Photo of irrelevance to this post, but cool nonetheless: classmates attempting an Abbey Road shot. That yellow bus is our white VW Beetle.

A piece of tremendous news to begin the New Year with: De La Salle University College Entrance Test (DLSUCET) results are out, and by God’s grace I passed! I qualified for my first choice, Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (AB-POM).

I’m still holding out for the results of the other entrance exams I took, though. Don’t get me wrong—DLSU is a great school, I’m sure. However, because it’s a sectarian uni and because tuition there is far from cheap, it isn’t exactly my first choice for college.

Still, thank God I passed the DLSUCET. Medyo lumuwag ang pakiramdam ko. Results of the other entrance tests are due in a few weeks—a month at most—so my fingers are kept crossed and my prayers fervent.

***

“To Kill A Mockingbird” was due today, but I renewed my lease on it until the end of the week. I’m in the home stretch now: page 212, just after Tom Robinson is handed the guilty verdict that reduces Jem to tears. It’s a highly captivating read, and as do many other classics it manages to give the reader a picture of the era in which it was written while remaining timeless. Its plot is as brilliant as its writing. Its characters are very well portrayed, from Atticus and his enviable calm to Jem, Scout and Dill and their childlike inquisitiveness. It’s not hard to see why this peek at a time bygone (and thankfully so) is among the most important works of American literature.

Today we held elections for freshman representatives at school. In intramural politics, there are six duly elected representatives for each year level as well as seven national-level officers. The sophomore, junior and senior representatives and the national officers were elected last February, towards the end of the previous school year. Being a COMELEC representative, I was in the heat of the action.

The COMELEC seized the recently constructed Supreme Student Government (SSG) office and converted it to Elections HQ.

COMELEC officials hard at verk. Or so we think…

Meanwhile, outside, the underlings make merry at the receiving table. The dude with the cap, in the right half of the picture, is in charge of accepting election returns and ballots from COMELEC representatives who in turn are entrusted with the task of conducting elections.

COMELEC members momentarily disregard their responsibilities to pose for a photo. To the left of the guy with the cap is our commissioner whom I will refer to as “F” from here on in.

Other COMELEC representatives crowding over whatever’s being displayed on that cellphone screen. Is it a racy photo of a schoolmate? A videotaped performance from a recent school singing contest? Text messages from an unknown person to Commissioner F?

Here’s a short walkthrough on the responsibilities of the COMELEC representative. After conducting elections in the section to which he is assigned, the COMELEC representative will take the ballots, ballot box and official election returns to Elections HQ. Seen above, a COMELEC member affixing her signature to an election return.

COMELEC officer Ms. A dutifully finishes filling out an election return.

The sample ballots (which are confiscated before ballots are handed out) like the ones pictured above, and unused ballots are removed from the ballot box, leaving only the used ballots inside.

Miss MJ, the big, formidable woman pictured above, then takes the ballot box and election returns…

…and gives them to the bigwigs waiting beyond this sign, who will add the results reflected in the election returns to the Grand Tally.

After conducting elections in a room of 60 students, a COMELEC representative is bound to want a bite to eat. And what better snack is there to enjoy than the chicken dog of unknown provenance! Its name makes it sound like something manufactured by a gray-haired wacko scientist in a top secret government facility than anything else, but no matter. Php5.00 for five pieces! They’re cheap, they’re delicious, buy them now!

Since we’ve finished conducting elections for the first half of the day and have nothing better to do, let’s take pictures! Seen here is Miss KZ, the COMELEC’s undisputed muse, striking a pose.

Commissioner F is threatened—err, tightly protected—by Ms KZ and MJ, our sergeants-at-arms.

Commissioner F and Miss K sneak up to Mr A, the Commission’s heartthrob, for a photo op. Mr A was feeling tired from conducting elections but genially acquiesced to his loyal fans’ request.

JCDM hasn’t enjoyed Mr. A’s amount of success with the ladies, but he has his share of admirers, too. Commissioner F and Miss K walk up to an already smiling JCDM to have their photo taken with him.

