good news, good times

1.

It has been two years or so since I’ve last written or even completed a poem. Aside from the technicality the craft requires, the prospect of surrendering yourself again to your well of “feelings” can be tricky. And, perhaps, mentally and emotionally difficult.

Writing poetry is like being skinned alive, the rib cage opened, your heart exposed, as all the weight of things that surround you are resting upon your shoulders. Writing the first verse alone would subject you to that macabre transformation. That is why writing, as many have said, can be a painful, lonely job. But I tried to get up from the rut.

Recently I completed one here and another one there. And the struggle gave back a reward. Just a few weeks ago, I received this:

(click photo to enlarge)

According to the University of the Philippines-Diliman website, New Voices will be “a two-volume anthology of poetry and fiction by new Filipino authors writing in English. To be published by the UP Press and possibly in cooperation with the Commission on Higher Education, these volumes will provide a platform for new writers to gain literary renown, as well as contemporize teaching materials for Philippine literature in English.

The New Voices anthologies seek to draw attention to a new generation of Philippine writers by filling a gap between the authors’ publication of individual poems or stories in periodicals, and the publication of their first book. New Voices will feature approximately 15 poets and 10 fiction writers.”

15 poets out of how many from all over? Possibly circulated in schools? The joy was electric. And then more news of acceptance letters from other people came flooding in. It became even more unbelievable. So far, from what I’ve gathered, I’d be in the company of Glenn Diaz, Tin Lao, Jason Chancoco, Mia Tijam, and Lystra Aranal. These names are giving me the chills. Aside from the flattery of being one of the country’s new voices in literature, I am just glad I have a voice.

2.

Last Tuesday, June 23, at around 7PM, saw the release of the results of the Nursing Licensure Exams for the May 2015 takers. The suspense was killing me, with every alphabetical update online an exercise in patience. Until it was revealed: My sister passed the board examinations.

I know very well the feeling of rejection and hardship, the seemingly endless missteps. That is why this is the singular news in many years that I have felt an overwhelming happiness not for myself but for another. All my sister’s hard work and sacrifices finally paid off. The purest form of fighting spirit is in her.

3.

The legendary Duran Duran is back after so many years. And they’ve brought along disco god Nile Rodgers and the impeccably talented, genre-defying Janelle Monáe. This music came at the most opportune time. It’s perfect, the stars have aligned. Everybody, everywhere! Step out into the future! It’s time to take the pressure off!

a good sport

I have once been asked to write something about sports. The closest I could get to was that event in college, the intramural. It has always been a part of many institutions since time immemorial. Its history could be sketchy at best; it could have started in the 1910s or it could have dated back to the era when Greece or Rome are in power, setting up games and competitions in arenas. This alone speaks volumes on how significant sports are in one’s culture.

But in this age of the iPhone 6 Plus, the internet, and other modern distractions, do the young still have time for ball games? Do they still have the slightest bit of interest on rules and discipline along with sweat and dirt? If we at the colleges of today, the answer is simple: Yes. During the intramurals, we see students taking pride in their team colors, taking part in an event that forges solidarity through fair play. There are no different courses and year levels, just skill and talent.

As tirelessly taught by many P.E. instructors, this is the constant agenda: We play to be better not only as an individual but as a community. Like a family. The intramurals are never meant to divide us. And this is the part where I have to probe deeper into the significance of sports among the young people of this generation.

Despite the consensus, a sport is not entirely about victory, power, strategy and strength in numbers. It is about the need to remind the young of the significance of principles such as honesty.

Fairness and truth must be discussed as a major factor in sports as much as being brave, being intelligent, and being pleasant. It must be discussed even more than the usual. Honesty is in fact a multilayered word. There are a lot of ways to interpret it: There was Gilas Pilipinas who admitted defeat to Argentina in the FIBA Basketball World Cup. There was the former cyclist champion Lance Armstrong who eventually revealed his use of performance-enhancing drugs in competitions. There was the regret of having not to play the sports I wanted to play now after suffering from a surfing accident that rendered both of my ankles inept. There was this defeat in a game I thought I was really good at. There are a lot more. Conceding only little.

