Good fortune

I still haven't fully digested the idea, but I am all set to fly home for the weekend - except that I haven't yet started packing, but that's a minor detail I'll deal with later. I'd already mentioned that my roommates spend most weekends in their own homes, and this had always made me feel a bit jealous. I never really considered the idea myself - not seriously, anyway.

It began on a whim. My sister's birthday is on the 31st, she wanted me to be around during the celebration (which would, of course, take place in Davao), and I wanted to be there. So we told our parents about our little idea and predictably, they said no. They didn't really have to explain anything - I knew it was out of the question. In the first place, leaving for even a weekend might cause me to screw up my academics, and god forbid that ever happens. Also, from a pragmatic point of view, buying a round trip ticket to spend a little more than a day back home would just be a waste of money. To complicate matters, I found out I had an exam scheduled for this Friday and another one on Saturday.

Still, I wanted to return to Davao badly. Ever since I arrived here at the start of the semester, I hated the thought of having to spend five whole months away. And that's just what would happen had fortune not decided to smile on me. But wonder of wonders, I got a call from my dad last night - it turns out he had already bought me a ticket and he wanted to know if I could come. I was prepared to decline, actually, because of the exams I had scheduled for Friday and Saturday. But then I remembered that both exams, for reasons I couldn't care less about, had actually been postponed, making me free for the weekend. At that moment, I wanted to jump up and down and do cartwheels. I was going home.

I just came from the airline ticketing office. I booked my ticket for an afternoon flight tomorrow. And boy, am I glad I'm leaving. Even for just a weekend.

Unreal

I was eating a (very) late dinner at Wendy's a while ago and lost track of time while reading an engaging short story by Stephen King about a man who finds a growing finger crawling around his bathroom sink. It was maybe a little past midnight when I stepped out of the restaurant and made my way to the building I stay in, and I immediately noticed that something wasn't right. The entire street ahead of me was empty and silent. No vehicles parked or moving down the road, no people, nothing except a dark lump huddled next to a building near the next street corner, whom I recognized as the urchin who regularly occupied that area at night. I had to turn the corner to get to my destination. I wasn't afraid of the sleeping figure - he wasn't a threat. But I was creeped out majorly by the sight of Taft avenue completely deserted. The same Taft avenue that I negotiated daily with distaste because of all the obstacles, human or otherwise, along the way. I had repeatedly found myself wishing that everything around me would disappear. And now it had. And I realized that had this happened during the day, the situation would have been more eerie. I knew that traffic thinned out along Taft at night, because most of the vehicles that pass carry commuters who work during the day, but I had never considered that it could actually become nonexistent, even for just a few moments.

In those strange few seconds as I took in my surroundings, with the yellow sodium lights casting a dim but warm glow around everything, I actually felt a sense of freedom that I never feel when I walk the streets. When I'm in any public area, and especially when I am alone, I am always on guard, and I never allow myself to completely relax. Especially when I'm on Taft avenue, a street which, I have often reflected, is a perfect testament to that bastard of a president it was named after. (You may recall that W.H. Taft was that moron who said that God had told him it was the Americans' duty to civilize their 'little brown brothers'.) So I let myself loose, and I found myself running until I reached the corner to the other street where I saw people sitting around the sidewalk doing nothing. And then the experience ended, and I stopped running and walked like a sane person the rest of the way.

A realization

Right now I'm hungry and tired and so not in the mood for another round of intensive studying. I had a long day, starting with a Zoology lecture exam I spent all weekend studying for, after which I immediately turned my attention to cramming hundreds of terms in my head for the quiz on cat bones in the afternoon. My strategy worked, because I think I did well enough, but I was hyped up the entire time and there were a couple of instances when I felt like I was about to throw up.

I am saturated with information, none of which would be particularly useful or interesting to laymen, which at present doesn't even have any concrete practical applications. And yet the fact that I've memorized so many obscure biological terms will translate into grades that will give other people the impression that I am intelligent. That I am knowledgeable. That I am wise.

Last night, as I walked towards a nearby convenience store to grab something to eat before getting back to studying, I noticed a few dark shapes stretched horizontally along a corner of the sidewalk. I knew what they were - indigents who chose that particular area to settle down for the night. They're usually thin, grimy, forlorn-looking men who wander the streets aimlessly during the day. I had long ceased to feel surprise or sympathy for their wretched condition. I ignored them the first time I passed, but when I approached the convenience store a second time, I just happened to glance at this lone figure, lying on a narrow cemented elevation in a corner, her body wrapped in a ragged blanket and her wrinkled face framed by wispy white hair.