Meanwhile, I sit in the sidelines, content with the somewhat aromantic life I lead. Siyempre naman I don’t miss out on any photo ops, noh. When I’m not taking pictures, I’m posing for them. Shown above, me with Miss A and Miss K.

That afternoon, a disturbance of the peace! A big, shiny red tank enters the school premises.

One can safely infer from the siren, hose and black-and-neon jacket that this is one of the city’s fire trucks. We are instructed to imagine an earthquake when its sirens start blaring.

*weeeeeee wooooooo* Nakngtokwa, earthquake! COMELEC operations grind to a halt, pertinent papers are secured in HQ, and representatives duck for cover.

OK, the coast is clear. COMELEC officials move to safer ground, hands over their heads. The ground is never too wobbly for a photo op.

Students from adjacent buildings move to evacuation area. Someone—presumably a fanatic of Counter Strike or some other warfare computer game—screams “soldier down, soldier down!’

This looks more like a massive raid than an earthquake drill.

Eventually, the drill ended and students hurriedly retreated back to their classrooms. The official results of the elections were revealed shortly thereafter.

Sino kaya nanalo? Landslide na naman ba? and similar questions pervaded the otherwise unremarkable revealing of results.

Screw the results, let’s take more pictures! From left to right, Commissioner M, Miss A, Mr. N, Miss KZ, Mr. JC, Mr. L, Miss M and Miss K.

Mamaya na ang results, mamaya na yang recount, pikshur muna! Miss A, Miss K, Miss M, Miss KZ, and Mr. K.

***

The following are the Official Results of the Agusan National High School Freshman Elections for School Year 2009-2010. A three-vote gap between Binongo and Rosales forced a recount. Original numbers (before recount) are indicated in parantheses next to final numbers (after the recount). Names of winners are underlined. Political party is indicated in parentheses.

• Bernales, Kristine (LEAD) – 932
• Binongo, Glyssa (SURE) – 863 (846)
• Borres, Rodnie (LEAD) – 531
• Calo, Sebastian (SURE) – 950
• Diolata, Cheyenne (LEAD) – 618
• Dominguez, Judy Ann (SURE) – 1, 211
• España, Lino (LEAD) – 825
• Gamboa, Kim (LEAD) – 1,028
• Maban II, Jimmy (SURE) – 668
• Maglajos, Jorome (SURE) – 855
• Rosales, Jul (LEAD) – 840 (849)
• Zaballero, Rommelyn (SURE) – 721

***

For years now, SURE Party has been the dominant political party in the school. At one point, all but two positions in the SSG were occupied by SURE members.

The domination of SURE in fact began with my batch. When I and my former partymates ran under the banner of SURE (it was called STAG back then, actually) as freshmen, we were the minority, the underdogs. But when we surprised everyone with a landslide 7-0 victory over the ruling majority, we brought about the winds of change.

The most recent elections’ results may not be as lopsided as when I was a freshman, but they are just as telling. SURE’s preponderance may have been glorious, but it may also be short-lived. The party leaders need to prepare heavily for the February national elections if they want to keep their power (or at least some of it) so that they at least leave the school and the party intact.

Still, no matter how hard they try, the opposing party will still sooner or later rise back to the top and take their turn in the carousel of supremacy. SURE will become the minority and lead the majority; everything old will be new again. That’s just how politics works. How soon that will happen is uncertain, but if the freshman election results are any indication, we won’t have to wait much longer.

Hello, all. I’m back from an unwired week in Tandag, Surigao del Sur, where I participated in the Regional Schools Press Conference, the penultimate of the series of press conferences held by the DepED every year. Thankfully, during the said event I won first place for Feature Writing English Secondary, and I’m heading to the National level in Legaspi City come February.

Pictures, they say, are worth a thousand words, so I’ll let these JPEGs do the talking.

San Agustin Beach, en route to Tandag

Delegates from Butuan City walking through Tandag City in the scorching heat.

Delegates of ANHS stop traffic to pose for an emo moment.

