< sermon >

   News got late to me that some of my younger friends in college have resorted to cheating in a long exam.  Now that could have been OK if it were some podunk college, but I looked around to see if there was some break in the fabric of the universe that made it all possible: an act of cheating took place in UP.

   I'm not saying that I never cheated before: if by "cheating" you mean copying an assignment passed around the corridor, then yes, I have cheated before.  But for all the pride that there is in being an overstaying student of the UP system, I have never cheated in a long exam.  Failure and shame are both risky prospects, but I'd rather risk a failing grade than to put the good of my name at risk.

   If you truly pride yourself on being an "Iskolar ng Bayan" and would tout it in the streets, you should be a paragon for scholarship.  You should live, breathe, and eat the motto emblazoned on the front cover of a blue book: "Honor, Excellence."  At least in a long exam: if you can't be excellent, you might as well be honorable.  Never mind that UP students cannot all be excellent, but the least thing expected of a UP student is to have a sense of honor.

   Damn shame.

< hmmm... >

   Lately, I found myself in a sort of quandary, with regards to my thesis.  It's not that I'm proud of having 240 pages for a draft, but I find myself in a sense of doubt.  "So what?" is a very good question.  Not just for me, but for all of us.

   It's not often that I find myself ruminating on life's most basic questions: not because I have four stomachs, but because life often hurls you a question that is difficult to stomach.  True: we all have a sense of purpose, but exactly what purpose are we talking about?  To what purpose does the sense lead to?  If all roads lead to Rome, why aren't we all in Rome?

   Where to, Mister?

< number 15 >

   I think my adviser should keep score on how many people I've consulted for my thesis.  Writing letters is part and parcel of thesis-writing: while there's nothing wrong with barging in, I've learned how to write letters to complete strangers, respectfully asking for appointments.  They all have been very gracious, and a professor at school even went at length to call me up at home.

   However, I can't seem to sell my "fragmented self" theory to my adviser.  It's basically snake-oil: I'm selling a theory that goes against the grain of the entire discipline of psychology.  Not that there's nothing wrong with it: self, in my view, is not a coherent unity but differences in flux.  The technicalities and brouhaha of it is something I would gladly talk about with anyone interested (bring enough cigarettes, San Miguel, and a bucket to throw up in), but it's a hard sell, especially if you're hawking it to a professional psychologist.

   I could rant and rave all I want, but to echo Karl Popper, everything must be subjected to criticism and debate to truly merit the term "science."  I do believe in Thomas Kuhn: the route to science is a route of different paradigms that arrive at some explanation of truth, and not truth itself.  Basically, I can't tell if my theory will hold up until I can get someone to argue with me.  As long as I set an appointment.

   If anything, I've been arguing for the past few months with people I do not know.  Not that it matters, but I feel the spirit of Shakespeare in me: of "Alas, poor Yorrick."

   I knew him, Horatio.

< hmmm... >

   Big things come in small packages: that is, if you can't afford the big thing.  Almost everything nowadays comes in "economy-size" packages, which says a lot about the state of the economy.  Laundry detergent, toothpaste, and shampoo come in economical packages where you get "more."  It's not really "more," as it is another way by the elite to further humiliate lumpens.  In this day and age, you are worth what you buy: your own sense of self-worth can now be conveniently packed in a sachet.

   A few months ago, much to my amusement, my friend Jay showed me a souvenir he got from a recent trip to Abra: a sachet of Ginebra San Miguel.  Apparently, the Philippines has already descended into so much poverty that drunkards can no longer buy a small bottle of Ginebra.  I don't know how you drink gin from sachets, but I can surmise the kind of abject personal humiliation that comes with partaking vice from small sachets that evoke "Downy Fabric Softener" or "Joy Dishwashing Liquid."  I can keep on surmising: Marlboro 5's - five cigarettes that come in a foil pouch - are not yet sold here.  They're only available in Metro Manila.

   I was reading The Philippine Star today when I came across a full-page ad for Marlboro 5's.  A friend of mine, way back, once thought that Marlboro 10's are a disgrace, but now I figure that he'll be staging a revolution against Marlboro 5's.  To me, though, the idea is pointless: don't we already sell cigarettes by the stick here?  Can't you just do what we common plebian smokers do, in approaching a takatak vendor and buy a few sticks of cigarettes to get by?

