Nineveh, Juvy, Mom, Atsi, Me

The trick or treating last night was preempted by the rain so now we have enough chocolates at home for… mama to give away as pasalubongs when she goes home in December.

One assignment I’m trying to finish now for my class tomorrow is to give a list of 5 moral values I would use in my treatment of others and I’ve decided on kindness, charity, and respect. I’m two values short because I’m not done yet, but I will try to exercise kindness when I see my classmate on Thursday… whether I mean it or not.

Does that defeat the purpose of tomorrow’s lesson?

So starting this year, I’m going to do something stupid and fun on my birthday, and I started with alcohol. After many many many birthdays of being good and responsible, after many many many years of (relatively) clean living, after decades and decades of refusing to relinquish control, I, M.A.S., got stinking drunk. I got so drunk that I will never remember parts of October 18, 2008 ever again. This is a good thing because according to reliable sources, my face was thiiiiiiiis close - to the toilet bowl, puking my guts out. Not once, not twice, but many many times. They heard me saying that had I known this was going to happen, I would have cloroxed the whole damn toilet! At least I was still thinking of hygiene even if I was inebriated.

It all started with an innocent dinner at Cheesecake Factory where I ate chicken madeira and drank long island iced tea. Then “Operation: Alcohol” kicked into high gear when we went to Santana Row and I drank a generous shot of tequila and a glass of kamikazee in three minutes. Then I had another long island iced tea which I downed in two minutes and not soon after, vodka.

After the vodka, everything became a blur.

I woke up with the biggest headache in the world and the urge to purge every few minutes. Brrrrr! Next year I’ll try something less debilitating. Ganja!

(This will definitely aid my quest to attain “The Dude’s” zen, yeah?)

After almost a month of school, I’m seeing some distinct differences with the teaching style here and back home. Here, it’s more of a collaborative effort with my teacher and my classmates. The teachers are aware that the students also have something to bring to the table and they’re willing to facilitate. Most of them are pretty generous with grades and you’d be an absolute moron not to get at least a B+. I only have one class/teacher which I absolutely HATE! This teaches me a very valuable lesson. If the first class disappoints, don’t give it another shot, just move on to the next one. I was so worried during the first week about not having enough units and not being able to get into the classes I wanted that I just stuck to my first schedule. Bah! Bah bah bah! Next quarter, I’m going to select classes wisely. I hate griping and complaining every week, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 3 weeks.

Barring that lechefying class, my life here in San Jose hasn’t been all that bad. I’ve got everything I need, although not necessarily all I want since I don’t have a job (aka no money). I’m trying to make a list of the things I want and hopefully by the time I can afford them, they will still be for sale (hah).

p.s. I have a class which is about teaching music and movement to kids and I had an assignment last week that gave me a headache. The teacher required us to bring a nursery rhyme in our own language to class and for the life of me, I couldn’t find one that wasn’t nasty. I wanted a nursery rhyme that has no music connected to it which made it more difficult because Bahay Kubo, Leron Leron Sinta, and Tong Tong Tong are sung more than recited. I researched online for hours and these are just some of what I came up with: (WARNING: Bastos!)

Utot

Ako’y lumabas
Kabilugan ng buwan
Ako’y napautot
Nilagay sa supot
Nilagay sa sulok
Pamatay lamok

Puwet

Ma’am I’m finish
Ang puwet kong makinis
Kinagat ng ipis,
Lalong kuminis

One, two, three

One, two, three
Asawa ni Marie
Araw gabi
Walang panti

(tanong ng nanay ko, bakit yung asawa ni Marie ang walang panty?)

The next day, I noticed half of my left arm was covered in rashes, ayiiieeee! After a few hours, it spread to almost a third of my body. P$#(@&$^$@!!!!!

Come Monday I could not take it anymore so I went back to De Anza’s health center to ask them what the hell is going on. They were supposed to give me a shot that would prevent measles and not the other way around! They denied at first that the sudden onset of rash on my body was due to the shot since that kind of allergic reaction has never happened to any of their students before, but I was insistent and bared my back for all the nurses to see how fast the rash was spreading so they took pity on me and sent me to a clinic to see a doctor.

The doctor agreed with me that my MILD form of measles was probably due to the MMR shot and prescribed me 3 different kinds of medicines so that the itchiness will subside and to prevent the rash from spreading any further. It’s a good thing that I already have my student health insurance so I only need to pay 10% of the doctor consultation, but i had to pay for my own meds which cost me more than 20 dollars

Hay, hassle na lipad pa ng pera.

I’m a HUGE Daria fan.

