I never really said anything about it, did I?

I never really meant anything at all, did I?

Did you actually ever think about that?

Did you even leave me any other choice?

How could I have known?

How could anyone have known?

Do you even have any idea what I'm trying to say?

Do you even care?




Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. You know those days when somehow everything and everyone seems to be on your side? Well, today is certainly not one of those days. I had to sit through the most nerve-wracking final for three solid hours. It lasted much much longer than some other things I've experienced (pardon me, but five minutes is still only five minutes!).

Tapping away on a keyboard has become distasteful. Not to mention tacky. Which of course explains the horrific dearth in blog updates. Ask me the next time you see me (if you ever do) and I promise to tell you the whole story.

Six whole weeks of nothingness are looming heavily before me. I wonder what I shall be doing. Suggestions are more than welcome, as long as they are of a respectable nature and do not involve illegal activities.

Sigh.

For once in my life I wish that I could say something that would change everything.

***

I am so bored out of my mind right now I can't even think of a proper blog entry. Really. How bored can I get? I mean technically, I shouldn't be bored at all! I should be up to my shoulders in work to do! I'm a senior already, why don't I have homework? Oh right, I'm only taking four courses. Grad school applications? Well I've decided to put all of that on hold until I'm actually not a teenager anymore. But what about Student Government? For some reason we're having a slow week. No homework papers to check? Ah yes, I forgot I don't do that anymore! And my other clubs? Well let's just say a very bad cold significantly limits my pool of possible activities, and lounging around in bed and watching all my cheesy movies stop being fun after a while (which is quite self-explanatory).

So while I am so deathly bored, bear with me as I try to dig deep from my wealth of knowledge and experience and share with you some choice tidbits

***

After an oh-so-generous donation of 200 million euros (where do you get such vast amount of money to give away?) we are being renamed to the Jacobs University Bremen.You wouldn't believe all the fuss everyone was making about it. I will spare you all the talk of selling-out and name-changing. I swear, if I as much as hear the word "JUB" or "Jacobs" again I am going to have to hurt someone. Thankfully everything has all boiled over now and we have accepted our fate.

For those of you who are wondering when I will be hauling my continuously-expanding butt back to Manila, you'll have to wait more than half a year. Homecoming plans for the winter have been nipped in the bud (see previous entry) so I'll be home soonest after graduation, which is in June. So be prepared to welcome back all nineteen years and bachelor's-degree-holding me.

There have been quite a few happenings around here lately, parties and the like. I would post pictures but then again there are too many creepy people swarming cyberspace and I run the risk of feeding the perverted fantasies of said characters.

I love Desperate Housewives! I love Mino even more for providing my weekly dose of suburban drama and dementia. Wonderful show! Such a far cry from the sappy, cliché-ridden Tagalog soap operas and so-called teleserye/fantaserye/cineserye/superserye/super-mega-over-grabe-serye. Please. Does anyone still even remember Marina? Well I do remember one thing, "Pagsisihan niyo ang araw na nagmahalan kayo!". Yes, of course. Drama, drama, drama. I must admit I miss it though. Hmm, but then again I can't complain too much for a lack of ehem, drama.

It costs approximately 5 euros (plus packaging - why do they not sell packing envelopes per piece?) to air-mail a 500 g package from Bremen to Amsterdam. Go figure.

I recently received a package from back home. And inside it was - wait for it - a signed copy of Sarah G's latest album! My mommy loves me so much. Other than the precious album, I also received new additions to my VCD collection plus replenishments for my goodie stash.


***

That's it for now. Oh look, it's actually almost midnight now. Maybe I can actually fall asleep.

***

I wish I could but I can't. Unless I package myself into a balikbayan box or maybe even take the trans-Siberian railway. I wish I could, but oh, never mind. Since when did my wishes start coming true anyway? I know I know, I'm not normally defeatist, I'm just particularly annoyed. Grrrrrr. But why should I complain? I was there last Christmas (fine, I arrived there last Christmas) and some of my friends here haven't been home in years. Oh well, I'm sure I'll come up with something! I'll probably drive everyone here crazy for six whole weeks, after all, I've never stayed here during the deserted periods; I've always been the first to leave at the first chance possible. I guess I'll have to wait till June before I see everyone else again. Sigh. It's at times like these I wonder why I left in the first place...

***

Apparently my Confession Session brainchild worked quite well. Funny, considering that I'm such a serial confessor and you wouldn't even have to coerce me to say anything, because I'm going to say it anyway. People say my life is an open book, and there is nothing for me to confess. It's been that way for years, and there is probably not a single significant detail I haven't divulged to the general public. But now I must confess that there are things to confess... but for once I'm going to keep these to myself. 

