Weekly Things

Since God decided to be kind and let us take Monday off, I was more than slacking off on Saturday.

It's been more or less an okay-ish week. Well, I've been flunking Filipino as of late, but I hope that won't affect my total grades too much. Stupid check-up quizzes.

Anyway, Tuesday saw Gian chastising me about writing the word "Ten Orgasms" in this post. He then launches into some rather hilarious tirade about how "orgasm" is only used by Pornography Websites that record their escapades in some kind of journal online.

Ew.

Then he proceeds to state that even they use euphemisms for "orgasm" (i.e. come, climax) and that I'm more forthright than they are. Hear that, ya'll? Daig ko pa raw yung mga pornsites.

I ask (rather sarcastically, plzzz) whether I should start following Kenn's example of simply using "O". He replies with a rather loud "YES!"

So I relay this newly acquired information to Kennzo, who then goes, "That's not true. I use orgasm a lot!" With what appeared to be a trademark Kenn grin. The H one. To which he adds, "Oh, but only in special circumstances. Other times, I use O."

Then during Filipino, we proceeded to the AVR (after that hellish quiz) and watched Noli Me Tangere: The Movie. It was rather nice, because listening to people speak very fast, very deep Filipino is like listening to someone speak in poetry. Wow. I wanna be like that!


Wednesday saw two things: First, during C.L.E., Fr. Guy began touching on some rather sensitive topics among the community, namely Chinese feeling obligated to marry into other Chinese families and not other races'.

The more proximal non-Chinese dude in our class, Dominic (he's my seatmate, as opposed to TJ Santos, who's at the other end of the room), began ranting (to Pohan, no less) about the whole Chinese-marry-Chinese-only thing is a matter of the Chinese not wanting to, and I quote, "impurify their bloodlines". He followed this phrase up with "Upakan ko kaya yung mga Chinese."

What a myopic, vindictive view. From someone like Dominic, that's highly unexpected. Guess I was right all along.

Anyway, in order to prevent some possibly bitter disputes (but mostly because I wanted to in-your-face him*ehem*correct his view), I proceeded to explain that it's because the Chinese don't want a culture-clash, because that often leads to couples not staying together, or tension between the parents and the son or daughter-in-law. I was saying, "In order to avoid that..."

When Dominic interjects with "Don't marry at all." and his trademark (but slightly annoying) raucous laugh. Some people.

Anyway, later on, Philip was called by Fr. Guy to recite, and Philip said one of the most hilarious things ever. "Why do the Chinese marry other Chinese? Because we want to fill the world with Chinese!"

Then Edrian, Jeffrey Go, Payton and Stanly (and even Timoy) got into a spat about God-being-good-making-man-who-is-a-sinner-and-if-man-is-created-in-God's-image-and-likeness-doesn't-that-make-God-a-sinner? A certain thought was brewing in my head at this. Sinning is something done against God. How can God sin against himself? Charlie mercifully put an end to things with "Man is made in God's image and likeness, but God isn't made in Man's."

Fr. Guy then made a rather fatal slip of the tongue. "Why is it that Chinese men only want to marry Chinese men?" ... Er... what?

Fr. Guy realized his mistake, flushed and paused, then corrected himself, quipping, "I think I just buried myself there."

Fr. Guy, don't disillusion yourself; you buried yourself the day you walked in the door to H3 - B.

The second thing was Math. Mr. Sy raised his copy of the red book that some priest guy (Fr. Mena?) wrote. I think it was the dead one (Yes, I know, Xavier has a lot of history with dead priests, but bear with me and I'll ask Mr. Sy) . Anyway, when he asked if we'd like him to read from it, I was slightly apprehensive. I was just not in the mood at the time, but then Stanly's overeager "YES!!!" reminded me that anything to delay the lesson (and quiz) was a good thing.

So Mr. Sy read an account about how before 1966, there were only two languages spoken in Xavier--English and Mandarin. English was most important because EVERYTHING was in English back in the day, and Mandarin was necessary for communication with China (I believe dialectal-suppression began long before this time, so it makes sense). Tagalog and Amoy were both banned.

Then he proceeds to make some kind of lengthy discussion regarding Iced Cream Slips, but I was about caught up with the whole Amoy-being-banned thing. I can understand Tagalog--it was American rule, after all, and this WAS the Philippines. But Amoy? C'mon... that language is practically unknown to the average Filipino, even until today. Still, it does explain why Xaverians at the time were so good in English and Mandarin.

When he'd finished the passage, I raised my hand and inquired about the Hokkien-banning. I explained that since my Dad doesn't speak Fukien as a native dialect, he had to learn Hokkien speaking with his friends. And speaking with his friends began when he was about five (yeah, I met the mom of Uncle Sonny, who says that she met my dad and Uncle Richard when they were five, and the three had been magka-barkada ever since). Analyze the following data:

Filipino-Amoy ban: before 1966 (it ended in the year 1966-1967)
Dad born: 1957
Dad entered Xavier: 1961 (yeah, he came in a year early. Also, his whole batch skipped fifth grade because of major curriculum reforms, but this is irrelevant).

So presumably, at 4 years old, and for five years after, Fukien was completely banned in Xavier. Now I would think that 6-9 years old being highly formative years for children, this would be the time when he would learn Fukien. But according to this ban, it wasn't.

Maybe he did outside with his friends? Or at his friends' homes? Oh well.

Still, my Dad's Fukien wasn't perfect even when he'd met my mom's parents for the first time. Apparently, when he met my maternal grandmother, he couldn't understand a thing she was saying because she had an accent that he wasn't accustomed to. According to him, she had to speak in Tagalog with him. How embarrassing, he says.

Somewhere along the way, some of the people began wondering out loud what Amoy was. Mr. Sy was repeating (rather fruitlessly) "Amoy? It's... Amoy! You know, Amoy!"

Then he did something I did not expect. At all.

He said, "Amoy! Dan le kong e!" (Curse it all. I don't know the character for "le".) Basically, it translates to "What we speak!"

Kenn suddenly does a backwhip sort of thing and goes, "Sir! That just gave me an O."

And really, it was cool. It must have been the first moment in all of Xaverian High School Math History that the teacher suddenly broke out in Hokkien. Mr. Sy follows it up with, "Lan-nang uwei! (I know this one! 咱人話) I bet you guys didn't think I spoke that, huh? HAH!"

That was just so cool.

So here's a really nice Cantonese song. It talks about some of the things that I'd probably talk about if I were to write a love song. The verses refer to little things about the ex of the persona that s/he apparently doesn't forget. It's a very sweet song. Originally sung by 吳國敬, later remade by 陳慧琳 for a movie.

我沒有忘記

常常想起 你最愛的是薄荷味
是那樣難聞 我想死
為何花心機 無聊地共你爭一口氣
幻想改變你

沒有 沒有 沒有 忘記
直發 亂發 也這麼討厭
怎麼會愛著你 除非風箏會飛

讓我 讓我 讓我 忘記
上次 下次 永遠都不會
怎麼會掛念你 除非雙手記起抱緊過你

常常想起 你愛的酒淡淡無味
沒有任何人 會歡喜
為何想起你 猶如提示我呼吸空氣
萬一很愛你

但是為甚麼皺眉 太專心厭棄
難道我太過愛你 還苦苦銘記
兩眼比耳朵美