안녕하세요 레이 신생님!*

I received this email 2 days ago. Last time I checked, I already resigned from my job as a teacher a long time ago. Jenny doesn't get it.

*Ahn-nyeong-ha-seyo Lei San-saeng-nim! (Hello Teacher Lei!)

The paaaaiiiiinnnnnn!!!!!!!! + UPBM trail run

Me: Let's just go to Bohol. Boracay is so overrated.
Friend: Super hot kaya dun?
Me: Dude, anywhere outside Baguio is hot.

Lemme just say: (in a Jamaican accent)It's so freakin' hot man! I know, a lot of bloggers have been ranting about the crazy weather and now I'm joining their bandwagon.

I looked at my dresser this afternoon and realized I need to go shopping because *almost* all my clothes are not "summer material." You would get what I mean if you live or lived in Baguio City where a 33 degree weather is a myth and one's cabinet should be filled with clothes which can get you through the subtle heat in the morning but can still shelter you from the cold at night.

I even had a cold shower this noon because I can not bear the heat. This is a feat because there are only a few people who can tolerate the icy Baguio water when taking a bath. Trust me, it's really, really cold. And ever since my family moved here six years ago, this is the first time I've done it. (Kaya sige na, kunwari ang galing ng nagawa ko..LOL)

According to Yahoo! Weather, we have a temperature high of 25C. Seriously? It's just 25C and I cannot stand the heat already! I'll probably die if I go to Manila or Tuguegarao. I'll look like a roasted pig siguro! I can just imagine the heat. Eeek! I can feel the sun on my back.. God I'm so OA! Haha!

Please, God, let summer go quickly. Or at least keep Baguio cool. ^.^

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I was supposed to run on this race because I'm a Greenpeace member and my friend, Maika, who is the president of UP Baguio Mountaineers asked me to (I think mostly because it will be entertaining for her part to see me run. Hehe).

Hello? Do you want me to die? I climb 4 flights of stairs and my heart is racing like a horse on amok and you want me to run a 14k course? And it's not on flat land! So I decided to save my life and just slept through Earth Day. Too bad though, Maika was almost certain that I would get this medal if I join the race:
It's a turtle if you can't make it out.

Winner!

(Yesterday was UP Baguio's commencement exercises and two of my good friends, Kubi and Maika finally wore their sablays. Shout out to the two of them!)

Anyway, what this post really is about Maika's very cute 10 year-old niece, Shayne, when she attended her tita's graduation. She made the following comment when the emcee started calling out all the laudes in their batch (eg Juan dela Cruz, cum laude; Pedro Penduko, cum laude; Nena Corpuz, cum laude; etc.):

Tita, ang dami namang may apelyidong 'cum laude'!

Winner, 'di ba?

Lines

I hate people who cut into lines. It is very unethical and at the same time disrespectful. Have you ever been in a situation where you've been standing in a queue for the longest time and then out of nowhere, friends of the person in front of you cuts in. Or when you are waiting for a taxi in the middle of the night, wanting so bad to go home because you're tired from work, when a group of raucous teenagers hurriedly pass you by to take the taxi you've been eyeing even when it was 100 meters away.

The other day, I was at NSO (National Statistics Office) fixing my birth certificate. I was on the last step of the process and was just waiting for the NSO guy to come back to his window so I can give my documents. When he finally did, I slipped my papers through his window. As I was slipping my papers in, suddenly out of nowhere, a hand holding some papers squeezed next to my hands wanting that his papers be taken first by the NSO guy. I looked at the person who owned the damned hands (apparently a man who looks way older than I am, probably in his late twenties) and told him in a *slightly* elevated tone "Excuse me! I was here first! Tanggalin mo yang kamay mo kung hindi puputulin ko yan!"

He quickly did and turned around towards the exit, with a very red face. The NSO guy was laughing so much and said "Ang taray mo naman, Miss. Sige dahil dyan, instead of getting your paper done in two hours, 30 minutes na lang. Baka putulin mo din kamay ko."

I just smiled and later on found what happened really, really funny. I saw the guy enter the office again after about 10 minutes and couldn't bring himself to look at me. The guy seriously didn't have any balls.

*insert devil laugh here*

Batista for Mayor and other local election yaddas + Virginia Tech massacre

The local election race here in Baguio City is very interesting. I have learned from this website that Baguio has nine mayoralty candidates. Of them, I know six: Peter Ray Bautista, Braulio Yaranon, Leandro Yangot, Bernie Vergara, Elmo Nevada, and Jun Labo.