   Reading the ad, I realized some salient points I've been missing out on smoking: the pouch is meant to preserve flavor.  It is a way to keep cigarettes from getting stale.  I don't get it: I don't fall into the immediate rubric of people who smoke because of the flavor that's in it (because I'm a common plebian smoker, I don't smoke DJ Mix).  No smoker out there would savor the taste of the cigarette.  Marlboro 5's also aren't a way for smokers to control their habits: they sell vice.

   But like I said earlier, these are times when your own sense of self-worth can be packed into a sachet.  Connect the dots.

< hmmm... >

   I don't usually do "blog reviews..." no, wait, I have never done a single blog review.  The least I want to do is to come across as an "expert" on blogging.  Besides, I'm extremely subjective, and I admit to it.  The way I see it, I should be the last person to write about other people's blogs.  Besides, the word "review" strikes me as playing to the role of a Roger Ebert or an Alfie Lorenzo.

   I managed to access four new blogs from Marifi Villegas' class on Online Journalism (Journ 113), which are class requirements.  I'm not a Journalism student, but I have been blogging for close to three years now that I feel the need - no, the urge - to write about other people's blogs.  By any means, these are not "reviews," but my thoughts on the J113 group blogs.

   To be honest, I've lost touch with my roots in campus journalism, and even if I didn't, I used to be a particularly difficult editor to please.  But beyond that, I decided to let go of my journalistic wedgie and I'm here to present you with the J113 group blogs.

*      *      *

Enviro-Net
Authored by "D'Others"

   To be perfectly honest, I'm not an environmentalist, and while this blog didn't make one out of me (be it a tree-hugger or a Chin-Chin Gutierrez), I like the way the articles are written.  Granted that I didn't expect such style from people trained to be journalists (as "high-schoolish" as the articles may seem), but it speaks of a kind of nostalgia that is much lacking in reporting today: the honest, no-pretenses innocence of the first-person.

   The potentials of reporting about the environment are very much evident with D'Others' choice of topics: trees, the mining situation in the Cordillera, plastic bags, urbanization, and so on and so forth.  While I wouldn't suggest that you get research material from here (or from any other blog for that matter), Enviro-Net offers readers the first-hand look on the experience of the report, which, in a way, humanizes environmental reporting outside of scientific garbles and press releases.

*      *      *

Foodster
Authored by "The RavMo Bloggers"

   My idea of "gastronomic delights" involves a hundred pesos, a trip to the Slaughterhouse Compound, and an order of dinuguan and pinapaitan on any table with a full view of the spires of the Iglesia ni Cristo just around the corner (no offense).  But deep-fried Coke, pinakbet pizza, santol sisig and assorted recipes for beetles may appeal to some other people.  Foodster is just for you.

   This site appeals to "weird food" lovers everywhere, and actually provides recipes.  Think of this site as a Del Monte Kitchenomics free recipe booklet (it even looks like it).  Conventional eaters may find themselves repelled at the thought of "tuna shake," but this site appeals to the non-conventional, those who experiment in their kitchens raiding fridge ingredients and garden snails.  You know what they say: If it looks good, eat it.  I would pass on kalabasa chips, though.

*      *      *

Misadventures of RED
Authored by "Red"

   This site, like my own blog, is written under an assumed character.  In this case, it's "Red," who writes about life away from home.  Red writes about boarding house experiences, love, mathematics, and even experiments in his kitchen with ice-box raids (although it's a bit sosyal for a college student to use beef chunks, but that's just me: here I am nursing a stomachache from pancit canton).

   While there aren't too many thoughts of Red to go around, Red will talk about anything that has something to do with college life, offering snippets of his own experiences to save the average freshman from a skinning from neurotic boarding-house ladies and bad eggs hanging around in the egg carton in need of a good scrambling.  I'm looking to see more Red in the future.

*      *      *

YrocK
Authored by "The Playmates"

   While I'll be the first one to (healthily) disagree with many ideas in YrocK, in the sense that Japanese rock belongs in the immediate category where Britney Spears' rendition of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock N' Roll" can be found.  But if you disagree with me and you believe in "rock" as multicultural, subject-referring, and beyond things you would hear in backmasked vinyl records of Sepultura, this site offers a fresh perspective on rock as something that crosses mullets, big hair, and stage pyrotechnics.

   This site also offers links to videos, Multiply playlists, and pictures.  While it's an easy way to hitch free multimedia (not that I'm telling you to do it), it's also a way for us to understand other contending issues on rock, to read a new perspective on what makes rock "rock."

