Going in Blind

Oras na para maging malabo na ewan...

I woke up with a feeling today...

It's not because there was a monkey beside me. (a.k.a. Gideon) It's also not because of the fact that I was late. I was always late for my first subject. It's not because I'm writing a blog entry when I AM already late.

Today, I felt something different. As if I was going to do something without any consideration for logic. I felt like the deer in the headlights. I don't know why.

Maybe it's because of the plans I have in my mind. Maybe I thought of everything too fast, to hastily that I didn't even bother looking at the big picture and if my plans would actually amount to a desirable result.

Whatever it was, I'm going in blind. I'm rushing towards what I have planned at what I will do. That deer in the headlights. I AM that deer, and I'm rushing towards the car with no consideration for what will happen next.

In any case, Good Morning Fidel Serrano, welcome to your world.

Calm Before the Storm

Today was a crappy day. The especially crappy part was this morning. It went on and on, non-stop 'til my scattered brain was all over the floor.

First subject was Math4.

Now don't get me wrong, I like Math4 because of Sir Nat. The discussion aren't all that boring, and he makes sure we know all we need to know. His teaching is great, always reminding us that Math can be simple as long as we practice. So each time I fail one of his tests, I know it's my fault. He had scheduled for us a speed test about graphing and inverse Trigonometry.

I studied for it all night long, I made sure I understood everything and in less than an hour I had mastered inverse Trigonometry... Or at least that was how I wished the night before the speed test played. Key word: WISHED. Last night was absolute hell. Room was messy, roommates were noisy so I decided to move my laptop, my notes and my book to another room where I was forced to study for a Bio long test which I will talk about later. Main point was I fell asleep and I had to cram Math4 in my head at 4 in the morning, half-asleep, half-dead. By the time the speed test was done, I really was dead. Sir Nat had us check our test telling us the answers afterward. I think I'd be lucky if my score reached half of the highest possible.

Next circle of hell. Bio Long test.

This one I studied for. I seriously stayed up all night to check if all my notes were right, if I understod the power point completely, even read the book. Only to find out that I would study everything except what was part of the long test, focusing on everything Ma'am didn't even ask for. Damn, that was annoying.

Enter the next period, which meant English Long test.

It was actually easy. Which made me breath a sigh of relief. Finally, something I prepared for which actually paid off.

Next was Chem. Chem meant practical test.

I went in as one of the first five testers. Remembering the two formulas which would be needed. mass = M x MM x L and M1V1 = M2V2. I actually hoped to get a solid or my practical since it was the easier of the two evils. Luckily enough, I got one of the easier problems.

A little calculation here and there. Hell, even my weighing of the substance was lucky, hitting the required mass on the second try. Dilute the solution, wash when needed. Transfer into whatever-its-name-was flask, Erlenmeyer ata. Sana tama spelling para di naman ako magmukhang tanga. Clean up and I was done.

Wha seemed like a flawless practical test for me turned out to have a four-point deduction. For what? I honestly don't know. I don't care. I was content with my score. Minsan walanghiya na kasi ang ibang tao eh. Minsan, ako na rin. Nakakapikon na nga eh. Antaas, taas na ng score, magrereklamo pa eh.

Rest of the day was test-free. I think ComSci could have qualified as having a test but my head was too wasted to consider it a test even though it was hard.

And then it hit me. Everything that had happened today would be nothing compared to the hell that would happen next week... OMG...

Civil War

That was the title of the Marvel comic series which would change the Marvel universe forever. Now, before you brand me as a comic nerd, I would like to first warn you that I am no such thing. I'm just an avid reader, a fan. And besides, Civil War was one of those comic series that anyone should read.

It was about how the carelessness of a few superheroes caused a tragedy, an entire neighborhood having an experience close to a nuclear bomb dropping on them killing hundreds of thousands. This in turn, makes the American government pass a law which will require all superheroes to register with the government become civil servants and have everyone know their respective secret identities.

Half refuse, half accept...

