May 28, 2007. When our cab dropped us at Battery Park, we were met with a mile-long line leading to the jetty where tourists board on a ferry to Liberty Island. Normally that would discourage me from pursuing the trip. But see, western literature has conspired to make all of us feel the need to step foot on landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty. We couldn’t just go to New York and not go to the famed statue. Fortunately, there were street performers and other tourists to watch in amusement. And the line also moved steadily and surely.

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May 28, 2007. The itinerary for the day was to take the quintessential tour at the Statue of Liberty. Before taking a cab to Battery Park where we would take the ferry to Liberty Island, we walked to have some pictures taken at a relatively deserted Times Square.

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I attended three of the five 3rd Cinemalaya Film Congress panels last Tuesday and Wednesday. My blockmates and I have been attending (or have been required to attend) this Film Congress ever since the first one, when we were sophomore film students in 2005. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any of the competing feature-length films in Cinemalaya, though I’ve seen some of the short film entries, when they were screened as thesis short films in UP.

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I went to my first State of the Nation counter rally last Monday. The campus chancellor apparently suspended classes in the university the previous night so I thought there wouldn’t be a big delegation of UP students to the People’s SONA rally of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN). It turned out otherwise.

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I attended our UP MCO anniversary dinner last Friday. I wasn’t supposed to be able to attend but thanks to Con and Patty, I was able to come. And I’m really grateful I did. Ang saya. As I’ve shared before, when I’m with my MCO orgmates, there’s barely a moment I’m not laughing my heart out. Busog na ko sa pagkain, busog din pati sa tawa.

Sigh. Last year, we also had an MCO Night, a first since I became a member in 2004. Everybody had fun last year too, much to the expense of some MCO boys including me when, um… we were forcibly made to dress in drag and compete in a beauty contest ala-Miss Eng’g. Fortunately, I can account for the handful of people who have pictures from the event, including me. In case any of those embarrassing and humiliating pictures come out, I have tick list. Hehe.

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May 27, 2007. After an almost two-hour loop bus tour around Manhattan’s downtown, I wanted to make most of our ride-all-you-can ticket and hop on a night loop tour around Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. My parents and my brother however, wanted us to catch up on jet lag and stay at the hotel. I was told I could go if I can handle being alone in such a foreign place. Wow, they might have not known, but that’s just my thing actually. The freedom to wander off and not be too restricted.

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May 27, 2007. We weren’t in New York City for very long. Just a day and a half, actually, to do the tourist essentials. It was quite surreal to be in New York for the first time. You know how one has never set foot in the place and yet his subconscious is saturated with its images from all the American entertainment and other such products he has consumed– from Spider-man to Superman to FRIENDS to many many other American sitcoms, films and literature. It can make one feel artificially enthralled and fulfilled.

After having a hearty Italian fast food lunch at Sbarro’s in Times Square, we crossed the street and lined up for the quintessential double decker bus tours.

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May 27, 2007. It was Memorial Day weekend. My aunt and her family brought us and saw us off from Hartfield Jackson Airport in the morning, a few hours before noon. At the security check, our boarding passes were marked with special markers, and we were brought into these special glass cubicles. It’s “SOP,” I suppose, for suspicious-looking people like us, however subjective their standards are. I don’t know. For certain, most of the other domestic passengers didn’t go through all that hassle. Anyway. By this time, I’ve come to particularly enjoy loitering around airports while waiting for boarding time. There’s this certain leisure in watching other passengers and looking through the shops.

Our Delta Airlines flight to New York took around five hours. New York and Atlanta are on the same time zone, so there’s no additional jet lag, though I did get to catch a few hours of sleep on the plane.

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