*      *      *

   Read 'em all, course your tags and comments to the sites of these new bloggers, and make them feel welcome in the blogosphere.

< short one... writer's block >

   The other day, I saw a friend of mine in a turtleneck sweater.  "Higad," she says, showing me the raised patches of skin that came with her encounter with a woolly bear.  Her neck was pink and puffy like a turkey's, even made more rosy by a liberal swathing of Caladryl.

   Itches have a great power for suggestion.  I felt the urge to scratch like hell, feeling a bit itchy seeing her irritated skin.  Because this is Baguio and it's the rainy season, the time is ripe for woolly bears crawling over everything.  Just awhile ago, I accidentally stepped on a woolly bear, not heeding the admonishments of old fogeys that the critter's soul will exact its revenge by giving me one bad itch.  I say, bring it on: it's not the first time I've scratched like crazy because of a woolly bear.

   Then I saw another friend whose kid had a bonnet.  Cute, I thought, until my friend said that her little girl had just come from a dermatologist after she had her hair treated for hair lice.  Since itches have a great power of suggestion, I started to unconsciously scratch my head.  I know what Kwell shampoo feels like: I bet that the kid would rather scratch her head like crazy than to burst to tears with caustic shampoo burning through your scalp to liberate your hair from six-legged biological terrorists.

   So the saying goes: I thought I had it bad when I had no shoes, then I saw a man with no feet... nah, he kept on scratching too.

< desperate housewives... again >

   It is the Tao of the schoolyard: the best way to deal with the bully is not to stand up to him, but to walk away.  It is not cowardice or self-preservation, but a matter of denying the bully his power.  It is a matter of being bigger than the bully, of being more capable than he will ever be in letting it go.

   "It," to the Filipino nation today, is the "Desperate Housewives" issue.  As of this writing, a troop of Filipino healthcare professionals are protesting outside the ABC Studios in New York demanding more than an apology for how they were "demeaned."  It's just like a schoolyard: only the game is played in cyberspace.  Everywhere from YouTube and online petition services, we see some Filipinos rising up in indignation... or maybe something to that degree.

   Master Yoda says that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.  We have now come to that point where anger over Teri Hatcher is slowly metamorphosing into hatred, and in many cases, sheer anti-Americanism.  One need only see a protester outside the ABC Studios bearing a placard with the word "bigot" in it.

   I cannot blame the Filipino: 300 years of being considered second-class human beings by colonizers have led us to believe that we should also extract our pound of flesh.  Restitution in the Philippines has always been equated with retribution, and justice is put at the same level as revenge.  It's the same everyday story of the schoolyard bully: a man murdering his father's killer, the demand that Joseph Estrada go to jail, Joey de Leon demanding that Willie Revillame apologize for the umpteenth time.  The "Desperate Housewives" protest is just another one of those things where the blinding flash of anger becomes a heavy burden.  The only way to get rid of a burden is to let it go.

   As long as we keep weeping - and weeping - and dwelling - and dwelling - over the "racist remark" made in "Desperate Housewives," we will never leave the schoolyard.  The boy who stands up for his manhood in the schoolyard stands up to the actuality of a busted nose, a bloodied lip, and a black eye.  It is not cowardice to walk away and let go: it is cowardice to stay in the schoolyard trying to pick a fight when you only win in the schoolyard of your dreams.

   Any person who has had an experience with a bully in the schoolyard will know that you cannot expect an apology or anything more when you stand up to him.  To be above the bully, though, means to do something a bully can never do: walk away and let it go.  As long as you're in the schoolyard, you can never defeat the bully.  To deny the bully his power means to fight him where he can't fight back: where the strength of your character far surpasses the strength of his fist.

< hmmm... >

   It's been raining hard the other day, and I was about to go on my way to SLU to find some Philosophy teacher my friends recommended to me.  Because the wind was strong, I decided to find shelter under the awning of a cellphone shop.  I was about to light a cigarette when I realized that my position was rather inconvenient: not only was the rain strong, but there were so many elementary school kids present.

   A little girl, dressed in the school uniform I was very familiar with (I came from the same school when I was a kid: I'm not a cross-dresser), then tugged my arm and very politely asked, "Kuya, puwedeng pahiram po ng cell phone mo?  Tatawagan ko po sana si Mommy eh."

