I have just hurdled the infamous “bar exams,” the licensure examinations for aspiring lawyers in the Philippines.
Besides actually passing the exams, successfully concluding the eight (8) examinations scheduled over the four (4) Sundays of November is a significant milestone for all law school graduates, having gone through four or five years of law school, in itself a struggle and a feat. It is the culminating point of the journey taken by many young and aspiring lawyers. As with any culminating point or climax, it is treated with much significance by those who share the same epic narrative and by those who share our aspirations.
This conclusion is of great relief for me, in particular, I would dare say, because it did not take me four or five years—it took me seven years of arduous study which I began back in 2008, as an idealistic 20 year-old fresh graduate from film school. Wide-eyed but terribly unacquainted with the intensive study necessary, I got myself dismissed from the University of the Philippines (UP Law) after a year and a half for failing two basic subjects. I took a break for a little more than half a year, and began another parallel journey in the University of Santo Tomas (UST Law), where it took me many more failures and five more years before I finally made it to graduation day.
To close its celebration of its Quadricentennial, the University of Santo Tomas is holding a two-day festival (January 25 – 26) that hopes to recreate UST in the “perspective of the cultural milieu of old Manila at the turn of the 19th century” through “period costumes, songs, dances, poems and festivity.”
This, I think, is a great opportunity for us to appreciate the role of UST students in Philippine history. It was, after all, the period of Jose Rizal, Emilio Jacinto, Apolinario Mabini and Padre Jose Burgos. However, I am disturbed by the tendency of the administration and many students to regard this celebration as a mere pageantry of costumes and deodorized commemoration of whatever concept of grandeur they have of “old Manila,” devoid of any socio-political context of its times.
Tisay celebrated her fourth birthday last Monday. We had planned to spend Sunday in a theme park, but since the metro was still reeling from the aftermath of tropical storm Ondoy, we decided to have a simple feast of Chinese food at home.
We had a small sansrival cake for Tisay but we even forgot to buy proper birthday cake candles, so we made do with a medium-sized wax candle. Tisay’s understanding of “birthday” unfortunately, is of a party, so all along up until today she doesn’t believe it was her birthday. She insists that she still has to celebrate her “birthday” distinct from the simple celebration we had last weekend. If the weather permits, we will push through with our trip to the theme park this weekend. I think she even expects to give a blow-out bash to her kindergarten classmates.
At the beginning of 2007 I had a mental checklist of things that I would do and a checklist of predictions on how my life would turn out for the year.
However, 2007, turned out to be so much different from how I imagined it when it started. So, so much different, I’m telling you. Fate (or destiny?) had something in store for me, and it really caught me unprepared in the beginning.
By the end of January, I suddenly found myself being invited to join a greek-letter fraternity. You gotta be kidding me, I thought to myself then. List some stereotypes of fratmen and I probably am the opposite to a number of those. But what the hell, weeks later, I eventually became an Upsilonian. It was a life-changing decision and such a difficult process that I’ll never forget nor regret.
So, from the most utterly painful to the most stressful to the most euphoric, ecstatic and fulfilling of experiences of my life this year (and probably of its 19-year entirety to date) belong to this, my junior year in the fraternity. Tangina na lang. Hehe. It’s quite difficult trying to word it out and explain the countless individual experiences adequately without using too many superlatives or revealing things. I guess you just have to take my word for it. If I’m compelled to sum up 2007 in one sentence, I would easily and confidently say, “It was the year I became an Upsilonian.” ‘Yun lang.
(On an interesting note, this blog played a big role in how and why I was recruited into the frat. Oh boy, the things my blog get me into, right? At the beginning of the year, I was hoping it would be TV guestings or something. Hehe, just kidding. Guess the blogger who invited me.)
Anyway, the next big thing for me this year came shortly after I joined. It was late February and early March–campus elections season in the University of the Philippines. It’s not easy explaining to non-UP people how serious elections in this university can get. It’s probably one of the most fiercely contested campus elections in the Philippines, with ideological and historical bitterness and baggage.
Anyway, I was running for college chairperson under STAND-UP. And it was a challenge because students were bitterly divided on some key issues, there was an apparent strong anti-radical sentiment, and we were being contested full-slate for the first time. As everyone in my college knows, despite my “pre-election popularity,” I was defeated. And honestly, for a while then, I was depressed. But as the adage goes, when one window closes, another one opens. It definitely didn’t end with the loss. I eventually got absorbed into the university-wide committees of STAND-UP and from there I worked with the various social and political campaigns throughout the year.
This year-end recap can’t be complete without mentioning that it was the year I first visited the United States. It was a family vacation. We were there for three weeks. Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. There. I think I’ve chronicled it enough already, so I won’t talk much about this. It wasn’t particularly life-changing, but yea, since it’s a major first, it’s worth the mention in this entry.
I’m sorry, I tried to keep this as short as possible. There were a lot of other things that happened this year, of course. I’m sorry if you’re expecting some things I missed out in this entry. Basta, 2007 will forever be etched in my consciousness for many various reasons. These three simply make the top spots.
Similar to last year, I celebrated the New Year with the family in our family-owned grocery in Bulacan. In the land of firecrackers, fireworks aren’t necessarily those beautiful fiery explosions in the sky that one would normally imagine, but they’re definitely heart-thumping and loud. Just when the year was about to change, the bomb-like explosions of the strong firecrackers went off and it went on for a quarter of an hour, with no half a second of silence.
A little past twelve, I went up to our top floor and watched the landscape flicker in chaos. Tens of thousands of mini rockets exploding everywhere across the landscape of Bulacan. It was quite amusing–I imagined it as a scene from a war, with thousands of anti-aircraft missiles flying in the air to fend off a foreign invasion.
We went back home to Quezon City at around 1 in the morning. It was an interesting sight. There were no other vehicles in the expressway except ours, seriously. It felt like we owned it. Or we were the only survivors of my imagined New Year’s war.