---

Thursday, February 22, 2007    05:29 a.m.

  
she flicked the stick over in her hand.
"what's that?" her friend asked.
"something to do," she said.
"that's not a solution to your problems," her friend said.
"i know. it's not. it's just something to do," she said.
"it's a diversion," she continued. "i'm sad, so i need a diversion."
"you have asthma," her friend said.
"my family has asthma. i don't think i have it. i guess it's about time to find out," she said.

"Sans toi, l'émotion d'aujourd'hui ne serait que la peau morte des émotions d'autrefois." HIPOLITO

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sushi and spaghetti (corrected version

Thursday, December 21, 2006    12:44 p.m.

   12/21/06 12:04

some time ago i uploaded a story that i wrote for a creative writing class. now, who would have thought...i got the whole thing wrong! to make up for this, i will be uploading the edited (corrected!) version here .

===========

Three small raps on my door announced his arrival.
“Hi,” he greeted me when I opened the door. “I brought sushi.”
“You never told me you liked sushi,” I said.
“You never asked,” he replied. He found his place on the table.
“But you never told me.” I finished mixing the sauce and pasta in one bowl.
“There are a lot of things you don't know about me,” he said quietly.
I transferred the spaghetti from the mixing bowl to the time-honored ceramic serving dish and set it in front of him. He was arranging the sushi delicately on a plate with a pair of wooden chopsticks. I sat down.
“I don't think spaghetti and sushi go together.”
“Then I'll just have sushi.” He toyed with the sushi, lining them up on the plate.
“But don't you like my spaghetti?”
“I did. I just like sushi better now.” This time he selects one of the round-shaped things and dips it in the plastic container, letting one side of it absorb the dark sauce.
“But it's raw. It might have salmonella or something,” I said, my voice reflecting distaste.
“The spaghetti is too heavy,” he said. He went back to lining up the sushi. “The sushi is healthy,” he continued, “because it has fish in it. The spaghetti is too heavy, but fish is good for you. Don't you know that fish is healthy?”
“Maybe so, but what about that green thing around it? It looks like plastic!”
“Well, civilized call it seaweed.”
“Civilized people don't eat raw fish.”
“But only uncivilized people think they are civilized,” he said simply, still looking at the sushi.
Silence.
“I love you.”
“I'll go get some wine.” He got up too quickly and spilled some of the sushi sauce.

---

zzz....

Thursday, November 2, 2006    11:45 p.m.

   bored. just staring at the ceiling...at two small holes on the roof directly over my head...

and the fluorescent lights...one blocked by a white-ish pipe, part of the warehouse-like interior of the office.

feeling so cold...from sitting in the path of the cold air from the industrial-strength airconditioner.

another shift about to start...
another day about to end.
bring it on.

---

the eye on the back of my head

Monday, October 23, 2006    08:03 p.m.

  

when i was young(er), one of my uncles took me to his office. he worked along the lines of fisheries. his office had what people considered hi-tech computers at that time. it was one of the first (if not the first) times that i got to play pacman which was a state-of-the-art computer game back then.

then we went home. before boarding the bus, in the middle of the road, a beggar approached us. i guess i felt like it was my duty to give...or i just took pity on that person (i believe it was a kid, although i can't be sure)...or for some reason along the lines of chivalry...i fumbled for my coin purse and gave the beggar some coins. my uncle half-dragged me into the bus. we were walking-running and i hadn't even closed my coin purse. when we took our seats, my uncle told me something along the lines of thinking about myself before thinking of others.

yup, heroes exist only in movie screens (i.e., the us marine who saved nicholas cage in the movie 'world trade' which i must admit i didn't enjoy). in real life, heroes get shot in the city park, or get scolded by their uncles, or end up being miserable...

let this week be a lesson...damned hindsight.

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nature versus nurture

Tuesday, October 3, 2006    08:53 p.m.