That is why significance of sports must not only tackle whether there is a need to implement this among the youth or bring up what specific sport is good for them. Significance should also bring to light the values we can learn from sports. Because what good is winning when you have cheated? What good is a strategy when you mean to hurt someone? What good is a trophy if your hands are as dirty as your next lie? 

Indeed, honesty is the foundation of sports, the bedrock of all the other codes and morals that makes the games more engaging, profound, and beautiful. That is why we take the oath of sportsmanship before anything else, right? No amount of medals and recognition would result to honor without honesty. This is the crucial significance in sports that the youth needs to remember now and always.

Honesty though can pull one in different directions. Like a tug of war, there is tension from opposite ends. In a sport that you have lost, you could be left embittered, in surrender to the raw emotions of anger and envy. But on the other hand, you could be liberated from what you think you can do and get up from there. This is the kind of honesty that nurtures humility and would make one say, “Yes, I will do better next time.”

You see, when it comes to sports, we become too preoccupied on the competition, too focused on the reward, and burdened by the desire to outdo one another and to claim that elusive success story that we forget the very core of sports: to be good, to be better, and to be humble. I believe these are what makes one notable, in and out of the court.

To bring this to a close, the significance of sports among the young people of today remains indefatigable. It is ever-changing, never-ending, and tireless like the spirit of a true athlete. And one could only be as such if there is a certain kind of openness and sincerity in his heart. Honesty, win or lose, makes one a good sport.

ethics #001

Differentiate Sociology, Psychology, and Ethics. 

If Plato would have it, I guess ethics will stand above all the other sciences like Sociology and Psychology, and there wouldn’t be that much difference. There is a thread that aims to tie them all: to study man and its nature. He wouldn’t say “Ethics is the supreme science” if he didn’t believe it as such. But actually there is, if we see the other two sciences as variations of Ethics. Though Sociology is concerned with the moral order of a particular society, which really likens it to the science of Ethics and it principles, Sociology focuses more on the relationship between individuals and then to the community. The difference lies on the observance of moral laws and how a community responds to it. In short, the act of observing is Sociology and the concept that is observed is Ethics. Between Ethics and Psychology, the difference is much clearer and basic. Whereas Ethics is concerned on man’s morality, Psychology deals more on what brought man to his idea of morality. It is like the former insists on how one should behave while the latter probes into why one behaves that way.

Give a sample situation wherein a person is liable legally and morally.

The situation that fits a compare and contrast study is usually the act of murder, sexual assault, and other grisly crimes. In this discussion, I will take an example that pervades in our reality right now which is cheating. It is in the movies, television, and even in our daily lives. Cheating is an act punishable by law when it is performed, specifically for a married man in a situation that leads to concubinage (sexual relationship of persons not officially married). With enough evidence, the man that does the cheating is legally liable. When the cheating is not initiated or committed, then the man is still liable, morally. His being morally liable is based on the fact that he thinks of cheating. Not acting it out does not lessen the man’s accountability to the wrongdoing.

To say that cheating is human nature (like the ability to think and to question), since the theory of evolution refers to and/or the origin of population could have started with polygamy and multiple partners, and the guilt that stems from cheating could easily be dispelled by dedication to one’s religion and faith, remains debatable. To me, what is certain is that whether cheating is legally liable or morally liable, both the idea and the act are simply unethical. It is wrong.

the amazingly extreme case of epic superlatives

Awesome? Epic? Great? Amazing? Super? Galing-galing? Sobra?

They all sound familiar, right? It is because they are the very same words we hear (and use) oftentimes, if not every day. And that reality is unsettling.

Why? I think our penchant for superlatives has just diminished our capability for precision, subtlety, and their unique varying gradients. Our critical mind’s supposedly surgical knives have become prehistoric stone tools.

How’s the food? Great. How’s your trip? Awesome. How’s the movie? Response these days usually falls under “epic” or “fail.” End of conversation. And please don’t get me started when it comes to books. I am a victim of my own complaint.

We’ve been there before (and still there, in fact) with “interesting” and “cute” labeled on things that range from puppies to the up-and-coming boy bands. Ambiguity abounds. In Sianne Ngai’s new book Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, as pointed out by Daily Beast reviewer Benjamin Lytal, “One of the big changes is this: we don’t use straightforward words of praise anymore.”

