1. a haircut: I realized after getting my graduation picture taken that the whole time when I was in high school, I had long hair. And more than half of my college life I had short hair. And only now that I've grown it long again and have gotten my college grad pic taken did I realize that my grad pic doesn't represent my college life. When I think about it, my hair in the high school yearbook is just the same length as my hair right now. I should've had it cut before the pictorials.
   
2. bangs: I miss my bangs. It made me feel like I was beautiful.
   
3. appreciation: If I were a Sim, I'd ask someone to appreciate me. T_T

JOKE LANG. I only cost P282 hahaha. XD

You look it over the following list
and see how many of these things you
have done. BUT you have to ADD up the
money amount along the way. Then post
the amount that you are as the title
of the bulletin.

PS: the smaller the better!

1. Had sex: P40.00

2. Smoked: P40.00

3. drank alcohol: P20.00

4. Went skinny dipping: P40.00

5. Kissed someone of the opposite sex:
P4.00

6. Kissed someone of the same sex:
P20.00

7. Cheated on a test: P28.00

8. Fell asleep in class: P20.00

9. Been expelled: P40.00

10. Been in a fist fight: P40.00

11. Given oral: P40.00 (fellatio i
think
counts)

12. Got oral: P40.00

13. Prank called the police: P40.00

14. Stole something: P40.00

15. Done drugs: P40.00

16.Dyed your hair: P20.00

17. Done something sexually with
someone older (like a few years):
P40.00.

18. Courted someone OVER 18 (if your
under 18): P40.00

19. Ate a whole bag of oreos: P40.00

20. Cried yourself to sleep: P2.00

21. Said you love someone but didnt
mean it: P4.00

22. Been in love: P20.00

23. Got caught doing something that
you shouldnt have been doing: P40.00

24. Went streaking: P4.00

25. Got arrested: P40.00

26. Cuddled: P4.00

27. Peed in the pool: P20.00

28. Played spin the bottle: P40.00

29. Done something you regret: P20.00

Now add up and post as "I COST P....."

I wonder why it's the smaller the better...@_@ I sure want to be worth something.

Guys, I would like you to meet Rafael Nadal, undisputed King of Clay, and Ana Ivanovic, one of the three up-and-coming Serbian's in the Tennis pro's circuit. I wonder, do they look alike to you? Because just recently, these two players have been aesthetically compared with, you'd never guess...




well, me.



*silence*

Honestly, the Rafael thing I feel rather uncertain about, it was an ancient observation I first heard from someone late last year. But on the other hand, I really don't mind apparently looking like Ana. XD (You can get a better idea of how pretty she is by clicking me!) Kuya Mark and Stephen have even started calling me Ivanovig or Ivanovigile. But I think it all started when I began to get my serves in. Haha. Kuya Mark was so used to my serves going out all the time that he couldn't understand the balls that were coming in from my service all of a sudden. Wehehe. I dunno how that turned into Ana, but it did. (Maybe it was also the effect of my having a Novak Djokovic* aka. Stephen doubles partner -- which by the way made us undefeated for a while XD)

* Novak Djokovic is another Serbian who
recently beat the champ Roger Federer

So anyway, I mentioned that my service has improved. I'm hoping it's not because I've been borrowing rackets from different people these past weeks. I hope when I finally get myself a racket of my own it'll stay. See, my racket got lost. T_T And while I figure out which part of my daily expenses I must give up to save for a new one, Ive been borrowing all over the place. It was when I started borrowing Kuya Mark's rackets that Ivanovigile was born. ^__^ (No, I don't think he's selling it though...*tears*)

So anyway...(horribly rough transition to a new topic)...

Advanced Happy Birthday Sigrouney Lina Pena!!

(I forgot how to get the n-curl working using hotkeys..T.T)

Today was a wonderful day. :) I got to see Sig and Gen again for a while. The rest of the day was better than okay too. XD

I think you could say I'm happy. *huggles world*



___
Ooh! And last: Happy Birthday Kai! :D

The first batch of exams have come and gone. And I'm still here. ^___^ Hahaha...What a thing to say.

I've been trying out new study strategies recently, if only to boost my dwindling productivity. I've tried the conventional staying up 'til very late at McDonalds on the eve of an exam. I'm usually with Tennis UP people, and we go home around four in the morning. I did this three days in a row and on the morning of the third day I was definitely bangag. I'd blurt out incoherent phrases everywhere, and my logic was a little skewed. I think I was counting the number of people who noticed my condition, but bangag as I was, I wouldn't have remembered.

I've also tried the no-sleep strategy: stayed up all night solving Theory of Numbers problems with JE until it was time to go to school for our first classes. (It's kind of disgusting when you think about it, but we were sure to go home and take our baths before the study session began). Anyway, I couldn't handle it, and had to sleep in the car for one and a half hours instead of study while waiting for my first class to start. (I came one and a half hours early for my first class, and it was good that I did because I wouldn't have been able to sleep before we had a quiz...which surprised me, although it wasn't a surprise quiz, and I only remembered that the prof announced it the meeting before when I was in the middle of the second problem.)

