12:00 PM I only just woke up now. It was a wonderful Christmas, the same yet different. Previous Christmas Eve celebrations had been held at my family's house, but this year we had to get dressed up because my uncle's family was hosting it. I missed eating the traditional arroz caldo and cakes and other sweets, because they all contain carbohydrates in the form of rice and sugar--and I follow a low-carbohydrate diet. In any case, it was still a very merry Christmas, and I can compensate for the lack of sweets in my system by eating the lechon. Ü I was also kind of surprised at the sharp increase in the number of cousins I had. Then I remembered that for some of them, this would be just their first or second Christmas. What a baby boom. Ü

06:15 PM I'm currently checking out an e-card my mom sent me for Christmas (even though we live in the same house). Ü In a few hours, I'll be gorging myself on lechong baboy (roasted pig) and various other foods with my mom's extended family. Tomorrow, I'll be doing the same thing with my dad's extended family. I truly hope I don't gain too much weight--but then again, my diet allows me to do that. Inggit kayo, 'no? Ü

In any case, we should be careful not to forget why we celebrate Christmas. We are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

09:58 AM It's official: F2s will cease providing free webspace beginning February 28. This means that I have to find hosting elsewhere--and just when I moved all my sites to this space. :( So, the quest begins... I actually want a domain for Christmas, so if anyone knows the mechanics of getting one, please email me or sign my guestbook.

And today officially marks the beginning of my Christmas break! Joy to the world!

09:01 PM For the past few days, we've been doing the brunt of our Christmas shopping. I know it's a bit late--the BIG EVENT is only a week away--but this is practically the only time my family and I have to go to the malls.

Yesterday, we were eating at this Italian restaurant (Angelino's) at Megamall, and our waiter was so bad at his job that it seemed he was bullying us into what to order. He was rude and abrupt, and we had to wait a really long time for anything to get served. Also, at lunch today, we went to one of our favorite restaurants in Glorietta (Tequila Joe's; it's the one with a Mexican worm as its mascot Ü) and we noticed that a new girl was manning the tables. Of course, the fact that she wasn't a familiar face wasn't the issue; we knew she was new because obviously she hadn't been trained fully for customer service. No smile, no courtesies: she just came up to our table and went straight to the point with a "What's your order?" Oh, yes, totally businesslike--if she were a correctionals officer and we were the delinquents under her charge. It was a total change from the service to which we were used, but my family and I managed to laugh it off. She wasn't hurting us (we were more concerned about the impact she'd have on the restaurant's image and the other customers she was serving). We were kind enough to leave a tip for her troubles. Later on today at Rustan's supermarket, we figured (and confirmed from the bag boy) that our cashier was new at her job because she didn't know the procedure to contact her manager when we found out that a product had been priced wrong; additionally, she insisted that our meat products weren't "buy 1, take 1" even though it was clearly marked IN BIG LETTERS on the tag that they were. It seems that to handle the Christmas shoppers, some part-time, seasonal workers have been hired to help out. Since morale is so high because of the season, I don't think anyone really bothers that much right now about service--or maybe it's because everyone's in a big rush to get their shopping done. Ü

One question, though: in the maddening hurry to buy material presents for loved ones, do we even pause to think about the One Great Gift we've been given--the reason for the season (if I may use a cliche)? The offer of eternal life with God came 2,000 years ago in the one called Emmanuel, and the offer still stands, if we care to accept it. Ü

04:36 PM Guess who committed a major blunder today. Yes, it was yours truly, and it was all my fault, no doubt about it, and it all happened because I lied.

It all started when classes were suspended today in UP Diliman so that the students could freely attend the University Student Regent Convocation. The main reason was that the University Student Council (USC) believed students should be informed about who was going to be selected as the next Student Regent (SR) to sit on the University Board of Regents (BOR), which has a lot of implications for the involvement of students in future University decision-making. Most students took this as an opportunity to go home early, and I was supposed to be one of them. I wish I'd just gone home.

Instead, when I learned that attendance cards would be given out, I decided to get one for some security against some teacher who could surprise us with a request for one as a substitute for class attendance for today. So, I went, dragging along my sister, her friend, and one of our friends from church. However, when I found out that the cards were only going to be given out at 5pm, I got a bit grumpy and decided to go home. Then, someone (whom I later found out to be the vice-chairperson of the USC) approached us and asked if we'd registered already. I replied that it would be pointless because the cards weren't being given out yet. I did this in such an offensive way; he was visibly hurt and said that if our official class time lasted only until 2:30pm, we could get the attendance cards then. He politely said that I could have requested my card without being so grumpy about it.

