My brother and I went to mass by ourselves because our parents were in Batangas to attend a wedding or something. Just wanted to note it down.

This is exciting! I’ll begin my junior high school year tomorrow! I can’t wait. I’m quite apprehensive though.

I went with my mom to the bookstore near the university and bought my new batch of school supplies. Then, we dropped by Jollibee and had snacks.

Anyway, I’m quite busy tonight till tomorrow. I’m in pressure to finish layouting the OSO Primer of all the high school’s organizations. It’s like a catalog of all 50 of my high school’s organizations. It’s such a chore to make it! I’m not even a quarter done and even though my deadline’s pushed from Monday to Tuesday, it’s not enough for me. And I don’t have all day tomorrow because I have school! Sigh. If there’s one thing or person I need now, it’s a staff. I don’t have any staff in my department. Even a single staff member to help me do these.

I can’t handle doing the layout of every single official publication the student body releases!!

It’s raining tonight. Its great. I want to sleep early. And with the chill of the rain, I can hopefully sleep early — with all these excitement and apprehensions for the first day of my junior year tomorrow.

I stayed home all day.

I have a strong feeling that I’ll be extremely busy tomorrow.

No, not just a feeling. I am certain.

It was just tonight that I was bombarded with emails and attachments of the write-ups of all of the high school’s organizations. I’m doing the layout of the OSO Primer brochure you see. My deadline’s on Monday but since they are still going to give me some stuff tomorrow, I guess that deadline would be pushed. But if not… I’d be working all night tomorrow and possibly on Monday. That’s the downturn of being a layout artist. You can’t adjust deadlines if the writers submit things to you late. You are their cushion. And I think that’s unfair and I hate it.

But oh well. I’ll do my best.

I went to school early this morning, at about 6:30 in the morning to help distribute the Freshman’s Guide to the freshmen. I was the first one from Hilites Magazine to arrive there, and I had to look for the issues because the publishers said they brought them there last night. I found them with the guard - two heavy packages, 650 copies of the guide.

So anyway, after some waiting for our moderator, we started sorting the issues out in bundles for each of the 15 sections in first-year high school. After doing so, we went to the covered courts where the freshmen were having an assembly of some sort, and handed the student-moderators of each section the bundle of guides.

After that, I picked up the cover art for the OSO Primer brochure, which I am layouting, from the OSO office.

I got home pretty early. 9 AM.

You know what, I guess this is boring the hell out of you. For me it does. Today was uneventful. Aside from seeing some people I know in school after the summer vacation, there was nothing else.

I had my violin lessons this afternoon. And I’m getting the hang of it so far. I’m glad.

I like how the violin sounds. I can’t wait to play it the way I like it.

Anyway, there seemed to have been a problem with the release of the Freshman’s Guide today because the publishers weren’t done with the printing. And they partly blame it on me. And I kind of feel a little guilty but it’s level with the guilt of the printers. The files I gave them last Thursday were corrupt or something, the publishers said. And so I tried emailing them the files one by one. I was able to give them the last piece of file last Sunday. Yesterday Wednesday, the printers informed me that they couldn’t properly print the file because there was some software error. Apparently the files I gave them, which were made from Adobe Pagemaker 7 couldn’t be printed with their Adobe Pagemaker 6 Postscript printers. So that’s why we weren’t able to release the Freshman’s Guide today.

Our Hilites Magazine moderator interrogated me this morning in the phone because she is a little surprised and pissed that she was not informed of any of these problems that caused the delay of the release.

In any case, the final verdict of our moderator was against the publishers. She doesn’t want our publications to be printed by them anymore. So some of my co-editors are off looking for some other printers now. I feel kind of guilty. Maybe they could have remained as our printers if weren’t for me. But oh well. They should’ve told me there was a problem with the printing before the day preceeding the release of the publication.

On the other hand, I was called to school again by the CSO to do some revisions with the CSO Manual, which layout I am doing. Hopefully, that was the final revision because as of now, I have more publications to layout for Hilites Magazine: the OSO Primer brochure and the first release of the Hilites Newsletter.