   I always considered myself to be a very kid-unfriendly person: my own nephews run away whenever they see me, and I've made my niece cry when I walked too slow for her obligatory piggy-back ride.  But this is no time to be kid-unfriendly: it was rainy, and believe it or not, some shock of compassion defibrillated my black heart, knowing that this kid will be here all night because her Mommy wouldn't know where she is.  I don't know if it was her pigtails or her perfect teeth.  So I decided to be nice and lent my phone to the little girl.

   After she was done with her call, she smiled and said a rather sugar-coated "Thank you."  It was all the niceness I could possibly take in three minutes of waiting for the torrent to die down.

   So I asked the girl (in the nicest, kid-friendliest way I can muster), "Bakit, di ka ba sinusundo ng Mommy mo?  Kasi nung bata ako, sinusundo ako eh."

   "Ang baby niyo naman noon, kuya!" she exclaimed, in a voice that even a deaf man within earshot could hear.  Almost every single eye in the little world of the awning looked at me like I was a burnt cat, or a 22-year-old infantilist who still was fetched by my Mommy.  Suddenly, the little angel turned into the Succubus.  It was a good thing the rain died down, so I walked as quickly as I can away from the awning, walked far and away, and smoked.  Every puff counted, knowing that the world is safe from Marocharim, thanks to Cell Phone Girl.

< hmmm... >

   I can't believe I'm editing.

   I can't believe that I just apologized to the entire nation for a blog entry that wasn't even in the blogosphere for two minutes before I pulled it out.  It's a cry and shame that here we are, in this day of "free speech," that some of us bloggers are editing our entries for fear of international backlash.

   Granted, I didn't have to apologize.  There's just nothing in that entry that would make me do a Malu Fernandez.  I didn't even do anything wrong there.  Yet the reason why I pulled out that entry at the very last minute is because of fear: I was afraid that some loony out there would demand that I "resign," even if I'm conveniently unemployed.  I was afraid that someone would start branding me names and make me part of the headlines.  I can't believe I even have to be afraid nowadays, even if I'm supposed to be protected by the Constitution, and even if I write through a very thinly-disguised pseudonym.

   It's not that I pander to people, it's just that there are people out there who'd make an enemy out of you because they happen to disagree with you.  Healthy disagreement is one thing, but for people to start frantically commenting and calling you names is another.  Is this the state of the "new digital democracy," that the exercise of free speech is delimited by fear?

   Some "democracy" we live in, even in digital form.  Even I never thought I'd see the day when I'd start pulling out an entry that I worked hard on (even if that qualifier is basically 15 minutes).  Why?  Because you just can't survive a lawsuit that comes from people who feel "offended:" the rich.  The associated.  The protected.  We bloggers don't enjoy the same protection, the same wealth, the same laws that protect journalists, even those who run and write for sex tabloids.

   I can't believe I'm editing.  What am I supposed to write about that wouldn't have me in the clutches of fear?  I mean, it could happen to you, too: while I'm not about to hang my keyboard up because I'm afraid, I am also in a position to speak my mind because I can.  My blog isn't a newsroom, it isn't a court, it isn't a place where I should censure and censor myself.  But not so the blogosphere: not so a place where people can damn you to hell because you have something to say.

   I can't believe I'm editing.  In here, of all places.  It's a cry and shame.

< oh yeah >

   Everyone has an idea of "revolution."  Lately, "revolution" in the Philippines has been for people who clamor for Teri Hatcher's head on a bamboo stake.  But our neighbor to the west, Burma, is in a real revolution: their freedom.

   How much do we know of Burma?  To be honest, my knowledge of Burma can be contained in the two days I spent on that semester where I took Southeast Asian politics.  The reason why I'm writing this single post for Burma is because I am for Burma: I am for a people who have really been repressed for so long, for a people who have a genuine cause to go to the streets of Rangoon and fight for their freedom.  I am for tens and thousands of people who have been truncheoned, gassed, arrested, beaten up and rounded up like cattle because they want to be free.

   For nearly 20 years, Burma has been on the actual, real end of what we complain about here in the Philippines: militarization, political repression, fascism, dictatorship.  What we have here in our own country is nothing compared to what Burma had to go through: a land of golden pagodas silenced by a barrel of a gun.

   I urge you all who read this to write about Burma.  They need us now more than ever.  Just one graphic posted on your site will go a long way.

   Show your support for freedom.  Show your support for Burma.