I was tagged by Aldwin a long time ago, and it's only now that I have the time to do this.
FIVE BEST NIGHTS OF YOUR LIFE
1) Every night of our senior year retreat - Those nights spent with HS 4C at the retreat house in Tagaytay were the most magical and poignant moments of my life. It was a harmony of opposites- boisterous fun and spirituality, laughter and tears, lovers and enemies, that made those nights truly special. I remember especially the class sharing with soothing music and candle lights, the reading of reco letters, and the spiritual activity on the last night that turned out to be a journey to dreamland for me. Our class really bonded in friendship and camaraderie, in hugs and in songs. I continue to cherish the beautiful memories of those nights, and I will certainly bring them with me even to my grave and beyond.
2) Last night of Beijing Tour - It was the last night of a six-week study tour. It was the last night we would ever see most of the friends (and partners-in-crime) we made during the memorable study tour. We decided to make the most of the last night. We did not sleep. We made so much noise so that no one in our dorm could sleep. Everything we did on that last night. We pulled pranks, took pictures, had heart-to-heart conversations, whispered, shouted, laughed, and finally, cried. Six weeks had seemed too short for our group, the trip had come to an end so abruptly for us. We wanted to stay in our school as long as we could and just be in each other's company. I can say that it's probably both one of the best and one of the worst nights of my life. One thing's for sure though, it was life at its best.
3) Junior Prom - Freedom! On what other occasion can we have an opportunity to see childhood buddies and familiar faces dressed at their best, and then to play in Timezone until 2 am, roam around Greenbelt until 3 am, and play strip Slapjack until 4 am. Truly, I have never been freer than I had been that night. It was the pinnacle of the wild joys of youth, and one of the highlights of my highschool life.
4) Last night of GGC Summer Camp - It was a very unsettling experience at first. I had never been in a fellowship program. I was so amazed at the sheer passion and dedication that the people in the Grace Gospel Camp showed. It was humbling and moving and awe-inspiring at the same time. We sang songs of praise, conducted enlightening fellowship sessions, and shared testimonies. The people were all so kind and friendly. It was primarily a spiritual acticity but we all had so much fun.
5) It is a tie between overnights in friends' houses, debut parties of my friends, and family vacations. Or maybe, my fifth best night is yet to come. =)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
My greatest fear
One of the most peculiar things about me is that I have this mortal fear of looking at watches or clocks. I dread being aware of the time.
As with most fears, my chronophobia is impossible to rationalize. I already had it since childhood. When I received my first watch from my dad, I detested it. For me, the disturbing ticking sound emanating from the watch reminds me to always hurry and do things with urgency. It felt like a timebomb on my wrist. It's probably the thought that watching every second tick is a reminder of time wasted, a creeping countdown to the end. Since then, I never wore a watch again.
The thing I really hate about the concept of time is that it quantifies life’s magical moments. The walls of time divide our experiences into segments, sundering apart the wholeness of life. It sets intervals and imposes limits on things that should have been immeasurable and free-flowing.
Of course, there are consequences. In this world where time is king, my fear is indeed debilitating. I am often clueless in my thoughts and random in my actions, often turning up late in class and in project submissions. I end up wasting boatloads of time since I am unmindful its limits and constraints. Still, I never looked at the time unless it was absolutely necessary. I have this outlandish belief that time does not pass until you look at it. It certainly does not exempt me from the reality that every person is a slave of time’s inevitability. I just love the “lost in the moment” feeling. I just feel so alive when I totally lose track of the time.
Losing awareness of time sometimes feels like transcending the limitations of mortality and of this world. We lose our sense of time when we pour out our entire consciousness in a certain endeavor, such as reading a good book, playing an addictive videogame or participating in a good conversation with a friend. Even for a while, we get to escape the shackles of time’s prison cells and experience true freedom. It’s surely no coincidence that the people who claim to have found inner peace are the ones with commune with nature and lose track of time. Conversely, the people who are the most stressed out are those who perpetually had deadlines to meet and appointments to attend to.
Time is unforgiving and constant, yet at some level we are in control of its rapidity. Why is it that time meanders like a drunk snail during Eco or Theo class, but rushes faster than a wild tempest during the fun and boisterous times we share with our loved ones? It’s all psychological, and it’s something we can overcome by opening our minds to the glimmer of hope and excitement in everything.
Good times or bad though, time eats away at life, steadily and surely. I had been afraid of time because I saw my life crumbling inconsequentially before my eyes. Now that I have realized what I’m truly afraid of, I am trying to overcome my fear. I guess that what I have to do is not to hide from time but to make use of it, not to think of each day as my last but as my first.
