Go the Distance

Last week was my brother’s graduation. He attended college at a private school in a nearby town. Their graduation was scheduled in the morning at the open-air school gymnasium. I was armed with my DSLR, ready to capture precious moments despite my high-heeled shoes giving me a hard time walking back and forth to get a better shot.

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UPLB: Changing Times II

As I’ve said in a previous post, there are significant changes occurring in my beloved alma mater that I really don’t agree with just because they’re not what I grew up with. I’m a very sentimental person, and it pains me to see that what life used to be in UPLB is now just a memory.

Recently, a campus-wide no-smoking rule was implemented. And although I’m not a chain smoker, only a chipper, I really am quite surprised with this one. What about personal freedom? Is pollution in the campus really that bad that they had to ban smoking? I don’t think so. Why so drastic? Why not just ban smoking inside campus buildings? Isn’t that more feasible, anyway? UPLB is a big and open campus. How could the powers that be possibly monitor and reprimand every smoker who breaks this rule?

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UPLB: Changing Times I

I’ve been in UPLB all my academic life. From elementary to college, I never left this seemingly secret place tucked into the sides of the enchanting Mount Makiling. When I started working, I only got to spend the weekends here, and how things change the minute you let it out of your sight. I used to spend weekend afternoons brisk walking at Freedom Park to catch some fresh air and to give my heart some much needed cardio workout. Over the years, I’ve seen little changes, but maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. It’s only now I realize that a lot really has changed since I graduated five years ago.

To my disliking, I feel like UPLB is now a stranger to me. After five years, I cannot recognize my alma mater anymore, and this saddens me. It’s as if she gathered all my memories of her, wrapped them in an old newspaper and threw it in a dumpster to be forever forgotten. I’m not talking about the physical appearance of the campus, of course. Little has changed, except for a few new buildings and a few restored ones.

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Scars of My Youth I

If I were to sum up my college years into a few words, I would describe it as a cultural revolution. If most people consider high school the best years of their academic life, it would be college for me. I enjoyed some of it, though I can’t deny that I’ve also had some not-so-good times. Among the things I’ve enjoyed was making my body an easel for some pretty good art.

One of my org mates has a cousin named Mylo, who does body piercing, henna tattooing and permanent tattooing for a living. He always hung out with us. He is a cool guy, very, very funny. It wasn’t a surprise really that most of my org mates got their piercings and tattoos from him. He charges pretty cheap too. I guess he took into consideration that we were students who obviously haven’t much a peso to spare for vanity.

During my first two years in college, I was still coming out of my shell and I gave my parents a headache because of all the crazy things I started doing. Of all the parts of the body I can have pierced, I chose to have my first piercing on my right eyebrow because I haven’t seen too many people, let alone ladies that have their eyebrows pierced so I said, why not?

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A History of My Hair

When I was little, I sported short hair, kind of like an apple cut. Because I was a chubby kid, having short hair accentuated my already poofy cheeks. My usual hairstyle, like all little girls, had been pigtails, and most people found me cute. In grade school, my average hair length was more or less shoulder length, but I often had it in a ponytail because the trend back then was those big bow clips and I had three of them: red, blue and mocha (I know, I’m cringing at the thought).

Upon entering high school, I made friends with one of our neighbors who was this tall, dark beautiful girl. She was only a year older than me and went to a different school, and obviously she was a heartthrob. She also had shoulder-length hair. Without warning, she had her hair cut - from shoulder-length to a boy cut. It was very, very drastic but it still suited her because she was a beautiful girl. I think she’d still be beautiful even if she were bald. When we go out, she would put some gel on and style her hair with her hands so that they spiked out in different directions, which I thought was really, really cool. For me, she turned from a girl-next-door type to a gorgeously fierce woman.

Inspired by her transformation, I contemplated on dramatically having my hair cut also. But since I had big cheeks, a boy cut would not be feasible at all for me. I’d probably look like a guy. So I decided to have a chin length bob cut - short at the back and longer at the sides. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me too. I looked fat. So I let my hair grow back again. By the time I graduated from high school, my hair was back to the usual shoulder length. I went to college with that hair length, but I still had my hair trimmed several times a year. One time I even had it as short as chin-length again when I had some impulse visit to the hairdresser.

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Rediscovery of a Lost Love

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. -Japanese proverb

I used to love dancing. No one ever told me I had two left feet, and I knew I was good at it from a young age. I remember, when I was in grade school, I was usually the one assigned to lead my classmates in creating a dance number for our Christmas partly or for a school program. We would dance to the latest tunes, and whoever’s cassette tape we were using was sure worn out because we would practice almost every day after class.

During my first year in high school, I joined the school’s dance troupe. I passed the audition with flying colors. We would dance at school programs like when I was in grade school. The club not only concentrated in modern dance, but in other genres as well like ballroom dancing. When senior year came, a folk dance concert was planned to be staged toward the end of the school year. It would be a comprehensive repertoire of Philippine folk dance; from the Igorots’ salip to Mindanao’s singkil, the concert was a two-hour exhibition of talent and culture. Our choreographer then was Ms. Naomi Enriquez, a renowned dance and aerobics instructor and P.E. teacher in Los Baños. She was very, very strict during practice, but all our hard work in perfecting each dance paid off. The concert was a success and got only positive reactions from the audience. Her strictness also taught us patience and most importantly, discipline, not only in dancing, but also in life.

When I entered the doors to the university, I pursued a different passion: playing the drums. Dancing got pushed to the background. The last time I really danced was in my second year. I had to because I took ballroom dancing and street jazz as my P.E. electives. After that, my dancing talent went into deep hibernation. I became part of a band, which eventually changed my attitude toward dancing. I found it to be corny because I became all I’m-too-metal-to-dance-and-wouldn’t-be-caught-alive-dancing that time. I started listening to heavier stuff and almost forgot that I knew how to dance.

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