Today is the first day of classes for some 20 million students all over the country.
My goodness. It is June all right.
Eleven years ago, I wanted to be an Atenean. I used to day dream of becoming classmates and eventually friends with the daughter or son of this/or that tycoon/ politican (social climber i am yes), of wearing that blue or white ateneo jacket, of playing football on the Loyola grounds, of going to UAAP and cheering for the Blue Eagles. Each time we passed along Katipunan, I looked at Loyola the way a smitten lothario would look at an unsuspecting female who caught his fancy--with so much eagerness, with so much desire.
Then I failed the ACET.
My brain was running all these thoughts as I was crossing the University Avenue this morning when I saw the Oblation.
I paused for a moment and smiled when another thought hit me.
June 2007 marks my 10th year in the University of the Philippines.
Who would've thought that I will pass the UPCAT, finish journ, come back two years later and take MA, finish MA and eventually become a lecturer in the country's premier state university?
No one.
I was bad in math and science, I never won a writing contest, I was not popular and I spoke like Kris Aquino/ Ruffa Gutierrez in high school.
And then, on February 1997, a month before graduation, I got this:
My admission notice to UP Diliman. The then Univeristy Registrar, now UP Diliman Chancellor Sergio Cao hoped to see me as a UP Diliman Freshman in June 1997.
Sweet.
Going to UP is one of the best things to happen to me. Of course, there have been a lot of tears over grades of 4 and 5, over enlisting in GE subjects (pre-CRS), over being confronted by the college sec of econ because I have been free riding in his college in the past eight sems, over not graduating cum laude.
I always remember what my boyfriend told me when I was smarting over that cum laude fiasco: you may not be the cream of the crop, but the field from which you were sown and reaped, is far richer and far better than all the universities and all the other UP units combined.
Sigh....
Ten years after, so many things have changed. You need to show your ID to get inside the buildings (down with the no ID, no entry policy!), ikot fare costs P6.50 now, there are new eng'g buildings, the University reg has a new building and... hmm.. I'll post na lang this UP-nostalgia-YM-conversation with my friend:
marty (5/18/2007 10:43:03 AM): wha??!!?? but i haven't even seen them yet this summer!
marty (5/18/2007 10:43:09 AM): what do you mean they're dead???
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:43:28 AM): they're dead... 60 days and they die...
marty (5/18/2007 10:43:38 AM): aarrrgghh! and i was planning to go there to get my transcript and bring the baby bros...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:44:05 AM): they're gone na... the admin people were removing them na this morning.. uproot
marty (5/18/2007 10:44:10 AM): and eat cheese kranier and the good old fashioned tasteless sisig at casaa...
marty (5/18/2007 10:44:14 AM): sigh...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:44:19 AM): oo nga...what's cheese kranier?
marty (5/18/2007 10:45:08 AM): it's this sausage sandwich sa casaa...diba there's this sandwich place there...sarap dude! whenver bring my baby bros, that's what we have and the coke slurpee thingey...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:46:00 AM): i'm not sure... haven't been to casaa in aloooong while... might bump into lawyer boy
marty (5/18/2007 10:46:00 AM): (i can't believe you've never had a cheese kranier there...)
marty (5/18/2007 10:46:22 AM): ahhh...hehehe...sana nandun pa rin...yung store, not your lawyer boy..
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:46:52 AM): but the fire trees are beginning to show off.. beautiful
marty (5/18/2007 10:47:19 AM): oh yes...throughout those 5 years, those were the little things that made UP worth it for me...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:47:47 AM): seriously... yeah...
marty (5/18/2007 10:48:06 AM): those are the things that i miss most...aside from mama thai that is now just a part of history
marty (5/18/2007 10:49:42 AM): man, nobody could beat mama thai's price...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:50:18 AM): yeah, except that there was one time in mama thai when there were two mice playing
marty (5/18/2007 10:50:57 AM): but there were always mice playing! that's why we always took it out (easier to dissociate ourselves from the reality of what might really be in the food...)
marty (5/18/2007 10:51:08 AM): yea, but when we were with the guys, we always ate there..
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:51:30 AM): i didn't want to eat na there... but i thought, the chili would kill the mice and everything that came with the mice
marty (5/18/2007 10:51:45 AM): haha! sigh...memories...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:52:11 AM): hey, we have an ayala mall na here
marty (5/18/2007 10:52:18 AM): WHAT??!!??
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:52:19 AM): in front of SM north... it's so laki....it's called trinoma
marty (5/18/2007 10:52:27 AM): is it done? yea, i've heard about it...but couldn't actually believe it...not until i see it anyways...
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:53:07 AM): yup, it opened last wednesday. has a lot of restos like those in greenbelt. and it has a rooftop graden... something like that.. nice really
marty (5/18/2007 10:54:14 AM): oh my stars!!! no kidding! not like we don't have enough malls here in the metro..there's practically almost one in every mrt station
marty (5/18/2007 10:54:49 AM): we sould go there, too, when i visit...ei, maybe we can go this monday! you free?
ambiex (5/18/2007 10:55:21 AM): i could probly drop by your place after my interview and we cud go.
Of course, I have changed too.
How I looked when I stepped in diliman as freshman in 1997
Smiling after earning my journ degree in 2002
June 1, 2007.
(Ironically, this photo was taken in front of the Church of Gesu inside Ateneo.)
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