Some argue that they were lucky to be tolerated. Some retrt that it is their liberty to remain behind their masks. As arguements are thrown back and forward, both sides come to a clash. each one gaining a victory over the other, losing and gaining members at the same time.

As each side gains whatever advantage they can get resorting to cheating and being allies with the worst kind of villains, they finally come to blows at the comic's last volume: Volume Seven.

Now for those who have not yet read the series, I am already warning you, I will spoil the ending...

Captain America, Marvel's closest copy of a Superman only better since he really is as vulnerable as any superhero should be. His arguement was that those who kept their masks on, their identity secret, held on to their liberty better than those who didn't. Liberty being Captain America's personified value. Iron Man opposed him saying that becoming civil servants was the only way for the people to turst in the superhuman community once again.

They come to blows in the last volume of the comic, Volume Seven as each one brings their recruited allies to fight for their stand. An epic battle takes place as each superhero fights on another in the name of their opinion.

Captain America and Iron Man meet on the battlefield...

Since that meeting the score was even. Each guy had a victory over the other on his belt. So when they met on the battlefield, the score was tied. After a while though, it was obvious. Captain America was winning the last battle. He had the better heroes, he outnumbered Iron Man's army, and he was wiping the floor with Iron Man's armor. Then Tony Stark, with melted armor and all, as he saw that his side was losing said to Captain that he should go ahead and finish it.

Captain America hesitates for a moment and is then attacked by a group of civilians. He tells them that he doesn't mean to hurt them only to realize after seeing the burning city that he was too late...

He realizes and says out loud that all of the superheroes, all of us aren't fighting for the people anymore, we are simply fighting...

Spider-Man, being on Captain America's side asks him why he is giving up when his side was winning everything back there. Captain America then says my favorite line in the series.
"(We are winning)

Everything...
except the arguement"

And then I wonder, about all those times when semantics and ideals were thrown by one side to another, how everyone argues their point only to resort to force to ensure that their idea is better. Who are we to say who is right and who is wrong when we are clouded by emotions like anger? When we bring tanks on the other side just to show we are right. We can't say who is the better man, the better idea until we look at the big picture. Until we see in an unbiased light what we have done. Until we have seen all our opponent's flaws as well as our own.

You want world peace? You want to punish everyone who is wrong? You want to stop all the chaos in everyone's ideals? Punish those who need to be punished in an unbiased light. Don't have the clouds of such things such as emotions, illogical beliefs, other people's opinions hover around your judgment. Have everyone see the big picture...

Wahoo Ateneo!!!

Before I went to Pisay, I was a true blue Atenean. I did it all. I cheered for the team during games. I wore the blue while proudly watching my team own the other. I was in the bonfire which celebrated the victory of the great Enrico Villanueva, LA Tenorio, Larry Fonacier, BJ Manalo and Wesley Gonazales.


And then I moved to Pisay...

While I tried to keep my links with Ateneo strong, going to their high school fair, meeting up with all my old friends, chatting with them. Holding on to something like Ateneo when I'm dedicated to a place like Pisay seemed useless. Before I knew it, I was considering myself a Pisayista rather than a former Atenean.

But when Ateneo won that game 1 against La Salle, I felt like a part of me, an Atenean part of me reawakened. Suddenly, I cared if Chris Tiu missed a shot, if Casio got up a good lay-up. I didn't care becuase I needed to win a bet. Di pa ko namumusta nung game 1. I cared becuase there was a time in my life,when I was an Atenean, when I wore the proud Blue and White, when I rubbed shoulders with the sons of famous people even though I was a random promdi who had the hardest time going to Ateneo from a far away province, when I cheered for the Blue Eagles in tune with "Three fights in a fight! Fight Blue and White!"

That was then, this is now.

