SATURDAY. I had a very bad headache last Saturday. I tried to sleep it off in the afternoon before the Easter Vigil mass but it only got worse. At mass that night, it didn’t help that the lady beside me wore this awful perfume which nauseated me all the more. And that was another two-hour mass. I had to excuse myself to vomit outside the church. I hate headaches.

SUNDAY. I started playing Breath of Fire IV in PlayStation. It’s been a while. I almost finished the game two years ago but I didn’t. And I’ve forgotten why I didn’t.

MONDAY. Started biking again. I hope I can get myself to do this as an early morning habit. I just noticed, there are so many stray chickens in our place.

In the afternoon, I went to school for the meeting among the volunteers for the Mass Comm graduation. The heat that afternoon was severe. It was apparently declared as the hottest day of the year yet. It was such a torture commuting home, walking under the sun like that.

TUESDAY. I had my last exam in the morning, ECON 11. I have a 2.25 standing which is really bad. I hope my final exam grade can push my grade even to just a 2.0.

I proceeded to my grade school for the preschool graduation of one of my cousins, Raphael. I dislike visiting my grade school. Really. I don’t know why but, it just brings back unhappy feelings. My grade school wasn’t bad at all, but… I don’t know.

I don’t really like bumping into my grade school teachers. I didn’t really dislike them. In fact, I was a teacher’s pet, if you can say that. But see, I’ve changed a lot — for the better, I would like to think. And every time I bump into them, they remind me of all the stupid stuff I did back then. They remind me of things I’ve long forgotten, and don’t wish to remember, like that “bitter” academic rivalry I had with a friend. And probably because all my grade school peers have gotten each other into relationships, they keep bothering me by acting all disappointed that I don’t have a girlfriend yet. Then, every time I tell them that I am a film student, I always get this disappointed cringe from them. Paano daw ako yayaman in that profession. I was my grade school batch’s valedictorian, see. They said they expected me to become a money-making businessman or a lawyer, at least. Ugh. I am beginning to really hate them for all these discouragements I’ve been getting. Well at least it motivates me to do my best to succeed and prove them wrong.

Anyway, it was Raphael’s preschool graduation, that’s why I was there. I never visited my grade school if not for my brother or my cousin’s graduations — even though the school is just a couple of blocks away from our house.

We went to Friday’s for lunch after the graduation. I was so stuffed that I didn’t even have to eat breakfast this morning (the morning after). I’m still full.

We went to SM afterwards. I asked Mama to buy me a bike helmet. Those damn jeepney groups are asking for a fare increase again. The moment the minimum fare jumps to 8.50, I’m going to start taking my bike to school. Ayos lang sa ‘kin kung matino naman silang magmaneho, eh hindi. There are other reasons why I don’t think they deserve a fare hike, pero saka na lang ako magpopost ng entry tungkol do’n.

THURSDAY. We’ve been doing the visita iglesia for the past four Maundy Thursdays, I think. Every year, we go to fourteen different churches around Metro Manila. There was one time we even went all the way to Tagaytay.

Last year, I decided to take a snapshot of each of the churches we visited. This year, I was planning on doing the same thing, but I realized how distracting that was. I just knew it was going to feel like I was going on a tourist tour, not on a religious/spiritual practice it’s supposed to be. But well, I still took a few pictures.

I told my parents that I’d prefer we go to the more traditional and poor parishes instead of going to those air-conditioned churches of the rich inside exclusive subdivisions. I was ready to argue my points, but then I thought it should not really be about the churches we visit, so I didn’t pursue my suggestion further. And I didn’t want to debate on a Holy Thursday, with my parents at that.

Right now, I don’t remember all the churches we visited. But the farthest one we went to was the Our Lady of Sorrows parish along Harrison in Pasay City. We also went to the church in the middle of the reclamation area in Manila Bay. After praying a mystery there, we decided to stop by the wide promenade nearby. It’s really nice out there. It’s like the bay walk along Roxas Blvd., only it’s much much wider, and much more windy. Once SM’s Mall of Asia is complete, it might just get even better.

FRIDAY. My mom said the day before that we should fast come Good Friday. But no, she decided that we visit their godparents’ place in Kawit, Cavite yesterday. We had lunch there, and it was a seafood feast. I tried to remind my mom that just the day before, she told us to fast and now we’re all eating like we were celebrating. Yes, I was just trying to pass on the guilt.

We proceeded to Amadeo right after lunch. We had our Good Friday mass thing (it isn’t a mass if there’s no celebration of the eucharist, right?) there. Great thing Amadeo is a hillside town and the air was cold and it was breezy. This is really petty but one of the things I don’t like when we go to Good Friday commemorations is that we often have to stand because there aren’t any seats left by the time we enter the church. And we have to stay put like that for two hours. But all’s well in sacrifice and contemplation (who am I kidding, I can’t concentrate while standing up for two hours).