It seems we’ve simply embraced all the terms that sound bombastic, go beyond normal, on something bigger just to sound cool, just for the sake of it. Which is really an alarming practice.

Now imagine you’re a ballet dancer. Imagine you worked hard on stage as if it’s your last. Now, how does it feel when you ask a friend how’s your performance and you get an “It’s cool!” response? Fine? Maybe. But great? No. Definitely no. Maybe insult is what you’d be feeling. This is like appreciating the icing on the cake, never going beyond the surface.

But why do we do what we do? Why just eat the icing?

Maybe this is our communal protest against English professors who’ve made our college hell. Maybe we’ve simply adapted to the concept of “bigger is better” in our everyday language, conditioned alongside by empty blockbusters assailed by almost all forms of entertainment these days. Maybe, due to the increasing accessibility of information, we forgo the duty of finding the right ones and use what are at hand—which are usually not the best of finds. Maybe, strangely, we are running out of things to say.

This is not an inquiry on our aptitude in language or an evaluation on personal preference or judgment. This is simply raising awareness on respect to an item—may it be a television series, a short story, even a dish—and the people involved around it. Especially these people. Because when opinion is given, enrichment follows. Discussion flourishes, not songs from crickets and rolling tumbleweeds that trail after the end of an empty conversation.

You see, an empty praise is the lowest form of flattery. One might say it is flattery, no less. But it is the lowest, no less. I say just judge it. Judge everything with thought. So, what’s your say then?

job(lessness) in literature*

What are we doing and thinking? It was one broad question. Thoughts were running in my head. But when the same question was anchored as to how I see myself in relation to Jose Rizal and the nation, my focus settled on this assumption: I think the very germ of what we are currently doing and thinking is we are escaping.

We escape to possibilities. We find escape to find respite or simple entertainment. We become escapers as practicing writers.

And this is where I think the problem lies. We have escaped too much, too regularly, that we have distanced ourselves too far from reality.

What made Jose Rizal a force to reckon with was his ways of unmasking the troubles of this country. He reminded people through two novels about corruption of the government, the unjust treatment in the society, and a whole lot of other abuses. In other words, Jose Rizal showed truth. Or, rather, what was true and stirring in his time.

So, what truth could we show now? What could be our primary concern? Here is one truth that seems to be very palpable today: job and the absence of it. Not only in reality but also in fiction.

Hundreds of stories have been spun about love and other feelings. There are also abundant stories about trips to the outer space. Even the occasional rubbing of elbows with creatures of horror has its fair share in today’s literary scene (especially with the rising popularity of the so-called speculative fiction). But when it comes to human labor and its nature, we read very little about it.

As far as I can remember in local literature, we have the secretary Miss Mijares and the carpenter in Kerima Polotan Tuvera’s “The Virgin.” We have the real estate agent Divina in Rosario Cruz Lucero’s “Good Husbands and Obedient Wives.” There’s also the group of people who cope with getting fired in Ian Rosales Casocot’s “Yeah Baby Take It All In Bitch.” As for stories from foreign authors, we have the diagnosis analyst in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Interpreter of Maladies.” There’s also the baker in Raymond Carver’s “A Small Good Thing.”

On the surface, these may seem just another set of stories on relationships, lives bumping or stumbling on another, but the characters’ jobs here are crucial, figuring not only as cosmetic devices but also triggers of emotion, of psyches, shaping the general environment of the story.

Today, instead of something that bears considerable weight, work merely receives the wallpaper treatment. A job is often thrown in as just another detail, an extra, something as minor as the main character’s smooth skin or brand of shoes.

Whether the work is done behind the computer, behind the wheel, behind the sink, behind the chopping board or behind the planggana, it is under-represented, if not entirely missing. This is not much of an argument but an observation.

One would probably argue that life itself is work, but that is of course another story. What I am trying to bring up here is the very means of acquiring money for the food on our tables, the very means of living that strangely exists like a ghost in fiction. You don’t see anything, but you’d know it is there, somewhere.

