Back, For A Bit

Hello. Back after one-sixth of a year, approximately.

You would expect that after a hiatus of that length I'd go into a lengthy discussion about what I did, the places I saw, the people I met... but I won't.

Hahahaha. What I've really been doing is focusing on my grad school application. I started with about 25 schools in mind, and now I'm down to seven or eight. The process of elimination was really hard. I had to consider programs, location, difficulty of getting in, etc etc etc. Anyway, just last week I took the GRE and the TOEFL within 48 hours of each other. Ganun ako eh, gusto kong patayin ang sarili ko. Haha. The two weeks leading to that was the worst. I crammed verbal and quantitative reviews and got two to three hours of sleep a night. I was aided only by coffee--which I suspect would hold its shape even without the mug, it was so strong. The next step would be getting recommendation letters and writing my statement of purpose, you know, once I figure out what that is.

The TOEFL was way easier, but I think I messed up the speaking part. I am bound by oath not to reveal the test questions, but they were really easy... pero nakakakaba talaga. At the end of each speaking task I couldn't stop myself from saying "crap!" Sana talaga di na-record yun. Hahahaha.

And then, of course, there was Milenyo. We're so lucky we didn't sustain too much damage, although floodwater did get into our first floor. My dad had to relocate our car to a higher spot, so my sister and I were left alone. When the water started to rise really fast, we panicked and started to carry some appliances to the second floor. We had a little trouble relocating the TV because it was big and heavy and had about a thousand cables attached to it. At one point I was sitting in the sofa carrying the TV in my lap while Ate removed the cables--with our feet soaking in murky water. It's so cinematic.

I was suddenly transported to my childhood when my lola found my sister and me in a distressing position. I had the TV on my lap, and I was on my sister's lap. We were fighting over which channel to watch, and the TV set fell on me. It was the early 80s; I think there were no remote controls back then, and the channel switch was of the dial type.

Sorry for the random thoughts.