21/08/2009 12:05:48

The prodigal blogger.

Dear Livejournal/Blogger,

Forgive my inactivity, tumblr will never replace you. It’s convenient, yes, but it’ll never equal the release you’ve given me over the years (well, maybe I can add it to the list, right?).

However, my hiatus can be attributed to this crazy paranoia of mine that some evil beasts are lurking around the corner, ready to cut my online persona’s head off. But, do not fret; I will come back with a passion. When all these stressful endeavours are over and my thesis printed, I will show my love to you again.

Missing you,

16/08/2009 13:05:32

On strengths and insecurities.

It’s tiring too, you know.

Even the strong ones break down.

And I reached my threshold. 

10/08/2009 21:25:54

When everything crumbles.

• "What else is a liitle girl supposed to do when all she needs in this world is you."
• "You know - one loves the sunset when one is so sad." -The Little Prince; Antoine De Saint Exupery.
• "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." -I really do not know whom this was quoted but i got this from Paulo.
• "If nothing was worth living for, it followed, didn't it, that there was nothing worth dying for either." -The Hellbound Heart; Clive Barker.
• "I was holding him close to my arms as if he were a little child; and yet it seemed to me that he was rushing headlong toward an abyss from which i could do nothing to restrain him." -The Little Prince; Antoine De Saint Exupery.
• "The day you stop believeing in fairy tales is the day you stop loving." -I heard this from an actress in an abs-cbn show.
• "Thus life has taught me, with its weary weight, to long for death and the dear light to hate." -Faust (Part I); Goethe.
• "Ang pagmamahal ay may hangganan na hindi natin dapat tawirin." -Stabilo; Lost and Found (Kamille's play; Starting Five).
• "So you want a heart? You don't know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable." -The Wizard of Oz.
• "Sometimes no matter how much you love someone, that person can't just love you back the same way, and being with the person who doesn't love you back is way lovelier than being alone." -Grey's Anatomy.
• "He had been obliged to wear three iron bands over his heart, to keep it from breaking." -The Frog Prince; The Brothers Grimm.
• "No one knows how it is that with one glance, a boy can break to a girl's heart." -Napoleon Bonaparte.
• "However much may we reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it a part of our lives." -Eleven Minutes; Paulo Coelho.
• "I feel like my heart turned into a toe, and grew an ingrown a size of a blackboard eraser." -Kach; Drama Queen.
• "The moon distresses you by silently reminding you of your solitude." -The Life of Pi.
• "The heart decides, and what it decides is all that really matters." -By the River Piedra, I sat down and wept; Paulo Coelho.
• "But this is what i could not give up: I could not give up myself." -Psyche in a Dress.
• "Remember what i told you about what girls want? Girls just want someone to want them back - at least I do." -One Tree Hill.
• "He killed me but he never hurt me. Do you understand?" -Psyche in a Dress.

These are the quotes I loved. And some girl thought it was smart to put it in her blog (and by the way, not put credits. O_O Who else watched Starting Five and quoted Stabilo?! Argh) so I was able to see it when I searched for Kach’s line in Drama Queen:

"I feel like my heart turned into a toe, and grew an ingrown a size of a blackboard eraser."

31/07/2009 01:49:51

Stuffed Chicken.

After 48 years, the Red Kimono date happened and boy, I feel bloated, bigger than our fridge, and I feel like I am a balloon about to pop.

But then there is love. Hello to:

Gabby and his judgment

Milesy-Miles, the preppy boy

Ciara, the modern-day Robin Hood XP

Fritziebabes, the driver (HAHA.)

Nyaaaaa and her NTU E-library

Joan and the “huling hantungan” – where all food go to die

Angeline, the mia (Joke lang, I love you!)

And, Ige, the lover boy

I therefore conclude, no eating tomorrow! Gah.

Anyways, I did the most stupid thing ever. Well, you see, going down a couple of floors mean that one is obsessed. CRAZY.

    

26/07/2009 19:05:24

On life’s paths and future plans.

Taking up law and economics, and doing law and economics for thesis, I came up with the following conclusions; I do not like law and it bores the hell out of me, and I like economics for all its flaws and, sometimes, utopian models. Ergo, I want to be an economist when I grow up (old for those people who keep on teasing me that I’ll never grow taller, ever.), I want to be in the academia, and I wouldn’t mind being the slave of a professor while all of my friends are making six-to-seven figures a month.

