Rough Draft

So that was Manic Monday.

At 8:30 in the morning, I was at the UP Oblation grounds to attend the mysterious Manic Monday activity. Dr. Blanca said the activities vary every Monday and for this day it was something physical. I was in the yellow team.

I didn't expect that we'd be running all over UP to look for clues but then reaching a station is really fun and the task are challenging. My groupmates were great. We just had a problem with one clue so we didn't win the race. How would I know that "Savage garden hanging japanese bonsai salad" actually points to the sunken garden. I just can't see the connection there even if I bang my head several times. It's a little hard to accept. But the whole activity was fun even if my legs started to get shaky at the end of the race.

When I came back to the dormitory, the unexpected message from Ms. Cathy came. Finally, I can pick up the cheque. I really need the money for the car's down payment. After encashing the cheque, I was quite afraid when I went out of the bank. Last week, I had an alarming experience. My precious leather bag was slash by some filthy thief. Too bad for him, he didn't get anything. My bag has three divisions and thank God all of my precious things were on the compartment which wasn't slashed. I was really shocked when I saw the two slashes on the side of the bag. I was like, "O my God!". I quickly ran my hand inside all the pockets to check my wallet, my phone, my cards. It was a warning for me. I need to be more careful next time. I used to think that such a thing can never happen to me and it just did.

So I got the money from the bank but I couldn't deposit it anymore because of the closing time. I was really holding my bag firmly and I was practically hugging it. I was praying for my safety. Just then I realize that I had been very blessed because the first attempt of a madman to take things away from me was a failure. I was saved and I'm grateful.

Something wonderful just happened. In the past weeks I have been struggling on how I could fulfill my promises to God. I knew I wasn't doing well and I was bothered and ashamed because I made these promises which I thought would be so easy to do. And then I notice that I was forgetting them and life was just difficult.

I wanted to do good but wanting is entirely different from really doing. I was so worried in everything especially about the things that I couldn't do on my own. I thought about how my life has been and how blessed I was and yet here I am acting like a kid who wants control things and cries when she doesn't get her candy.

I knew I have to snap out of all my troubles and this could happen if I'd just let it all out so I prayed. I prayed like I never prayed before. And then everything started falling to the right places. Everything was suddenly smooth-sailing and all the things that I worried about just passed by quickly without ruffles.

This has always been true: When I tried to rely on what I could do, everything was difficult but when I cast away my worries and just believe that He wouldn't let things go wrong, everything was just perfect and I couldn't ask for anything more. He has always given me more than I deserved that's why I should do everthing in my power to fulfill my promises.

Now I'll write the things that I should remember the next time I take exams. Might come in handy next time.

1. Review backwards. Start studying the last topic discussed and make sure you understand it. We usually do the other way around. It seems to be the normal way of doing it because we think that we have forgotten the earlier lessons. However, when we do this, we unconsciously trust that we remember the most recent lesson which is sometimes not the case.

The last topic discussed in my quantum mechanics class was about ladder operators. I can explain how they work and I know the basic equations. I felt I knew. I felt that if there's a problem that requires the use of ladder operators, I can rely on memory. I was wrong.

I reviewed the older topics with the fear that I might have forgotten them. I solved the exercises and problems in the book. I tried to understand the examples. Really, I tried.

[I'm not sure if I did my best but surprisingly, I feeel different. If this has happened in the past, I would have been disturbed and I would have sulked for days. But it seems different now. Somehow, I'm not shaken by the incident. At the back of my mind, I'm still looking forward to good things that would happen.]

2. Do not think that the exam is of average difficulty. It's not. It does not have any level. The level of difficulty depends on you, depends on what you have stuffed in that brain of yours. I feel like I know this fact. It's funny that sometimes I forget it.

3. Study your teacher and try to see things in her view. This is a little detective work. What kind of teacher do you have? Probably you can try to predict what information she's interested in. this might be a key on what items she would include in the exam.

4. Do better next time. If you reviewed for three days for the previous exam, probably that wasn't enough. Extend the time and give it a hundered percent attention. If the trick fails, you'll still be happy. Trust me. I know.

5. Believe that there are greater things. If the people you love wish you only the best, how much more with God. He'd help you, so better be worthy of the help.

Whew!