As with most fears, my chronophobia is impossible to rationalize. I already had it since childhood. When I received my first watch from my dad, I detested it. For me, the disturbing ticking sound emanating from the watch reminds me to always hurry and do things with urgency. It felt like a timebomb on my wrist. It's probably the thought that watching every second tick is a reminder of time wasted, a creeping countdown to the end. Since then, I never wore a watch again.
The thing I really hate about the concept of time is that it quantifies life’s magical moments. The walls of time divide our experiences into segments, sundering apart the wholeness of life. It sets intervals and imposes limits on things that should have been immeasurable and free-flowing.
Of course, there are consequences. In this world where time is king, my fear is indeed debilitating. I am often clueless in my thoughts and random in my actions, often turning up late in class and in project submissions. I end up wasting boatloads of time since I am unmindful its limits and constraints. Still, I never looked at the time unless it was absolutely necessary. I have this outlandish belief that time does not pass until you look at it. It certainly does not exempt me from the reality that every person is a slave of time’s inevitability. I just love the “lost in the moment” feeling. I just feel so alive when I totally lose track of the time.
Losing awareness of time sometimes feels like transcending the limitations of mortality and of this world. We lose our sense of time when we pour out our entire consciousness in a certain endeavor, such as reading a good book, playing an addictive videogame or participating in a good conversation with a friend. Even for a while, we get to escape the shackles of time’s prison cells and experience true freedom. It’s surely no coincidence that the people who claim to have found inner peace are the ones with commune with nature and lose track of time. Conversely, the people who are the most stressed out are those who perpetually had deadlines to meet and appointments to attend to.
Time is unforgiving and constant, yet at some level we are in control of its rapidity. Why is it that time meanders like a drunk snail during Eco or Theo class, but rushes faster than a wild tempest during the fun and boisterous times we share with our loved ones? It’s all psychological, and it’s something we can overcome by opening our minds to the glimmer of hope and excitement in everything.
Good times or bad though, time eats away at life, steadily and surely. I had been afraid of time because I saw my life crumbling inconsequentially before my eyes. Now that I have realized what I’m truly afraid of, I am trying to overcome my fear. I guess that what I have to do is not to hide from time but to make use of it, not to think of each day as my last but as my first.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Music... more than meets the ear.
I have come to love music the way it deserves to be loved.
My taste in music had always been at least a generation behind the current craze. When people were already crazy over Westlife, I was still humming my favorite Britney Spears songs. When people had already gotten tired of N’Sync, I just started to get the hang of Backstreet Boys. And in the times when those OPMs escalated in popularity, I took a different route and explored my passion for Chinese love songs.
My highschool years marked the times wherein I attempted to address my anachronistic tendencies. I tried listening to music for the sole purpose of keeping myself updated on new trends and hit songs. I tuned in to MTV to watch the newest music videos. I religiously followed the Myx Hit Chart so that I would know which songs to download. But I quickly lost interest as it was something I had to force myself to do. For the longest time I continued to suffer in silence and cluelessness whenever the topic of music came up, or during times when everybody just had to sing along to some song I just heard for the first time.
As I matured through the years, I have realized that there has to be love and not mere infatuation between man and music. In this light, I have come to see music as something that transcends mere fads. The gigabytes upon gigabytes of tunes in my music folders would affirm that notion. I couldn’t care less if my playlists are not up-to-date nor popular. My kind of songs span a wide variety of musical genres and fit into any occasion in my life. This special assortment of songs in my music folder reflect the evolution of my musical preferences.
When I was a child, my father often played classical music so it was the first musical genre I liked. As I reached my preteen years, I started to have my own tastes and got immersed in, hate-to-admit-it, bubblegum pop. I fortunately outgrew this and went on to like boy-band and girl-band music. After that stage, the rush of hormones in my teenage years dictated my passions, and I got hooked to senti songs. Paraphrasing a quote from a friend, the sadness and longing sentimental love songs evoke actually make me feel more alive and human.
My musical horizons continue to expand. I am currently inclined towards alternative rock music, chinese songs, religious songs, and instrumental movie themes. I have developed my own standards to assess which songs are nice and which are not. In most cases, I am now able to relate whenever the topic of music comes up.
I have come to love music the way it deserves to be loved. Music truly more than meets the ear. Looking back, it certainly seems that each period of my life has been colored by a particular song or musical genre. There seems to have a soundtrack for every significant experience in my life. When I listen today to my old songs, I can’t help but have an “ecsta-nostalgic” (combination of ecstatic and nostalgic) ache in my heart.
