I got all my subjects in our online enlistment, so I didn’t have to go through the batch runs. It’s just sort of weird for me, since I’m used to seeing long lines everywhere in UP during enrollment season, and now that everything’s online, the crowds are gone at any given time the past days in campus. I was giving out tickets for our free screening of Tulad ng Dati a day or so ago, and I could barely finish disposing of the free tickets because the crowds of students are missing.

Anyhow, classes haven’t even started and I’m already stressing myself out because of this event, among other things.

What, it’s also my last undergraduate semester in UP, and oddly I don’t feel that hyped or excited about it. I’m not even in a mood to finish my thesis. It feels like I’m going to have to drag myself to the finish line.

On another note, it’s nice that people see me as a dependable person. It just sucks how too many people and/or affiliations depend on me all at the same time. And that they don’t realize how I have to juggle my tasks with them with other duties I have to perform, too. Sometimes I want to vanish, or be mean enough to say I shall be Mr. Dependable no more.

The picture above is a photo of Upsilonians at the entrance to UP from Commonwealth Avenue. The University of the Philippines marker still exists today, but as you can see, the trees of today weren’t there yet. You can even see Quezon Hall far in the background.

I actually don’t know most of the details behind the picture above. I’m not sure when it was taken, but surely it was from a time decades ago when college boys were still wearing that style of fashion, and before the time First Lady Imelda Marcos had trees planted all along the entrance to and along University Avenue in the 70’s. My guess is that the photo was taken sometime during the late sixties or early seventies.

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My mother, my brother and I were in Cebu City last Saturday to attend my mother’s college best friend’s dad’s death anniversary affair. My mom and I were also in Cebu the same time last year to pay respects when her friend’s father died. This college best friend of hers was her three-year roommate when they were students at the University of the Philippines. She now lives in Iowa so, I guess my mom takes on every opportunity there is whenever her friend is in the Philippines, even if it takes us all the way to Cebu.

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This year, we spent our annual pilgrimage to the cemetery in Sta. Maria in Bulacan where my maternal grandparents and great grandparents are buried. On the other hand, we went to my paternal relatives’ graves in Cavite the day after.

Since the annual pilgrimage was set together with a weekend and a government-declared holiday, it would seem that people took advantage of the long vacation and avoided crowds by visiting the cemeteries before and after November 1. I do not know if many people share my small observation that the cemeteries were less crowded this year.

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On today’s return flight to Manila from Cebu, I grabbed the Sunday issue of the Philippine Star and came across the readers’ opinion page.

The topic of discussion was about plunder-convicted ex-President Joseph Estrada’s possible re-entry in Philippine politics, after being hastily pardoned by President Gloria Arroyo. I was aghast–the entire portion was filled with condescending remarks against the poor masa. The Philippine Star is, of course, a very tame newspaper, often perceived to be pro-government, that is read widely by the urban middle and upper class.

This kind of condescending mentality is something that really irks me a lot. There is this apparent mentality among the “educated” among us that blame the poor for the election of actors and plunderers like Estrada for they are ignorant and uneducated (a handful of other negative adjecties filled the page, from ill-informed to outight stupid). This can be extended to the mentality that blames the poor for their own misery because they are lazy. This kind of mentality is exactly the kind of thought peddled by the perpetrators of this condition, to preserve the status quo that these “educated” readers of Philippine Star claim to disdain. These people fail to take the critical analysis that there are external conditions that come into play to maintain this condition. The “masa” are not “uneducated” or poor because they choose to. The prevailing order controlled by a certain few thrives from this condition. Those in control have profited and thrived from various forms of exploitations, from low wages, to the preservation of excess labor and unemployment to miseducation.

Besides, I can’t stand it sometimes, that these are the people who may be the same ones who helped install, and whose silence and conservatism helps preserve a president who has long turned to be so much worse–and is actually the same president who, ironically, pardoned their much-hated political masa-idol.

June 6, 2007. Between the states of Nevada and Arizona, less than an hour away from Las Vegas, is Hoover Dam, which supplies electricity to Nevada, Arizona and parts of Southern California.

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There were only a dozen of us who came to the semender. It was fun, nonetheless. I miss having fun with my CAST friends. There were those times that UP CAST (and UP MCO) were my only affiliations and I got to hang out with my org friends a lot.

I met my CAST friends in Philcoa and I drove half of us to Calamba, Laguna in the morning of October 26. It was my first long drive south of Manila. We stayed at the rest-house of the family of one of our new members, Kim A. A large and cozy house, I must say. There was a large swimming pool which we had all to ourselves too.

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