With a little bit of Googling, I found out that the unemployment rate in the Philippines was reported at 6.4 percent in October 2011, a considerable drop from the previous month’s 7.1 percent. It sounds reassuring but not entirely.

Although this sounds like an economist’s report, it must not be denied that young professionals make up a good chunk of the workforce in the Philippines, especially in the BPO industry. And with the class of 2012 graduating soon, jobs would once again be at the center in many people’s lives. Therefore, the youth will always be involved.

As for the young writers, I guess they ought to be aware, just like how Rizal is aware of almost everything.

The essayist Alain De Botton said that people “rely on writers to help explain the world” to them. So, have writers explained the world of the daily toil sufficiently? Should there be a need to explain it? And why don’t we just leave both the working class struggle and the high society’s eternal discontent to men behind journalism?

Given its very subjective nature, it is no wonder work in literature tends to be sidelined as an accessory. But the answers to the questions mentioned earlier would all boil down to this fact: We are in hard times, affected in one way or another.

The overall weakening state of the world economy alone paints a picture that we are linked together by consequences. And it is strange a strong theme such as this is ignored. But why is it ignored? Young contemporary writers have reasons, of course. Work could be plainly boring. It could be inessential. It could be too distancing from pop culture. It could be anything.

But the novelist and journalist John Lanchester has a detailed idea in his article “Why Fiction Breaks Down.” He said that although fiction “can be fantastical, wild… incoherent, even mad,” it has “to feel true. It has to generate a world of its own and create a satisfying internal order within that world.”

“But there are limits, and one of them is to do with unlikeliness.” He said “Fiction copes badly with unlikeliness. The bizarre is fine. But sheer unlikeliness, improbability, things that simply shouldn’t have happened or feel as if they couldn’t have happened, even after you know they have—that is likely to break a fictional world.”

And because of this unlikeliness, along with his deduction that modern work is so complicated one can’t thoroughly explain in fiction the “complex realities of different working lives,” a story about work tends to collapse.

In other words, the nature of predictability of what we already know or seem to know (e.g. CEO, window washer) tends to be unbelievable compared to what we are unfamiliar with (e.g. Remedios the Beauty ascending to the heavens, Piscine Patel boating with a Bengal tiger). We can be appalled by the most ordinary of things.

But this is, of course, just another reason, and which, if tweaked a little further, could also be considered an excuse.

I asked a couple of young practicing writers (who are also taking full/part time jobs) on how they see the relevance of work in literature.

Marguerite Alcazaren De Leon, web writer, said, “Whether we like it or not, we live in a capitalist society, so making a living has become a primary concern that informs our decisions and actions.”

Glenn Diaz, freelance writer, also said that “As far as realist fiction is concerned, economics entraps and frees people and, therefore, the characters. In the Philippines especially, where the distribution of wealth is highly uneven, good literature should attest to it.”

Some had another outlook though. Copywriter Mo Francisco said, “I guess it’s not so important unless integral to the story. Citing a job is an easy way to help characterize a person, setting, etcetera, but things shouldn’t be dependent on it.”

From the side of the established writers, their takes are much more encompassing than particularizing. The fictionist and essayist Susan Lara said, “Anything could be a worthy subject of a literary piece, as long as you can make it interesting, and of course, resonate.”

The poet and critic J. Neil Garcia does not think that livelihood is any more worthy as a literary theme than other themes. He said, “Human experience is fair fame. The literary treatment of human experience deepens the understanding of it.”

Differing opinions, yes, just like the types of work we have. There’s the blue collar job and there’s the white collar job. Others don’t have a collar at all.

With this year’s Philippine Arts Festival theme, “Tradisyon at Inobasyon,” the concept of the daily toil could be as relevant as ever. With tradisyon, we could acknowledge again the fundamental hard-working Filipino. And with inobasyon, we could acknowledge the developments of how work shapes us and how we shape works. We could both face the past and the present.

It is not that stories about love or the mananggal aren’t enjoyable. It is not that there are no recognizable truths in those stories either. I simply think the time calls for it, to resurrect and highlight the real face of labor, warts and all, in literature.

