Brutality of the Goddess

my baguio debae experience will be something that i’ll find hard to forget in a long, long time.  it’s not because of the surreal feeling one gets at actually being able to attain the impossible without expecting it.  but more so, it’s because of the hilarious experiences that one has with team mates.

i admit, i was giddy to leave dumaguete city and trade the humid weather for baguio’s chilly mountain breezes.  after an exhausting six-hour bus ride, it felt oh-so good to just set foot in the city of lights, knees knocking, and teeth chattering.

right then and there, i knew we’d be having loads of fun.  actually, the fun really started when juliana, rochelle, belton, odie and i went out of summerplace hotel to explore the city.  first stop was burnham park where we decided to jump into those quaint swanboats for a ride.  juliana and i volunteered to do the rowing and believe me, it seemed as if the boat was going nowhere as it rocked and moved forward and backward in the middle of the murky pond.  belton of course, sat in the middle of the boat to provide ample balance while rochelle and odie sat behind him.  now odie, unknownst to us until that fateful time, wanted so badly to do the rowing, and went as far as actually standing up and attempting to move to where we were.  we screamed.  the boat rocked violently and threatened to overturn when the balance was wrecked.  sincerely, it felt really good to get our feet back on dry land.

we headed for session road right after and wandered aimlessly as we searched for the elusive ukay merchants while leaving odie to haggle with a key-chain vendor by the sidewalk.  we lost him eventually right after and were only reuntied with him at sm baguio.

it was a sunday and rochelle, having come from a catholic family and having been educated in a catholic school kept nagging us that we needed to go to church.  no problem.  however, after hailing a taxi cab, it seemed as if the taxi driver, rochelle, and i had different things in mind.  upon entering, i told the taxi driver that we wanted to go to the lourdes grotto.  rochelle told him that we wanted to go to the cathedral at the heart of session road.  exasperated and confused, the driver said, " saan ba talaga kayo?  sa lourdes o sa cathedral?"

" sa cathedral nalang po manong," i said, yeilding to what my friend wanted.  unfortunately, the taxi driver was only able to remember lourdes grotto.  it was strange.  the taxi driver took us through a winding path uphill, far from the city proper.

" manong, yung cathedral po sa may session road.  malapit na po ba tayo sa session road?" rochelle asked the taxi driver for what seemed like the nth time already.

the driver scratched his head in frustration.  " Bakit ba kayo session ng session?  walang session dito!" he scolded and pulled over in front of a stone grotto that was carved from the face of a hill.

my companions’ faces paled as they gazed at the 392-step stairway that led all the way to the grotto of the lady of lourdes.  belton and rochelle were on the verge of fainting as we trudged uphill.  belton carried three jars of strawberry preserves and six jars of peanut brittle while rochelle carried six baguio broomsticks and three jars of peanut brittle.  my stomach ached as laughter consumed me.  what happened to belton and rochelle was a perfect remake of jesus christ carrying his cross to golgotha.

we collapsed at the base of the grotto, surrounded by candles and offerings.  on our way down, rochelle grumbled and insisted that we head back tot he hotel.  however, yana and i had other plans.  we had to go downhill to hale a taxi and when we did, all of us raced towards the cab.  a few seconds made the difference and we were able to tell the taxi driver that we wanted to go to session road to continue our ukay ukay expedition much to rochelle’s misery.

these past few days i’ve been feeling really lazy.  too lazy to debate, too lazy to read up on the usual boring servings of news.  i can’t blame myself.  after my sorry predicaments during the first semester, i can’t seem to really bring myself to work my butt off all over again.  it just seems to unfair to me that no matter how much i work, some people are still too stupid to  even appreciate it.

lately, i’ve been up to listening to some old songs.  and some OPM songs that i seemed to have overlooked before.  one of those songs is HARI NG SABLAY.  i don’t know.  i think it’s a really cute song.  it talks about the life of a poor klutz.  you know, someone who seemed to have been born when everything came falling down.  the kind of kid who never seemed to have any luck in life.  someone who was not only born FUGLY but was also born under the worst of luck.

