All I want for Christmas....
Friday, December 7
At last, after 3 days of hard work, my laptop is back in tiptop shape, defenses are up and about, critical documents have been recovered from Mozy, plus the music library has been reanimated and has even expanded. Thankfully, the service center made up for their screw-ups this past few weeks by managing to get hold of a new motherboard before their scheduled shutdown for the yuletide season. I've forgiven all the mishaps they've given me, but i do hope that would be my last visit to the service center. So, after a year of procrastination, two system crashes, and the occasional hangover, what have I really learned this year? Absolutely nothing, nothing but pure gibberish, and I'm still as clueless regarding my future as I have been 1 year ago. I thought I was already past these crossroads yet here I am gazing upon that forked path again, as unsure and clueless as I had been when I first got there, and still none the wiser.
Santa, if you're reading this, please, all I want for Christmas is conviction (and an ipod touch, a Macbook Pro, and a MozyPro license, haha), the determination that would drive me to push through my studies and afterwards proceed to Med school afterwards. I'd really like to have that feeling of enjoying what I do, instead of just going through the motions just because. There are times when I still feel pissed at how I let my mother talk me into pursuing Medicine, but thinking about it, I really didin't have any alternative. I could have:
a.) listened to my father and taken up anything with Engineering in it, and live my life as he sees fit, treating me as his second chance in life.
b.) or I could have just gone with my gut and taken up Computer Science, and just welcome the grim future that I may have just as well sentenced myself to become a call center agent. (No offense meant to CompSci Majors, just remembered what one of my Aunts told me)
c.) or I could have just taken Psychology. That way, I'd still be enroute to Med school, but at least I won't have to bleed through every pore in my body just to pass a damn subject.
But then, if I was given a chance to go back, I doubt that I would do things differently, I would have still taken up Biology, and would still rant occasionally on my supposed lack of choices. I don't think the choices really matter, it's the conviction of the one who's about to choose, as it goes by the saying: "If you don't decide for yourself, other people will make that decision for you.
Well, I don't think I have a choice anymore. I once planned to shift to another course, but decided the whole process would be too much work. Add to that the fact that my mom would, upon mentioning any of my plans to shift, do one of two things:
1. Sigh and then say: "Akala ko pa naman may mag-aalaga na sa akin pagtanda ko."
2. Or mention her body aches during dinner:
Ma: May mali na ata talaga sa katawan ko, minsan inaatake ako ng vertigo.
Me: Nagpatingin ka na ba sa ENT?
Ma: Hindi pa e, hihintay na lang kita anak.
Adding to the trap I'm now in is the fact that if I do opt out of Medicine and still pursue Bio, where would I end up? After all, there doesn't seem to be any practical alternative to Med after graduation, as shown by my experiences:
a.) Once someone finds out I'm enrolled in Bio, the follow-up question is always: "Magme-Med ka?"
b.) One of my lab instructors, during a sermon, spurts out: "Training lang yan. Alam ko naman na yung iba sa inyo after graduation magme-Med after, yung iba magtatrabaho sa uhm... Anyway next week..."
Anyway, I shouldn't be troubling myself too much, after all, I've still got tons of work to do, a dozen chapters and hundreds of pages to review, and some handouts to fill up. That said, Merry Christmas everyone!
thrown by A.Paul @ 22:51,
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Too stoned to think of a decent title...
Sunday, November 4
Finally, I'm home from our little blitz escapade, where I was half-dragged by my father for a thousand kilometers. And like a WWII blitzkreig, it was fast, surprising, spontaneous, and absolutely painstaking.
First of all, it was unplanned. I only got wind that we were heading off the night before the actual trip, when my mom came home with bags full of chips, nuts,softdrinks, and other gunk, stuff that she doesn't normally sanction inside the house. Then I found out that we're gonna head off to a resort hotel somewhere, but we had no reservation for a room in the hotel, and we were just gonna make up along the way. Sounds fine, but the problem is the resort was located somewhere in Ilocos Norte, at the tip of Luzon, a friggin 500km away from Manila. I tried to ask them: WTF happens when we don't get a room anywhere in that place?! Just turn around and head back home as if nothing happened?! I'm cool with a bit of spontaneity, but the place is 600km away from home, and I need some assurance, like a hotel reservation. But as usual, the word of my father is a divine rule in itself, so I had no choice but to tuck myself in for a gruesome 14-hour drive.
I'll leave out the horrific and gory details of the trip, but here's a pic to give you an idea:
The yellow circle indicates where I live, and the big fat X marks our destination.
I'm still too stoned to give off the details of our trip, so fast forward to the present and I'm here at home processing the whole bunch of pics from the trip and hopefully I'll get it done before sunrise.
thrown by A.Paul @ 03:57,
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Looks like I'm really in the wrong field after all...