Tandag Gymansium during the opening program

Panorama of our billet; PanoLab FTW.

The zodiac sign takes a new spelling on this keychain found in a souvenir stall in Tandag.

The stage of the J.P. Elpa National High School during the broadcasting competition

1st place, Feature Writing English Secondary

Close up of the trophy, the sweetest take-home from Tandag.

Oliver Robillo, Mindanao Blogger-in-Chief and organizer of the first ever WordCamp Philippines, recently came up with yet another timely project in light of the general elections, which are coming up in two years’ time. Presenting RP2010, the election watchblog.

The blog’s “About” page pretty much says it all:

The RP2010.com blog endeavors to be the poll watchdog for the Philippine Presidential Elections in the year 2010. As such, we, the bloggers behind it, commit to helping ensure clean and honest elections through non-partisan coverage of election-related news and commentary.

RP2010 aims to bring to the Web what Namfrel has been doing for decades now. Its objective is to be a watchdog (“watchblog”, as Kuya Blogie puts it) for the upcoming elections, ensure that they are fair and clean, and expose any anomalies related to the electoral process.

What’s great about it is that it’s a community effort, so there’s none of the shady business of mainstream media. What RP2010 needs right now are eager bloggers dedicated to the same cause to fill the blog with news and opinion regarding the 2010 elections. If you’re a Filipino blogger who’s interested in keeping the upcoming elections clean and honest, read this post and become active in the project.

Please get involved now, so we can ensure clean and honest elections in 2010. [RP2010 Website]

When Gizmodo alerted me to the fact that Intrepid Ibex, the latest version of popular Linux distro Ubuntu, was out for download, the early adopter in me screamed, “upgrade!” So today, I spent the entirety of the day away from the computer and on my iPhone as Ubuntu upgraded to 8.10. Finally, after ten hours of waiting, the process is complete. Hello, Ibex!

This isn’t a huge release for Ubuntu. It’s not a Long-Term Support (LTS) release unlike 8.04, Hardy Heron, so nothing radical has changed. It has enhanced driver support though—my TravelMate’s WiFi button light thing, which didn’t use to blink, does now. There’s also this new utility in System -> Administration -> create a USB startup disk. It does exactly that—create a USB startup disk from which you can boot Linx. I unfortunately don’t have a spare flash drive lying around, but will see to it to try this thing out when I do.

As I said, this isn’t a major release. The next LTS they’ll be putting out is 9.04, codename Jaunty Jackalope. Its due date is relatively far off—April of next year, says Gizmodo—but I’m psyched nonetheless.

There’s nothing much to say about Ibex, except that you should probably download it now. If you already have Hardy Heron on your system, upgrading’s easy (albeit, with speeds like mine, painfully time-consuming).

Ooh, and the National Novel Writing Month starts in about half an hour. Weeee!

The past few weeks have been very hectic for me, and as a result this blog has gathered some dust. My bad. I had suddenly become preoccupied with the Science Fair—I had two choices: work on a study or get a failing grade in Chemistry—and other goings-on in life.

The Science Fair’s finally over with, and things have generally settled down, which means that I can now finally start writing blog posts again! *banana dance* So, here we go with one of those lengthy write-ups aggregating the entirety of my life and thoughts since my last posting. Brace yourselves.

Science Fair

Copy of our manuscript with our ribbon

Every year, our school holds a Science Fair in celebration of Science Month. In the aforementioned fair, brainiacs and tinkerers from all four year levels come together in a battle of wits and brains, resulting in a nerdazzling day of epistaxis-inducing projects about biofuels, magnets, and (as my classmate would say) sh*t like that.

In short, I never really cared for it. Not. At. All. I’m not particularly fond of Science and its related branches (except for technology), and I didn’t plan on joining this year’s festivities (festivities?) either. However, I recently found out that if I didn’t join in on the (dare I say it) fun, I’d have a pretty crappy grade in Chemistry.

