0179: A Defensive Conversation with the MiniStop Lady
“Bakit hindi ka naglaw?” said the Mini Stop lady, withholding my food and my receipt. “7 years rin naman yun!”
“Ummm…” intelligently said I. “I like Biology?” I said weakly, hoping that she would just hand over the food. I was surprised that no one was waiting impatiently behind me, but it was one of those slow hours for this particular branch.
Because I live really near a particular MiniStop branch, I tend to buy food there when I am lazy and/or there’s nothing else open. This means that most of the staff recognize me on sight, and I generally know them all.
This however piqued one particular employee’s interest in me, which is why I ended up in the aforementioned discussion.
The lady in question had asked me if I was in high school (sigh, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised) and I had replied that I was in college. She then asked where, and I said “UP Manila” and hoped the conversation would end there.
She then asked about my course, and I thought of how best to explain it as she looked for my ordered cup of rice. I said it was medicine, and it would be finished in 7 years, and that I got in it straight out of high school. (I did not give the name of the course, as I have had many sad experiences of people not knowing what it was.)
Certainly I did not expect her to gasp in awe or bow down with respect and offer to pay for the rice I ordered, I actually didn’t expect anything other than a nod and her giving me the cup of rice and my receipt. I didn’t expect her to question my course choice (and effectively choice of UP campus, as the UP College of Law is not in UP Manila).
“Ang law,” she said like she was explaining to a little girl, “seven years rin. Dapat naglaw ka nalang.”
Not that I hadn’t considered law for the whole of third year (thanks to PopLaw) until I decided I had no future in it as I was too passive and if I went into Intellectual Property Law I’d have to arrest my whole family and most of my friends, but it was utterly demeaning that she questioned my choice of healing over arguing (well, one does speak a lot in law). I contemplated telling her that my high school did not allow going into a prelaw course straight away, but I realized that she might already think me poor and destitute for going to a public school (like my interviewer at the College of Medicine did) and decided not to go there.
“I like biology,” I say a little more strongly. “And chem,” I add (though remembering that I hated certain aspects of it, namely Organic Chem) for good measure.
“Maganda law!” she says with conviction (failed dream ba niya?), ignoring my last two statements. “Dapat naglaw ka nalang! Seven years naman ang ibabayad mo eh!” At this point her look implies that I was not smart enough to contemplate the beauty of law and all, and it was her duty to convince me to shift courses.
I was getting annoyed (Who was she to look down on my career choice when she seemed stuck in the convenience store business? And no, I don’t think she was studying law and this was a sideline as she was always there and I saw her at all hours of the day and night), and I bit back a retort on how hard it was to get in my current course and how we in Intarmed were considered geniuses (while I still think I got in by a fluke, I do realize how intelligent my classmates are). This conversation was going nowhere, and I was getting rather hungry. I looked pointedly at the rice which she still held, and she ignored it, her eyes still on me and her mouth readying itself for its latest assault.
“Ayoko law eh,” I said quietly, and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly as she finally put the cup of rice down on the counter along with the bill. I took the moment I won and grabbed the cup of rice and the bill and walked (hopefully with dignity) out of the store, wondering how the hell I had gotten into this situation.
So there, and now I can say that I have not only defended my course choice against my friends, my family, and my teachers; I can now add the MiniStop Lady to my list of verbal opponents with regard to that.
***
I had my follow-up checkup Thursday with my ENT doctor, who as I mentioned in a previous entry obliterated my poor vein, and he mentioned casually that the name of the vein he killed was “septum” after I mentioned that it had bled again 6 days after its alleged demise.
Unfortunately for me, the first thing I thought of was the septum found in the heart (separating the right side from the left) and I had gruesome pictures of that septum exploding and my oxygenated and deoxygenated blood (colored red and blue respectively, following the illustrations found in the beloved Campbell book) mixing. I am however 50% sure I heard him wrong because I had a cold then, and colds diminish my hearing accuracy greatly.
Hopefully, as I’ve been looking in my laboratory manual and I cannot find any vein in the nose (or artery) called septum.
***
Next week (if it isn’t postponed) is LadyMed, which is the yearly competition between the batches in the College of Medicine of UP wherein each batch changes (I think the operative word here is “transforms beyond recognition”) a straight guy into a beautiful lady. Our entry is JF, and certainly the operative word is not an exaggeration. I am however traumatized by the seductive poses he makes (which, as we have seen earlier in the first LadyMed we entered, the judges eat up).
***
On Wednesday morning I braved the rain and went to my PE class (which was not cancelled). Given the outdoor nature of my PE (Walking) and my teacher’s insistence that we still have class, we ended up doing aerobics. The aerobics in question being similar to what I had endured earlier this Intarmed life in PE1 (the infamous lecture PE).
