Some last words and life updates: moving on to a new blog.

1. Thanks to those who have interacted with this blog since 2010! Soon, I will be starting a new blog in a different address for a fresh start. I hope to make it more formal and active. It will have a definite subject now: Librarianship and LIS studies. I also hope to post in a more regular manner and encourage myself to read and write more by making book reviews. This blog has been through many changes in my life too, so I will just leave it here and I won't delete it. Anyway, here's the link:

Library Log: books, libraries, magic.

2. Congratulations to our friend and classmate Ms. Mary Grace Oliveros for being top 3 in the Librarian's Licensure Exam last April. She's the highest ranker in the history of LIS in CPU! That puts pressure on us, the next batch (there's still no schedule from the PRC for the 2015 exams but we're preparing)

3. Congratulations also to our teacher Mr. Stephen Alayon for bagging the Asian Librarian Award for the Special Libraries Association! Our teacher has also been featured with his life story in the Panay News: The boy who never stopped believing.

4, Life has been hectic after graduation! Now I am working and volunteering in libraries. I am also preparing for a board exam and there's been pressure to do well and I want to do my best in studying for it to pass with flying colors.

5. This is my last post here! It's been nice... even if I haven't updated in forever. See you in the new blog!

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Maybe I should stop this blog I cringe at everything I've written since 2009 so if I continue I will just write about libraries or book reviews... it's like I don't know what is this anymore it's not representing me now.

Thoughts on Graduation

[Most of this post was deleted because it sounded like a whole, awful humblebrag]

“No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.” -Philippians 3:13-14

I always thought I’d never get so sentimental for college graduation. In previous graduations, while everyone was crying with goodbyes, I was the one who wanted to get out of the place fast. In university, I always thought that I was not really in school, only staying in the library, the classrooms, and the dining hall where I usually eat lunch. Before, I thought that it is just like any other day, an expected culmination and just another ceremony... until the day itself. It was a day marking the end of almost 18 years of life in school. Graduation was last Sunday, April 13, 2014. Even if it took long, I listened to every speech and tried to clap for all the graduating classes and I felt happy for everyone.

Things that I do daily, the mundane and the boring, I remember in luminous detail. In school, everyday seems to be the same: studying for quizzes and exams, preparing for reports, typing requirements, eating and talking with friends, organizing activities. But those are the little things I’ll miss... Things like: Looking for empty, quiet classrooms to study in. Funny moments in working in the library. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.”

Of course, right now I feel indebted to my family who puts up with my bad attitude sometimes, all the teachers in all the schools I’ve ever been (I learned something from every teacher who taught me, even in classes I’ve failed, since kindergarten). I also would not get this if not for the supportive teachers and librarians of the university, and my friends... I found the best friends I’ve ever had in the CPU Library.

Also, I have to mention that I’m impressed with the yearbook team. Their distribution was organized and Centralite 2014 is great! It is a heavy book, considering that there are more than a thousand graduates. It comes with a blue box and a Centralite magazine with the highlights of the school year. Insigne is Latin for 'medallion', and the each cover has an embedded medal. As the preface of the yearbook says, "Graduation is not just a tribute to those who are graduating with flying colors. This should have an essence of giving tribute to everyone, who despite hardships, was able to be graduate."

My only complaint is my badly-edited yearbook entry. I hope it doesn't sound bad. 

Okay, but what after? There's still a librarian's board exam to prepare for in 2015. I plan to still be in school for further studies. I hope to work in a great library. I'm even thinking that I want to be an LIS teacher. I still want to write.

"Ang pikon talo."

I have a proposed invention, specifically for those people who annoy others on purpose and when people get angry, they only get satisfied because "Ang pikon talo" (The short-tempered always loses). Instead of stopping their annoying tactics, it is still your fault for being angry. There's no way around them, because they will always think they are right and will ridicule and laugh at you more for being pikon. I like anger. Anger is a valid emotion. Anger is a fuel.