  

there have long been arguments about one's personality development. some claim that a person's character development is determined by his or her genetic background. other claim that a person becomes who he or she is bacause of his or her environment. still, there are others who prefer to play it safe and say that a person's genes AND environment contribute to his or her personality development.

i believe i was preprogrammed to be an overly vain, overly materialistic, fashionable, 100% feminine female...but due to the environment, i turned out to be the opposite.

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tuesday, April 18, 2006    9:31 p.m.

   4/18/05 21:31 Today we went to the Lingap Pangkabataan office. We left the college at around 11 and got to the Lingap office at around 12. We did not intend to come during the lunch hour, but we were told that we were expected as soon as possible. When we got to the NGO office we were told that our supervisors-to-be were out (on Youth camp). They (supervisors) would be back by the end of the week and that we should just check back on Monday.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2006    02:39 a.m.

   i haven't been able to update the site in a while, what with thesis and other school stuff. but i'm coming up with a new flash-integrated layout. i'll also be posting more pictures and will be removing unnecessary sections.

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personal position on plagiarism charge

Saturday, June 11, 2005    04:21 a.m.

   6/6/05 15:59

So this is it. We have done everything we could. Now its all up to fate; and the vague possibility that proud people can accept that no one is infallible. In all probability I feel that this case is closed. Now I can discuss the event in whole.

Last semester I was enrolled in Quantitative Analysis, a major subject. The class was required to submit a paper as a final requirement. We were to do a secondary analysis of data from SWS. Since it was a quantitative class we were writing a quantitative paper (statistical).

I was part of a group of three. We worked on our paper for five days (tuesday to friday) in a boarding house. On the first few days we were trying to finalize the topic. Thursday we had a topic and we were trying to analyze the data and by Friday we were fixing the tables for the study. We finished writing the actual paper (The parts we wrote together, data analysis and the conclusion. We worked separately on the other parts.) on Saturday. I took it home for proofreading and submitted it minutes before the monday deadline.

Enrollment day was Thursday. Our group was not allowed to enroll early. We had to talk to the instructor.

In her room, she closed the door. Then she said the magic words: I don't think you were the ones who did this paper. My mind was flooded by thoughts, but the first word that came to mind was "WHAT?" Then I thought, "wow, was our paper that good?" Then I remember thinking that Saturday, as our group was wrapping up, and on the wee hours of Monday, as I printed the paper: This is lousy. So the paper couldn't have been that good.

Then the instructor gave her reasons for accusing us such things. She said the paper, particularly the analysis and conclusion, was too statistical, that the writing style wasn't ours, that we didn't follow the pattern she required the class to follow, that it wasn't bad to ask for help and that we should tell her who wrote the paper for us (plus the paper would get a sparkling ZERO).

I wasn't really listening to the conversation between her and my groupmates. I was still recovering from another blow earlier that day. I have often thought about a similar scenario when my proud self would be accused of plagiarism. I thought that if such a thing happened, I'd ask the accuser for proof and that would be the clincher as no accuser would ever find proof. (In this case all the accuser's arguments could be shattered, and I'll get to that in a while.) Then I heard one of my groupmates ask the instructor what we could do to prove our innocence. The instructor made us "attempt" to duplicate the paper.

In three hours my group managed to duplicate the essence of the paper. A few hours later the instructor took pleasure in telling us that she wasn't convinced that we wrote the paper but since we "knew our variables" she gave us enough points for a probation grade (do you know what probation means? it means that you are on temporary admission). she also said that our relationship would never be the same (i believe she even used the word "Consanguinity" like it ever described anything between us or as if it would mean anything to us four after that day).