it’s a really cute song and i can’t help but listen to it over and over again.  as for debate and time magazine, well, those two things can wait until later.  i want to rest.  i wanna simply sleep the night away and just forget about even making a school that doesn’t spend for your contest finances proud.  there’s no point and i’m tired of trying to convincince myself that this is all for the school.   yeah right.  it’s no longer about the school.  it’s my cash and my parents worked their butts off just to shell out a few thousand pesos.

if the school is not spending a bit for  the bus fair, they can kiss that stupid trophy farewell because i’m as sure as hell that i’ll be there to have whatever fun i can have.  i’ll be there to pick strawberries.

a few days ago when the freakish weather took a toll on me right after our political science 51 report, i felt fugly.  days after that, i still felt fugly.  do you know what fugly is?  i first heard of that word in the lindsay lohan flick, mean girls, and i never truly knew what that word meant until after monday of last week.

fugly is actually a contraction of f****ng ugly.  it’s more than just feeling ugly, alright.  it’s feeling, yeah, you got that right:  F****ng Ugly.  and i hated that feeling.  i was burning with fever and i was struggling to breathe.  i didn’t want to get out of the house because my lips were chapped and i could virtually see my collar bones sticking out of my body. 

i was too lazy to get properly dressed so, whenever i had to get my butt out of the house, i was left with no choice but to grab a tshirt done with poor taste, ull up a pair of ill-fitting pants and hastily comb my hair.  i’d get out of the house without putting on lipgloss, never mind if i look as deathly as morticia adams (you know who she is, right?).

what can i say?  I was feeling FUGLY.  and it really sucked.  FUGLY.  uggh….i even hate that word.  it’s like having to wake up on the wrong wrong side of the bed, waking up to realize that you don’t have any money in your pocket, waking up to realize that you still have so many things to do, that the online game won’t download pronto, that you’re not inspired to write a story or a decent essay, FUGLY is when you suddenly realize that the person you’ve been eyeing for months is not only gay but has a boyfriend as well.  FUGY is when you find someone else only to find out that although he’s not gay with a boyfriend, but that he has a witch of a girlfriend.  FUGLY.  that’s really FUGLY.  it’s fugly when you go to school and realize that there’s no class since sembreak started days ago.

FUGLY.  eww…

i was shocked, actually, that my final examination in filipino 13 was something i could very well consider a piece of cake.  honestly.  during the past week when i spent most of my waking hours just trying to grasp the answer to the question ‘anu-ano ang mga kasanayan sa pakikipagtalastasan na kailangan nating linangin?’ i found myself at a loss.

i must have read that book more than a hundred times and yet everytime i shut it to take a cat nap, i found myself unable to recall whatever i had read about in the first place–that, i considered tragic.  but the Lord God always manages to come up with little surprises, and yes, i guess he was merciful enough to have allowed our teacher to come up with an elementary-easy test.

but more than that, i guess i’m just so glad that the first semester is officially done and over with.  finally, i can catch up on a lot of good movies that i’ve missed because of the mountains of schoolwork that i had to surmount.  finally, i can drown myself in the pages of novels that i’ve borrowed from my friends, some of them being the da vinci code, inkheart, memoirs of a geisha, and the roman mysteries.

my friends and i share a common view on the first semester: tiring, boring, all messed up.  i believe i’ve heard this line a gazillion times now–we’ll do better in the next semester–only to find out that the promise of oneself has been broken yet again.

the first semester storm did hit me and it left me with a mountains of debris to clean up.  when i browsed through my notes, i found that my notes on the composition of the legislative government were all hastily scribbled in my filipino 13 filler.  when i searched for the family tree of terah, i found it in my political science filler.

be it as it may, i’m so glad that i made it through one of the stormiest seasons in school–literally, and figuratively.