The World is Sinking, Group Yourselves into Three!

There is something about parlor games that makes me raise my eyebrows. Aside from the fact that I don’t know why the hell they’re called parlor games, I highly question the values that they teach children - certainly, these values doesn’t include sportsmanship, camaraderie, and other related euphemisms as they would seem to propagate.

Let us take for example, the game of “The Boat is Sinking” where children group themselves into a specified number of people and in the process, form alliances and choose the one to be excluded. Then the poor child who was left out, shall haply accept his defeat while winners rejoice their victory. Here resurface the theme of betrayal and unhealthy competitiveness at an early age. Just imagine if they happen to be in a real situation where the easiest way to be safe is to sacrifice someone, I don’t think they would think twice doing it. As for the title, I can’t say that it’s the most child friendly, all the gore and trauma of a sinking boat it would cause – definitely not for children. 

Another is “Trip to Jerusalem”, where one competes to secure a chair for himself after revolving around a group of chair in a circle. Talk about imparting selfishness to the next generation. No wonder we have a growing census of position-starved politicians, swindlers, and frauds as confirmed by the news programs. This should stop.

Now who could forget the children’s party staple, the “Bring Me” game where children are asked to “bring” to the host a specified item and the first one to do so snatches the prize. While the immediate effects are fun and adrenaline pumping, the lasting effects could be devastating, some of which include imparting to the kids the idea about wanting to have something out of reach and teaching them that having “everything” is ideal. In addition to that, this makes the parents pack in anticipation the usual items asked during birthday parties – say, 5 peso bills, a family portrait, and the most frequent, a strand white hair (Poor lolo and lolas) – which is not really mentally healthy.

This post is an outrage to the parlor games and their detrimental effects to society. If the humankind would lay ignorant my warning, I would just bless the world and watch it destroy itself. 

Heed my call, STOP PLAYING THEM.

A Balladeer’s Reply to the Ignominous Game Keeper

Oh, Ignominous game keeper!

Let me sing my song of joy and sorrow,

I hope it lasts until tomorrow

My piece of truth and woe,

As sweet...as prickly as a rose.

I sing of Valiant kings

Hearken me, the battle’s cometh,

Every aged and clandestine bore their son

I long that this ever does not move on.

I sing of the minions of your enemy,

Are they slaves working for their master? 

Tainted warriors, why can’t they see,

The signage too obvious for one to see

I sing of the Skillful head and lady justice,

Where art thou stand now point?

I sing of the Willful master, he be so sure,

That all stories blessed and old, be one’s practiced and told

Promise,  all will be the cure, in this ground so unsure.

I sing of the the masses  waiting, mute and blind,

Would someone stand up and be so kind?

Voice of the people where art thou?

Now that the people had been castrated like cows

I sing of the Sweet puppet master, who knows very well this game.

Had age made immune with all the shame?

Pompous queen and king Lear,

Beware for the battles near.

Brave soldier, cunning strategist, blind follower, idiot believer, fool-hearty king, pompous queen, and puppet master, remember I come to bring you truth and woe.

For no virtuous deed you commit on my people, you shan’t sow.

TSFY: Pyramid

WARNING: This is disturbing sh*t. Takes a lot of courage to pull off. Frequent flats,sharps, and tone deviations are present. This is for YOU, you know who you are. :)

Here goes nothing:

 

Haircut Fiasco

I recently got a haircut two days ago (see picture). It just came to me that I sorta have this fetish of taking photos of myself after getting a haircut. Some may call it self-love, narcissism, or vanity, but I prefer it to be called appreciation of oneself. If you yourself doesn’t appreciate how you look, trust me, no one else will do.

The hardest and most mind-boggling part when getting a haircut is when the hairdresser asks you what hair cut do you want. I, who lived in a generation of schools requiring a 2x3 haircut, aside from being a style imbecile, would always find it very hard to answer. I would usually say, “Kahit ano po” then the stylist would jokingly quip with “Kahit kalbo?” then I would reply, “Wag naman po yun…”. That’s the usual script. 

If I would put up a salon/barbershop, I’d provide a catalogue of hairstyles so that choosing a cut would be in a jiffy, less stressful and guarantee that the cut is suitable for one’s preferences. Salons would really learn a thing or two from the karinderya’s turo turo system.

