Backwards and forwards

Oh man, about two weeks have passed. And I have so many things to send to Room 101.

But, since this is really something I totally hate, then my desire to place this in Room 101 is double intensified.

Please lock up and rain upon unmentionable suffering to:

Muggers

Every time I hear about people being mugged, my blood pressure just surges. I am telling you that nothing will ever justify this. Nothing.

Poverty be damned. So what? If I’m destitute then I practically have the license to terrorize people for their own money? For their own hard-earned money? Because, the kicker is, most of the victims of the muggers are the ones who actually did earned their money honestly.

Assholes, every single gun-totting one of them.

It’s one thing to terrorize people with their gun in exchange for their cellphone, wallet, and whatnots, but to kill them? To actually take a life for several thousand pesos? Just like that? Bang, it’s over.

And please, please, send along those people who say, “Oh, you shouldn’t show your cellphone/wallet/jewelry so conspicuously.” No one deserves to be mugged, okay? If you just want to be all hoity-toity to someone who has been traumatized, keep your damn mouth shut.

I speak from experience because when I got mugged a couple years ago, this one person in the jeepney had the gall to tell me, “Kaw man gud, gi.gawas man nimo imo cellphone.” Okay, it was hindsight and it was careless, but fuck her. In between gasps and sobs, I managed to snap at her. Although I doubt I was able to deliver the venom in my words that I wanted to considering that I was shivering down the tips of my toes and barely breathing.

I wish upon these muggers the most painful of deaths. Along with the murderers and rapists.

No matter how I try, and I don’t really try very hard, I can never find any sympathies for these people.

Poverty is a reality, an unfortuonate circumstance that nobody really deserves to suffer through.

But I judge those who use their unfortunate circumstances as an excuse to ruin the lives of others.

Announcing the official launch of my 101 in 1001

I’ve published a page and everything.

Credits for the idea:

The Daily Meme and Day Zero

I’m a bit out of words now. Been blogging nonstop since the start of my three-day weekend. It’s Monday tomorrow. It’s hello Working Girl once more.

Room 101 Internet meme is based on this British television show where you send the things that you hate to Room 101, which is supposed to be a torture chamber, so that the things that you hate can suffer.

Considering I’m generally an angry (*cough*understatement*cough) person, this is perfect for me. A category for all things I hate. Of course, in deference to my “loyal blog readers,” this is going to be a once-a-week thing. Every Friday or Saturday, I will post about the thing that I hate during the week, things that I believe should be sent to Room 101.

This is going to be so much. For me at least. One more way for me to spread the joy.

(I got this Room 101 meme from here.)

And for more internet memes, check out The Daily Meme.

First up in this will be STUPID RADIO COMMENTATORS

I hate them with more than usual vengeance. I didn’t hate them before, I never even thought about them. But since I got stuck listening to one stupid know-it-all radio commentator while in a taxi ride home, I’m beginning to believe he should be the first one in my very own Room 101. I have know idea who he is exactly, which is good for him, that way I don’t curse anyone with a name.

I hate how he interjects every line with their radio jingle (or some sort of stupid jingle), I hate how he paraphrased in Cebuano what Noli de Castro said on TV a mere minutes ago and did not even have the courtesy to quote who it was from, so it was as if the statement was from him and not from the country’s vice president. And then he added a few more words to his statement, which made what generally would have been a short statement into a long unnecessary commentary.

And because, as one too many people have pointed out to me, I’m too kind (I have a social conscience, sue me), I couldn’t bring myself to ask the taxi driver to switch stations, or turn it off altogether, so I had to contend with it for the whole twenty minutes that it took for me to get home.

And the radio commentator always ended or started his statements with mga kapuso. Okay, so I’m more of an ABS-CBN viewer than a GMA one, but I never liked how these two stations had to lump the Filipino viewers into kapamilyas and kapusos. Shows from both stations generally suck. So there.

Whoever you are, stupid know-it-all radio commentator, I hope you rot in Room 101.

Apparently, registration for voting can only happen when it’s an election year, or something like that.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?!

The next elections will be on 2010. So what is COMELEC doing until then? Twiddle their fuckin’ thumbs! Cut the bloody ballots using scissors? What is it that they’re doing from now until then that is so important that no one can register?

