Another Life Update

Wow. I'm crying right now because I read a post I wrote in 2015 to update my future self, and here I am, in the future, being updated.

A bit of a background check: I was cleaning up my email inbox when I found something in the Spam folder. It was an email from this site, asking if I still wanted updates from this blog. I mean... who wanted to pass up the opportunity to binge-read all my cringey blog posts, right?

That's how I ended up backreading.

I guess I have another message for future Toni.

Remember this moment. You are a second year law student. There are so many opportunities that were opened up for you, and so many that were closed. Right now you really needed a break and this is what you get for wishing that, I guess (haha).

So a little update, you kind of got back into anime, and fell in love all over again with Naruto. Sasuke-kun is still your OG crush and SasuSaku is life. Wotaku ni Koi was Muzukashii is a favorite as well, and so is Kuzu no Honkai (surprisingly).

You have matured a little more but have grown a little more cynical. I hope that's something you overcome in the future.

You've made more friends, and lost some, but both are valuable things that happen in one's life. Don't fret. You got a Vita, and are recently getting into gaming, and you adore Persona 4 Golden. 

Bottomline is, Future Toni, I just want to reassure you like the past Toni reassured me. It will eventually be better and things will eventually look up. Please don't give up because you are an amazing human being, and your parents are so so proud of you no matter what you do. So why not allow yourself to be proud too?

You may be struggling right now but remember that you struggled in the past as well and look at where you are now! Who knew you could make it?

I hope by the time you re-read this life update, you are happy. If you aren't, why not? Go get what you want. You deserve it.

A final word: You always want to take care of everyone to give the illusion that you are in control of your life, but you aren’t. Instead, you tend to neglect yourself. Please be kinder to yourself, Future Toni. 

Our UP Diliman Adventure

UP is not just a school! It's a community!

Have some fun with us in this video!

Bataan in a Budget

Tomas Pinpin was the frirst ever Filipino Printer (nope, not like HP, more like Scholastic). He was also a writer and publisher from the municipality of Abucay, in Bataan. He is sometimes referred to as the "Prince of the Filipino Printers".

Because we missed our class's field trip to Bataan, the three of us (Bella, Danica and I) went to Binondo to get to know Tomas Pinpin, a Filipino hero from Bataan.

Click here to find out more about Tomas Pinpin!

Fireflies

– are the most amazing things in the world. There is something very innocent and pure about them – a place with fireflies is a place with magic.


I only ever travelled to one place with these curious creatures and that is my mother’s home in San Pedro, Camarines Norte.


It would be summer, but the temperature would be cold as city –Bers’, and I would stay outside the front door, looking at the pine tree outside my lolo’s house; I would hide behind a column because I thought if they saw me they wouldn’t come out.


And there, one by one, they would light up and the pine tree would look like a Christmas tree. Slowly, and my smile would creep up my face just as slowly.


I would stay outside until my fingers would grow numb from the evening cold, until my mother or my grandmother or anyone who noticed my absence first called me inside. Only then, only then would I leave and even then it would be reluctantly, because I didn’t want to leave my friends. Friends who didn’t even know I exist, and that I watched them every night, and that I loved them.


Friends that probably only lived for a day or two and whose sole purpose that my little three-year-old brain could comprehend was to light up that pine tree across the yard.


“Bem!”

Oops, gotta go.

Three More Days

(A J195 - Travel Journ - Article)

I did say I took this class because I needed to travel more. I love it when I travel – the feeling of moving from one place to another, buttocks hurting from the amount of time sitting on a bus, knowing there’s some beautiful (or not, but nevertheless, a) place waiting for me at the end of the journey.

I love new cultures, and I love eating food I haven’t tasted before. I love the difference of the smell of the air in the city and the province, the sun on my neck and the wind in my face, the rain penetrating the ground and releasing petrichor and visible stars and –

I did say I love to travel. But I didn’t say why.

You could say I was a well-travelled child. My mother took me to Legaspi every month when she would get her dental supplies and the dentures her patients ordered. She would buy me Funny Komiks and a tube of Smarties and we would go to McDonald’s and she would buy me a 6pc pack of Chicken McNuggets (I was a fat kid) – all these without fail. Every month. Until I turned four.

She had to leave, she said. It was only for three days, she said. I’d be back soon, she said.

Only the first one was true.

It’s not so dramatic, you see. She had to work abroad – for reasons a child couldn’t understand, the adults thought, and so nobody told me anything. And so I didn’t cry when she left – because she said she’d be back in three days’ time. I waited, and I waited, and I remember waiting. I don’t remember when I stopped, though.

And so the next time my mother came home, I was too old for Funny Komiks. Smarties had phased out. And I had grown sick of McNuggets.

