I was busy preparing teaching materials in my office this afternoon when somebody knocked at my office door. As I called out for whoever it was to come on in, the door opened and one of our younger instructors entered holding two large flat boxes with his left hand. He came over to where I was seated at my PC and lowered one of the boxes which had no top so that I could what was inside. Looking in I saw that there were several quaint golden-brown cupcake-like food stuffs inside! The instructor told me he was treating everyone at the office for the New Year and to help myself to a few. Thinking that there was just enough for each one of us at the office to have one each, I got one cupcake. Seeing that, the instructor cried out, "Kulang pa yan! Kuha pa ho kayo ng isa pa." (That's not enough! Go ahead and get another one.) So I got one more and said thank you.
I brought both home to show and share with my parents. They turned out to be mini cassava cakes. And they were gooey-ly yummy! Too bad I didn't get to take a picture of the cakes before we gobbled them up.
Just a simple journal of random thoughts, events and current obsessions.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
A man and his pig
Late this morning I left my office to move my car from the far end of the parking lot to a spot closer to my office building (the lot was practically empty anyway). As I walked to the car, I saw in the distance an elderly man jogging along the bridge farther down the road. A few feet behind him was a fat black short-legged dog trying to keep up with his master. I could hear the man chanting something as he jogged and it sounded like he was urging on his dog. As they came closer, I saw that the dog wasn't a dog at all: It was a young pot-bellied pig! The few people who were walking about must have come to the same realization because they all suddenly stopped, stared and smiled at this unusual sight of a man jogging with his pet piglet.
The new year's first day of classes (sort of)
Today being the first day classes resume at university, I got up early with the intention of arriving at my office early. I wanted to make some last minute changes on the lecture slides I would be using for my 8am lecture.
I was however puzzled to find the parking lot near my office building nearly deserted as I drove up around 7:40am. The jeepneys that usually wait for passengers were not around and there were just two other cars one of which I recognized as belonging to our director who is always early at work. I also noticed that there were no cars parked either at nearby buildings. I couldn't see any students or other instructors milling around or walking through the building's corridors either.
Dismissing this as due to the early hour and it being the very first day of classes of the new year, I walked over to the building carrying my bags after parking my car at the far end of the parking lot under some trees. As I entered the first floor lobby I met a colleague (owner of the other car I saw parked at the parking lot) whom I immediately greeted happy new year.
He likewise hello then asked, "Alam mo ba na walang klase ngayon?" (Do you know that there are no classes today?) I was stunned and managed to asked, "What?!" It turns out that the university chancellor had declared on the last day of classes last year that there would be no classes today to give students more time to travel back to town! My colleague who has his own 7am lecture class on Wednesdays wasn't aware of that announcement either. He was informed about it by the college dean only that very morning through a text message. No wonder there weren't any students around at all! There may have been no official memo but this kind of news spreads like wildfire among students. But I wish some kind of official announcement had been posted on the university's website to at least let the rest of us know about it.
Anyway, after having a good laugh over our situation I excused myself and walked on to my office room. As I settled down to work, I realized that my lecture/lab schedule has been messed up a bit once again because of having to miss today's lectures. I was however slightly relieved that I at least now had the entire day to edit my lecture slides and other teaching materials as well as catch up a bit on other work that I had set aside to thoroughly enjoy my Christmas vacation. There was just a small glitch though later when I discovered that our Internet connection was down. While that meant that there will be less to distract me from my work, I was bereft of my main source for teaching materials. So I wasn't able to do as much work as I hoped to.
But the main good thing about not having classes today was that I had at least a day to adjust from vacation mode back to working mode.
I was however puzzled to find the parking lot near my office building nearly deserted as I drove up around 7:40am. The jeepneys that usually wait for passengers were not around and there were just two other cars one of which I recognized as belonging to our director who is always early at work. I also noticed that there were no cars parked either at nearby buildings. I couldn't see any students or other instructors milling around or walking through the building's corridors either.
Dismissing this as due to the early hour and it being the very first day of classes of the new year, I walked over to the building carrying my bags after parking my car at the far end of the parking lot under some trees. As I entered the first floor lobby I met a colleague (owner of the other car I saw parked at the parking lot) whom I immediately greeted happy new year.