Nothing against the corporate world, though. I guess I just feel safe in the confines of the academe. Maybe it’s an excuse for delaying, if not avoiding, the real world. Maybe it’s because I feel like there’s too much to explore. Maybe, and most probably, it is because I like what I am studying.

I’ve been studying for most part of my life, 16 years of formal education, in all fairness. I’ve been holding and reading books since two. There’s too much attachment to school, I guess.

The problem, however, is I do not know where to start. Plus, I’d have to support myself if I want to go to grad school, and maybe beg. Gah. I hate this pobre-ty (poverty, idiot).

Dear family members, I really want to go to school. Please finance my dream. L

Muh.

One short post before I struggle with my geekiness. (You see, it’s hell season already. The problem is I’m numb to it. Bad. I should be panicking for the sake of stressing over the HELL season, but no, I still sleep like crazy. Boo.)

Anyhow, I’m starting to get kilig again! :P I just realised, for all it’s worth, I like smart boys with strong math background. Seriously, this is me compensating for my lack of math aptitude. HAHA.

Yun lang. Kaythanksbye. :D

12/07/2009 05:01:25

It’s always harder, not feeling anything. I mean, although tiring, I’d take happiness or sadness any day. As opposed to this kind of existence where I see the world and everything in it pass through my eyes.

At times like these, I feel like the world is moving too fast but I’m stuck in the middle, I cannot move. Once in a while, someone gets into where I am, temporarily stuck as well. But somehow, s/he is sucked out, and I find myself in solitude, yet again.

There’s nothing wrong with it, I guess. It just gets boring. Always, a nagging cloud reminding you that the world will continue to move even if you, that people who gets out of that vortex you are in would never remember you, would not even notice you’ve vanished.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s the reason why most people are afraid of solitude. It’s not because of the fear that one is left alone. Rather, it’s the fear of exploding into thin air, and no one, not a single soul, notices. That fear of fading away, not even a memory left behind, that fear of the fate that’ll inevitably catch up with all of us.

What if I’m a mere figment of my own imagination – make-believe in a make-believe character’s story?

What if all I have is a dream within a dream? An illusory existence, not even making it to reality?

What if I’m not real? Would it really make a difference?

I don’t think so.

I’ve never been a Michael Jackson fan. I only know Thriller, for one, unless you tell me that those songs imprinted from my childhood are his too. But then, he was popular and later, infamous.

His life story was that of a fallen star. The world heard of his bankruptcy, have seen his disastrous nose, and have judged his paedophilic, homo escapades in his “Neverland”. Oh, how Peter Pan’s heart would’ve been broken if he, too, sees Michael Jackson’s playground.

But it’s always a sad story when one dies when he’s preparing for his grand comeback – a resurrection of a man almost destroyed, if not totally destroyed. The King of Pop should have been in 50 stadiums, in front of 50 sets of eager fans waiting to hear him sing again.

Not in a cold coffin six feet under.

P.S. Although, he could’ve died of drug overdose which makes it some sort of poetic justice, blowing this one chance given to him. But who are we to say.

P.P.S. Thesis makes people write about totally random stuff if only to run away. :( Brain melt!

6/21/2009 10:36:18 PM

On Job and Sundays

Going to church is not really part of my weekly routine. Firstly, my family is not as spiritual as, say, my grandparents. Secondly, my parents are as contradictory as the water-diamonds paradox – they are backward traditionalists and libertarians only when one is more convenient than the other. You see, that’s where one of my biggest problems lie; my parents and I do not meet. When I was younger, I always thought it was cool, I’ve never had to maintain grade point averages but I have curfews which were bendable. I could talk to them about things most of my classmates would not discuss to their parents such as how Catholicism was but a superimposition of pagan beliefs to lure the ancient civilization into conversion – which was one of lessons in my World History class in third year.

As I grow older, it may sound presumptuous but I’d like to believe I mature and my ideological stances, although not solid, are stances that I choose. This is when I notice how my parents are antithesis of democracy. They give us freedom in many aspects, yes, but in the more important avenues of learning, they constrain us into believing and not questioning the faiths and principles they have.

That’s one idiosyncrasy I have. I like consistency. For me, either one is strict or not. Because when there is consistency, one knows what to expect; which does not say I do not like spontaneity either. But there can be consistency in spontaneity, right? If you come to think about it, schedules change but the rules governing all these tasks and effectively all the things around us are pretty much constant. After all, rules are derived from universal laws anyways.