Work may be a tedious matter, even daunting, but it would always be a part of the human condition. And with literature, we could grapple it down, tame it. This is the strength of the written word. I guess Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish poet who died last February 1, says it best with her poem “The Joy of Writing.”

Writing, to quote the last two lines of the poem, is “The power of preserving./ Revenge of the mortal hand.”

*

Presented last February 9 for the conference session “Under 35: Young Writers and Their Milieu” in the 2012 Taboan Philippine Writers Festival at Fontana Leisure Park, Clark Field, Pampanga.

the lost verve in reading

It is gone, I think. That fiery wanting to finish whatever you’ve got to do just to pull that one book from the shelf, a box, the bed, inside a drawer, and crack it open to get immersed in its milieu, its characters’ psyches, or simply its wondrous wrought imagination. In my elementary days, there is the Harry Potter series by Jo Rowling. In high school, there are Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy and Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. In college, there are Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, and Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi.

Typically an enumeration of commercial literature in their respective times, but this is indeed the handful of books that have caught me in a hook like pleasurable traps of the mind. After the education years, I find myself speculating are the books available today repellent to my taste? Or has my taste gotten so much low and ancient it repels the books available today? Or have I just lost the interest in reading? I fear for all three, of course. Partiality, at times, must be feared.

Yes, there are the short story collections Feast and Famine by Rosario Cruz Lucero and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. There is Emma Donoghue’s Room. Maybe even Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado, for its ambitious take on steering as far away as possible from the tropes of what represents a work of Philippine literature. The premise of each calls for vigilant curiosity, and I have gladly taken the demands of the text. There are hits and misses but nevertheless they are all interesting.

But none of these has offered me that pull, that incessant voice in the head, that gravity synonymous of what a crazed lover possesses for his object of affection. I have tackled them on and off, stretch each for days on end, unlike those that I have read in my school years where the pages fly by.

Recently, I have expected to reawaken this sensation with the massively publicized doorstopper that is Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. His short stories are fascinating, and many I know religiously adore his previous novels. But like many expectations, it is but a spark from a little matchstick. The interest comes and then in it goes, instantly. The tome now sits next to a pile of other scorned books.

Aside from the three speculations that are mentioned earlier, I come up with other factors, or should I say, excuses: Is it time? Anxiety? Diminishing attention span? Distraction? Exhaustion? With television, cinema, internet, smartphone, and a slew of other technological advancements, have I been culturally desensitized, becoming callous, mechanical?

The hypothesis is a bitter pill: It could be everything.

I guess I simply miss the symbiotic devotion that comes with the activity: I have to read, the book has to be read. All is well. With no clear answers to the questions that have bombarded me as early as six this morning, I might as well pick up another book and see where it takes me.

And I hope it would be a joyful ride.

there's not much to hate

Except for those who have witnessed the incident one early afternoon, I have never shared this to anyone:

I remember being told by a teacher, no less than inside the classroom, in front of my classmates, that I would not succeed in anything I would do. It’s too early to tell but what I can clearly share is that this teacher now is a drifting unemployed mote.

Yes, I have my own share on the plate of the bitter pie but, as far as I can remember, not in such scale. I cannot stoop that low when it comes to broadcasting a person’s fate, a dark fate that is—just for the heck of it.

Especially that the statement came from a teacher made it all the more striking. My own mother is a teacher and I couldn’t picture her saying that to a student, especially someone who’s a few years away from plucking a course in mind for college.

This account was posted in Facebook and what a number of responses I got. It turned out I was not the only one assaulted with scholarly omens.

I’ve had a similar experience... with my high school principal, no less.

I’ve had teachers (mostly in high school) who would belittle me.

Di naman ako inapi like you, but I do remember when my other classmates were ‘upgraded’ to “one potato, two potatoes” and I was stuck in “bird’s fly bears don’t” workbook dahil di ako magaling magbasa or something.

Alarming, really, to learn that in different regions of this country, in places where knowledge, self-assurance and competence are fortified, some working men labeled as teachers ironically pull these very things away from a student.

In my case specifically, this teacher of mine would always find the littlest mistake in all the things that I do, in a not-so-constructive way. “Why did you draw this with a black ballpen?” he asked with a frown. In my mind, I could’ve illustrated it with watercolor, you know.