I told my brother how my exam turned out and you know, it made me realize that even if we fight sometimes, he's a person who really understands me. He's someone that I could talk to without reservations.

I had two exams and I don't know the results yet. Things have changed when I started with the graduate program and I think it's safe to say that at first I didn't understand the gravity of being a graduate student.

Yet, I love looking at the good side. There are two people in my life who usually make me feel better whenever I feel school pressures, my mom and my brother. Before, it was just my mom but now, my brother has really been helping to lift my spirit. I usually don't tell my father about school problems. I only tell him about my accomplishments and the new things that I learned which could really be very helpful for future academic projects. But I remember that there was a time when I cried in front of both my parents because of school pressure.

School pressure on an individual is a problem that isn't understood by everyone. I knew this from experience. There was a time when I tried to confide to friends how bad I'm feeling about my performance or the outcome of something related to school. (I used to be like that.) But then I got responses like, "That's not bad at all. If that's what you call bad, then mine is worse." Obviously, they didn't share my feelings. If you look at the other way around though, it was me who didn't understand. It was me who unintentionally made them feel that they too weren't doing good. I was so insensitive. Since then I started to clam up. I stopped telling anyone because they think a school problem is a minor thing. I couldn't make them understand that it is a major headache for me. And the funny thing is, it seems that most, if not all, of the problems that I encounter belong to this type.

There is this popular saying, "People change." No one can prove otherwise. It's easy to see changes happening to the people around you. My classmates in college for example, they seem to have grown up a lot in just one year. I think it must have been because of work. How ironic it is that it's quite difficult to see changes in ourselves. They take place without us noticing them. I'm not sure if I grew up. Physically, I didn't gain inches but that doesn't count. I'm more interested in what I've been thinking. I want to catch myself. How am I thinking these days compared to the way I do two or three years ago? I see this as a database that's secured with a password that only the person typing this knows. 

It must be weird that I am interested about this. Somehow, I think its a key. Somehow, I feel that I need to be always aware of how it has been and how it is right now.

I hope I don't appear pedantic here. If you study hard in Math, you become better in Math and all activities related to Math will make sense to you. How do you do this? You can read, solve problems, study examples, reflect on the mistakes that you have made in your computations. Understand the data from the past. I think it must be the same with life. Study your life and you could become better in it. Understand the data from the past. When it comes to this, my brother thinks that I'm just making my life more complicated. But this is the way I think. It's the way my system works.

I've been through some of the crests and troughs of life. There'll be more bumps ahead. But I guess "thinking" plays the most part on how we take things.

The new year will be a lot better.

There are really many things that we could only learn by living our own lives. What I mean is, we don't learn everything from our parents or from our immediate family. Besides, if we look at the scene closely, our parents are in the same school as ours, just years ahead of us.

The day we were born, we were enrolled in the School of Life. Amazing, isn't it? This school is very, very BIG, and I think it tries its best to be fair to everyone. Everyone passes through the same levels. Experiences may vary but then we are all acquainted the general elements of living like happiness, sadness, pain, success, and the greatest of all, love.

Some people say that we have no choice in everything, that God was unfair, that we didn't have any say on how we will look like and who our family would be. Its a very tempting argument to ride with and at one point in our life, in our darkest moment, we could fall into asking things that we couldn't understand, things which just don't make any sense at all. And in the the end, aside from being unable to see clearly, we start to question our being, and if everything that we do is worth the struggle.

I feel that way sometimes and I guess, I need not be ashamed of how weak I am because even if the going gets tough, there's so much beauty in life, much greater than the ephemeral moments of tribulations. There is this great gift from God that we should choose to accept. The gift to love and be loved. Life could only be difficult if one chooses to be alone. I guess nobody really wants to be alone in the world. An eskimo in the North Pole, a mountain climber in Everest, the captain of a ship, an inmate in prison for years, the buko juice vendor that you see everyday, all of us - we don't want to be alone. The sad thing is, we may be enrolled in this same school of life and we understand each of us in one way or another, but we hardly bring comfort to each one. We started to live in a very individualistic way and this has led to a habit of focusing only on our personal needs. And then we say, "That's life!". This has become "our reality" because we made it that way.

Now, I'm talking about something big again and one may say, "this person is all words". Well, I don't care. That wouldn't stop me from saying what I want to say.