What? No one turns eighteen until 2010 so no one can register until then?

This has got to be the most ridiculous thing our government can do.

Okay, so maybe the next most ridiculous thing, next to PAGASA.

I wish.

Just when I thought that I’ve seen and heard the most ridiculous thing about Filipinos, something else happens and I have this urge to burn every single paper that documents my citizenship as “Filipino.”

ONE: PAGASA’s reaction to Sulpicio Lines suing PAGASA.

Actually, in fairness to Sulpicio, they have a point in suing PAGASA. Once and for all, our so-called weather bureau should be made to face the error of their ways. Because I agree (while still maintaining that Sulpicio is still, also, responsible) that our loser of a weather bureau is also ultimately responsible for the tragedy of MV Princess of the Stars.

And I really want to sock every single person, in this case it was this radio commentator, who defends PAGASA by saying “you can’t predict the weather” and “the winds will always change their course” or that “nature yada yada.“

Here are a couple of arguments to that. One, I guess we will all agree that the weather has a huge impact on our everyday lives? That one little change of the clouds, humidity, winds, temperature will affect us greatly? Then more care should be done with weather forecasts. Haven’t we already learned from so many past “sudden” shifts in weather that there is more than one way that the storm will hit. You can’t just say, “It will pass by this province” and when it turns out wrong and actually hits a province in the other direction, you’ll just shrug and say, “We can’t predict the weather.”

To be honest, I wouldn’t be so pissed about this if it wasn’t for PAGASA’s reaction to the suit against them.

PAGASA’s take: “Hello?”

That’s it. They’re not even taking it seriously. However this has turned out, their negligence is also partly responsible for the loss of lives, lives that shouldn’t have been lost in the first place.

This is beyong irresponsible and unprofessional. I can actually let the whole “The weather is very unpredictable thing” go (truth be told, the weather is really unpredictable) if only they won’t resort to such childish retorts on national television.

TWO: Sulpicio saying they were not aware that endosulfan is toxic.

Here’s the thing. I didn’t know endosulfan is toxic until recently either. But let me tell you, if someone presents ten thousand liters of a chemical to be used as a pesticide, I’d have been a little more alert than usual.

And I would have called it common sense.

You know, people can’t keep pleading ignorance in defense of their innocence and get away with it all. That’s just plain unfair to people who actually use their brains.

THREE: Someone tells someone in our family that we’re lucky that our uncle’s body has been found and here in Cebu, even though NBI won’t release it yet because the relation has to be established. (My uncle’s got no dental records and somehow, his fingerprints are not on record. It’s DNA testing for us now.)

Nothing, and I mean nothing, about this situation is lucky. More than anything else, we’d rather there was never a need for any of this.     

I can’t believe I’m somehow connected to these people by virtue of my nationality.

P.S. I hate know-it-all radio commentators. I wish their mics would short-circuit and they get electrocuted.

This post needs a disclaimer, so here it is: I do not have anything against nursing students. Both my best friends have nursing degrees; both of them, one from elementary and one from high school. My favorite cousin also has a nursing degree. She calls herself an RN without the R. I have the deepest respect for nursing students and the hours they keep because I could never survive those long hours of hospital duty, not to mention the constant exposure to medical maladies. My own blood scares me.

I also respect the profession itself. I’m sure doctors won’t be half as effective without nurses, and again, long hours in the hospital. And with the hospital horror stories to boot.

Okay, disclaimer clear enough? Then here goes.

Last Saturday, my sister is on a jeepney bound for Talamban, and it is full. Of course, the questionable spatial intelligence of the jeepney drivers and/or conductors comes into play, and so they insist on letting a student ride, even though it’s full. So she sits on the extension bench.

But ladies and gentlement, this is not just any ordinary college student. It’s a nursing student.

The passengers are indignant. “Let this student sit properly, she’s a nursing student. Her white uniform will be dirtied. Come on, people, move and give way so this student can sit.

There’s a fish vendor with her pail of fish to sell and so they separate the nursing student and the fish vendor, God forbid her pristine white uniform shall stink.

And so they scoot and scoot until she’s comfortable.