Yes, there was this attempt at trying to make these two days meaningful. And it was, even though there were times when some rational thoughts kick in against all these religious rituals we’ve been doing. But that’s part of the struggle I guess, that makes all of it more profound.

Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル). The adults of Japan pass a law that sends off randomly chosen high school classes to deserted islands for the students to kill each other off. Why? To punish Japan’s delinquent youth for their contempt and disrespect of the older generation.

There are rules to the game. If a student wants to go back home, he has to kill everybody else. Yes, all his classmates. Even his best friends. That’s such a horrifying dilemma, isn’t it. Everybody is given a random weapon. Everyone has three days in the game to accomplish the mission. If more than one student is left alive by three days, nobody wins, everybody dies.

Battle Royale is a disturbing movie. But I really liked it. It made me think who would get killed next and by whom. It made me sympathize with the dilemma among friends. Would you really kill your best friends so you can go home? Some say the pacing of the movie was too fast. I disagree, I thought the movie introduced an ample number of the class’s students well enough so audiences could understand the relationships each of them had with their classmates. It made me think a lot in the end too. About the nature of man. The dynamics of friendships and social groups. Basta, the movie can really make you think, if you tread the path of thought. There even are a lot of fan sites in the web to answer ‘unanswered’ questions from the film.

My rating: 8/10

Bahay ni Lola 2 was a slipshod movie. The writer probably took just one night to write the entire script and didn’t polish the details. Mother Lily probably wanted another Regal film in the movie houses as soon as possible, so cash will continue to come in. There were a lot of unneccesary scenes and characters, unclear connections among details, unexplained motivations — almost two hours of “horrifying” apparitions and silly discourses among its actors and you’d think the reason behind all the horror would take you away with its brilliance. No. It was an annoyingly unoriginal and simple concept. Ghosts of the house’ previous occupants haunt its present occupants away, because well, the land is theirs and they don’t want to be disturbed. Just that. Oh, and can I just say that the ending was so silly. An overwhelmingly pathetic excuse for a Bahay ni Lola 3. So in the end, the occupants did leave the house, but the last scene shows you one of the ghosts hitching onto the movers’ truck. She said in a “creepy” voice, “Sama ako…” What the hell!? Papalayasin mo sila sa bahay mo tapos sasama ka sa kanila? Baliw!

I can go on with the technical lapses too, especially with the continuity, but never mind. That is such a petty thing to criticize at. The technical people behind the movie should’ve avoided those or at least remedied those in the editing, but they didn’t. The entire movie was probably made on one weekend, I guess.

For a more detailed nitpick on the movie, read this review from FlipCritic.net.

Was it even scary? Thanks to Chokoleit and John Lapus, (and simply because it was not scary at all), no. And that’s probably it’s saving grace, it entertains you by making you laugh at the absurdity of it all.

My rating: 3/10

I admit, it had been a while since I saw myself laugh as hard as I did when I watched Sex is Zero (색즉시공). Damn, some of the scenes were just tremendously hilarious. But it didn’t mean the movie was any good at all.

Many online reviews I’ve read about the movie remarked that this was the Korean counterpart of American Pie, or rather was a movie greatly inspired by the latter. On one hand you have a shy-type guy with a bunch of horny male friends who has a certain liking for this gorgeous girl who belongs to a certain clique of females. Tough luck for shy-type guy because the girl doesn’t seem to like him back. The main plot revolved around the two but the entire movie was filled with their friends’ sexcapades, which I thought was not really necessary to the story. But I’m not really complaining. I shrugged that peeve off nonetheless because I still had a good laugh. Towards the ending though, it just killed the comedy by introducing the issue of abortion. And then in the end, after all the obscenity and comedy, it suddenly became one of those romantic Korean saps we are used to. It didn’t connect! They showed all these nonsense sex scenes and boob flashing at first, make everything funny, and then suddenly turn serious and telenovela-sappy.

My rating: 4.75/10

So Manny Pacquiao lost to Erik Morales. Normally, I wouldn’t care. I was never fond of watching boxing. But there was some sense of national pride at stake in this situation.

The family was on the road while the match was going on so we were just listening to the radio. Previously, I was annoying my mom by being a cynic, saying that I just know Pacqiuao will lose. I can just feel it, I said. I get annoyed easily and I was really annoyed at people I saw on TV arrogantly proclaiming that Pacquiao will win by knock out. Ang yabang. It really irked me off. So, in a way I was interested to see how these Filipinos will react when he indeed loses. And it did not really help my disinterest knowing that our asungot congressmen and Gloria’s *cough* personal smuggler are in Las Vegas. But really, no matter how irked I was, I was secretly cheering on while listening to the radio. And it depressed me when the commentator announced that he lost. Shouldn’t have been a cynic. My bad mouth!

