Brutality of the Goddess

February has arrived.  the infamous month linked to valentines, love, cupid, and everything that screams coupledom.  for a stark minority, the month is somewhat interchangeable with april fools.  for some, february is the new november.  go figure.

however, for those who are attached to a special someone, a better (or bitter) half, a novio, a paloma mia, a cariño, or cherie amour, or whatever else you call it, february 14 may be a day not out of the ordinary.

for those who just recently go attached or who are flooded with invitations for dinner dates and the like, here is a semi-comprehensive guide on the kinds of dates there.  actually, there aren’t too many.  and since we shall do this in the philippine context (traditional, conservative, blah blah blah…) let the date be a guy and the datee, siempre, a girl (unless some of you are opposed to that then just drop me a line or something).

1. MR. MUCHO DINERO. mr mucho dinero bleeds, smells, and reeks of cash–no, not the kind that jingles but the kind that can actually be folded.  he has no problem with resources for as long as he will be able to spend a few precious moments with you.  he can treat you out to the most expensive restaurant in town, drive you around in the most expensive car in town, and give you a valentine gift that can very well qualify as a dowry.  when you are out with mr. mucho dinero, you can almost feel as if you’re going out with the son of the sultan of brunei. mr. mucho dinero is not afraid to spend, spend, spend–impulsively at that.  hey, he might even be the one to buy you your valentine getup.  no how’s that?

2. MR. KURIPOTITIS.  Oh man, oh man.  it’s amazing that he even considered to ask you out on a date knowing that he is in perpetual belief that his wallet has cancer and that a single peso is worth a million bucks.  You’d be lucky if mr. kuripotitis spends for your pedicab trip to the place where he plans to take you out on a date.  on ordinary cases, mr. kuripotitis will insist that the two of you use your legs and walk towards wherever you plan to eat and spend valentines at.   don’t expect a lavish and extravagant v-day.  hell, you might not even get the works.  here’s what mr. kuripotitis might give you: a santan he just broke off on his way to your classroom, three pieces of maxx candy in red (candy still has ample sugar content but costs way cheaper than a bar of tobleron i.e 3pcs candy=Php2.00 while tobleron=<or> Php 37.50), a recycled valentine card which he stole from his dormmate.  if he takes you out to eat tempura at bosing’s, he just might ask you to pay for half of the total cost.  if you don’t want to starve to death on your date, make sure you eat dinner first before going out with mr. kuripotitis.

3. MR. NO TENGO DINERO.  slightly the same as mr. kuripotitis except that as his name suggests literally, he really doesn’t have the resources to begin with.  in his lack of anything to spend, the only thing he can give you is a valentine greeting and probably he will offer to stroll around the campus with you on foot.  that way, you don’t have to spend anything but time.

4. MR. TORPE. it’s a great, great, great, achievement if you manage to get mr. torpe to ask you out.  if he asks you our up front, he might do it in a voice as faint as a whisper.  his eyes would be wandering all over the place and he would be bending a piece of metal behind his back to release pressure and tense feelings.  don’t expect a quality conversation with mr. torpe.  he will be too shy to even utter a word.  somehow, his vocabulary for the first few hours of your date may be limited to monosyllabic words and you will be given the burden of having to think of all sorts of things to keep the conversation going.  expect then, to dominate the conversation as mr. torpe will be exceptionally silent most of the time and too conscious of his gestures and movements. 

5. MR. CONFIANZA.  confianza.  confidence.  too much confidence.  beware.  he thinks he is God’s gift to women and therefore since he asked you out, he believes and is fully convinced that you must be the luckiest damn girl in the world.  he will suffocate you with the hot air he emits (and destroy the environment by contributing to the greenhouse effect in addition).  he will dazzle you and bore you to death with his achievements.  he will not stop talking about his favorite topic: himself. so in case you decide to go out with him, bring a good book to read (or bash him on the head).  you’ll need it.  badly.

