Today, those old ladies working at the Shrine asked me and my dad to offer the... ehm, offerings? LOL that was the first time that ever happened. I think they chose us because I was the only one wearing a dress and my dad just happened to sit beside me. And the funniest thing was that my dad and I weren't even listening to the homily (which was the part before the offering thing). Our heads were bobbing up and down because we were so sleepy and the priest's homily was not engaging at all. His voice drone on and on and he didn't say anything substantial. Most of the time, he just translated what the bible said in English to Bisaya.

Anyway, I gave my mom the please-don't-let-me-do-this look but she pushed me on anyway and after doing what was asked of us, I walked back to my seat like I just ate the most horrid dish ever. I mean, I'm not even religious and they ask me to do that. Those ladies should choose the people who actually listen to the homily, not just those who wear fancy clothes. Sheesh. I will never again wear a dress or skirt when we hear mass in Shrine.

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This sembreak, I realized my dad is old-fashioned. Well, not really but he wants me to be an old-fashioned girl. You know, those girls with long straight black hair and are prim and proper. I was wearing flats the other day and he told me next time, I should wear something with heels, even just a little bit (my mom, on the other hand, said nothing of the sort). There is only one other guy I know who also hates flats but I read his opinion in a magazine and I don't even know him personally. My dad also said if I were going to wear a skirt, I might as well walk like a girl. I never knew I walked like a boy (oh wait, yeah I do). He also doesn't like it when I get my hair cut short. I always ask him if my hair is okay and then he says without looking at me, "okay lang." I find that rather amusing. I wonder how he'd react if I get my hair cut short like a guy's. He'd probably never stop asking me why I did it. LOL.

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Vina! I was watching Mulan and she reminded me of you during your debut. Wahahaha :D

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This sembreak has been extremely short. In 4 days, I will be back in Manila and back to my miserable self. Ged. I only hope 2nd sem will be better than the first and totally eradicate my fears of low 2nd sem grades. Bahumbug.

The first sem is done and it's time for those retrospect posts again. Or whatever. LOL

So the first sem was pretty mean. Well, not exactly the entire sem, just the last part. But the last few weeks exhausted me pretty much that it felt like the entire sem itself was tiring. Especially the last few days without sleep. That was torture. For real. With all my deadlines the same day, it's a wonder I managed to pass three of them on time. The last one? Eh, I'd rather not talk about it.

Class-wise, first sem was interesting. Despite having 21 grueling units of college madness, my schedule was surprisingly lax. Maybe it was because J123 wasn't that demanding. Or maybe because I managed to cram every J111 article the night before their deadlines. Or maybe because all we did in Film100 was listen to reports and watch awesome movies I would never watch outside class. Or because Psych101 was actually really interesting and the exams weren't that difficult. Or that our Comm120 prof was really funny and I liked studying for his class even though we had to read about a gazillion cases for one class meeting. Or it could that our Comm140 hardly had any requirements so my Fridays were pretty much yay days. Or it could be because J121... never mind.

First sem was mean. But I learned a lot still. It was just those last few weeks that ruined everything.

I'll try to make this quick because I'm really tired and really sleepy and I haven't taken a bath in over 12 hours. But I need to let this out. So I don't think this will be quick at all.

I hate being a disappointment. To anybody. It doesn't matter if that person is a family member or just a friend or a classmate, I just really hate the feeling of letting someone down. I don't mind if my own expectations of myself weren't met. There's this thing in Psychology called... something (lol) wherein a person attributes his or her failures to external factors. And that's what I do. And I'm okay with that.

But when it comes to other people, it's a whole new story. I mean, it's different when someone expects something from you because it tells you just how much they believe in you. And then you return that belief with disappointment. A big fat ugly disappointment.

Today was such a whirlwind. Four deadlines in the same day. I got three in, with one of them barely meeting the deadline. But the last one, the most important deadline of my academic life this sem, I couldn't meet. And I don't know why.

We worked all night. I edited stories all night. They made the page layouts all night. But why couldn't we meet it? People asked me the same question and I had no answer to give.

As I was riding a jeep to school, I kept asking myself what went wrong. But I couldn't point fingers. Seriously. Everyone did something and contributed something so why did we not finish on time? We slept, sure, but only for 30 minutes at most each time.

Then I realized it was probably my fault. I took so long to edit them darn stories that they finished layouting pages late as well. The thought of pulling down the grades of two other people because  of my incapacity to do well is very disturbing.