Anyway, I’m over it now. Pacquiao did his best and we should all still be proud of him. The only thing I’m worried about is the millions of dollars and pesos we lost because of this. Whoever said this was all about national pride knows nothing. The congressmen weren’t in Las Vegas just to cheer Pacquiao. They were there to bet. By how much, we can only guess. And they lost, and that’s assuming they placed their bet on their fellow Filipino. How do you think “Money Pakyaw” and his henchmen are going to recoup their losses?

Arroyo’s husband, Mike Arroyo, who was in Las Vegas to see the fight, sent a statement home saying, “we are all very sad here, licking our wounds.”

Inq7.net

This is indeed our loss.

I’m almost done with my second semester as a freshman. In relation to my previous entry, yes that was the last of KOM 1 and of our gay professor I’m going to be seeing, hopefully. MY PE Walking For Fitness class is also over. Before I forget, we had a Fun Run/Walk last Sunday with all the Walking and Running classes in UP. We had to do a 5 kilometer course. Which was alright. I didn’t finish among the firsts but I wasn’t expecting anything anyway, so that’s alright. SOC SCI 2 is also over. We had our final exams last Friday, which was not too difficult, thankfully.

For FILM 110, to conclude our course, we had an exhibit last Thursday afternoon. Almost all my classmates in FILM 110 are also my blockmates, so that was cool. Some of us worked the entire day last Wednesday to prepare the exhibit “panels” where we stuck our photographs. Thinking how to hang or display those panels was really stressful since some of us could not easily imagine what each of us wanted to do, thereby the arguments and the lack of compromise.

Come Thursday, I went to school hours before my class to prepare our exhibit. Anyway, the exhibit went fine. We had to take it down by the end of the day though. So not a lot of people came to see our fabulous photographs. Haha.

I can always trust myself to take the art of procrastinating to a whole new level.

I went to our KOM 1 class yesterday morning expecting another boring and absurd lecture. When I sat down, I saw that my seatmates all had our final research papers with them. I was certain it wasn’t the deadline yet. ‘Di ba Friday pa ‘yan isusubmit? I asked confidently. Ngayon kaya, my seatmate Olive said. That can’t be, I thought. That can’t be. I haven’t even started writing my own tapos deadline na pala. Hindi naman ako ganoon kapabaya ‘no.

Then our professor came. To my horror, he asked us to submit the papers immediately. Oh, shit. This is not happening to me. Why didn’t I know that the deadline was on that day?! I haven’t even started writing my own! This is not happening. I was not going to let myself get a 5! This is not happening to me!! So I approached the professor and asked him if I can submit it later on. I told him I just haven’t printed it yet, even though the truth is I haven’t even started writing it. There, he gave me a 12-noon deadline. What time was it? 10:30 AM.

An hour and a half. MAJOR PANIC! I rushed home. I was already psyching myself up while commuting. I can do this, I keep telling myself. Though I’ve procrastinated a hundred times before, I’ve never done it in this tight a time frame. And hello, I’m going to be starting from scratch!

So I got home a little after 11 AM. Shit, I have less than an hour to do my research paper. I opened my computer and started writing. Wait, I didn’t start writing. I was doing a mental outline first. I was starting from scratch. The only thing I had was my topic. At first I didn’t know how to begin.

Anyway, so there. Panicking like hell, I typed away, mindless of any grammatical errors. Whatever. Basta may masusubmit ako. Basta hindi ako masisingko, I swore. I finished my “research paper” by 11:40 AM. Since there wasn’t enough time for me to commute, I hailed the first taxi that came by. I got to school a little past 12. The professor was still there. And even though I was really late, I was able to catch up with my 11:30 AM SOC SCI 2 class.

I DID IT!!! I couldn’t believe myself! That was not something to be proud of, but… well yea, I’m still “proud” that I was able to do that. I won’t let this happen again!! (Oh, but Victor, how many times have you told us you won’t procrastinate?)

Onto other news, I’ve also done the layout of my high school classmates’ (who are in ADMU) projects. The great thing is, aside from getting in touch with them after a while, is that they compensated me financially for the work. Oh, and they liked the work too (or are they just being nice?). Cool. See, the skills I acquired as layout editor of our school magazine didn’t go to waste after all. It’s been a while since I’ve used Adobe PageMaker. But I’m telling you, it’s a really drudging and boring job.

I was also elected as Media and Public Relations Team Director in one of my orgs. Great. Responsibilities again. Don’t get me wrong. I love keeping myself busy. (Yes, but I only say that when I’m not busy, like now).

Lastly, I re-joined Friendster after cancelling my first account more than a year ago. Just to keep in touch with old friends. No more adding of groupies or fake accounts or people I’ve never met. And no more being insecure when you see other people having a multitude of friends.