But the above paragraphs are long digressions.

Going back, attending masses are not exactly what you call comforting activities. My tita, for example, likes going to church or pray the rosary when she’s stressed out. On the other hand, I space out for the most part of the mass. I am by no means an atheist. That is so high school. Traditions and upbringing are integral part of everyone’s formative years and it is so hard to unlearn things which were fed since we were born. (I am pretty sure novenas, or whichever is equivalent in other religions, were offered if only to pray for a safe delivery.) There are exceptions of course. I know one person who’s an atheist for so long I can remember – AND HE’S NOT EVIL, quite the opposite actually.

I believe that there is a higher being – or beings, for that matter. For a scaredy-cat like me, praying usually soothes me, kind of. After all, I grew up with Lord’s Day every Saturday nights.

But organized religions are not really my cup of tea. It doesn’t make sense; everyone’s fighting with one another, predicting who’s doomed to the endless pits of hell and who’s saved and given eternal life. The Catholic Church is one with a dark past. How many “heretics” were burned at stake during the Spanish Inquisition? Others have claimed that their church – and their church only – would be spared from eternal damnation.

More so, God or whoever is up there surely would listen to Catholics as much as he/she/them would listen to Hindus or Muslims or deists. After all, he/she/them is/are supposed to listen to everyone otherwise the church-specific protection or whatever you call the bestowment of grace would’ve wiped out non-church members.

I do hope I am still making sense.

Not to be blasphemous though, the gospel a while ago (as I’ve mentioned a couple of paragraphs back, my tita likes churches and going to masses) made me think. Okay, this is not original. Julio kind of blogged about this, but hearing the passage and the homily, I cannot get it out of my crazy, little head.

Today’s gospel (Am I supposed to write it as Gospel? I forget. Catholic school was so grade school.) is about Job and the trials he’s been through as a test of faith. If I remember correctly, Job has to undergo all these hardships because God and Satan were competing and they kind of made a bet. The priest, in his homily, said that God even rebuked Job because he was trying to understand God and God didn’t like it because He was too big an entity to understand. Never mind that God got everything but Job’s wife. I mean, come on, the poor guy had every misfortune one could imagine, he kind of earned the right to ask God why him, you know.

Also, don’t you think there’s something fundamentally wrong with using a person to with a bet with the devil no less?

Furthermore, the priest told the story of a businessman, a husband, and a monk, all of whom were exiled in an island because they have leprosy. A non-believer, one that is so-so, and one who is a firm believer of God, they all prayed to God asking for them to be cured (the monk, obviously, had to be the one who suggested this). After a week, the businessman was cured and he left the island. A month later, the husband was cured and he left the island. One year has passed and the monk was still sick, a few days later, he died. The husband went to the funeral and asked why God cured them while he left his servant to die. God answered, “If I did not cure the businessman within a week, he would not believe in me. If I did not cure you after one month, you would’ve ceased to believe in me. I did not cure the monk but even in his last breath, he still believed in me.”

If you find the beauty in that story, good for you.

It bothers me though how the God I’ve been taught to be merciful and just can be so narcissistic. It’s like doing something “good” because He’d get something in return, i.e. the faith of people who do not believe in him or those with shaky faith. If He was so just, he should have saved the one who has had the most investment in Him first.

If the rebuttal is that faith is supposed to be belief without asking for anything in return, then just the same, saving someone shouldn’t be because it’ll translate to one more believer. Unless of course one believes that the highest form of salvation is through eternal life. I mean, I like that, but I like to enjoy a couple more years too, seeing He’s given others their chances.

This is what Marx and Feuerbach were driving at. Religion uplifts people’s hopes with the assurance of eternal salvation and going through hardships earns you brownie points in heaven. The priest, with the slightest hint of being condescending, even mentioned how belief without action is fanaticism but action without belief is communism. And that’s when all the red lights flashed.

I am not an advocate of communism. In theory, social justice in the form of equality rather than equity is but a beautiful concept. But humans are creatures capable of so much evil as much as we’re capable of so much good. It’s the duality of nature; light exists, so is darkness; there are positive charges and there are negative ones; matter and anti-matter (stealing the term from Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, which does not necessarily mean that the antithesis of matter does not exist.); action and reactions. Almost everything exists in pairs, even dialectic. And putting too much trust in human’s compassion and sense of justice is way too much of a risk.

