05:53 PM Colour Me...
I never openly admitted this before, but I do believe that now I've made my decision. Drum roll please...

My favorite color is pink.

12:55 PM A "Spoiled" Child
Well, not really gossip, but I do like reading about celebrities. Not the local ones, though: I'm sick and tired of Ara Mina whaling on her lover's wife or Rosanna Roces airing her dispute with Dra. Vicky Belo on national news or Kris Aquino spilling her guts on primetime television that she contracted venereal disease and then suing a network for libel for implying that she deserved the STD. No, I'll have none of that. My tastes run toward the Hollywood scene. (Eh, not that that's any better. It's just a preference.)

Lest you think I am just one step away from picking up the National Enquirer or some other foreign celeb tabloid, I can get a dose of that just by clicking away. E!Online is a good place to start. I already get their programs on cable courtesy of the Lifestyle Network, so it isn't much of a stretch to look for a little bit more Awful Truth or Watch with Kristin. And because I can't get enough, I also go to Fame Tracker to see whether these celebrities I watch and read about are overrated. It's a good way to keep my head out of the clouds.

Then, of course, as the consummate consumer of television shows that I am, I can't resist going to websites such as Jump the Shark and Television Without Pity to read up on other people's opinions on the shows I watch. (I also like reading spoilers, by the way.)

So, in reading spoilers and looking at shows in advance before starting to watch them, I figure out which are worth my time. Well, at least I try not to start watching a show that was canceled after just one season. It's what let me watch Dark Angel comfortably because I knew it was going for a second season.

But now, Star World is showing John Doe, which I first caught on local television (RPN 9). I started watching it yesterday and am hopelessly hooked. But when I looked it up on its home network Fox TV, I realized it only stayed on for a season and then got cancelled! I hate getting emotionally invested in shows which do not climax well (Now and Again, I'm talking about you).

I'll still watch it, though. I'm a masochist in that way.

01:04 PM "Mirage"
I thought I saw you, two days ago.
I blinked and you were gone.
Then I realized you were never there.

09:01 AM Your Friendly Neighborhood Garbage-Person
What a burden garbage is.

In order for UNESCO UP Diliman Club to get recognition from the Office of Student Affairs, my orgmates and I had to participate in a clean-up drive of Vinzons Hall. It's an old building with ugly blue bricks, and its parking lot is known for being a favorite carbarn for jeepneys.

We thought we were just going to sweep up dust within the building, move broken furniture out, maybe clean the toilets. We were wrong.

Instead, we were given a garbage bag and nothing else and were told to pick up litter from the ground. No brooms, no gloves (it was the fault of the OSA for not providing these). We had to bare-hand things that had been there since what seems like the dawn of time: candy wrappers, plastic cups and utensils, discarded styrofoam food containers, cigarette butts, and rags that had soaked up rainwater and mud and, uh, other things. Of these types of rubbish we mostly picked up rags, probably used by the jeepney drivers to wipe down their vehicles after a long day on the road and then just thrown onto the asphalt. It was what irked me most; we'd clean up the trash, yes, but who threw all the trash there anyway? Certainly not us, and after that ordeal I will certainly not throw things by the roadside ever. Someone has to pick the trash up eventually, and I pity that person who has to do it.

Yesterday it certainly seemed like no one ever cleaned around Vinzons Hall. Kami'y naging parang aliping sagigilid!--We felt like slaves. As soon as we finished filling one bin full of garbage, we'd get another empty bin forced upon us until finally we went along with it and kept filling up bin after bin. We worked quickly and furiously over a wide area, but when we were called off the chase, it seemed like we'd never been there. The ground was still flecked with cigarette butts and candy wrappers, and there was this whole section of Vinzons Hill strewn with plastic seals from coconut drink cups.

I thought that was the end of my garbage-handling days. I was wrong.

Today, in order for UNESCO UPD Club to get points so that the University Student Council would prioritize our ACLE (Alternative Classroom Learning Experience--a sort of symposium), I had to drag around a whole garbage bag full of soda cans. My sister had volunteered to bring these, but as is the case with older and younger siblings, ultimately it was I, the elder, who had to carry them out of the car's trunk to the tambayan.

First try, there was nobody there to receive them and I was afraid they'd get stolen by any opportunistic org who also wanted to gain points for themselves. So I carried the cans back to the car and started to leave. I had already made it down the driveway and was about to turn onto University Avenue when my sister called me and said someone was on their way to pick up the cans so-would-I-please-leave-them?

Again, I felt like a slave. But also, I did what was wanted, and then left in a huff.

I hate garbage.