***

I'm back in the bubble, and no matter what all the other people say, I am very glad to be back! After more than two years here,it actually does feel like home already. It's not that I feel displaced from my friends and family back in the Philippines, I've just grown into this completely different world that feels like home nonetheless.

After a grueling six hour train ride from Munich to Bremen, the immediate grayness and drizzle that greeted just made me all the more eager to settle in. And to make things a bit more interesting, I signed up as a Student Advisor, which makes me responsible for showing around a group of freshies (who are all my age, if not older). I was all by my lonesome for two months, so I had a good deal of talking bottled up inside me, and oh how much I talked! I talked to practically everyone, especially the new faces of course. I've met a good deal of them already, I haven't learned all the names yet (I'm bad with names, I have to admit!) but I'm sure after a few weeks they'll all stick in my head somehow! It's just great to meet all these new people and tell them all about my stories; ff course as a wise old senior I have all the experience about our little IUB world.

And what else did I miss? The partying of course! The good old OtherSide has been open every night since I got here and the atmosphere is better than ever. Last night I actually took my student advisees to an Irish pub downtown and it just so happened that it was also karaoke night! It was great to hang out with them, but just wait until the big parties start!

***

So it's a Friday night, my last Friday night here, in fact. And what do I do on a Friday night? Normally, I would go out with some of my friends to the OtherSide or a big campus party if there happens to be one. Usually I already have plans, and if I don't, I just pick up the phone and drag along whoever's willing to come with me. Or in the case when I am dead tired, I simply plop down on my bed and catch up on some much-needed beauty sleep. But tonight, well, I have neither of these options to choose from. The next best thing I thought of was to prance down to that quiant little beer garden just around the corner and down a few Augustiner beers while breathing in the cool Munich air all by my lonesome. And besides, it's a fair excuse to get all dolled up, which I must say is half the fun. After half an hour of delicate face-painting I realized that this really wasn't such a good idea in the first place. I know this is supposed to be a very safe and decent country, but I'd rather not take my chances. So here I am now, thumping away on my flatmate's keyboard hoping to pass the time and make some sense out of it.

Friday nights. Ah, yes. Don't you just love Friday nights? Back home when I was still in high school I simply couldn't wait for Friday to roll around. It was the one night of the week when my sisters and I were allowed to stay up late watching DVD's or talking on the phone. Of course when I turned seventeen and got to Germany staying in didn't quite cut it as the ideal Friday night activity. And especially for me, after a grueling week of lectures and homework topped off by a Student Parliament meeting (not that I'm complaining of course, I mean, I love what I do!), I desperately needed to unwind with a few drinks. Some of the more conservative people back home might find this shocking to hear, but hey, alcohol in itself is not evil, and I am certainly not an alcoholic. I like to consider myself as a social drinker  which, surprise, suprise, even my mother approves of (I'm absolutely sure she downed a couple of drinks herself in her college days). My drink of choice is always an ice-cold Becks (but never Green Lemon, that's practically carbonated lime water) but since I naturally do not hold my alcohol very well, I get tipsy after only two. But there was one particular night after an excruciatingly long meeting where I had to raise my voice more than a couple of times (as opposed to what others say, I never shout) and I was at the bar with Iza and Ana, the two other IUB Filipinas. Ana, once being Secretariat herself, suggested a Long Island Iced Tea for a change, which I gladly did, and I even had a refill on that one. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done, because I ended up wasted like never before. Needless to say, I completely could not recall the allegedly very uninhibited dancing (I will spare you the details) and throwing up that followed. To my credit, I never got that drunk again after that and the moral of the story is to keep me away from Long Island Iced Teas.

Oh well. Another lonely Friday night. My only consolation is that this shall be the last one, and next Friday I will be reunited with my sorely missed IUB crowd.