He could point that out, especially that most of us in class passed the assignment in pencil, but I could also point out that there were no provided specifications or rules. The instruction simply said copy this instrument. Good thing I didn’t have a camera right then and there to take a picture of it.

No matter what explanation I had in my defense, it was my fault, assuming he hated the fibers of my existence. Fine, my mistake, let’s move on.

The succeeding encounters did puncture my buoyant floaters. Luckily, I was able to forget the dramatic saga altogether and graduated. I followed, though not that easily, the path I wanted to trek on, and found my steps towards a few triumphs. As for those who responded in the Facebook post, I pondered on their names and, wow, there are far from quacking ducks. In fact, they’re the few people I highly regard.

That’s why I’ve always loved this statement from my college teacher/mentor: “You gotta love haters. Because they push you to do even better than you thought you could.”

This time, I don’t think my high school would like to talk more about success already.

new academic heads of silliman university

Silliman University (Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental) has issued appointments to new academic heads for three school years, starting school year 2010-2011. The University underwent a rigid selection process that involved nominations, consultations on the academic unit level, screening by a committee composed of different sectors in the University, including the alumni, headed by Vice President for Academic Affairs, and an endorsement to and a confirmation by the Board of Trustees.

The following are the new academic heads effective June 1, 2010:

Dr. Jose Edwin C. Cubelo

Dean, College of Agriculture

Dr. Margaret Helen U. Alvarez

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Prof. Jane Annette L. Belarmino

Dean, College of Business Administration

Prof. Dave E. Marcial

Dean, College of Computer Studies

Dr. Muriel O. Montenegro

Dean, Divinity School

Dr. Earl Jude Paul L. Cleope

Dean, College of Education

Dr. Tessie A. Cabije

Dean, College of Engineering and Design

Atty. M. Mikhail Lee L. Maxino

Dean, College of Law

Dr. Ma. Cecilia M. Genove

Dean, College of Mass Communication

Dr. Jonathan C. Amante

Dean, Medical School

Prof. Florenda F. Cabatit

Dean, College of Nursing

Dr. Elizabeth Susan V. Suarez

Dean, College of Performing Arts

Prof. Carlos M. Magtolis, Jr.

Dean, Office of Student Affairs

Dr. Ma. Teresita Sy-Sinda

Dean, Graduate Program

Dr. Reynaldo Y. Rivera

Dean, School of Public Affairs and Governance

Dr. Edna Gladys T. Calingacion

Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Prof. Teodora A. Cubelo

Director, Institute of Clinical Laboratory Sciences

Dr. Lynn L. Olegario

Director, Institute of Rehabilitative Sciences

Prof. Francisco E. Ablong, Jr.

Director, School of Basic Education

Dr. Nichol R. Elman

Director, Extension Program

Dr. Enrique G. Oracion

Director, Research and Development Office

Dr. Pablito A. Dela Rama

Director, Instruction Office

Information taken from the university's official website.

parentless

March 13, before Valentine’s Day, was honors day. Luckily, on my fourth year, I still made it to the roster of nanings. You know what a naming is? This is a kind of breed who works very hard to achieve what’s supposed to be achieved for our parents and significant others to be proud of their spent hard-earned monthly salaries. This sounds too negative but positive nevertheless.

But wait. Yesterday, I was lonely. My parents didn’t arrive. Due to weather conditions that troubled daring sea fastcrafts to be slow, my mother and sister went back to their homes in Tagbilaran and called me that they can’t come see me do the walk in the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium. Their trip was cancelled. Okay, I still have my acquaintances to cheer me up. Well, so much for my anticipation to see mum’s face, complaining about my new hairdo.

And yes, my hairdo. This is a blatant projection of narcissism but I just adore the way people stare at it. I may have a few minutes to show it off on stage (and pat SU President Ben S. Malayang at the back for an inside joke) but the cameras, whispers, cheers, and hollers love me. Eat that you boring people!

Next stop: Graduation day.

