Free Food in School!

Mass Comm is cool because profs usually compensate with our hardwork in classes with food, haha!

Chocolates, donuts, and Juice, are rewarded to us in exchange for recitation. Mrs. M., thank you as always!

Paper Cranes; Chance Meets

 

Out of a whim, I went to a mall to look for materials for an article I’m making. My good karma brought me a chance meet with somebody I wanted to see for a while! ^^ I was feeling sort of down because of multiple reasons, and this was just the perfect thing to get me out of my rut. Had I loitered around Gateway longer, or not looked for a purple Pilot pen in a particular counter, (plus plus other reasons) I might have missed you entirely.

Spent a couple of hours just talking and browsing art, children’s books, and the company of these paper cranes. I went home later than I intended, feeling incredibly freshened up to finish the rest of my responsibilities everywhere else.

 

(Gateway Mall, Quezon City)

 

“Nagpapatrol, 24 Oras”

 

What would you feel like if you have attended a student research dissemination forum like this? Like, the research-presenters are kids your age, and, well, they happen to be ultra-confident and good at it? (or at least way better than yourself, you think)

Methought they were utterly professional, but at the same time young, fresh, and still student-like.

Methought: @#$% kami n’ang magpupuyat to pull off something as big as this starting (technically) a month and a half from now! WAH!

 

Fangirls!

 

Johnny’s Entertainment UP Fan Girls!

We’re classmates in Japanese 10, the introductory elective class that familiarizes us with one of our sole links to the guys we’re drooling over–Japanese language and culture!

It’s always exciting to go to a class where everyone loves what they’re studying.

 

The Geeks and the Artist

 

“Library Tambays”

That’s what UP CommRes students are highly identified with. If not, we’re said to be the “studious”, the “OC”, and the “academic” sort of geeks that grace this giant circus campus.

It’s funny how many of us end up needing/owning eyeglasses or contact lenses somewhere within the span of this taking up this degree. This may help prove the extent of the incredible amount of bookworming, net-skimming, or photocopy-scanning we do in order survive in this department!

And then, compare the four-eyed ones to this groovy curly haired dude! It’s one of my Fine Arts friends.

It’s fun seeing this classy diversity of characters who study and walk around in the same school!

 

Oversized cellyphone

A group project for Communication 141 (Media and the Society) class under Ms. Moppet Varlez. This instructor lets us do fun “high school” stuff–we have games in EVERY saturday class biruin mo. May prize pang candies, junkfood, at cupcakes lagi! Tapos ito pa–art project! Syempre excited ako! Nagconceptualize ung groupmates ko, then tinulungan ako magbalot ng cellphone keypads (LOL)…at inuwi ko ung project…at naging kikay siya. Nagkakalat na na ka-pink-ang lagim ito sa masscomm ngayon.

 

Velvet Sunset

 

When I went home from an interview for school, I experienced a beautiful sunset.

I was walking towards a brightly descending sunset, and it was shining velvety light all over the sidewalk. The grass, aspalt, cement…they were sparkling softly! Plus, even if I was directly facing the sunshin, I wasn’t blinded by it.

Remember this one scene from the movie “Ghost”? It’s like the “heavens is calling you” type of sunlight! It was incredibly awe-strucking, inspiring yet chilling at the same time.

It lasted for about 2 minutes. I took a picture of it in dedication of a friend celebrating a birthday from US.

 

TV Station Visitor

 

I was auditioning at GMA today. 

KIDDING! My classmate and I had an interview at the place and I was auditioning GMA at myself to see whether it had a good working environment or not.

Yes, it passed my idea of a “great” working environment. The people were cool and groovy– most of them were young, and had great disciplined, professional working dispositions.

As for entering the “office environment” I still can’t imagine myself logging in and logging out for time. My idea of work does not involve offices of any kind. What kind of work will that be I wonder.

 

 

 

Anyway, nung pauwi nakong sabog and full of thought, I decided to walk all over my beloved UP and I saw this. I-full view nyo para maganda.

 

Ugaling Pinoy, Tuklasin mo

 

I was in UP Masscomm till about 10 pm practicing for a “dry run” for a conference the next day.