Nonetheless, what Marx was saying have merit. Religion is repressive and oppressive because it makes people believe in karmic justice and delayed gratification (only they’d enjoy it when they’re down the grave) that passivity is actually encouraged and the sense of outrage contained if not eliminated.

Although I am pretty sure the end goal of this the-poor-will-inherit-heaven kind of teaching is not to encourage idleness and accept the hardships life has to offer. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church should balance their teachings and show how good things should happen on EARTH. It’s not responsible to feed people the illusion of an after-life wherein the luxuries they were deprived of would be waiting for them. The point of the image of an after-life is to comfort humans that we’re not just going to rot and be eaten by all these worms when we die – not to lure people into thinking that justice not served here will be theirs when they die anyways – because God loves them because they passed His test of faith.

And if hardships are really the way to go, the members of the clergy should lead ascetic lives and walk the talk.

I am so happy, I can cry. Teehee. I have a week off, then enrollment, then school. What a happy life I have. NOT. Plus, I have this Psych 171 grade worries, I am so positively gonna get a BAD grade for the child-psych-oh-but-wait-there's-more-it's-dev-psych-after-all. Whenever I remember it, I want to cry. For serious. I hate it.

On the brighter side, fuck school (Salapantan, 2009) was a success and wagyu (teehee) is a winner like the Winnervilles! Woot! Amanda left for the States :( (may you bring the ***** fire with you), so we had a family dinner where she prepared Romanian food. I cannot remember the dishes, I only remembered Polenta because I called it Poleneta. @@ But then, I called it the ***** rice, because it's peasant rice. I don't make sense, no? That's censorship, and censorship is a bitch. HAHA. Anyways highways, the family dinner was after Psych's fail final exam and the day after was STS finals. 125 pesos worth of readings, so how many pages? I don't know. And I tried, okay. I tried studying for STS 'cause Sir Nemenzo is a hot one like that. But nooo. The questions I answered were from the lectures I did not read. Fail.

But I will miss the routine. Seriously. No more "Hey Innah, Ama be late, where are you?" texts and "I'm late too, let's text Trisha for seats." replies. No more killer looks given to Pestulio and Oil Lamp Head. No more laugh trips with new found friends (Hullo Plutiti, Trisha, Ogot, Buyao, Cef, Ian, Chek, and Alvs). No more hot monay with cheese and extra cheese or lumpia or hotdog sandwich from Tita Narry. No more Rix and Kitten (who murdered my foot, whattab!) and Jihad dancing Jai-Ho. No more hot prof, no more tangang classmate (YAY! This I am happy about. SHE'S REALLY STUPID, KAYYY!), and no more all-nighters. No more Innah! :(( (I will see you again, palamis! :D)

So you see, even if I rant a lot, I still like the entire summer class experience (fine, maybe not the Psych XP), and I've met truckloads of wonderful people. Also, I'd like to thank (whut?!) FML, Julio's blog, PostSecret, and Facebook for keeping me alive when my eyes fail me and Eye-mo doesn't work anymore. These sites saved my sanity, for real. :)) I'll see you again in a couple weeks. :))

Now, it's time for thesis!

Stoooopid! Idiots! Morons! Dumb asses! Murderers!

Argh! Gaaah! Please, God/state your higher being, kill these stupid, idiotic, moronic, corrupt dumb asses. Please, please, please!!!

A lot of people I know have already blogged about this. Who wouldn't?! Our stupid government is imposing a tax on imported books. Yes, my dear, TAX. STUPID.

Public Economics, that's Economics 151 in the School of Economics, taught me the importance of tax, but, you know, it's supposed to be derived using economic models and the assumption is, PEOPLE ARE RATIONAL. But wait, this is the fcukingPhilippines! Our government officials have brains the size of a pea! I hate it! Dear parents and forebearers, please forgive this moment of weakness, but this stupid, idiotic, moronic tax makes me want to throw up my Filipino citizenship. I'm pretty sure all the Katipuneros in heaven want to revolt and kill all these stupid government officials now.

Damn right. Jose Rizal have seen this all. "Why independence, if the slaves of today will be tyrants of tomorrow?" (Padre Florentino, El Filibusterismo)

Ugh! What else do they expect us to read? Precious Hearts Romance?! I HATE IT!

