beingbeaple

I am officially addicted to hexrpg.com. The role playing is fun but seriously, it’s the thought of being in Hogwarts - taking classes and owling witches and wizards from all around the world - that hypes me up! Although I desperately wished I could be in Gryffindor, the sorting staff - the people who read the intro essay I submitted before sorting - decided to send me to Hufflepuff.

Others say those in Hufflepuff are a load of duffers but I’m quite at home with them. True, they may be a bit carried away at times and they’re not as well-behaved as the Ravies but they’re still very fun to hang around with!

Oh, did I say they? I meant WE. We Huffies are the best.

Happy New Year everyone! My cousins from my ma’s side are at home to have a traditional salo-salo. Tee hee! I’m trying to do as much housework as I can so that industry will rub off on me the whole year through!

Poof!

I spent the last day of 2006 at my cousins’ home, watching my uncle mutilate a poor female pig for the new year countdown later. Spent the whole afternoon eating camote with ginamos, squatting beside rogue turkeys, chatting with my Boholano kuya about cooking, bonding with baby Misay, bickering with Long Long, and just having the time of my life.

If the last day of this year is any sign of how I’m gonna fare next year, I must say I’m quite excited!

Poof!

How have the holidays treated you?

Me? I’m quite fine, actually. I think I’ve gained weight over the course of all the Christmas parties and late night heavy dinners, but because I’m quite the typical stick I doubt a few fats here and there would qualify me as obese.

I’ve been hanging in front of this laptop quite often lately. It’s just so fun getting in touch with the rest of the world through just your fingertips! See, a few days ago I couldn’t log in to Friendster - maybe it was the quake in Taiwan that caused the disruption - so I tried to look around for a few interesting sites. I went to mugglenet to look for some good fics that I hadn’t read yet but - honestly speaking - I’m getting quite bored of the almighty mugglenet, so I tried to search for anything Harry Potter and found…

www.hexrpg.com

It’s really good. You should enrol. The people are quite friendly, too.

All in all, this Christmas has been nothing short of great. I may not have come to terms will all my inner demons yet, but at least I’m on the way of banishing them from my inner psyche. And the mass this morning - about the Feast of the Holy Family - was wonderful. Seriously. I don’t mean to sound anything like a student from a  Catholic high school - which I am, by the way, but still - it feels so good to go to Church to hear mass.

I hope this year holds new promises and surprises for everyone! Happy New Year, guys and gals!

My Christmas was quite lovely, thank you very much. We went to watch the annual cantata at my father’s church and my mother’s favorite dried fish was present - as usual - during noche buena. And the night before Christmas was anything but quiet - our neighbors seemed intent on cheering up the solemnity of the baby Lord’s birth by letting loose a stream of fireworks that I watched over the window.

Christmas Day itself was quite interesting, actually. I went over to my cousins’ place to help them conduct this children’s Christmas party or something. I even got to wear this tiny santa costume (which was originally meant to fit a boy of ten or so) as I helped my cousins distribute food, toys, etc. So sad that because of all that reaching out, I just dropped on their couch (after lunch) and slept like a log until mid-afternoon.

And now, I am at Domain in Limketkai, celebrating Christmas with the guys - literally. We’re all gathered up because Kenny’s here from Cebu and since he’s not always here, we’ve decided to make this visit memorable. So aside from all the guys here, it’s basically just me and Mary and Jeanne. (The rest are off with their personal celebrations.) Mary and I tried to play DotA - I swear I really tried - but now we’ve both accepted defeat - with as much girlish dignity as we can muster - and we’re currently just surfing away.

The boys are, of course, battling their heads off.

It was exciting though, my brief DotA stint. Not that I am in any form violent or aggressive or such, but I really had fun listening to my character say stuff like "How I abhor violence" or something like that, watching blood spilling onscreen, and basically just glimpsing a bit of the thing that fascinates boys’ minds so much.

I remember once, after my little heart problem, Varian gave me some comforting advice. He told me that I should find someone who would love me for who I was and would never question me. He said he had already found his own partner and that she was the greatest. She didn’t complain when he was late; she didn’t mind if he swore in front of her; she didn’t flinch or get jealous when he spent some bond time with his friends.

He also said her name was DotA.

Oh well. I knew I couldn’t win that one.

So Merry Christmas to all of you! Hope you find true peace this season!