So, sure, I shamefacedly apologized to the guy but here came Lie #1: I lied that my 1pm class would end at 2:30pm, which was half-true because it did--but I also had a class from 4:00-5:30pm. We went and registered anyway. When we came out at 2:30pm, I noticed that they were asking students for their Form 5 (something that says you're enrolled; also contains class schedules). Lie #2: I said that I didn't have my Form 5 (later on, I found out that I really didn't have it; but the intent was there to lie that I didn't have it). They were all set to give me my attendance card when they asked my sister when her class was supposed to end. My sister did not want to lie, unlike her big sister (who is a "Liar, Liar"), so she just said that it was true her classes ended at 4pm. Since classes had been suspended, she continued, we'd reasoned that we could have gotten the attendance cards without going through the whole ordeal, so we'd called our dad to pick us up already.

To make a long story short, I didn't get my attendance card, even after all the embarrassment and lies I went through to try to get it. The people handing them out refused to give one to my sister, so I was too ashamed of myself to take mine. Our friend from church who was with us goodnaturedly told me this: "I have a Biblical explanation for what happened. You lied to get what you wanted, so... you didn't get what you want." I guess I had to learn this the hard way. After that little escapade, all I wanted to do was (a) crawl into a hole in the ground and die, or (b) go to sleep and wake up to find it was all a dream. Neither of those things happened. Instead, I'm here at home, trying to use all the time I'd saved in coming home early to write my last paper of the year for Ma'am C__.

10:25 PM I think I've got a case of the common cold; right now it's ravaging my nose; I've been sneezing nonstop for the past hour. I guess last night's swimming did wonders for my lungs. Don't forget to read the sarcasm in those words. Ü

So, my old subdomain is back online. I'm currently attempting to transfer all my old fan sites to it, since they're all defined as "passing fancies" according to me. I'm going to design an "under construction" screen in the meantime. Ü

I finished Ma'am C__'s assignment in one subject. Now to get cracking on my reading for my other subject under her... *sigh* Oh yeah, for those who read my entry yesterday, I committed a little faux pas, dating it as December 9 instead of December 8. Sorry for the confusion, as I've rectified the problem. And pardon the big long words I'm using right now; I'm still in academic mode due to that assignment. Ü

10:21 PM Let me tell you about something that happened yesterday, which was a Friday... Ü I was preparing to leave my tambayan (which is a small shack officially assigned to an org as its hangout) for a class in another building when V__, a friend of mine, sent me a text message telling me to wait for her so we could leave together. When she came, another classmate of ours, A__, also arrived. We started talking, and worried as I was about being late, I didn't make any move to leave.

I wandered over to a spot in our tambayan which provides a view of a nearby parking lot framed between our bulletin board and a tree trunk. I had barely noticed this dark green car squarely in the center of my field of vision when I realized that it was shaped like the car model of my crush. I don't know what drove me to keep looking, but suddenly the front driver's side door opened, and out stepped this tall guy who had the build of my crush. I caught my breath as I realized that he had crossed the road and was now walking on the street separating our building from the next one. It was my crush--and he was coming up to our building!

Of course, V__ told me to walk past him so he'd see I was still around campus. After hedging and saying that would be pathetic, I did so anyway. I took a good look at him, and just as I was about to look away, he in turn looked at me. Ü

I don't know if he recognized me, and I would be assuming too much if I said that he felt the same way I did when he saw me. Broadening the discussion a bit, I don't know if guys feel the way girls do when we see our crushes. I mean, afterwards are guys on cloud nine just because they saw their crush? I see this happening in movies, but somehow I don't believe this could happen in reality.

One thing I know for sure: absence makes the heart grow fonder, at least in this case. I think I've been putting him too high on a pedestal in my imagination, because I was faintly disappointed that he wasn't as devastatingly dashing as I remember him from last semester. But hey... he's still finger-lickin' good-lookin' guy. Ü

11:28 PM I take it back. Ma'am C__ is not all right. In fact, she's the most frustrating teacher I've had--well, since my History 111 professor. I just don't know what she wants from her students; she gave us this assignment last week, and then yesterday when we were about to submit it, she suddenly surprises us: she announces that what we had accomplished was not what she had had in mind when she gave out the assignment.

