To Start a Day

Here's something I started writing last Saturday and finished this morning. It's funny that I was working on this when I said I'd be working on my PolSc midterm papers. Drat.

To Start a Day
by beaple leone michaelmas
IT IS A CHILLY FEBRUARY MORNING, and she is late for her seven o’clock class. She hops into the first yellow-topped jeepney she sees, muttering a couple of distracted excuses at those whose feet she unintentionally steps on, all the while wondering if her professor had felt the sudden urge to give a pop quiz on last meeting’s discussion. With furrowed eyebrows and an inward curse, she settles at one edge of the half-hard, half-soft benches of the vehicle, positioning herself right behind the whistling driver. As she takes out her coin purse and begins fishing for six pesos, her eyes find themselves magnetically drawn to the figure sitting near the mouth of the jeepney, her fingers freezing for a moment before moving involuntarily as though her heart has not just skipped a bit.

He is yawning now, his pale, lanky frame bent towards the window. As his face relaxes into a sleepy expression, she sees that his eyes are heavy-lidded and glassy; apparently, he has just woken up. Not that she has the right to pry into his life, but at that moment, she wonders what kept him up all night. Homework? A movie? Or did he stay up until dawn, texting that Tourism major who was rumored to be his girlfriend?

As she hands the driver her fare, she frowns at her own stupidity. What business does she have thinking about his love life? She was not even sure he knew her by face, let alone by name. After all, in their college nameless, faceless people come and go – there is not much need for social interaction in Engineering.

Still, she believes it is natural for any girl to develop some semblance of crush on the smartest guy in the entire batch. What harm will it do anyway, catching his eye in an early morning ride to class? At most, he might find her intriguing, but in all likelihood, the incident will be forgotten by lunchtime.

And so she tries to catch his eye by staring at him intently, willing him to look away from the scenery outside, wanting him to look straight into her eyes for once. To really see her. To be intrigued by her presence. So she stares.

And stares.

And stares some more.

Suddenly, he stops looking outside, and his gaze shifts, bored eyes panning the faces of other passengers. Upon reaching her face, he pauses, and recognition flashes before his face. He frowns thoughtfully, and stares back at her, just as she is beginning to blush at the sudden eye contact. Then his eyebrows suddenly rise, before he finally smiles.

A rather weak, foolish smile.

A simple smile of recognition.

And yet it makes her day.


IT IS A CHILLY FEBRUARY MORNING, and he is riding an early jeepney to Math as usual. He sits on one edge of the half-hard, haft-soft benches of the vehicle, near its mouth, looking at the world outside with tired eyes and a bored expression caused by reading until midnight. It was a half-assed novel, in all honestly, but for some reason everyone in the council is addicted to its pettiness. Whether he likes it or not, however, he has to read it, too – it is one of those things that automatically fit into his job description as an officer of the student body.

As the jeepney passes by the twin dorms, a girl enters the jeep, and accidentally steps on his shoes. He is slightly irritated, not only at the act itself (because these are new shoes after all) but also at the way she apologizes – haphazard, half-meant, an altogether pathetic apology. He frowns up at her decidedly, but as she sits on one end of the half-hard, half-soft benches of the jeep, he recognizes her as that ditz from last sem’s English. The one who answered every question their professor posed. The one who laughed too loud with her friends at the back of the classroom. The only other upperclassman in a room filled with freshmen.

And yet he has never spoken to her. Although, strangely enough, he has always wanted to.

Her gaze falls on him, and he sees her hands freeze, her eyes widen in a shock of realization. His pulse quickens – has she recognized him? If she has, she makes it a point to look as though she has not; she hands the driver her fare and goes on about her own business, albeit very consciously.

He frowns for the second time that morning. Partly because he has just been ignored, and partly because his gut is reacting adversely to being snubbed by this girl. As he trains his gaze at the world outside, he tells himself she is inconsequential to his happiness. Life will not change simply because this one girl refused to recognize him. Ditzy, noisy, inelegant – she was not his type anyway.

