

Happy 20^th Birthday to you.

We are getting old, you and I. And for a long time, I have been doing this nonsense over and over again. Some people never learn. Or maybe some people just don’t want to. I don’t know why I’m still doing this but I guess some things are done for no other reason except that you feel like doing them.

It has been eight years since I first saw you. Eight years since I first saw your face. Although I have known you for quite some time, I admit I do not really know you that well. You are a puzzle whose pieces keep showing up and disappearing altogether that I find it hard to figure you out. But still, I try.

We have not been able to talk to each other in person that long. In reality, all the time we’ve talked in person could be shorter than the span of one whole day.

I regret the 10 months that I’ve had you as my classmate. And I regret the one whole year that followed when I exhibited how foolish I am after you’ve left. I should have talked to you more and got to know you better instead of acting like some spy and trying to get information about you without arousing attention. I should have replied to those darn letters. I should have…

I should have made everyone KNOW that I liked you, more than anyone else in my entire existence yet. I should have made the whole world know, if I could. Maybe that would have changed everything. I would have been another person entirely. I should have taken every opportunity to carve myself some place right there in your heart.

I know that nothing I can do can change the pattern my life has already woven. And nothing I know can bring you back to me. ‘Coz I never did have you before. And I may never will.

If you could just do me a little bit of a favor and get out of my entire life without making me feel incomplete, I would appreciate it very much.

And ill never bother you again. I’ll give you my gift of silence in return.

Orchid Mode

"An idle mind is the devil's workshop"
- anonymous

(ginawa ang draft habang nasa classroom...)

These past few weeks, I could have given anything for the same remote control like the one adam sandler used in Click. I would have given anything for some sort of autopilot to take care of my daily activities just so my body can stay at the classroom yet my being can be elsewhere doing something else.

Daydreaming, as well as astral projections, is out of the list though, since I still have to feint attention or else the professor will have my guts skewered in front of everyone.

Having not enough sleep doesn’t help either, since instead of one enemy, I now have two. Not only do I have to fight intense boredom emanating from the four flaming walls of the classroom, but I also have to fight waves of sleepiness that attack me during lecture hours. Grrrr…

My body clock is in a mess. I am attuned to sleeping way, way past midnight and waking up at least by nine o clock in the morning… And I cannot sleep early. I waste more hours trying to get myself to sleep early than sleeping itself… And this term, I HAVE TO WAKE UP BY 5:00 AM! That’s an average of four hours stolen from me. And I get very irritated sometimes, I feel cheated of what is due. I feel like a drunk the whole day, lightheaded and very drowsy.

And let me attest to the fact that classrooms during lectures are very, very conducive to sleeping…especially those air-conditioned rooms, ah…paradise for the sleepyheads. I’m not lying if I tell you that I sleep longer at the TNB office than at my own bed. Sometimes I even sleep longer while riding the fx than hugging my pillow.

Yet there are so many things to do…and I feel like I do not have enough hands to do each one. Two hands can only do so much. ninong cannot do everything.

That is one hell of an alibi to justify why I am in orchid mode. Maybe it should have been parasite mode but I think the word parasite is too strong a word, especially when it is applied to me. Haha. If you have heard, orchids and trees employ a symbiotic relationship called commensalism wherein one party benefits from the other. But unlike parasitism, the other party is not harmed by the symbiosis. Likewise, I benefit from the work of my groupmates, but I don’t think I harm them in any way. I will help them should they require it, but since they do not ask, I assume they can do it themselves.

Being an editor is no easy job. NO EASY JOB. Sir ean can attest to that. And I do not envy sir ean for being the features editor. As sports editor, I only manage two pages while he manages at least four to five pages. I don’t know how he finds the time, but if I have to do his job and everything else, you can just kill me now and be done with it. Allow me to rest in peace.

See this blog post? It’s in English. I rarely do English blogs anymore but when I do them, I’m a bit on the edge of breaking down. Also, editing and writing articles, just grows on you, I guess. If you do them for the better part of your time, it grows on you. And this software-engineering-lecture-class-powerpoint-reporting-projected -on-the-wall-thingy-done-in-front-of-me is putting ME at wits end. I hope the 10:30 bell rings right now. If boredom can kill anyone, I am dead a long time ago. Bummer.

I am not complaining on being an editor, anyway. I mean, I prioritize this thing among anything else. And it has been one of my principles in life that when choosing between what you like to do and what you have to do, you chose what you like to do first. To hell with everything else. Although there are exceptions, especially during hell week and some special deadlines, I abide with this way of life.

Oh and by the way, I will take that scholarship anytime.

Distracted

How come great minds like us are not so lucky in love yet love like there are no other people to love anymore?
– tina (hana ga-eul)

Haha. Masaya si ninong ngayon.

Nakachat kasi nya si Jo….

Palagay nyo ba magaling lang talaga siyang tyumempo? O malakas lang talaga siya tsumamba?

Alam ko hindi ko na dapat ikinakatuwa ang mga ganitong bagay… it was hopeless from the start. Pero wala akong magagawa kung natutuwa ako. Saka minsan lang ako matuwa bakit ba makikialam pa kayo… Pakiramdam ko para akong aso, na natutuwa sa konting buto…pero ang asong ito ay masaya. At mababaw lang naman akong tao… kung di makukuha, fine. Beggars can never be choosers, sabi nila. Siguro tama yun.

Wala lang, natuwa lang ako dahil ung chat na nangyari kagabi ay kapareho ang ambience sa text marathon na nangyari noon sa amin last year… iba yung pagkakausap namin.

Matagal na kasi akong parang may kausap na tuod. Bumabato sa hangin. Kung hindi sya sasagot (na madalas mangyari), yung sagot nya puro period. Parang walang continuity, parang ayaw nya ako kausapin. Nung mga panahong yun, di ko alam kung wala lang ba talaga siyang masabi, o itinataboy nya lang ako...

