As I write this there are tears in my eyes/ways to know you're getting older

On a literal level, my eyes are really all welled up and teary. Terrible bastard sinusitis. Been under the weather the last couple of days. So most people get stuffy noses under the circumstances. It's not enough that the stuffy nose is terribly irritating, plus this feeling that there's something pinching the bridge of your nose. I get a bonus irritation. My eyes start going red and they tear up uncontrollably. That or one eyes turns into a leaky faucet and just keeps going all day, as it has done today.

I've been taking pills for the sniffles and so that I'll fall asleep and hopefully sleep through all this. The pills don't help at all with the eyes. I've finished up a bottle of Visine or Eye-Mo or something. Provides only temporary relief. My eyes clear up, then after about fifteen mintues they start going again.

Needless to say I'm in no real state to work. I'm having trouble focusing. This entry comes because, well i Feel that i have to write something. can't write creative when i'm sick and i can't work either.

bummer too because the work is becoming another shitstorm. After narrowly averting the big trouble just a month or so old, here comes another reason to get in trouble. The past couple weeks have been rained out. One would expect that schedules would adjust. they do not. we are expected to submit grades on time. oh, and if you aren't done yet, well the faculty room's open during the holiday. and you can also go to the faculty room when there's a friggin' super bagyo.

I can't work with being under the weather. normally i'm a trooper I can work through the limp and I've even taught when I lost my voice. But it's so terribly hard to check papers when your eyes are making like faucets. i don't know. doesn't really make sense to me why we can't get some extension. but then as too many friends have told me already, i should just keep my head down on this one and not fight back.

so i guess that when i'm well enough to work i will be swamped and trying to meet deadlines which are, well, they can be accomplished. they are possible. that doesn't mean that they are sensible. you could, conceivably, stack enough playing cards in such a way that mathematically, you could build a bridge to the sun. it is also possible that you put a bunch of monkeys in a room, and based on theories of possibility, one of them will type Hamlet word for word. Given an infinite amount of time these monkeys in the room will, according to laws of possibility, type all the great major works of literature.

Of course we're talking possibility. And as that optimistic saying goes, anything's possible. Probability is a totally different matter. Being sensible is yet another thing to consider. But as far as the work I have to do is concerned, I am pitted with the theories of possibility.

Way to know you're getting old: when you have to buy appliances and furniture.

Sometime this week as I woke up to stretch I heard something in my bed tear. There was this large rip and the stuffing of my mattress was coming out like somebody's innards when their stomach had been gashed through with a scythe.

Then just last night I was asleep and then I woke up because I was sweating badly. I looked over to the electric fan, which wasn't turning at all though I remembered it being on when I had fallen asleep. I checked and found that my fan had died on me.

Even with the terrible condition I was in, I had to head to SM with my mom to buy replacements for these things. I had an extra handkerchief along just for the eye perspiration. You can wipe away the tears, but you can't help the weird way people will look at you because they think you're crying and your eyes are all red.

It's such a mundane thing to do, go to the appliance store to buy an electric fan. In all the drama of the past months I had dedicated myself to a life of beauty and intellect. I was trying to find something beautiful about looking at various elecric fans, me being an idiot at this and my mother asking about wattage and other things that I should really learn to understand.

Then it was off to the mattresses. Another similar process. I mean, it's very weird. I normally buy things and I'm very excited about them. Usually it's either books or music or movies and I'm in my zone, I understand everything. Here these were things that were simple and mundane and everyday. It just reeked of domesticity.

I remember going out with Anna a few months ago and I went with her to look at furniture for their new apartment. A few weeks back we were drinking at Cos and Cel's and Cel and Anna got to talking about furniture and the like. I got up to get a glass for a drink and there were still price tags on their stuff. The conversation was steered to living room furniture and I saw a bean bag. There was a time when I believed that a living room full of bean bags would be awesome. Actually at times I still suffer from that belief. Then Cel mentioned that a friend of theirs had mentioned that they and their friends were all getting on in years and maybe the bean bag may not be the best piece of furniture for your sala set.

I had to think, hell no, I'd love to spend the whole night in a bean bag in front of the TV with a controller in my hands. but we all are getting older. Think of the kinds of old man's diseases my friends and I are started to get, or are in dread and scampering wildly to avoid. Those bean bags would do our backs no good. Sturdiness, stability, security. You see people with solid wood furniture or strong metal to serve them and you can't help but consider the metaphorical possibilities when you juxtapose these things with the limp, formless bean bag.

And still as we move neared to our 30s, some of us much closer than others, there's still time to go back to being a kid. Yesterday was Anna's birthday party and a good part of the time was spent with us huddled around a TV and PS2 playing or heckling each other at various fighting or wrestling games.

Me and My New Pal Tea Tea

Yes the title is as it is to provoke the reader. And though friends know I am more than capable of the most base and crass humor, this actually comes from a video game that I've been playing, video games being the great excuse for the long gap between the last update and this one.

I was chatting with Kael, who should be congratulated once again for taking home first place for poetry in this year's Palancas. He told me to update, and how could I say no? Along with Kael, a student of mine will also be going to the ceremonies; she won first place for the Kabataan essay. Wow, man, wow. I haven't heard yet who any of the other winners are, but I've got my fingers crossed for other friends.