When I was in high school, I used to sport a 5x6 haircut because, believe it or not, I used to be a CAT officer. The barber from the kanto played as my personal hairdresser, me going to his shop every two weeks without fail. One time I asked him to do my usual cut but ended up having a semi kalbo head. It was a disaster. I then had to suffer being an egg head for two excruciating weeks that’s why I choose to play it safe now and be very particular with the places I get my haircut. And I swore never again to go to barber shops.

***

If I badly need a haircut when I’m in Manila, I’d usually go to Mary Pauline Salon Dapitan Branch – that’s where I recently got my haircut days prior. Although one observation I had here is that after two weeks, my hair becomes kinda messy and hard to manage.

Pampanga always has some of the best hairdressers. I highly recommend Matrix Salon and Lykx Feliciano, formerly from Dan Jose Salon but now operating a shop of his own, Trenvision. The former is more student budget friendly at the price of 100 per haircut while the later is more costly at 180 pesos. But more or less, the quality is just the same.

Much Ado About Being Late

www.photo.icedcoffee.ie

I just discovered a new talent today – that I can actually wake up ten minutes before classes start and afford not to be late.

Screw breakfast. Screw the morning rituals. Screw everything that you think are necessary for your optimum learning experience at school. These are the times that one learns that the only things you'd have to do is get dressed and go. It’s a post modern thing, I guess. I’ve heard this is what they call the “laidback” lifestyle. While this may not be the best routine to follow every day as it promotes unhygienic practices and the bahala na lifestyle, it still pays to learn the trade just in case.

It took me around five minutes to take a bath and another five get to school via an over-priced tricycle ride just to beat the traffic. Trust me, tricycles are the most trustworthy form of transportation in times like these. It’s amazing how they go through the city’s mazes unfazed by traffic glitches.

Upon arriving, I had to dash though the university’s streets and gates until I was blatantly blocked by a horde of students coming in who seemed to enjoy their time walking, as if in a park, marveling at our school’s century-old buildings and facade. I was so pissed that wanted to yell at their backs, “Hey! Make way for a soon-to-be late nursing student! You’re not the only one using the road!” I scrapped the idea. I guess I’ve been better at anger management through constant practice and frequent outbursts. My rage must’ve reached the point of exhaustion.

I have this thing for people who walk at a turtle’s pace. Given that braniac, now deceased, Charles Darwin was correct in saying that all life is a series of evolutions from a less able specie to a more adaptive one – that organisms tend to lose attributes that doesn’t benefit them, and vice versa, through the process of natural selection - I have this theory that those people who walk so slow had suffered from some evolutionary delay as evidence by their poor coping behavior to our fast paced world. Makes me wonder why they’re still existing now. Their race must be annihilated.

I am reminded of an instance when I was walking with a classmate for lunch. I suddenly blurted out with absolutely no pun intended, “Hay, alam mo ba ayoko sa mga taong mabagal maglakad”. Then suddenly the girl in front of us gave me the you-totally-burst-my-bubble look and said, “Sorry ah, mabagal kasi ako maglakad!”. I was like, whoa..what is your problem, lady?

Now, if the people in charge of our roads have solved the traffic problem by having a fast and slow lane, why can’t we apply the same idea in our pedestrian lanes? Imagine, you’d have a lane for those who seemed to be running late and another lane for those chillaxing people, that way everyone will be happy as they could still afford to walk whatever pace they wish to do without being a disturbance to others. It will be such a better world.

Back to the story. Although the universe doesn’t seem to lay all her plans in my favor that day, I still managed to arrive at our classroom before our professor did. That makes me, uhm…not late.

P.S: I guess just have to deal with my body stench later at lunch time.

All the Weird People

Some people are just plainly unbelievable.

I happened to have a friend from a foreign country who desperately wanted to have a poster of his crush, just to have something to fantasize about in his room. The poster was there in the street, and it so happened the universe lay all her cards perfectly that no pair prying eyes were around. So his hands did the dirty job (which was illegal), got caught by the police, and served jail for it. I cringed.

“Forest, lady, or straight, anyone?” that’s another friend’s line who used to be a drug dealer for Manila’s literati until he got cornered and followed by the other big time dealers who threatened to put his family’s house to flames. He promised not to do it again since then. At least that’s what he said.

Another friend recently called, he was asking me, being a student nurse, if I happen to know a doctor who discretely treats sexually transmitted infections since I think he’s got gonorrhea or something (sign and symptoms: painful burning pain upon urination, pus discharge). 