So I teamed up with my classmates Xavier and Angel and, after a bit of brainstorming, we decided we’d go Physics-nutty with magnetic levitation. I could very well bore you with the details of our project, but I know your time’s precious and all so I won’t. In essence, we made the upper (passenger) compartment of a toy car levitate over the bottom (engine) compartment to lessen the load the engine would need to carry, making the vehicle more fuel-efficient and *blah blah blah*. Let’s end it at that.

The day of the Science Fair (read: today) dawned, and I arrived in school jittery and jumpy. It’s hard not to when you have to defend an ambitious project in front of three major geniuses, one of which has a degree in Physics.

One of the judges came to our booth (tarpaulin banner would be a better term), examined our study and temporarily wrecked our finished product before nonchalantly nodding as she left, leaving behind her three students (namely me and my two group mates) with palpitating hearts and dizzy heads. Fast forward to two or three hours later. The aforementioned students’ hearts are still palpitating, and their heads are dizzier than ever, but because of a different reason—the improbability of all improbabilities has occurred! Their project, something about playing with magnets to get a piece of cardboard to hover precariously over another magnet-laden piece of cardboard, has been picked for defense in the Science Congress.

The Science Congress. Five minutes of hell is what we called it. When our group number was called, we walked with heavy feet towards the table in front of us and sat down in front of the judges. I picked up the microphone sitting innocently on the table and said, “Good afternoon, judges. The title of our study is…” and then read our abstract with a voice that, according to my classmate, sounded like Microsoft Sam’s. After I finished reading the page-long summary of our study, we then submitted ourselves to intellectual beating by the judges. “The proponents are now ready for pain, anguish and suffering.”

They scrutinized our mansucript and the concept of our project like the Sun would never rise again. “You copy-pasted your review of related literature, didn’t you?” (D’oh. Wikipedia phail.) “Your framework could use a little tweaking.” (I didn’t know what I was doing, ma’am.) And then, after the questioning, they let us off with a confusing “congratulations”.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my classmates in the hall, chatting and Rubik’s-cubing and whatnot, and left school at half past five not knowing whether or not our project had made the final cut. Feh. We’ll find out when we find out.

Nano-chromatic!

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced to the world the fourth generation of Apple at their “Let’s Rock!” event on September 9^th. The new Nano, available in 8GiB and 16GiB variations and in more colors than ever before, also features a new playback screen and a curved body (which they say feels better in your hand). Apple also incorporated an accelerometer into the nano. Shake the device to shuffle your playlist and turn it sideways to activate Cover Flow. Pretty sweet. Did it make me regret my iPod nano purchase? Not really. My black fatty’s served me pretty well, and has offered more than everything I need to quench my taste for music. I’m a happy camper. (Which is not to say that I won’t accept an iPod nano 4G as a birthday gift, hint hint. )

We’re still alive

The geeks over at the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN has switched on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for the first time in many years, and, contrary to what many feared, it didn’t create a big, Earth-eating. life-ending black hole.

But that’s because they didn’t smash any particles in the collider. At least, not yet. What they did was fire the first beam all around the 27-kilometer undeground tunnel. They’re not going to smart smashing things together until October. Maybe Doomsday then?

Nine Zero Point Nine Five

All the calculations have been finished and the results are in. For my first quarter, my average grade’s 90.95. It isn’t measly (by my standards, at least), but it isn’t stellar, either. I will try—and I say this earnestly—to do better in the Second Quarter.

WordCamp Philippines=WIN

Blogie Robillo et. al. successfully organized and held the first WordCamp ever in the Philippines (and in Southeast Asia, correct me if I’m wrong) on September 6 in the College of Saint Benilde. The Father of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, was in attendance. The Philippine blogosphere’s been buzzing about the event before, during, and after it was held, and there has been a flurry of posts from bloggers nationwide describing the event in detail. See the entire list of posts (and old media coverage) on this blog post.

In related news, the Philippine Blog Awards season is now in full swing, with the voting for the Bloggers Choice Awards now open. This blog post explains everything you need to know.