To narrate a few instances, whenever ”In the End” by Linkin Park blares from my speakers, I float away from my computer back to that carefree summer in Beijing, once again eating cup noodles while having boisterous conversations and sharing magic tricks with tour-mates. It was as if time never passed. Whenever “If we hold on together” plays, I get to relive that magical moment in our senior year recollection, wherein our class as one big circle sings the song teary-eyed while passing roses and hugs to each other. Oh how bittersweet a feeling that is - bitter because I would never be able to truly live it again, yet sweet because I could always relive the magic through that song.
Songs in these instances cease to become mere expressions of emotion. The lyrics and even the melody are shed, and the soul of the song comes out. Music at the level of the soul immortalizes life’s best moments. As these euphoric moments die down and we fall back to our mundane lives, only music can serve as escape vehicles back to our happiest memories. In invoking our fondest stories these songs serve the highest purpose of all, as the bookmarks of life.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Wikifun!
All of us have used Wikipedia for research, but I wonder how many share my new hobby? Yes, from that lame title you can probably guess that it's... reading WIkipedia articles for fun! Call me whatever you like but it's unexpectedly fun and incredibly addictive. You start off searching for something, then you find one link that catches your attention. You click on it then you find even more links that interest you.
You can learn the most important things, like economics or computer engineering, free and unobstructed. On the other hand, you can also search about the most inconsequential things, like anime or actors' biographies or a movie synopsis, and gobble up knowledge to your heart's delight. Either way, it made me realize that everyday experiences and even school only cover such a limited spectrum of learning. Reading random articles about my interests sparks up more excitement in me than school ever can. In fact, Wikipedia has become a guilty pleasure for me.
There are some nights when I just intend to check my mail and see who's online, then a random thought like Honda CR-V or Erap or Harvard University just pops up, and I begin to search and Wikipedia just steals the entire night from me. I get too engrossed in the pool of knowledge, clicking on link upon link, attempting to but never fully satisfying my intense curiosity for almost anything.
I love WIkipedia so much that I think it should win an award as the best invention of all time, for what other device can level the intellectual playing field and empower any ordinary guy to learn things that even Ivy-League PhDs could not have dreamed about? Okay, now that I've made my point and even exaggerated it a little, I'll resume hunting for interesting Wiki articles, and commence another night of WIkifun :)
You can learn the most important things, like economics or computer engineering, free and unobstructed. On the other hand, you can also search about the most inconsequential things, like anime or actors' biographies or a movie synopsis, and gobble up knowledge to your heart's delight. Either way, it made me realize that everyday experiences and even school only cover such a limited spectrum of learning. Reading random articles about my interests sparks up more excitement in me than school ever can. In fact, Wikipedia has become a guilty pleasure for me.
There are some nights when I just intend to check my mail and see who's online, then a random thought like Honda CR-V or Erap or Harvard University just pops up, and I begin to search and Wikipedia just steals the entire night from me. I get too engrossed in the pool of knowledge, clicking on link upon link, attempting to but never fully satisfying my intense curiosity for almost anything.
I love WIkipedia so much that I think it should win an award as the best invention of all time, for what other device can level the intellectual playing field and empower any ordinary guy to learn things that even Ivy-League PhDs could not have dreamed about? Okay, now that I've made my point and even exaggerated it a little, I'll resume hunting for interesting Wiki articles, and commence another night of WIkifun :)
At a crossroads...
There are so many uncertainties, so many speculations and what-ifs that people at this point in life have to face.
In the past few months, as I took my first major subjects and got exposed to a wider assortment of people, there has been this pervading sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness within me. I keep on wondering, "Is this the right thing for me?", "Is this what I want to be doing sixty years from now?"
I don't know, it's probably the mundane and meandering classes, or the unsatisfactory grades, or the overall monotony and painful blankness that come with the business subjects like accounting, law, and statistics that force me to question the state I am in right now. Is it because I simply do not exert the effort? Yes, I'm certainly guilty of that but there is a possibility that the problem is bigger. It may be that I am taking up the wrong course, I sometimes ponder, or even studying in the wrong school.
I am a person more inclined to writing, stories, literature, drawings, arts in general. I do not thrive as much in problem-solving and management as in introspection, reflection, and imagination. I am neither interested nor excellent in what I am doing now, and the absence of both factors is a big problem indeed. It's sad because what I do today will set the course of the next few decades of my life. Again, the what-ifs. What if I had just taken my original course of AB Humanities (or another related course) instead of shifting and ending up where I am now? What if I had followed my heart and studied my dream course (Architecture) in my dream school (U.P.)? It was well within my reach but instead, I listened to my dad's practical advice to study management in Ateneo. Up to now, this bothers me still. I don't know if I will ever be able to get over it.