I’m sure they feel that they have fulfilled their patriotic duty. She is a nursing student after all. Bring out the trumpets, sound the drums, make way and behold. I thank you, bow.

After my sister finished narrating that heartwarming story, I did my very best, and thankfully succeeded, in quelling the sudden and surging need to scream at the nameless passengers. I took deep breaths and proceeded to eat the KFC chicken my mother brought home from the mall. The gravy now tasted a little differently with the bitterness in my mouth, but KFC is KFC, right?

Okay, ranting time.

Nursing, my dear unenlightened jeepney passengers, is NOT the only college course in the Philippines, or in the world, nor is it the only one that pays. Your success in life is not determined by what course you took in college. It is determined by the amount of hard work (with a little bit of luck) that you invest toward your future.

So damn it. When will this ever stop!

Back when I was in college (haha, three months ago!), it pissed me to end at how courses in college are divided into “nursing” and “not nursing.” The basic assumption that your being a college student means you’re taking up nursing always angered and saddened me all in one blow.

“College student? What course? Nursing?”

“No.”

“Ah, then what?”

“Psychology.”

“Mag.SPED ka noh para makagawas?“

And that too, the basic assumption that I’m in for my college degree because I want to go abroad. Of course I want to go abroad, but maybe, just maybe, I took this course because I want to? Did that ever cross their mind?

Just in case I’ve ruffled some feathers by this time, I think it’s time to remind people to reread my disclaimer. Again.

The thing is, I’m sure nursing is a good course. And I appreciate the hope that it offers for those who want to go far in their life. But nursing students aren’t the only ones with ambitions. Nursing students aren’t the only ones with dreams. Nursing students aren’t the only ones who are forced to go with no sleep just so they can be one step closer to their degree, and in effect, their dreams of a brighter future. Nursing students are not the only ones who need a comfortable seat in the jeepney. And by god, nursing students aren’t the only ones who are in college.

I’d like a little respect for the other courses here. Please!

Oh, and in case I’m still ruffling some feathers here, I don’t know what to do with you anymore. Bahala na mu.

And one more thing, nursing is not the easiest way to go abroad. True, there are a lot more opportunities for nursing graduates to go abroad, but I’m sure they will agree that it’s not the easiest road to take either.

You want an easy way to get a visa? Log on to those matchmaking sites and create an account. Say hi to beer-belly hairy Joe for me.

(Man, I’m so going to be killed in my sleep for this post.)

Over the weekend, a Sulpicio Lines vessel sank off the coast of Romblon. Now is the not the time to search among the crowd and place blame. Now is the time to pray. And hope for the best. And wish for strength for those struggling for survival in the middle of the raging sea, and strength for those at home, waiting for news, any news at all.

And I pray that one of the survivors will be my uncle.

My uncle may or may not be a good man, by most standards, but whatever his faults and shortcomings, he does not deserve to go this way, in the midst of the sea, alone and helpless.

I pray for the survivors, for the victims, and for the ones they leave behind.

And I thank those who will do the same.

I had an epiphany. I finally have the key into letting go of the one thing that held me back for so long now.

Everybody who knows me–intimately anyway–know that I hate my elementary years with every fiber of my being.

If I could get away with it, I would pretend that I never went to elementary school and that my formal education started in high school.

A conversation about where I went to elementary school normally goes like this.

Curious person:  Maris, what elementary school did you go to?
Me: Oh, me? This small private school just a couple of kilometers from our house.
Curious person: Really? What’s the name?
Me: You wouldn’t know it. It’s not that known. It’s really small.
Curious person getting curiouser: Really? Come on, what’s the name?
Me: Oh look, an unidentified flying object! Look! Look! LOOK!

The reason why is that those six years of my life were the absolute worst. Yes, thesis and that whole History of Psychology fiasco-slash-massacre included. And as recently as last week, talking about it gets me super frustrated at everything I went through. And makes me shed a tear or two or three, at most four.

The thing is, when I was in elementary, I was this sensitive little twit who would cry at the slightest infraction. Ergo, fair game for my sadistic classmates. They’d make a game out of making me cry. I even suspect that they induct the new boys, for they were mostly boys, in our class into their circle of friendship by making them make me cry.