Hindi ko rin alam kung apektado ba siya sa taong nasa paligid nya, kaya ganun. Kasi kagabi, mag-isa lang siyang nag-internet. Unlike before, lagi siyang may kasama.

I’m not expecting anything. I’m just taking in whatever comes to me. Kung meron e di ok, kung wala, magrereklamo siguro ako, pero ok lang. may mga bagay na habang tumatagal, natatanggap na lang ng sistema natin…

Kaya nga masaya ako e. I’ve missed those kind of conversations…

tanungin mo ako kung anong ginawa ko…well, nilagay ko lang naman sa Microsoft word yung pinag-usapan namin tapos si-nave ko sa file. These rare things should be documented para sa akin. Gaya nung mga importanteng text. Kasi may mga bagay na gusto kong binabalik-balikan. Kahit masakit.

Shooter's Bounce: Complete and Unabridged

due to insistent "public" demand, ipopost na ni ninong ang first offering ng shooter's bounce. pero medyo may catch. kasi malamang hindi ito yung lalabas sa dyaryo... ewan ko. medyo di nila ata nagustuhan e...pero para sa akin ok na ito e. ewan ko ba. nahihirapan na ako, actually. but still...
_________________________

Commending the Effort

When nobody around you seems to measure up, it’s time to check your yardstick.
- Bell Lemley

I guess I have no outright talent in naming things to christen my column with names like Coffee Scented Keyboard or even Soda Brew. I have been wringing my head dry to find an apt name for this column ever since I found out that I was the new sports editor. I know I could have used anything from Onomatopoeia to Ninong’s Special Grill and people would not even care. But since this is my first column, I just wanted it to sound like something special.

But alas, I do not have the luxury of time in my hands. I do not have forever to think of some magical name to put beside my picture and have you all mesmerized by the sheer creativity of it. Like any ordinary Mapúan, I have hundreds of things to do and thousands of alibis not to do it. Fortunately, I can cook up some profound and insightful reason to explain why you are reading a column named Shooter’s Bounce instead of some other witty column name. My reason may even leave you believing that my column name is no accident.

In basketball, not every shot attempt will make the ball hit nothing but the net. There are times when the shot will miss and hit nothing but air. And there are times when the ball will dance above the rim, bouncing its jig, before sinking through the hoop. The last bounce that knocks the ball in the basket is what they call the shooter’s bounce. It is the bounce that makes all the difference, and I hope my column can do the same. There you have it, a reflective introduction before the main event.

A lot of power goes with writing for the public, that is, if people read what you write. Otherwise, I might as well type nonsense trash here for all the good that it might do. I know a good lot of people do not read the Sports section of The New Builder. A lot of people just do not care nowadays. I’m just gambling that since you see a different picture up there, you might care to read a few paragraphs and hear what I have to say.

One reason why people do not read the Sports news is because our varsity teams had not won any NCAA Championships lately. Not all Mapúans are interested in second, third or even fourth placers. They will commend champions not runner-ups. But I believe this is a crooked way to view reality. Because in reality, not everyone are leaders nor are everyone topnotchers.

Let us say Mapúa has around 15 courses. Simple mathematics tells us that there are 15 top 1 students for every batch. Five batches bring a total of 75 top 1 students in their respective courses and batches in Mapúa. If Mapúa has a 10,000 student population, what do you called the other 9,925 students?

Well, you call them runner-ups.

What does being a runner-up mean? Does it mean that we lost? I do not think so. Losing happens when people give up. Being a runner-up just means there are people above us that we have to beat. It means there is still room for us to get better. But in order for us to get to the top, we need to improve not only our habits but also our perspectives.

Since all of us here are runner-ups in our own ways, we should learn to appreciate the effort that our varsity teams have poured in their respective sports disciplines. They gave us something to be proud of. The least we can do is give them some credit for what they did. You can start by caring for their achievements and reading the news that concern them. If they did not fulfill your expectations, stop berating them. They deserve some respect. And they deserve to have it from you.

The first half of the NCAA is over and I salute our athletes for what they had achieved so far. It is not an easy task to maintain last year’s performance despite the pressures and the indifference of the student community. Thus, I commend your efforts. And if I can convince one or two Mapuans to commend you as well, then my privilege of writing here is not in vain.

Nakalimot na ba si Ninong Magtype?

"...we try hard to hold it off in our hands, but it sifts through like soft drifting sand..."

Ang sagot sa tanong na yan (see title) ay hindi.

marunong pa rin magtype magtype si ninong... else wala nang update-update...

pero magbibigay ako ng ilang dahilan kung bakit wala pa ring update.

1. mayroon akong draft sa bahay pero hindi pa sya tapos...at wala akong oras tapusin yun.

2. maraming kailangan gawin sa skulpaper at kung magbloblog ako e baka sabihin ng iba na napakarami ko namang time...nakakapag-blog pa ako.

3.tatlong araw na akong magdamag nasa skul...masagwa ang sked at napakadaming design..maaga akong gumigising (5:15 am), at masama ang loob ko dahil parang nadadaya ako... itutulog ko na nga lang, kailangan ko pang ipasok sa skul!!! grrr! sayang sa oras...

4. nasabi ko na bang wala akong time? ayun, wala nga akong time...


kaya pasensya na po...matapos lang ang mga palaisipan ko sa buhay lalo na ang darating na october issue baka makahinga na ako ng konti... kasi alam naman ng lahat ng tao na lahat ng mga first-time sa isang posisyon ay kelangan laging may patunayan sa mga tao sa paligid nila...

ayoko man ng may nag-eexpect sa akin... failure is not an option.