Here is my proposal: the next time someone laughs at me and tells me "Ang pikon talo," I will draw out a freaking GUN. And while they're panicking that they made a mistake they actually toyed with an insane killer, I will gloat at the look of surprise in their faces and shoot them in the face. But what will go out of the gun is not a rain of bullets but a red, hard boxing glove that will knock them out like a KO Pacquiao punch. When they wake up with a broken nose they'll think twice about being gadflies. I swear these kind of people probably get aroused from making other people angry.

Also: the only person who can use the Socratic irony in arguments is freaking Socrates, okay? I know he used to question people until they are finally admitting that they don't know anything. But I have a feeling that some that tried to act all Socrates on me didn't do it out of reason or some intellectual motive but for their own motives of shaming people and making them look dumb.

The problem with them questioning people is that they think of themselves as the beacons of reason, questioning others but not themselves.

yeah right today I was angry over something. that means I'm a loser.

But... seriously. Stop this. I just want sincerity here. I advice the people who do this to take your head out of your asshole. Now let me think of how to invent that punch-glove gun.

Here's a post with pictures of cute fish from SEAFDEC Fishworld.

Our practicum in SEAFDEC ended last month. For our last day, we had a chance to tour around...

Before the fish... here's the sunrise that greets me every morning while waiting for the bus every 6:30 near SM City.

A large turtle named Paula.

Another turtle of different species named Tina.

A boxfish asking for a kiss.

More boxfish! The tiny ones look like dice!

A lionfish showing off its wings.

It's a shrimp giving a massage to a baby sea cucumber.

Tiny octupus with glowing tentacles!

Talking to an empty can

Two more final exams then I'll be out of school. I'll graduate on April, with honors (I'll only post my photoshopped grad pic then). Hello empty blog, after some years here I feel like I have nothing more to say. Anyway, here are: me, my fellow graduating classmates, librarians, and an inflated Uncle Sam in HLL.

I don't wanna hear the phrase 'social media' again

I have like/hate feelings with social media. That phrase has been repeated too many times.

My dislike probably stems from my own embarrassing experiences in social media. I know that once, I tried to show off and tried to portray a cooler version of myself, and when I recall that I cringe. All the shitty things I posted and all the crappy comments and messages I've sent sometimes makes me wish there was a switch to make me forget those things. Also, I don't trust relationships that begin in social media (which almost always also end in social media)... Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone, but in my own experience all the likes, chats, and comments don't compare to knowing someone in real life. In Facebook I sometimes feel that someone is only showing off, and when I'm also showing off then we end up presenting our fake selves to each other. Then when we meet in real life again and I find that I resent them, that he or she doesn't actually know me (or do I know them) with any factual basis because of the castle of lies and assumptions from their impressions of me in social media.

Also, I've noticed that Facebook (or the website of your choice) and mocking people on Facebook has become a past time. It seems that Facebook has dominated our everyday life, our relationships, present and inevitable as the air you're breathing. Is it just me, or do people try to make their lives seem so enviable? (Or maybe I am merely jealous because no one likes my posts). I scroll past Facebook and I admit I sometimes get envious. Other people... prettier, hotter, thinner, more lovable, get more likes, have more exciting lives, take better pictures, in some fabulous vacation abroad, in a relationship or whatever. What gets me is food porn, when they post luscious pictures of what they're eating and it just makes me so jealous... and hungry for cakes and drinks I can't afford.

Then I realize getting jealous is also me being self-centered. Me, me, me, comparing myself to them and what I lack. So I deactivate, get away from it for a while. And I use anonymous websites and fake names in accounts with none of the people I know in real life. I find them much more comfortable than people I know the actual names and faces of.

If not for Facebook, I wouldn't know or even remember barely half of my acquaintances or former friends that are no longer friends. And sometimes we're all not part of each other's lives anymore, that I prefer just forgetting about them save for a few.