Things Have Happened

I enrolled. Fixed my schedules, paid my fees. Went to class for the first time this semester.

After the last class of the day, I found that I’m not ready for this yet. It’s going to be really difficult this time, I can feel it.

That being said, I hung out with my classmates on the first couple days of class.

I’m the one in the green shirt & faded jeans + dirty black sneakers.

I went back home to Manila after.

I got my hair dyed red for some reason I’m not sure of. I also had it cut a bit shorter. I like it. I think it looks kinda awesome. And besides, my sister paid for it.

It’s her birthday in a couple of days too, so I guess I came home in time.

There’s a big storm over some parts of the country again. Signal no. 5 or something. I can’t even begin to think of things that would make this okay.

We have a new fish in the tank. It’s an aroana. We haven’t yet decided on the name. It seems to be afraid of me.

So, What’s Been Going On?

Only a few more days before August comes to a close. 18 posts so far for this month, as compared to the previous couple months’ almost-90. My brain has once again dipped into what’s-the-point territory and began dissuading itself from posting anything, since it’s a futile activity that won’t really amount to much. Or at least, that’s what my brain says. I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I need to be doing to change this mindset, or if it would just go away on its own just like last time. In the downtime, my brain simply refuses.

However, it was probably a good thing that my brain decided to hibernate at the time, because if it had stayed up to wait for anything exciting, it would have blown an aneurysm in the mess that ensued: another storm ravaged my country, and by “ravaged” I mean caused Php 80 million in damages, human lives excluded. Concrete highways cracked & split open, flood waters rose way overhead, and people swam to places—or rode plastic boats—instead of walking. It might seem like an image from a cartoon, but it’s real alright. And while it’s the Filipino habit to laugh and smile through calamities, it’s not really something to make light of—people were left homeless, crying on the streets, escaping death only by a foot’s length of rope or styrofoam board, and that’s if they escape. I’m glad the worst I got was a flu.

The flu, yes. I am once again reminded of my duty as a mortal to acquire sicknesses if only to seem like a normal human being. As if having to skip classes because of the catastrophes going on outside wasn’t bad enough, I had to get sick near the weekends, too. Now I have multiple absences and a fuckload of school things I missed, including reports and group activities. I feel so useless. I can’t blame them if they decide to exclude me from the activity, but it kinda sucks because I didn’t want to get sick (or at least, not really; I’m pretty sure my panicking subconscious induced this flu). I’ve used up almost all of my absences, and I had to get a medical certificate to serve as an excuse letter. It cost money! It sucks!

And I wasn’t the only one who got sick, because the day I planned to get started on my report, Sirhk Julius my laptop decided to lie down and not get up for a whole day. It took me a few hours of crying and a few more hours of obscure troubleshooting to get it barely up and running again (I never even found out what exactly went wrong; maybe it’s the beat-up state of the hard drive in general). It’s okay now, just a little slower than usual (meaning it’s very slow now), but we’re still planning to reformat it in the next few days. Need to be doing some backing up.

So yeah: brain is dead, people are dead, roads are dead, acads are dead, laptop dead (for a day), blog is dead. Dead is the new in thing.

(Oh right, and uh I kind of found out she made a Tumblr blog recently [for acads, she assures me]. I sent her decent messages at first, as a signed-in Tumbr user, but then I remembered that the Ask box features an option to send anon messages.. And soooo.. Yeah. One time I sent her a lovelorn anon message. Fuck, I don’t know why I keep doing these things.. So uh yeah, heart is also dead.)

I have not been posting anything lately, mostly because I’ve been busy with GISHWHES and storms and academics. It’s going to be a lot less busier in the coming days, but before it does it will of course have to swell and burst like a boil first, like last weekend. Maybe a week’s worth more of reports and papers and exams, and then it’ll be smooth sailing again after that. GISHWHES ends in a couple of days, so that’s one less thing to worry about (though the experience itself is taxing; I won’t go into the details right now, maybe on another post). There’s always the threat of more storms, but hey, this is the Philippines; I don’t really expect anything otherwise.

A very short life update, everybody.

An Extremely Long Post About Rain & Fatigue

As expected, yesterday turned out to be the type of day that loves you in the dawn of morning but turns sour by breakfast and then starts beating you 16 hours into the relationship. I was groggy and deadbeat from the get-go, but the progression of the day drove the nail into the coffin.