there you go...

the fragments are complete...

as of this time... tabulas will no longer be updated... he will not be deleted, he will remain here... a reminder to myself as to what once happened... all the joys, the laughter, the regrets, the sorrows, the pain... they are all there...

i hope that maybe someday, she'll come across this... maybe she'll realize that maybe i could have been a different person... maybe 4th year could have been happier for me... if only she said the truth... maybe it could have been better if i hadn't fallen in the first place... i don't necessarily blame her, but i don't leave her hands clean either...

i guess i lost to my memories... i lost...

this was my first blog... it was the witness to my views, opinions, and feelings towards certain things... it was one of the few that listened... it was one of the few that understood... it was one of the few that cared... and for that, i thank it...

but by leaving this blog, i hope i can leave the memories behind... but i doubt that is entirely possible... i can't articulate my reasons well... just think of it as a sort of "ceremonial"/"symbolic" thing to do... call me crazy, but hell, it's my blog...

and so i fade into the black of night... the fire is all but gone... but i hope you'll see me again in lj... look for half_elven17... he stalks the earth alone, all the fire gone from his heart...

i leave with this song...

I'm Still Here
by John Rzeznik

I am a question to the world
Not an answer to be heard
Or a moment
That's held in your arms

And what do you think you'd ever say?
I won't listen anyway
You don't know me
And I'll never be what you want me to be

And what do you think you'd understand?
I'm a boy, no, I'm a man
You can't take me
And throw me away

And how can you learn what's never shown?
Yeah, you stand here on your own
They don't know me
Cause I'm not here

Chorus:
And I want a moment to be real
Wanna touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on and feel I belong
And how can the world want me to change?
They're the ones that stay the same
They don't know me
Cause I'm not here

And you see the things they never see
All you wanted I could be
Now you know me
And I'm not afraid

And I want to tell you who I am
Can you help me be a man?
They can't break me
As long as I know who I am

Chorus

They can't tell me who to be
Cause I'm not what they see
Yeah, the world is still sleepin while I keep on dreaming for me
And their words are just whispers and lies thatI'll never believe

Chorus

I'm the one now
Cause I'm still here
I'm the one
Cause I'm still here
I'm still here
I'm still here
I'm still here

and so... i bid farewell...

thanks...

veni veni venias... ne me mori facias...

this is it...

grad ball...

the 31st of March...

the final night that we will spend as high school seniors...

shangri-la hotel makati. that's is where it was held. david, mav, tj, dudi, archie, louie, patrick, c3, matthew, martin, j3, and i all shared a single room. Room 1312... so expensive, we had to split it. kp, nicole, and gina were in the room right next to us. fred and potpot were just across, the truth boys were 4 floors down.. cj, ange, dixi, etc were 2 floors down.

david, mav, dudi, and i were the first to arrive at the hotel. we got there at around 0230. mav and david were arguing as to who was to keep the other key (i had the other one since i reserved the room for us, thanks to kp and her dad for making it easier for us!). they ended up running across the 13th floor to race to the door of our room, trying to stop the other from jamming the card key in the slot.

inside the room, we played around in the room, pillowfights, wrestling, bed jumping, and other childish games. after 10 minutes of all that crap, we decided to have some merienda at glorietta. we ate at burger king, since hotel food was expensive beyond belief. i did some groceries for us, chips, drinks, chocolate, the works. david bought some ferrero rocher for kp.

i did some extra shopping too. it was jana's birthday that night and rachelle's at exactly 0000. so for jana, i got her a necklace with "jana" as it's pendants. and for rachelle, a smaller version of the teddy bear i gave her when i asked her out during 3rd year.

the party was at 0600, so we went back to the hotel at around 0500. we argued as to who gets to use the bathtub first. and i won. whee. tj, louie, and patrick arrived at around 0515, and since they were already dressed, lounged about in the room. i was finished bathing by 0525 (bathtub was fun). archie and j3 arrived at the same time i was coming out of the toilet. mav, then dudi, then david took to the soaker.

during the vacant time, i room hopped over to the girls. they were getting their hairs done by some stylist. wow... girls... i couldn't linger long because nic was in the bathroom, so i had to boot immediately.

back at the room, everybody was finished dressing. so we waited it out until 0600, watching phonebooth on HBO, making dumb jokes, making finishing touches to our long-sleeved polos, occassionally munching on a chip or two.