**Ryan, a good friend of mine, saw a series of tampered Bautista campaign posters in one of Baguio's streets. Someone who had nothing better to do erased the letter 'U' in Bautista's name, which now reads as Batista for Mayor. As in this Batista. =)

**Yaranon maybe is the oldest Mayor who governed a place where I actually lived. He was supended a year ago and was replaced by Batista, I mean Bautista. I most remember Yaranon as wearing turtle necks, at least during the times when I see him on TV or at City Hall. Because of that, we often joked that he has a tracheostomy tube in place.

**Yangot. Hmmm where do I start? All I know is that this is his wife. Oddly enough, the couple were both front liners in demanding retakes for cheating-marred exams.

**Vergara and Nevada do not look good on each of their campaign posters. Vergara does not know how to smile and Nevada looks very much drunk. Will post photos soon.

**Labo, oh Jun Labo. I wish I could tell him he'll never win however he tries. He runs election after election. When will he ever tire?

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Hey, look who we have here running for councilor:

Isn't he the one in most action films playing as the bad guy? Yung laging kasuntukan ni Robin Padilla.

And this guy...
...scares the hell out of me. This is Jack Cariño. I find his campaign tagline "Stop the 'uglification' of Baguio!" very ironic. Can you guess why? =) He takes great photos, by the way.

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Imagine if this happened here in the Philippines. RIP to all those innocent souls who fell victim to Cho Seung-hui's violent outburst.

This brings to mind a 10 year-old South Korean kid, Shane, who became a student of mine when I was still teaching. He was shy and polite around teachers but little did we know he bullies everyone to their terror. He once locked himself and another kid in the bathroom and beat the shit out of him. The student had a broken nose that needed surgery. He also sort of jabbed a stick in the throat of another innocent student that caused stitches. I also heard from the other students that he extorts thousands of money from them.

No single student said a word about these until he was on his scheduled plane back home to Korea. When the teachers asked why they didn't tell anyone what was happening, they all had one answer: they were scared because Shane told them if they were to squeal anything, he'd hurt them bad.

Tsk.

Not funny

Unfortunately, I am one of the controversial passers of the June 2006 Nurse Licensure examinations who were asked to retake portions of the said examination for "employability" to the United States of Africa. Errr.. I mean America. But being the brave little girl that I am, I decided to just give up my marred June '06 license in favor of a new one (read: I voluntarily am retaking the whole exam).

Off I went to PRC this afternoon to register. All seemed to be fine, until...

PRC Guy: Bakit ganito itong birth certificate mo?
Me: Ha? What do you mean po?
PG: Ito o. Yung gender mo. Male (as in boy) ang nakasulat.
Me: *shock mode* Patingin nga ho. *looks at the paper in horror* Oh my God!!!

So there it was. All my life I used that birth certificate for everything and all things legal it was only now that I saw that *gulp* error. I tried to make pa-cute to the PRC guy to just let it go since the last time it was okay (read:they did not notice it). But he was firm and said that they may have overlooked it last year.

My friends are laughing at my misfortune and all started questioning me if I was really a girl.

Texts from friends:
Sabi ko na nga ba bading ka eh! LOL
Pa'no mo narealyz? D ncheck dti sa prc? Check m pag may birdie ka. hahaha

It's not funny kaya!

*edited

The mean, fat, bald, ugly guy

Last Saturday, I met with my college friends because we haven't seen each other for the longest time. We had dinner and then decide to just lazy around in Melissa's "pent house" apartment and drink. We bought booze and a couple of chichirias at 7-11 Session Road.

It was only a few minutes past 9 in the evening and already there were no available cabs around (None of them brought any of their cars. What a sick universal conspiracy joke, really.). After grueling 15 minutes of waiting, we walked from 7-11 up Session road for about 100 meters. Still, there were no taxis. We were getting a bit irked because there's this bunch of noisy Koreans who just came out of a restaurant and after 5 minutes, luckily, a cab stopped in front of them to let down a passenger. And we were waiting there for almost 25 minutes already!

