because i’m still a debater

After more than 3 months of sabbatical, I debated again today. *hohum*

Joining the training of the NUS Debate Team really made me happy. I hope I can train tomorrow in Bukit Timah!

(too tired and hungry to update a sensible post)

Kosovo’s free but I’m not

I’m not really a matterloaded person with regard to what’s going on around the world, but I’m happy with what happened yesterday. Kosovo finally declared independence from Serbia! Although issues will still continue to sporadically grow given the unending opposition of Serbia itself and Russia and as well as its allies, I still feel happy that long years of suffering from a manipulative Serbia (at least symbolically) seem to end now. Kosovars now get a taste of sovereignty, at least as it is backed up by the United States explicitly and almost by the general international community. If opposing forces say that this is illegitimate with regard to Serbian Rule and if they fear that it serves as a dangerous precedent for “rebellious” and “struggling” territories to just assert themselves in the international community, I continue to believe that this is just an extreme case of irreconcilable differences. So much for the long wars of a plethora of causes such as differences in religion, ethnicities, history, and even language (I think it was sort of mentioned in my Language Planning and Policy Class two weeks ago)— Kosovo is now free.

We should concede to the fact that indeed, some differences are really reconcilable such as maybe the example of Mindanao’s struggle to form an independent state from the Philippines, or some other similar cases in Georgia or maybe Basque (or maybe not, that’s the reason why Spain continues to oppose Kosovo). But how do we really determine whether these differences are petty or not? I don’t cloak myself in the character of a political analyst, but as what I observe, this is something beyond the long occupation of the United Nations from the late 1990s in Kosovo which was never successful since it just remained as part of Serbia still; not when autonomy in terms of administration as offered by Serbia herself to Kosovo as a region serves only tokenistic purposes; and not when Serbia, despite considering Kosovo as their heart of “Medieval history” (or something to that effect) continues to not give Kosovo what it wants. And not when it has even become an integral factor in the relations between Serbia and the European Union. Man, that is really a big deal.

I still find it amazing to think about what could possibly happen maye within a month in Kosovo. I’m still thinking of all possible ‘diplomatic” warnings given by Serbia to the countries who will recognize the independence of Kosovo, or the cases to be filed by the Serbian Parliament to the now government officials of Kosovo, or worse, even the continuous belligerence of Russia that might even use its gas and its missile targets in Poland and some other places (apparently I forgot lol) as blackmailing tools just to possibly regain the Kosovars back to Serbia. Oh well, if they have the ass of the United States behind them, I don’t Kosovo’s possible fear should be decremented. And as usual, UN meetings (even termed “emergency”) still do not work, as evidenced by the meeting called for by Russia last week.

Just thinking… who knows? Kosovo might be the next Singapore. After a period of depression from Independence, in some few years, they might be a developed country too. *back this up with imaginative economic principles which I lack lol*.

No emotional resonance or whatever, I just suddenly feel happy with last Sunday’s declaration of Independence. Yay to Kosovo.

***

And although Kosovo is now free, I still remain in captivity by my requirements. Oh no, mid- semester break is next week, and I still have many things to do. I have group projects in all my modules and many of them will be due the week after the break. So now, it seems to be not a break at all. It just sounds like a break to make all requirements! Haha. But I still continue to be optimistic about things, something like having a mantra of “Jesus take the wheel” or “I will survive”, but yeah, WE HAVE TO GO TO THAILAND!

We are still waiting for the disbursement of our allowance though. No allowance = No Thailand. I only have enough to live decently, but I no longer have money for travel, even just to Sentosa. LOL. I still do not want to bother my parents at home by asking them to send me money, especially if it is just for Thailand or travel. I’d feel guilty, they already gave me enough money before I left. So I guess I have to do my own saving here. My brother needs a new computer since our desktop at home’s already fucked up, so that alone should motivate me to save money for myself. Saving’s relatively easy since I don’t eat a lot, but the most bitter part of it is the fact that I have to trim down drinking and clubbing. That’s not fun after all.

All work and no play alcohol makes Raymund a dull boy. Right?

Vday Narrative

Since I don’t have anyone to celebrate Valentine’s Day with here in Singapore, I just considered it as another ordinary day. Although waking up at 7:00 AM for an EL3251 class doesn’t really sound so ordinary, I just went to Burger King at the Arts Canteen first to get something to munch in class then proceeded to my class early for fear of being late again.