And another thing, my favourite professor of all time will be the most disappointed of all. Not just in our group, but in our batch. To think, very few groups were able to pass their projects on time and they weren't complete either. There was only one group who managed to beat the deadline and give well-thought of project.

What will probably bug me the most is our professor's message to all of us.

"Class, I gave you this assignment weeks ago. Why couldn't you do it earlier? You know I'm very strict with deadlines. This is the first time that hardly anybody passed a decent project. I am very disappointed in all of you."

Of course it's going to be more heartbreaking than that. And naive little me will think she's lecturing me directly and telling me what a big disappointment I am, especially since she was also my professor in a previous class. *sigh*

And what will my parents say? :(

But still. I'm so thankful for my blockmates and batchmates and fellow journ students for making me laugh and forget about this seemingly huge problem for a while. I'll get through this. I know I will. I'll look back at this someday and laugh at the silliness of it all, for worrying about such a small thing as grades.

Wow blog, how long have I forsaken thee?

Well, it's 4am right now. I'm still doing my feature article which I should've done during the week long vacation we had because of the monstrosity that was typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana). Thus our sembreak has been cut short to one week. But I shouldn't complain. Others have lost homes, families, lives. My loss is nothing compared to theirs. I wanted to say good thing Peping (Parma) wasn't as harsh but then I realized Peping wasn't harsh on MetroManila but still was on the northern part of the country. Gad, these typhoons...
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The article I'm writing right now is about this single mother of 4 who managed to get through her husband's death by holding on to her faith. Before interviewing her, my friend and I also interviewed another guy with a very turbulent past that included gambling, sex, shopping, gambling, booze, gambling, gambling and more gambling. His story is how God helped him get out of his gambling addiction and in to his new life. Both of them are Christians, btw. The guy asked me whether I was Christian and my first answer was yes. Then I realized that for him, Catholics are waaay different from Christians so I had to correct myself. Then he told me I had to find my god. Hmm. I always thought Catholics were a more specific type of Christians but were still Christians themselves since they believe in Christ. I don't know. It's just weird having to draw the line between Christians and Catholics when we both believe in Christ and God and all that. It's not like Christianity and... Buddhism or something like that.
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2009 has been a "taking" year. It took away Edward the Hamster and our pet dog Fluffy. It also took away Vina's pet Cody. Then the two typhoons come over to the Philippines and took away hundreds of lives and thousands of homes. As usual, the corrupt politicians are taking away money from the people. Wtf is your problem, 2009?
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I was watching this documentary about the sun on the Discovery channel (while switching back and forth to the Disney channel which was showing a Lilo & Stich movie I had never seen before [a third one?]). It was very enlightening and also very scary. It made me realize just how dependent we are on the sun and how strong it actually is. And I would bombard you with sun facts but I know it would only bore you to death. So I'll just share the amazing insight the documentary had in the end instead.

Basically what it said was that we all came from the stars. If it weren't for the Big Bang, we never would have come to be created. Yes, we're very far down the line of creation that it seems silly to think we come from those balls of gaseous material. But if you think about it, it's true. And though it shows just how insignificant we are in the universe, it's kind of nice to think we're like the stars. Even if we are just stardust.

Let us push that annoyingly emo post down a notch.

Yesterday, I skipped class for the first time in my life. As in voluntarily. I've never done that before, not in elementary, not in high school. I only ever skipped school because I was really, really, as in really sick.

But I skipped my feature writing class yesterday for two reasons: first, I lacked sleep for almost 48 hours already and I was about to collapse on the floor at any moment. Second, I was kind of embarrassed of my interview story, which we were going to read to the class. I just couldn't take that kind of humiliation again. My human interest story was bad enough (our professor didn't consider it emotionally strong enough to be a human interest story), I most probably couldn't bare another barrage of criticisms.

I know what you're thinking (or not really), I'm a journalism student, of course people are going to criticize my articles. But the thing is, it's a feature article. There's more heart put into it than a regular news article (in my case anyway). And besides, I can accept that may news articles suck, it's expected really. It just feels different with feature stories.

Anyway, it didn't feel so wrong to play hooky. At least it wasn't my majorest major class and besides, I still passed (via a classmate) my paper and all the requirements due that day. Plus, we have six allowable absences. I've just used my first one.

Aside from that, nothing else much has been happening in my life aside from toxic midterm exams. I only have one left this Friday. My eyes are still recuperating from sleepless nights.