0600... this is it...

so the motley crew crammed ourselves in the elevator and headed down to the ballroom... nothing much exciting happened during the grad ball...

food, buffet, ice tea, cheers! i got my money's worth... but i wasn't in the mood to eat...

am presented to us a movie, a film she made herself. it compiled some pictures of ourselves, and some clips of us saying what we thought about leaving pisay, about what pisay is. it was a bit nostalgic... memories flashing back...

the various bands of ice cream mundae, chichoy and the pasados, and septic tank performed. they had really excellent music, cheers to the boys of pisay!!! chichoy sang a rendition of our graduation song. not bad eh. i hope they all compile albums so that i can have a copy of their songs.

but then, the moment we all waited for began. the dance... first it was all fast, and group dancing and "idiot" moments were there... and then the pace slowed... the lights dimmed a bit... and then... the slow dances...

i wanted to dance with so many girls, girls who have affected my life one way or another, but i wasn't able to do so due to the lack of slow songs. i was only able to dance with...

1) hazel: classmates since 1st year, close friend since 3rd year. thanks to all those punches... some of them were out of playfullness, but more often than not, they bring me back to reality.

2) kp: well, let's just say she owes me a lot. hahaha.. kp was a good friend to have, even if it was only for one year. she can be funny, wacky, and "horny". really fun to be with when you're down.

3) rachelle: my first dance during my first prom. now my best friend. i gave her the bear, and she liked it. she was there when i needed her, and she continues to be the ever-loving ate. cheers! keep it up in college! i'll be needing your philo notes!

4) jana: instant close friend in 4th year. there when you need her, a smile and charm than can brighten up clouds of darkness and doubt. though she frequently robs me of money. hahaha. gave her the necklace, she liked it. hope it's still around your neck, old friend!

4) gee: well, she was available to dance with. so i took the opportunity anyway. hehe, i know little about gee. except that her brother is a good weapon to use to piss her off. hohohoho.

5) cassy: same thing with gee. she was available so i took the chance. hello cass! hope you're all right there in singapore! thanks for that dance!

6) mariel: she wanted a dance. i'll give her one. i think she was trying to drive away a frog... hohohoho....

i remember jerms walking around... advertising himself to other girls... "sinong walang kasayaw? ikaw? tera! sayaw tayo!"

and then there are the girls i didn't get to dance with.

1) laura: a friend since 3rd year. her perky attitude would either leave you smiling or leave you wondering "what the heck was that about?!?" hahaha... she is also like a doting mother to me... hehe...

2) zaw: the person who robs me, and continues to rob me, of my money at every opportunity.

3) drea: the person i got along with due to LOTR, friends, j3, and the occassional cd borrowing. cheers!

4) yeyen: of course, if i dance with 2/3 of the trio, i had to complete the set right? yeyen was also like an ate to me, but i rarely confided with her. sorry, yen!

5) patag: the girl who also leaves me scratching my head sometimes, also wondering "what the heck?!?". but she can also make me think deep about certain topics due to her different perspectives, sometimes radical.

6) dixi: the str groupmate who does not know the meaning of the phrase "let justin rest". the power source of our str group, and the girl who elbowed me in one of the scenes of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when the lights went out.

and of course....

7) _ _ _ _ _: obvious as to who this one is... but it wasn't because of the lack of songs that prevented me from dancing with her... it was because... she didn't want to... i asked gerald if it was ok to go ask... but gerald said no... she said that she was not in the mood...

recall that ever since i liked her, i was content to dance with her during the prom and during the grad ball... the former never happened... and now, the last dream was shattered... with a heavy heart, and one final glance at her... i trudged back up the steps, into the elevator, and left the festivities behind...

in my room... i was left pondering... i wanted to throw myself out of the window... 13 floors will do the trick... but i couldn't find it in myself to do it... i pondered... then j3 knocked... he went in, he was tired... so i left him, probably hung up over the fact that he didn't get to dance with his... so i went down the elevator to the lobby...

it was all over... people were going home... i ran into jv... he saw that i was down, and decided to let me drink... so trek throughout the greenbelt area until we found a 7-11... i bought three beers... two of the light and one of the strong version of san miguel... i drank the light, then the strong...

i'm not sure if i was really tipsy... but i wanted to drink... for the first time, i drank beer... i wanted to drown it all in those cans... things were hazy... i was walking across streets, hoping that a car would come and ram me to oblivion... mav took me under his wing, and helped me get back to the hotel... and after getting a shower... i fell asleep...

