(Incidentally, I now know the identity of Pres. Aquino’s speechwriter, haha…)

However, a closer look at the contents of his SONA made me realize that beyond his pet idea of public-private partnerships, it lacks content. Sure, he described in detail what he plans to do with corrupt officials. (He should, his entire campaign is based on that promise…) But corruption is not the only problem in the country. And his silence on these other issues is a bit disturbing. This is the main reason that I hesitated to pick him as my presidential candidate. If he will concentrate all of his policies on the crackdown of corrupt government officials, he might not have time to deal with the other concerns. We might end up worse than what happened in the previous administration.

I have other concerns regarding the public-private partnerships, but that deserves a separate blog entry. Let it brew for a while, and wait until I review my economics.

But before I tell you the fate of my toys, let me give you a little background. My earliest memories were from the year before I went to school. I was 4 years old then and my brother was just 2 years old. We lived next to our “tita” (actually she was the sister of my grandmother) and next to the landlord who had a teenage kid and a pet dog. We also had an old lady as a neighbor, but once in a while her relatives (and their kids) would come to live with her for a few months or so. There was also a stray cat that my mom adopted. When I was six years old, my younger brother was born. My mom’s adopted cat also gave birth, so I had my own pet that I took care of since she was born. So for most of my childhood, I played with my two brothers, the neighbor’s dog, and my pet cat.

Now for my version of the Toy Story.

Like any normal girl, I used to own a doll. Actually there were 2, one is just your regular doll who can close her eyes when you let her lie down, and the other was a Barbie doll. But since I played with my brothers, my cat and the neighbor’s dog, that didn’t really go well. I was easily irritated with the tangles in her hair, so there was one point in time when I gave my dolls a really short haircut. (I also gave my bangs a trim at that time, my mom was horrified with the results.) I also got impatient when I couldn’t put their clothes back on, they always get ruined from my rough handling. The time came when the clothes were so mutilated that I just had to dispose of it, and they were left naked for the rest of their toy lives. (Could this be the reason why I couldn’t style my hair properly and I have poor sense of fashion? Hmmm…) We used to light mosquito coils when I was a kid, and I learned early on what happens when you heat plastic doll parts.

I also remembered having this mechanical toy slide, with penguins going up the stairs and down through the slide as long as the battery lasts. Something like this, but with more paths:

This toy needed two size D batteries to run. But since batteries are expensive, I figured out a way to make them run manually. I was amazed that the little penguins could just go on and on and not fly off course. But this also didn’t last long because I accidentally broke the slides (either by stepping on them or they got broken while I was disassembling it). I kept the staircase part even though it was already broken, for the battery compartment can be used as a house for one of the penguins. And since the penguins don’t have a slide to roll on to, they just have to be satisfied with rolling on the floor.

I guess the toy that could count as my “Woody” was my stuffed red dog. (Technically he belonged to my brother, but he was too young to play with it when it was given to him.) We named him “Taba-taba” because he was so fat, and he was as tall as me when I was 5 or 6. We used to take turns riding behind his back and explore the entire house: inside, outside, up and down the stairs, you name it. And since he’s been to every corner of the house, my mom has to undo some stitches and remove the stuffing before washing it. I remember sitting by my mom’s side, patiently waiting for her to sew Taba-taba back together, and running off to another adventure with him as soon as she finished sewing.

As the years went on, he lost his eyes, his nose and his two ears. But I didn’t care, he still looked like a dog to me. It was the only toy that I passed along to my two brothers when I grew tired of playing with it. He also got thinner as the years went on, to the point that my mom didn’t sew him back together again and just used the stuffing to fill our pillows. (I can’t remember what happened to the skin, it was probably converted as a “counting” bag.)

I might have had other toys after them, but I can no longer remember them. I graduated to jigsaw puzzles and books, and passed the rest of my toys to my brothers. They used to own balls, toy soldiers, toy cars, magnetic fishing set, and a Lego set. However he wasn’t too keen on storing them, so most of them ended up in the trash whenever my mom would sweep the floor. I also remembered owning a jungle set and a farm set, but I used some of the plastic animals for a diorama when I was in grade school. They might still be alive somewhere in one of the science laboratories of STC.

When my sisters were born, our parents were not too keen on buying them expensive toys, seeing how my brothers and I treated our toys when we were young. They just had those toys that came with the McDo Happy Meals and Jollibee Kiddie Meals (we almost completed the Tarzan set back then) and small stuffed toys given to them by their classmates. My mom also bought them building blocks (not the Lego ones, but a cheaper brand). My youngest sister once asked for a Zoid. It was expensive, but we contributed just to keep her happy. (All right, I admit I had ulterior motives because I always wanted to try building one of those…) We even helped her build it, and it was annoyingly complicated even if we were following the blueprints. But it didn’t last a week, the tail would always fall off whenever we attempted to make it move on its own. So my sister played with it manually, and it eventually suffered the same fate as my brother’s Lego set.