It was a sad day for my group. We were seen as imbeciles who couldn't even write a substandard paper. If we could not write something as mediocre as that, what were we capable of? Why was she so sure that we were plagiarists?

in mid-May our group approached the department. we submitted a copy of the paper and, through the department, asked the instructor to reconsider her decision. the department said that the instructor stands by her original decision and that the department stands by her in her decision and that our group should speak with the instructor to clear things up further. personally, and i believe both my groupmates share this position, i do not want to have anything more to do with the instructor. i have heard her reasons when we first spoke and i know that she would tell us the same things if ever we came to see her.

so my group decided not to see her. we had almost run out of options. we were angered by this injustice but we did not know who to turn to. there was no disciplinary tribunal for errant instructors. and because of Academic Freedom, only the instructor in question could change the grade. by this time the grade was no longer our major problem. we were hurt by how these baseless allegations could be accepted by no less than the department. but the major manifestation of belief that our group did this paper would be a change of grade. of course, i would accept a written apology from the instructor in question instead of a change of grade.

here I'll repeat the instructor's arguments and give the counter arguments:

1. THIS IS NOT YOUR WRITING STYLE

   does this that mean that it is not MY writing style? not MY GROUPMATE's style? or not OUR (three people's) style? and what did she base our/my/my groupmate's writing style on?

   she said that it was based on our exams and class activities. fact: me and my groupmates had average to low scores in the activities and exams. but LOW SCORES DO NOT REFLECT ONE'S WRITING STYLE. the activities were formula based and cannot be taken to represent one's writing style. the exams had some essay writing but they could not adequately reflect one's writing style. LOW EXAM GRADES could probably prove that we were not capable of writing what was in the paper, not the writing style. but the instructor could not go for this angle. THE DUPLICATE ANALYSIS SHOWED THAT WE KNEW HOW TO CONDUCT SUCH AN ANALYSIS AND THAT WE KNEW THE VARIABLES IN OUR STUDY. one good reference for writing styles would be other papers written by the same people. however i doubt that she referred to one of our previous papers, and even if she did, the three of us have never written a paper together and therefore there is NO SUFFICIENT BASIS FOR OUR GROUP'S JOINT WRITING STYLE. and THE WRITING STYLE OF A GROUP OF THREE PEOPLE WOULD BE MARKEDLY DIFFERENT FROM THE WRITING STYLE OF EACH PERSON IN SUCH A GROUP.
   
   

2. it is TOO STATISTICAL. YOU DID NOT FOLLOW THE PATTERN I REQUIRED THE CLASS TO FOLLOW.

   several days before working on this paper, our group (one member was part of another group) was working on a paper for another major subject: qualitative research. this qualitative paper was subjective, as opposed to the statistical, objective nature of this quantitative paper. we were still quite hung up on the qualitative paper and thought we were doing the right thing by writing the way we did: "TOO STATISTICAL" WAS THE RESULT OF OUR FEAR OF BEING SUBJECTIVE.

   regarding the pattern given to the class, we had overlooked the handout given to the class. we knew there were definite meanings for "most", "many" and other statistical terms but we were not sure and we did not know that they were in the handouts so we tried to use each word as we saw fit: not repeating a word every so often. this is the only pattern we know of. if our group had violated any other pattern, then it was our fault (ignorance of the law is not an excuse) BUT THIS DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT SOMEONE ELSE WROTE THE PAPER FOR US.
   
   

3. IT IS NOT WRONG TO ASK FOR HELP. JUST TELL ME WHO WROTE THIS PAPER FOR YOU.

   this wasn't really an argument, this is the 'baseless allegation'. in the first place, we did not GET OUTSIDE HELP WHICH WASN'T ACKNOWLEDGED IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHY. we got the idea of 'economic nationalism' from Sicat, and we recognized him for that.