But here I am now, just a regular, underachieving student in the most populated course in the school. I guess that in the raging battle within me, practicality won over the combined forces of inclination and aptitude. I am stuck with boring lectures about the abstract gibberish of business. I am doomed to always having to worry about financial statements, corporate equities, and other accounting torture. Yes, maybe this is the penalty of my cowardice. This is payment for simply complying with the accepted status quo and shutting out my heart's desire.
I still try to look at the bright side of things here. Studying in one of the best business schools in the country and surrounded by great people, there's not really much to complain about. Although my current course does not lead to happiness and fulfillment in my point of view, it at least promises stability and financial security. Dabbling in the arts will have been a much riskier option, especially in the financial aspect. Secondly, this gives me an opportunity to broaden my horizons, to step away from my comfort zone and meet new exciting challenges. Also, studying business management can help me address my inherent weaknesses and bring a little more discipline, leadership, and organization to my life.
My life right now is at a crossroads. I am at a point wherein every little decision can set me up for success or downfall in the future, which is why I can't help but ponder about these things. I just comfort myself by the knowledge that in front of me a myriad of new opportunities and exciting challenges still await, and they are coming ever nearer within my reach. Beside me are family and friends supporting me, expecting me to step up and become someone. Behind me is a wild and carefree past, abound with lessons from mistakes and what-ifs. And within me is hope - something, I believe, which conquers even the mightiest uncertainties and which helps ease the monotony of it all. Quoting Van Gogh, "For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."
Life is never a clear path, who knows what the future can hold? Up to now, I am still stuck, still unsure about which choices to pursue but who knows? Someday, somewhere, I just might gather up enough courage to chase after my dreams.
In the past few months, as I took my first major subjects and got exposed to a wider assortment of people, there has been this pervading sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness within me. I keep on wondering, "Is this the right thing for me?", "Is this what I want to be doing sixty years from now?"
I don't know, it's probably the mundane and meandering classes, or the unsatisfactory grades, or the overall monotony and painful blankness that come with the business subjects like accounting, law, and statistics that force me to question the state I am in right now. Is it because I simply do not exert the effort? Yes, I'm certainly guilty of that but there is a possibility that the problem is bigger. It may be that I am taking up the wrong course, I sometimes ponder, or even studying in the wrong school.
I am a person more inclined to writing, stories, literature, drawings, arts in general. I do not thrive as much in problem-solving and management as in introspection, reflection, and imagination. I am neither interested nor excellent in what I am doing now, and the absence of both factors is a big problem indeed. It's sad because what I do today will set the course of the next few decades of my life. Again, the what-ifs. What if I had just taken my original course of AB Humanities (or another related course) instead of shifting and ending up where I am now? What if I had followed my heart and studied my dream course (Architecture) in my dream school (U.P.)? It was well within my reach but instead, I listened to my dad's practical advice to study management in Ateneo. Up to now, this bothers me still. I don't know if I will ever be able to get over it.
But here I am now, just a regular, underachieving student in the most populated course in the school. I guess that in the raging battle within me, practicality won over the combined forces of inclination and aptitude. I am stuck with boring lectures about the abstract gibberish of business. I am doomed to always having to worry about financial statements, corporate equities, and other accounting torture. Yes, maybe this is the penalty of my cowardice. This is payment for simply complying with the accepted status quo and shutting out my heart's desire.
I still try to look at the bright side of things here. Studying in one of the best business schools in the country and surrounded by great people, there's not really much to complain about. Although my current course does not lead to happiness and fulfillment in my point of view, it at least promises stability and financial security. Dabbling in the arts will have been a much riskier option, especially in the financial aspect. Secondly, this gives me an opportunity to broaden my horizons, to step away from my comfort zone and meet new exciting challenges. Also, studying business management can help me address my inherent weaknesses and bring a little more discipline, leadership, and organization to my life.
My life right now is at a crossroads. I am at a point wherein every little decision can set me up for success or downfall in the future, which is why I can't help but ponder about these things. I just comfort myself by the knowledge that in front of me a myriad of new opportunities and exciting challenges still await, and they are coming ever nearer within my reach. Beside me are family and friends supporting me, expecting me to step up and become someone. Behind me is a wild and carefree past, abound with lessons from mistakes and what-ifs. And within me is hope - something, I believe, which conquers even the mightiest uncertainties and which helps ease the monotony of it all. Quoting Van Gogh, "For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."
Life is never a clear path, who knows what the future can hold? Up to now, I am still stuck, still unsure about which choices to pursue but who knows? Someday, somewhere, I just might gather up enough courage to chase after my dreams.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
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