Can I just ballistically whack these people's heads!? Say,what are you doing with your life?! Don’t you know how to use a condom?! Are you insane?! turning into a delinquent?! Sexually preoccupied?!

Amid these outrageous experiences, there’s still a thing one could learn from their experiences. That is, the best role models are not the ones who lived a clean slate life.

They are not those who receive a CNN hero of the year award because of some kariton education streak or some taxi driver who turned in a purse with thousand dollars left by a foreign national in his cab (as if not expecting a reward for the act). While these people have done just so much heroic deeds to be considered a hero, I still believe that they still won't pass to be considered as role models. Not that I don’t have the highest regard for them, I really do; however, I believe role models are more than just an effigy of a person’s sheer display of valor and integrity. 

The best people to serve as our role models are the ones who lived their lives to the fullest, fucked up all there is to fuck about, and those who made the necessary compromises for the things they had done. They are the unwavering ones still standing after a raging storm, the strategic ones who apparently will lose a pusoy dos game only for his opponents to find out that all the dos’s are on his deck, and those clever ones who nearly lost a chess game but managed to turn the table around. Most saints didn't become one if not for their stories of struggles and repentance, I guess even the Bible supports my claim.

There is much to learn from other people, you just have to listen to them.

QUIET!!!

Why can’t the world just shut up?

Contrary to my verboseness in my writing, you’d normally find me sitting there, sulking in the corner, quietly minding my own business. Because I, of all people, happen to enjoy silence as much as I would devour a double down sandwich within five minutes. And if you happen to disturb me in my so called mute sanctuary, I would (a) on the most favorable of circumstances, just let that little disturbance slip off and pretend like it didn’t happen (b) be civil enough to tell you to shush up or (c) ragefully snap and transform myself into a 6-month starved lion ready to take you down anytime, anywhere. And oh, I just noticed how the word “ragefully” was underlined with red in my word processor. I love making my own adverbs. Thanks for the correction, but I’d have to ignore you for now MS Word.

I am especially enraged during times when my classmates seemed to have mania of the vocal chords, their voices sprouting from every direction I don’t know where, while I, being their Class President, is trying my best to announce something. How I hate those moments! Faced with a highly trained 45-man noise battalion who mercilessly weren’t so forgiving, I know I wouldn’t win.

Well, genius as I am, sort of discovered a very innovative solution: a microphone. That time, no one in the noise battalion dared to stand up and compete with me and my much, much better arsenal. I owned them, hurling higher decibelled words which outdone the battalion’s weapons, thanks to the built in speakers in the classroom. It was my personal Hellenistic age! Although the glorious golden days were only short lived until the skills lab custodian went beserk, reprimanding me of causing too much noise. I had to suffer a long sermon then. And that was five minutes post-discovery of the wondrous microphone. Boohoo.

The preschool teachers must have something in them that lures their students into silence. I remember my grade school days in O.B.Montessori when we would play “The Silence Game” where we would rest our butts on the little pink and yellow chairs, place our hands in our laps, zip our mouths, and stare blankly to your seatmates’ sipon smeared faces without saying a word . I loathed that then but now, I deem it very useful.

High school days came and the “Silence Game” was replaced by  “The Noisy List”. And I, being a human chat box would always top the list written in the least unnoticeable corner in blackboard. I was really noisy when I was young. I also remember the dramas and tampuhans behind those lists, especially the one when a classmate of mine allegedly accused the Noisy List lister of the day of injustice which was then followed by a inter-girl group derby. I can’t belive were that gullible.

Sometimes I wish that some brainiac would discover a remote that could mute the entire surroundings. And if that brainiac do come up with something similar that and sell them to the public , he will definitely make a market composed of me and other noise Nazi’s. I can just imagine myself hoarding the shops,buying myself two pieces so that if the other one gets broken, I’d still have one as reserve until I buy another one. And probably on my second trip, I’d would have saved some money to buy those hyperdecibelled people their own silencers.

While the materialization of that ingenious idea looks too distant, I’d have to start in conceptualizing it, just to speed up things.

On How I'll Manage to Complete my DR Cases

One year to go till I graduate college and I still don’t know what to do after. Oh wait, before we get on to that, I still have to complete my requirements for PRC, pass the local board exam, and struggle with all my remaining energy in claiming my license. 

