As a candidate, I wasn’t able to take a lot of pictures during the campaign. I couldn’t carry along my bulky camera all around campus. Here are some of the few pictures that I was able to take right before and during the campaign season.

These were taken on February 13, 2008 from one of the first discussion groups and training sessions we had as a slate right before the elections.

The ones below were taken on February 20, 2008, a Wednesday. After a brief discussion group regarding our General Program of Action, and right before we were interviewed at the Philippine Collegian office, we had some time off at the Sinagbayan tambayan on Vinzons Hill.

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Tags: CAL, STAND UP, student council elections, University Student Council, UP Diliman, Vinzons Hall

The last pile of academic work has come upon me. I’m back to drinking energy drinks and 24-hour fastfood delivery to keep me up all night. I’m this close to graduating! To be honest about it, I’m not very interested in my present subjects anymore. Even my thesis! I just want to get things over with. Tsk, bad. It also feels quite weird that I don’t have to enlist in any subjects anymore. I’ll miss being an undergraduate.

I’m just trying to kill time right now by blogging while waiting for a sequence I’m trying to weave and edit to render in Final Cut.

In other news, we enrolled Tisay in a neighborhood day care center a few days ago. It was quite a joy bringing her to the center morning, all eager and ready with her tiny lunch box. The teacher’s pretty cute too.

Ok, back to work.

[Photo above taken this morning with Photo Booth while waiting for a professor to arrive].

Youth ACT Now! or Youth for Accountability and Truth Now is a newly-formed alliance of student councils, national youth and student organizations, community-based youth, young professionals, artists and prominent youth leaders and personalities.

Leading the list of about a hundred of its convenors are student councils and official student representatives from De La Salle University, University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, University of Santo Tomas, College of St. Benilde, and Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

It also has under its fold the largest and most active national youth and student organizations like the National Union of Students of the Phils. (with 700 student council-members), College Editors Guild of the Phils. (with 650 member publications), League of Filipino Students, Anakbayan, Student Christian Mov’t, and many more.

The formation of Youth ACT Now! marks the further strengthening of youth and student participation nationwide in the fight for truth, accountability and genuine change in government. Join us, Youth ACT now!

Visit www.YouthACTNow.com

During the campaign period, despite losing some hours of campaigning in campus, we kept ourselves involved in the brewing movements and the growing calls for the resignation or ouster of President Arroyo through the various marches and mobilizations that took place.

February 22. The entire day, aside from delivering the usual campaign line in the rooms, we invited people to the march around the academic oval in support of Jun Lozada who was to arrive that afternoon in the UP College of Law. By afternoon almost five hundred students joined our bulk behind the law students. By the time the march ended at Malcolm Hall, the crowd had swelled to around a thousand.

February 23. Together with Youth ACT Now, we held another protest march in Quezon Hall which was exclusively covered by Ms. Korina Sanchez of ABS-CBN. Prior to the march, I was also interviewed by Zen Hernandez in Vinzons Hall for a story regarding the ouster campaign on the internet.

Later that afternoon, we proceeded to the Church of the Risen Lord, still in UP, for an interfaith candle-lighting protest, still with regards to the corruption scandal hounding the administration of President Arroyo.

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For the entire two week period of campaign, most of us candidates, and our campaign managers, stayed at the campaign headquarters where we would retire to at midnight (after long and heated dormitory assemblies), sleep for three hours (or less!), until we wake early enough to prepare and go to school and campaign at the 7 AM classes. That was the routine for two weeks.

It’s a welcome treat that I get to sleep longer now that elections are over. I find it weird sometimes that I’m surprised I do not wake up from sleeping on the floor and seeing a co-candidate’s face (or foot!) beside me. I feel weird not having to wear a big nameplate the entire day anymore, or not having to wear black leather shoes all the time. Or going all around the vast Diliman campus to every nook and cranny of every college building to reach out to as many fellow students as possible.

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University student council election season is over! Time for some of us to catch up on sleep and academic requirements, and prepare for a whole year of work in the student council.

Maraming salamat, mga iskolar ng bayan! Kahit na hindi nanalo nang buo ang STAND-UP ngayong taon, isa pa rin itong tagumpay para sa ating lahat. Pagpupugay sa inyong lahat at sa mauupong centennial university student council!

Apologies, I shall write a more profound post-election blog entry after getting a good night’s sleep tonight, for once in a three-week span.