After 10 more minutes (which means we have been there out in the cold for a good 35 minutes... the ice we bought was already melting and we could've sworn we would only take home ice water.), a cab *finally* stopped in front of us. And because we're dead tired and happy that after eons of waiting we have snatched a cab, we went "woohoo!" and one of us jumped ecstatically, too.

Two guys from the back went out first and I was ready to go in when the third one (the mean, fat one!) said "Ahh.. dito na ba kayo?" (talking to the other guys who went down already). The two guys quizzically looked at him. "Sige, aalis na kami. Dito na pala kayo eh," he continued. One of the two guys said "Oy, pare ang gago mo. Halika na, may sasakay."

But the fat guy just closed the door and motioned the driver to go. The two guys were still saying "Ang gago talaga nun" (referring to the fat guy). My friends and I were like really depressed because we thought that we were finally getting a cab. It was like the saying "Pera na naging bato pa."

Then all of a sudden, the cab with the mean, fat guy stopped mere 50 meters away from us and he got down! Ay grabe, nag-init talaga ulo ko! That asshole! He deliberately did not get down in front of us so we, the kawawa people who have been standing there for 35 minutes, holding our groceries and melting ice, will look MORE kawawa. So I shouted "Tarantado!"

"Aawayin ko 'to!" I said and was already ready to walk towards the guy. I was to show this mean guy who he is messing around with. I'm tired but I can still make bangas! But then my friends stopped me saying that it would just make matters worse and that we were mostly girls and that Ryan (the only male) would be in big trouble since there is a good chance they would go after him kasi nga he's the only male. I said no, I would still go after him and hello, we're in freaking Session Road! With a lot of freakin' people! The fat guy can't hurt us.

But still, they didn't want me to make a scene so they egged me to just let it go.

But I was still shouting obscenities and had my arms crossed and looking at him. The fat guy's friends were a bit guilty looking at us and were muttering something to him. And the fat guy looked at me and I said "Gago!" Just then my friends pulled me closer to them saying 'stop it'.

Arrrghh!!! I hate that fat guy! I also hate the fact that my friends stopped me from confronting him! He could've received some major scolding. He ruined my night. That asshole!

Anyway, after 40 minutes, we finally got a cab. Until we reached our destinations, I can't let go of what happened.

That guy was so mean! He deserves to die a painful death. And when he's dead, he'll spend all eternity in hell waiting for a cab in the middle of the desert and every time he sees one, a person will suddenly pop out of nowhere before him and will flag it down and ride it. If I see him again, I swear to God he'll pay.

The Long weekend

Potipot Island

Aside from the poor service at the resort we stayed at coupled with bad food and the long and arduous travel from Baguio to Candelaria, all went fine with our short Lent vacation. I hope you guys had a restful holy week too, and a meaningful one for all the Christians out there.


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Here's something I found in Pia Magalona's (Francis M.'s pretty wife) blog. Really cool...

Holy Weak

I'm almost done packing for my trip to Zambales with Arcie, Irving and Ronson tomorrow. (Read entry below.) I made some last minute shopping and had a headache. Yes, a headache. Which, I thank the heavens above, did not progress to migraine. What caused this headache, you may ask?

Aside from the heavy traffic downtown, senatoriables from Team Unity roamed around Baguio today, having the mountainous city as their last pit stop before resting from all the lying campaigning they are doing. Banners of an ex-Spice Boy, a person wanting to be "planted" in the senate (the dumbest tagline ever), an actor who I think clearly was just dragged in this whole bonanza, another ex-Spice Boy with disturbing orthodontics, a dancing lady whose sorry came six years too late (a very showbiz-like stunt) and a Jueteng Lord in denial were splashed all over and jingles from novelty songs of all sorts were reverberating throughout the small city-- which I really really hated.

I think Philippine politics have completely turned upside down. Artistas want to become pulitikos the the latter turning out to be faux artistas in stupid (often funny and hard to believe) campaign commercials on TV. We live in a funny country with clowning politicians. I mean, c'mon. Itanim sa senado??? My 3 year-old nephew can do a more sensible and appropriate campaign ad.

This is the first time that I will be voting, since I was only 17 the last time. One could just imagine the idealism oozing out of me. So you would understand why those people do not really appeal to me.

Anyway, I hope all of our local & national post-seekers, together with us voters can reflect over the next few days. Because we seriously need people who can lead us to a better Philippines. Need I say more?


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This is the funniest thing ever. I loved 300 by the way. It's raining men talaga! Haha!