Still, as he feels her gaze targeted at him, he finds his eyes magnetically pulled from beyond the window, involuntarily, almost instinctively, meeting her eye. Despite himself, his lips form into a small, amused smile – she really is weird. His brain automatically works on full capacity, thinking up a few topics of conversation to spring on her. Hey, long time no see. What grade did you get for English? Do you have a class this early? You’re from Engineering, aren’t you? Will you be attending the event this weekend?

Just as he finishes outlining what he wants to say, she shifts her gaze to the person on his left, acting as though she does not recognize him at all. Eyebrows rising, he turns to the passenger beside him: a slouching, yawning teenager much like himself, spare the distracting lime-green shirt, tousled hair and bloodshot eyes.

Is she seriously ignoring him for this?

He looks away as the guy catches her staring. He tries not to see the face that scrunches up thoughtfully or the blush that creeps up her cheeks as they continue to stare at each other. He forcibly reminds himself of all the things he has to do today: finish paper due on Friday, read the next chapter for 180, remind his Vice-Chair that they have to meet a sponsor for the event this weekend, remind everyone else that there is a college-wide GA tomorrow…

And yet, he is very much aware of the other guy finally smiling at her. And at the corner of his eye, he sees her smile as well.

A rather weak, foolish smile.

A smile of one who is recognized.

He tells himself it should not ruin his day.

sucking up the subtle way

Here's an idea. When you're writing a paper, do you honestly say what's on your mind, disregarding what your teacher might think?

Case in point: In my Global Studies 197 class on Cultures and their Global Entanglements, our course coordinator is obviously against (economic) inteconnectedness aka Globalization aka free trade, which, being an Econ major, I'm predisposed to tolerate, if not welcome. I can tell she really loathes it, even when she doesn't show open hostility when the topic is brought up, because she keeps showing us films like The Corporation, Bordertown, and Manufactured Landscapes, which show the butt-ugly side of globalization.

Despite being shown the ugly truth, however, I still write reflection papers for globalization. I can't help giving it "the benefit of the doubt", given people like Muhammad Yunus, and concepts like positive-sum theories, and teachers like Dr C who say we should keep sending OFW's abroad because they're the only ones keeping this country afloat. I have never considered writing a paper against globalization - before now. I briefly toyed with the idea of seeing things from Ma'am's POV even once because, after all, some "side effects" of interconnectedness really are vomit-inducing, and I really do want her to think I have some semblance of a heart. The disgusting fact is I don't want to clash against her. I'm non-confrontational, after all.

What I'm trying to ask is: Do most students write papers that really contain what they think? Or does a large fraction of the student population write papers that are "doctored" so they're forced to fit with the teacher's line of thinking? It's a pointless question in the UP case, but I was wondering how essays were done elsewhere...

What Truly Matters to Filipinos

I don't know if it's an annual thing, but this year, the College of Law initiated an Academic Congress, a sort of fora mainly for the faculty of UP, although students are invited (or required) to attend as well. It's a week long event, spanning Feb 1 to 5, and kicking off the entire "intellectual celebration" was Randy David's lecture this morning, which he entitled "What Truly Matters to Filipinos". As always, I meticulously kept notes (in my beautiful handwriting, if I may be so vain) detailing almost every idea Prof. David pointed out during his 45-min speech. Now, however, there are only a few ideas that have implanted themselves in my head - blame it all on a short memory.

Three points, the first of which is Diaspora. According to Prof. David, what truly matters to Filipinos (without us fully recognizing or appreciating it) is our families. With the phenomenon of Filipino migration, however, (9.1 million to 192 countries, in barely 3 decades) our greatest resource, what truly matters to us, falls apart. Economically, there is no doubt OFWs contribute to our GNP. But culturally, the results of the OFW Phenomenon are ambiguous. On one hand, as Prof. David mentioned, Filipinos who have traveled abroad are able to set themselves apart from Philippine society and inspect it - weaknesses, strengths, and all. Also, because most of them are immersed in "mature" democracies, they imbibe the political culture of their host countries - the principle of initiative, the value of one's voice, etc. - and they become assets to nation-building once they return to the Philippines. On the other hand, parents, children, brothers, sisters, are forced to leave their families behind. Personally, among these groups, I think the absence of parents are the most difficult to bear with.