The final strategy, which I think is the most effective whenever I successfully wake up for it, is the sleep early-wake up early strategy. I go to bed around 7-8pm, sleep for six hours and wake up at three-ish, head to a 24-hour establishment, and hit the books. (Not in my pajamas, of course. I take a bath and get ready somewhere there.) This is one very productive study technique, as long as you actually wake up that early in the day and don't forget your pencil case. (It happened to me once and I slept the rest of the morning in McDonalds, unable as I was to solve any math problems. O_o)

All those strategies all in two weeks. You can imagine the damage it has done to my bioclock. I'm not quite sure I can call it sustainable just yet. Give me some time~ Hehehe.

Sustainable environmental quality would be nice.

Anyway. I did find Forever, just in case you wanted to know. Hehehe. I'm not sure though if it'll help in my story anymore, since my plot has shifted to something away from the theme in that book, but it was a pleasant read nonetheless. And it gave me one or two insights on how to handle young adult fiction. (Number one insight: never use kilometric sentences -- which is my disease. >_<) Well, anyway, it doesn't really matter, because at the moment I'm only on the planning stage the plan I have for my story is on the rocks. You see, I think I bit off more than I can chew. I chose for my young adult story, a sort of coming of age of a teenage boy of 18 who is faced with the burden of coming up with a certain amount of money the quickest way possible for the treatment of his girlfriend diagnosed with ectopic pregnancy.

• Issue number one: an ectopic pregnancy can kill a woman in at most 24 hours. The baby isn't even considered in this case because it'll die anyway. So my story more or less happens in a span of a day. I'm wondering if I can successfully render a fast-paced story.
  
• Issue number two: does he get the money or not? There are many options: borrow from friends, pawn property, look for a 5-6 lender, tell the parents, enter into an underground group doing shady stuff for big bucks. I haven't even answered this very basic problem at this, supposedly late stage of planning.
• Issue number three: the girlfriend dies vs. doesn't die. At first I was dead set (no pun intended) on killing the poor girl as a sort of turning point, so that in hysteria, my young adult will be pushed to choose the worst option if only to pay for all the debts. But then the professor said that anything that happens after her death will be uninteresting to the reader. It has to culminate with the death, if I choose to kill her. So now I'm thinking, maybe he does get the money, after everything he goes through, and the girl still dies. I don't know.
  
• Issue number four: what coming of age realization does my young adult get from all of this? Basic would be to be careful not to get your girlfriend pregnant. Not so coming of age if you ask me. It has to be something deeper, more life-changing in a sense. But what?

Grawr~
Not something I should be blogging about is it? O_o I dunno, this could be an equivalent for free-writing. Maybe a lightbulb will light up if I keep doing this to solve my young adult lit problems.

Hmm...It's almost mid-August. Time is so fleet-footed.

Preserve the environment. I wonder what in particular about the environment I can make a propaganda poster on. Grr.

Finally...

Belated Happy Birthday Criselda Bugasto!
aka. Selda, Barri, Reiko, et cetera. XD

For the first time in my Iska life, I've found a book that cannot be found in the UP Library. ^o^ Forever by Judy Blume. This fact isn't exactly a good thing for me, I need it read and studied so that I can be guided in my young-adult writing under the same...*cough*...theme.

To those of you who know what Forever is about..Lemme just say that my professor referred me to it. :P


Which reminds me, I read this short story which was published back in the 50's about pedophilia. The amazing thing about it is that it was written subtly enough to have been accepted by the publishers. Pedophilia and anything sexual in the literature used to be (and still is) a very controversial topic, especially in the Philippines, since the biggest market for books in this country are schools, i.e., private schools. But if you read the story, you'd have only a vague idea about what's happening unless it was mentioned to you beforehand that there is something fishy going on in the story.

I need to learn how to write about a subject like that in the grace and style Alfon rendered it in. *.*

Anyway, I saw Stacy yesterday in Trinoma. It wasn't planned...I was supposed to study in Philcoa but the UPCAT traffic was bad so I went straight to the quickest mall I could get to. It just so happened that Stacy was consulting with a professor there, and so for a brief few hours, we were in the presence of each other (most of the time she was in the other table talking with her professor). The only time we were really able to chat was when we moved from Starbucks, where I was originally studying, to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, the place Stacy was having her consultation. I missed her. TuT Maybe over the sem break we can go to Trinoma again, this time for fun, and with Gen.

I got a sprain recently. The type my orgmates said would last two weeks the moment they laid eyes on the swelling. It's the rainy season together with the addiction to tennis that orchestrated my injury. And it's the addiction alone that lead to its surrender. It didn't even last a week (well, it hasn't really been a week since the sprain), and I wanted to play so bad that the sprain just retreated. Mwahahaha. It still stings sometimes but at least I can run now. Running after the ball is such a pleasure~ Hehehe..

The rain has been a tennis player's strongest adversary these past days. It's the only thing that has kept me from playing, acads excluded (the sprain didn't do the job). Bad time to get hooked. Tsktsk.

Anyway. The mother again tearing me away from asking to use the laptop..I'll have to once again cut my entry short.

Ehehe. August is hopefully a better month for couples who have survived July.