Your best enemy is yourself.

April 18, 2007 22:25

While having lunch this afternoon with Rej, we talked about the upcoming UAAP season. And then we got around to talking about the finals of the season 69 men’s basketball. I was for Ateneo, and she was for UST—underdogs, she says.

And then she said something about the Ateneo Blue Eagles not able to beat themselves. Hindi nila natalo ang sarili nila, kasi kalaban nila talaga nun ang mga sarili nila.

And up to now, honestly and obviously, I am bothered by it. Did the Blue Eagles lose to themselves?

Rewind.

Everyone actually thought Ateneo would go unbeaten after the elimination round. I couldn’t really remember who was the first one to beat them—I think it was UE—and boy I am so sure that it was UST who gave them the second loss. I distinctly remember that because I always loved Chris Tiu and he was the one who worked that game out, only to falter in the end. (Or did I get it reversed?)

I was rooting for Ateneo—but not during UP-Ateneo games, because I am effing sure I’d be on the UP side that time around—during the Finals, and was even on the verge of giving in to nervousness and uneasiness when I found out they were going to meet with the Adamson Falcons during the semis. Adamson was a tough assignment for them—they won by a margin below three points in their past two games in the elims. And then the semis.

Grr.

I couldn’t remember who saved the day for them—it was JC, I think—but there they were, in the place everyone expected them to be: the Finals.

They won Game One by being lucky. I guess around that time they already got complacent because they were going up against the fourth-seed team who just dumped the second-seed UE back in the semis. Although admittedly I cursed Allan Evangelista (I wish I got his name right this time) when he raised his arms as if saying “glorify me because I (think I) just scored the winning basket,” and that was just so mayabang, and that there was really a lapse defensively in UST’s side, Ateneo could have lost that game.

When UST won Game Two, I started doubting it.

Yes. I doubted the team I am so amused with and smitten with.

Heading into Game Three (and absenting myself from my last class around that time to watch the game), I somehow had the feeling that… they would lose. I have a weird, weird way of feeling it if my team would win or lose, but sometimes it’s overridden by my emotions that it’s not trustworthy. When I saw JC Intal missing the crucial shots, and I hated Macky for not taking the shots since he was the one who was hot in that game, I knew it was over.

(Loved Japs Cuan though. Ever saw a pointguard who misses a lot of free throws and mid-range shots? Forgivable naman siya. He’s cute. And a good pointguard at that.)

I cried over the PDI article done about Macky and JC. Macky said he told Coach Norman Black that he would give the ball to JC because they wouldn’t reach the Finals if it weren’t for him. Aptly so, but… practicality-wise, I think you should just let the game be because you need to win it. It’s the championship we’re taking about, not a… not a… elimination game.

I cried so hard when Ateneo lost that game. I couldn’t forgive UST, for I think they took something that Ateneo aptly deserve.

But maybe I was wrong.

Your best enemy is yourself.

I still couldn’t grasp the main idea, but I think they were just really… complacent and thought they could do UST in two games. But they didn’t.

They didn’t, and they lost.

I hope they could redeem themselves this time—but losing almost everyone on their starting lineup? (JC, Macky and Doug—hey, they’re four, right? Forgot the other one. Chris Tiu’s staying, so there’s at least one starter left.)

And then La Salle’s coming back.

Grr.

Am doing another entry on that—season 70 updates, I mean.

If anyone from the Ateneo lineup reads this, enlighten me please. Did you really just give in to yourselves?

In Deep Profoundness (Department of Redundancy Department)

April 18, 2007 22:10

You’re in UP because you can think and speak for yourself by your own wits and on your own two feet. And you can do so, no matter what the rest of the people in the room may be thinking. You are in UP because no one can tell you to shut up if you have something sensible and vital to say. You are in UP because you dread not in the poverty of material comforts but the poverty of the mind. You are in UP because you care about something abstract and sometimes as treacherous as the idea of “nation” even if it kills you. –Dr. Jose Dalisay, Jr.

I was one of the very few iskolar ng bayan—or maybe let’s generalize it and say ‘college students’—who have a weird sense of what if I didn’t go to the university I am actually in. It’s not that I regret that I chose UP over Ateneo or UST—it’s just because… not one semester had passed ever since I got here that I got a ‘perfect’ semester to say the least.

What do I mean?

For one, I already incurred two INCs for the past four regular semesters I am here in UP, and then my name magically disappeared from the official class list of my first ever 1.0-grade class. And then just last semester, out of sheer carelessness and tension for the Cres101 grades haven’t come out yet and the agony of a five-hour wait for those grades, I wrote Comm140 instead of Comm141 in my Form5 and had to redo the process all over again to correct my fugly mistake.

It’s really just so… irritating.

And then just this semester, my professor in Comm141 is taking a bit longer to release our grades. To think she was already way past the deadline. I’m just so freaking tired of seeing that blank space next to the Comm141 subject, and then the INC next to my Art Studies1 (which I am taking forever to complete, by the way).

I want a car. (And I just blurted this out.)

Last sembreak, I came across the booklet that they give to those students who took entrance exams at Ateneo. I browsed through it, slept with that booklet covering my face, and it was the first thing I read as soon as I woke up. Sorry to say, but I was thinking how was my life if I went to Ateneo. Maybe we’re even more broke—oh yeah, care to remind me?—and maybe I need to update myself to their standards. (Excuse me to Atenians. I’m making it clear here that I don’t have anything against you guys.)

I’m here on the verge of my what ifs. Not good, don’t you think? Wallowing in the what-could-have-been instead of enjoying what I have now. Hell, the tuition fee of other private schools in one semester could very well fund my education for two degrees or maybe even three—four even?

And then I have always wondered if I went to Holy Spirit instead of Tarlac Montessori, but then again… I wouldn’t have met my fantabulous batchmates if not for that. Come to think of it, maybe I wouldn’t have been too bitter in my freshman year in college because of a dude back in high school if I went into an all-girls school, don’t you think?

Argh.

I can’t just move on and get over this because I need frigging closure.