Well, I guess that’s about it. Talk to you soon. (There are a lot of stuff on my mind—about Palin and her obvious incapability for the vice presidency, let alone the presidency; about poverty in the Philippines, and how it has become so bad that suicide has become an option for many people; and about other things. Stay tuned. Subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed to keep yourself updated.) Laterz!

Apparently, Section One isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

When Section One and I parted ways in Sophomore high school year, I missed it. I missed the fact that I was part of the top brass of the Special Science Curriculum, of the entire school in fact. Being in Section Three was an uneasy feeling. I felt like I didn’t belong, in an arrogant sense. I felt like the gods had smoten me for no reason at all, that I’d done something wrong and they punished me by sending me to the third section. For ten months, in Section Three, I toiled long and hard into the night in the hopes that I would soon return to the glory that is Section One.

Looking back, I now realize that I’d gotten it all wrong.

Because Section One doesn’t necessarily mean top brass. By sending me to the third section, the gods weren’t smiting me—they were blessing me plentifully. And, although my mantra is that life is too short for regrets, I now wish I hadn’t toiled so hard to get back to Section One.

Because it just isn’t worth spending that much time on. It just isn’t.

Section One—hereon in referred to as III-Avogadro, or simply section Avogadro—is a mess. A total, depressing, happiness-depleting mess. When I come into the room every morning, everyone is wearing either a grumpy, pissed, irritated, or panicked face. “I forgot about the Chemistry test! Dang, I forgot about the Social Studies assignment!” The word disgruntled could be appropriate to describe what state section Avogadro is always in. Even a simple and quick question would be met by the “talk to the hand” gesture, because everyone’s so busy with their books and shit. This is where I don’t belong. This is where I seek asylum from.

I could swear that people would be ready to kill just to get high grades here. I’m just counting down the days to when all hell breaks loose, when grades will have become such a priceless treasure that we’ll start throwing armchairs and maiming each other with textbooks.

Which would be sad, because grades aren’t priceless treasures. To quote a good friend of mine, grades are merely numbers. They don’t total one’s personality. While I do agree that education is a priceless treasure, report cards aren’t accurate gauges to measure knowledge. The effects of education aren’t felt during school. They can be observed during life itself, and the Great Periodic Test is when we stand at the edge of our precipice and ask ourselves, “What have I done with my life?”

Grades are numbers. A combination of ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines, and zeros. And such useless things aren’t worth maiming people over.

Some people in Section Avogadro can also get arrogant. At the risk of being called a hypocrite, I daresay I hate arrogant people. Shit. Like you know everything. Always managing to sneak intelligent phrases no one gives a shit about into your sentences. Whenever quiz-checking time arrives and the owner of the paper you’re checking gets a wrong answer, you quickly quip that he’s stupid/dumb. Sometimes I wonder whether you bring all this failure upon yourself.

And then there’s the invariably crushing pressure to perform well in Avogadro. I don’t do well under pressure. Nor do I think we should be pressured at all, but hell, we are.

I actually have the option to transfer sections, to move to a lower, less-pressuring classroom, perhaps with less [insert adjective here] classmates. I’ve actually really thought about it a lot.

Why haven’t I?

Fucking regret, that’s why.

Why would I toil for ten months to get to Section One and then transfer to Section Two? Thanks, but no thanks. (Mia, I respect your decision.)

Avogadrites, sorry, but this is just how I feel. Ahh, it felt good to relieve myself of that burden.

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.]

Hi, guys. As I said before, the silence of this blog is too loud to bear, so here’s a post to fill the empty void and break the awkward hush.

So I thought I’d take you guys through a timeline-style tour of how a day in the life of Dean usually goes, just so you see how crazy the world I live in is. Let’s begin after the jump. Continue Reading »

Remember your high school teachers? Oh, those curious creatures. They were either the reason for the smiles on students’ faces or the bane of their existence. They either made your school life easier or made it a living hell.

We love our teachers. No, no, don’t try to argue with me. Trust me, you love your teacher. You just can’t admit it.

Continue Reading »