I don't know what happened. Maybe I just felt a sense of nostalgia, a sense of wanting to become an Atenean again. At any rate, the next day, when I woke up, I looked at myself in the mirror, and said to myself with full honesty "I am a Pisayista, and proud to be one" just like as I said to myself long ago "I am an Atenista, and proud to be one"

Immortality, Take It! It's Yours

This was the famous line of Achilles when the Greek Force was about to land on the shores of Troy. His force went ahead of the others and Agamemnon laughed at his foolishness only to find out that Achilles and his Myrmidons would be the defining force which would take the Trojan Beach. Besides the fact that Achilles was near immortal, and he knew it, there was also another reason why Achilles so boldly charged head-on to the Trojan War. He was searching for what many search for and never find: Immortality. We share the same definition of immortality; it means to be remembered. It just doesn’t mean to be remembered by your children or grandchildren. No, anyone could do that. Immortality means to be remembered by everyone forever, to walk in annals of time to be marked as a key person in one’s era, to have your ideas, your actions, you achievements echo on beyond your death. Few have reached such a status, some through righteousness, others through brutality. Whatever method they used, it was all about impact. In the pond which we call the world, they didn’t throw pebbles in the water. No, they threw one big boulder to make one big splash which would change the pond, the world, forever.

We live in a world of stagnancy, of repetitiveness. No one is remembered anymore for anything in our world. There are a select few who do rise just a little out from the murk of normality and they get awarded with things like the Nobel. But we don’t remember them the way we remember people like Jesus, Da Vinci, Plato, and Mao Zedong. We remember these guys for their ideas, for their actions. It was in V for Vendetta where I heard an idea I’ve always thought about for a long time. It’s just irritating that that guy V beat me to coining it. “You cannot kill me for I am an Idea and Ideas are bullet-proof.” Ideas don’t decay for as long as a mouth speaks it, a book talks about it and for as long as people still believe in it. Jose Rizal showed it to us through the two works of El Filibusterismo and Noli Me Tangere. With these two works he sparked the fire of revolution in the hearts of the Filipino. Jesus’ life and inspiration gave us the Bible with which we are preached in the ways of righteousness being, on paper, the most prominent belief of the world. Here we can see that to become immortal, we need to be great, to be more than just the average passerby in the busy and swift avenue of time. We need to be the poor simple guy in the corner with the sign “Repent, the End is Nir.” We need to be philosopher arguing ideal with other passersby. We need to be the seemingly crazy mathematician vandalizing an entire wall with his complicated formulas only to come up with something truly amazing. We need to be the guy who brings a Tommie gun to the scene and makes sure that everyone is listening to him, remembering him. We need to be biochemist who finds a cure to a once incurable disease. We need to be the general who makes the tactical strategy to win the war, the physicist who finds the secret of the cosmos, and the mathematician who finds the formula for world peace. We have to become the terrorist, who bombs the Statue of Liberty, the sniper who stops the said terrorist, and the spy who introduces anarchy in a country. We need to be a figurehead, the face of something, of an idea. We need to embody our idea to make ourselves immortal with that idea. We need to be remembered for success, for failure, for innovation, for improvement, for genocide, for peace, for your ideas for anything, just be remembered.

These people did not start out great once they were borne from their mother’s womb. The only difference between the normal person and these pivotal fictional people is that these people chose to be more than the ordinary. It started small. The mathematician must have chosen to be the most innovative math genius one school day in school and it continued on to adulthood. The physicist must have formulated a crazy idea one mundane physics class long ago only to test it and find it was indeed true. The sniper must have picked up a toy gun in a toy store one time to play with it and later on become the sharpest eye in the sniper force. It all starts small and it is up to us if we want to walk that road. Immortality is truly within our reach. We just need to see it, to seize it and make it our own. Immortality, take it, it’s yours.

We cannot be immortal alone. We should have the generations ahead to talk about us, to pass our story through mouth or through paper. As we are passed on from generation to generation long after our death, as our ideas, our actions echo to form inspirations in the hearts and minds of many, we truly become immortal

Large Hadron Collider...

Just yesterday, I heard about The Large Hadron Collider. It was supposedly a really big particle accelerator capable of forming a black hole. After much research, Wiki lang katapat niyan, I realized that indeed the rumors are true

We really do have a big-ass collider ready to blow up into a an even bigger black hole...

