March 16, 99

ARROGANT GUY IN THE MEETING HALL
I am lying in a futon on the floor of some meeting hall much like the ones we used to be in during our Jesuit Volunteer (JVP) training days. There are plenty of people around me... in conversation and asleep. The atmosphere is like one big slumber party consisting of my high school classmates and fellow Jesuit Volunteers. Can't tell if it's night or day. Some arrogant guy comes in and starts harassing one of my female friends. He's claiming the girl and he are seeing each other... When I know it's all hogwash. And I don't like the way he's throwing his weight around. Maybe I am jealous.
___ Sheerin (bandmate and co-volunteer) and I are running from the meeting hall to the corridors giggling. I think we played some mischievous prank on the arrogant guy. Damned if I know what the prank was. Meanwhile, all our other co-JVP'ers are either waking up or coming from the showers after their morning baths.

ALGEBRA FROM HELL
A whole group of us students are waiting in line outside a classroom for a seat. Apparently if you want a seat, you have to arrive early. Classroom seats here are on a first-come, first-serve basis. The teacher has some problems for us to solve, all written out on the board. It's a MATH class. As the students get noisy, the teacher decides to give us all extra work, in short, more problems. A punishment for our rowdiness?
___ Suddenly I am solving algebraic equations all over again (shudder) but this time with variables that have more than ONE either subscript or superscript number attached to it… It's a frigging nightmare! How do you solve something that looks like this?

ALGEBRA AT THE PIER
And just as suddenly, I am elsewhere. Now I am seated at a formica table in a monobloc chair, next to my 4A high school classmates and we are all solving bizarre quadratic formulas on our own papers. Weird thing is, the classroom is gone. We are under the night stars, in some back lot of a pier with weeds growing out of the dusty ground at our feet. In the distance we see boats docking. We are right outside the chainlink fence which separates this empty lot from the main pier.
___ In the middle of our algebraic seatwork, my classmate Ayedee whips out his celphone and starts conversing with his longtime sweetheart Madz, saying he needs a break from all this mathematics, and that he's going to meet her soon. And I am suddenly singing “I Can Dream About You” by Dan Hartman… (which was my favorite song back in Grade 7). Another classmate, Paul Santos, is suddenly singing the guitar solo while playing air piano…. My classmates are singing along apparently. It's like some mad scene from a Broadway musical, where for no reason at all, people just get up and start yodelling their lungs off...

March 19, 1999
Friday: 6:50 am

MORNING SHOWER WITH GREASY WOK
Yet another big gathering of the Jesuit Volunteers Philippines (can't stop dreaming about this time in my life). I am planning to take a bath in the main bathroom, but ther appears to be only one shower room and it's co-ed... first come-first served. Just as I step into the main shower foyer (as big as the one in Sacred Heart Novitiate), my friend Sheerin is there. She and I are viciously racing each other to get to the shower first and claim its sought-after space. She is in white cotton pajamas and looks like she'd cut my heart out if she could get tot he bathroom first.
___ But suddenly the shower area turns into the kitchen in my grandmother's old house in Bulusan street. There is a hearty breakfast of sinangag and corned beef being cooked in a greasy wok. And it looks like I want to use that wok as my tabo. I don't know why. But it occurs to me that if I use this greasy wok to scoop the water out of the basins for my bath (what happened to the shower?), I must first eat all of the fried rice and corned beef that it contains...
___ A priest, I think it's Fr. JJ Jesena (former chaplain of Ateneo De Manila University, circa 1993) comes in commenting about my eating again and seeing me stealing bites from the wok of corned beef. And while I sneak food into my mouth, a lot of other people have snuck into the actual bathroom and are taking their baths ahead of me.

ANOTHER FUNERAL GATHERING
The entire scene turns into a funeral gathering, even though I know I'm still in the bathroom/kitchen area of my grandmother's house. All my 4A classmates are here to celebrate(? or mourn?) the passing away of yet another of our classmates. I don't know who. We talk as we piss in the urinals. I seem to be ambivalent about everything.
___ Some slutty-looking GROs appear just outside the bathrrom door.. they've come from the club just across the hall (a girly bar across the hall) and some dudes like John are making typical comments like, “Hot mama” or something.
___ Karlo Samson leaves his IDataSystems ID card hanging atop one of the urinals….(by this time, I wake up feeling the need to urinate)

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