This is the end of the first term of this year. I will have at least a week to prepare for the next term, if I will be able to enrol or if I would be readmitted again, that is.

Looking back, I think this has been the most perilous term for me in Mapua including my high school since 1996. And once again, I did not emerge victorious against the challenge.

This has always been me, I bravely put myself up to the test and rarely survive triumphantly. I always end up either half or brain dead and now I feel like a multiple-dead rotten animal.

My Aunt Nancy will be home from Wisconsin, with her husband, on Friday. And together with my family, we will go to Bicol over the weekend but I will be home before next week for work. I will also get to have the chance to have the eight-hour shift on the whole of next week and my coach, Tinx and Armi placed a bet if I could do just that.

One thing I still have to worry about is how to tell Mama about my Design 2 subject and my readmission status. Another test, after the other.. and the school's already over. Darn.





I could already smell the familiar stench of failure. Things hasn't been going as planned again. Mench broke up with me yesterday after she found my picture with Shiela on my friendster account and I have already given up my Design 2 class.

At this very moment, my classmates are taking the Finals for that class while I couldn't get myself to show up there again after I have decided not to finish the notebook compilation Mr. Larion has required us to pass. I never knew what really happened to his underground deal but I've heard he had canceled it because the issue has been very much talked about this term.

I know it was already a losing battle and I would just be wasting my time if I would still take the exams, let alone giving Mr. Larion another chance to humiliate me in front of the class. I better be ready for my appeal letter for it is now as sure as I-will-be-late-again-for-work-tonight, that I would get another kick-out status at the end of this term.

However, there's s still one possibility that I might not need it just yet. Mama asked me the other day if it's okay with me if I don't enrol next term. She said she doesn't know any more where to get the money to get me to school. And all I do is screw up my studies... I am such an ungrateful son, I don't deserve anything.

If it happens, it's going to be the first time in my entire life to be out of school since I was four years old. Now, I'm not sure if I should be happy that I would be able to give my work more time or I should feel bad that I will have to overstay longer in school. But honestly, I'm still scared of the idea of leaving school without a diploma in my hands.

Barely a few hours after Mench broke up with me, I feel that I couldn't manage to look at her in the eye ever again. She's completely convinced that I have cheated on her-just basing on the picture she have seen on my friendster (I never thought she would ever see my account) and that is just one of the many reasons she could find to stay mad at me and I can never blame her for that.



Paging Mike Enriquez!!! Engr. Larion is indirectly soliciting P1500 for each student (on a rocky status) for the Design class. I heard he's done that for several times now, but more rampant in the other school he teaches at, Adamson University. Perhaps he'd sensed that it is more unlikely for him to be caught there because he himself is a Mapuan.

Now, I'm torn to giving in or not. Considering also the fact that I only have a thousand bucks left in my card. And more so, I've heard that there were incidents that a student had paid but failed the subject nonetheless. Pathetic. What if that happens to me? Now that he knows me more than any other student in our class after he clashed out on me just the other day, I could be a potential victim.

Jesus Christ. The Design class is a 4-unit subject and I haven't done good in it. And I have given that pig another chance to press me deeper. He's an opportunist and I wish he gets caught.



I'm not sure which is going to kill me first. Either my school or my job.

I never had a decent sleep for the past five days and I have been struggling with time to keep both my work and my studies. Almost every night, anyone can see me running in the rain as if playing hide and seek with the star-spangled bus, PVP Liner, the only bus line that goes from Manila to Ayala Avenue. Too bad, I was always the 'it'.

In spite of my new Coach's efforts to keep my records clean, by moving an hour or so my scheduled shift every time so that I won't appear 'late', I'd already exceeded the maximum number of absences last Friday because,being the appointed secretary, I really needed an off to give time to make the Student Certificates for the Field Trip class. Thus, I received a memo from my ex-coach, J.Lo, now a supervisor, sending me on a final reprimand status- one step away to suspension.

I got severely reprimanded by Engr. Larion this afternoon. I came in thirty minutes late for my quiz in his class because I had to finish the Design plate also for him. I had a share of his fury right on the Dean's office where he was loitering, almost in affirmation that I'm flunking the subject. He threatened me in front of the whole class, that he would make things really hard for me, as if it wasn't just yet.

I know it's my fault once again. I knew I can't do the plate last night because I didn't have O.T. and instead of directly going home after work, I went with the other agents to the Cable Car, at their prodding, and flirted with Shiela over the phone (I finally have one again, paging hold-uppers!!). Engr. Anastacio once said that we should keep our social lives intact. I don't think that is what he meant by that, keeping pace with your social events while setting aside a school paper, but I think he meant that I should give my girlfriend, Mench at least a quality time, who I haven't been seeing and I have been taking for granted again, for almost three weeks now.

Next week, we're back down to hell again for the Finals and there's just so many things I still have to do, I'm not sure if I'm still alive by that time.



I went to work today two hours ahead of the time.I came in prepared with biscuits and coffee sachets for the Saturday O.T. The guards on the 19th floor of RCBC were stunned to see me there as I was not surprised to see that I was the very first agent to arrive. It was only a quarter past six.

Armed with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (I've been rereading it, in the hope that Dumbledore's not going to die on the second read) and my coffee tumbler as I wandered around the RCBC Plaza while also taking advantage of the company phone all for myself.

Twenty minutes before 9:00 pm, I was still the only agent around, one of the guards asked me again if I was certain that we have work tonight, then I remembered Roselle telling me one time that they were being informed thru text if the shifts were canceled. When the clock strucked 9, I knew that I have made another stupid mistake.
Caused by this already shameful incident, one shameful thing has remained widely to be seen: I am the only agent on my entire program who didn't have a phone.



My sister is in seventh heaven. She has been going out with a childhood crush for a few weeks now after she finally ended her almost 5-year relationship with John. Though I've never really approved of him before, I can't help feeling sorry for John. He's already 31 and probably thinking about settling down with Annalyn but due to his lack of sense of independence and other unresolved matters, my sister had to make the decision, and though she's not closing her doors in true finality for him, I think that, basing on how she frequently asks me if she looks happy right now (I asked her to ask me without smiling), it will take a very long time if they will ever be together again.

A few days ago, I went to work feeling odd. I had the feeling that something wrong's gonna happen that night. I was on the last chapters of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and albeit Julius tried to spoil Hogwarts again by telling me who's gonna die after I called him up during my break, it didn't stop me for feeling bad about it just the same. It has been a long time since the last time that a book has moved me, and if I didn't remember that I was finishing the book on the stairs of a bank entrance in Guadalupe at 3:00 am in the morning, I could've cried with Harry when Dumbledore died.

I have been denied my supposedly first quarterly bonus. My supervisor accounts it to my failure to reach the 80 percent grade in my scorecard. He showed me that I missed by one percent and it's a little bit frustrating that though I trying to work for eight hours for a couple of times now, I'm still the lowest paid in my team.

Some people are thinking that I should make a choice if I should stay with Mench or I try it out again with Shiela (she's in Cebu right now with her family so my life had been relatively peaceful here in Manila for the past fortnight). I know this is a crossroad, and I don't know which better path to take. After a few days of thinking hard, I gave up and now I'm letting things happen as it is. I don't want to push myself in making a decision if I'm not sure where it's going to take me. I've had my share of mistakes, and actually most of my decisions proved to be mistakes in the end, and I'm fed up with that. And as the old saying goes "Not everything that can make you happy is right for you", I'm trying to face life as it comes to me now, leaving everything to fate like I always did.