09:55 AM Now Serving
On my Friendster profile, I say I'm into tennis as a spectator (since nobody bothered to enroll me in a tennis class). I got into tennis watching because my mother, her brothers, and her father are huge tennis fans. Whenever I went to visit my maternal grandparents in June, the television would be tuned to a replay of the Wimbledon match that happened in the wee hours of the morning. One of my uncles would be doing a play-by-play because he had already watched it live. My mom would be rooting for Pete Sampras, who was still at the peak of his game. I got dragged into it when I saw that commercial Sampras and Andre Agassi did for Nike, where they set up a net and started playing tennis in the middle of Times Square. I got filled in on their friendly rivalry by my grandfather.

So, last year, when Sampras retired and Agassi was beaten out by Ferrero in the U.S. Open semifinals, I thought I had no more reason to keep watching tennis. It turns out that yes, it was the end of an era, but it was also the beginning of another. Andy Roddick won that Grand Slam with his powerful serve and became world number one (for a few months). And then Roger Federer with his strong all-around game stepped up, having won Wimbledon and the Australian Open.

You can imagine how many late nights I've been up the last weeks of June 2004, pissed off at the rain delays that kept me from watching Roddick and Federer eliminate their opponents until they finally met on Wimbledon's Centre Court last July 4. World number one and number two facing off: I could barely watch since I couldn't decide who to root for. As always, I ended up rooting for the underdog (Roddick) and thus was devastated by his defeat. But he accepted runner-up position with such grace and good humor that I felt justified in naming him my favorite tennis player.

Anyway, the sports news writers have been trumpeting this Roddick-Federer rivalry as the new Agassi-Sampras. Time will tell if that's going to be the case. I'll be glued to the edge of my seat in the meantime.

07:23 PM Hey Shorty, It's Your Birthday!
(Okay, so this post wasn't really written on the 4th of July. I don't care, and this is my journal. Ü)

Is turning 21 any different from turning 20? I suppose it might mean something when the legal age for drinking is 21, but in this country I've been legally able to consume alcohol since I was 18 years old. No, logging 21 years on the age-o-meter means I'm legally an adult now. My mother said (jokingly, I hope), "Honey, you can get married without our consent now. You just have to inform us." To which I replied, "I've got everything prepared. The wedding with the pastor, the reception, the dresses, even the bridesmaids. I just need a groom..."

Thinking about that gives me the jitters, though. I may be chronologically one-and-twenty years of age, but I really never wanted to grow up. I remember when I first felt this way; it happened one Sunday when I was nine years old. I was going to participate in my Sunday School class's special number in front of the church congregation, so I came dressed in a pink gauzy "fairy" dress. As I sat in the car on our way there, though, I happened to look down at myself and got this sick feeling in my stomach. Gone were the straight lines of my other dresses; I had bought that particular dress because it was loose around the upper chest area, where I had begun to, um, expand. I remember thinking, "Whatever's happening to me, I want it to stop!"

Of course, it didn't stop. I continued growing older, and I hated it. I always looked older than those other kids my age, and by the time I was thirteen years old, I had the va-va-curves while my fellow teen girls were still stick-straight. It's a curse when you get to grow up a day (or in my case, probably two years) earlier than everyone else.

And so it goes on, every year adding to my age. I guess I should think of it as added experience rather than ageing, but I also can't escape the feeling that time is slipping through my hands, and before I know it I'll be a 40-year-old spinster with nothing to show for anything.

Birthdays could possibly be one of God's ways of reminding people, "Hey you! What have you accomplished lately?"

11:27 PM Shag Before You Bag? Not for Me
Last Saturday, while I was helping Org # 1 construct an exhibit, a group of students from a PanFil class approached us. They had a video camera on standby and were all eager-beaver about polling us on our views regarding premarital sex. Inwardly I groaned; in my second year of college, I had been dragged into a classroom because they had a forum on the aforementioned topic. I was picked off the street (hallway, actually) to be part of the panel.

Understand that all throughout my life it had been drilled into me that one should never engage in premarital sex. However, Filipino teens' views seem to be more libertine than what one would expect from a predominantly Catholic country; a magazine poll had many ascribing to the view that if one loved the other person enough, then it would be all right.

I had never been put in a position where I had to defend my belief. Back then, I didn't know that beliefs are as irrefutable as facts; if a person believes something, it's as true for them as gravity is true for a high-diver. So naturally I crumbled into silence as one person who expressed her pro-premarital sex views quite strongly dominated the panel.

Last Saturday, though, I had time to compose my statement--sounding old-fashioned be damned. I said, "I'm against premarital sex because I believe that sex is something that should be shared only between husband and wife." Don, who was there too, also said he doesn't believe in premarital sex because of the emotional baggage it creates.

Today, Julia sent me the URL of an article in Relevant Magazine that articulates, in long-cut, those things.

"'Everything is permissible for me'--but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible for me'--but I will not be mastered by anything. 'Food for the stomach and the stomach for food'--but the Lord will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.... Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body." (1 Corinthians 6:12-13,18)

Side note: Video presentation and website for Org # 1 have been completed. I'm quite happy, really. There's some truth that one doesn't need to be paid to take pleasure in working, despite my previous griping.