Hallucinations.

In the late afternoon, upon glancing outside the window, I thought I had gone bonkers.

I thought I saw a dinosaur.

Stupid Mathematics IA.

KOOBECAF. I’m back!

Salut! Je m’appelle rowland.

Je suis fatigué. J’ai trop de travail!

Bwiset!

Damn. sheeeet. After abstaining from the allure of koobecaf by using the power bestowed upon my mouse – that is, the wonderful ability to click the “deactivate” link – I am back once more (of course using my mouse’s wonderful ability to click the “reactivate” link). I feel that feeling of unsuccessfulness knowing that I can’t live without a social networking site that is a million times better than retsdneirf – because there are fewer Filipinos online and no one can demonize his or her profile with annoying glitters and annoying songs and annoying htmls and annoying backgrounds – for at least a month.

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It is frustrating when you keep on typing www.facebook.com, and then clicking the ENTER button, and then waiting for the page to load, and then realizing the realization of my facebooklessness gradually resounding in my head. But koobecaf is also a million times worse than retsdneirf because it shows no mercy when we talk about privacy. But, with the usual lightning-thunder brain delay — or thunder-lightning brain delay, depending on the personal perspective you take and the social paradigm you glorify — I actually realized that koobecaf has always offered privacy settings. Duh.

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So, this time, I finally decided to adjust my privacy and account settings so as not to create an exorbitance of facebook links in your homepage that will direct you towards my wall, my photo gallery, my status, my applications, or my notes – in short, my koobecaf.

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Voulez-vous manger?

I don’t really miss SJI independent, but I do miss the canteen there.

Because, number one, the food generally tastes nice. Number two, there is a wider variety of food available. Number three, the canteen is HUGE and there is plenty of space to eat while lying down, or while you’re doing a pile of homework, or while you messing and gaying around with your classmates, provided that no H.O.L.s are around. And most importantly, for scholars like me, number four, the food is cheaper.

The canteen in my new school kinda sucks, not because the food is bad – it’s just mediocre, but it’s not bad – i like some of the food stuff actually – but because the space is too small. I feel like a hungry chicken stuck in the middle of all other chickens in a chicken coop. Back in any other school canteen I had been, I never experienced the need to ask people to move their asses for me to maneuver my own ass in a labyrinth of tangerine and lemon-colored chairs and rectangular tables in order to find a decent place to sit down and do my lunch ritual. Three hungry schools (the baby IB, the very Singaporean secondary, and the all-expatriate elementary) are jam-packed inside one campus, fighting for seats and tables every recess and lunch time.

And because the food is expensive.

But like any other sjii student, i still <3 my school.

I wanna have five children. I’m thinking twice.

I really need to study chemistry now, for there is a test (a test?!!?) tomorrow, but I saw this article in the internet saying that some head of EU delegation dude is endorsing a bill passed by some Filipino legislators to promote a “serious” family planning programme in the Philippines.

UNsurprisingly, the omnipresent Catholic Church comes into the picture, voicing out their staunch opposition, threatening  to excommunicate them, those poor brave souls (the legislators) who will vote for the bill to be passed.

I am a Catholic. I believe in the sanctity of life. I suport the Catholic Church’s stand against contraceptives, although if you were to really ask me, I don’t really mind using it (in the future). Therefore, call me a hypocrite. But in this recalcitrant world, wherein – I believe – a part of my existence as a frail human being persists, I just can’t stand the government’s impotence problems. Dude, if you really want to do it, have the balls to do it. Don’t be a pussy wussy whatever. Don’t let some old priests scare you. Or is it just that yoooooooooooouuuuu are afraid of losing their support for the coming 2010 elections if you decide to sign THE bill?

I think Filipinos are born naturally intelligent. And talented. And creative. Raising your eyebrows won’t help. I have lived away from the Philippines long enough to notice the difference between examinations-based  and  naturally well-rounded  organisms. When it comes to family planning, I shall give an A grade for following the Bible’s “go and multiply” instruction manual, but an F grade for making the lives of many new children worse off year by year.  And I must make this clear: I’m not saying the Church’s at fault for my country’s skyrocketing poverty levels. That archipelago of 7,107 islands will be occupied by a whopping 100 million starving people in the next five years. Of course the population will always increase. Reproduction was essentially created to preserve the human race. But as what is always said, anything in excess is never good.

I don’t support killing babies. In fact, did you really kill a baby when you haven’t yet created the baby at the first place? You would not even get to that shining moment of some amazing mitosis and meiosis if you wore a rubber on you. The “fusion” of love in the heat of the night would have never occurred. On second thought, killing babies would apply more to abortion rather than to the use of contraceptives.

Maybe they should just remove the flavoring. It adds to the disgruntlement of conservative people. It’s like… Eeew…? And why does that thing have a banana flovor in it?! Banana flavor! And, look, there’s mint too! Let us ban this unprincipled, despicable, immoral device!

And I think it is even worse if you contribute to the suffering of people by letting your wife mimic a China factory. She produces too much, resulting in too many people to feed, to take care of, to send to school, to scold, and to release, let go, and have a life of their own, to start their own family football teams. Too many eventually suffer. That’s just my point of view.

