Grieve

Last Friday Night, I claimed that the word "grieve" did not exist.

My office mates and I were walking down Ponciano and spotted a sign on one of the salon shops. It read that the establishment was temporarily closed because the employees were attending a wake for a colleague's relative. 

The phrase used in the sign was "we grieve" and I immediately shot back that it should be mourn as in "we mourn". Pressed for an explanation by Henry and Grace, I said that there was no such thing as the word "grieve", just "grief" and "grieving". 

Even now, I still wonder what made me so confident to issue that proclamation. My best guess is that I thought the word "grieve" was so awkward in any sentence that I believed it didn't exist at all. 

It also caught me thinking how many words have I discarded over the years for the sole reason that they looked disjointed and weird whenever I use them. Hmmm...

Grinning

It just so happened that a few night ago, my faith in humanity was restored (as if it needed restoring).

I was riding a jeep on the home when a female passenger alighted from the vehicle. As the driver was about to speed away, the woman yelled the driver to stop. First thing that crossed my mind was that the woman forgot something. But she immediately ran to the front and apologized to the driver. She didn't pay the fare yet.

The driver was grinning afterwards.

So was I.

Lighten Up

My gratitude to Rose and the rest for sharing this to me. It would have been fun if I had witnessed this firsthand but the way they told the story made me laugh big time:

Scene: An irate client is in the building and is lashing out at Vanessa because of the attorney's letters she has been receiving. After her (or was it a he?) tirade, she feels faint and is suffering from high blood pressure.

Client: Mamamatay ako dahil sa (Insert my company name here)!

Vendor (out of nowhere): Huwag  muna Ma'am. Masarap ang mabuhay...lalo't lalo na pag may minamahal.

Like I said, I was giggling at the absurdity of it all. Sometimes, work is fun.

The Hulk and Taguro

The Hulk. He's a giant beast triggered by the raw emotions of Dr. Banner. Similar to the character of Mr. Hyde, the hulk is the alter-ego of Bruce, a hyper-literal manifestation of the doctor's anger.

Taguro. He's a demon who gets stronger the bigger his body gets. 

Obviously, the similarity between these two characters is that they both heap on body mass (ergo, their bodies get larger in just seconds), which greatly increases their strength and stamina.

The question I've always wanted to ask is: where does the additional body mass come from? 

For the Hulk, its body comes from the tiny, slender frame of Dr. Banner. For Taguro, he manages to add more weight in the form of grotesquely bloated muscles. Do all those muscles come from thin air? Or do the creators prefer that we disregard this phenomenon and simply accept it as plausible?

Fascinating question, really. Just asking.

Enrollment

I'm inside a campus once again. I'm sweating, slightly hungry, as I jostle for a place among the teeming masses. Jeesh. I've never liked enrollments and this one was no exception.

At least, when I was in college, I had all the patience in the world, waiting and lining up along with the students. I had to be because I knew I was studying in Ateneo for free and, for this sole fact alone, I was willing to go through the process and waste two days of my life for enrollment.

Now that I'm finally pursuing Law four years after my graduation, I've found out that I'm not really patient anymore. It's probably because I know I'm the one who's going to pay for my tuition and I do feel a sense of entitlement, however false, because of it. I mean, I'm not an undergraduate scrounging for some education; I'm a freakin' professional scrounging for some education. I deserve a special line for us professionals so we could file just one vacation leave for enrollment instead of two.

Anyway, enrollment hasn't been easier since the last time I checked. For all the hulabaloo about online enrollment, UM doesn't seem to be fond of this (Ateneo de Davao has gone this route, according to my brother, but it was too late for me to enjoy it).

There were instances when I was unnecessarily inconvenienced. The student assistant kept insisting that I submit a copy of my birth certificate, which was odd since I've already given one to the Admissions office (his reason: there are multiple filing systems for both Records and Admissions, although technically they share the same room). I was also sent back and forth between the two UM Bolton campuses because I needed to be interviewed by Guidance (which wasn't necessary according to one counselor)and I needed to write down my subject codes (because the Admissions didn't have a copy of these codes in the embassy area where the enrollment was going on). I was also asked for my Certificate of Good Moral Character despite my insistence that it didn't apply to me because I was no longer a high school graduate (in hindsight, the student assistant probably didn't know any better). And finally, the long line: four hours of just waiting so I could finally reach the encoder, who would then enter my subject codes.

Simply put, my enrollment experience in UM was distasteful. Definitely, it was not a good way to start a relationship with another school.