i nearly died yesterday.

sleep was heavy, and so instead of my preconceived image of me in UP by 6:30 am, i got up by 6:45, rushed in bathing, ran all the way to trinoma to ride the UP jeep and arrived tremendously [and relatively late] at 7:30 in that hot-as-hell summer morning.

the day before i arrived at a much later time, thanks to me and my stalking tendencies on a competitive DSL line. but as luck would have it, and since apparently, the universe is trying its best to like me, i easily snagged a slot in my much prayed for creative writing 10 class. it only took about 10 minutes of me wasting my life in a line of people, people desperately trying to adjust their existence in a discriminating, unaccommodating, overassuming educational system. and so while they wait in pursed lips and hopeful hearts, i look at them and question why they would not even scorn the system, revolt against the repressive ideologies that make us do this, this waiting in line thing under the hot sun, or within closed cramped spaces of cheap concrete and aged hallways. but since i am one with them in haggardly defining what would become of our lives as shaped by this university, i tried my best to hold on to my patience, thanks to my hearty conversations in bicol with a former school mate who dreams of a life in law school and to me and my efforts of teaching a Korean political science student to pronounce my name while telling her it's not really as ethnic as she thinks.

and after that thursday, much has happened, in this saga called enrollment, of UP students braving the searingly hot asphalt in cheap rubber or overrated havaianas. it was odd to look at a summer day with people going about with their lives, as if there was nothing so hot and punitive soaring above them, in flares of pain and in glares of deadly warmth.

the friday story was about me and my wishes for a decent physical education class. a class where i could have my mind turned off without me being bothered by the semi-death of my neurons while my muscles, nerves and my desire for a swimmer body get their fulfillment in surges of salty sweat and burnt skin. but before my body gratification, i opted to tickle my dormant sense of reason and chose to kill and revolt for a nice, satisfying philosophy class. and the result was three hours of locking myself up in the faculty center, enduring the blandness of the pale yellow paint, the faceless shoes, of dusty chuck taylors passing by as i breathed, semi-lying on the hallways. i never thought that philosophy classes could be done and all inside cramped rooms outside of my beloved palma hall. i stared in aghast as sir valero entered this pseudo-decent space and talked to 15 or so students about philosophical problems and the utilization of dialectics in solving dilemmas in ethics. and to top it all, i wasn't even in his class, there i was, begging for a slot, as i stood speechless with a head band tucked all the way against my sweat-laden hair. i looked at him and his passionate talk on the beauty of philosophical reasoning, and then i would switch glances towards that girl who fondled her phone all throughout, that guy who was scribbling something on a sheet, that lady swirling her manicured fingers on her bleached, ugly hair. and i told myself: i should have gotten their fucking slots.
and so after that i did get in his class. and he said something about moving to another room where everyone can breathe decently. and then i walked away, so much swallowed by this system, a system that laughs at tired limbs and disheartened souls walking around hallways like they were even cared for. but no.

before my attempts at an inclusion in an animate philosophy class, i braved through modern technological pretensions just to get myself enrolled. i never used an ATM, and it felt so much awkward when, in a sunshiny April morning, you are soaked in healthy morning sunlight as you avoid the glare while keying in your ATM pin code. then the machine would cough out and rough sounds go about, the morning's solemnity would be nudged by bills slipping through tiny slits in easy sways. but you know you won't be fooled by the convenience of it all. the morning was way, way better.

when they said UP was smart, they never really referred to the physical education department.

before i thought it was just me and my obstinate prejudices against things i innately abhorred. but now i realize nothing really was wrong about me. it's just PE. i want lawn tennis so i could run within court lines and hit balls while my arm muscles would twitch in violent mini-spasms and afterwards i could get arms as big as those of ubiquitous print ad models. but nobody every told me i need to collide head on with the muddy logic of a PE instructor. and so i thought that the physical hell of the enrollment process was hell enough, there i was falling deeper into the pits of mental nullity, inside the physical education faculty room.and yes, as sad as it may seem, there would be no perfect summer class for me. all i could ever get, [and all i did] were my creative writing classes at nine and me running like mad for my philosophy 120 class right after. no more PE to complement summer's heat generators. it would just be me and my brain, and this neat UP community fried in mad [but beautiful] waves of hell.