But if you look at the real trend of events in the Philippines, the population growth has gone down by a few decimals, that’s good news, but the standard of living continues to plummet like a meteor crashing down on earth.

So what is really the problem? I don’t know.

le plus probablement, de manière permanente.

i

DEACTIVATED

my

Facebook account.

It’s all about planning, dude… and how much time you have left to squeeze in all those superficial things you learn in school.

I am going to tell you now.

I did it for my SJI Prelim Exams last year, and it worked. It really worked.

I’m not talking about the cartoon.

I did not do it for my O Levels, and obviously, I screwed it up like shit. Add the fact that I only had two weeks to prepare for my O levels, after exhausting my brains from the hellish Prelim exams. You guys, you sec4 guys this year, are very lucky. Some people, unfortunate they are indeed, take time to RE-learn things. And for me, I guess that generous two weeks of preparation was, sad to say, insufficient.

Plan ahead. Click here.

And, unless dad and mum really had a bad experience that night which resulted in the most disastrous, calamitous, and unfortunate fertilization of gametes ever possible (given the high improbability of that occurring), that NOW, you are suffering from the most undesirable combination of genes, hence the inability to get un-discombobulated with the horde of school stuff thrown at you, don’t just study hard.

Study smart.

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Anyway, I’m still wondering whether I should delete my facebook account.

Wings and Swings.

I Always try to swing as far as I could reach, to reach for the skies, but I always end up in the same position where first begun. I wonder why the swing’s stuck on the ground. I wonder why I can’t have wings instead. wonder why I can’t fly. I wonder why the chains won’t stretch. I wonder why the sky makes itself perfectly visible but physically unreachable. And I often wonder why gravity always holds me back.

Can’t I be where want to be? What I want to be?

*****

Sid told me, “Rowland, you’ve been getting a lot more quiet.”

Padia adds, “and skinnier.”

Well, I am. Too bad.

My schlong and my balls.

Once upon a time this morning, I made some hot coffee.

And while I was reading the newspaper, I knocked over the cup of hot coffee, and the hot coffee spilled over the table, and a hot stream of hot coffee poured down. My pair of boxers was wet with hot coffee. I looked at the toppled cup of hot coffee for a moment, investigating how I knocked the cup of hot coffee when I was just reading the newspaper.

Then I felt something.

The hot coffee seeped inside and burned my schlong and my balls. I cried out loud and ran to the toilet, pulling the boxers away from my schlong because the hot temperature of the hot coffee was driving me nuts. I wondered then: how can Japanese men withstand those public hot water baths? Oh, maybe because it’s not a hot coffee bath. d:

The end.

Sa loob ng bus.

A pitiful poetic effort written in my mother tongue.

I know i’m a big loser when it comes to written prose in Tagalog – my vocabulary is of nursery school standard – but hey, at least I tried. (:

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Sa loob ng bus.

Sa loob ng bus,

Maliit, masikip, makipot ang daanan,

Masakit ang umupo sa matigas na upuan,

Minsan punuan, minsan walang kalaman-laman,

Maamoy, masangsang pag maraming Indian.

Araw-araw, ay aking libangan

Ang tumingin-tingin ng mga kotse sa daan.

Hindi kagaya doon sa Gensan

Magagarang klase, makikita dito saan man.

Subalit gaya ng alinmang libangan,

Ito’y ‘di mo maiiwasang pagsawaan.

Kaya naman batung-bato ang isipan;

Parang nakalubog na sago sa ilalim ng gulaman.

Mahirap ang maglakbay nang mag-isa lamang;

Walang kausap, walang kakwentuhan,

Walang karamay sa sikip ng upuan,

Walang kasabay sa patutunguhuan.

******

Sa loob ng bus, buhay ay walang kulay

Pakiramdam ko tuloy may kulang sa buhay:

Isang taong pwede kong maging karamay

Sa aking araw-araw na paglalakbay.

‘Di ko naman naisip ang bagay na ito dati

Ngunit ang kalungkutang nadarama’y tumitindi.

Tunay ng pag-ibig, puso’y humihingi

Makatakas sa lungkot ng bawa’t gabi

Sa loob ng bus.

*******

It’s a beautiful day.

It’s a beautiful day, and another term has begun on this very beautiful day. o.o

Do you know that feeling, that feeling when you can’t seem to give a shit about waking up and taking a bath and eating your petit-dejeuner? I doubt anyone does anyway. But do you know that feeling? That you just can’t stand the fact that you’re waking up early in the morning to go to school. Why do you even need to go to school anyway.

But once you reach school… do you ever get that feeling, that feeling when you see everyone’s smiling at the sight of everybody else; at the uniformity we achieve by wearing the same, horrible uniform, knowing that no one is alone in that very awkward and unglamorous fashion crisis.

I am sad and happy at the same time. Sad that challenge week has come to an end, sad that I haven’t gotten the chance to unwind, relax, and enjoy the beaches of Phuket, but happy to be back in the company of the people that I have left for a week.

