tomorrow is our permanent address

So our paper is due on Monday and we're almost all of us clustered (damn if Statistics will rid me of the use of a perfectly acceptable word) in Jasper Vince Jio's condo unit working on it, or at least pretending to work on it. Terence and Orven are going off and buying us lunch and Alexeis is playing music and laptop screens shine with data on smoking, personal history and family influence and peer pressure and all the things we should be running tests on and analyzing.

We set records for procrastination and unproductivity, but what the hell, I love my classmates.

Our class is doing a research paper on the factors affecting smoking in UP Manila students. In order to conduct said research, we have to hand out questionnaires, to get our statistics straight. Questions 16 and 17 of the questionnaire read as follows:

16. How many close friends do you have? _________

17. How many of them smoke, if any? _______

This is in order to determine the percentage of smokers among the respondent's close friends. Our prof approved, or at any rate he didn't disapprove. That doesn't stop me from feeling faintly ridiculous about it.

A lesson only the most stubborn of you have not figured out by yourselves by now: never, ever offer to write the paper. Never. If your class is doing a research paper and you need someone to compile the related literature everyone else has found, do not offer to do it. Not even on pain of death. You may think, Sure, it's an okay job, they've written summaries of the existing trends, it can't be that bad. It can.

It isn't due anytime soon, but by the time it is I won't have the chance to complain about it.

I don't like statistics. Any fondness I've had for any form of math was all because of the sheer common-senseness of it, because once you grasp the basic you're all set to go, and so I don't like statistics for the same reason I don't like calculus: you have to go through every single possible case before you can be let off the leash, and there's no way to check your answers without resorting to brute force.

I don't mind PI100, and not just because we're finishing a week early. What I mind is the rest of the world being shocked, shocked, that Jose Rizal could be anything apart from a paragon of virtue sent from heaven to save the Philippines from those nasty Spaniards.* Heroes? Are people, just like everyone else, sometimes flawed and sometimes weak and sometimes arrogant and sometimes downright pains in the neck. They just did something, one thing, worth remembering and debating about a hundred years hence. That's all. Rant over.


*Unrelated side note: why is the Filipino for Spanish/Spaniards Kastila? The non-Castilians would be insulted.


When the room temperature is higher than your average body temperature, is when indiscriminate use of the air-conditioner can be, if not justified, at least sympathized with.

By the time you get into college you ought to stop being surprised at how many words you can fit in five sentences, and how many explanations you can't.

Mental note: You never take the easy way out, do you? You have to take both sides and lead them to their logical conclusions and mesh them together and try to look smart. And then you justify it by saying that you can't think any other way. Don't be surprised when your grades come in, Jillian Lee.

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Our Stat exam was moved from this Friday to next Tuesday because the faculty member in charge of making the exam went to Batangas for a workshop and forgot to give the questionnaire to the department.

Manila smells like fish when it rains. Don't stop and wonder why, it will eat up your day.

Apparently the stamp ink does too. Six days and one failed attempt to upload pictures on Facebook later and Enchanted Kingdom's stamp on my right arm is still there. I feel like I've voted, only more productive, and that's a shot at the moon since I still have three years to go before I can cast my first vote.

And this is the summer of finishing all the books I have yet to finish and rereading all the books I have to reread and statistics. Gods above but I've forgotten how much I love Vicky Austin and Bran Davies.

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Yesterday I climbed 32 flights of stairs. Well, 31, really, there was no thirteenth floor. I feel unbelievably productive. It's a good feeling, even though my muscles aren't being cooperative as a result.

Manila in summer is a continuous energy-eating heart-breaking series of heat waves and quests in the pursuit of ice cream, to the detriment of everyone not making a living from selling ice cream or air conditioners, and is definitely not the best setting for your block's biggest loser contest. But hey, you know what they say about beggars and choosers.

And once I finish this paper the second sem will be over and done with, at long last, and school will not be a problem for at least a week. Thank God for small things, whether it reminds you of the book you have to write a paper on (in Filipino, don't forget) or no.

Also! Have I ever said that Tolkien is awesome? Because he is, and that's coming from someone who isn't exactly a fan of Lord of the Rings. Then again it's also coming from someone who downloaded a bunch of his essays and things and is busy reading them instead of writing a paper, so it might not be much of a basis for a statement.

Tito Claro has a cold. When he's done with his tissue he throws it out of the car window. Now, I know that tissues are biodegradable, and that the worst they can do flying out a window if they don't hit anyone along the way is look unsightly, but still. If you think that you can help but laugh at the sight you have obviously never seen a wad of tissue fly out a car window at 80 km/h.

Brought Marvin to the CSI dog show, and for once Im actually glad he has a prostate problem. He would have been very embarrassing if he didnt. XD

Andaming Shih Tzu. And till now Im still wondering who came up with that name in the first place.

Atonement is better the second time around, but maybe thats because you can appreciate the slowness of the prose now that you know whats going to happen. Or maybe because right now I can sympathize with their weather issues.

My story isnt working, and I have a deadline in twelve days. To be more accurate, I am not working, but thats hardly something to complain about, see.