I can’t believe me and my classmates still had energy for all this. No wonder I feel so burnt out during the weekends!

(hehe, cute doodle btw)

This is my groovy Qualitative Analysis Professor, Dr. Jose Lacson. He brought us lots of jokes, and dinner for the night.

Almost everyone was toting laptops around. I still don’t have my own, and I feel like owning one would change my life so much that it’s kinda scary.

 

UP Fine Arts Sumi-E

Here’s the audience during cosplay ramp time. Almost EVERYONE had a camera pointing somewhere.

“Succumb to my gorgeousness!” LOL

Jin, the Deathnote-Light cosplayer who can pull off looking like a handsome anime character despite being a fashionista girl in real life.

My friend Ced blending in with the plastic as a Bidaman robot.

All in all, I had FUN. I hope the UP Fine Arts people organize events like these again next year :D

Noh Play, the Italian Restaurant

My Japanese 10 professor, Dr. Jina Umali, asked us to watch a Noh-inspired play as a culminating event of a recent Filipino-Japanese cultural meet in UP.

My friends and I were seated in the middle of the first row of Aldaba Hall. We were at arm’s length away from the stage. Swerte! I’ve always loved being seated super near stage performances like these. Makes you see how completely human the actors/actresses are; how you can also do the astounding things they’re doing, if you give it enough time and devotion.

Love, Stargirl

 

There have been few books which have summed up all that I am to this world, much more all I ever want to be for this world.

This is it: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.

When I went to the bookfair with Elay, I saw Stargirl’s sequel displayed in National Bookstore. @#$%~! Napamura nalang ako because I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing the book that contains as to what will happen to my favorite character Stargirl.

But, I did not buy it.

It was depressing. I had enough money to get it despite it being hardbound and expensive. I told myself that I wouldn’t have time to read it. That I couldn’t buy the Neil Gaiman storybooks I just purchased if I bought this. That I’d just wait for a cheaper softbound version that will be released eventually. Etcetera etcetera.

Haha, and how stupid my reasoning was. I only realized this three days later when I was in some brink of depression because of too much schoolwork.

As I told someone, my decision of not giving in to the second book was like an act of disregarding myself in general. Para bang, inuna ko na lahat, and binaon ko na sarili ko sa ano? School?

When I saw my friend Chary in school, another Stargirl lover, she brandished a brand new copy of Love, Stargirl to me. She called several National Bookstores, found one that had a last copy in Glorietta and ran off to get it.

When I went home that day, I did the very same thing. I chanced upon one in Shangrila and as soon as I got off the phone, I ran off to get this “last-copy”.

I read Love, Stargirl in installments. Time constraints.

Di ako nagsisi that I went through all that drama just to get this book. ^_^

Lahat ng nakuha ko dun sa new book na un, timing sa mga pinaggagawa ko sa buhay just then. I was immensely inspired.

Well, there’s a lesson learned: I’m not gonna bail out of important stuff like inspiring myself because of money and “work” ever again.

 

Conference Backstage people

I can’t believe we pulled off an academic conference – the First Communication Research Student Conference (some pictures here). As organizers AND paper presenters with regular CLASSES, the entire experience was nerve-wrecking, and heart-wrenching. I’ve never been more scared/excited/tired in my entire life, but all the fuss was worth it. I believe that we somehow proved to Filipino students that we can make useful research studies, even with “student budgets” and resources. 

Imagine we handled 500 people who wanted to hear about my co-department major students! 

I handled mixed responsibilities in logistics, design, and documentation (photography), for this event. I can still hardly believe it.

Well, we have another event to organize next week. We’re such busybodies haha. We’re going to be SOOOO ready for the “real world” by the time we graduate.

Go go go UP CommRes!

Sunbathing Chairs and Dazzling Lights

Actually, the chairs were just bathed by the Kuyas in the college. They were left in the sun to dry so that they become sparkly white for the next day–a first ever communication research student conference in UP Diliman masscomm.

Hours later, they turn to this: a theater’s worth of seats!

My friend Mai is struck by the beauty of its emptiness, uniformity, and potential.

(Gah and I feel strangely abstract ant light-headed these days)