Summer Break Comeback

Ah, hiatus... Finally ended your streak.

So, yeah, I've come back to the Necropolis. I got bogged down by school requirements and paperwork and finals that I barely had time to post and entry. Since I badly wanted to post something, I'd start of with a little but of rambling and hopefully, my next posts will be more interesting for the most loyal of my readers (and I really wish they'd suddenly multiply like, well, mushrooms in our backyard after a thunderstorm).

We ended our school year in a rather interesting way. Our class, together with another that was merged with ours for our Evidence class under Commissioner Rene Sarmiento made a book. The book will serve as a simplified guide much like the "Idiot's Guide to ____" books - a handbook-slashie-manual if you will, a handbook, really, for law students and for laymen to understand a rather popular topic in the past months or so: IMPEACHMENT.

Our editors decided to entitle it: A Posteriori. I don't exactly know how or why they chose that but it is eye-catching, even if I have no idea what it means. Nevertheless, we had a blast in our launch. Commissioner was there, as well as several associates who played the role of panel in case they would like to ask questions, which indeed they have. Because my groupmates were my close friends, and our editors decided to pick one of each group to present a short report on our parts in the book, my group decided I should do it. Only that I had a few reservations about it. You see, when you are cooped up in a dorm room with only your books and a broke-ass netbook with a broadband stick as your company, you tend to just browse the net and watch streaming videos to kill time. And it so happens that the last clips I watched before I knew I was to speak in front of two classes and a panel of lawyers and our dear Commissioner himself was Eddie Izzard's Glorious and Dress to Kill. Full shows. Streaming.

So, what do they have in connection with me presenting a report? Well, I tend to make everything I do while standing up talking into some sort of comic experience. Not that I'm funny or a comedian of sorts, I just tell things as they are. But things like that happen, so there. My reservations include among other things: What will I say? Will they like it? Will I keep myself from blurting out cuss words and keep the whole thing formal? And what will I wear? In the end, I secretly wished that my group mates would change their minds in the last minute and pick another one in my stead. But no, and after my report, well... I ended up messing my own head next and finished my report in lackluster fashion.

But they seem to like it.

One lady classmate thought I was drunk at the time.

Awesome.

No one really knew this, but what I said there was half-baked, and I ended up omitting the other bits because I was afraid no one would get my material. Just to get this out of my system, a long narrative of events was what I was supposed to say. Rather lengthy, if you ask me, and that was one of the reasons why I decided to cut up the few bits and insert more on the more substantial bits of our paper. I admit I took a few off from Eddie Izzard, but I like the guy and his work and his humor just gets to me more than other comedians.

So yeah, our group had a blast doing the paper and of course we had a lot of things going on that sort of, hindered or bogged down our progress. Nevertheless, we finished it and the book was finished, and I think it will turn out okay.

So you're working on a paper on a deadline, and when you're a law student and deadlines just keep popping up, you cannot help but think how conveniently they put the word 'dead' in deadline. It keeps building up. It builds up, builds up, builds up, and then the next thing you know you're neck deep in work that you won't know what to do first.

And so you decide to go for the overtime. The all-nighter that you have done for the last three, four, or in some cases, five years of law school which you have been doing night in and night out. Except that you'll be doing it with a group and you feel like you'll finish it, and you are like, 'Nothing can go wrong, we'll finish this! Let's get it on!', and you get a car, and laptops, and books, and drafts, and notes, and coffee, and a toothbrush, and gatorade, and coffee, and more coffee, and your personal secretary, some jam, more books, and pens, and highlighters, and more jam perhaps, your slippers,  and bring the kitchen sink with you, and a thermos of coffee. Only one problem: you're lugging all that around Manila in the middle of the night and you realize, 'We're driving for hours and we haven't started yet.' You see, we didn't get a venue that night and the four of us - one was out due to something lodged up his throat, and the other was a woman so we couldn't expect her to go driving around Manila with four other guys.

So yeah, we drove around the city and when all the Starbucks closed down on you, you have no other choice but to swallow you're pride and do more of the unorthodox methods of paper-making.

Get a room in a hotel.

But it was the fifteenth of the month then, and everyone knows what that means... Fresh cash in the stash for a late-night mash... I don't know what the hell that means. But basically that means all the cheaper rooms in the more respectable hotels are booked. And we ended up driving across the more seedier parts of the Metro just to find a decent room. But when none comes up, well, we gotta swallow our prides and check-in in one of the more, well, red-light district... Sleazy, even... all for the sake of finishing the work that would immortalize us.

So we ended up in one of the backstreet motels in Pasay City, and when you see four blokes driving inside a motel, then well, it gets interesting.

I have no idea why they wouldn't believe us. They wouldn't accept the fact that we are really doing a paper! I mean, come on, I know you got a policy of two-in-a-room, but this is academics!

Us: We'd like a room, please. For the four of us.
Busboy: Sir?
Us: We're just here to make a paper and do research. We like to coop ourselves up so we can concentrate.
Busboy: Riiiiiight...

What? Do you honestly think we were there for a sausage party? Come on, man.

Busboy: We can't have all of you in a room, sir.
Us: But we're just going to finish this paper...
Busboy: Sir, it's our policy to have only two in each room...
Us: Can't you see? Bugger, we got tons of photocs, and two laptops here, and books, and...
Busboy: Sir, unless you-
Us: OKAY! OKAY! WE'RE HERE TO HAVE SEX!
Busboy: ... Keys right here, sirs...

So we ended up like that and when it's 2 in the morning, well, as if we have a choice.

It's not the first time I did this, though... There was a time when me and my friends came back from a "E-Gamers'" convention of sorts and needed a place to crash since we were all punch-drunk. We did the same thing, only that we got separate rooms. And when you're with four other drunk blokes driving into one popular chain of motels around the metro, well, the results may be the same, but a bit totally different. But that's another story.

So things ended up well enough and most of my class binged in the "after-party". I'm back home in the provinces playing COD and whatnot, and well, just spending my summer away with all options open for anything that may come by. Whatever this summer may bring, I think I'll enjoy it while it lasts. I mean, when you're thinking whether you'll get kicked out or what, you tend to do things that make you forget of your worries.

Maybe more of Eddie Izzard then. Man, that guy just cracks me up.

(Now listening to Island in the Sun by Weezer)