Bobbet’s World

It worked December 18, 2008

Yes, it indeed work. Success! Now I can sleep. And face a new day later. Yeah, it promises to be a great day. I'll write more about it next time. Meantime, I'll sleep loose without letting my pesky bedbugs sip.

Let me try… December 18, 2008

This is an initial attempt to check whether posting on BLOG IT will mean automatic posting on my blog and status accounts. Let me see… This is a phase of exploration, of testing the truth of what online applications claim.

It makes me delay sleep for another 15 minutes. Anyway, I can wake up late tomorrow. Or this morning?

I’m back at WordPress! August 12, 2008

After three months, I’m back here. Hope for good, for the better. Some technicalities prevented me from posting new entries. Now, it’s okay.

You can also read Bobbet’s World at 360yahoo and friendster.  All the best.

Bobbet’s World @ WordPress May 14, 2008

The first time is always crucial, critical. Be that as it may, I’d like to think that this is a brave new attempt. Welcome to Bobbet’s World, this time at WordPress!

Bobbet’s World started at 360.yahoo, then moved to Friendster Blogs, and now it has expanded its “world” to a new site: WordPress. Through new friendster “friends,” I was able to explore this domain. May words flourish here as productive, rich, and prolific as they flowed and flourished in my old sites.

Your comments are so welcome. Feel free to negotiate, construct, re-construct, de-construct the meanings. Through our post-modern lens, let’s all look at life, living, and matters that crop up in between, in the process of living life. Yes, ruminate on, muse over practically all things under the sun: books, movies, philosophy, the writing life, etc. Let words flood this new site of mine.

Let Bobbet’s World expand and go beyond its limited realm. Let this be our thinking corner. After all, as Butch Dalisay wrote: “the knowing is in the writing.”

05.14.08 / 1.34 a.m. May 13, 2008

I think I’ll go insane if I won’t be writing at the end of the day. This has become a habit. So hard to break. I’m still awake, probably with all other insomiacs.

Games Uplate Live had just signed off. Thirty minutes earlier I received a text message from a graduate student who so apolegetically reminded me of the paper he’ll submit on the 15th that I must try to finish the following day.

An hour and a half ago, Nina sent to us the template for language shape-up slated on the 15th and 16th of this month (the event will be end of this week!). An hour ago, I finished working on faculty loading of our English faculty in the department. There are still 12 floating sections whose skeds conflict with one another.

Outside, I can hear the sounds from midnight-shift tricycles. Later, I still need to wake up early. Must read four more technical articles due to be critiqued this afternoon in our workshop class. In between, still need to go to Los Banos to buy stuff, etc.

It’s now quarter to 2 a.m. I just had a glass of cold water to freshen up all that I felt dry. Am I now ready to sleep? Let’s see where I would end up from here.

Postmodern Confession May 12, 2008

What a day! I practically cleaned up everything. The jeepney strike was responsible for this. I didn’t meet my class this afternoon, so I was left with no choice but to stay at home and wipe the dust off, discard the the scrap materials that all gathered dust from the shelves all this time. In other words, I let go of all those that were there, triggers for  negative vibes or energy in my comfort zone.  The rain did its best part while I was doing all these.

The quali files were a revelation. I couldn’t believe I’ve gathered voluminous materials, papers, and books (all photocopied versions) more than enough for one block of my shelf. That was the body of "experience" and "wisdom" we gained from a semester of quali research class under our guru, Ma’am Jean Saludadez. Andrea also contributed a volume of additional resource that time I was writing my quali-quanti combi of research proposal  for our commres class under the turf of Ma’am Meldy Lumanta. The mini quali research saw print in The Collegium. I hope I can do the same for the commres proposal: a bold attempt to do a time-series version of conversational analysis using distance education (on-line learning) as data site.

Speaking about The Collegium. Right now, I’m in the process of closing the pages of our combined issue, finally. The laid-out pages now render themselves open for proofreading. I pray I can finish this by the end of the week, with another editing work, faculty loading, and language shape-up workshop on the side. Whew!

My TW class is also now in the workshop mode. We were supposed to start the first session this afternoon, but the "welgang bayan" came into the picture. We’ll do this for two weeks till the semester ends. My students are off to a real writing experience capped by an activity that would lead them to hardcore revision, eventually to their interpretation project. Well, I’ve said a lot.

In our advance comm theory class, we call this process debriefing (military origin), quarter-backing (football parlance), or simply "reduction of dissonance" (Ma’am Mads speaking). With the many things I do and think about now, writing them out certainly makes me sane, provides me a breather. So, I filled up the page of my blog site again. Where the heck can you find a free opportunity to confess your day and do it effortlessly? Only here. Maybe next time, I’ll try my pen (virtual tool, though) again to poetry, he-he-he, and let’s see where it would lead me.