I remember the moments I first heard about it. I overheard Joaq say it was the end of the world. I thought it was just a joke so I asked him about it "They turned it on na" *ang cono mo Joaq... Haha.

A string of questions later, I found out about the Large Hadron Collider. And the world coming to an end never seemed so real. 

For a few seconds, I thought about what I would leave behind. What WE would leave behind. If a black hole in Switzerland sucks everything up for good, will all our monuments, our legacies, our actions mean a thing?

But then again, it was only for a few seconds...

'Tas natamaan ako. Think about it, if there was a real threat to world of a possible black hole popping up, why the hell would scientists, supposedly the smartest people in the world go through the risk to answer just one question? 

As it turns out, physicists have considered the possibility and have calculated the risks involved. They've gone through all the possible angles. A black hole popping if indeed something goes wrong is possible but VERY highly unlikely. 

The illusion of the world ending may have been fake, but those moments in between, those moments of fear, of thinking of leaving the world behind without making a mark on it, without being remembered. That was real. 

And it hits you so hard when you realize it...

Nakakabaliw

Kaunti pang tiyaga...

That's what my class adviser wrote about me on my report card. Please lang naman... kaunti pang tiyaga sa pagsulat ng comment. Yung iba nga dyan may mga quotes of wisdom pa kung saan saan eh. Kung nakakapikon na nga na maikli na yung comment, gamit na gamit pa. Di ako masosorpresa kung may kasama ako sa section ko na ganun din ang comment.

Pero pag-isisipan nga naman natin. Ano lang nga ba ang solusyon sa ating mga problemang pang-akademya? Really, what is it that we need to remember each time we go home?

Isn't it the same? That we need to remember to be responsible? To be hardworking? Maglagay pa ng kakaunti pang tiyaga?

Maybe I'm just making a pathetic looking comment seem deep. Maybe I'm just bringing life into a lifeless comment. At any rate I got what I needed to get. I got a lesson from a simple reminder.

Pero sana naman next time... Para hindi naman ako agad mabaliw sa kaiklian ng comment ninyo. Maglagay naman kayo ng words of wisdom, wala akong pake kung kahit mula lang naman sa aso ninyo. Kahit man lang sa joke book mo kunin ung advice. Andami kong dugo't pawis and dinadaan sa araw-araw ng Pisay at di man lang umabot ng limang salita ang acknowledgement sakin. Palabukin niyo naman mga comment niyo... Pwede ba?

Spirituality

I am a Roman Catholic... on paper

I see myself as a very religious person on hell weeks and probably special holidays... sadly on no other time.

Truth be told, I'm not really the most religious tool in the shed. I like to work based on logic. I've tried all the logical alibis as to why I should really believe, as in BELIEVE, but somehow, someway through the same logic, I've found a way to debunk the said alibis. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to think that there is something greater than today, but somehow, I don't see it in all the religion. See that's the difference between Spirituality and Religiousness, at least in my opinion. Spiritual people need only to believe that there is something. Religious people need to believe IN something.

I'd love to believe that there is something bigger than you or me, that there is a greater being watching over us, a higher order of justice which is not bound by what is evident but by what had truly happened punishing in all fairness who were wrong and rewarding all who are just. I'd love to believe means, I'm not believing just yet, even though I'd love to.

Think about it...

They tell us to dismiss temptation, to dismiss our desires, to go beyond the selfishness of wanting reward. And yet what do they promise? The greatest reward they could think off. In a sense, everyone who is dismissing all their desires (becoming a good follower of the belief in the process) is just forsaking them all for a greater reward. Isn't that selfishness in itself. Just like a hunter forgetting about the fawns that pass him by to catch and kill the biggest and best game.

I want something bigger than life right now but also, in a sense, I want life to be something big in itself. I want everything we feel, all our memories, all our sorrows, our joys, our accomplishment, our setbacks, our actions, our choices, everything... to be more than just a passing moment, some temporary state of life. I want now to be more than just a test of how righteous we are or how selfish, something more than just 80 or 90 something turns of the earth around the sun.

