The free piano lessons (the extracurricular thingies I'm supposed to be doing this summer) officially started last Wednesday. It just so happened that with the free piano lessons I'm taking I'm also required to attend a one-hour bible study. It was all fine and dandy except for one fatal fact: my teacher in piano lessons and the one in the bible study are both full-pledged Koreans.

   I'm not discriminating them or anything nasty. They're kind and very amusing to watch. The piano teacher vaguely reminds me of Kim Sam Soon with her no-nonsense attitude, while the bible study guy brings Korean comedians to mind. Again, it just so happened that I am having a lot of trouble understanding them since they speak broken english. Everytime they try to converse with me is like risking a mild case of nosebleeding -I must concentrate all my mental faculties on catching context clues or the meaning completely escapes me.

   Case in point: the first Bible study session. Bible study guy goes through a step by step process of introducing to us the subject matter, the Bible, until we came upon a parable told by Jesus to Peter. The parable goes somewhat like this (please excuse my rough recollection): Who would pay for the taxes of the King's son? The son or the others?. In which Peter answers with 'others'. The guy then proceeds to analyze this little parable and discover its actual meaning: Who did this 'others' refer to?. Our answers ranged from nonbelievers to nonbelievers, which turned out to be far from the correct answer.

   The correct answer? 'Others is Juice People!', announced the Bible study guy which I responded to with utter silence. His sudden exclamation reminded me of dancing life-size Zesto packs, and I thought that this was an imagery completely unrelated to the Bible at the moment. Why would tetra packs of juice pay taxes at a time they haven't existed yet? Then the meaning dawns on me as the guy scribbles 'Jews' on the white board below the 'others'. Aaaahhhh.

   After that, I couldn't stop myself from smiling too much as he continued with the lesson. I just couldn't get the dancing Zesto packs out of my mind.

*******

   Strange. Earlier today I prepared my usual iced coffee drink, the one I had been hoarding like crazy for the past few weeks, planning to drink it slowly in front of the telly to relax myself for the afternoon. I took one sip and then- bleaaaacccckhhh- it suddenly tasted horrible for me. I never noticed something new from the taste just- I don't like it anymore. I tried to drink it again but I couldn't stand it so I just poured it in the sink. What's wrong with my taste buds today? Is it the end of my love affair with coffee?  

   Or this could also be titled, 'Why I hate CRS?'.

   This morning I checked the last round of preenlistment for CRS this summer to see if I got anything out of it other than the previously enlisted STS, which I hadn't really planned for in the beginning. What I really really needed for this summer was Math 100 and I was hoping I got in, any schedule would damn do. What do I get?

   I logged in and glared at the screen that blatantly replied, "no you don't get the freaking math subject and you're stuck with this 11-1pm STS unless you sweat and fall in line for it come registration day". I logged out and logged in again just so I could check if this was one of those dream sequences again. (I did dream about checking my sched on CRS, I just couldn't remember what my sched looked like. Now I know.)

   Well, there are many good reasons why I hate CRS. One, it messed up a perfectly planned schedule for summer classes: math and science in the mornings, piano lessons in the afternoon. Two, it makes me do a lot of unnecessary work, which I normally avoid at all cost, like enlisting the subjects I want through manual labor. But that's all due to my inherent laziness and bitterness on everything not going my way.  

   I just wish I could manually enlist a slot for math 100. Then I could go on griping about math again.

P.S. I peeked my grades on the online viewing at CRS. And I think part of my pissed-offness today could be attributed to my low grades. Drat.

   I spent half of my day rolling and sleeping on the sheets. The other half I spent on a Bleach dvd marathon. I'm definitely doing unproductive things today and that pretty much sums up my official descent into bumdom.

   I was actually set to get out of the house earlier this morning to splurge my newly changed money (remember the 40 dollars? I guess I didn't stay torn for too long). But unfortunately, my Dad got the fever so we decided to just stay at home and rest for a while. Weird. Tina also managed to get a little fever yesterday. Does this mean I'm next? *scrambles for some hiding place*

   I'm really really bored at home. There's not much to watch on tv. I can't rewatch my dvds all the time. And reading books doesn't make the time go any faster. Is this the curse of being a bum? Searching endlessly for things to do?

   I know I'm going to hate myself this coming June when it happens but, I just wish that classes would start really really soon so I could love being a bum again.

