The Catcher in Your Eye

Not meant to parody the literary classic; but let's just say that it all happens at times you rarely expect.

If there is something I could comment about David Peralta's class is that we're just way too many and that having two classes in a single classroom is just too much of a 'magisterial' thing - if he's going to be asked. Having a class of 80 people does saves a lot of time and effort - not to mention electricity - but when time comes that you need to know who your classmates are (or maybe even the beadle), the problem steadily rises.

My blockmate alwyas extolled the beauty and 'purity' of being the beadle. He says that it's the next best thing to becoming the class president. One of my biggest misconceptions about beadle work is being the fastpass to suck-up to him or to her just to get the grade. In High School, suck-ups are frowned upon. I don't know why. It's hard to generalize why this is happening before and now that you're older (presumably) nobody even gives it a damn.

In other words, my biggest problem now is knowing (at least) who our beadle is. I haven't even seen this person emit some presence; but in fairness to the beadle, he/she doesn't really have to be conspicuous 99.9% of the time.

So when submission time came (for an assigned homework), the beadle for Ch1A stood up and started calling for papers. I knew section A's beadle because his presence is always felt (recitativo et animagis... hehe); but in Ch1E, and to see my paper collector should at least be something I'm entitled to.

Then she begins calling out the papers. I'm sure that's for Ch1E. I knew it was something familiar simply because behind my head, I knew it's a girl.

But when I saw her, I never realized that this person would catch my eye.

As if to add insult to injury, Mr. Peralta's lecture wasn't even enough to compensate for the internal trouble brewing in my alchemical system.

Darn.

So it was just pretty that; one look and then yun iba na... you know the rest, but let me assure it's not any near to that.

So let's just say that she's an eye-catcher, so to speak. But don't everyone go through the same process once in a while? I mean, I for one have felt sometimes that Ooohh... moment wherein I feel taken aback and swept off my feet.

Luckily - or rather unluckily - I haven't taken it to a serious level. Hehe.

So what am I trying to point out? This same problem! This big magesterial class, is just way too big! Lecture class, should at least be a place where you could meet your other classmates since you're just there sitting on a fixed chair ingesting everything that the teacher tells you. But what about lab class? I think she's still Ch2E's class beadle at that time...

Che! Asa ka pang makakahalubilo mo siya when everyone's busy with their volatile chemicals.

In a class of 80+, how the heck could you be convinced to go the distance and dare say...

'Hi! I'm Jem, your classmate in Ch1E. You must be ____ our class beadle. It's so nice to meet you! 

By the way, has sir uploaded this day's lecture? Oh, maybe not yet. I see. 

From what school did you come from? 

Oh, okay. 

Nice school. Hehe. 

Oh, may I get your cellphone number and contact details? I'm a bit forgetful in schoolwork, if you don't mind.

Ay wait! Do you have a boyfriend already?"

Hopefully, with my tougher-than-talc convictions I don't go THAT far..

Every beautfiul relationships, be it romantic or platonic always start with the simple 'Hello!' It's rare that some people will try to catch your eye - practically screaming, "Hey sugar sugar rune! Look at me! I wanna eat you! Yum!" I'm not trying to be lewd out here - just trying to be a bit twistedly realistic.

It will always start like that, Oh, I find you cute! Then you get to know. Then we you do get to know, you look at the things beyond surface can tell. Then, you start generalizing; then you start judging if things are worth pushing through.

I haven't fallen in love yet. And even as I say that I will do after college, my life would be dull if little sparks don't fire you up. Think flame tests, if you should. See how different materials yield different flame colors?

I guess that's how my life should be. A never-ending quest of various colors. Life's so much better in two. If I'd say that I don't want to love, then I'm practically saying I don't want to live.

So, when is she showing up again?



Author's Note:
This is the only blog post I decided to rescue from my Multiply account. Why? Read on. :-)(Posted over multiply.com: December 2, 2007, 11:54 PM, Manila Time)

A Blogger's Fatigue

I have always considered myself as a serious writer. Whether I'm just going out into the world to collect the stories of my people (naks... feeling noble!) or simply sitting down to document the day's events, I have always seen a considerable amount of passion in the writing that I do.