6. MR. BRAINIAC.  prepare for mental overload.  going out with the nerd, with mr. brainiac will leave you speechless if you are not a nerd like him simply because you will never be able to follow his line of thinking or understand all the fancy polysyllabic latin words in his jargon–in geek speak.  you will have the theory of existentialism as you appetizer, the theory of relativity as your first course, the quantum theory as your second course, and newton’s law of motion for desert.  by the time your date is over, your iq will have shot up by 50 points.

so far, these are the the kinds of dates that i have spotted out.  i will be adding more in due time so please, please, be patient.

Finally, midterms is over.  i can’t believe how extremely delighted i am to have rushed into battle armed with more than a hundred’s worth of pages crammed into my brain and to have emerged in one piece–alive to tell the tale of how it is to have read two chapters of wilbur schramm from morning till night.  alive after making a comprehensive reviewer of my infamous religion handouts (the text on the handouts were microscopic).  alive after immersing myself unbelievably in college algebra.  midterms is finally over and i couldn’t be any happier.

admittedly, i was in a state of shock prior to my midterms.  after three semesters of only having to take one or two midterm exams, i couldn’t believe i had to take midterm examinations for all of my subjects.  it felt so much like high school except that high school was way more cumbersome and saddistic. 

now we can all look forward to the glory of taking our finals and taking a bow after a whole school year of working doubly hard just to get that coveted 4.0.  my goal is to hibernate during the entire summer vacation and wake up energized and feeling as if i’ve had enough of too much sleep.  impossible.

it amazes me how some people think that i barely get any sleep.  that’s just so weird.  i love to sleep and i jump on the dreamland express whenever i get the chance to.  i mean, nine hours of sleep just isn’t enough now, is it?

i just hate it when i have to rise and shine and everything just seems so perfect.  the temperature, the folds of my blanket, the softness of the pillows.  it makes me feel lethargic and sleepy and nice all over that i’ve often entertained thoughts of skipping class and just sleeping the day away.  of course that never happened.  i can’t bear the thought of having to miss class. 

forgive me for yacking away.  i’m just so glad that i can use my blog again after a week’s agony of being unable to access my little spot in cyberspace.

the next entry should be a lot more interesting.  something about valentines.  don’t cringe.  it’s not gonna be anything cheezy or what.

i’m not particulary interested in my filipino class or in any filipino class for that matter. my command of the language is amazing–amazingly horrendous, that is.  once i was asked to report in class and i stopped in the middle of my report, pressed my lips together, composed myself, inhaled deeply before saying, "ma’am, puede ko magbinisaya?  di jud nako carry and tagalog."  with a look of utter pity, my teacher agreed to allow me to speak the language that i could best express myself in.

lately though, i believe i’m having fun.  i enjoy filipino because of our lengthy discussions of philippine epics.  i can’t help but crack up at the most outrageous scenes in the story.  believe me, it’s too obvious that the author or whoever came up with the epics wanted to achieve a happy ending at all costs.

case in point: in darangan, mabaning’s brother was killed by datu mapondi.  mapondara, mabaning’s brother, as you know is one of the good guys and HE CANNOT SIMPLY EVAPORATE FROM THE STORY.  thus, just as mapondara lay dead, enter madali who came from goodness knows where and brings mapondara back to life using his power as a ‘manghuhula’ (hmm…i wonder how fortune tellers can actually bring a person back to life…). 

there was also another part in the same story wherein the hero, mabaning, was nearly defeated by the vile datu mapondi.  just as mapondi was about to shred mabaning into a thousand little maranaw shreds, enter bantugan from his kingdom a jillion miles away bringing with him an army to save the day.  wow.  talk about coming just in the nick of time.

in the story indarapatra at sulayman, king indarapatra orders his brother sulayman to kill the four beasts who have been plaguing the kingdom.  we see prince sulayman as the perfect principe: dashing, debonair, brave, and above all skilled with the sword.  unfortunately, just as he was about to slay the third beast (a huge bird that has the habit of swooping down on a poor little village whenever), he made the horrid mistake of chopping off big bird’s wing and not running for it just in time.  hence, the wing fell on top of him, squashing him dead.  indaraptra knows about his brother’s death through a nifty plant in the veranda and comes to the rescue.  and get a load of this–i love this part, the line, actually, so i’ll state it as i read it: nang lumingon siya ay bigla niyang nakita and mahiwagang tubig na lunas na ginamit niya upang mabuhay muli si sulayman.  hark!  talk about the magic agua popping out of nowhere.