   the instructor merely thought, "SOMEONE HAD TO HAVE HELPED THESE CHILDREN WITH THIS PAPER". i believe that the instructor first HAD THE IDEA THAT WE NEEDED OUTSIDE HELP BEFORE LOOKING FOR "PROOF"

ultimately the instructor ended up giving us 45% of the grade, which i believe was carefully chosen so that we were still on probation but was not low enough to get us removed or delayed by a year. A 5.0 WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY CONTROVERSIAL. more people would pay attention to this case, more questions would be asked. it ALL BOILS DOWN TO THE FACT THAT SHE IS NOT SURE THAT WE DID NOT WRITE THE PAPER, BUT SINCE HER GUT IS TELLING HER THAT WE DID NOT WRITE THE PAPER, SHE AT LEAST HAD TO GIVE US A SLAP ON THE WRIST. if she were entirely sure that we cheated she should have gone to the student disciplinary tribunal and sought our suspension. but since none of her arguments were solid, she had to settle with probation. if we had gone to the tribunal, we could have formally destroyed her arguments and proven our innocence. of course a lot of things work against us as students.

if we had in fact taken someone else's work as our own, we would be denying plagiarism charges as well.

the most compelling evidence that we wrote this paper is that we had enough sense to know the variables and the process well enough to duplicate a three-day analysis in three hours. if we had someone else write the paper, the only way for us to know how to do the analysis is to have read and studied the paper before submitting it or to have looked on as someone else was doing the analysis. IF WE HAD SOMEONE ELSE WRITE THE PAPER, WHY WOULD WE EVEN BOTHER TO READ AND UNDERSTAND IT? IF WE HAD SOMEONE ELSE TO WRITE IT FOR US, WOULD WE NOT JUST WANT TO FORGET ABOUT THE DAMNED PAPER AND GOTTEN TWELVE HOURS OF SLEEP EACH DAY? WHY WOULD WE ASK SOMEONE ELSE TO WRITE IT FOR US THEN STUDY IT, AS IF EXPECTING TO BE CAUGHT? THIS IS SIMPLY NOT LOGICAL.

If any other group in that class were made to duplicate their study under similar circumstances, I doubt that anyone would do better than we did. When duplicating the analysis, my group was more concerned with THE CONTENT THAN THE FORM. Since we had little time, we were more concerned about writing everything down. However the instructor said that the writing style was different. OF COURSE IT WOULD BE DIFFERENT. We wrote separately for the duplicate, even using outlines for some parts. Besides, even if we wrote the exact same things we wrote on the paper, the instructor could say that we just memorized the paper.

The instructor said that she had to give us credit since we knew the variables used in the study. REASON WOULD DICTATE THAT THE ONLY WAY FOR US TO HAVE KNOWN THOSE VARIABLES THAT WELL IS IF WE WERE THE ONES WHO WORKED ON THE DAMNED PAPER FOR THREE DAYS.

but, through all this the situation is still seen as OUR WORD AGAINST THE INSTRUCTOR'S. as always the instructor's words hold more water than the students'.that instructor can convince anyone that she is telling the truth, what with her magna cum laude standing. maybe she even believes that she is telling the truth. but careful scrutiny and some logic have shown that exams and writing styles are not equal, just as honors don't really symbolize infallibility. So what happened to every individual's right to a fair trial? What happened to "Innocent until proven guilty"? Can instructors really go accusing people of plagiarism without sufficient basis? Apparently academic freedom dictates they can do that-- and get away with it.

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On local media focus.

Saturday, June 11, 2005    04:17 a.m.

   6/3/05 23:17

There are many local series and movies that portray the lives of rich and famous people. In contrast to this, "reality shows" which feature the lives of non-rich and non-famous people are also quite rampant (athough not in its peak at this time). What follows is a brief analysis of media subjects and why they are chosen.

The stories about lives of rich and popular people are favored media subjects. Such stories often portray rich people as "poor", dissatisfied people caught in intricate webs of problems which they create themselves. In such shows, there are usually money-short characters who end up being the hero and saves the day with his/her kindness (or some other positive attitude).

It's no news flash: rich people aren't all plagued by problems and poor people don't always end up saving the day (or getting the rich spouse). But such portrayals are necessary for escapism.