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december six two thousand eight

I know the importance of current events. To know the happenings around you is not only beneficial, it makes you belong to this order of people who think and who care. This may sound a bit elitist but relatively it’s true. But who would have thought of having a test, a periodical examination to be specific, that has an item questioning when is Manny Pacquaio’s next fight? This is true, mind you. It exists in a Grade 5 class managed by clandestine sisters. Minus the biases against this sports star, this setup is just far too appalling. Sometimes, you can say it’s weird. So is this the kind of education the Philippines is bragging off? Well, I don’t really know. As for the answer to the question, look up, it’s the title for this post. Just correct me if I am wrong, or better, inform the nuns.

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students going overboard

Yesterday, I wrote a post that was just the tip of the iceberg matter on how students are losing their interest in education. But when I stumbled upon Sir Ian’s blog post entitled Death Threats for Good Grades, I discovered that it was not only the interest that they were losing but their sanity, too.

To mash up Sir Ian’s concern into one short summary, students are now capable of giving death threats to their teachers in order to pass a certain subject. Also, just recently, a friend of mine from UP Diliman even told me that there’s this specific teacher whose office building is terrorized by bomb threats and the like. Gone now are the traditional backstabbing, the usual labeling that the teacher is but a hellish one, the puncturing of the car tires. This time, they can go further by giving teachers a P3,000 prize money on their heads. And what more, the said “pricing” was formulated by the students’ parents so as to end the cycle of getting their children schooled-dropped-schooled. They are using poverty as an excuse to mask incompetence.

The news slapped me so hard in the face. Could students really stoop this low? This shallow that studying is the most tasking thing to do in the world? This desperate that one’s life merely equals a cheap DVD player at the tiangge? If so, then the nation is indeed in a state of turmoil. Imagine, compromise is out of people’s vocabulary and hardwork is considered exaggeratedly true to its word!

As a Sillimanian who is talking about fellow Sillimanians gone overboard, this pains me so much knowing that our institution still has teachers who are excellent in their careers, who still succumb to the demands of having a thankless job. The department Sir Ian mentioned in his post is also my department that’s why this whole no non-sense word spill alarmed me.

As what I have commented in the said post, if these students want to pass college that easy, they should find an institution that equals a day-cay center! And the nerve—these students still have the guts to complain why they are repeatedly getting F’s (Fail) when they, to quote a line from Ian’s post, “submit a paper clearly copy-pasted from the Internet (including hyperlinks printed in blue)….” My jumping bullfrogs!

I know this is not only a case that’s brooding in Dumaguete City but a national one, or maybe, even worldwide. What I am only hoping for is that everyone’s hearing this silent noise, this usually disregarded fact that from desperation springs mentality going out of proportion. Times have changed and all that has been circulating could possibly happen. Something must be done.

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out of school

Yes, I’ve been lounging in our house for almost a week exam-free, article-free and basically everything that involves the university. It’s not that I’ve longed to get out of college (heck no, I wanted to extend it pa gani), but I am just enjoying the break. School is fun, really. Then suddenly, Donna, the ultimate source of gossip and all things seedy, has sent me this morning a message saying:

“I’m at the b/f and some mom just found out

that her son didn’t even enroll last sem….”

Isn’t this so tragically sad? My, for four months, what could her son be possibly doing in Dumaguete? The list of answers is actually eternal. I thought this only happens in American television shows that give a picture of the rich and the nasty. I am mistaken. For a third world country, I am still momentarily stunned that there are indeed some young people who do not value what they have and could possibly have.

URGENT UPDATE! It is just so hard to admit but university student these days are as desperate as rabid dogs longing for a bite. And what awful bite they could make! Students no longer sulk in a corner whenever they commit a mistake but this time they can do more than just cold stares and curses at one’s back.

Read this post here, entitled Death Threats for Good Grades, written by Ian Rosales Casocot, and you’ll see what I am talking about.

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catharsis for two things

When cutting a line to form a verse thinking the mundane is subjugated in poetry, when falling for the temptations of serpentine sentences thinking it’s alright in fiction, or when believing the facts can be twisted to add eccentricity thinking it’s forgivable in nonfiction, it's time for one to change his/her mindset as early as possible. Seriously.

