Are You Who You Want to be?

It’s the first week of November and it marks as the start of my final semester. Hopefully, in God’s time by the next year I would be earning my degree. And after two more years of diversified training for me to be able to take the licensure examination for Architecture. Here comes another season of decision. When I was about to enter college, I wasn’t really sure about the course I will be taking after high school. There are lots of good sounding courses like business administration and engineering courses that I thought would fit my vague mind but I was still not in the mood of choosing one. After several ways of thinking and long hours of decision-making that took me a bottle of beer to finish, here I am today standing in front of people with t-square and messy pens that I got from nowhere. By the time I am writing this article, I’m still uncertain that I’m going to be an architect someday. I really don’t know why I am standing still. Perhaps there is a good reason why I woke up one day on this side of the road. The song “This is your life” by Switchfoot always reminds me of the things that I should be thinking right now.

Don't close your eyes, don't close your eyes
This is your life and today is all you've got now
Yeah, and today is all you'll ever have
Don't close your eyes
Don't close your eyes

This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Are you who you want to be? Is this the life I am dreaming of? Is this sum of all my sacrifices? When I was writing my book for thesis, my adviser always asks me to revise my goals and objectives of my study. He said “stick with your goals. The objectives must be coherent to the goal you want to achieve.” The goal setting is similar to building bridges leading to your ultimate dream. We may not know what lies ahead of us, but important is that we succeeded in fulfilling our dreams not by the reputation given by the people but the heart and mind that reached self-actualization. Nobody measures real success but us. I realized then that this life is too short; we have to do what we have to. I don’t want to see myself someday acting the role of someone who I’m not used to be.

An Encounter With the Morons

Foolish talks have always been a part of my daily living. Perhaps it’s a punchline of God saying how lucky I am that there where human-shaped creatures dumber than what I could ever imagine.

Scenario 1: On an oral defense of a thesis, a professor who’s in charge of the event asked to run her an errand. As the situation goes…

Prof: could you buy us snacks for the jurors? There where three of them so buy three drinks and sandwiches (then gave the money)
Me: right away ma’am
From the store, I came back to the moron to give her what she instructed.

Prof: (in a astonishing tone) oh??something’s missing. I told you these should be four iced tea and sandwiches..Hmmp..
Me: (to myself with my astral projection coming out of my body and dragging a knife towards her chest) You’ll be in hell soon.!!!

Scenario 2: The teacher discusses the latest discovery here on earth (screw you if you didn’t know this) the sun rises in the east every morning. Suddenly, a shit comes out from a butthead classmate.

Teacher: the Chinese wants their room to face east.
Stupid classmate: (sheepishly murmured something to his seatmate) is it true that in Alaska, the sun rises in east too?
Seatmate: Dies on the floor breaking her neck laughing.

Scenario 3: Professor approaching each of her students for an announcement.

To student 1: we’ll meet in room 311 @ 3:00
To student 2: we’ll meet in the AVR @ 3:00
To student 3: we’ll meet in the library @ 3:00
..And so on…

Conclusion: Mental health situation in the country is quite alarming.

Sheltered Dreams

I once dreamed of a house, a home, something more than to shelter my needs but to illustrate my perspective of a real living. Walls and roofs that envelope a what I valued most. A home for family. In Filipino “tahanan”. Literally speaking, it means a place to shed your tears. For most Filipinos, a home is a significant sanctuary for building the personality of an individual because the values are cored into the family which we all consider as the basic unit of the society. For almost five years of being involved in the practice of planning homes as an architecture student, I’ve found that that a dream house is indefinite. It is only defined by the boundaries of contentment of its inhabitants. As I have remembered in the book “The Most Beautiful House in the World” by Witold Rybzinski (not quite sure about the spelling) his boat-building project eventually became his house in the end of the story having the house as a concrete monument of his childhood dream of sailing.
This is my own interpretation of “tahanan” as of today. An evolution of my design abilities (my mentors say it’s not yet evolved), sense of taste, value for people and sleepless days and nights. It has four bedrooms, a balcony, library, a cozy family room, living room and maid’s room. Come and take it as an experience.