Good thing I wrote this blog entry since it just came to me that I still have zero delivery room cases. (Thanks to my very timely chickenpox infection which made me miss our whole DR rotation in Tondo) If you’re a nursing student, which you are unlikely am, you have to experience three cases of childbirths within your 4-year stay in college, if not, well let’s just say PRC won’t allow you to go get the local boards.

Maybe I should already start dancing at a festival in Obando, hoping my dancing would please God and in turn, bless these faithful women with their longed for fertility. And if God would be generous enough, that fertility blessing could lead to an adequate or better yet, an oversupply of child birth cases to be shared by all nursing students in the Philippines. Whether He would consider me worthy of my wish or not, I seriously doubt He’d fall for it. First, because I believe he wouldn’t be pleased with my motives. Second, I just realized that I won’t do any help since lady common sense would tell us that they’ll probably give birth in one of those distant hospitals in Bulacan and not here in Manila. Poor me.

Maybe I could talk my friends into having pre-marital sex then asking them if I could be the “nurse-in-charge” during their deliveries! No. Bad idea.

Or maybe I could torture some nursing student into giving his case numbers and the clinical instructors’ signature. A hefty sum of money as additional compensation would also be nice. But no, I won’t do that.

Well, we’ll have completion duties this summer so let’s leave that hanging for now.

So prior to my emancipation to the real world, I still have to sum up everything that I learned and force my remaining neurons to suck up everything there is to know in nursing. From the disease processes, to clinical procedures to its legal implications, I must already know by heart. And I, a person who suffer from post-exam amnesia, if there is even such a diagnosis, find it very hard to remember all of our lessons after a span of one grading period. Maybe I’m just being too hard on myself, expecting myself to remember everything and put it to use in a snap as the situation require it. 

I still have a year to learn, and I’m keeping faith on it.

And when I happen to pass the boards and get my very own license , what happens next? I’d end up being one of those unemployed nurses who scratch their bellies while watching TV, hopelessly waiting for a job to sprout in the most unfavorable condition. Or I can probably join the call center bandwagon and be one of those twang clad yuppies, practicing therapeutic communication on irate callers. 

But before I think about that, I’d have to finish first my impending Bioethics paper to be passed tomorrow.

* Entry is based on the creative mind of the writer, some parts may be exaggerated and will not be done by the blog author in real life.

Dalaw: Unbiased Movie Review

Unless you’re a Star Cinema fanatic or have extremely poor taste in movies, I am pleading about to convince you not to watch Kris Aquino’s latest film, Dalaw. Let me start by saying that the entire movie looked cheaply made, based from a predictable storyline played by actors who where either too stiff or too engrossed with their role to the point of exaggeration. Sure, most of the Metro Manila Film Festival entries were made in the similar or lesser fashion but this is a different story since this is Kris Aquino. The Kris Aquino.

Where in the world could you find a former president’s daughter and now the current president’s sister starring in a horror film featuring a curse-reckoned family, a desolate ex-lover who committed suicide who turned out to be the one haunting the family, and a cataract-begotten elderly housekeeper with a third-eye. Oh, and who could forget the mud covered monster whose make up was poorly executed? This my folks is called a spoiler. 2 syllables. Spoi-ler.

No wonder the Filipinos never get over their superstitious beliefs. How many times have you been told not to go out and play because a mananagal will devour your insides or a tikbalang would kidnap you and take you to his kingdom inside a tree? If you still haven’t been told about those two, then something similar must have been constructed, like an evil violet gay dinosaur tormenting the children with his “I love you, You love me” song.

I also did a little research on what other people thought about the movie just to check if I’m being too mean. Guess what? I just confirmed it. You know how these media men and public relation people hype up the movie with their TV commercials showing people how be-dazzled they were with the story, how spectacular the actors were, and other stuff like that. DON’T YOU BELIEVE THEM.

The movie still gave me a thrill. I still had to occasionally squint my eyes a little or gobble up on my popcorn once the scary music starts so as not to see the whole thing – even if the scene wasn’t really that scary. There were even times that I had to control my giggles when Kris had to belt out her monotonous scream and put on her game face which looked like this every time.

Amazing huh?

Aside from those mentioned above, the movie was okay, not good, but it’s still looked like the less worse choice compared to the others.

And no, we won’t see Kris like this.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll the nth, you’re next.