i also find parts of the other epics simply ridiculous but interesting nonetheless.  kung sa ako pang pinulongan–trampas gayud! 

let’s take hudhud for instance.  aliguyon and pumbakhayon were in the middle of the greatest freaking duel in the mythological history of the ifugao people.  just when things got a lot more thrilling, in came one of the their moms to ask if her baby boy pumbakhayon could take a break and eat lunch.  the thing is, aliguyon had to agree!  i could actually hear someone scream ‘RECESS!’ in the middle of their fight.  wow.  if i were aliguyon i would’ve just chopped the guy’s head off when he stopped.

Moral of the story Biag ni Lam-ang: never go up the mountains killing igorots.  you just might smell like hell.  take lam-ang for instance, the moment the village maidens bathed him in the river, hell, the fishes died because of the stink and the grime that came off him.

Bidasari was even more outrageous.  first off, her parents actually forgot they brought a baby in the forest thus leaving her by the river bank.  second, i’ve never heard of someone who actually told their adversary how best they could be killed.  that’s bidasari for ya.

and of course, who could forget Labaw Donggon who just couldn’t get enough of beautiful women–even one that was taken.  dah sana!  gibitay lagi ilawom sa balay sa bana sa iyang ganahang agawon.

then you have tulalang who’s tall dark and never mind who falls in love in the blink of an eye, who orders his accessories to fight in his stead.  and then you have tuwaang the only freakin guy who made the diwata utter a word.  i wonder how good he looked.  he must’ve been drop dead gorgeous.

that’s philippine epic for you.  it’s unbelievable but undeniably enjoyable.

it’s been a long time since i’ve been able to jot down some of my thoughts here.  this is my first post of the year and i don’t intend on making it a pulitzer-worthy composition, mind you.  i just need to take a lot of stuff off my mind given the fact that my mwf sched always leaves me drained.

what to write?  what to write?  here are some things i’m looking forward to in 2007.

1. DE LOVELY.  i’m watched this movie twice already and i still can’t get enough of it.  this is the only movie sent a deluge of tears down my cheeks.  the story revolved around cole porter one  of my favorite composers of all time.  the man’s a genius and a legend but the way his life was depicted in the movie humanized him to the last fingernail.  to begin with, the songs meant a lot to me since i grew up listening to cole porter’s songs from the great american songbook.  the movie wasn’t just about cole’s life but more importantly it was about love.  the movie’s tagline: a love that never dies, and music that lives forever.  the movie was de-ritz, delightful, and totally de-lovely.

2. TUESDAYS, THURSDAYS, SATURDAYS, AND SUNDAYS.  no doubt, these are the only days of the week which leave me enough room to hybernate and reenergize after the rigors of an 8am-6pm schedule.  i just love the feeling of having to think about nothing but sleep.

3. SUMMER BREAK.  i’m looking forward to summer break for one reason: it gives me ample time to write new books.  i’m thinking of creating a more interesting book version of the philippine epics particularly darangan, ulahingan, and hudhud–slightly tweaked, but written for kids who just can’t get enough of magic and adventure.

4. CONQUERING STAGE FRIGHT. it’s embarrassing but i do get goosebumps when i have to play the violin in front of a crowd.  but i vowed to myself that i’d vanquish that silly feeling this year and i’m looking forward to it.

5. A NEW SCHOOL YEAR.  my sophomore year isn’t through yet but i’m already excited for my junior year.  i can’t wait to be an almighty, powerful junior!  kidding.  but really, i’m excited.

6. TROUBLE.  i have this potential for attracting trouble but then, that’s a given.  all i could do is laugh about it and consider an interesting twist in the story of my life.  things would be awfully boring if nothing happened, don’t you think?  but of course, trouble should only come in moderation if at all.  i’m still enjoying the peacefulness of my life bigtime.

So far, these are the things that i could think of.  i’ll resume to my raving, ranting mode later on when the need arises.  i can’t be staki if i’m always wistful and hopeful, you know.  it’s just so not me.  hehe…