   And back to hating schoolwork.

******

   You know, in your mouth, there's just a bit of everything you've experienced for that day: your delicious lunch, the smell of that shawarma you last ate, the soft peck made on someone dear, that bile left by a suppressed emotion. It's all there, the mouth acting like a holder of perceived memories. And at the end of the day you try to clean all of it, try to cover the traces of it with that minty toothpaste. The brushing could be for preparation, like clearing a space for new things. Maybe simply for hygiene's sake. 

   But sometimes we try so hard to get rid of the taste that when we spit out that foamy blob it isn't pure white. A blurry of red appears, swirls until it grows darker and darker into the center. 

   The only things that keep me up and above the thing called boredom would be my dvds, my new book conquests, and some extracurricular learning that seems to be floating and drifting at the start of my summer. Yes. There's no more homework to be busy with (And when did I ever get busy with homeworks? Unless it was for Psych 115, I'd be sleeping through it like a log.) and I've got two weeks to bum around and be some lower lifeform before summer classes push through. 

   My 2nd semester officially ended without a hitch; my last and final paper for my Psych 115 (there goes that major again) was finished at 3pm and was dropped off at the department around 4pm. Technical papers are not exactly my forte ever since that Philo incident (my prof called me illogical -how appropriate) but writing that final paper was not as hard as I thought it would be. There certainly is some hard work involved yet I felt strangely organized  and so-not-me when I was writing the paper. It felt right. I mean, I was writing something logical and straight to the point without the blurriness of fiction and hiding behind the masks. Then, I realized that I enjoyed doing this kind of things too. I want to keep on doing it. Along with my other frustrations, of course. Now I am much more confused in what I'm going to do in my life than when I was four. I should've stucked to becoming a nun. And since that one man I told my nun dream to when I was four died quite a while ago, it's too late and I cannot go back.

    Why do we want to be so many things all at the same time? Or is it just me? 

   Maybe I need to stop worrying about the future. If it happens, it happens. I'll just try to believe that everything will fall into place.

*****

   Somewhere I smelled a stink of fish. Now I can name it in five letters.    

Randomness# 15??

The Tattoo Artist

You came to me with your skin,
an empty slate, wanting to
wear his brand on your sleeve.
This is love, you said as you
bared the blank canvas.
And you were willing to
pay its price with this
black blood.

Yet when my pen,
burned, carved the stigma into
your flesh like sharp nails, you
neither called out his name
nor for that love that brough you here.

It is my hands you will
remember. And the pain.
For who was it you clinged to,
cried for, as I cut each bloody letter
into the skin that will never
know my name?

   For the past week, after I had splurged my money on books and several copies of *ehem ehem* Korean movies, I feel strangely poorer than usual. Still with various items to buy in mind, I planned for ways to get cash, which includes (a) working as part-time tutor during summer (b) maybe encoder in places that needs one (c) begging in the streets. But suddenly, because of events that transpired last Saturday afternoon, I now stand in my room with 2 20 dollar bills in my hand, 2 baseball caps, a binder, and a new blue shirt.

   I now feel very very blessed and think that God really really loves me now. But with all this unexpected money handed to me without any warning, I am again strangely torn between spending it all to keeping it to myself for future, more productive, buys.

   *****

    I hate summer. I hate the heat. The one thing that keeps me from going haywire and flying to another country would be (1) things don't go any colder just by me complaining about them (2) I don't have enough money to fly into another country anyway. I'm literally sweating buckets here. And people won't surely like me if I'm sweaty and irritated and hotheaded from all that heat. I want some weather-control thingy so we could have snow here just once. I miss the cold weather =( 

   Well, there's just one rule for that....

...for this guy anyway....

Watch all 16 yummylicious episodes of My Name is Kim Sam Soon. You'll get the idea.

*credits of pics go to soompi.com forums

   Mr. Thomas, aged 35, sleepily dragged himself off his doorstep like a slug out to work. The only difference between him and that slug was that he wasn't really out to work. He got fired just a week ago due to a curious incident with a toothbrush and a toilet bowl. And all this dragging business was just for show so none of his neighbors would know how he had fallen from grace -from floor manager to professional bum. At least, he cheerfully thought, passing the mailbox that had always been empty but sagged like an overbearing fruit, he reached the professional level and got out of the stupid cycle. 