At first, everything was normal in the class. Prof. Park was early as usual, and many of my classmates were late. The same pattern of discussion, starting with the discussion of the assigned readings for the day then a 10- minute break then a group activity or sort of an application output at the 2nd half of the class. After talking about the semiotic processes of differentiation (Saussure, leave me alone) and the differences between a Singaporean “heartlander” and “cosmopolitan”, everyone just started to change.

Everyone was greeting one another a Happy Valentine’s Day. Pretty common, eh? Not quite. They were even exchanging gifts, one was giving out cup cakes (Li Ping) while one was giving out chocolates (Ying Ying). Ying Ying even gave me a chocolate. And I was really surprised when Gim Yong gave everyone a simple yet heartwarming Valentine card. Here it is:

(sorry for the sucky picture; it was just photographed, not scanned.)

Even though I became religion-less since last year, I still appreciate Gim Yong’s card because yeah, I still believe in God but not in the Church *blabbers*. And it is just amazing that these people, even though we have just met just last month and even though we’re not really close friends, still bother to do such stuff. They still bother to add an international student like me in their list, and that is just so… memorable.

After class, Ying Ying and Li Ping invited me to join them for lunch so I said yes. But before we went to the Arts Canteen, Gim Yong and Ben asked me to help them out surprise their friend, who was waiting some steps away from the Central Library. The plan was for me to give their girl (space) friend a bouquet of spinach with this script:

Me: “Hi, I am Raymund. Your secret admirer asked me to give this bouquet of spinach to you, as a symbol of your friendship. He hopes you like this Valentine gift”.

It’s really funny but I’m so glad to help them out with that plan. Lol. Even though almost all my classmates were watching while I was talking to the girl. Lol.

And this was our conversation during lunch:

Me: You know what, I’m really surprised to see that you really celebrate Valentine’s Day here.

Ying Ying: Why, don’t you do the same to your friends in the Philippines?

Me: No. In the Philippines, Valentine’s Day is just for couples. If you don’t have a partner go and be bitter the whole day. Or at least that’s what I observe with my friends.

Ying Ying (who went to Korea as exchange student before): It’s okay, in Korea it’s even worse! You’re doomed if you don’t have a partner!

Li Ping: Is that the reason why they always date people? 

Oh well… hearts.

Now I’ve got a reason not to be bitter during Valentine’s Day. Once I’m back to the Philippines, I guess I just have to think of my friends here in Singapore. That alone is enough to make me happy during Valentine’s Day.

I am really loving my classmates here in Singapore. ^-^

Okay, this narrative sucks. I’m back to my EL3880B Essay.

That’s why some things need to be implicit

Thanks for today’s short albeit v. worthwhile talk. I am overwhelmingly happy and I greatly hope that the things that you’ve mentioned will push through. I am still scared whether I deserve such thing, but I am just so happy that you’ve thought of such a possibility.

I’ll be good. And I’ll work hard. Harder than ever for it.

***

The biggest question: Whaaaaat Valentine’s Day?

I just need to go out, but our allowance is still not disbursed yet. So yeah, total loser, might end up doing nothing in PGP while everyone’s out to the clubs. And that’s like… almost a fact. Salvage me, please. Any plan or whatsoever. Text me or whatever.

I wanna go to Zouk!

***

My room is clean. I love this freshly-recovered-from-fever feeling that made me clean my room today. Brown is the theme of my room. Did I mention that I love coffee?

Go. Decipher what you can out of this ambiguous post.

I wanna go back to the Philippines for this :p

This is just one of the best brandsales ever. Of course, the UP Debate Society never gets tired of organizing such amazing brandsales for everyone!

It’s gonna be a fantastic brandsale. Go and enjoy! ^-^

An Entry of 4 Parts

Six years of wasting spending time online by blogging and writing about stuff online, be it the informal ones such as this or the formal ones that I have tried a few years back, made me think that I am fully fit for such an activity which some people regard as a “craft”, or worse, as their lives. I’ve had my fair share of experiences in blogging, such as getting to know people, getting to know about their lives, and even getting a topic for my undergraduate thesis. Then again, things can just drastically change; in fact, I am now thinking that blogging may not be totally for me.

Bloghopping, or the practise of reading, commenting, and interacting with random people’s blogs on the regular, is a totally separate activity from just blogging. There really is something very distinctive about bloghopping that makes it completely different from mere blabbering about your life online. There is an extra burden of making sure that your entries are worth hopping to for your bloghoppers, from the mere selection of topic to the frequency of getting your turns to speak and even up to the register that you choose to write your entries and respond to theirs. It also involves some more stuff such as recognising that adjacency pairs of interactions just have to exist, and that there is a general system (or framework) that you have to submit yourself to, whether it is a result of your own volition or not. Sounds Schegloff-ish, right? But yea, there is really something unique (for the lack of a better term) about bloghopping that makes itself a system of its own right. That is something that I thought was a legitimate rationale for choosing it as my thesis topic.