While there were few of us who had already taken PE1, most had not and were surprised at the nature of the aerobics (which entails different variations of stepping on a miniature bench while doing something with arms to music, and might I add, the same music over and over and over again). Of course the music was the same as before (for the most part, for some reason, at the end of our session the remixed version of Titanic came on) and by the end of the session one of my similarly blessed classmates promised to bring his own music lest we suffer those songs again (apparently the PE unit only has one or two CDs for aerobics in PE1, and only one of these are used 90% of the time).
The odd (really traumatic part) bit was we were taught a dance (eek) by Ma’am to break the monotony of the benches which was influenced by Hip-hop (in a really really basic way), Swing (eek), Cha-cha, and aerobics moves. I don’t really want to dance it ever again. It has thrusting movements. And stuff. Okay, I’ll stop now. Thankee.
And then we finish and measure our resting heart rate and it’s raining and the road’s flooded and by deux ex machina I end up at the flooded entrance to UP Manila’s CAS (long story, but UP Manila is split up by PGH, and I mean “split up”) and walking into the classroom bedraggled and with a soaked piece of homework I am greeted with this: “Lorraine! Walang SocSci!”
Okay. Hello world, hello. Cheers.
***
Good morning, and it’s Saturday and I can’t believe I’m reading a proof for Physics in my Biology book (wtf, Kardong?). Thank you, and I now return you to your regularly (theoretically) scheduled blog post.
***
I sincerely apologize for the second to the last previous post, which was 1) absolute crack, 2) deranged, and 3) rather vague yet glaringly obvious at the same time. It was so fun to write, though, I’m thinking of doing something like that again. Someday. Somehow.
And for the previous post…
I won’t apologize, nor will I pretend everything is all right, because it is the truth. It’s the blinking honest truth, and I don’t care if it hurts you, you, or you (and of course no one but the three “yous” know who I’m referring to, so bah).
***
I write this though I know others beg to differ: I like having days alone, with only one’s self for company, to have no one to sit beside as I watch bolts of lightning and hear rumbles emanating from the sky. I like the days where I wonder if the broom I placed outside my window will fly away, with how the strong winds (rare though they are) play with the bristles and how its handle seems to sway from side to side. I like listening to the rain (and still my parents don’t realize my fascination with it partly comes from how close my name is to that certain kind of precipitation) and even walking in it while in maroon jogging pants and while my SocSci homework gets soaked.
I like to touch the glass of the window with my palm, feeling the cold of outside contrasting with my own body temperature, looking as the numerous raindrops falling from the sky blurs the horizon until all I can see are blurred lights from streetlamps interspersed in the dark night sky. And then there are the moments when the rain’s just stopped and everything comes back into focus again, like waking up after a long long bout on the Sandman’s boat.
Perhaps it isn’t right to derive enjoyment from these things, from precipitation and solitude and freedom, but I do. Perhaps I should go back to my less than idyllic, less evocative duties of studying about C-H hyperconjugation and the splitting of muscles. Perhaps.
But looking at the dark night sky, the sky that has just come back into focus, and the streets below, washed of grime that will be reacquired once the new day beckons, and I falter from opening my beloved textbooks, wishing to observe these some more, give them some more time, these days.
***
[A prologue to a series.]
It’s been almost a month, and I’m still sad.
Some people have called it the end of childhood, their childhood days, and others have called it the end of an era.
I think words fail me when I try to describe what it was, what Harry Potter was, for a girl that grew up to become me. A girl that was me, in a way, yet not in so many other ways. What it is now, for the girl that grew up, my mind goes fuzzy and I can only spit out half-baked sentences and soliloquies that fall flat on their faces (had they faces).
I cannot say that the series was perfect, that there is no other series that will surpass it. I cannot say that my favorite fictional character of all time belongs to its universe (the Enderverse has that dubious honor). I cannot say that it is the longest series I have read (I think LOTR still takes the cake with so many other books in its universe), the most detailed (still LOTR, my goodness), the most expensive per page (I think Series of Unfortunate Events wins this hands down), had the best illustrations (I deny that Snape has a receding hairline as he is depicted in the US editions and the books’ words seem to agree with me and I still don’t understand the cover of the US 7th edition), even the best ending (I do like it lots better than the ending of The Chronicles of Narnia, which is the ending I most despise).
It was Harry Potter, though, and maybe those who are like me, those who’ve spent half their lives knowing its universe, will understand me when I say that is enough.
For those who don’t understand, though, I shall try to explain with halting words and freezing fingers what it is, what Harry Potter was, what it still is to me.
But that’s for the next post (hopefully).
***
I want this.
I want that.
But I don’t step on others to get what I want like you do.
You may be the golden one, the one everyone thinks the saint, and I, the one everyone labels the loner-fool, but what we do -those things we term actions- reveal the truth about you and I, of what we really are.
