someone's getting married

I just heard from the grapevine that a couple from our batch (well, at least for our course) in college is getting married next year. As far as we know, they're the first in our year to do so.

Rumor has it that the guy proposed while the couple was on board a helicopter, a few kilometers from the ground. How's that for high expectations.

I feel genuinely happy for them. We've known them as a couple since freshman year (that was roughly six years ago!), and I think it's high time for them to take the relationship to the next step. Personally, I have my qualms about marriage in this country. It is too restricted, formalized and iron-clad. At least in this country, it is only for those who are pretty sure about what they are getting into.

But as for this couple, I have no doubt whatsoever. Plus, I can't wait to see the cute babies-to-be.

that fairytale kiss

I remember the conversation. It was amidst incoherent conversation, discordant laughs and the stench of beer. What is your fairytale kiss? Everyone is asked. Everyone's answer I now forget, save for mine, and the resultant jeers of my drunken reply.

I said I want to kiss the person I love in a library. I guess that shows how nerdy I've been all my life. But hey. I can't deny it. The library is a special place for me. Sacred, even. It's the only place where things can make sense, if one has the temerity to, well, browse through all of the shelves. A certain lightness is evoked by the thought of being surrounded by the greatest written ideas of man. And it is natural, I think, to share that special place with the person you think is special enough to share your life with. Haha. Cheesy. But hey, the question, after all, asked for a fairytale kiss.

But the thing is, I've been rejected once before. In a library. And like the child who suddenly discovers that Santa Claus is just his dad plus a pillow tummy, I sigh. Adulthood is creeping up. There are no tooth fairies. No wizards. No happily ever after in this goddamn boring world.

Maybe my friends were right. Maybe I was naive in choosing my fairytale kiss, and more so, in actually trying it out. I hear their alcohol-induced raucous all over again. But this time, I join in the laughter.

For now I nurse the bruise my inner child has sustained. But hopefully, tomorrow, I'll learn how to check under my pillow for magic coins. Again.

school spirit

It bothered me as I sat in the Araneta Coliseum last Sunday that I bisected the maroon and blue sections of the stadium. No, I didn't mean it physically, because the two schools were, and have always been, supportive of each other. As one Babbler coined it, we were all children of Katipunan.

I meant it figuratively. I always said I had a genuine dual allegiance. An Atenean for more than a decade, and a Scholar ng Bayan the past three years, I used to think that I love the two schools equally.

But as the cheers (and jeers) went on, I couldn't understand a single maroon chant. As for the blue ones, I knew I could utter them in my sleep. I couldn't join the Ateneo cheers (vigorously) as I was clad in a maroon shirt and was sandwiched by two die-hard marooners. It would have felt awkward to do so.

But I felt awkward inside already, so maybe I shouldn't have cared. Looking back, maybe I should have shouted my heart out for Ateneo the way I did for UP. Love, as my mom used to say when we were young, need not be expressed in the same way to everyone. She didn't ever to go one of my PTAs, but she was almost always present at my brother's because I didnt have any problems at school. But she always brought me to art classes and to my weekly doctor's appointment. These she never did for my brother because he was neither interested in art nor sick when we were kids. She loved the two of us, equally but not identically.

I believe it's the same thing for the two schools to which I owe my life. I love them both, equally, but not identically. Love, nonetheless.