I watched House and he was once asked "You would rather believe that THIS is it?"
He replied "I'd rather believe that THIS is more than a test." It was one of the deepest lines that got stuck to me.

Yes, I want to believe, but I don't want to depend.

Recently, I had a talk about prayer. It helped me get back on my religious track. O baka madali lang ako pagsabihan. It helped me believe in God again. After some reflection, I realized that maybe God is something so big for me to logically reason out. Then again, maybe not. Who knows?

I don't know where I'm going to go after my life. I don't think much about death. What I'm really concerned with is Today, Life happens Today. It happened Yesterday, is happening Today and it just might happen Tomorrow. At any rate, days will come and pass and years will fade like leaves that fall from a tree. And I want to be able to relish every moment of it by dismissing the uncertainty of my Tomorrow and really giving a damn about Today.

If you have any violent reactions about my post. I'm sorry. This is my opinion and I'm entitled to it as much as you are entitled to yours.

If you were not influenced by my post, if you are still strong on your faith and belief, Good.

If otherwise, please forget everything I have just said. I don't want to make atheists, but I do want to see more people concerned with their actions and their consequences today. I want to see people who do the right things not to invest in their concept of tomorrow but because they want to make a better Today.

I don't know... maybe I need to talk some religious authority on the subject. Until then I will remain a Roman Catholic... on paper... in life... or maybe something in between...

"We live, we die, and the wheels on the bus go round and round." - The Bucket List

Live in a Dream

Ang labo talaga ng pagtulog ko. Madalas ako magsleeptalk at paminsan-minsan kinakaya ko pang mag-sleepwalk. And the dreams I dream. Sometimes they go on for so long and the colors and the sitauations are so vivid that I'd often confuse them with reality.

Masaya ba na paminsan-minsan, nabubuhay ang isang tao sa panaginip. Even for a few short moments, we can escape to a world where we dictate what will be and that our wishes are always fulfilled. At the price of reality, we get a world where what happens is what we want to happen.

I've had a few dreams kung saan alam kong nananaginip lang pala ako. Medyo astig na rin yung mga panaginip kong mga iyon. When I thought I was dreaming I tried to test it. "Gusto ko ng chocolate cake!" Poof, may lumabas na chocolate cake mula sa kawala! It was then that I knew that I was dreaming. Panira nung kakainin ko na sana ay bigla akong nagising. Sometimes, the dream can make itself obvious. One time, I fell asleep doing my Math homework, and so I dreamt about a Math4 class. Sir Nat gave the class a problem to solve. After about an eternity of elipses runnning through my head, the class gave up and begged Sir to tell the answer. After a long pause, Sir Nat said "Di ko rin alam eh..." Ay kung di mo pa inisip na nananaginip ka na sa lagay na iyon. The list goes on and one and on. I dreamt Neil had an afro, my sister turned into guy, figthing off an army of numbers (halatang traumatized sa math), biglang naging kasimputi ko si Juan Senga and a few more impossibilities make up a list of impossibilites which helped me deduce that indeed I was dreaming.

I have had a few dreams where I never wanted to wake up from. You know those moments of complete happiness. Those moments that one can indeed just dream about. It is a moment of extreme happiness and dissapointment. Happiness lines the entire dream and dissapointment hits hard in the waking up.

In dreams, you can't feel anything. You can't feel pain, no sorrow, no joy, no nothing. What you get is an illusion, a false assumption. What follows is that everything else that follows is false. Kung simula pa lang ay mali na pano pa kaya ang final answer

Maybe...

Maybe Life is just a Dream. or at least it can be a dream.

We sometimes look forward to much to the false euphoria of a dream that we forget to work on getting it in the real world. We look up to idol on TV from so far down that we forget our own ability to rise up from ourselves to be looked up to. We listen so much to the songs which tell the story of happiness that we forget to live our own songs of our own happiness. We focus on the future of promise that we forget the actions we need to do today.

We dream of illusions too much to make our own life a dream in itself to behold.