P.S. I do not intend to fully give up on DotA. I plan to bully Mac to teaching me how to maneuvre around that blasted campsite. Revenge is mine!!!!!!!! Tee hee!

P.S. I just finished reading Oblivious by Pallas and it’s really great! I don’t even know enough adjectives to describe it! Check it out yourself at http://fanfiction.mugglenet.com/viewstory.php?sid=1308

Of brownies and dogs… hmm… that doesn’t sound right. But it’s my title for tonight’s short post because it’s the last thing I laughed about before entering me pre-blogging stage. See it went like this:

I was looking for the stack of brownies that Auntie Eunice - she’s not really my aunt or anything like that, it’s just that in the Philippines, kids call older family friends aunt or uncle or tito or tita - gave my mom for Christmas. So I was asking my manang where the brownies in question were and she looked at me as though I was crazy and asked, "Unsa? Ang iro?"

And, in my starving state, I was quite incapable of understanding her and I just kept ranting, "the brownies… the brownies…" and she just keep insisting WE HAD NO BROWNIES and then I understood that we both misunderstood each other because she thought I was looking for a dog of ours named Brownie (which would have been quite alarming since our dog is black and her name is Millie) and I, the patay-gutom that I am, was looking for the brownies.

So yeah. That made me laugh.

Anyway, I wasn’t planning to blog tonight but I was bloody bored cause, for some horrible reason, mugglenet won’t open up for me and jkrowling.com is taking so long to load and this ridiculously slow java installation thing is taking so LLLLLLLLLLLong. That’s why I’m here.

In case anybody is wondering, the party at OWWA went well, my hosting job fascinated even me, and although I fell asleep during the later part of the program, I still had a blast - especially when we were all dancing to the tune of Boom Tarat Tarat.

Haha.

Btw, I’d like to spread some extremely alarming news. Aimee Capinpuyan of More to Me fame is no longer one of us. She no longer plans to continue posting clips and flashes of her life. What will happen to her fan base (myself included)??? If I had that much readers I wouldn’t stop blogging!!!! Aahhh. Aimee! Nooooooooo!!!

Sigh. I hope she changes her mind. But for now, I shall divert my attention to my friend Ogi’s blog http://myseeminglyboringlife.blogs.friendster.com/my_seemingly_boring_life/2006/12/the_start_of_so.html

and I’m going to check out Mark Madria’s blog.

Sigh. Sigh. Oh, for the love of Limewire. Aja Java, Aja!

Hiya everyone, I’m back!

After the dreaded third quarter exams, I’m alive and kicking once again! I’d really love to share the latest happenings of my whacked-up world (aggravated by the season more commonly known as Christmas) so here goes nothing:

Our friend Clint turned sweet sixteen yesterday! Happy birthday, Clint! He invited us to Limketkai so we could eat at Greenwich and watch a movie afterwards. So after chowing (and arguing about who gets to eat more slices of the sisig pizza) we went to the movie house only to find out that Borat - the movie the birthday boy really wanted to watch - was R-18.

We ended up watching Saint Ange instead.

Although it doesn’t seem like the perfect birthday party movie to watch, it still turned out to be quite good. Since we only caught the middle part of the film, we were a bit confused about the happenings - yes, if you watch from the middle it really does become quite murky and confusing. Nevertheless, we (or better yet, just I) got scared with the whole drama unfolding on the silver screen.

See, it wasn’t the usual type of horror movie. Sadaku, Samara and THE GRUDGE protagonist/antagonist weren’t there (their relatives weren’t there too) but the whole plot of the story revolves around something so sinister and psychological that people like me (who have vivid imaginations, borne out of dark and enclosed spaces) tend to get edgy and jumpy.

Oh, and it didn’t help that there were only a few people in the cinema.

So yes, since we started from the middle, the beginning was quite unclear to us and we wanted to watch the whole thing. But we did start watching the movie quite late already and there were only about two hours left before the mall closed. And yes, shopaholics like me need a minimum of three hours to be satisfied with our hunting, thus, I excused myself and left early.

After dropping Carmel off at the entrance (she left early too), I immediately got into action. Operation: Pre-Christmas Party Bargain Hunt was well under way.

Sigh. I love shopping. I rarely have money to shop for myself and for others (I have this awful habit of splurging on Internet cafe fees, food, school supplies, food, group project contributions, and food) but in a way, that’s good. It challenges me to search for the perfect item on sale. And retail therapy really does work: all my problems take the form of an overpriced article of clothing and such.