I MISS Daria.

Where are the dvds? MTV, hello?

It’s a good thing Allen gave me avi copies of all Daria episodes a few years ago, but still.

A significant percentage of the Chinese student population  is here in California. Everywhere I turn I keep meeting kids from China, Hong Kong and Macau. I’m sure the students from these countries are wondering whether they left their country at all.

I can pass for a college freshman apparently, so there’s no need for me to wear my Winnie-the-Pooh and Cinderella t-shirts to fit in.

I’m getting a record number of zits on my face. My skin’s contribution in my desperate bid to reclaim my youth.

The sun is scorchingly hot and I can’t use my umbrella for fear of alienating people and repelling potential new friends.

Sunvisors? Forget it! I’m sticking to my shades. I can’t do anything about the freckles but I can certainly do something to prevent getting premature wrinkles from squinting too much.

The boys during orientation are exactly that, boys. I’m too ashamed to even find anyone attractive. I don’t want to be a cougar in my late twenties.

I’m excited about courses I’ll be taking next year such as astronomy, visual arts, geology, human sexuality, introduction to film/tv and music: rock from roots to rap. I wish I had courses like these when I was in college the first time around. It would have made going to school less tiresome.

School, work, volunteering. School, work, volunteering. School, work, volunteering. School, work, volunteering. School, work, volunteering. School, work, volunteering.

This is THE PLAN.

We tried some pretty cool rides but I wouldn’t recommend Vortex and The Demon to roller coaster lovers because they suck. Demon would slam your head side-to-side and front-to-back and in atsi’s case, pull your neck. Vortex isn’t any better. It’s the only stand-up roller coaster in Northern California and that’s a good thing because it will make you feel uncomfortable in the nether regions. The less I see of stand-up roller coasters, the better.

I highly recommend Flight Deck, Fire Fall and Survivor: The Ride! I also highly recommend the last ride that atsi and I took which was Extreme Skyflyer. You have to pay extra for this though because it’s an added attraction. According to Wiki, it’s a 170 ft (52 m) tall skycoaster flying 17 stories at 60 mph (97 km/h). According to atsi naman, she will never do this again hahaha! Extreme Skyflyer looks a lot like bungee jumping and skydiving. So I’ll just describe it as bungee flying.

To give you a clearer idea of what extreme skyflyer is, check out the video below which I found on youtube. We actually had the option of getting our bungee flying on dvd but atsi and I were too cheap to shell out 30 bucks for it so I’ll just have to settle for someone else’s video of their extreme skyflyer experience.

(I can’t view this video using the latest version of Firefox, but when I switch to IE, the youtube video is there - scratch scratch head)

For someone who was not a big fan of school when she was younger, I’ve been going to school a lot the past few years. It’s not because I’m fond of studying because I’m not, nor is it a desire to feel young again because I’ve always felt young. It’s because I have difficulty deciding what to do with my life that’s causing all this matriculation. So now, I’m back to school again and have decided to enroll in a community college instead of a university. I thought about what to do for months and months and months… I really wanted to go to San Jose State (SJSU) for my graduate studies but I also wanted to go to De Anza to get an associate or at least a certificate in early childhood education. A decision had to be made and I suppose it was made easier by the fact that my I-20 from SJSU got lost somewhere between California and Manila.

From Manila to California on a student visa:

Getting a student visa was a breeze compared to what I went through at homeland security when I entered San Fo. I HATE MY PASSPORT! Let me write this again for emphasis, I FUCKING HATE MY PASSPORT!!!

School Orientation:

I attended school orientation this week and I have another week to go. I also took my placement tests in Math and English and I’m so ashamed to admit that I can barely remember Algebra. I used to LOVE Algebra and I always got As in Math during college, the only problem is the last time I attended an Algebra class was 13 years ago. It’s a good thing I have no math pre-requisites for my major. Whew!

Relating to kids almost half my age:

No problem so far! I whine a lot about getting older but age is just a number and it’s a good thing I have the emotional maturity of a turnip so it’s no problem talking to and relating to students who are more than a decade younger than me. Let’s see how things go when school starts though, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

To top it off, I’ve been feeling crappy since Saturday and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I wish my body would cooperate and get sick already to get it over with instead of prolonging my agony and waiting until I’m out of the country before it escalates.

My room is still a disaster area since I haven’t finished packing. I keep putting things in and taking things out because it’s very hard to decide what to pack when I’m only limited to 22kg per luggage. I wish I could be more organized and have all of these done a few days before my departure. Then I could just take it easy and relax. Alas! I was not built that way.