Empires, Voices and Naruto

My eyes are already aching. I spent the whole afternoon in front of the computer trying to finish my project, I mean our class project. For some reason the task of making the class project for my history class fell on my lap and. I finally gave up after realizing that I have been looking into a computer monitor for more than 5 hours already. I will just have to finish doing the project tomorrow when both my eyes and mind has rested, I just hope that I can still catch up and pass the project on time.

The service at the church today was something that I particularly like. I do not know why but there was just something with the service today that got me. I remember how observant the guest pastor was even concluding that our church is an exciting one and I think I agree to what he said. But let me blow your bubble, I am not to write somethign abhout how spiritual it was because the thing that struck me the most in that service was the duet done by our Chaplain and his wife. I do not know, I just can not help it but think so much about romance, one good Christian even said that maybe I am not actually in love with another person but I am in love with falling in love. I began a serious thought on that remark earlier and somehow I think that it could be correct. But I am not saying that it is correct. As far as I am concerned I am really just going along with what I am feeling and hoping very hard that in time I will know exactly what to do. I am not forcing anything I am just enjoying whatever it is that I am feeling right now, if at some point I will understand what it is really that I am going through (maybe realize that I am just really being crazy and not in love) at least I am sure that I did not do things my way and just allowed things to happen as it should. Anyway I am not to talk about that, I am to talk about the duet of Chaps with his lovely wife.

I once said to another friend that if ever I get married, she would have to be someone who can sing. Not that I would want to marry someone who can belch like Regine Velasquez but I just love singing and I hate it when people are out of tune even if it is none of my business. I just thought that if I get stuck with someone who sounds very bad, I might commit suicide. That is why Chaplain and Tita Zeny (thats the name of his wife) singing a duet in church was something that I really loved. It wasn' t that I was daydreaming again, I just was mesmerized with how their voices blended together superbly as if it was some divine melody. I could sense just by listening to their voices that they really are a loving couple and it is not always that we get that feeling. It was as if their voice were pieces of a puzzle that just fit perfectly.

I have no more idea what to write, I guess my mind has drained after thinking of Industrialism in Asia for the whole afternoon and trying to ask myself why the Muslim Empires were defeated. I will rest my mind now, I will not think of Empires, maybe I will just watch my room mates current addiction... Naruto.... hehehe have a good day people....

Imaginations

Pwede bang hini ko muna itutuloy yung series ko?

Reply: Pwede, by the looks lang sa'yo kaya yung blog

Thank you...

I was not able to sleep well yesterday afternoon. While my room mates were snoring away the afternoon, I was tossing and turning in my bunks (that's bed for you) trying to discard that thought that has constantly bothered me. Oh, bother is not exactly the word, it is just something that I can not get my mind off, it was fun but I just can not sleep because of it. Even as I was wrting the entry before this, my mind was wandering, I just have to force myself to squeeze out the remaining sense of me regarding that topic. This morning as I open my friendster account, I couldn't take it anymore, so I am writing it here, and perhaps just maybe something good will come out.

It is not easy being me. I mean with the finals fast approaching, everybody talking about what to do on break, the closer it gets, the weirder I feel. Its not that I feel so bad at not going on break, its just that the things that I will be missing is beginning to get a hold of me. Yesterday afternoon, I was imagining a dozen white roses early in the morning, with poetry attached. The words of that poem is somethign that I have not written but has constantly plagued my mind for say the past couple of months. I was thinking of beautiful hands against mine putting it above my heart as it beats nervously, not because I was afraid but because it can not take the happiness that it is experiencing. I was thinking of a beautiful romantic movie where the two people who watched it together are not talking. They are so focused on the movie being shown and it seems that they do not know each other. But inside that is not the case. Both of them are inside the movie, they are the main characters, when the two love birds in the movie kiss, both of them also wants to kiss each other. And yet they remain silent and it all seems that they are very much concentrated on the movie. When they finally go out, they proceed to the nearest restaurant where instead of ordering, they look into each others eyes as the waiter on their side impatiently waits for each of them to say a word. But they do not, little by little their hands are moving towards each other until finally they touch. Each hand is secured firmly to the other. They finally look at the waiter and in unison say, "Ice tea na lang." They pretend that they are not holding each other's hands so they talk. They started talking about the movie. Each of them are trying remember the details of the movie, analyze it and look intelligent for the other. The truth though is that both of them have not really "watched" the movie they just made it an excuse for them to be together. The whole time they were simply wishing that it will never end. Then the ice tea arrives. The waiter now is a lady who is clearly disturbed. She is disturbed because the two people that ordered the iced tea look so weird yet beautiful together. Thirty minutes after they were sitting, reality finally sank and they felt the hunger. They ordered their meals, ate it, paid for it and they were off. The light suddenly goes back and I realized that I had used up the whole afternoon just imagining. A little while, my snoring room mates started to wake up. I went to the sink (that's the bathroom) and I am back to reality. I am back inside the tiled barracks and will not be able to see freedom again in the next two months or so.

