So I went to school at 6 AM in the morning for cadet-officers training. A hundred jumping jacks, more than a hundred total push-ups. One time we were commanded to do some knuckle push-ups. Mind you, we were at the driveway. ON hard, rough dirty concrete. I remember myself spitting a couple of times in the driveway since I stepped into the high school, so I’m quite sure I’m not the only one who does that. Argh, disgusting. Oh, and my push-ups were barely push-ups. I found myself kissing the road damp with buckets worth of my sweat most of the time. That’s not all, there were also some other drills, I don’t know what they were called. We also ran the entire university in circles while chanting. All those for a little more than two hours. No breaks, no rest. I’ve never been pushed off my physical limits like that. I’ve never had the strongest urge to quit. It’s miracle I survived without saying that word that day. It was torture! I was sorry though to see two of our comrades quit. Now there are nine of us left.

You know, I understand a lot of seniors hate the CAT. But I wish they would at least respect and follow their flight commanders and all those officers. ‘Di naman sila papatayin eh. Saka, okay lang sana kung yung galit n’yo sa CAT ay idinadahilan n’yo sa rasyonal na pangangatwiran. Pero hinde eh. It’s wrong to backstab people, judge them off from rumors, and insult them and their loved-ones till you’ve degraded them to dust–in the security of mass chorus with your fellow seniors (I doubt you could do that in front of your officers, alone). Kung alam n’yo lang yung gaano kaputang-inang hirap yung training na pinagdaanan nila. Di naman sila ang dahilan kung bakit may CAT tayong lahat eh! Ano magagawa nila, eh trabaho ‘tong nakasaad sa batas natin eh! Ba’t hindi n’yo kaya sisihin yung mga magulang n’yong pulitiko o yung mga kaibigan nilang senador, konggresman, presidente o sinupamang may kapangyarihan naman para buwagin ‘to, hah?! Mas rasyonal pa ‘yun eh!

My body is sore right now from cadet officers training yesterday.

Anyway, first of all, it’s an okay week. A little stressful. Pressures everywhere. But the stress from academics and extra-curriculars are nothing new, so I won’t talk about that. Now, here’s me being a cadet officer. That’s something new.

Last Friday, Mass of the Holy Spirit day in school, one of the two days in school when classes start in the afternoon and end with a school-wide mass and salu-salo at night. Anyway, since we are high school seniors, our schedule starts earlier in the morning, with CAT.

So that day, I was assigned to flight L. Ah, it was silly. I mean, me being their flight commander. They know me as a young guy from section O. So with that prejudice in their minds, who would’ve expected them to take me seriously. I tried.

Hm, there’s this guy in the flight that keeps joking around. Naturally, I couldn’t help but laugh too. So that didn’t help. I mean, when they see me laughing and smiling, how the hell could that make them fear and follow me.

There were no specific orders from the first class officers so I just tried making them do some drills. And of course, since it was my first time, I couldn’t remember all of the commands. There was one time I commanded the flight to march. So we were chanting, wo, wo, wo nan wo. Then we just kept marching and marching in the CAT field under the torrid morning sun because I forgot the command to stop. After about a couple of minutes of mindless marching and keeping my pride, I finally conceded and asked one of my cadets if he remembers what the stop command was. Tsk, tsk. Bad. Our wing commander noticed my clumsiness so he helped me around with handling the flight.

Ah, disappointing.

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