Ang Und(r)as

We all are grateful, I daresay, to the inventor/s of SEMBREAK. Because of it, students now have a short vacation, a break from all the tiresome academic things (goodbye din muna sa mukha ng mga terror teachers, instructors and professors, haha), perhaps a short break for those work.
Being in a country where family ties are indeed strong, such breaks give a chance for families to get together, mag-kumustahan, and of course to remember together their loved ones who have passed away.
All Saints/Souls Day or Und(r)as here in the Philippines is an event worth noticing. Filipinos value the day that we can in fact read something about it in Noli Me Tangere by Papa Joe Rizal.

How do your families observe Und(r)as? Do you have any special activities that you do annually? If not, what do you usually do? Off to some resort maybe? Or do you just stay at home and enjoy the free hours?

Do share them here as this, in a way, surveys how we Filipinos react towards to what I may call a revered event in the country.

A Winning Moment

Woah! The news, when it finally reached me, literally cleared away the clouds of dormancy that has reigned over me in the past few weeks. It definitely fueled me to go and proceed again with the laborious review on a bunch of academic stuff. So so so happy about this one!

The winners are the following:

Grade School Category:
"My Calapeño Role Model"
by Alenia Selene Laurente (San Lorenzo Academy)

High School Category:
"Untitled"
by Arjay Machete (Jose J. Leido Jr. Memorial National High School)

Open Category:
"A Worthy Motto Stella"
by Francis Emralino (University of the Philippines)

The announcement and the winning entries can be found at the Insights website: http://www.insights.tabulas.com/

(I won’t say that this is a consolation for that lost wallet. This is a whole new different story.Weeh!)

LOST and (NOT STILL) FOUND

I imagine (in horror) a man whose face hidden in shadows holding a blue object. Upon closer inspection I recognize it as my wallet…
He digs in it, finds the 990 pesos neatly arranged and puts it in his own pocket. He then stops in front of a stinky old trash can besides a noisy, busy street. He pulls out my ID, throws it into the bin, looks at the variety of ATMS and then throws them too. He continues emptying my wallet (of my resident certificates, receipts, pictures, other IDs) until he finds the three pieces of one-thousand peso bills in the center pocket, folded in two. He gleefully pockets them too.
I could not see his face, only his teeth, as the light from the lamppost strikes on them.

This is the only way I could think of right now to relieve me of the terrible disappointment that has gripped me today: to write something about it. It gave me a very heavy feeling, losing such an important object.Of course there is only one person to be blamed and that’s ME. But I could tell for myself that never have I lost it before, even when I have traveled in many places in the country. It was that darn carelessness for a few seconds that completely changed my day.
But I am still betting some trust to my fellow Filipinos. I still believe that many of us still has the heart to be HONEST even at these rough times, when the very sight of money brings ecstasy to those who don’t usually have it. Honestly, if after this week and still that precious object is not found, I could only blame 1) my 5-second carelessness in getting off the jeepney and 2) the corrupt government that encouraged the breeding of those heartless people who cannot do an easy thing such as returning something that don’t belong to them. It’s the darn poverty I’m speaking of, of course.

(Just allow me to be a full-blooded pessimist for just one night…I could get over it after this night. Can anyone give me a tobacco? I miss it.)

QQQUUUESSSStion/s!

Rather than twist my mind yet again with a sensible topic to write about in this blog, I instead came up with a question-and-answer type of entry here.

Since I believe the month of October is one of the most:

1. BUSIEST (for most of the students hurrying up to finish school requirements for the semester and professionals accomplishing assigned works before the holiday by the end of the month) and;
2. MEMORABLE (to those who have already graduated and for whatever other reasons, hehe),

I would like to ask you...

WHAT DO YOU USUALLY DO WHEN YOU ARE FACED WITH A PILE OF WORKS (school stuff, work stuff, the infamous "Hell Week" for UP studes, etc.)?

DO YOU MAP OUT YOUR PLANS OF ACTION(prioritizing and the like)?

CAN YOU SHARE ANY EXPERIENCES WHEN YOU HAD TO DO SILLY/BAD/NASTY/NOVEL THINGS JUST TO FINISH YOUR WORKS?

Do share them here. And tell your friends to put in theirs here too. I'd be much glad to read about your personal experiences (para maibsan naman ang bigat na dala ko sa kakaisip ng mga gagawin ko ngayong darating na mga linggo, hehe).