I am weird. My imaginations are weird but these are born of longings that only I could understand. Yesterday wasn't a blast but in my heart I knew what I was looking for. Thanks God.

Continued...

I ran out of time last night so I am continuing the thought of what I wrote about.

I was talking about the incident that happened when I lashed out on my underclass. That wasn't really the whole point but my realization was brought about by that incident. I realized that unknowingly we have forgotten some important things that we learned. Here in PMA it is easy to think about persistence, perseverance and patience and dwell on this traits when we are plebes. We try our best to persevere at everything, put patience into what we do. I think everyone who had been to plebehood will agree with me that it is the abundance of this things that has enabled each of us to overcome the challenges of being the lowest mammal in the Academy. But then as we move up in rank, we mature to bigger responsibilities, we seem to forget the value of the very foundations of being victorious over plebehood. In doing our jobs, I think this also applies to officers or even those who are not cadets, we have forgotten to live by these things just because we had the luxury of another option. Let me illustrate this point. As plebes we are told that our job is to follow orders. We do this even if sometimes it takes a lot to follow these orders. We endure the endless exercises, ignore the mental fatigue and go on regardless of what we feel, whether good or bad. Later on, as upperclassmen, we are told that one of our responsibilities is to train our underclassmen, especially the plebes. As plebes, when it seems that the situation is hopeless, we try again, and again and again. We never cease to try because we know that we do not have the choice. As upperclassmen, the scenario becomes different. When the situation seems hopeless (just like the one with my plebe), we try again, again and again and then we give up. We accept that the plebe can not be taught. That acceptance is despite of the knowledge that the plebe we are referring to passed a battery of exams that not many can hurdle before he arrived at PMA. The thing with this second scenario we do have a choice. A plebe who can not do what is required of him will try harder because he knows that he will get punished. On the other hand, an upperclass cadet can just quit because he will never be punished (maybe to a certain extent but not something that will really force him to try harder). This is also true even to non cadets. When we first apply for jobs that we like, we will do whatever it takes. But later on when we have moved up we accept that some things can not be done. I am not saying though that everything can be done, what I am saying is we tend to easily give up when we have the luxury of choice.

My point is, it is a disgusting reality. In a world where there are so many choices people would rather quit that persevere. They would rather accept defeat than try some more. The irony of it all is that it all happens when we have choices. When we have the luxury of choice we forget the virtues of perseverance and patience. This is disgusting because we only practice these virtues when we do not have the choice. I would like to believe that this is precisely the reason why the world is just so corrupt. The world has instead made all the options to everyone, gave access to all this things eventually causing the decline of peoples appreciation to important virtues that all of us should live by.....

I'm running out of time again... to be continued...

Not quitting...

I originally wanted to write about the unfortunate event that happened this afternoon during drill. I lashed out in anger to an underclass when I suddenly lost my temper over my plebes inability to perform a simple rifle drill. In a previous entry, I wrote about my plebe's problem of not being able to cope up with the standards set for him. With the dismounted drill this afternoon, I further discovered other things that he is unable to do which are basic to every cadet. I realized that he is not able to perform the manual of arms the way it should be performed. His whole body moves when he raised his rifle, he can not put a snap in each movement and it just seems that it's not a cadet performing the drill when he does it. Other cadets were already gathering around him as they laugh at his inability. For my part, I went to him and decided to personally supervise him. I performed the drills in front of him to become the example. The other cadets, I mean one cadet (a yearling at that, my underclass), just did not think that I was serious at teaching him. He kept on bugging the plebe, teasing him and stopping him from teaching the plebe. Already impatient because of the plebe's performance, I lost my temper and lashed out at the yearling. In my loud voice I reiterated that I just can not give up teaching this plebe because he is my responsibility. Realizing that the others were already looking at me, my classmates went to me and grabbed me for me to regain my composure. I guess I got the message across and I made certain realizations on my own. Somehow with my lashing out, I made the point that we just can not give up in doing our job even if it is to someone who seems not to learn the things we are trying to teach.