Eventually we moved out of the house when I was in second year college, and we just left all the broken toys behind. Since then, the only toys we bought were the stuffed ones (after all, they might get squished but not broken). My mom kept them in a plastic bag though, so that they won’t gather dust. I think they are still stored in a box somewhere up to this day.

Fast forward to the present. I am amazed that Andy’s toys in Toy Story 3 are still in good condition even if he’s already going to college. I now wish I could say sorry to all of the toys I mutilated when I was a kid. I wish I had the chance to say goodbye. *sniff*

If I was the one funding the project, this definitely makes sense. Because there is money to spare, that implies that the people involved in the project overestimated their budget. I own the money, so I have the right to reallocate it as I please. So from my point of view, this is logical.

My supervisor thinks otherwise. He says that this is a stupid policy, why not let the people involved in the project keep the money so that they can save it and use it next year? I started to protest, but he mentioned a word that made me realize that we are looking at it from entirely different perspectives. It is an obligation, he said.

I shrugged and merely said that I am looking at it from the capitalist point of view. His point of view is clearly socialist in nature.

I could dwell on the right balance between these two ideologies that will make this world a better place to live in, but one idea dominated my thoughts at that moment: Damn, I wish I had that amount of money to spend.

To be honest, I’ve been cleaning up on my online presence. With the Facebook privacy issues surfacing nowadays, I’ve been deleting photos and untagging myself in Facebook photos. I guess it is the introvert in me kicking in. I’ve been adding several people I don’t know in Facebook, either batchmates of former students of mine or people who are also playing Restaurant City (the only Facebook game I’m obsessed with). They do not need to know every single detail of my life now, do they? I save my daily brain fart in my Plurk account (only accessible to the people I know personally).

I’ve also deleted my Friendster account (the new logo is simply horrifying) and several blogs I started here in WordPress. To my annoyance, I cannot delete a blog I started 2 years ago. It was supposed to be a blog for my numerical analysis class, but it was hosted on a domain I once owned and allowed to expire. So for those WordPress experts out there, any ideas on how to delete a linked blog from your WordPress acount?

The time is not ripe for a major overhaul of my online presence. Hopefully I can do that after I finish this madness I’m currently doing.

One would certainly wonder if the uploader of this video had the correct interpretation of that cat’s actions. Is that cat trying to revive the other cat by using cardiac massage? Or are we misinterpreting the actions of the cat?

This video reminds me of my pet cat. Her name is Bleke, a Visayan way of saying “black cat” (which is ironic because she is not black, her fur is actually white with black spots). She was born when I was 6 years old and she stayed with me until she died nine years later. I even had a picture of her somewhere back home.

There was a time when I dreamed of her giving birth. I distinctly remembered that dream because I found Bleke licking my nose, trying to wake me up after I had that dream. I immediately stood up, surprised at finding her beside me. She jumped out of the bed and kept on staring back at me, as if urging me to follow. She led me to her kittens, and up to this day I am still amazed by the strange coincidence. Fine, maybe my subconscious already heard the purring kittens and it made my brain conjure images of my cat giving birth. That still doesn’t explain why I found her waking me up that day, for she never deliberately woke me up before.

We would always prepare a basin for her kittens, lining it with newspapers so that the kittens would not roam around the house. We always placed the basin underneath my bed. We tried to put the basin somewhere else, but Bleke would always put her kittens back under my bed and she would nag me to bring the basin under my bed. *sigh* I’ve gotten pretty used to sleeping even when I hear the kittens crying out for their mom.

It’s always sad whenever we had to dispose of the kittens. My mom would leave them in the retreat house near our neighborhood, hoping that the nuns there would take care of the kittens. It pains me to see Bleke searching the entire house, calling her kittens every now and then hoping that they would respond. There was one particular batch of kittens I was attached to, and I was crying for a week after they were gone. I even wrote a short story about it, complete with drawings and everything. I was hiding it from my mom, but she eventually found it while she was cleaning my room.

So, was the cat in the video doing a cardiac massage? I wouldn’t be surprised. I think cats are capable of forming emotional bonds like humans do. Can they also feel grief? Hmmm… why not?

1. Pa-download naman ng paper na ito: [insert list of papers here]. – You haven’t emailed for a long, long time, and that’s the first thing you ask? Not even something like, “Hi there, how are you?” If you only remember someone when you need something, you better make it less obvious.
2. Kumusta ang thesis? – If things are going well, that PhD student is going to announce it to the entire world via Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, or whatever social network. Otherwise, just shut up or risk being punched in the face.
3. How’s your French? – It’s either you study math intensively or you study French intensively. It can’t be done both ways. Quit it.
4. Kumusta ang pag-aaral sa compre? – The biggest WTF question of them all. No one should be allowed to do research without completing the f*ing comprehensive exam.