She had the peaceful look of a person in deep sleep. Or a person who's dead. It took me a while to get over the image of that old woman in my mind, not only because I felt disgusted at a world that could reduce someone's grandmother into such a miserable state, but also because I knew that I had no way of helping her, and even if I did, I had no intention of doing so.

What do I know that really matters? I know that people often hide their true thoughts and intentions from each other, and that this is an indelible and probably essential aspect of society. I know that the people I see in the streets who stare blankly as the world passes them by are living in my definition of hell. And I know that ultimately, in a world where people like to think that compassion and decency and kindness are imperatives, it is every man for himself.

I am wise, I know, but so is everybody else.

More than a little strange

It might not seem real, but that is the photo of an actual pregnant woman who allowed her body to be preserved and included in an exhibit called Body Worlds. I didn't want to believe it at first, but the image does look a lot like the color illustrations I've seen in medical books. I'm not exactly sure if the exhibit is legitimate or just made up, since I read about it from a site called Daily Rotten - News You Cannot Possibly Use.

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing the exhibit for myself, if it really does exist. The images I've seen so far look fascinating, although somewhat disgusting. But hey, it's not as if I won't be exposed to my share of dead human bodies. And from an academic point of view, the more of them I see, the better.

You really should see the photo of people showing only their blood vessels - that one I find harder to believe to be real. I've linked the article where I got the picture - click on the title of this post to read it.

Off with their heads

What really works up my temper when I'm walking along the streets is when the people around me demonstrate just how immensely stupid they are by getting in my way and acting like retards (most probably are, given the amount of lead and other toxic substances they inhale each day). I have always known that people are stupid in general, and I really didn't have a problem with that. However, it's an entirely different thing when they're impeding your progress while you're in a rush to get somewhere important. Do these people lack some rudimentary portion in their brains that would have allowed them to comprehend simple traffic rules? Because even a two-year-old can understand the concept of red means stop, green means go, and yellow means slow down. And even a two-year-old would realize that a pedestrian lane is not the place to board public transport or pick up passengers, especially if that two-year-old has taken and passed a driving licensure exam, which I sincerely hope applies to all drivers I encounter.

I am sick of having to put up with buses stopping their bulk in front of the pedestrian lane just when it's time for people to cross, and people jostling me aside because they're hurrying to board a jeep that's parked right on the pedestrian lane. There is no excuse for that kind of moronic behavior.

I say kill them all. Death for every offense. And if some pompous public official starts to complain, then kill him too. Our country could use any amount of population reduction we can provide. And judging by the number of public officials, if we kill them all off, well, that would be a big victory. Besides, I should reign supreme. I can certainly run things better than those blathering idiots in public office.

I just noticed. My posts seem to be getting more vindictive. Oh well. There are a lot of things to despise.

Two statements

Sometimes I have to resort to psychoanalysis to figure out why people act the way they do. Sometimes I would just like for them to shut up.

Alone with three dead bodies

My roommates went home for the weekend - unlike me, home for them would mean somewhere less than a thousand kilometers from here - and so, as always, I am spending my weekend alone. This time, though, I have three silent companions bundled up conveniently inside bright blue cylindrical bags, placed in various locations within the room (near the fire exit, under the microwave, under the T.V.) - one of which is Barry, the cat Julian and I skinned during class, with whom we will both undoubtedly be spending many more hours as we poke around his insides in the attempt to learn how they actually look like. I find it surprising how easily I've adjusted to the concept of examining dead animals. Although I wasn't squeamish as a kid, I never really had an interest in Biology, and I never considered dissection among the things I'd want to try doing. As far as I was concerned, dead animals belonged as far away from me as possible. What's strange is despite that general indifference I used to have, I'm actually starting to enjoy what I'm doing. And I've found myself anticipating dissecting actual human bodies, which we'll start doing around this time next year. Maybe it's because I've realized that examining the complexities of creation is one of the most concrete ways of learning about life in general, and me in particular, and might ultimately lead me closer to discovering who I am and why I exist.

Or maybe I just find it cool to cut things up and look inside them. Either way, it doesn't really matter.