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.

chance of rain

I've always expressed an unpleasant feeling towards the rain. Indoors or outdoors. Outdoors, I get wet and I feel moist and icky and germ-ed (literal). Indoors, I feel wet and icky and germ-ed (figurative). Sure it's a Nescafe moment but I stopped drinking coffee since months ago.

There's a translucent silver sheet that blankets your vision, we call it raindrops. And it paints everything dull - the trees, the buildings, the people, the streets, the vehicles. Sometimes, it blocks our judgment and we think of dull things like loneliness and our lives tragedies.

Where am I getting at? Pardon the incoherent introduction but what I really want to say is.. notice weather forecasts? No matter how promising a fine sunshining tomorrow looks like in the weather room, they will always say there's a "there's a x-percent chance of rain", or "scattered rainshowers in the afternoon".. that's because meteorologists know that weather is a fickle bitch.

And I'll tell you another fickle bitch - Destiny. (You all should watch LOST!)

And another bitch that just won't die - my insecurities (collective).

That is why, I'll go back to working out again.

But you know what I like about the rain? It feels so nice when it stops. It gets rid of the filth of the metro, the skies are clear, the roads are clean. And everything looks beautifully photoshopped. But the dark feeling lingers inside me. Ah, to the gym!

and I forgot

There's a reason why I entitled my previous entry "erect sensibilities".
Is it the weather?

All these thoughts in my head.. inappropriate topic for blog.

ADIDAS

***

So much for ccerebral blogging. Let's talk narrative!

I was in San Pablo, Laguna yesterday. Jeland passed the bar! Woot woot! And he threw a giant party in San Pablo. There I met a few interesting people. The travel sucked. I hate commuting. Good thing Kerwin was there and the ever reliable Xerxes (mp3 player).

But before San Pablo was an interesting make-up class in PolSc14. We talked about the Armed Forces' role in Philippine politics. My professor is a consultant in the AFP which makes the discussion exciting - will his bias show? And for a while, it did show. In our previous discussions, he bashed the government, the present administration, the bureaucracy for all its flaws. But he was generally forgiving with the AFP's mishaps.

The probing and inquisitive student that I am, I asked about his views about the alleged 'extra-judicial killings (EJK)' that been tagged to the AFP. He went on to saying that (this is paraphrasing, not verbatim) there is no written policy on these kind of attacks. The AFP strictly abides the provision of human rights. However, if such activities do occur, it's on the commander-level and no order whatsoever has been given for these acts to be carried out.

I was like.. uh, yeah right. (narrative ends, haha, back to cerebral)

I don't know if he just implied that the AFP (or a minor minor branch of it) is indeed involved in the EJK. But whatever. All these talk of AFP is making me sick.

*unleash inner activist*

It's not a secret that two UP students, Karen and She are still missing. There whereabouts still unknown. But there's been talk about their disappearance. We all know where the fingers are pointed out. Same goes for Jonas Burgos.

So what is the purpose of this entry? This is to inform all of you that these kinds of evil exist in this world. And it is not enough that we make ourselves aware. It's not about taking this to the streets, too many has done that and failed to address real issues. Let's take it to the blogs!

***

Wow, I actually wrote something like that. How political.

ADIDAS

Please link http://www.biggereager.blogspot.com to your blogs! Thanks

erect sensibilities

The sun shines brightly but it doesn't really mean the past few days were warm to me. In a nutshell, it's a struggle - realizations after realizations. It's quite cool actually albeit really painful to crush pre-conceived thoughts about things. Too vague? Ah well, let's just say I'm not as marketable as I think I am. Manny Pacquiao bleeds after some heavy blows. Being the goody-goody, sensitive, whatever-hypocrite that I am, it's only fair to assume that I also do.

I actually think that I have a good perspective of things now - nebulous and formless but it's on the rational side of things. No more psych-ward-worthy acts like calling people randomly.

It's just weird, though. I'm getting used to the loneliness. This may not be a good thing.

Here I am at 4:38AM listening to Karen Carpenter and oddly finds comfort in her songs.

hyped

There was a time when I hated a blog. I never quite understood why my friend spent more time writing in his blog than actually talking to me.

Since February 2005, I blogged. At this point I can say it has become quite an addiction. I compulsively blog - my heartaches, my academic woes, my unusual but unexpected moments of happiness.

Ah well, and it's understood, sometimes, blogs can be the only avenue for being heard and being relieved.