We formally opened and had the restaurant blessed last Saturday. I was too groggy and sleepy the entire day because I wasn’t able to get enough sleep due to our student council semplanning the night before.
Posts published during November, 2006
Second regular day of classes went by fine. I’m still trying to get used to a daily 7 AM Spanish class. I don’t even have time to eat breakfast before going to school anymore.
I went home after Spanish class since my next class was at 1PM. My 1PM class was in Mass Comm, Film 183 or Music in Film. It’s a new course offering so I don’t really know how much or what to expect. We just had the usual introductions during first day and then we were allowed to go.
I dropped by the Sentro ng Wikang Filipino to buy some required textbook then I proceeded (walked) all the way to Sunken Garden to meet my UP MCO friends. I enjoy alone-time walking.
We had a mat and a few finger foods. It was good. Sunken Garden afternoons are good. If only there weren’t too much traffic with noisy jeepneys plying the Academic Oval.
Some of us went back to Mass Comm after an hour or so. Ayeen and I joined our other student council members and we all went to some empty house for our semplanning.
It lasted way, way past midnight. We even had a heated debate because some of us had opposing views regarding the 300% proposed tuition fee increase for incoming UP students. I’m against the proposal. It makes UP less affordable for its supposed benefactors. Given, UP needs more funds. But must it be sourced from the students themselves? It was at first difficult to counter the argument that the well-off should pay more for their education. Gee, if one is so adamant at helping one’s university and be willing to pay more for state university tuition, then go ahead and donate money to your college! Don’t impose a sweeping increase against middle to higher income families and provide the government with an excuse to conveniently and gradually abandon its duty to adequately subsidize the national university, which it has been doing the past years.
Sans the tuition fee increase debate, the semplanning went fine. It was a bonding moment too for the council members for our last semester as a student council.
I’m actually a morning person. I enjoy waking up to the cool morning breeze and the light touch of the morning sun. I actually feel good when I wake up before the sun rises. But, these are all true if I get enough sleep beforehand! Being forced out of sleep by academic obligations can suck. I’ve had a 7 AM class before, but our lecturer was kind enough to give everyone fifteen to thirty minute allowances. And that one was twice a week only. Our Spanish professor is an early bird who claims he gives quizzes at 7:05 in the morning. And this is an everyday-except-Wednesday class.
By the way, they’ve implemented a no ID no entry policy at Palma Hall. I was a little surprised. I didn’t have my ID with me, good thing I had my Form 5. How… authoritarian. When did this policy start? And why is there such?
I spent my idle time with friends and orgmates. Then I had lunch with my new team in UP Mass Communicators Organization. I was reassigned from my publicity team, my team for almost three years, to the finance team of the organization. Contrary to some expectations, I shall now be an ungenerous creditor. I won’t shell out for anything until all my receivables have been received. Hehe.
I didn’t have any more classes after lunch, but I decided to stay in school and wait out our 5 PM general assembly in UP Cinema Arts Society. I manned the student council booth collecting “taxes” (I really don’t enjoy the feeling) and played with my PDA for the time being.
By 5, I whisked myself off to Cine Adarna’s steps to meet my orgmates. It’s been a while since I’ve attended a general assembly of UP CAST. As usual of myself during beginnings, I’m optimistic with the plans. We shall accomplish them.
My mom had half an hour to spare before the window time period began for her to be able to drive the car without being caught in violation of the number-coding scheme. She asked me to take her to the Shopping Center. She always told me they used to call it Dilimall, back when the only other mall in Metro Manila was Alimall. She was surprised that the Shopping Center has become a photocopying mecca. The only stall she recalled to have survived the decades was G. Miranda’s bookstore/shop of school supplies. The “Coop” was already existing then, and she said little has changed with it.
When we went to Cebu for the wake of her college best friend’s dad, my mom and her friend both talked about and shared with me various college day stories when they were both UP students sharing a dormitory room in Kamia Residence Hall. I had a good time laughing it out with them reminiscing their juvenile days. It is indeed enlightening to imagine my mother as once being a normal college student much like any other.
I went to school yesterday to help man the student council booth on the first day of enrollment. Aside from being an automatic information desk, we also collect the student fund contributions from the students. It’s not something I really enjoy doing. I feel like some tax collector or something.
Wala na nga palang bubong ang overpass sa Philcoa. I think it’s a way to discourage illegal ambulant vendors from turning it into a marketplace, as what usually happens to such pedestrian overpasses.
I went to Cebu yesterday and flew back to Manila last night.
Some American television series can be really addicting. If we had shows like these on primetime here, I’d be an obese Filipino couch potato. Hehe.
I finally caught up with the latest episode of the third season of Lost last night. Yes, after nights of staying up late at night watching more or less five episodes a sitting. This show can really get me glued to my computer monitor for hours. The series is really exciting and storyline is really stimulating. People crashing and being stranded on a strange island trying to figure out what the hell is happening to them–strange being an understatement. Surfing the web and reading all sorts of theories regarding what the island really is or who the Others really are or how every happening and character is related to all the others, geez it can get you into hours of inquisitive self spoiling.
When I thought these sort of television series couldn’t get any better, here comes Heroes. Rickey of Rickey.org recommended it in one of the comments he left. The series is about individuals who discover that they have extraordinary abilities as a result of human genetic progression. The thing is, the world is in peril and they soon realize that they must seek each other out and save the world together. It’s just on its sixth episode of its first season, so it’s not too late to start following the series. It just gets more interesting as the story progresses.
The administration will surely play the economy card come election period. Perceived to be unpopular and bound for an election defeat due to countless political controversies, I’m betting administration candidates will try their best to paint a good picture of the economy, what with the rise of the peso, upgrades in the country’s credit outlook and supposed monthly budget surpluses, and then they’ll continue to harp positive numbers to back them up.
Second world my ass. I cannot comprehend nor reconcile such numbers with the fact that a fourth of our population still live on 36 pesos a day (and this is only refering a poverty threshold at its barest minimum) and that incidents of hunger are its highest in years.
How are these numerical increases in credit outlook or peso-to-dollar values relevant to common Filipinos?
My economics, conservative and borgeouise friends always argue with me with this. To them, such numbers are significant and relevant. They tell me I should wait for the benefits to trickle down to the masses.
In the first place, there’s something wrong with that statement. Are the poor confined to be left waiting for just spoils to trickle down to them? The people are supposed to be the foremost beneficiaries of improved social services due to such credit outlook upgrades. Not bureaucrat capitalists nor the already-rich ruling class.
The way I see it, this credit outlook upgrade only allows the government to borrow more money, which supposedly in turn brings about more state investments in social services, right? But that’s not really happening, is it? Where does increased credit go?
Corruption thrives in this administration.
[Related blog links: Unnifors: Ratings outlook is not credit rating; Angelhouser about what a credit rating outlook upgrade is.]
While browsing through my past blog entries on Undas, I noticed that I wasn’t able to post anything about it on 2004. That was the year we spent the Undas holidays with a vacation in Hong Kong and Beijing, China which was why we went to the cemeteries days before November 1.
These pictures were taken at Dangwa flower market in Sampaloc, Manila on October 29, 2004. I wonder if it still looks the same today. I haven’t been there since then.
Victor Villanueva
law student, leftist, national democratic, film school graduate, photography hobbyist