My mother has been working abroad for a considerable part of the last decade; I won't say I mind, because when she left for Hong Kong, I was too young to understand what the implications of her departure were, and now that she's in Israel, I'm studying away from home, anyway. Honestly, I think I have an attitude problem, although I'm not sure if this is because of my genes or the fact that I've been raised by a father who loved me a bit too much such that I grew up pampered and clueless. My mother has told me though, during her brief stay at home in between her two overseas postings, that she's handled children of OFWs - most of them grew up without parents, because either their moms or dads or both had been working abroad since they were tiny tots. And my mother, although she often comments on others' behavior, was firm in her belief that kids whose parents left them early to work for a living grew stuck up, and selfish, and pampered. They were true-blue consumerists, whose ideas of their parents were summed up in balikbayan boxes sent home to compensate for the absence of parental guidance. They were spoiled, and impatient, and general nothing like the traditional masunurin Filipino kid. And although I'm all that, too, I feel disgusted that my generation's come out like this.

And although I know my mother's probably not reading this, I'd like to thank her for turning down that overseas job she was offered in the early part of her career; I was not even ten years old. She wanted to watch me grow, she said, and for that I'm thankful. I may not remember, but I appreciate it.

Second point - the role of the academe. Sir Mike Falgui of DECL fame once told our Eng12 class, "If you go out of this classroom thinking what I think, then I will have failed you as a teacher." That statement hit me hard, committing itself to my memory even after all these years, long after derivation techniques from last year had vanished from my thoughts completely. From that point on, I began to respect him even more, because, from the very beginning, he knew that his mission was to teach us to think, not to teach us what to think. In Prof. David's lecture earlier, he tackled the same issue, saying that the academe must not dictate what should be, or how things should be done - think of the entire academic body as an adviser to politicians' king. If the academe dives into the political arena, too actively taking roles it is not meant to take on, it drags itself down - it changes people's perception of it as an institution. According to Prof. David, if it commits that mistake, there will come a time when people will regard the academe not as a institution of knowledge, but as an institution of opinions. And as the sole sector in society that must uphold the truth above all else, that connotation simply will not do.

Honestly, I don't understand this point fully. My classmate Mahon, who asked the final question in this morning's open forum, pulled the words out of my mouth when she asked Prof. David to explain further what he meant by the academe keeping out of "the heat of the moment" - the political arena, so to speak. She said that each time she read "moments of history" when students took an active role in nation-building (and I think she was referring to the Martial Law era, among other histories) she felt empowered. But if she understood Prof. David clearly, then it would mean that students shouldn't march down national highways screaming bloody "topple down dictatorship", right? For his part, I don't think Prof. David answered the question very clearly - or maybe I was just drifting off above the clouds, as usual? I'd love to make a clear distinction though - not that I'd follow his advice even if he cleared things up.

Final point - a true intellectual. This point is a very shallow one. Basically, I just think Prof. David is an absolute genius. If he were forty or fifty years younger, perhaps I'd even have a crush on him. When he lectures, he seems to be evoking emotions out of you - for a moment during his speech about effects to families of diaspora, I actually felt my eyes prickle with invisible tears. He's mild-mannered, he says things simply without being simple, he speaks of human experience with a blend of someone who's up there but down here, of someone who knows things and someone who sees things. And I know my final point of reflection should be about the lecture, or the open forum, but honestly, the man left a deep impression on me as well. Others did, too. In that room, surrounded by eloquent, intelligent, humble individuals, sharing different ideas, demanding answers to their questions, I found myself thinking I want to be like them. I want to contribute something to this world. I want to be a true intellectual - one who thinks, but one who doesn't think only.

Is there hope for one whose GWA is barely a notch above 2-flat?