Pardon me if I don’t have time to type everything. I’m not sure if WordPress will embed this properly, so here’s the link to the document: http://100araw.com/official-list-of-partylist-nominees-for-the-may-10-elections-243

Special thanks to 100araw.com for the list.

Yes, I am well aware of that. And that just makes me more frustrated because from my point of view, it is all the Student Regent’s fault.

Why was she removed from office in the first place? Because during the meeting of the Board of Regents, she is not even enrolled. This account made by people from CAS seems believable enough, and not “black propaganda” as the activists want to believe. It states that the last day of enrollment was November 20, but she only filed her application for residency on December 16.

Makes you wonder where she was during enrollment? I looked for her statement and found this. (Quite difficult to read because it was written in all caps and gray font against white background. Gah…) Looking through all the conspiracy theories that came with her statement, I finally found what I was looking for. The bottomline was she was conducting dialogues on the issues that needs to be addressed, doing research on the topics that will be discussed in the BOR meeting, and joining the protest rallies. That was why she wasn’t able to enroll. And now she’s complaining that the UPLB Chancellor has something to do with the delay in her LATE application for residency.

Excuse me, but that reason is not enough. It only takes half a day to finish applying for residency ON TIME. Hell, you don’t even have to be there, you can ask someone else to do it for you if you just make a letter of authorization.

A mere technicality, they say. But that is exactly the reason why the BOR found a reason to expel her. If this was a game of chess, she just committed a blunder. And she could just pray that the enemy didn’t see the blunder she made, but she can’t exactly cry foul when the enemy took advantage of her weak move.

And for the issues that were raised after she was removed? Yes, they are catastrophic, for it led to the chaos in PGH, having two directors because the one sworn in to office after the BOR meeting last December was removed due to the status of the student regent. That effectively nullifies her vote and allowed the BOR to assign another director.

You can cry “conspiracy” all you want, but the fact remains that it was her fault. I’m sorry, but I see it as a betrayal of the trust given to her by the student body. She was the voice of the students in the Board of Regents, she could have fought the tuition fee increase and all the issues being raised while being a member of that board. She gave them a reason to remove her. When facing an enemy, you don’t show your weak points and accuse your enemy of cheating when they exploited your weakness.

And the paint-throwing incident? The activists just showed another weakness that the BOR could exploit. Who knows where this will lead to? More budget cuts because it is a “waste of time” to invest in “barbaric” students, which in turn will force the administration to raise tuition fees because of lack of funds? The cycle never ends.

Activists were saying that we don’t have alternative solutions for the problem. Yes, that’s true. But complaining to the administration is not working either. What do we do? I wish I had an answer to that problem…

P.S. I find it revolting that some people who joined that rally are regular visitors of the Ayala Technohub. Hey I thought you guys are against commercialization of education? Hypocrites.

I have to thank you for teaching me the value of patience. My former teachers and classmates can attest to the fact that I get easily irritated with the slightest provocation. But there is just no point in getting angry when you don’t understand what I was saying in the first place, right? I had to think of several ways to make you understand the concepts. Some of them worked, others did not. In any case, that gave me time to pause and think instead of flying off the handle. So while I haven’t totally rid myself of that habit, it is less true now.

When I listen to your visions of the future, of how things should be done, I find myself remembering how we were back then. We also dreamed big when we were your age. A lot of things happened, so somewhere along the way I lost that optimism. But your dreams make me smile, and I thought that maybe it is not yet too late to pursue that dream. I pray that you do not lose that optimism as you grow older.

The best thing that I learned from you guys is how to have fun. I did not care for those extracurricular activities when I was in college. Yes, I was boring during my college years. I only maintained a small circle of friends, and we don’t even meet that often. (I blame the Math building for being isolated with the rest of the UP community during that time, and the fact that I chose an unpopular course.) It was a breath of fresh air to watch your Ramayana presentations, to listen to your Paskorus pieces, or to take your pictures during the retreat. By golly, I even found a lot of people who can relate to my yaoi anime obsessions!

I am glad that you became part of my life. I have to admit that I learned a lot from you, my former students. I probably learned a lot more from you than what you’ve learned from me. Personally, I value those lessons compared with what I’ve learned from all of my professors in college combined. You’ve changed me and helped define what I am right now.

Thank you, and I wish you the best of luck in the future!

P.S. Since I cannot celebrate with you when you get your degrees, let’s just celebrate when I get mine.