It’s not an exaggeration. Unfortunately, I’m dead serious.

Every single time this issue would reach the teacher–you know, they tease me, I cry, they laugh, I cry harder–every single teacher would sit me down and say:

“Don’t cry Maris. They’re just doing it because you cry so easily.”

Somewhere between those lines, in my innocent, and desperately confused, mind, I translated it into, “It’s all your fault because you cry so easily.” And even though I tried my best, I couldn’t stop crying, and my classmates never stopped teasing me. And it affirmed my suspicion that every single bad thing that was happening to me was all my fault. I was nothing but a rotten person who didn’t deserve a single minute of peace because I couldn’t stop crying to begin with.

Oh, some teachers made a half-hearted attempt at stopping them, but, afterwards, they would sit me down and tell me that they’re doing it because I cry so easily. Ergo, it’s my fault again. And again. And again.

The worst part is they never hit me. It was all just teasing left and right. Catcalls and ridiculous name-calling that went beyond tolerable. It’s harder when you’re a kid and you can’t pinpoint what it is that is hurting you. All you know is that it hurts so much and you can’t even tell where the pain is coming from so your parents can put a bandage over it and kiss the boo-boo away, just like skinned knees. It ate me from inside, and I let it because I truly believed it was all my fault.

My mother is super guilt-ridden about this, by the way. Whenever the subject comes up, she gets a little teary-eyed and says, “I’m so sorry. I wish I transferred you to another school when I wanted to. It was just so easy to keep you there because it was nearer.”

That’s the whole mystery of my whole I’m-really-not-a-people-person-and-I-don’t-like-most-people-in-the-world mentality.

I don’t blame my mother by the way. Nor do I blame my classmates; they were young, just like me, and we all didn’t know any better.

Hmm . . .

Okay, so I blame them an itsy-bitsy-bit.

I do place a little blame on the school and the teachers. Their utter disregard for the whole thing encouraged my classmates and my destructive thinking. I’m a mess of a person and fail at socialization because of them. Instead of telling me, in not so many words, that it was my fault, they should have tried harder at quelling my classmates’ sadistic tendencies. We were children, we didn’t know any better. But they did!

Which is why, until the day I die, the name of that school shall never pass my lips. Because I still hate my memories of that school and it would be unfair to name them now, in such unflattering circumstances. Who knows, they might have improved after all these years. The dark side of me really doubts it, but I try to be fair. Which they never were to me, but you know, whatever.

Okay, epiphany time.

I was thinking about where I am in my life now, and how every single thing that happened to us before led us to where we are now.

If my classmates didn’t make my life so miserable back then, I wouldn’t have turned to books as a form of escapism. I devoured every single book I could get on (mostly romance pocketbooks since those are the books my mom had anyway). If I never picked up the interest in reading, I never would have read Sidney Sheldon’s Tell Me Your Dreams, which was the book that got me interested in Psychology. And for all its stress and drama and murder fantasies, those four years in college were one of my happiest, and I never regretted taking that course. (I do regret enrolling in that bloody History of Psychology class. But water under the bridge, you know. Duplicitous, evil water [Veronica Mars])

A lot of my happy memories actually came from the misery from my elementary years. And I realized that if they never happened, my life would be completely different. So different that I can’t even imagine how. Nor do I really want to.

I like my life now. Reading improved my English, which led me to writing, which led me to being involved in the school paper, which was basically the experience needed as a qualification for my present job now, which I actually like a lot more than I realized, mandatory overtimes and all.

My life is actually good now. And in some bizarre way, I owe it to my elementary years.

Heck, I’m still the social mess that I am now, and I doubt that will ever change, but all in all, I think I turned out okay. A little mental, but okay. So maybe those six years weren’t all for waste.

I still don’t like it. I still hate the memories. And I still hate my old self for being such a crybaby all those years. That will never change, I guess, my memories and how I feel about them. The road that led me here was nothing but pure hell.

But I like it here, where I am now, so in the end, I guess it was worth it.

Okay, previous post was more or less a false alarm since now I can’t access WordPress at work.

Check me out here though:

SIRAMARIS.I.PH

I have a message board there and everything!

See you then.

Toodles.