Site Closed Collage and Bad Memories

after 48 years of thinking, i'm putting up the "site closed" collage again in my geocities website. i just love how i pasted all the pictures of my friends randomly. and just for fun, i tried to identify who's in each picture and where the picture was taken. surprisingly, hindi ko na maalala yung isa. blame it on my short-term memory.



FROM TOP TO BOTTOM PICS, LEFT TO RIGHT COLUMN: abu and dacayo in front of oblation; quezon hall in UP; palma hall in UP; ate mickey and hubby and dog and jansen in fun run; me and barot in hacienda roaring; me, donna, pam and lex in CASAA; alan and becca in CASAA; UP chapel; another UP chapel pic; dex of compsoc; doe and des of compsoc; me up close; melchor hall in UP; jazzie and her college friends; blockmates in front of manila cathedral; blockmates inside fort santiago; tfa studio pic; compsoc friends; hannes pogi; me and kareen at SM manila; me and barot; blockmates in front of church ruins in ilocos; blockmates in malacanang of the north; blockmates at the top of a lighthouse in ilocos; blockmates in pagudpod; chico plate; another chico plate; jigs pogi; karen of compsoc; lex at SM manila; another melchor hall pic; old picture of gonzales hall; at the eng'g lobby during graduation; another pic at eng'g lobby during graduation; luanne of compsoc; mayk manyak; officemates of jazzie at accenture; naj; barot walking away; olib; jingo; pon; row 2 during graduation; another chico plate; row 3 during graduation; tfa tambayan; another pic of tfa tambayan; tfa tambayan in the eve of rummage sale; moritz boys; UP website logo; the person whose name i completely forgot; alan QT; yuri pogi (btw, most tfa guys claim they have "pogi" as surname); zee of compsoc; veej pogi; and ien pogi (hahaha!).

whew! memories... i got a lot of them! speaking of memories... yesterday, as some of my friends would remember, was my birthday. i did a lot of reminiscing and regression. most of the memories that haunted me for the longest time are bad memories. i would like to share my top 5 college bad memories. i'm hoping some of the people involved (and who are able to read this post) will forgive, understand, and/or hopefully forget about it. i mean, it's not worth the neurons... but then again, can't and won't blame them. i myself can't do the same either.

- i had a heated verbal fight with jing at the TFA tambayan. if i can remember it right, he accused me of being a traitor. i was running for student council chair and abandoning my memcom head post. it also had something to do with jansen and the tfa applicants. really can't remember the details of the reason for the fight. it ended with him shouting at me saying, "yan ba ang magiging chair ng ASC?" i spent the rest of my college days [and probably spend my whole life] avoiding him. but he has this way of constantly reminding me of what happend.

- the whole AF hated me because someone told them i was against their smoking [in their tambayan]. everyone in AF, including those i call "friends", was not talking to me and was raising an eyebrow here and there. i was really clueless until someone showed me their logbook (during an ovenight). sabi doon, chu-chu daw ako ni ma'am lisa santos. it even had a caricature of me riding a choo-choo train. hahaha. now i think of it as funny, but back then it was a stab. rigel was the only one who tried to hear me out. for the record, i was not against it. i even proposed for it to be "legal" or allowed since the "no smoking campus" is impossible to achieve.i don't know what happened along the way, but i think [and i feel] were ok now.

- i stopped writing to my high school bestfriend. she wrote me at least twice a semester, snail mailing and e-mailing me every time she has something to tell me. she asked how i was and how was my studies. i never replied. or maybe i did once. no, i didn't ignore her letters. in fact, when the time came she got tired of writing (or so i thought), i read her letters over and over again. i posted her pictures (our pictures) at my bedroom wall. i couldn't tell her i was not ok, that i was flunking math, that UP is fucking hard, that i miss davao, that i have a new set of friends, that i'm a totally different person now. i don't want her to think i've changed because i don't know if she'd still like me as a friend despite those changes.

- i detached myself to alan. don't get me wrong. there was no "us"... ha! there can never be. *smirk* during the ilocos-vigan trip, in pagudpod beach specifically, he told me he won't get himself wet. to cut the story short, he plunged into the water [after seeing the awesome beach and our blockmates having fun swimming] and left me in the cottage. anyway, i saw how trusting and vulnerable i was when it comes to him. and i hated it (the feeling, that is). to cut the story shorter, after that, i never let myself get too close to him, literally and figuratively speaking. i don't know if he noticed, but i did that consciously. result: i never got to know him the way our other friends did. but this bad memory has a happy ending. we are as close as ever (or at least that's how i see it now), aren't we alan?

- probably the worst memory i had in college involved nobody but myself. yeah, college was a lot fun than high school for me. but i realized that with complete freedom and independence, i can get overly mediocre. yes, i became ordinary. in high school, i was different, a superhuman ready to change the world. UP presented itself as a venue for me to practice my superhuman powers with other superhumans. it turned out destructive for me. i remember my high school valedictory speech entitled, "Reaching for the Stars." i guess when you're there with other stars, your glow seem insignificant compared to the suns and supernovas.

good memories naman next time.