RIP Johnny Delgado

JUAN MARASIGAN FELEO aka JOHNNY DELGADO February 29, 1948 - November 19, 2009

I have never been affected by showbiz deaths. I just didn’t care. But when I heard about Johnny Delgado’s death during dinner tonight, I was genuinely saddened.

Johnny Delgado reminded me of my father. So much. They kinda look alike actually, but my dad’s built and personality — very Johnny Delgado. In some of Johnny Delgado’s pictures, he looked like Papa from afar. Johnny Delgado was one of Papa’s idols, next to or maybe at par with FPJ. Johnny Delgado was one of Papa’s favorites. When I was younger, I would catch Papa watching really corny sitcoms just because Johnny Delgado was in them. Papa dreamed of meeting Johnny Delgado in person.

I hope they had met already.

Mr. Johnny Delgado, you will be missed. You are a legend.

P.S. Why are there so many deaths this year?

Six

One random day in Baguio (I took the picture. haha.) Yay for family members.

It’s been six months. It’s starting to become a little less painful to accept. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it?

If I would read this aloud, I would be very tired

It has always been my problem that my life is so boring, but I think my problem now is I’m not even sure if my life is boring or not. Maybe having time to philosophize as to whether  my life is boring or not is actually proof that my life is boring, but what the hell. I wonder why I always go through these kinds of circular dilemmas that go round and round and then at the end of the paragraph I just say “what the hell”. What the hell. Even merely contemplating about how boring or non-boring my life is bores me. What the hell.

It’s my last semester in college. Yay. Not yay. What the hell.

I have 13 more units to go endure, acads sounds pretty easy, but no, acads is never easy in UP. I have 2 majors, an elective, and one sort of required elective (oxymoron!), but they’re all heavy. The majors are just heavy as they are and the non-majors are so reading heavy. The Philo elective requires me to read the kind of stuff I tried to escape from in SocSci2 (read: dropped) but it’s fine. At least this time I have no choice but to blame myself because I can’t say “I didn’t know what I was going into!” anymore. And for goodness’ sake, I have to graduate. My aversion to Sociology still lingers despite the idea that once I enroll in  a Socio class everything will get along pretty well. I don’t know if it’s their jargons or just the sociologists’ way of writing that’s so complex which makes it hard for me to absorb, but it’s realllllly hard to absorb. I’m in page 5 of 10 of what I’m reading and I still don’t get what the main idea of the prose is. What the hell.

LAE’s looming and I’m not very nervous, probably because I have finally opened my doors to other law schools. I am not gonna die for UP Law anymore, Ateneo sounds like an equally good school anyway and there are a lot of law schools in the country as well. Regardless of what law school I go to, I know that I just have to finish law and be a lawyer. I might practice, I might not(!), but I’ll cross the bridge when I get there. Yuck, cliche. I hate cliches. What the hell. As for the LAE, I feel pretty prepared already. I don’t know if that’s enough for me to pass but I know that I tried to study for it. I have to improve a lot on my English and Math (but that’s just like saying I have to improve in everything since the exam is pretty much just English and Math haha). I’m not sure if I still have to do some self-study or something, but my idea of expanding my vocabulary right now is playing Bookworm Deluxe. Haha.

I turned 20 last Wednesday. So I’m older, and maybe wiser. But I’m definitely older. Being past my teenage years hasn’t sunk in to me yet, but that would probably be because my life got so boring I didn’t even feel like I was “young and carefree”. But what the hell.

What the hell.

(WTH counter =9)

Hello hello

Today marks the 5th month of my father-less life. Just saying.

Konti na lang.

My low-res countdown to freedom. Konti na lang?

Nag-iilusyon lang ako kung sasabihin ko na konti na lang. Dahil ang dami dami pa. Eh well, papel. Mukhang nasanay na nga lang ako na ang dami kong ginagawa here and there. Kaso lagi akong nakakatulog. Kakaloka.

Anyway, malapit nang magsembreak. Kahit marami pa bago magsembreak, malapit naman na talaga. More or less two more weeks of stress, two more weeks of supposedly sleepless but I know will be sleepful nights. Ewan ko ba, basta lagi akong nakakatulog.

Nakakadepress kasi pupunta dapat kami sa Baguio nina friends ngayong sembreak, kasi wala lang, bet lang namin mag-inuman one cold sembreak night. Eh nakakalungkot kasi binagyo siya What is happening to the world? Okay, rhetorical question. Time to make new plans.

Wala, gusto ko lang ulit magsulat in Tagalog.