and then the dreams... they came back to haunt me... the smiles on her face... the pain would continue... and it would continue... until now...

and so it ends... the night that should have been happy, ended in sadness, grief, sorrow, and misery... and so it ends...

veni veni venias... ne me mori facias...

graduation...

the start of our journey into college life...

all graduations have a baccalaureate the day before... we had ours too. one wednesday morning, there we were.. eating... nothing much happened... carlo and jana sang some songs for us, as part of the program. they look so good together. hahahahaa...

so we now skip to the graduation. basically what we rehearsed during the practice was carried out... it was my first graduation, i didn't graduate from elementary because i was an undergrad (grade 6 only). it was exciting for me, at some level.

the gown was hot, and my hat was a little too small... the place was hot... come on, if a graduation ceremony was to be held in a gymnasium without proper ventilation design, what could you expect?

the basic sequence was this... at any one time, there are to be 3 students on the stage: 1) bowing entrance, 2) getting diploma, 3) bowing exit. it should have gone smoothly, but there were a few hitches... the photographers at #3 were slowing the line a bit by stopping the graduates for extra shots of, and ma'm serrano was oblivious to this during the first part, causing some build-up in #2... order was restored somewhere around "L".

there were some of my batchmates who received special awards... din got best in biology, nina with best in soc sci, patrick for chemistry, joseph damasco for math, carlo for english journalism and filipino speech, zaw for filipino journalism, button with the Jerry Roxas Leadership Award, juanchi with the Presidential Leadership Award... i forgot who ended up with physics...

for the academic awards, the range for suma was from 1.00 to 1.25 average, magna with 1.26 to 1.50... the cum was not mentioned... there were plenty of magna's, and 9 suma's... rachelle and paul from our section, kirsten, juanchi, hya, martin, emzo, jerome, and patrick from truth... way to go boys!!! we outnumber the girls!!! hahahaha... joke lang... as a whole, our batch was the largest graduating batch in the whole of pisay history: all 235 of us. no one was left behind! we all made it through, way to go '05!!!

the event ended with two songs composed by our batchmates... two songs that invoked so many streams of memories to flash before my eyes... and yes, call me a wuss, i was teary-eyed...

i remember dixi jumping up and down, singing "we're out of high school! we're out of high school!"... hahaha... by the way, dixi appeared on the cover of a brochure of the National Technological University in Singapore... go groupmate! time to appear on the cover of Seventeen now! hahaha....

i had mixed feelings about the event... i was happy because i got a medal (magna), and that we were finally moving to a new stage in our lives... but part of me still clung on to those days... it wanted to hold on to high school... partially because there were still unfinished business... i looked at her, and damn... damn... damn... she could make even an ordinary gown look extraordinary...

and so we end our days as high school students... we hope that the times we spent here in pisay, both happy and sad, funny and dramatic, joyous or sorrowful, will be forever remembered in all of our hearts...

The Farewell Song
by John Carlo Timbol (lead singer of The Cromwells)
and
Jana Mier (conductress of Himig Agham)

** to be updated later **

veni veni venias... ne me mori facias...

graduation practice...

the week after clearance week. typically, that sort of week would have been spent wallowing at home, at the mall, or anywhere where we can do something exciting, and for most of us, it is an extended clearance week. but as fourth years, we have something else to do: graduation practice...

what is it exactly we do in graduation practice? doi.. practice... seating arrangments, program arrangments, entrance order, exit order, yada yada yada... some boring moments really...

i sat up front, in between alvin (salvador) and john kim (redecio)... until now, i'm not sure what to call john kim... jk, kim, john, kimjay, kj, joki... hahahaha...

anyway... yada yada yada... nothing interesting is worth noting... although it was fun tripping gerald everytime he went up on stage... just grab a pant leg, and whoosh... he stumbles... so damn bored during those practices...

to get away from it all, lunch outside was a must... that week i spent at the spaghetti house, cello's, kfc, and mcdonald's with david and kp, and sometimes with val and gina, and sometimes louie too. luckily, i was able to pay for my bill, especially at the spag house... the food was expensive... wow... good thing i save money for such occassions... once again, cello's delighted my dessert time with those donuts... must get  box one of these days...

speaking of dessert, kp once mentioned a certain cake... it was called "better than sex chocolate cake"... ok, for one, i found that weird... how can one say that it is better than sex if he hasn't done it yet? and you don't eat sex? its disparate!! david and i where spinning some really bad jokes about the cake...