He likewise hello then asked, "Alam mo ba na walang klase ngayon?" (Do you know that there are no classes today?) I was stunned and managed to asked, "What?!" It turns out that the university chancellor had declared on the last day of classes last year that there would be no classes today to give students more time to travel back to town! My colleague who has his own 7am lecture class on Wednesdays wasn't aware of that announcement either. He was informed about it by the college dean only that very morning through a text message. No wonder there weren't any students around at all! There may have been no official memo but this kind of news spreads like wildfire among students. But I wish some kind of official announcement had been posted on the university's website to at least let the rest of us know about it.
Anyway, after having a good laugh over our situation I excused myself and walked on to my office room. As I settled down to work, I realized that my lecture/lab schedule has been messed up a bit once again because of having to miss today's lectures. I was however slightly relieved that I at least now had the entire day to edit my lecture slides and other teaching materials as well as catch up a bit on other work that I had set aside to thoroughly enjoy my Christmas vacation. There was just a small glitch though later when I discovered that our Internet connection was down. While that meant that there will be less to distract me from my work, I was bereft of my main source for teaching materials. So I wasn't able to do as much work as I hoped to.
But the main good thing about not having classes today was that I had at least a day to adjust from vacation mode back to working mode.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year celebrations
It's another new year!
New Year's eve was spent practically at the church were I once again had to provide accompaniment at the keyboard during the "midnight" mass at 8pm. As usual I had to be at the church at least ecrackers has finally convinced more people to resort to safer ways to make noise to greet the new year. In fact, I didn't hear too many firecrackers going off during the previous weeks and this morning has itself remained unusually quiet up to this late hour--which could also be due to people remaining in bed after staying up late.
In any case, I don't think one needs to raise hell to celebrate the coming of a New Year. The tradition of setting off firecrackers after all has its origins in Chinese culture where noise is made to scare off the bad spirits. While many Filipinos believe in all those bad spirits and feng shui, I myself don't believe in such superstitious stuff. (Hey, I'm after all a Christian, a Roman Catholic, so why should I?) Besides, I generally can't stand loud noise or music. (It makes me wonder how our neighbor's son can stand sitting in that pick-up of his with all that music pounding into his ear drums.)
We here at home haven't touched a single firecracker for long time. The last time we had a firecracker was something like twenty years ago when my father bought one of those cone thingies that, when lit, gives off a fountain of sparks for one or two minutes--which wasn't even a real firecracker if you think about it. Before that, we had sparklers for one or two years when my sister and I were still in grade school. Nowadays, I feel we're simply too old for such things. There are other anyway lots of other things one can do to celebrate and not get hurt at the same time. Like eating! He-he.
New Year's eve was spent practically at the church were I once again had to provide accompaniment at the keyboard during the "midnight" mass at 8pm. As usual I had to be at the church at least ecrackers has finally convinced more people to resort to safer ways to make noise to greet the new year. In fact, I didn't hear too many firecrackers going off during the previous weeks and this morning has itself remained unusually quiet up to this late hour--which could also be due to people remaining in bed after staying up late.
In any case, I don't think one needs to raise hell to celebrate the coming of a New Year. The tradition of setting off firecrackers after all has its origins in Chinese culture where noise is made to scare off the bad spirits. While many Filipinos believe in all those bad spirits and feng shui, I myself don't believe in such superstitious stuff. (Hey, I'm after all a Christian, a Roman Catholic, so why should I?) Besides, I generally can't stand loud noise or music. (It makes me wonder how our neighbor's son can stand sitting in that pick-up of his with all that music pounding into his ear drums.)
We here at home haven't touched a single firecracker for long time. The last time we had a firecracker was something like twenty years ago when my father bought one of those cone thingies that, when lit, gives off a fountain of sparks for one or two minutes--which wasn't even a real firecracker if you think about it. Before that, we had sparklers for one or two years when my sister and I were still in grade school. Nowadays, I feel we're simply too old for such things. There are other anyway lots of other things one can do to celebrate and not get hurt at the same time. Like eating! He-he.