tomorrow is our permanent address

It's a number of doom, along with 1.550 and 80.91g/mol and 3 postquarters, and do you know why? It's the number of leukocytes in my bloodstream.

It's also the number that made my doctor wonder if I caught dengue for the second time in one year.

I'm serious. Who else could be that unlucky?

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We won second place in our di-kum! Late news, I know. Bad news travels fast, after all. => Cesium won third and Magnesium won first and they deserved it. I guess the judges only found us cute. No false humility there.

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After four years, my family got me a new bike.

I can hardly blame them for waiting that long, though. The last bike I had I rode for the last time in grade 5. I just so happened to ride it in a flowerpot that used to stand in the middle of the garden in Pangasinan. The bike was never the same since. Neither was the flowerpot.

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Four summers after that, I rode a motorcycle into the flowerpot that replaced that flowerpot. Guess what happened.

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I forget that I owe belated birthday greetings to Vince Bernardo, Ate Dyane, and Anna. Happy birthday! =3

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I tried writing my story for Filipino in Filipino.

Let me explain that. It would be much easier to write it in English, and then translate that into Filipino later on. Much, much easier. But once in the process of being translated, it would sound weird. Very very weird.

So I tried writing it in Filipino, and thank goodness my classmates- Norman and Emman especially- were so patient. So patient, in fact, that I felt guilty.

"Norman! Anong Tagalog ng sword?"

"Spada?"

"A, oo nga no...!"

Then:

"Spell spada!"

And, after that:

"Anong Tagalog ng needle? Teka, alam ko 'to... Begins with the letter k, di ba?"

A pause. Fingers snapping in air that would give no answers.

"I give up. Anong Tagalog ng needle?"

"Karayom!"

"Onga no! Salamat!"

If you suck at Filipino, it's best to have very patient classmates and the ability to make yourself seem ridiculous.