Blue Ichor

Text

Lyan: I hate my history teacher. :(

Albert: Bakit?

Lyan: Because he hates me back, or at least I think so. Most times I notice that he’s bent on humiliating me, but that’s just me. I’m not quite sure but I can’t help but notice a few things. Hmpf.

Albert: Then do good in class. Show that el bastardo what you can. O kaya talk to him. Which is a very difficult thing to do… Pero you don’t really have to. Try to be indifferent in his class, like you don’t hear and see anything. Besides you can learn history from books. That way he’d feel less attended to and also hated.

Lyan: Aah. Hehe. You’re suggesting revenge…but the guy is a lawyer!

Albert: Okay lang. That’s how you bite back the gentle way. In the end that freak will seem like a shark and you, his prey, when actually you are two bulls clashing each other’s hooves.

Lyan: Wrong body part, not hooves, horns. Hihi. Anyway thanks. I should just ignore him, right? Mmm? How ‘bout you? Are all your teachers okay guys?

Albert: NO! I hate two of my chem teachers. I hate them just because I don’t feel liked back. Alam mo yun, yung bigla ka na lang galit sa kanila.

Lyan: Yeah, I know how that feels. I don’t like teachers who commit grammatical mistakes. I tend to look down on them even if they are teachers. Hehe.

Albert: Ako rin. Haha. Maraming ganun dito sa UP. That’s why sometimes I question myself where UP gets its guts to actually brag its name.

Lyan: Ahaha. Every institution has its own problems—internal or not. But the bragging is still justified by the students’ intelligence and high performance of the school in itself. For an institution with as many teachers as UP, they probably think that a few teachers won’t matter. Hehe. How’s your tuition fee pala?

Albert: Okay lang. May tuition fee subsidization na pwedeng applyan. Parang yung categorization sa Pisay—full, special, etc. Luckily, bracket C ako dito, 60% discount on tuition. Pero full ang bayad sa miscellaneous and lab fees. This sem I just had to pay 8900 for everything.

Lyan: Gosh. That’s already 60% off?! So totoo yung news na the government won’t fund UP anymore?

Albert: Pa-send ulit. Di ko nabasa.

Lyan: Haha. 8900 is still a lot to pay for after a 60% discount. So it’s true that the government has withdrawn funds for UP?

Albert: Ah, matagal nay un. Like two years ago?

Lyan: Eh? Really?! I thought that was just recent. Mmm. Crazy me. Haha! What you doin’ now?

Albert: Wala lang. Nag-iisip kung mag-aaral ba ng bio o hindi.

Lyan: Haha. I should be starting on my lab diagrams too but it’s more fun to text. Ah, indolence…

Albert: Self-study lang naman. Haha.

Lyan: Hah. I guess. Bio is more on memorization naman kasi. But trying to draw something—anything!—is beyond me… Heeellpp!

Albert: Ano bang dino-draw mo?

Lyan: Triple beam balance. 8 variations of it. Haha.

Albert: Wah. Good luck sa’yo.

Unmistakable Mistake?

It is a usual impression among the common people that sci-fi movies are replete with exaggerated objects like giant robots that could talk and transform into cars, laser guns that could reduce anyone into ash, and even normal antagonists that then become the SuperBug when agitated.

Avatar has made debut when it was released last December. Movie-goers and non-movie-goers alike came flocking theatre houses, like locusts swarming a corn field, during its first weeks, even up until now. There is no end to people who say that this is the best they have seen for years, as much as there is no end to columnists, writers and bloggers who have asserted that James Cameron may have produced the movie that trampled the most renowned movies of all time, including James Bond, Superman, and DC’s XMen and Spiderman.

Also, according to Time, polls have seen that recently, among the movies released on the same time frame, it has the highest earnings. Considering all the movies since time immemorial, it lands second as what earned the highest during its first release. Interestingly, for a straight decade, the title still goes to Titanic, another of, still, James Cameron’s very own creations.