Glee

This morning, I realized how it’s really weird that every time the term is about to end, I get preoccupied by or addicted to something irrelevant and terribly disastrous for my academic endeavors. Sometime in 2nd year I got addicted to a person, in another term another person, in another term a TV series. In my 3rd year, one of my 3 terms ended with an addiction to a book, one ended with a preoccupation to having a social life and therefore not much academic concern, and the last one ended with something really devastating to totally mess me up. And this sem, it’s yet another TV series.

I guess if you’re one of the people who like or at the very least enjoyed watching performances in any High School Musical movie, you’d like Glee. It’s so cutesy-patootsie and high school-ish and somehow cliche that you’d just feel like singing and dancing even if you don’t really know how. Haha I think my thing with Glee is that it inspires me. Haha. I don’t know, it’s just so fun and their numbers are so amazing. Glee episodes run for about an hour (40 mins without the ads) and I never really get bored. Now that I’m really more into American sitcoms and not American dramas, I’m used to watching shows that run 3o minutes per episode only so I really get impatient watching shows that run a full hour like Gossip Girl and totally wish that they would just end whenever I’m halfway. But in watching Glee I never really notice that time passes by — before I know it the episode has ended and I just want to see more. Plus all the Celine Dion songs are suddenly not so heartbreaking to listen to even if they are.

Photo from Google

Although all numbers in Glee are to die for (heck, even Finn singing Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore in the shower was so damn good), my favorites would be Somebody To Love, and the one where the football players danced Single Ladies in the middle of their losing football game.

Preview only cause youtube is so madamot about this. But anyway, this Somebody To Love number gives me the Start of Something New feel in High School Musical 1, it’s so cheesy but not so. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Haha but you’d suddenly feel like jumping and shouting and crying at the same time. Exagge. Haha.

I just love how it’s so gay and manly at the same time! It’s so… fab! C’mon where else will you see a bunch of jocks dancing Single Ladies? I can’t even dance to the song myself! I love it it’s so gay!!!!

More of Glee please!! I’m so tempted to watch the Ep6 teaser but I’m afraid I might be teased! Hahaha! I might not be able to study at all na. Haha.

Sembreak! Wish you were here already cause there are a lot of good shows that I really wanna watch all over again and I have baduy Pinoy chick flicks to watch yet! Come on!!!

The Day After Yesterday (is Today)

September 26, 2009, Saturday. It was Che-Che’s 20th birthday, and it was Metro Manila at its worst.

My Psych 160 professor scheduled our 3rd exam 10:00 am that day. I have been staying with my Aunt in BF since Wednesday of this week because my Mom went to Bicol and I really didn’t want to stay in Bulacan. The week was one of the many hell weeks of the sem, and I didn’t want to stress myself further by dealing with the traffic at NLEX and Balintawak and EDSA and Munoz and pretty much everywhere. Plus the sem has been really very rainy, and rain equals traffic and road accidents. So I stayed in BF to decrease my stress levels and though the week in UP was really lethal, I think I came out in Friday as a well-coped girl.

Come Saturday morning, I woke up at 3 am and read a little more for my upcoming exam. It was raining very hard by then, but there were no announcements of cancellation and I thought that it would be pretty weird to suspend classes on Saturdays (since normally, there are no classes on Saturdays). I called up the department at around 9 am if the exam was going to push through, because it was raining really hard by then and I actually wished I had a little more time to review. Initially the intent was selfish, but what the hell. Long story short, the exam pushed through and by 1o am, I arrived at UP.

By then, most of the members of the first class were done taking the exam. Some of them had to take the exam along with us, the second class. Some of my classmates arrived really very wet, head to toe. Some were partly wet, and some didn’t even make it to UP because they were stuck at Katipunan or elsewhere.

The exam lasted until 12:00, and by then people were worrying as to how we could go home. My brother who was supposed to fetch me came from Bulacan. I asked him to fetch me at 12, he left the house at 10 (because he has something else to do in UP), but he never came as soon as I wanted and instead reached UP at 5 PM. Classmates who were able to ride a jeep were eventually brought by the jeep back to PHAn, apparently the jeep has no way of bringing his passengers to where they were supposed to go. Classmates who attempted to drive in the middle of the rain were back at PHAn hours later as well.

PHAn became a refugee camp. Thank God for laptops and movies inside them, the TV at PHAn 201, Madie’s AV cable, Jamie’s speakers, and the people who went to SC to buy food. We were comfortable and warm, but it wasn’t really enough to make us feel better. We all wanted to go home (we have another exam tomorrow) and staying in UP watching movies wasn’t really the thing we wanted to do first.