Don’t get me wrong, I love her, I can say that so many times and you may not believe me but I don’t care because I do love her and there’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think I ever stopped waiting. For the Funny Komiks. For the Smarties. For the McNuggets. Every month. “Maybe after three more days” is what I still keep telling myself.

I love to travel – and I admit it’s probably because I’m looking for that feeling the monthly Legaspi trips gave me, something that I will never feel again.

So you see, it wasn’t even my going away that made me a changed person.

A Trip Down the Food-Memory Lane

I would say my title sounds cliché, just like the food at Guevarra’s.

Once a spa before it was turned into a restaurant, the house’s owners decided they wanted to do something different with it, and since it was an ancestral house among many others in San Juan, they thought it would be nice to turn it into a buffet restaurant.

My classmates and I paid 447Php for the buffet lunch in the acclaimed restaurant, and ate main dishes by none other than Chef Laudico himself and pastries by his wife Chef Jackie.

The restaurant is two years old, established in March 5, 2013. It offers caterings, and events hosting, weddings often being held at the garden. The house can accommodate 200 people, and it is mostly fully-booked especially at lunch time, when the food is cheapest. Weekends are more special because of seafood and other dishes, and they pride themselves for their roast beef, lechon, and leche flan.

It was nice seeing a restaurant so tastefully presented: Filipino, down to the core. It was situated in a good neighborhood as well, although not too accessible to the masses. Then again why would the masses want to pay 500 pesos for lunch?

As for the food itself, it was pleasant enough; I liked it – I would even say I loved it, especially the roast beef. But I didn’t taste anything different in the dishes. I thought they could be cooked – maybe even better – by my mother.

I guess it would be great for balikbayans, or for people who have not tasted Filipino food at all. It would be a good “coming home” or “first time” experience. But I wouldn’t come back a second time.

Reading my old posts

I was making a couple of academic papers for school (yes I'm in college now, can you believe it?) when I stumbled upon my old blog.

It has been TWO YEARS since I've last written and whoa do my posts make me laugh! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA sorry I had to get that out.

This is my book blog and I realized all my reviews have been pretty gut-based, a lot of "I love this" and "I love that" and not enough substance. Being young was not an excuse, Toni, you were eighteen when you wrote that Mortal Instruments one.

I also realized how much I've grown and how much my taste have differed after two years (discovering Battle Royale made me think not less of The Hunger Games, only more aware of its "unoriginality", and nope that's not a word)

An update for my future self reading this is this:

20-year-old Toni is in love with comic books (Deadpool is going to have a movie all to himself next year, the deserving bastard), children's books (Stargirl is a personal favorite) and classics (still, that never went away), and has tried to read the LOTR series for the boy she loved, but only got through ten chapters, because FELLOWSHIP IS TOO FUCKING LONG. As of now she is waiting for a long enough vacation to start reading it again, because her motto in life is "Try everything at least thrice, so it's statistically significant." And she is also hoping the writing will be different from Tolkien's The Hobbit, because that book was childish for aaaaall the wrong reasons.

Toni has also cut her hair short because she wanted to for so long now and decided society (and her beloved mother) was in no place to tell her not to. (Love you ma). She also got glasses because apparently she has had astigmatism all these years, and crying while reading was not normal (unless a beloved character dies).

She has also tried to get cultured in movies because her childhood, as you know, was never filled with them. She has discovered Citizen Kane and The Shawshank Redemption, and Jurassic Park. She loves all of them, even the sappy romances.

She has also discovered a new love for TV series (although this started two years ago when she got too busy in school to read books for pleasure). Breaking Bad is her all-time favorite, followed by Game of Thrones, Friends, HIMYM, the awesome BBC's Sherlock, and Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix.

She is also afraid she pushed herself too hard this school year, with tutoring and being VP for Screening for an org she loves but she does not see herself being a part of as a grown-up. She mostly stays there for her friends and the kids and the elders and the medical missions and the blood donations... and at the end of the day, she feels better because she knows the members she will bring in will take care of the org she loves.

She has decided to become a lawyer almost a year ago, and has now worked her ass off to graduate as soon as possible given the fact she shifted twice. She will do anything, anything to be a JD, and I hope by the time you read this, future Toni, you are well on your way to becoming one.

She has been through a tough time in 2015, the hardest it ever got. The worst of the bunch was she realized she had no home now, and the only consolation through those tough times was her mother coming home, and her father visiting, and the three of them being together for at least a month. It was everything to her.

Don't forget about 2015. It was the year Toni pushed herself to her limits. She thought she wouldn't make it, but she did.

You did.

That's something to be proud of. Go you!