I dunno if this is just a simple and natural wear-and-tear that I am currently experiencing, or prolly just a matter of getting tired with other, real- life stuff that made me think that I am no longer fit for bloghopping. The more that I am being able to experience what Hine refers to as “virtual ethnography“, and the more that I spend time in making friends through bloghopping, and the more that I study it, the more that I get to think that everything seems to be not worth all the pains in the ass that I have gotten from it. Talk about the people who may have just forgotten their netiquette of ignoring, spamming, or thinking that bloghoppers are just there for their Google AdSense hits or whatevs, and talk about the people who carefully pretend to have read your whole entry and make a comment out of it even if you know for yourself that they have only the first fxcking line of your whole entry. I just think that life online is just something about it: it has been very much mutual since I remember that I also do that to people. And no one should even care.

When I took English 199 (Undergraduate Research aka Thesis 1) last semester, I thought that my drying interest for bloghopping would be rejuvenated because I now feel obliged to do it, since I would not be able to collect my data without it. For some months it was effective, and people such as my bloghopping best friend Mariel might attest to this. I even made this WordPress blog for the specific function of my thesis, that’s why I also maintain my Blogspot and Livejournal for some more personal entries which are not optimally fit for bloghopping (edit: don’t try to view them, most of the entries are friends locked lol). But my interest is really gradually drying up. And I feel terribly sad— I am not just losing my interest in bloghopping per se, but I am now starting to miss out on the activity that partly made the past six years of my life happy.

As you can see, I still update my blog, or blogs for that matter. I am still the same person who always sees to update the world of my recent helluva rides in my life, since my star complex (as the English majors mock me) is always in me. But as my bloghopping friends might notice, I am no longer a visible creature in their blogs. Hence, I really feel that I cannot be the same person without blogging, but at the same time, I have just realized that I can easily abandon bloghopping.

With regard to my thesis, I still do not know how to deal with it once I finally decide to abandon my source of data. I think I will have to cross the bridge when I get there. In Ma’am Laurel’s words in our English 120 (Stylistics) lecture last semester, “Be sure that you like your thesis topic, to the extent that you would want to sleep with it and spend nights with it in bed” (she really meant the double entendre). But now, I just do not have the enough libido to tell myself that I am aroused by my topic, or at least, for now.

So bloghopping friends, feel free to remove me from your links now. You may see me once in a while in your sites, but I no longer expect to see you in mine. People just abandon their linked friends once they start to abandon them. But in circumstances when I just miss bloghopping, I’ll make sure that I will drop by your domains, read your entries as thoroughly as I have been doing since before, and will make sure to give you the comments (and the hits) that you have always wanted to have. Feel free to do the same if you wish.

Bloghopping might not be for me now, but blogging is something that really makes me complete. ^-^

***

While playing Pusoy Dos (a local version of Poker or whatever), Wayne asked Dake and me this very existential, out-of-the-blue, albeit important question: “Anong gagawin nyo pag next week wala na ako? Hindi nyo na ako kasama?” (translation: What will you do if I’ll no longer be around next week? If I’ll no longer be with you?, or something to that effect; I’m poor with quotations and translations lol).

I dunno. Even though I don’t know if there’s even the slightest validity to that question, and even though he tells me that I look grepa, I just don’t want to think about the grim possibility of a sudden collapse of our “clique”. It’s just so weird.

***

On a happy note, I’m really looking forward to Chinese New Year. This is going to be the first time that I’m celebrating it in a country with 77% percent of its population Chinese. Wayne, Dake, and me will go to Sentosa this Thursday and Friday to celebrate it with some booze (for me) and some man- made beach, while almost everything in Singapore will be closed for such an important holiday for them.

***

I’ll be getting a haircut tomorrow. And I’ll be having my wi-fi fixed tomorrow, finally. I do not have a choice but to just use StarOffice in the mean time, so I will just have to get my MS Office once I return to the Philippines. I tried StarOffice and I don’t think that it’s that bad. It’s free, so I don’t have the right to complain, right? Oh no, I have to go to HP Alexandra again. Wuuuh.

Still waiting for my friend’s reply, but I hope I can pay a visit.

Should sleep now. This is such a long post.

I’m so full

I am v. happy.

Thank you so much for everything.
You know who you are.