Barefoot Cook May 11, 2008

Why there’s always a part of me which wants to cook or prepare foods? Maybe it’s my former life. It has something to do with what I did during my past life, if I’ll buy the precept of "reincarnation." So I was a cook in the past. Like Bobby Flay? Or Tyler Florence? (Maybe not Jaime Oliver, ha-ha! Gosh, never Wolfgang Puck!) That’s why I loved the moments we had our halo-halo fest or the pizza-cole slaw-chicharon bonding moment with my family at ate len’s lawn one hot summer night? Maybe. Let’s treat that as a hypothesis.

So, now I’m a trying-hard chef waxing sentiments through a shout-out that celebrates the culinary being in us, nya-ha-ha! Yes, each day, we are cooks — we cook up lives, events, lots of abstractions like ideas, angsts, etc. But we have to consider "cook up" as an action phrase in the positive sense of things. To cook up means to extract what is inside us, to squeeze out our creative juices, to toss ideas in mind, to prick up our imaginations. Yah! A mouthful.

Whatever all these mean, I’ll continue to be a "cook," whether of words or cuisine, past or future life, literal or figurative, positive or negative connotation. So let’s cook it up. Bon  appetit!

My Old-and-New-and-Old-Again Self May 8, 2008

Look at the photo below. That’s me 37 years ago. There could be some
traces of the present me. The nose perhaps evolved better, ha-ha. I’ve
grown bigger, better yet wider, or physically challenged in width or
girth, he-he-he. But come to think of it, our childhood photo speaks a
lot of our physical evolution, yet, there’s always a trace of us that
remains as we grow old or euphemistically become mature and  wiser.
Maybe it’s in the eyes. I got to recognize my old Canossa classmates,
those I haven’t seen for more than 20 years, through their eyes.

So,
the eyes don’t change across time? I’m not an expert in anatomy or
physiology so I can’t conclude myself. About our body structure, one
cousin of mine, who have gone to medical school, one time blurted out
that we tend to go back to our original body form, i.e., the one we had in
childhood. Given that picture, I may go back to my own old slim
physique in the future. Praise God! Nya-ha-ha!

Whatever these
mean, one thing is for sure: we can’t elude the past — our history,
our origin, our roots. Short of saying that life is a vicious cycle. It
is cyclic or circular. Yeah. Maybe, the oriental belief is right to a
different extent. That in death, we’ll be reborn into different forms.
A rock. Shrub. Insect. Mountain. Etc. In reincarnation, we meet our
dreamed-of creature or creation. Or we meet our past. In science,
though, believing what my cousin said, in growing old or mature, we
tend to meet our old physical self, of course, minus the clear skin or
black hair or straight body. Maybe a trace of who we were before. Fun.
Exciting. Let’s welcome our old selves again soon. In my case, 30 years
from now? Ha-ha-ha!

Blurred and Unstructured May 7, 2008

Summer is tiresome. I always need to rush up checking papers I need to return the following day. Need to clean up a lot: files, the house, clutter, my mind. Often, I have to repeat the process. Like going to the grocery. Like remembering. Or forgetting. Often, I have to draw up a list. Lest I forget. But true, I often forget. I always need to do similar things. Over again. Like a routine. Sleeping late. Telling myself I’ll wake up early tomorrow. A promise i.e. always meant to be broken. I often wake up late.

There are new things. Now, I see the world through my polarized lens. And surprises. Medicard that doesn’t work. Unexpected letter. Etc. Young faculty members who heeded the call.

Like an abstract painting, things are hazy, even vague. I don’t know how to clear out, clean up the clutter in such a way that life will be a lot simpler, predictable.  Maybe the answer is somewhere. Let the mind rest for the meantime.

What matters at the end of the day May 4, 2008

Seems I can’t really sleep without writing my heart out first. Writing is a constant practice, after all. Also, I have to live up to my dreamed-of occupation as a CNF Writer, he-he-he.

I had enough of work this weekend. Did paper chase. Checked the papers (prelim exam, last quiz) of my summer writing class (the entire thing I did for one complete week). Yesterday, I cleaned up my room, wiped off the dust, disposed scrap materials, changed everything about my bed, brought back things to their natural, clean order. That was tough! But it felt good eventually. Last night, I slept the sleep of the just, ha-ha-ha.

Tonight, I cleaned up my thinking corner: re-organized the files,  discarded old papers from previous semesters, put back all things in their rightful places. I’m now dead tired. My neck and nape ache. I look forward to a better sleep since it’s cooler now after it rained thoroughly this afternoon. Tomorrow is another work day. But I can wake up late. It’ll be another hectic week. I have to list down things I need to accomplish by order of priority. I have to let my quanti realm work for the meantime. Then, I’ll go back to my usual self again: taking my time, savoring each moment as if it’s my last, slowing down. Well, I do that routine every end of the day, at night. That’s where I am now. In the silence of the night, in solitude, I go back home to what really matters at the end of the day: being at peace with one’s self, coming to terms with one’s own version of how it is to be authentically happy.