That can be best proven by my old blog posts which reached its height during my Freshman year.

Vibrant, long, yet witty. That is how I believe my posts were. A lot would disagree in the background since I'm used to writing long blog posts typical of a philo reading. While I believe that my blog posts are 'easier' than the Marcelian text on Primary and Secondary Reflection, I still admit to the "crime" of verbosity and thus "suffered" the consequence of low viewership.

My friends say that for a blog post to be succesful, you should have just the right title and after that, the talk. Leave it to the gods if you will be blessed with a reply. And a lot of times I do. But it has always puzzled me, why do people get replies as much as 40 to 70, when all they did (at that point) was just to say what they did during the past few hours? Could it be that this person's social likeability is pouring out even in the cyberspace as well? Oh, I mean the blogosphere...

Social life, before, only consisted in the outdoor life. As what Steve Tuttle would tell you in "You Can't Friend Me, I Quit!" the moment he knew Facebook (and gave up on it), he decided to go back to the "real Facebook" - that is, his "local bar where everybody knows your name...[where] status updates thre are said in real time by real people". And if you think Facebook is any disparate from blogging, I'll be the first to digress. Because in a world of online social networking, blogging seems to be the cord that links you to the entire world. "Everybody should have a blog!" one unnamed blogger says. The inevitability of opinions and ideas is what bloghosts bank upon. And it is this realization that bloghosts sell to which bloggers chance upon.

Blog post content and length are two very contentious issues. And I can say that it's very relative and very fluid. There can never be a single shot solution to the 'ideal blog post'. Some say that at 800 words, the blog post is fine. But modern 'practitioners' say that due to a person's limited attention span in cyberspace, anything more than 500 words is already a chore and worthy of shelving. I even remember asking Abby Yao, a Communication graduate and one of my intellectual sources, whether there is a link between personal likeability and online likeability since she studied the blogs of Pinay British immigrants and things like that. While her answer (during that conference) satisfied my wonder to a sizeable degree, I believe that there could be more to the 70 replies from 70 different people. Either there is THAT something about the blog post or the person blogging in general.

The second issue I grapple with regarding blog maintaining is personal space. From the humanistic perspective, personal space is something inviolable and in a sense, sacred. It is at this space that a person flourishes to be what he/she wants to be without the necessary intervention by other people. I don't know what philosophy is that; but I know it is directed towards personal space and freedom.

And then I encounter a friend who was met with intense opposition after a "scathing" blog post. It was [said to be] so scathing that people started talking to him about the blog post and the people's perceptions of things. The most scathing thing, for me, was when I heard "You have a very active online life..." to begin this long chain of admonitions culminating in "You shouldn't have written this blog post. You should have kept things to yourself." If that is the case at which our blogs now work, then why are we even maintaining a blog in the first place?

It's a serious dialectic, however. It makes me think - is there such a thing as freedom in this world? Dr. Remmon Barbaza once shared in a Philosophy seminar I attended that freedom cannot really be proven as existing. If you must, you'll be entangled in all these arguments from different perspectives. I say, then, if we can't be in our own supposed personal space, then why maintain that space in the first place?

Freedom of expression has it limits, I know. It is never absolute, as your High School History teacher will say. "Big Brother is watching," George Orwell will tell you. But then again, the question remains: if we can't be who we are online, then why continue being online? That is my sense of a blogger's fatigue - a fatigue which transcends mere tiredness or inactivity. It's a lack of faith in the same and a common fear that what I write might actually bite.

But writing is an art of telling the truth. A truth that which we put our lives into. A truth that we're willing to defend. And many times what we believe as true is relative and inapplicable to people. But if we have to live in truth, then we have to face what is true - even if it entails scratching another and causing it to bleed.

Because untruth is the greatest folly of human existence.