Be damned, then, and don’t forget the pitchfork. (You deserve it anyway.) Cheers.
“Ummm…” intelligently said I. “I like Biology?” I said weakly, hoping that she would just hand over the food. I was surprised that no one was waiting impatiently behind me, but it was one of those slow hours for this particular branch.
Because I live really near a particular MiniStop branch, I tend to buy food there when I am lazy and/or there’s nothing else open. This means that most of the staff recognize me on sight, and I generally know them all.
This however piqued one particular employee’s interest in me, which is why I ended up in the aforementioned discussion.
The lady in question had asked me if I was in high school (sigh, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised) and I had replied that I was in college. She then asked where, and I said “UP Manila” and hoped the conversation would end there.
She then asked about my course, and I thought of how best to explain it as she looked for my ordered cup of rice. I said it was medicine, and it would be finished in 7 years, and that I got in it straight out of high school. (I did not give the name of the course, as I have had many sad experiences of people not knowing what it was.)
Certainly I did not expect her to gasp in awe or bow down with respect and offer to pay for the rice I ordered, I actually didn’t expect anything other than a nod and her giving me the cup of rice and my receipt. I didn’t expect her to question my course choice (and effectively choice of UP campus, as the UP College of Law is not in UP Manila).
“Ang law,” she said like she was explaining to a little girl, “seven years rin. Dapat naglaw ka nalang.”
Not that I hadn’t considered law for the whole of third year (thanks to PopLaw) until I decided I had no future in it as I was too passive and if I went into Intellectual Property Law I’d have to arrest my whole family and most of my friends, but it was utterly demeaning that she questioned my choice of healing over arguing (well, one does speak a lot in law). I contemplated telling her that my high school did not allow going into a prelaw course straight away, but I realized that she might already think me poor and destitute for going to a public school (like my interviewer at the College of Medicine did) and decided not to go there.
“I like biology,” I say a little more strongly. “And chem,” I add (though remembering that I hated certain aspects of it, namely Organic Chem) for good measure.
“Maganda law!” she says with conviction (failed dream ba niya?), ignoring my last two statements. “Dapat naglaw ka nalang! Seven years naman ang ibabayad mo eh!” At this point her look implies that I was not smart enough to contemplate the beauty of law and all, and it was her duty to convince me to shift courses.
I was getting annoyed (Who was she to look down on my career choice when she seemed stuck in the convenience store business? And no, I don’t think she was studying law and this was a sideline as she was always there and I saw her at all hours of the day and night), and I bit back a retort on how hard it was to get in my current course and how we in Intarmed were considered geniuses (while I still think I got in by a fluke, I do realize how intelligent my classmates are). This conversation was going nowhere, and I was getting rather hungry. I looked pointedly at the rice which she still held, and she ignored it, her eyes still on me and her mouth readying itself for its latest assault.
“Ayoko law eh,” I said quietly, and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly as she finally put the cup of rice down on the counter along with the bill. I took the moment I won and grabbed the cup of rice and the bill and walked (hopefully with dignity) out of the store, wondering how the hell I had gotten into this situation.
So there, and now I can say that I have not only defended my course choice against my friends, my family, and my teachers; I can now add the MiniStop Lady to my list of verbal opponents with regard to that.
***
I had my follow-up checkup Thursday with my ENT doctor, who as I mentioned in a previous entry obliterated my poor vein, and he mentioned casually that the name of the vein he killed was “septum” after I mentioned that it had bled again 6 days after its alleged demise.
Unfortunately for me, the first thing I thought of was the septum found in the heart (separating the right side from the left) and I had gruesome pictures of that septum exploding and my oxygenated and deoxygenated blood (colored red and blue respectively, following the illustrations found in the beloved Campbell book) mixing. I am however 50% sure I heard him wrong because I had a cold then, and colds diminish my hearing accuracy greatly.
Hopefully, as I’ve been looking in my laboratory manual and I cannot find any vein in the nose (or artery) called septum.
***
Next week (if it isn’t postponed) is LadyMed, which is the yearly competition between the batches in the College of Medicine of UP wherein each batch changes (I think the operative word here is “transforms beyond recognition”) a straight guy into a beautiful lady. Our entry is JF, and certainly the operative word is not an exaggeration. I am however traumatized by the seductive poses he makes (which, as we have seen earlier in the first LadyMed we entered, the judges eat up).
***
On Wednesday morning I braved the rain and went to my PE class (which was not cancelled). Given the outdoor nature of my PE (Walking) and my teacher’s insistence that we still have class, we ended up doing aerobics. The aerobics in question being similar to what I had endured earlier this Intarmed life in PE1 (the infamous lecture PE).