“And yes, Jose, you look glamorous – like, totally” is what’s running on Jessica’s mind. d:

Headband courtesy of Danusha.

Physics test tomorrow on simple harmonic motion. DIE.

From Katong to Patong.

Sawatdee Khrab. (:

Sometimes, we do not need to substantiate things so profoundly, with so much verbosity, and so much detail.

Sometimes, there is no need to tell and retell the whole story, no matter how splendid or spectacular it was.

Some things in life can be so sincerely unforgettable and worthwhile, one needs not to write everything down in words, because the memories, wonderful or heart-wrenching they may be, linger long enough to last a lifetime.

I thank the children for inspiring my life.

I thank the people who took care of us and treated us as part of their family.

And I thank two very good friends, John and Nalaka, for being there with me through thick and thin. We worked as a team, we did our best, and I’m proud we did it all by ourselves. (:

Due to our difficult circumstances, we may have not gone at all, but I am sincerely glad we did.

3-in-1.

My brain is really interesting. It can manufacture bizaare night dreams and daydreams out of the mere shit food and unalluring tap water I eat and drink every day. I don’t know how it works lah. It just struts its own thingy. This week in particular was like imagination week. There have been millions of random stuff popping out of my brain every single moment I begin to wander off into my subconscious mind.

Subconscious mind. Yeah. Today, I told John and Nalaka I have multiple personalities. But I didn’t tell them what they were. Okay, I’m going to tell them here. My first personality is this crazy flagpole-shaped guy who wanders around in school doing crazy weird stuff, smiling excessively, as if heavily drunk on soy sauce, giving the people the impression that I either have a problem-free, cheerful disposition, or simply an eccentric nature uncommon to most humans.

I dunno. I think I have this seriously introverted personality which pops out every time I am confined to places with people I don’t really feel like talking to. Or to public places. Public areas. I hate talking, actually. Sometimes conversations can be a terrible ordeal for me. I don’t like sharing stuff verbally. I don’t even share that much to my parents. Even friends. I dislike the idea of disclosing my personal life. Okay, maybe my life is just too lackluster or too rigid to  be worth sharing about. But seriously, try talk to me about life, your life, their lives, I will just listen. I will listen and listen until I can listen no more. I actually like listening to people. You can categorize gossiping under listening. I just like to listen to people brag, slander, gossip, back-stab, praise, rant, muse, fantasize, demonize, commend, comment, whatever. It opens your windows to the world out there. You see the world in a different light. Different people, different views, different experiences. When you listen, the world doesn’t just revolve around you. You revolve around the world, and you see more of the world than when you simply talk about you and you and you and no one else but you. (:

My third personality is affected by my second personality. So I won’t be talking about it here. d:

World record time of 5hr 40min, Personal best budget of S$520

Just try to imagine this scenario: You have to entirely revamp a six-day trip to some island one night before your departure.

There are three guys and three girls in a group. They intend to go on an overseas trip.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, on 29 August, an international airport closes down for three days.

Just before sunset, on the third day, the airport re-opens.

Danger still looms in the place.

But, before the re-opening of the airport, one of your groupmates has decided to cancel the hotel booking since the probability of the group going there is zilched by the protests.

Two girls dropped out due to parental concerns.

As a result, all credit card transactions are affected. You need to find another credit card.

The other girl is forced to drop out too.

The three boys remain, and contemplate on whether or not they should pursue their trip.

The trip is on the next day, 1 September.

At 6pm in the evening, 31 August, you all decide to re-plan their challenge week. And it means changing EVERY SINGLE THING.

You call the service in Phuket, and inform them your desire to pursue the trip. She is happy. She recommends booking a hotel reservation for you guys in a place called I.H.O.T., which stands for International House of Travelers. You don’t want to go there. You really don’t intend to go there.

So, you search for a new hotel, and make a booking online. You get a very cheap and nice 4-star hotel.

Fuck, you don’t have a credit card. You can’t book it.

You go and call your guardian. You have to go to your guardian’s house and ask her to use her credit card.

You have to rush. Time is running out.

You arrive at the place. You eat dinner first. Your tummy’s grumbling.

You get the credit card and start yor booking.

All of a sudden you realize that you have to book your plane ticket as well. You go get the credit card again.

Your tummy goes really bad. You shit for half an hour.

You return, exhausted. You continue the booking process with your two friends.

You FORGOT your passports at home. You go back home and get them.

You return, and scan all passports, all student passes. You print all tickets, all booking confirmations, and all other important documents. You print them again to have a back-up copy.

You sort everything out and make sure everything’s in place.

You sigh a sigh of relief. Check the time, it’s 11:40pm.

You all finished everything in world record time of 5hr 40min, and in personal best budget of $520.

You all go to Parkway Parade, and one of your friends withdraws money from the ATM. You go and deposit your money.

Then, you top up your Ez-link cards.

And then, you all go back home, and hope that the airport remains open forever. If it isn’t, EVERYTHING WILL JUST GO TO WASTE.

You pack your stuff.

And you sleep soundly

and await the sunrise.

And seriously, the one below is TOTALLY COOL.