Alternate Reality

Major League Baseball destroys the clothing that was made for its runners-up. The NBA donates it to an overseas charity. The NFL sends it to a place far away.

Apparently, the UAAP sends it to Subic.

... And Justice For All

Homecoming Saturday

Sometimes, when we both have time, the wife and I drive to Kyusi to eat at some of the best and most famous eateries in Katipunan and Diliman. You see, these areas are not only known for the best institutions of higher learning in the country, they also have the best inihaw na liempo, pork chop, pork barbeque, tapsiliog, fishballs and squidballs anywhere. (Hey, it must be the water!)

For some time now, I was planning on bringing the wife to another one of the best eateries in Diliman. But, for one reason or another, it never pushed through. I just remembered that I wanted to bring her there, when another lawyer and I made a short stopover at Old Balara after coming from one of the many government offices in QC.

So after spending two consecutive Saturdays at work, and as a consequence, missing an Ateneo-La Salle game for the first time since 2007, Saturday can't come soon enough. Either before or after the game on Saturday, we will have Mang Jimmy's Tapa Mix and bottomless rice. Sounds like a plan.

Song of the Year

Pagdating sa Naga
Dun tayo mag-beach

- Express Highway, Bloomfields

Nice song, Bloomfields.

Except, of course, for the fact that Naga is landlocked.

*facepalm*

Kagitingan

"Sleep, my sons, your duty done, for freedom's light has come."

Hallelujah!

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

The above passage is from the Gospel according to Matthew. It was the Gospel for 17 March 2011 ─ the same day the results of the 2010 Bar Examinations came out. I think it was at that point of the Mass when I was finally able to relax, after being a nervous wreck since the day the Supreme Court announced to the public that the results are finally coming out. The premature greetings on Facebook, while sincerely appreciated for the posters' confidence in us, certainly did nothing to help.

All the eight people from my block who took the exams last September passed. After five long years of shared pain and agony, I honestly believe that we were all rooting for each other from the time we finished law school until the day we saw our names published at the SC website. I cannot remember being with a group of people who are as genuinely happy and proud for one another as we all were that day. We share this happiness and pride with our other blockmates who will take the country's first MCQ Bar Exams this November, and who we trust will feel as delirious some time next year as we did last Thursday.

Amen.

Shirt Happens

I have quite a number of Ateneo items in my closet, inspired, in no small measure, by the recent success of its men's basketball team, which I have religiously followed since 1991. (Those were the days when you can get into an Ateneo-La Salle game simply by assisting the Babble carry the drums up the bleachers. Those days are long gone.) I got the the original "Sixth Man" shirt from the Babble itself, basketball jerseys from online sellers, jackets and more shirts from adidas and Nike. The school itself has been selling all this stuff for years, but it cannot be denied that the successful partnerships it has formed, with adidas from way back in 2006 up to the present one with Nike, combined with the success of its basketball program may have boosted sales a bit. (I am just guessing here.)

But what do you do, when your basketball team has not tasted a championship in 25 years, and has not actually won a game in two seasons?

Anyway, back in September, during one of the few times in my life that I cannot associate myself with anything blue, I was planning to wear, for the last Sunday, a shirt made for the college by some enterprising folks from Diliman. Katya (one of only two people who I know still visit this site) informed me that the largest size available would not be very flattering if worn by me. They are too small, as are most shirts sold in the vicinity of UP campus, which explains why I do not have a lot of them (the fact that the Maroons have been stinking lately don't help either).

But, God bless them, the same enterprising people, for once, decided to be generous with their material, and came up with this in 3XL:


UP Fight.

Kalayaan

"Labimpito ang saksak, tagos sa puso at baga, tuhog na tuhog ang laman. May marka ng itinaling alambre sa pulso niya, talop ang siko at tuhod, basag pati bayag."

Welcome to Hell

When the LAE results came out last week, various public fora were once again flooded with questions about life at Malcolm Hall. For the most part, upperclassmen and alumni are more than willing to accomodate the incoming victims' freshmen's questions, if only to reassure them this early, that everything will be ok.

I am reposting a part of an entry in the old LSG blog from way back. From what little I remember from that first year in law school, this should more than sufficiently sum up what every freshman needs to know in order to survive his first year in UP Law.

---

Dear Scaebolah,

I’m depressed. Ever since I got into law school I rarely see my old college buddies, and my girlfriend is starting to think we’re growing apart. I think it’s because of all these readings. Please help!

Blue Frosh

Dear Blue Frosh,

Have you not read The Great Message Inscribed in Marble? You’re here to be great lawyers, not happy, well-adjusted ones. Hello!?! Expresio unius est exclusio alterius. If you wanted to stay socially functional, you should have just taken an M.A..

The law school is here to fashion you to into a minister of law, praying for litigation. But until then, as far as your professors are concerned, you are the lowest possible life form.

Take to heart the ideal that you have to strive for. The lawyer is a priest of justice (In re Thatcher, 80 Ohio St. Rep., 492, 669), bound to uphold the dignity and authority of the law. Or, in case you want to be a judge or justice someday, this is how you must be:

"A man of learning who spends tirelessly the weary hours after midnight acquainting himself with the great body of traditions and the learning of the law.

A man who bears himself in his community with friends but without familiars; almost lonely, devoting himself exclusively to the most exacting mistress that man ever had, the law as a profession in its highest reaches where he not only interprets the law but applies it, fearing neither friend nor foe, fearing only one thing in the world — that in a moment of abstraction, or due to human weakness, he may in fact commit some error and fail to do justice. That is the judge." (Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War of the United States of America during World War I, quoted in GEORGE A. MALCOLM, Legal and Judicial Ethics, 1949 ed., 200.)

What does the above text say? First, you have to be a man (sorry ladies). Second, you have to be studying late at night, not worrying about whether or not you’ll get some bumping and grinding with your girlfriend (chances are, you guys won’t last until the end of the year anyway). So deal.

My advice is to make do with your blockmates as your temporary barkada substitute. Or do what I did during my first semester: I named my stacks of readings, painted a face on each of them, and hanged out with them all sem. I had so much fun, and to this day they’re still my friends.

Yours,

Scaebolah

Dear Scaebolah,

Do my professors care about me? I mean, as a person?

Afraid

Dear Afraid,

Hahaha! What a hoot! The answer should be obvious. :P

LOL,

Scaebolah

Blah

This site has been dormant lately in large part because of the sudden rise in popularity of microblogging sites, where you can rant and rave in 140 characters or less. Most of what I wanted to say made it to Facebook and I just did not have enough motivation to post longer versions of the same thing here.

Anyway, I also do not have a lot of things to rant about these days. Granted that I actually have more time in my hands right now, the absolute absence of any law school-induced stress also resulted in much less interesting things to write about. And work? Work has been relatively stress-free for me for the past few years. I think I have reached the stage where I have my job down pat.

Nevertheless, IF everything works out well, I will have a new job by April or May. I will start at an entry-level position, with significantly less pay, knowing absolutely nothing about what I am about to do. (I would like to think I know something about it, but no. Not really.) Yet somehow, I find myself excited at the proposition. The funny thing is this is not even the first time I am doing this.

But hopefully, this would be the last. I don't think I still have enough time to make another career change in the next few years.

See you in the dark side.

A New Year’s Benediction

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful.

And don’t forget to make some art. Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously. I hope you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you all have people to love and to like in return.

And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now, I hope that you will be wise and that you will always be kind.

And I hope that somewhere in the next year that you will surprise yourself.

by Neil Gaiman