The freshman politicians of Service Through Appropriate Governance (STAG) Party, one of the two major political parties in Agusan National High School (and the one to which I belong), once again won the recently-held First Year elections by a landslide, with all six of the party’s candidates grabbing the First Year Supreme Student Government seats. You go, guys. Remember, though, that you are now Supreme Student Government officers, and that means you’ve got a job to do. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you.

In other news, you may now call me editor-in-chief Dean. LOL. Not that I mean to brag, but Mrs. Villamor has just appointed me to the position of Editor-in-Chief of our school’s official English publication, The Narra. It’s no easy office to hold, that’s for sure. However, I understand the importance of the post, and will do my best to not screw things up for our dear school publication.

I don’t usually post on weekends (Friday thru Sunday), because no one reads blogs on weekends. I guess I’ll just be writing these kinds of posts (you know, posts no-one will ever care about) on Saturdays so as not to disturb you and your alone time. Kthxbai.

Hi, all. Let me bitch for a while about how freaking crazy school has been.

So, today’s the 30^th of June. It’s only been a month since Junior year started, yet we’re already swamped with incomprehensible equations and ridiculous scientific terms. Like, WTF’s sin and cos and tan and tan^-1? My calculator is increasingly becoming my best friend, and to keep myself within the realm of sanity I need my iPod everyday.

Physics, though, has been the most stressing subject I have ever encountered. EVAR!!111!!. Not that our teacher’s bad or anything. Physics isn’t like the rest of the subjects in school, where lessons progress throughout year levels. They just slap Physics in your face—whapak!—and leave you to deal with it. Alone. Then they give you all these symbols like ? and ?, along with numbers and brackets and curly brackets and parentheses, and then tell you to figure it out. They don’t slowly feed you Physics. They cram it all down your throat and out the other end before you can say “vector displacement”.

Statistics, on the other hand, wasn’t as brain-damaging as I’d originally thought. It’s actually pretty easy—well, so far, at least. Sure, there have been some activities that have irked us, like recently when we collected some school organization participation statistics from Senior students. The questionnaires were returned a tad bit late, and processing the data is a pain in the rear given all the other activities we have to attend to. Like that Physics activity I never got around to finishing.

Another thing that’s been bugging me lately is the thought of which college I’m going to. My friends will by now have known that my target school is the prestigious University of the Philippines Diliman Campus, home to the infamous Oblation and learning place for the country’s future greats. Thing is, to be able to study within the hallowed halls of UPD, one must first pass the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT), which is by no means an easy task. Says the UP website,

The UPCAT is a five-hour examination consisting of subtests on language proficiency, reading comprehension, mathematics and science. The languages used in the UPCAT are English and Filipino.

Now, all bragging aside, language proficiency and reading comprehension will probably be the easier parts of the test. However, my knees start shaking whenever I hear about the allegedly über-difficult mathematics and science parts of the test, and if you know UP, they want something more from you than English-speaking douchebaggery before they can admit you to the institution. (“Admit you to the institution?” Did I just make UP sound like a mental hospital there?)

The thing is, there are a ton of other good schools to go to besides UP (albeit UP is the fo-shizzle-wizzle, and pwns all other schools in the country hands-down). Ateneo. Siliman. University of Santo Tomas. However, being an Iglesia ni Cristo, I’m not allowed to enter sectarian colleges, which pretty much narrows it down to UP and New Era University, which is owned by the INC. (On a side note, NEU is a non-sectarian institution,  contrary to what some might conclude from the fact that the Church owns it.)

I’ve been stressing lately. From Physics. From the whole where-will-I-go-to-college conundrum. And to think that a mere 20 months ago, I began my high school odyssey as a carefree creature. Back then, when people would ask me where I’d go to college, I usually quipped, “bahala na, kung asa makapasa (Wherever I pass the admission test),” and then I laughed. But recently, the whole idea of college has taken on a whole new meaning for me. It’s not merely that place where independence reigns, where people never run out of places to go. It’s the last stop before the rest of my life, and I better come into—and out of—it prepared for whatever’s hurled at me.

But right now, I’ve got something more immediate to stress about. Physics. Goddamned Physics. ‘Til next time.

[I was afraid to post this, since I think it'd be too personal for you to give a f*ck about. The mere fact that you made it this far into the article is stellar. Please allow me some space to vent every once in a while. I promise I'll warn you that it's a venting/bitching post, with the [VENTING/BITCHING] tag right beside the post title, like what you see in this post. Thanks.]

I don’t know if you guys have heard of IndieBloggers. It’s a blog run by Anastacia Campbell (who also has a photoblog) where creative writers can submit their works—fictional or otherwise—and get them published, offering free visibility for you and your blog (if you have one).

I first sent a submission to IB in the last week of March 2008, and my work, “The Novelist Path“, was published on March 31. I think I received a little traffic from that, and it was thrilling to have my post read by many, many people. It was a great way to receive visibility for both me and my blog.

I’ve submitted two or three more works to IB, and Stacy has decided to publish one of my submissions, “Vanity Fair“. It’s gone live on the IB site, and that fact makes my eyes water with joy.

In any case, please visit the IndieBloggers blog. Here’s my post’s permalink. Oh, and the original post! I’m also encouraging you to submit your work to IndieBloggers.

More power to Stacy Campbell, and I’m loving her IndieBloggers blog.

When America elects its next president come November, it will have to decide between two starkly different candidates—the seasoned John McCain, who believes in spending billions of dollars on the war in Iraq, but thinks twice about spending millions of dollars in education, or Barack Obama, who, in his charismatic speeches promises of a new direction for his country, for change we can believe in, but who many people believe does not have enough expertise to deliver his promises.

That is, in my opinion, perhaps the biggest dilemma voters face. Should they entrust the future of the world’s single largest superpower to a man who knows how to manage a country but in a wrong way, or to a young chap who promises radical change despite his short curriculum vitae?

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Pardon the lolspeak reference. Let’s cut to the chase: the Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition I requested from the Ubuntu web site about a month ago arrived in the mail today, earlier than I expected. The package included one live CD in a hip-looking paper jacket-ish thing, as well as some stickers which said “Ubuntu: Linux for human beings”. Pictures after the jump.

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