So back to my friend Tea Tea. The past few days have rained us out. On Wednesday, when we were sent home early, I was riding a trike to school. As we came around the U-Turn slot near mini-stop an SUV came down the flyover from Katipunan extension and it sent a wave the size of something you'd see at an amusement park water ride straight into my face. My jacket was soaked through and so was my polo shirt. bummer. Rain water tastes nasty. I have ingested all kinds of liquids and chemicals and other crap into my body. Rain water coming from tire splash of an SUV goes straight to the top of the undesirable column.

We were sent home and the last two days have been spent here at home, trying to write, getting a few paragraphs in before succumbing to the call of the Xbox. Yes, and that is where I found my new pal. Very weird. I start this mission in a game called Ninety-Nine Nights and it says, "You and your new pal Tea Tea head to the blank blank mountains to face the enemy forces." Hmm, ok. Let's go Tea Tea. Who picks these names? In Gears of War I'm Marcus Fenix, in Splinter Cell I'm Sam Fisher, those are normal, sort of. So why this? I don't know.

In between bouts of gaming I find myself delving further for answers in terms of cosmic questions and philosophical inquiry. The temptation to declare myself a bright (which is the word they are trying to get people to use when referring to atheist, to avoid all the negative connotations that the word atheist comes with) is becoming stronger as I read more of contemporary science. The books I'm reading have so many scientists declaring their disbelief, non-belief, or whatever. I wish I could take Kael's stance which is I don't care if there's a god or not. But I do care, and this, for some reason, troubles me terribly.

I had turned my head away from all these things before. I hadn't really thought about it, just kind of drifted away from the church and hadn't cared to much about it either way. But I suppose teaching in a Catholic school, plus the philosphical inquiries on the nature of beauty and concepts of transcendece to a higher One in class, and all the science that I am bombarding myself with, make this question inevitable. What is it that I really believe in.

It's interesting to document what belief can do to people. Just look at the holocaust, the crusades, and contemporary terrorist threats based on fundamentalist notions, both Christian and Islamic. I found myself thinking about whether a soldier in, say, the NPA would have the same guts to be a suicide bomber.

The suicide bomber's eagerness to sacrifice himself to his cause is based on the premise that his belief is the one true belief and that he will be rewarded in the afterlife for making himself a martyr to his belief. Now if we were to talk to someone who didn't believe in an afterlife, let's say if you're a Marxist that doesn't believe in one, then would that soldier be just as willing to die for his cause? Or would he fight harder to stay alive, knowing that this life is it.

Apparently, according to one of the psychologists that I read, one of the problems for us in accepting that there may be nothing for us after we die is that there is no way for us to simulate that utter loss of consciousness. Most of us are dualists, believing in a separation between the body and the "soul" which the scientists prefers to refer to as consciousness or the mind. the mind is different from the brain though. So he says if you're a dualist you believe that after you have shed your mortal coil your consciousness lives on. However if you are a monist you accept that the consciousness, coming from the mind, is inextricable from the brain processes. There is no way for us to simulate this, thus we cannot fathom the idea of not having consciousness, and that is why the belief in an afterlife persists.

Again it's the beliefs that we have that drive us. A belief in the afterlife influences how we act now, thinking that if we can right we build towards entrance to a desirable afterlife. However, if we do not believe, then our precious, short time here on earth becomes that much more precious because this is it, there's nothing more than this, and we must make the most of it.

The turn two Troll Ascetic will redefine the Metagame!

This title refers to all this thought I've been giving Magic:The Gathering even though I haven't played in a couple of weeks. I haven't even gotten my hands on any 10th edition cards. Which the title also refers to.

I've sold off a lot of cards and all that's left of me are two decks, my Time-Spiral block U/B/w teachings deck and my Standard Mono-Green Aggro. So, it's the Troll Ascetic that becomes essential in the MGA deck. For those unfamiliar with this guy, he's a three to cast 3/2 that can't be the target of spells or abilites your opponents control, and he regenerates. That's just an overpowering card.

So how does it come in? Turn one elf. Turn two Troll Ascetic. Turn three, moldervine cloak. Cast Might of Old Krosa. The troll Ascetic is now pumped into a 9/8 monster. If your opponent doesn't draw, or doesn't have Wrath of God or Damnation, then it's pretty much over next turn. Turn four, the 5/4 ascetic can come crashing in again and if you've got a good old Stonewood Invocation it's time to clean up and start shuffling. This of course is the God Draw, but then I've managed a turn 5 or 6 kill with the Silhana Ledgewalker, a puny 1/1 comparted to the Troll Ascetic, and with the acceleration I could drop the Troll Ascetic on the same turn as I normally bring in the Ledgewalker.

Ok, so there's just one hitch in this grand plan. According to Yol the Troll Ascetic used to go for around 150. So getting a set would run me around 600. Not bad, no prob. But Jeff went to Sta. Lucia recently and saw it going for P500! So that nixes my plans for putting together a set. I sold my mono-white weenie for how much a set of troll ascetics would cost.

And in case people haven't noticed the updates on this blog are getting fewer and further between. It's a lull time because there are new issues happening at work. Can't bring them up here. And there's a fair amount of other things to occupy my time. And biggest time-occupier: Xbox 360. I'm playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Gears of War. Diwa, who sold me this machine of God, was kind enough to inlcude all his games. This should render me invisible for a while.