***

It's my mother's 49th birthday today. And being the loving daughter that I am, I called home on my own initiative and bid her all my love on her special day. It's amazing how much our relationship has changed since I left two years ago. To be honest, she was one of the four main reasons I decided to go (I leave it you to figure out the other three). I was her oldest daughter, and being her mother's oldest daughter herself, she had always wanted me to be a better version of her. My mother did very well at school, and even climbed the corporate ladder at Procter&Gamble before resigning to become a full-time mother to me and my twin sisters. My mother is a real hardass (I'm sorry, I just realized that this is the perfect way to describe her!). All throughout my life I remember her just pushing me to do better at things I wasn't even the least interested in. From the ballet recitals and piano playing in my younger years to the limited phone time and "Books before Boys" policy during high school, she always had a clamp on how my life was going. Of course, I was just as headstrong as she was (like mother, like daughter), but try as I might, I could never hide anything from her. And she has this incredible talent of discovering all the things I screwed up in school. I sincerely think she had spies among my teachers and the other parents. My sisters and I actually have a theory that she wiretapped our rooms and cellphones, she even read my diaries, for crying out loud! And my mother can really terrorize people to death. Not only my friends, but even the teachers too (I told you she was a hardass)! She particularly likes picking on people who work at fast food restaurants, especially KFC. You see, my mother only eats the thigh part of a chicken, and whenever the poor little soul standing behind the counter proclaims that sorry, all the thighs are gone, would she be willing to wait for 15 minutes or change her order, my mother starts yelling, "What? That's impossible! You're a fast food chain! Where's your manager? I want to talk to your manager!". The frantic manager comes and tries to appease my mother by magically producing a thigh part (I would always look on and be completely amazed and embarassed at the same time). Believe me, it works every time. Which is probably why she was contantly lecturing me and my sisters about the importance of assertiveness and sticking up for yourself. Yes Mom, I heard you the first time. And no one is more competitive than my mother. Good grief. When I started raking in the 1.0's and awards she would never be happy unless I topped the entire class (And come on, I was in Pisay! She should be thrilled that I do more than just pass!). She even accused me once of purposefully letting my closest academic rival get ahead of me because I liked him (as a matter of fact, yes, I did like him, but that did not in any way affect my performance!). And sometimes she just does the weirdest things that drive me crazy. There was this big high school retreat in the mountains that I had been dying to go to, and of course we had already paid for everything, but the night before my mother got pissed at me for some random reason and announced that she was not letting me go. And then the next day she tells me, "So why didn't you go? The bus left ten minutes ago, it's your fault you missed it!". I just gaped at her in utter disbelief. And whenever I went out with friends to the mall or some weekend outing, she always insisted on getting everyone's contact numbers, the responsible "adult" in charge and the exact address of where I was going, with strict instructions to call her when I got there and when I was about to leave. I mean really now, who can live with that? Don't get me wrong, I love my mother to bits. She taught me almost everything I know and I am very proud to be her daughter. But I really just had to live my life for myself. Letting me go was probably one of the hardest decisions she ever made in her life. And being apart made us appreciate each other more (especially me, allowance is always such a good thing!). I've even started saying "I love you, Mom!" and when I went home for Christmas last year I almost burst into tears when she picked me up at the airport.  Ah, mothers. What would we all do without them?

***

I knew it. How could I have not known this before? I have turned into the ultimate jill-of-all-trades-mistress-of-none (and by mistress I mean the feminine form of master). Sure, I've tried my hand at a great number of things, especially during the summer breaks, since my mother would not allow me to lounge around the house all day. But as it turns out, I haven't exactly mastered the art of any of them. Consider the following:

I started art lessons when I was eight. After graduating from crayons and pencils, I moved up to dabbing oil and acrylic on canvasses bigger than me. I was pretty good, even won a few art contests here and there, but was certainly not your next CJ de Silva and the only gallery that displays my work is the one in my house.

When I was nine I took a summer workshop for gymnastics in the University of the Philippines. As it turns out, I was ridicilously good at it (apparently bending and splitting come naturally to me), and by the end of the summer the trainers wanted me on the national team. My parents said no, for reasons I cannot exactly remember. And that was the end of my life on the balance beam.

Swimming was another sport that took up a good portion of my summers. Waking up at 6 AM and training for three hours everyday wasn't really my cup of tea. It made me a good swimmer of course, but come on, I was a kid! And what more does a kid want than to sleep all morning? It did build up my stamina and lung power (I remember that experiment in Bio class when the whole class had to blow balloons to measure lung capacity. Guess who had the biggest balloon) but I was no gold medal winner.

And let me see, I also tried tennis at one point (I used to cry when the instructer yelled at me because I couldn't serve with my right hand. Is it my fault I'm left-handed?), badminton, bowling, basketball, soccer, softball, table tennis, aikido, running and even golf, for goodness sake. But I do happen to like outdoorsy sports (just not camping, please, I enjoy civilization as it is) namely rapelling, spelunking (a fancy term for cave exploration), jetskiing and scuba-diving. Oh, and one day I hope to either go sky-diving or bungee-jumping or both (any volunteers?).

