What I thought was supposed to be a simple interview became a sort-of soiree slash bonding session with four girls, an honor student from Ilocos Norte, and a guy from Alabang. I spent the whole Saturday for the AFS interview for the applicants to Japan (haha, sounds like we’re applying as Japayukis). The whole day!

Interviews with different panelists, group activities, and tons of waiting hours. Tiring!

The whole thing ended at six. I had to walk from ISSI in UP (where the interview was held) all the way to the church. I just walked. Hehe.

I wish I get the call tomorrow. I really want to get to Japan. I’m excited!

CAT was hell. Literally. Today was unusually hot (or it may be just because I haven’t stayed under the torrid sun for that long). We were like baking in a giant oven humid with evaporated sweat (from our bodies and from the grass of the CAT field).

What’s more annoying, the school shuttle didn’t pick us up. Tired as I was, I was forced to commute again. Phew!

Even though among my friends in class, I am the least fanatic about our school and about basketball (hence most cynical), I still caught the game high.

We were dismissed at 1 PM from school so we could watch our UAAP juniors finals game one against Adamson at Araneta. (They were selling hundreds of tickets yesterday in school). So we all hitched a ride with Jake. Seated on the front rows of Upper A.

Nice game, on the last thirty seconds, Adamson was leading 77-78. Ateneo was in possession of the ball and then Jai Reyes attempted to make a three-point shot, and did it! We were jumping like mad! Great. No, but for us O-boys the best player of the game was our class president, Mark Encarnacion! 19 points! Highest scorer of the game from Ateneo!

So after that, we decided to stay at Araneta (and therefore devoid those who possess seniors game tickets of seats) and watched the seniors game against FEU. You know what, I could’ve maintained my game high at a high if not for the people around me. To my right were a group of apparently rich fat-bellied alumni betting up to forty thousand pesos before the game, and insulting the FEU crowd as squatters. Behind me were a bunch of arrogant asshole high schoolers who were taunting insults and cusses every minute against FEU calling them jologs (the same way they previously did with Adamson). You see, there’s something about the Atenean elitist arrogance which tremendously ticks me off. In moderation, it would’ve been okay but no. It’s as if those around me saw themselves as the all-mighty kings of the world, and that world revolves around Ateneo and Ateneans. Anything else is jologs or squatter. Gets into my nerves!

Nevertheless, I still cheered even though my classmates were calling me a jinx because the seniors (not we) were losing “because” of my being cynical.

The atmosphere in Araneta then was ecstatic. A crowd of loud and wild green and yellow against a sea of blue. (It was unfair, even the patron seats in the FEU side of the coliseum were crowded with Ateneans).

The seniors really lost in the end. I felt sad but in a way I felt indifferent. I absolutely enjoyed the faces of those arrogant alumni in humiliation. Haha, forty thousand pesos down the drain! Arrogance really gets back at you.

To my classmates, I’m sorry I’m not that fanatical over our school’s seniors basketball team. I am drowned in thoughts of wanting to go to UP, see.

See related story here.

In my class, democracy is mediocre. Communal decisions aren’t made on fair grounds. They are rarely based on logical rationale. Popularity and who-gets-to-vote-what always gets into the picture. Especially pakikisama. The Filipino attitude of pakikisama reveals its ugly face. I hate it. I thought I’ve buried this annoyance in the past, but now I’m annoyed again. (Thanks to this though, I have an idea for my next column in Hilites. No, I’m not the Gunslinger.)

I’m watching the basketball finals game/s tomorrow. I want our juniors team to win. (Even if I’m not fond of basketball, that team still represents the school I currently belong to). But I’m interested at seeing the seniors lose. I don’t really care. I hope they lose, the way my “true blue-blooded” high school classmates have been insulting FEU (what do they care anyway, they’re high school students, that’s not their team), I want to see them lose their faces.

I always often side with the underdogs. That’s why I often always side with my classmates who point out the wrong-doings of the class’ majority. What’s wrong should be wrong. Leave pakikisama out of the picture. We shouldn’t be indebted with any dues of “loyalty”. That loyalty has often been one-sided anyway. It has rarely been absolutely fair. It has always been pakikisama to a certain group in class. It rarely has been the other way around. We owe no one nothing. Bah, utang na loob. That’s another story.

Pagbigyan n’yo na ‘ko. May ilang bagay talaga sa klase na hindi ko talaga sasangayunan. Hindi sa may galit ako sa kahit sinuman sa klase (hindi naman talaga obviously, wala akong kaaway e) pero dahil kung anuman ‘yong pinagtatanggol na ‘yon ay hindi tama sa akin. Give me my own due. Dati n’yo pa dapat alam na iba ang takbo ng isip ko sa karamihan sa inyo. Kung ginagalang ko ang anumang desisyon n’yo, ganun din ang inaasahan kong gagawin n’yo. Kung hindi, naghihiprokrituhan lang tayo dito.

This is weird. I’m not even in the usual hot-seat right now and yet I’m ranting like this. What more.