Majority of media product advocates are in need of escapism. For instance, if some hillbilly moves to the city "in search of a better life" but finds himself having to work his head off, probably as a construction worker, and in subhuman standards. This person does not want to see his life portrayed on screen: he won't want to see somone else living his nightmare. Instead, he'll want to see portrayals of the nightmares of the rich and seemingly happy people. He needs reassurance that he is not the only one who suffers. It doesn't have to be real. And seeing that things work out for characters with worse problems, it'll work out for him too. He doesn't need a mirror to his own pathetic life.

But there was a time when there were movies made about construction workers. People behind those movies are now highly acclaimed for "telling it as it is". Ironic though that media people no longer tell it as it is...or are we no longer a poor country? Today, the media present people living below the poverty line .and their living conditions as either glorified or ridiculous--or presented in a reality show.

But how real is the reality presented in these shows? Some say that writers would become extinct with the advent of reality shows. I highly doubt this. Scriptwriters may no longer be necessary, but writers are still needed to orchestrate these charades. Writers may no longer have to put words in the characters' mouths, but they are still the ones who put the story together.

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conflict of interest

Friday, May 27, 2005    02:03 a.m.

   5/26/05 20:14

So to follow through with last night's line of thought; tonight I shall say some things about feminism.

Some people advocate feminism for all the wrong reasons. Some believe that feminism seeks to establish the superiority of females over males.

Feminism does aim to show that males are not superior over females. More than this, feminism aims for equality between men and women.

Ah, but one might ask: if feminism aims for equality between the sexes, why is it named after only one sex? Shouldn't 'aim for equality' be called something else? Someone argued that 'humanism' is the only '-ism' that should be kept alive.

But first to answer that question on the term 'feminism'. It is, evidently, one of the nuances of this language. Take the terms 'history' or 'man/male and woman/female' (Although I do understand that some 'feminists' actually use the term 'herstory'. And wommon.) for example. These terms were introduced back in the days of severe bias against women. We still use them today despite their being sexist merely because we've gotten used to them. Now 'feminism' was originally intended to make people realize that women are superior gender: that was the time when everyone thought that males are superior over women. Feminists hoped to uplift women's status in the society, first to make them superior over men, eventually realizing that women don't need superiority as much as equality. The term was just a mechanism to boost the status of the gender that was considered inferior.

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sex and sexism

Thursday, May 26, 2005    12:56 a.m.

   5/25/05 23:03 The reason that it is more embarassing for a (straight) man to dress like a woman, or that people are less comfortable with (and often poke humor at) cross-dressing males is that men are still considered superior to women: dressing down (man dressed as a woman) is considered less acceptable than dressing up (woman dressed as a man). Now, most people claim to adopt a non-prejudiced stance; you know, apparently upholding the point of view that "all men are created equal" (or, stated in a politically correct way, that both sexes are equal). Inspite of this there are still obvious manifestations of sexism: one being the consistent belief in chivalry (primarily among women--I can't really speak for men). In most places, like here for example, a man is still expected to be a "gentleman" and to do gentleman-ly acts like giving up his seat and opening doors for ladies. Some people don't realize it but this behavior is based on the assumption that females are weak-weaker than men who can open doors and endure train rides while standing--apparently. This frame of mind goes back to time immemorial and although people have recently become "more mature" by "abolishing most forms of discrimination", I believe this so-called maturity goes only skin deep: we are not as enlightened as we would like to think. Another manifestation of this "shame in dressing down" is that people are less comfortable with male-male relations: more attention, more humor, is aimed at male-male relations than female-female relationships. Two women being best friends and holding each other's hands, dancing in public: these are more acceptable when done by women than by men. I'm not saying that women (or men) holding each other's hands are gay. I'm just saying that people accept these types of behavior (which are sometimes considered manifestations of romantic relationships) more when done by women than by men, which implies that they also regard homosexual relations among women as more acceptable than homosexual relations between men.

