To Drop or not to Drop
A blog on fixing oneself on a dropping day
It’s February 18, 2008. Everyone has a blue slip and it sad. The week, with a totally very blue beginning had a quick fix start on my first subject ChE31. If there could be an insisting way to develop neuroses on a ‘blue’ Monday morning, it would be coffee at Starbucks Katipunan where my every day practically begins. Coffee, miraculously, has some issues other than my slump foot on the sidewalk of AS. I was dazzled not by the blackness but the caffeine that drives me to the edge like riding on a race-flat car with a gong in front of me. Having been engorged on my morning cup, I could say that I am surely a goody-dudey walking tall. Yes, I am walking tall in my Mario Boro sandals, and literally damaging my brain cells with loud music from my iPod Shuffle.
For college jocks and matinee idols, every Monday morning is a take off for a good shower at the GYM. And, with the ‘gym’ word I’d rather say no to showers. As good as I can be, taking P.E. classes in the gym is truly an interesting thing. Not to mention the health ‘benefits’ it gives me, I was really looking for a trouble myself. Or more importantly I am looking for a double trouble myself.
In a week with more or less five subjects, two of them are very hard, I couldn’t help but wonder: What makes a P.E. class important anyway in your two years of stay in the University? Is it really important that a mid-day dancing class would finish your day? Or is it a boost of ego on a weight training session? What really comprises a complete day of an ordinary U.P. student? Is it P.E. or no-I-don’t-need-that P.E.?
Everyday it always and always has been that a substitute for leisure and fun is sleep. Lots of sleep, yes, lots and lots of them. Suddenly, it becomes dangerous and subterranean: dozing off not only in bed but in a Math class in front of the professor. It is true, we need coffee to stay alive or we’re dead meat.
As with sleeping, I kick off my second semester in my second year with a very, very long but ragged sleep: a sleep on a line full of bored, uncomfty UPians dying to finish their registration process. And yes I was sleeping my sore ass when in fact I had only one problem left a 3-unit course to complete my subject row. And by the mercy of God, it was even better: I had P.E. 3 JUDO. Sleeping is such a bad habit that we all should take out from our system. If sleep could be punishing, I am glad I have coffee this morning. Days passed, tossing and jumping, wrestling till my head cuts and bleeds, I am proud to say that I am a Judo master. What difference could it be, being a insanely handsome guy and being a ‘Judo’ master? My mother said, “None.” So I believe her. So being an insanely hot, rich, hunk, gorgeous looking guy who is also a ‘Judo’ master took a Christmas break and found himself alive again. And happy with fat cells happy also. Christmas is entirely a knock off from starvation diet and gym lessons. It is the freedom and pursuit of happiness with food sandwiched in between. I bled over a roasted chick, and cried over a bloody salad if I would still be doing Kesa Gatame on the mats.
It really true, that Christmas is a time for my fats to reproduce. As for my mother, I am always that insanely handsome kid she always sees and I could even bigger. And yes, I am quite bigger than usual. For a record straight I had never left my bed for three days watching Smallville and eating for three straight days nothing but cake and macaroni salad. It was spoon feeding with a dinosaur. I voraciously eat myself without thinking that one of my insanely good qualities would fall off. I became a potato. Then days after, I became a couch.
It was the end of it, and by January the second, the couch flew off to Manila to continue his studies on how to put a nail in your fat lining. Before that happens, I was a potato with a bad case of insomnia, so what more could I ask than being an extra converted potato. I am a potato with abs before, by the way. And everyone likes to taste my French fries, as what Yvonne says.
What really makes a good meal is a breakfast with herbs, not the plant herbs but with ‘HERBS’ the cafeteria, and I speak in ironic terms here. Talking about hazy vegetable salad and murky coleslaw, death on the bed with the best meal of them all: CHICKEN! And what does chicken have to do with February 18, 2008 for goodness sake? As what other people don’t know, I was faced with chickens today: chickens who could talk like roosters. On my daily shift from ChE 31 to Physics 73, which is a 5-mile walk from the College of Engineering or a ten minute ride from on a Katipunan Jeepney, I took a nook in NIP, and NIP is no place like hell. And it was a hell with a chair to student ratio of 100 to 1, thinking about it gives me creeps. The new physics building is built on solid foundations and that foundation is in the middle of nowhere. The chickens that I am talking about are not chicken looking but chicken-moving. And those chickens are PET bottle collectors. But the thing is: are chicken moving PET bottle collectors are concerned with eating chicken on Herbs Canteen? If ask me impoverished neighborhood like the ones besides ‘building-in-no-where-street’ NIP, the possibilities of eating fried chicken could fit on a Gaussian curve which relates random amount of graces on the amount of money they have. The Gaussian curve would have high density on the value range of 1% to 10% chance of eating chicken in an interval of 365 days on random circumstances. But the fact that most of these PET bottle collectors are chicken moving and exhibit chicken-like behavior implies that most of them are close to a chicken life. And that life would be a one-tick-one-big-time life that depends on random amounts of grace spread over an expectant lifetime of 21, 900 days. And most chicken moving people flew around in flocks, not just flocks but large flocks.
If there could be something sad about chickens, the sizzling lunch I had after my class in NIP is definitely the ultimate ‘Herbsian’ specialty: CHICKEN BBQ. . . .
Stop!
I wondered again, why this view of my life became so detailed, vague and nonchalant. What makes me a mortal? Or more importantly, what could be more interesting aside from writing this ego-fueled blog? There is a definite sense of being out there, plunging into life experiences, looking for answers to questions, describing once faith, and making an effort of knowing the unknown. What could be there that hinders growth? I couldn’t think much more that my day would end abruptly. Cutting my responsibilities as a student is enough. I deserve much better. All I want is structure.
But sadly at the end of the day, I didn’t drop.