there was also that time when i ate with jana, joseph, some gluon boys, and others. we ate at tokyo tokyo. there was the infinite rice thing at that restaurant, so i attempted to match the record of 10 rice bowls... i thought it was easy... it wasn't... i only met 8... my stomach was ouch... at least there was room for the beef and the iced tea... going there, i always sat in front of the taxi... and i ended up paying for the fare for some strange reason... when jana asks me to do something, more often than not, i do it... she has very powerful persuasion means...

well... that's it...

care for another side note? i confronted her during that week. i wanted to get some answers... i got them... i first said that i wanted to say sorry... then she cut in... the general flow of her "speech" was: "you're forgiven... it's in the past, it's water under the bridge, and all that... hindi lang kita makausap dahil bad trip ako nung araw na iyon... things can never be the same....gets?" (the ... means parts i forgot)... note the bold-faced phrase? hurt like hell...

now that i think of it... i didn't get the answers that i needed... there were so many left unanswered... why did she lie when she could have told me the truth? why did she end up mad at me? why? why? why? so many friggin' whys...

this is the beginning of the end...

veni veni venias... ne me mori facias...

what is clearance week?

clearance week is that joyous week where students carry papers and have their respective faculties sign it for them to be allowed to proceed to the next grade level. it is a tiring week for the students and faculty alike, running around, catching up with teachers, meeting requirements, and finding a way to get that elusive teacher to show up in school. it requires a mix of cunning, connivance, flattery, force, and in some cases, groveling.

but for students, clearance week means another thing. it is a chance to travel to sm north edsa to hang out, play games, eat food that can be actually considered food, shop, watch a movie, or simply bum around. and even if i was in charge of having the papers signed for the whole class, that didn't stop me from having my share of the fun. i mean come on, a whole year of work, sleepless nights, and cramming? i deserved it! i think...

what did i do that week? let's see... there was trips to katipunan with david, kp, val, and gina (sometimes with louie) for lunch at any of their stores there. i remember that donut store, cello's, and they had these really delicious donuts... so soft... yummy... sweet... made me crave more...

there was also the time i watched a movie (forgot what it was) with nina, geraldine, patag, me-an, laura, tonton, etc. and there was also another movie (forgot that one too) where i watched with jana, tonting, etc. damn, my memory fails me... i think one of them was filled with romantic crap...

and there was also the time i went with matthew, louel, aro, mav, and c3 to play at the arcades. from time crisis 3, daytona usa, dance maniax, para-paradise, etc. i remember clearly the dance maniax... matthew and i took the prometheus course and we were able to get to the bonus stage. unfortunately, in bonus stages, one mistake sends you spiraling to E or F, make another one immediately after that... and game over. unfortunately matthew and i missed one each, and then matthew hit his hand on a nearby machine, disrupting his rhythm. boom! fail...

there was also another instance when louie took me and j3 to katipunan to play warcraft 3. we played at blueskies. we were able to beat our opponents on battle.net... louie kept pissing the other players off with comments like, "nagmumura ka? ang cool mo naman." hahaha...

there were also numerous instances of eating at various restaurants. don't want to jot those down... too many...

of course, it wouldn't be clearance week without the clearance. there was a flurry to get our papers for research in before the deadline. dixi was pressuring our group to get our jobs done. and, just like the cat officer she is, she got us going one-two-three-hup on our paper. then there were the teachers and the staff. the teachers were "cooperative" with the signing, but the staff? some of them were making it difficult for us by saying, "last dapat kami." but they aren't even as important as the registrar! and when they schedule times for signing, they aren't on time. sometimes going MIA. the hell...

sigh... due to the hassle of everything, i only got my clearance done sometime at the start of april... what a way to spend my birthday...

oh yeah, side note... there was this girl (doi, obvious as to who this one is) who wouldn't give her clearance to me so that i can have it signed with the rest of the class. i was holding only 29 papers. hers wasn't there. i let two days pass, and nothing... out of professionality, i asked louie to get her paper. i also asked louie if he could tell her that it's my job, and i'm not letting any personal strifes stop me from completing it. the following day, i got her paper. it was missing half of what i already had for the other papers. and for someone like her, i had to do extra rounds to get that half... crap... crap...

sigh...

another side note... perhaps when i'm done with the "fragments of memories" part, which will end at #20, i'm considering of leaving this blog behind... i don't know really what i should do with this...

as tifa said, "did we lose to my memories?"

did i lose to my memories?

veni veni venias... ne me mori facias...