Beating Odds

Today I watched my very first UAAP game this season. It's between the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. They call it 'The Battle of Katipunan" as the schools are located along the avenue. Naturally, bottom seed UP lost to Ateneo, 78-53. Six games into the season and UP is still without a win, they will close the first round with the National University on Saturday.

I got in for free because I have a Sportswriting class for this semester and our teacher happens to be a PR expert who has some reasonable influence in the UAAP. I have a media pass that allows me to watch any game I want, on courtside.

The fun thing about staying on the courtside is you get to see things you never have the chance to see on TV, or on any other place in the arena.

1.) My friend Sara is jealous that Nico Salva who's tall and really good-looking (the best looking in the Ateneo squad, IMO) was walking/running just three meters away from me. For all we know, I could have inhaled a dead skin cell and its stuck somewhere there in my nosehair.. OMG! We can definitely clone him!

2.) Ateneo wore their white uniform which is actually a very light and thin fabric. I can see who's wearing briefs and who's wearing supporters. I swear. My classmate Janina will agree. Ateneo seriously has to get new shorts.

3.) Mark Lopez is the hottest player on court. Really.

4.) Basketball players tap each other's ass A LOT. There's no other social event which tap asses like a basketball game with the exemption of gay parties. You shoot, you get tapped in the ass. You fall, get tapped. You get fouled, get tapped. You sub, get tapped. You foul, get tapped. It's unnerving. Even for me.

With that said, it's obvious that I can't wait to watch another game. I will see UP win against NU on Saturday. It will happen.

***

I planned to row again today after three weeks. But since I am still awake with less than two hours 'til the agreed meeting time, I decided not to. Obviously, I'll die if I jog and do some drills before I subject myself to 2 sets of 15 minutes of continuous rowing. Yes, I still fear death.

I promise, however, to row next week when my money vault would be replenished and I would have prepared for it physically.

Brief, Wondrous

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I have been reading intermittently over the past six months, doubles as a stand for my laptop monitor. You see, one of the hinges of my Compaq Presario C500 gave up. So my laptop looks like it's been stricken with polio and the awesome book written by Junot Diaz is its crutch. In fact, it's the perfect crutch because its height is the same as the base of my laptop.

One day, I will own a MacBook Pro and my life will be wonderful.

***

It's been more than three weeks since I stopped rowing, it's more than the time I actually rowed. And because of this, I started losing weight. Odd, isn't it? How I gain weight when I have a strenuous physical activity and how I lose weight when I stopped doing it?

I also haven't been jogging anymore. It's like the fire on my ass that fuels me to go farther than I think I can has gone. My life is eaten by things I tell myself are important.

I need to row and jog again.

***

I feel sad. I feel sad I can't write anymore. This entry for example is churned from hard-squeezed creative juice and yet I use "***" to mask my inability to provide transitions. (Ma'am Chua will agree)

Rawr. Argh. Obviously, there's something wrong. In fact, there are a lot of things that are wrong today. I feel sad, I feel overworked, stretched out thin. I feel poor. I feel alone. I feel needy. Blah. I hate today.

The Lakers-Celtics Rivalry (or How I Will Never Understand This Love We Have For Basketball)

It was in the NBA Finals of 1996 when I didn't develop a liking in basketball. The live feed directly ran through the set of morning cartoon shows I watched as a routine.

My father and uncles, who would gather around the TV set and shout and cheer and shriek and growl with every turnover, insisted that I should just miss the whole thing for just two hours, it's not every day that it's NBA Finals anyway. But at six years old, cartoons mean everything to you and when they took cartoons away from me, they took everything from me.

The Chicago Bulls won that year.

Fourteen years later, I sit in my college lobby where students gather to watch Game 7 of the LA Lakers-Boston Celtics game. The winner of which would be proclaimed NBA Champions.

I get lost in the sea of yellows and green, in the look of excitement and disbelief in their faces, in every profanity they utter. They are so into the game. And it hits me, I may have never fully understood the way we, as a people, love basketball.

The Lakers and Celtics have been gunning for it for a long time, their rivalry is legendary. The closest we Filipinos can get is the Ateneo-La Salle rivalry. And as a tennis aficionado, I just think it's another Federer-Nadal match to better understand the kind of spite and complex fanatic behaviour that surround this rivalry.

I dropped out early of the NBA Play-offs when the San Antonio Spurs were eliminated by the Phoenix Suns. The Spurs is the team I keep and I closely just so I can talk about basketball and not look stupid around people who talk about basketball. In the Philippines, that's everyone. It helps that Manu Ginobili is cute.

To be honest, the only Kobe I like is a slab of meat that costs a fortune. So in every Lakers-Celtics Twitter update, or in any Facebook post, I feel indifferent. Sure, it's a momentous event in history. But for me, it has value not because I get entertained with every awesome, selfish shot Kobe makes, but because as a journalist, I should know a little bit of everything. It is a nugget of informaton that might come in useful in everyday conversations, or in everyday articles.

I may never have a heart or at least, an understanding of what is this to be tangled in the Lakers-Celtics rivalry. I do not really care if the Lakers didn't win. Or the Bulls made a comeback. If the Spurs won, it would make a difference but very little. Ever since that NBA Finals game in 1996, I have developed all these judgments against basketball. Basketball is overrated, overpatronized. And this love we Filipinos have for basketball, I will never understand.