Life is short and I need not say it really because it's general knowledge. I think it's the ONE FACT OF LIFE THAT DOESN'T SINK IN. It's really funny.This precious life could end anytime! Is it worth to spend 24 hours in the workplace? Is it worth to study quantum particles? I think about these sometimes and then I end up with just one idea, that if I'd die tomorrow or graduate tomorrow in this school of life, I want to assure myself that I aimed for an A+ in being a daughter, a sister, an apo, and most of all as a child of the Father. For now, in my mind as a 21-year old, I know that's how I want things to be. People say we could see things differently from different levels and when I turn 30, I might be a woman of different views. But now, at this very moment, this is what I heard from my happy heart.     

The Secret of Castle Cant

Who said that children's literature is just for kids?

When I was in grade school, I really loved stories filled with faraway lands, castles, princes and princesses, knights, fairies, witches, monsters, dwarves and other fantastic creatures. As we grow up though, we realize that these stories are very unrealistic and we might even laugh when we see children being highly entertained.

But isn't it wonderful how children's literature succeed in teaching values to young people? These stories teach us to have a pure and loving heart. Come to think of it, much adult fiction focus on lies, deceit, regret, and other human emotions that lead to sadness and failure. It is true that everyday, adults face a great battle of morality, how one can keep being in the right path despite the fact that the world seems to push you to be astray. But if we just hold on to what we have known when we were young, what our parents thought us, what stories for kids have imparted to us, I think things would be different. Don't we know that Cinderella was rewarded because of her pure heart? The little princess Sarah of Frances Burnett never harbored anger in her heart despite all the seemingly unpardonable evil deeds of Miss Minchin. Isn't it funny that we were taught to be kind, honest, helpful, and diligent when we were young but when we grow old we seem to forget these things? Some people lie as if it's not wrong at all. They cheat their friends and they love money more than people. It could have been good if people have kept the innocence of their hearts.

Harry Potter has been very popular in the recent years until its final installment came out last July 2007. Nice story. Highlighted the importance of friendship, and the truimph of good over evil. But the thing is, it happened in a magical world which we may feel to be true while in the process of reading but after sometime, the magic dies away.

It's different in The Secret of Castle Cant by K. P. Bath. I've finished the sequel Escape from Castle Cant and I'll soon be reading the third.The best thing about this book is it is presented as a historical account. The format, including the footnotes, tells you that it came from reliable sources in the Barony of Cant. Also, the characters are lovable, and you would want to hug them. After reading the first book, I was laughing with teary eyes. I'm so happy for Lucy Wickwright for being able to stand up for what is right and for having a heart that's filled with love and not greed unlike Vlad Orloff. In the second book, you'd love Pauline von Cant because despite her noble upbringing, she was able to show that what matters to her is her relationship with the "sister of her heart". Great story! Action-packed! Fun-filled! You'll feel like you are with them in their journey. I can say that this series is a wonderful achievement by Bath. 

What are some ways you save money? 
Submitted by Pixiemom.  

You just reminded me that I need to save! When I was a little girl, I think I had a piggy bank. I always ask the adults to give me their coins and the technique never fails. So it turns out that all the money in my piggy bank is not just my personal savings but it actually belongs to everyone. When the piggy bank is filled with coins, we just buy some good food from it.

Now I don't save anymore. I think I should though. Maybe I'll start tommorow.

Timeline

This is what make's Crichton a very sensible SF writer. Most SF themes talk about the far future and the setting is some fantastic land with sophisticated machinery. Crichton writes in a way that what he's telling actually happens in some secret lab in the desert or an inhabited island. That's make his stories a tapestry of science, action and adventure, plus the strengths and weaknesses of the human race.

In Timeline, Crichton predicts one future outcome of quantum mechanics which is space travel (contrary to the popular time travel concept showed in many SF novels like H.G.Wells Time Machine).

Although the idea of the so-called multiverse is very debatable, the 14th Century action made the whole novel fantasterrific! I was laughing and hoping at the same time as I turn the pages. Well, I was one who thought the the middle ages was filled with barbaric wars. Crichton made the 14th Century alive in a different light. That could be the reason why Marek chode to stay.

In the last part however, I don't quite agree with the idea of sending Doniger back to the 14th century as payback. It was just too harsh. True, he was almost inhuman and very selfish, but I think there could be other ways to put an end to his arrogance.