Wednesday, October 17
Labels: crap
thrown by A.Paul @ 12:31,
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And Karma strikes yet again...
Sunday, October 7
So, this weekend was just my average typical weekend. When I say typical, I mean telling myself in the morning that I'll do some serious number crunching and book burning, but engage in some warm-up activities first, like stumbling across the net or playing some games. But the problem is, I often end up stuck in these "warm-up" activities until I realize that 10 hours have past and by then it's too late to cram. It happens quite a lot to me this past sem, so I've gotten fairly used to cramming. This week however, was different, because I'll be having another Bio exam this Monday, so I've set the whole weekend to be my review session.
Now, to give you an idea of how bullsh*t Bio 11 is, picture this: you're exempted so long as you pass all 8 exams, but the catch is, each exam can already be considered as a final exam due to its coverage (minimum of 300 pages, but that's only in the lecture part, mind you). So, I normally review at least a week before the exam, but then this time, I only get 3 days to review due to my hectic schedule.
I woke up that morning intending to review the whole day, but before that, I said, why don't I play a short game first. So I started a game in Max Payne, telling myself: "It's only for just an hour, how can that hurt my study schedule?". Nine hours later and I'm still there, until I decided I've had enough and that it's time to hit the books.
But just as when I turned the pages of the book to study, the lights and the fan suddenly went out. Great, I thought, blackout... How convenient... But I proceeded on studying by candlelight, and decided I'll just read two chapters for tonight before going to bed. After finishing a chapter, I felt a bit queasy so I decided to take a few minutes off to rest at the sofa. And the second I hit the pillows, the light suddenly flickers and the fan roars back into life. I thought: Sheesh, someone's playing a prank on me...
Luckily, I was able to finish cramming despite of that, and now I'm just glad that exam's over. And Yatta! I got exempted in chem!
thrown by A.Paul @ 23:18,
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Hunting for Sandman
Thursday, September 6
At long last, after 4 months of grim waiting and dreaming, I've finally set my greasy paws on a relatively mint copy of Dream Country.
I first set my eyes on this gem a few months back, but unfortunately someone beat me to the chase, and snatched it away from my leering eyes before I can even pull out some cash, which I foolishly assumed I had more than enough of. Ever since then I've been a bloodhound on the scent of an alluring yet elusive prey, sniffing and eventually scoffing at every bookstand my wandering feet fly me off to. My life has since then been a constant attempt at homicidal suicide, with my pragmatic persona trying to choke the life off the sandman fanatic in me. So you can just imagine the orgasmic high my dopamine levels gave me when I happened to stumble across this graphic novel while on my way from lunch. So, long story short, madman drools, madman jumps up and about in glee, madman furiously reserves the book, madman zips back home for cash, then madman slaps salesman with money, then blogs half-truths about madness and short stories.
As much as I'd like to lose myself in its pages, at the moment I can't do so. There's still a truckload of exams to cover, which includes memorizing all the names of the bones and muscles in your garden-variety frog, their functions, location and insertion. So pardon me if sound half-insane because it's no easy task to simultaneously slack your ass off and overload your brain cells in one seating.
Labels: books
thrown by A.Paul @ 20:34,
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Karma
Wednesday, August 29
Finally, after weeks of barely catching my deadlines,I vowed to myself that this week will be different, that I would no longer be a slave to the monotony of Dawn of War and Tiberium Wars. I held up pretty good for the first few days, but then you just can't shrug peer pressure, and today, I finally got coaxed by my roommates to assume my "battle station" once more.
All it took was a split second, there I was, playing my ass off when not-so-surprisingly
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I shift the foldable table to make way for my passing roomie when suddenly the table folds up and down goes my laptop.
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And dammit, it's not just some surface scratch, it scraped deeply into my lcd cover, past the imprint finish and through the top layer of the tough plastic. Damn.
Months and months of pruning, cleaning, and polishing has just been recklessly laid to waste in a split second. Now, it's just like an immaculately white paper with a dot in the center. No matter how much I clean, polish, or cry over it. Yes, it's a goddamn shibboleth but I simply can't find the right words to say, the anger simply burns me up.
But what really pisses me off is the fact that it's all my fault, that I can't shove the blame on someone else, and I can't kick anyone's nut, just my own balls. I knew that I never should've broken my stupid vow, and now I'm stuck here weeping at my loss.
But then, looking on the bright side, at least if i get in some sticky situation, like say, some bastard tries to take my laptop for his own, I'll have that painful scar as a distinct name label.
Labels: rands
thrown by A.Paul @ 20:36,
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