I have just been in exile. In literary exile, to be exact, for I and my literary pieces have been subject to analysis, highlighting flaws and stupid mixed metaphors devilishly playing within my woven words. Wait, not in exile in the sense that I am banished from this field but in exile for I have been detached from my ideals that I have considered right and sufficient.

Just months ago when personal-internal crisis jarred my entirety in chaos, creating lines of poetry and paragraphs of fiction out of the ethereal gloominess that shrouded me, I shifted my focus with much effort to the only friend I had at home: the PC. The two of us had been nice to each other; he provided me stuff that loaded my attention bag to its fullest while I bear his glaring monitor. It was through his constant cyber-charity that I found doorways out of the prolonged remorse. These were the writing workshops’ call for submission of entries.

Page upon page in the internet, I immediately chose three prospects: The IYAS in Bacolod, and the national workshops in Dumaguete and Iligan. Since I had been writing “something” during my state of melancholia, I’d better fry my works in the pan of the authorities. The unlucky thing was that Bacolod had already closed its doors so I was left with two options. Without any hesitation, I applied both. I even said to myself, “What if I got into both workshops? My, heavy decision! I’ve got to choose which one I should participate. Feelerette!”

And then the messages came. I received the Dumaguete message first, informing me that I passed. What was more ironic was that I was at Dumsville when I got the tip (happy). Then the day finally arrived that I had to leave the province (happier—at that moment). Back in my hometown, my mother said someone called from Iligan (happiest). I instantly became a writing fellow in the 47th Dumaguete and the 15th Iligan National Writers Workshops, for fiction and poetry respectively. The rest was history.

If statements such as “What use is this piece to me?” and “I need to be rewarded and I don’t get anything from this!” make you fidgety, then these workshops are not your avenue yet. I readied myself for hard-hitting comments since most of my pieces were written for therapeutic purposes, not mainly literary. As much as the nearly-autobiographical concepts sliced through me in the process of writing my fiction and poems with such self-inflicted pain, the realization of mistakes and required developments proposed by the workshop panelists were definitely sharp and piercing.

Now after a month of bashing works into pulp they could make use as jam for morning sandwiches, I basically have to thank the aches of my inner being that I have been able to explore the outer landscapes of existence. This whole thing screams emo but this is the tad fact: those two writing workshops have been the much-needed catharsis to both my sensitivity on certain matters and, of course, my unfurnished love for the letters. To Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Butch Macansantos, Dave Genotiva, Butch Dalisay, Danny Reyes, Susan Lara, Ernesto Superal Yee, Lito Zulueta, Leoncio Deriada, Christine Godinez-Ortega, Rosario Cruz Lucero, Antonio Enriquez, Victor Sugbo, German Gervacio, Steven Fernandez, and Ralph Semino Galan, thank you very much for the insights.

And to my fellow fellows, both from the Katsubong Troupe of Dumaguete and the Hipon Gang of Iligan, your raucous but pleasurable company never fail to spark up even the most dormant energy and brain cells in me. With you, I’ve learned a lot of things other than those which reverberated in the workshop sessions. I love you, bullfrogish feelerettes!

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an orange a day

Just minutes ago, I have witnessed this local version of the gameshow 1 vs 100. Hosted by the domineering Edu Manzano, tonight’s episode exemplified the nation’s elementary education condition: Alarming.

I said elementary because in this episode, both celebrity and noted young students represented the “Mob” of the show (nah, the specifics are too tedious to discuss). What was really disturbing, in the utmost concern for the Philippine education system, was that these little kids must have either went out of the classroom to harvest guavas at the school grounds or the current teachers’ capability to edify young minds have already faltered. These two reasons should explain why those kids were not able to answer this simple and basic question:

1. A/An _______ a day keeps the doctor away.
a.) apple
b.) orange
c.) grapes

Fact: A lot of the children answered orange.

Bullfrogs! There were more questions that could easily shake you out of your seats about this uneventful truth witnessed by millions of viewers, too, worldwide. What Christmas character is always described as the snowman (answer: Frosty), What is the sound that’s usually portrayed by Santa Claus (answer: Ho ho ho!), and many more. Sigh!

So much for "pag-asa ng bayan", eh?
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