There is no single reason anyone should not admire the over-all aesthetics of the movie, but not until you hear speculations that Cameron might have plagiarised the storyline from Disney’s Pocahontas. Just knowing this, anyone would hardly miss that the clashing of the two giants in the movie industry, like the classic clashing of the ginormous Titanic and the colossal iceberg, would wreak a considerable unidirectional havoc to the party of Cameron. If Cameron did actually bootleg the plot from the other party, then we must say he has not done well enough. If, for any case, it only turned out an utter coincidence and that there had not been any breaching of the intellectual rights and dirty play that happened, then perhaps, considering the law doesn’t take ignorance and thoughtless actions as sound excuses, it’s still an unfortunate twist of fate for him.

Of course I am not in the proper position to judge whether Cameron is guiltless or actually violated the law. But if the rumours were true, I reckon it is reasonable enough to say that Avatar should definitely sink together with the Titanic and his apparent wretched thirst for recognition, which may be the only obvious reason why he might do that. And if they were not, then perhaps it is already implicit that he should be more cautious and watchful of his steps next time he makes a movie again.

Where Students Fear to Tread

Ask anyone to describe UP, and you’ll never get answers not coupled with the word activism. In UP it’s always students versus the administration.

And that’s basically partly what’s wrong. We commit ourselves in pickets not because we care, but because we childishly just have to maintain a tradition, even if that means having to compromise our ideals and values.

Perhaps we students think too idle that we get effortlessly won over by the sweet remarks uttered by the student-leaders themselves, and join the activist bandwagon without thinking again. We grouse against the issues because we think thoughtlessly of their immediate consequences on ourselves, and not on their payoffs for the whole University in the long run. This nonchalant behaviour, unknowing of the future, is a manifestation of our own abject stupidity and wide egocentricity.

In the perspective of a common student—a student who typically draws observations only from what he sees and hears—what I saw was, behind the cajoling remarks spat by our student-leaders, there was concealed a propaganda, how dark no-one really knew, that somehow wanted really badly to suggest and impress on every mind that each step the administration takes is a wrong move, always a trap to manipulate us and always a manoeuvre to benefit them. Two years is enough to transform and give you sense to scrutinise when you’re in an activist community. But I must say that two years is also enough for me to learn to scrutinise the very same people that taught me to set indifference aside.

The University would not issue a policy if it had no basis. We are pressed for money, time and other factors. We cannot afford to wait for our sluggish government, which itself cannot manage to pay its debt, to subsidise us. In times like this we cannot afford to stand high with our pride, and for once just have to give way.

If we fear that moving to a large class, with which currently the students are not acquainted, will altogether boil down to undermining the quality of education, then we have to take actions in the gentle, legal way. We don’t have to unleash our collars and growl like a vicious dog as we always do. After all it is an issue about the implementation of the large class policy and the relative progress of the university, and not whether the chancellor is a double-dealing shark and his son a jerk.

Largely, maybe the problem here is not whether the University has a sucky administration, but that essentially we students fear to succumb to change. The University works to effect change, not to profit. They are professionals, not just an anywho picked up somewhere and then put to work. If we keep going on thinking shallow and superficially, then the very purpose of our efforts are put to waste, and the prospect of progress we long to have, gone for nothing.

The students themselves said that the University does not receive enough subsidies. But three years ago when the administration proclaimed an increase in tuition and other fees to back itself, for we’ve complained it doesn’t receive enough, some students self-defeatingly went off to protest against it. And now that the administration tries to make allowances for all by proceeding for large classes, we still act like babies wailing in the dead of night.

Activism is a welcome view in a difficult time, but if it is also one that dismisses certain realities a little too easily, then it’s activism for the wrong cause. If we line up in the streets shouting like hell but do not live up to what we fight for, then we Iskolars ng Bayan does not after all deserve the name we’re credited with. Lastly, we always sing the UP Naming Mahal, with the left arm raised, but then again, I ask you: do we really sing with conviction?

The statements I drop here may be considered a rubbing of a stone against another stone. But, when everything seems so wrong and gets overlooked, I guess we just don’t have a choice but to have to resort to that.

Not

Re-blogging felt unoriginal, pathetic, and lackluster, because they sapped my creative juices, acted like a supernatural force that zapped neurons down, ruthlessly, slowly draining them to the last drop like a strainer sieving spaghettini strands.

New Year

Are New Years are about resolutions which we give up on before March?