***

The great book blockade of 2009 

By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:15:00 05/04/2009

Filed Under: Books, Computing & Information Technology,State Budget & Taxes, Laws

According to Malaysian blogger-turned-parliamentarian Jeff Ooi, if you buy books or computers, the government will allow you to deduct your purchase costs from your income tax. The Malaysian government seems to be of the opinion that buying books and computers are good things; that these good things should be encouraged; and that the benefits of personal purchases that improve knowledge and increase modern skills outweigh any potential loss of revenue to the government.

The policy of our government seems to be the exact opposite: to put the squeeze on citizens in order to add to government coffers depleted by electioneering expenses. Over at McSweeney’s is an entry by Robin Hemley, the director of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program who’s in the Philippines on a Guggenheim Fellowship. In “The Great Book Blockade of 2009,” he details the creativity of Filipino bureaucrats like Customs Undersecretary Espele Sales.

According to Hemley, the situation developed this way. Stephenie Meyer’s novel “Twilight” apparently did so well in the bookstores that the number of copies being imported attracted the attention of a Customs official. Examiner Rene Agulan decreed that duties be paid. It seems that the importer of the book reacted in a manner familiar to most book lovers in the country: to eliminate the hassle, the importer complied with the Customs levy on the title.
Hemley says surrendering to the authorities was a mistake because the Philippines, back in 1952, became a signatory to the Florence Agreement, a United Nations treaty that mandates the tax-free importation of books in order to facilitate the free flow of “educational, scientific, and cultural materials.” The importer’s submission to the whims of Customs whetted the Bureau’s appetite; they put a squeeze on all book importations by air. The result? For two months virtually no imported books entered the country.

Not least because it seems book sellers had the gumption to challenge the government. Enter Undersecretary Espele Sales whose PowerPoint presentation to booksellers Hemley describes as “Orwellian,” because of an essay in which Orwell examined how officials twist words to suit their purposes.

Take the official’s interpretation of the following sentence in RA 8047 (the Book Publishing Industry Development Act): “the tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing.” According to Sales, this lacked a comma after the word “books,” which meant that what was tax and duty-free was only books used for book publishing.

People in the book industry were left scratching their heads, wondering what a “book used in book publishing” is. Customs went further and said it interpreted the Florence Agreement to mean only educational books are tax-free, with Customs deciding whether a title qualifies as being educational or not. Booksellers responded that this went against half a century’s common understanding of the treaty; did this mean everyone had been wrong and Customs suddenly right? Sales replied, “Yes.”

Their books sequestered in warehouses, booksellers trying to comply with red tape found the rules being changed every time they seemed on the verge of getting their documents in order: “Now they were told that all books would be taxed: 1 percent for educational books and 5 percent for non-educational books.” With Customs officials doing the sorting, manually, on a per-volume basis, it seems, tying up inventory as storage fees escalated.
This finally led many booksellers to comply (under protest) with the government’s levying of tariffs. Who says kidnap-for-ransom doesn’t pay?

For years now, Filipinos bringing in books have had to wrestle with Post Office and Customs officials trying to impose tariffs, hoping that citizens would meekly submit to paying duties and fees on books. But back in September 2008, there was an opinion of the Bureau of Internal Revenue that the importation of books for personal use is exempt from value-added tax as well as from the payment of import duties. A small handling fee, is, however, legitimate on the part of the Post Office.

While Republic Acts 8047 and 9337 put in place Value-Added Tax exemptions for imported books, the government seems intent on nullifying those privileges; and citizens and booksellers alike seem headed to being at the mercy of Customs officials pressured to remit to the national government even to the extent of defying international treaties. This is a government policy that has basically declared obtaining knowledge, in any form, as subordinate to fattening the national purse.

But of course this is simply yet another manifestation of a larger trend, which is to deemphasize government’s being in place to serve the citizenry, and instead fortify it’s existing in order to mulct the population: the rule of law being nothing more than systematized extortion, whether one talks of traffic enforcement or books.
As a writer and a partner in a modest book publishing concern, I have a bias for books. But then again, this is, to my mind, a healthy bias and one shared, for example, by countries like Malaysia. You’d think any reasonable government would encourage all forms of reading, as healthy and beneficial to the population. The teenager who reads “Twilight” might just go on to reading the classics or about science; however, at the rate officialdom’s going, it seems content to keep us starved for affordable reading materials. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king?

* * *

YOU can read Robin Hemley’s entry in full at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/manila/1dispatch6.html