Then there were the piano lessons. My father, out of his own frustration at not having learned it, forced me and my sisters into it. I probably had five different piano teachers, but banging on black and white ivory keys was really not my thing, not to mention those pedals you had to press your foot on (and back then I had trouble even reaching the floor). I honestly would have preferred voice lessons (anything that involves me opening my mouth and letting words come out is fine by me!) but my parents never really got over the piano playing.

Hmmm, what else can I do? Ah, yes, carpentry! A girl with a saw is a very dangerous creature, I tell you. It was actually a technology skills class, and I was in a group with four guys and other than being officially known as the Blue* Group (the groups were color coded) we were also called the Audacious Group. Go figure. And I simply loved electronics class! I can proudly say that I know the resistor color code by heart (yet another of my seemingly useless talents). I was always Electronics Star, along with Cholo, of course (we always were rivals , but I must say it added a lot of spice to our relationship).

The last thing I mentioned of course, has spun itself into a possible career track of its own (who would've known?). And what becomes of that, well, that remains to be seen.

*Not the Green Group as reported earlier, thanks to Abon for the correction!

***

I normally loathe chick lit - the paperback equivalent of a shamelessly formulaic and feel-good romantic comedy. Having grown up reading the classics (I read unillustrated, unabridged versions of novels by Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte when I was nine), I turn my nose up at books with titles like, "Mr. Write" and "Confessions of a Shopaholic". But of course, now and then I indulge in the guilty pleasures that they are (I am a sucker for sweet, happy endings). And in light of which, Monsu gave me a link to a very fascinating story.

Imagine getting $500,000, a movie deal, and instant fame for writing a story about an academic-oriented girl who goes all wild to prove to Harvard that she's well-rounded, drawn from the young author's (she's my age!) own life experiences and quite controversially, ahem, other chick lit novels as well. Seriously. I could whip up a storyline far more interesting and not to mention, original than her premise, anytime! Drawing on my IUB life alone (let's leave out the melodrama of high school, please) I could definitely spin a nice yarn worth at least a three book series and maybe a cool million bucks.

This has really got me thinking. I write my book, peddle it  to some American publishers, hopefully impress them with my wit and originality, get an endorsement form Oprah's book club (hey, a guest appearance wouldn't hurt either) and fame and fortune, here I come! Well, maybe it won't be that easy. But it is worth trying, isn't it?

***

And I am back, and still very much reeling from the whirlwind celebration that was Amsterdam. It was very, very, very good, and I could heap on more superlatives if I could. But let's leave it that, shall we? At the risk of sounding like a spin-off of some tourism promotion (in the lines of "such a glorious city!" and "I had the time of my life"), I'll tell you about my personal highlights.

The whole trip started off on the morning of my birthday, which was a Thursday, but quite unexpectedly, the train, for some reason or another, was delayed by a massive 35 minutes. And this my friends, never happens in Germany. NEVER. Not in a country where everything works like clockwork. It is almost unimaginable. You should have heard the gasps all across the ICE when they made that announcement (in German of course, but I got the gist). But anyway, since of course my whole itinerary was screwed up, I had to wait for an hour in Cologne, which wasn't pretty bad in itself, in fact I have some lovely pictures to show for it. I finally arrived in Amsterdam Centraal (the Dutch language uses a loot of double vowels, not to mention j's and k's) at around 9:30pm, and after successfully finding Monsu, we headed off for Los Argentinos, where I proceeded to stuff myself with good Argentinian steak.

The next day, which was a Friday, Monsu had to go to work, so I was left on my own to navigate the extremely narrow streets of Amsterdam (almost reminds me of the even narrower eskinitas in Manila), which to my surprise, was lined with mostly old buildings and structures. No high rises, apartment buildings, not even a modern McDonald's restaurant! Everything was stone and brick and straight out of the 19th century. And most of the roads were cobblestone, too! And there were so many canals and coffeeshops (and if you think they're just quiant versions of Starbucks, think again!). I was exhausted by the day's end, but in a very good way, nonetheless (and then there was this hilarious incident with Monsu and the moving "statue" at Madame Tussaud's!). Saturday was more sight-seeing with Monsu, which coincided with the Gay Pride Parade. I have certainly never seen that much Gay Pride in one place. It was a real eye-opener, for lack of a better term.

I couldn't have had a more fabulous 19th birthday! And for those of you who wanted to know, no I did not get high. My only regret is that I couldn't stay longer! But mark my words, Amsteram has not seen the last of me.

***