Oh well, school is going to start in a couple of more days. Hopefully, that will get me in synch for all these duties.

Yesterday, I got a message from Jaime, my editor-in-chief, that there was an editorial meeting today. So I went to school this afternoon, taking the usual cab to Ateneo.

The meeting went on at the cafeteria. I’m not really used to these kinds of meeting. I’ve never been editor before so, I’m kind of still trying to grasp the whatever it is I think I’m trying to get used to. Right, like that made sense.

Anyway, after school, I went to Banjo’s Barbershop just across Katipunan from the university gates. It’s been a long time since I had my hair cut there. They already have a new set of barbers though.

I didn’t intend my hair to look like this, but now, it is a lot much shorter than my overgrown hair. It has been a long long time since my hair was shaved at the sides.

The cab ride home was not the usual one. The taxi driver was talkative. He talked all the way from Katipunan to my place (well, that’s not really a long ride). But still.

He talked about his life story. Being 32 years old, the youngest among sixteen children. They lived in Zamboanga, far in the southern part of the Philippines. He told me his father died when he was just in grade one. And that his father was a farmer and they had a farm. They were just poor, he said. And most of them didn’t finish college or just didn’t go higher than high school. That made me feel bad because I just told him that I study in Ateneo, an elite all-boys school with an enormous tuition fee. And most of his siblings have already gone abroad to earn money. And now, he is here in Manila trying to earn a living as a good-ol’ cab driver.

After his life story, he talked about how he is disgusted and sad to see the youth today. He told me he once had a drunk 15 year-old girl in his cab. Well, for many, that’s very shocking to see, especially when you come from the province, I suppose. And for me who belong to a class infested with drunk teenagers, it still disgusts me. I was really glad he was talking about how teenagers now are the … are what they are now. It also bothers me why the culture is like this.

First, we pass a treaty for allowing American troops to train with our Filipino army annually. And for that reason alone will the American troops be here — to have military exercises with our army.

Next, American troops counting to less than 100 start coming here.

Next, they start training right where the Abu Sayaff is — while the terms of agreement dictate that they should not engage in combat and are only here in the Philippines for training and military exercises.

Next, they bring on tens more of troops.

Next, they build roads, bridges, bring on heir high-tech gadgets and give our military some of them.

Next, they bring on even more than 600 troops.

Next, they try to extend they’re stay here which is supposed to end on June 30, 2002.

Next, they admitted to be itching to shoot their guns at the Abu Sayaff.

Next, the Philippine government, allowed American troops to rise up to company level and participate in action against the Abu Sayaff.

Next, the Americans want to widen the scope of the treaty and terms of agreement to allow them to fully engage in combat.

You do not need to tell me what’s next.

It was only yesterday morning when my mom told me that we were to spend the weekend at Fontana Leisure Park in Clark, Pampanga. So I only had the morning to prepare and all.

Anyway, I’ll spare this entry of those boring details, what I did while on the car going there etc.

There’s something in leisure parks and country clubs in this country that bothers me. I mean, I never enjoyed my short stays in any of those that I have visited. Most of the people you see in those places savoring the luxuries of such amenities are elitists, or don’t look like they were Filipino at all. It ticks me off that in the Philippines, the very few elite, mostly of mixed-blood, get to lavish around in the best of Filipino country clubs.

Mind you, we are not members of those elite country clubs and leisure parks we visited. We are only invited guests. Even though. I hated staying in Tagaytay Highlands and Tagaytay Midlands and I hated it when I visited all those other golf and country clubs I’ve been to, so I hated being in Fontana this weekend — that’s what I mean to say.

Just because it bothers me that people enjoy these luxurious amenities like snobs in a country so poor as the Philippines.

Anyway. This morning, we all went to Fontana’s water park. It would seem that that was the only place in Fontana that was open to the public. That place pissed me off a lot. Aside from the multitude of people — mad riot I tell you — there were hundreds of pesky flies around. Ugh. I didn’t even remove my clothes and touched the water. We left the place after half an hour of stading like statues being preyed upon by those flying pests.