And I was ecstatic. There was the whole of Limketkai to sniff around for great deals and amazing buys and to think, I was shopping alone. For the first time in my life, I was actually shopping alone! (Of course my parents don’t know and I plan to keep it that way.) I felt so liberated, so confident, so….

College-y.

Anyway, I was having a problem buying stuff for the pips. I had an idea about the stuff they wanted but I didn’t have enough money (according to earlier calculations involving a lot of frustrations and business transactions with my mother) so I had to really search long and hard. And I was actually more than eager to do so.

Only thing was, it was almost nine pm. And Ketkai closes at nine pm.

So after grabbing a satisfactory gift for my manita (Carmel, who didn’t have a clue about the identity of the person who picked her name because Mac, Karla, me and all the other people involved are such good actors and actresses and, not to mention, highly accomplished liars) I rushed off to buy presents for the rest of the gang.

And when the guard came and blew his whistle, I was rammed with a shocking realization: I was one bloody gift short!

So I rushed to the only open stall I could find, and purchased - at random - something for one of my friends. And I went out, satisfied and confident that I had covered everything - although I was quite disgruntled, thinking thy weren’t good enough - when, while standing out of Urgena Fruits, I realized I didn’t have gifts for the guys (well, except Mac because……………. I had gotten his gift earlier). And that is why Clint, TJ and Retuya have native delicacies for Christmas gifts - from me.

Worse, I wasn’t able to grab any wrapping paper so I had to wake up at 5:30 this morning to wrap everything - after Ate Tani had gone to the subdivision one-stop shop to buy some wrapping paper.

And yes, the party this morning was quite enjoyable. I loved all the gifts I received, especially the one from my best friend Karla. I do hope my mom’s office party later turns out quite well, too.

Poof!

Sweating has always been a problem in my dad’s side of the family. One of our relatives - the ones I don’t know well, anyway - who wanted to take up engineering - it’s a fad to the Bergados - gave up his dream when he realized he couldn’t possibly make blueprints and such if his hands were so clammy. My dad almost always has these weird sore throat attacks that lead everyone to conclude that he’s got pneumonia or something - yep, my mom and I fell for it and he had to be rushed to the hospital last night cause we all thought something was desperately wrong with his respiration.

And me? Well, aside from the fact that I find it embarrassing to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer in each mass and my feet get soaked even when I’m wearing sandals AND inside the cinema, there’s nothing in particular that irks me about this legacy. But there is that slight problem of sweat dripping down my legs and hands when I’m stuck in a crowded jeep (without elbow room) in the middle of a traffic jam.

Dripping, yes. I am so not exaggerating.

Anyway, enough of that.

The exams today were "evil" - fitting words from a friend of mine. But, as my mother constantly reminds me, nothing is easy in this world, even for Albert Einstein.

Physics was difficult but since it is ALWAYS difficult I’ve sort of gotten used to becoming befuddled halfway through the test paper. Filipino… now that’s another story.

See, I’ve always thought Language Proficiency was my best subject (it used to be Social Studies but then Econ came so…) because it seemed so bloody fascinating to just read and read and read then analyze. Modesty aside, my scores in Language Proficiency and Reading Comprehension exams (nope, not the achievement tests given and graded in school) are quite good. But once you look at my grades in my report card, you’d probably do a double take.

My grades in those subjects are quite bad, actually.

Sigh.

But it is my fault, you know, so… I mean, instead of making little reviewers for English and Dev R (exams, exams) later, I’m blogging… and planning to pay mugglenet fanfiction a little visit later.

…

Tee hee! I am so blasted lazy.

My classmate once wore a pair of graded glasses even though he wasn’t required to. When we asked him why he did that (it caused quite a stir because he metamorphed into a nerd, you know) it became apparent that he did it just for fun. And this affirms the cliche HUMANS WANT THE THINGS THEY DON’T HAVE. We just have a knack for desiring things we can still live without, things that will supposedly make our lives easier (in truth, it’s the other way around).  I mean, have you noticed that…

Guys go for the girls they can’t possible reach?

Married men look for mistresses? ?

Male dogs can’t keep the streets porn-free???

Okay, Okay. I’m being unfair here. It’s not just the guys fault. There really are some guys who are capable of loving for real, guys who are willing and able to keep their half-hearted promises to themselves.

Sad thing is, there’s just a smattering of those demigods here on Earth. Sadly, there’s just not enough for all of us girls.