At around 3:30 PM, my mother called for the nth time, and told me that we could stay by her friend’s house in UP and we could spend the night there if things really get bad. I didn’t wait for the night to come, I left PHAn as Agnes did. She walked home. I am thankful that my Aunt’s driver who brought me and my younger brother to UP wasn’t able to leave UP as well, so I called him and we went to fetch my brother and went to my mom’s friend’s house. Finally there were warm clothes, and food, and TV, and news updates. We waited for Commonwealth to become passable so we could go back to BF.

Sometime after 5 PM, my brother from Bulacan finally arrived. He was dripping wet and his fat Vans shoes were icky. When he and his driver were in the QC circle area (somewhere near East Ave I think), they just parked because QC Memorial Park became QC Circle River. Actually, cars were parked just about anywhere at that time. They hadn’t had their lunch yet, and they were hungry. My brother walked in the leg-high flood looking for food, but no there wasn’t any food. Finally he saw a cashew nut vendor who sold a handful of nuts for 5o pesos. I mean, come on, in this time of calamity, aren’t food supposed to be free?!

Anyway, so we stayed there at my mom’s friend’s house and I was losing hope until my Aunt called and said that Commonwealth was passable already. We left for BF at around 9 PM and stayed in BF for the rest of the night.

Pat and AM, who were in UP yesterday as well, were about to sleep in my mom’s friend’s house too, but when I told them that Commonwealth was passable they tried. AM wasn’t able to go home to Marikina for obvious reasons, but Pat got home safe at 10. There are people in UP still, I suppose.

Some pictures I found all over Facebook:

A Corolla submerged in flood; somewhere in Araneta

Christine Reyes on her rooftop; she lives in Marikina

Katipunan Avenue

I believe Manila wasn’t ready for this kind of calamity, but I believe that it’s about time that we people finally listen to what the Earth is trying to say. The world is experiencing a crazy climate right now and though we can do  nothing to turn it the other way around, maybe there are still a few things we can do.

I want to go home. I have study and I’m gonna pack my unwanted clothes and give them as relief to the victims of Ondoy (it’s the name of the typhoon! What an ugly name). Manila needs help right now.

Rituals

And here goes the ritualistic 18th of the month blog entry.

Back in the early days of acquisition of Panicuason plus the NPA and all kinds of threats, hence armed guards.

But he kept his calm and composure

Coping has been going well lately, except of course for the intermittent breakdowns. I think we’re on the way of getting used it. I remember telling my friends during his wake that I couldn’t imagine living forever without a father. After four months, I realized that I didn’t actually need to imagine it – that it was gonna happen regardless if I can imagine it or not. That life really will go on, that the world won’t stop spinning, and every morning we will still wake up with the sun somewhere up there, although sometimes we see it, and sometimes we don’t.

I realized that in life, no matter how we dread some things from happening, they are going to happen. Perhaps we can delay it for some time, but by doing so we will only prolong the agony that we feel. There are times that we simply have to let things pass, and they when they’re done, we can get let them go and then we can breathe. Either in death or in exam taking, that statement applies.

It’s mid-September, and it’s the time of the sem again. Some things just happen that ritualistically.

TV time

I noticed that I’ve been going home pretty early lately, but I don’t why. Maybe I should get a life. And since I’ve been staying home so much, I’m having the most TV time I have ever had in my life. Surprisingly, and ironically too, I guess,  I’m doing pretty fair in my subjects this sem, so a little more TV time is fine.

But then, this afternoon, while I was having the most fun in the world watching ABS-CBN’s newest drama remake Katorse, I got into thinking, why did I never have this much TV time in ever before?

And then I cried. Because it hit me so hard.

I never had this much TV time in my life because someone else ruled over the TV back then.  I would never forget how he would talk to me and convince me that what I’m watching is crappy and ugly just so he could get to watch solo in the TV in the living room to watch Vic Vargas movies from the 70s and 80s. I’d never forget how he momentarily changes the channel to CinemaOne only to be annoyed when he sees Toni Gonzaga’s overly large jaw on-screen. I’ d never forget how he would religiously watch FPJ movies again and again and again on ABS-CBN’s FPJ Saturdays, and how he would actually rush going home when 4:00 pm is near because he wouldn’t want to miss FPJ movies that are actually on repeat. I’d never forget how he would space out at night, sitting on his armchair, while not really watching the movies on HBO that he long waited for. I’d never forget how he would tune in to ANC when he has nothing more sensible to watch but still wouldn’t want to give the remote to me.

Looking back, it’s okay that he had the TV all for himself. After all, now that I have the TV all for myself, I realize that I don’t really want my TV time, I just want my father.

Snap back to reality.

Less than 2 years ago.

Three months na kahapon.