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Thursday, May 19, 2005    02:14 a.m.

  

years, decades, centuries, millennia have passed since our ancestors began thinking. back then they thought that the world was flat, that the moon was made of cheese, that god/s watched over us, and all such crap. now we know better: or at least we know that the world is not round and that the moon is just a huge piece of rock.

so is this good? i mean, what good is it, knowing that the world is not flat and that the moon is inedible (and even if it were edible, it would still be so far away). there are benefits from knowing these things (we know that we won't fall off the world's edge even if we sail 'too far', and we won't salivate when we look at the moon (at least not normally)). but then there are negative effects as well: the biggest of which being that we begin to think that we know too much (or everything). we stop wondering.

admit it. everything we 'know', we heard from other people who heard these things from other people, and so on. i mean, how do we know what we know? how do we know that the earth is round? there are physical manifestations which eventually make us realize that the earth really is round, but we initially hear about it from someone else. most things we know are not original (by that i mean that we just hear it from someone else).

(i'm straying) my point here is that we know a lot of things about this world. do we know enough? is it time to stop asking questions? some people say that we (people) make our own problems: we make human life so complicated. why weren't we just satisfied with the mystical planations: that you would fall of the earth (or get eaten by a seaserpent) if you sailed too far or that you can eat the moon (if you can get to it) or that rain was gods' tears (or something)? back then, when we didn't know what actually caused rain, we (or at least some) asked why. now that we know why, we (i'm using we to refer to humans, some humans) are gutsy enough to say, "why did we have to ask why? why weren't we satisfied with the simple life? why did we have to make it so complicated?". but how would life be better if we still believed that we could fall of the arth? if the person who found out that the moon wasn't made of cheese did not make that discovery, someone else would have done it: it was supposed to happen. if the philippines wasn't colonized, people in that country would not remain "uncivilized", just as in the case of thailand.some things are "supposed to happen", even if we wish they didn't; mathematical equations, history, fate, whatever..dictate that such things should happen.

and suppose that knowing certain things (hence the birth of weapvons of mass destruction and the like) do make life worse, does this mean that we should stop asking questions? "oh, we make life too complicated, let's just retreat into our shells, fellow hermit crabs." or not. (so i guess this shows that i don't buy the " since thinking and asking questions helps us make our lives more difficult, we should stop thinking and asking questions" argument.)

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Thursday, May 19, 2005    12:10 a.m.

  

(this was written for a creative writing class when i was in my first year. i love those days..plenty of time and motivation for work.)

Three small raps on my door told me that she was here.

“Hey,” she greeted me when I opened the door. “I brought sushi.”

“You never told me you liked sushi,” I said.

“You never asked,” she replied. She found her place on the table.

“But you never told me.” I finished mixing the sauce and pasta in one bowl.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she said quietly.

I transferred the spaghetti from the mixing bowl to the time-honored ceramic serving dish and set it in front of her. She was arranging the sushi delicately on her plate with a pair of wooden chopsticks. I sat down. “I don’t think spaghetti and sushi go together.”

“Then I’ll just have sushi.” She toyed with the sushi, lining them up on her plate.

“But don’t you like my spaghetti?”

“I do. I just like sushi better now.” This time she selects one of the round-shaped things and dips it in the plastic container, letting one side of it absorb the dark sauce.

“But it’s raw. It might have salmonella or something,” I said, my voice reflecting distaste.

“It’s colorful!” she replied. Whether she was impatient or just excited, I could not tell.

“And it’s healthy,” she continued, “because it has fish in it. Don’t you know that fish is healthy?”

“Maybe so, but what about that green thing around it? It looks like plastic!”

“Well to civilized people it’s called seaweed.”

“Civilized people don’t eat raw fish.”

“But only uncivilized people think they are civilized.” She pushed her plate aside.

Silence.

“I love you Liz.”

“I’ll go get some wine,” she got up too quickly and spilled some of the sushi sauce.