While there were few of us who had already taken PE1, most had not and were surprised at the nature of the aerobics (which entails different variations of stepping on a miniature bench while doing something with arms to music, and might I add, the same music over and over and over again). Of course the music was the same as before (for the most part, for some reason, at the end of our session the remixed version of Titanic came on) and by the end of the session one of my similarly blessed classmates promised to bring his own music lest we suffer those songs again (apparently the PE unit only has one or two CDs for aerobics in PE1, and only one of these are used 90% of the time).
The odd (really traumatic part) bit was we were taught a dance (eek) by Ma’am to break the monotony of the benches which was influenced by Hip-hop (in a really really basic way), Swing (eek), Cha-cha, and aerobics moves. I don’t really want to dance it ever again. It has thrusting movements. And stuff. Okay, I’ll stop now. Thankee.
And then we finish and measure our resting heart rate and it’s raining and the road’s flooded and by deux ex machina I end up at the flooded entrance to UP Manila’s CAS (long story, but UP Manila is split up by PGH, and I mean “split up”) and walking into the classroom bedraggled and with a soaked piece of homework I am greeted with this: “Lorraine! Walang SocSci!”
Okay. Hello world, hello. Cheers.
***
Good morning, and it’s Saturday and I can’t believe I’m reading a proof for Physics in my Biology book (wtf, Kardong?). Thank you, and I now return you to your regularly (theoretically) scheduled blog post.
***
I sincerely apologize for the second to the last previous post, which was 1) absolute crack, 2) deranged, and 3) rather vague yet glaringly obvious at the same time. It was so fun to write, though, I’m thinking of doing something like that again. Someday. Somehow.
And for the previous post…
I won’t apologize, nor will I pretend everything is all right, because it is the truth. It’s the blinking honest truth, and I don’t care if it hurts you, you, or you (and of course no one but the three “yous” know who I’m referring to, so bah).
***
I write this though I know others beg to differ: I like having days alone, with only one’s self for company, to have no one to sit beside as I watch bolts of lightning and hear rumbles emanating from the sky. I like the days where I wonder if the broom I placed outside my window will fly away, with how the strong winds (rare though they are) play with the bristles and how its handle seems to sway from side to side. I like listening to the rain (and still my parents don’t realize my fascination with it partly comes from how close my name is to that certain kind of precipitation) and even walking in it while in maroon jogging pants and while my SocSci homework gets soaked.
I like to touch the glass of the window with my palm, feeling the cold of outside contrasting with my own body temperature, looking as the numerous raindrops falling from the sky blurs the horizon until all I can see are blurred lights from streetlamps interspersed in the dark night sky. And then there are the moments when the rain’s just stopped and everything comes back into focus again, like waking up after a long long bout on the Sandman’s boat.
Perhaps it isn’t right to derive enjoyment from these things, from precipitation and solitude and freedom, but I do. Perhaps I should go back to my less than idyllic, less evocative duties of studying about C-H hyperconjugation and the splitting of muscles. Perhaps.
But looking at the dark night sky, the sky that has just come back into focus, and the streets below, washed of grime that will be reacquired once the new day beckons, and I falter from opening my beloved textbooks, wishing to observe these some more, give them some more time, these days.
***
[A prologue to a series.]
It’s been almost a month, and I’m still sad.
Some people have called it the end of childhood, their childhood days, and others have called it the end of an era.
I think words fail me when I try to describe what it was, what Harry Potter was, for a girl that grew up to become me. A girl that was me, in a way, yet not in so many other ways. What it is now, for the girl that grew up, my mind goes fuzzy and I can only spit out half-baked sentences and soliloquies that fall flat on their faces (had they faces).
I cannot say that the series was perfect, that there is no other series that will surpass it. I cannot say that my favorite fictional character of all time belongs to its universe (the Enderverse has that dubious honor). I cannot say that it is the longest series I have read (I think LOTR still takes the cake with so many other books in its universe), the most detailed (still LOTR, my goodness), the most expensive per page (I think Series of Unfortunate Events wins this hands down), had the best illustrations (I deny that Snape has a receding hairline as he is depicted in the US editions and the books’ words seem to agree with me and I still don’t understand the cover of the US 7th edition), even the best ending (I do like it lots better than the ending of The Chronicles of Narnia, which is the ending I most despise).
It was Harry Potter, though, and maybe those who are like me, those who’ve spent half their lives knowing its universe, will understand me when I say that is enough.
For those who don’t understand, though, I shall try to explain with halting words and freezing fingers what it is, what Harry Potter was, what it still is to me.
But that’s for the next post (hopefully).
***
I want this.
I want that.
But I don’t step on others to get what I want like you do.
You may be the golden one, the one everyone thinks the saint, and I, the one everyone labels the loner-fool, but what we do -those things we term actions- reveal the truth about you and I, of what we really are.
Be damned, then, and don’t forget the pitchfork. (You deserve it anyway.) Cheers.