When we are a plebe, it is easy to raise up our spirits because we need to survive. I remember how I try to improve my morale then by just looking at the PMA seal to remind myself that no matter how hard everything is at least I am in PMA. Words of Don't Quit is just so alive as we try to wrestle with the daily pressures or the seemingly insurmountable compliances. It is easy really because we do not have a choice. As plebes, we just need to survive. But then as we go higher in rank and be given different responsibilities, doing our job is something of a choice, giving up becomes an option. To illustrate this, I will go back to my plebe. As I said he can not do anything the way I expect him to do it. For most of the other cadets, including the yearling I got mad at, he was hopeless and he'd rather laugh at his deficieancy. He had a choice at doing his job, that is to teach him or just laugh at the plebe. Either way, he goes on with his life and maybe graduate in three years time. But I realized that the same attitude we show towards training when we were plebes should also apply even if we are no longer plebes. I mean, the CAN DO attitude, if I may call it, is more important to the upperclass because by this time he already has a choice. I realized that in situations where the plebe is hopeless that I must not quit at teaching him. Somehow, I felt that I should espouse that attitude more now that I am an upperclass, a squad leader at that because now other people's lives are already at stake. Doing ones job as a plebe makes us continue and become upperclassmen but doing ones job as a squad leader affects the life of people, underclass cadets.

I am running out of time I will continue writing about this topic tomorrow....

Don't worry, be happy

When I sat in front of the computer, I was not in the mood to write anything. I was just passing time jumping from one website to another, browsing through friendster accounts, reading blogs and just doing what I felt was doing. I wanted to put myself in some zone for me to be able to write something really serious as I promised in my last post. I did discovered some things but was not able to go to that serious zone I was intending to be in, instead I find myself happy and so I decided to just write the reasons why I became happy all of a sudden.

My first stop was the rankings of Pinoytopblogs where I was monitoring my ranking. By some twist of fate I moved 20 ranks up. When I later checked traffic in Sitemeter I was surprised by the numbers of visitors I had in the last 24 hours from all over. Although some were random visitiors who found my blog by searching Diether Ocampo in Blogger (it's weird I know) most of them took time to really read through my entries. Some even came back several hours after which I could only assume is a good thing. Its really just too bad that my shout box is no longer in operation I would certainly want to know what these visitors thought about. I guess that started to make me smile.

My next stop were the friendster accounts of people I miss. I went to my friends list and just randomly clicked at the pictures of people. I read testimonial and viewed pictures. One testimonial caught my attention. It was Visayan and it was something about being "hubog" it was so funny that I ended up missing my dear cousin and tagay-mate Mai-mai. Personally, she is just one of the few reasons why I feel bad at not going on break when this semester ends in two weeks. I loved the picture of Nani jumping to the air in her jolly state with all smiles, I couldn't help but miss her bitchy remarks. Then there is Darius who posted wedding pictures, I thought all the while that he was the one being married. The thing with him is that his girlfriend was incidentally a classmate in my speech class back when I was still enrolled at Silliman. There is even the possibility that I met her first before Darius knew who she was. I could just remember our radio play about little red riding hood (that was fun). I am really hoping that you'll get to understand what I am talking about so I am trying my best to post the links to their friendster accounts. I know that the reason I consider all of what I am saying as fun is because I know this people personally and had lots of personal experience with them, but I really hope you'll understand what I am saying.

The one that really hyped up my happy meter are the new pictures posted by my crush (haha hindi ko na ipopost ang link ng friendster account nya). It just seems that she is so happy with her life now compared to the previous months where she was always lonely and sad to say bitter. I mailed her a letter yesterday and I am hoping she'll reply to me finally. I do not know although there are really times that I find myself funny writing her every week despite of her non reply but I still enjoy it. I maybe weird but at least I am enjoying my weirdness. I do not know what will happen in the end, I guess it will boil down to what God has in store for me.

So I'm still smiling. I'm smiling because of the realization that there are so many things to smile about, despite of me not going on break, despite of being huddled up in this sort of prison. The thing is happiness is everywhere, it comes from the appreciation of the blessings around us and the gratefulness of everything that God has given. We may not have the best of circumstances yet there is plenty of reasons to smile about. The incident this morning at the mess hall draws out this point. The Cadet First Captain was to command Batallions Rise (this is the command to mean that our meals are over and that its time to leave the mess hall). The music being played was not yet paused when he made this command. As he started his command, everyone sat in attention and the whole mess hall was quiet. Then the song erupted.... "Don't worry, be happy" There were giggles from all of us. I can not help it but relate it to my situation. Well you do the connection the thing is smile people... Don't worry.... BE HAPPY!!!