You see, she had (deliberately?) forgotten to mention a certain requirement--a certain question had to be satisfied in order to validate our submitted data. It was really frustrating because we'd also just received the results of our previous exercise, and she didn't bother to specify her grading scale before we'd submitted that. As a result, our modal grade (the most common grade) for the class was just what she calls her "basic correct": an ugly 2.25, which is pretty low. I mean, if she had told us that was how she'd grade our assignments, we'd have put more effort into that first assignment, not to mention we would have definitely constructed assignment #2 better.

Now, the best chance we have of changing our grade is when we rewrite those assignments. On the one hand, I would have liked to get a good grade in one shot. On the other hand, it would be useful to see what she thinks of our assignment #2 when we get them back, and then tailor our rewrite according to what she expects, and then probably surprise her with a flash or two of brilliance, if we have it in us. You know what's really irritating? She has a ceiling grade of 1.25; she never gives perfect 1.0 grades, which is quite unfair of any professor to do.

All this has suddenly made me think seriously of a question that has haunted me through my four years in this university--should I have shifted to another course during my second year? At that time, I had thought I could handle this Political Science thing; I mean, I was getting excellent grades (though that was probably because of the General Education subjects instead of my major subjects), so I didn't know what kind of pickle this discipline was in. Present-day Political Science is in a quandary about its identity. Psychology deals with mental processes of individuals; Anthropology studies people and cultures; History is, well, history. But what kind of social science is Political Science? What is its subject matter? What is its core? I've been in this course for nearly four years, and I still don't have a clue.

11:00 PM Glorietta (a mall, for those of you who don't know) was packed today. I mean, I was bumping into people every ten seconds or so, klutz that I am. I shouldn't be so surprised; I mean, it is the Christmas shopping rush after all. There was an inordinate number of people at Nike Park, the reason being a full-blown sale where some items could go for 70% less than their tag value. Ü

The main reason that my family and I are at Glorietta on Sundays is that we go to worship services there. I'm not talking about the masses held hourly in front of Mercury Drug at the ground floor. My church, Bread of Life Makati, holds two services at Cinema 6 (at Glorietta 4, 4th floor) from 8-10 AM and 10-12 PM If anyone's interested in attending, the doors are always open and seats are always available.

Dani wrote something very thought-provoking about Harry Potter in relation to the Evangelical Christian faith. I must say I especially agree with this particular statement:



Well-said, and amen to that!

It pays to go through my links once in a while, but one discovers more things when one goes through other people's links. I found Wil Wheaton's website through Pau's blog links. Way back when Star Trek: The Next Generation was showing for the first time on a local channel, I was a fan--both of the show and of the character Wesley Crusher, who was played by Wil. I think it was during that time period that I imagined myself part of any show I watched; Wesley was the youngest character, so I was able to relate to the show. Of course, Jean Luc Picard and Deanna Troi were my other favorite characters. Dr. Crusher (Wesley's mom), on the other hand, didn't have the magnetism the other characters had. Anyway, when I found Wil Wheaton's blog, it was truly surprising to realize how long ago all that was. Ü

Oh, look! A smiley with cheeks! --> (Ü)

04:18 PM Guess who's back! Ü Amazing that I didn't manage to disappear like I always do at the start of each month. My family and I just got back from Subic Bay, where we did not go swimming as expected. Instead, we stayed at our cottage in Forest Hills Resort (I'm not sure what the whole name is). The occasion was, actually, a convergence of two Bible study groups from our church You could say it was a sort of retreat. There weren't many people my age there, so I didn't get to socialize. Instead, I amused myself (and immensely, it seems) with the kitchen and other amenities our cottage afforded us. Additionally, the family we were sharing the cottage with had a 19-year-old son with whom my sister and I got along very well, so we weren't bored at all!

(By the way, if you're wondering "Is he cute?", he looks like a thinner, non-blonde version of Dawson Creek's Henry--you know, the young guy who became Jen's boyfriend. Ü)

And it's December 1! The song running through my head isn't a traditional Christmas carol, though. It's from Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas album.

i don't want a lot for christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don't care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas
Is you

Oh yeah! I joined The Rice Bowl Journals. It feels pretty amazing to know that there are so many people of Asian descent out there on the net, and even better that a large percentage of them are Filipinos! National pride and all that. Hehe. Ü The really funny thing is... I don't eat rice. Part of my weight loss program and all. Ü