Sigh.

I think the lack of sleep and work-related stress are taking their toll on me.

In my two school years as the Editor-in-Chief of our school publication (I would love to call it a magazine but I can’t because its contents are mostly news articles) I have never actually worked on the layout. Seriously. All I’ve ever had to do was write my stuff, compel other people to write their stuff, and pass the whole thing to the big boss. For quite some time, I was under the delusion that making a magazine was pansit - until we had to work on Bukang Liwayway.

The layout was a big problem, at least for me. The articles I asked the others to write were so darn long that they wouldn’t fit the actual size and I had to murder everything. In my final draft (the intial one was something of a joke) my members’ works were mutilated badly and my own compositions were missing in action.

Elmer from the Printing Press - who is handling a ton by now cause all the other groups assigned to create publications went there, too - said my original dummy was so confusing and that left me with a predicament. I had to print a comprehensive dummy with all the articles and layout and pictures in one day.

Sigh. So I had to work on that thing the entire Sunday! And you know what, I had the whole thing done by night and the only thing left to do was to print it. And then…

The printer wouldn’t print. I don’t know for what reason.

Next thing I knew, I was bawling over that thing so loud and hard that my parents - who despise the sight of me crying so much that they shout at me til I shut up - took pity on me and tried to drive me over to a place with a printer. And then…

The car overheated right in front of Agfa.

So we had to commute. And commute we did. So we got there and everything was done and then…

I had to study for the Computer exam this morning (the first part of a Computer test that culminates in a practicum this afternoon). But I was so tired so I went to sleep and decided to wake up early instead.

So wake up early I did. And I went to school at 6:30 to practice that song for our presentation during the mass. (There is more controversy behind the song but I shall not dare discuss it here for fear of being dubbed tactless.)

And my head was spinning all throughout the exam that I nearly fell asleep. Lucky thing is, I’m logged on right now and my mind is crystal clear. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. the medicinal properties of the Internet. It works against almost anything: heart problems, body pains, depression, thoughts of suicide, lack of friends, stress, etc.

Sigh.

PS: I feel guilty cause everybody’s giving me great testimonials and I can’t give back cause my mind ain’t got enough inspiration to write!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So bad….. So bad….

The Wisdumbians know Thursday as hell day because all the major - read: heavy - subjects fall one after the other on that particular part of the week. But now, I think it has a strong contender for the post of hell day: Friday.

Just think…

This morning, I had to go to school early (6:30 am and that’s the same call time for people on duty for rover scout training) because we had to practice our Christmas carol for our Music Class project. Then, there was this quiz in Computer and then I had to rush to the Guidance Office where the rest of my group mates in Music were gathered, practising our stint. (Oh, I had to take pictures for my group in Filipino, too cause tomorrow, we’re going to go to press and if our newspaper project gets published without pictures, then we are history.) Then, there was this quiz in Economics (I seriously don’t see what’s so interesting about studying the flow of money!) and then…

It was Music Class. The group and I thought we were in for it. All the other groups looked so pretty and dressed up and ready to take centerstage, and there we were, dressed in our little costumes (put together at the last minute) with barely a few minutes that would qualify as practice sessions.

But, God really is full of surprises. We got the highest score. Yipee!

Anyway, during lunch break, Jee Ann and I and some others helped pack these canned goods into plastic bags (there’s a Share-a-Joy activity tomorrow). Then, we had to roll up two hundred pieces of paper for the bunot-bunot, study for Accounting, study for Filipino, and look at all the stuff in Alex’s laptop (which proved to be quite interesting and funny).

Then there was the graded reading for Desiderata (I was bad) which was designed to replace our exams. To think, I should have had the edge since I know that piece off by heart (I tell myself all those things listed in that thing, actually) but I still wasn’t able to do so well! Ahh… stress and its consequences. I suppose I shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night to finish the stuff for Bukang Liwayway.

Thank God there was NO Filipino quiz and there was no Accounting quiz and all I had to do was change into my civilian attire and pose for our Filipino project with Clint. That is, after I ran around distributing little slips of activity sheets to those people who’ll be attending the thing tomorrow.

Sigh. If that’s how my day went, I wonder how the others are like now…

P.S. I won’t be able to do much writing this week since it is the exam week and I really must attempt to study. I mean, I jumped ten places down the honors list. Doesn’t that tell anyone anything?