   Two of his once closest friends: Eddy the security guard and the late Saranza "Anti-Dirty Perry", his mentor in the mopping business, got so sick of being forever chained to their respective jobs they both went ballistic after a couple of decades. Eddy, after a particular night shift had grabbed his shotgun, robbed the nearest pizza house, ate all the pizza and threatened to shoot anyone who made fun of his white uniform. He soon got arrested, now living happily behind the guarded cells of some farflung prison with sleeping patterns normal after 30 years. Saranza hadn't been that lucky. After realizing that an obsessive-compulsive couldn't lead a stress-free life being the janitor of a local brewery, seeing that there's just too many dirt in the nooks of crannies of machines he was off-limits to, he decided it was high time to end it all. He jumped atop the tank holding the beer, plunging into its murky alcoholic depths. There had been no better way to die for him than to be surrounded by disinfecting liquor.

   "And now", muttered Mr. Thomas, standing jobless before his decrepit mailbox with a pseudo-working expression on his face, "Now that I've broken out of that, what the hell am I supposed to do?" 

   His mailbox, after seeming emptiness this past few years, churned out to the ground a very much wrinkled brown envelope with Thomas' name on it. Surprised at having received a letter at last, he slowly bent down to pick it up and gently opened the envelope with a pair of rough hands.

   It reads: Mr. Thomas Thomas,

         We are glad to inform you that you have qualified for entrance into the Kaliska domain (aka, what ignorant beings might refer only with the phrase: the world on the other side of the mirror), where your magical potential are to be enhanced for your self-gratification and our world's preservation. Please, if you have read this Mr. Thomas Thomas, get your ass in Kaliska right now or we'll be dead real soon.

   signed,

   Gramioli of the deep (03-19-86)

   Thomas peeked at the letter with a puzzled look. "Well", he muttered, "learning magic would be nice. But," He then took a long glance at the date. "I think I'm twenty years late for it."

   It finally happened. My best case scenario. And dang, I hadn't expected it, merely hoped for it to just pop out and surprise me. I AM EXEMPTED FROM THE CHEMISTRY 16 FINAL EXAMS. EXEMPTED!! And since in order to be exempted you had to at least have a point average of 2 or below, this must mean I friggin' passed chem. One thing accomplished for this year!!! Wooohooooo!

   Along with being exempted from chem exams, part of my best case scenario would be my exemption from the finals of Natsci, and I did get exempted (whee!). So now I only have finals for English!!! *does the wiggly dance of joy*

   *breathes*

*****

   book trippin'

   Aprille and I decided to go to Pasig for the Powerbook's Warehouse Sale after finishing the last of our classes at UP today. Riding MRT up to Boni Ave., then taking the tricycle to the depts of Pioneer, we arrived a little after 11 at the warehouse. According to Aprille who had been to warehouse sales before, the conditions of the actual Powerbook's warehouse is topnotch: it's airconditioned, etc. But there is one thing that's quite disappointing about the whole thing: the prices of the books are still *looks up* very much high.

   Maybe as consolation through all the trouble we got into, I got a very nice copy of my fave author's book, The Deeper Meaning of Liff, for only P59, Field Guide to the Apocalypse for P29, Books of Magic 1 & 2 for P49 & P34. At least I acquired some new reading material. 

   After a thorough inspection of various titles and prices we proceeded back to pioneer to eat. Then went back to UP, me, to check my chem grades, and Aprille to meet with Paula.

   I want to go cd trippin' next time. 

   The last two days had been pure blah and uggh. Friday, I had been cramming for this long exam in Bio, then come Saturday, I had been going around sporting my sleep-deprived self on the campus for a Chemistry long exam. After which, I came home pissed off at Chem and at myself because sometimes they are so much alike.

   I am now struggling with an English paper to be passed tomorrow -with no idea how I am going to start the whole thing, except maybe that it has to start with something coherent and logical and so not me at this moment. If anything decides to go boom at me at this point, or if anyone decides that it is high time to kick me down the gutter, please do so. If I stay in this way I get more moody and it'll be better if I direct this self-loathing to something more 'there'. I am not even sure how I've come to this metaphysical fighting with myself. Maybe because I'm just crazy. As soon as things settles for the start of summer I'll go buy myself some cds and books then maybe I'lll like myself better.

   This is what happens when you notice how bitchy you have been to people in general.