harsh times

According to the local dj this morning it's 49 days before Christmas (was it this morning or the other day?) As I stared droopy-eyed into the computer's screen, I reached my pocket and found 66 pesos. It's still more than a week before the next payday. I'm thinking of the neighborhood office's staff who lends money at little interest. How much will I need to get by?

I should be giddy-up with that remark of the dj and his playing of a rehashed version of a Christmas song. But it's still too early to be thinking of the yuletide even though the weather and the radio waves signal that it's just around the corner.

Yesterday, the owner of the room we're renting coaxed me into this 'autoload networking' thing, in which I have to subject myself in a shabby, overrated, forceful salesman's speech (salesman's pitch) to enlighten myself on the overwrought procedure. With respect I said yes, though immersing myself in some networking scheme is the last thing on mind, a last-ditch desperate effort to stay affloat during these financially tumultuous years. And yet, isn't it a decent thing to do, to engage oneself in tactics and gimmicks to keep oneself sustained?

As far as I can remember, I have been engaged in legit 'sidelines' even when I was in college. I used to do reaction papers, essays of various topics - from the mundane to the ones I really need to research, and I can recall doing a film review/critic a coupla' times for fellow mass communication division-mates. I went to Ateneo - which I left just a year ago after graduation - and I guess up to now it remains to be some rich kid's - or perhaps in most cases, the parents' - stigma of a fairytale-landia of a school. Well, the school doesn't have a problem of lack of parking space like ADMU does, but its still some rich brat's dream come true.

But the misplaced elitism doesn't at all envelope the school nor the student spirit. My father cannot afford to send me to a school such as Ateneo and never did I dreamed of it either. I worked my butt off as a student assistant and during the first year of my stint as an SA, I met fellow SAs and students who didn't even resemble the closest character of an asshole or a spoiled bitch. I remembered writing a feature story on the student paper about SAs and how they managed to get out of the usual Atenista shadow through tirelessly toiling whole day -- studying and working - just to get through college.

Yet it was hard as I neared graduating with all the expenses and stuff that my father cannot afford to subsidize. Someone was supporting my daily stipend, a sponsor whom I got to meet the day of my graduation. But somehow, harsh times force me to do extra work to earn some needed extra cash for school expenses. There's this one professor who really trusts my choreographing skills (despite me really sucking at it and only able to orchestrate simplistic moves) that he manage to call me up everytime there's some affair in their office that they need to perform. I recalled checking some of the teachers' papers and exams during tests.

My bosses and my co-workers at the division I'm working in were extremely considerate and helpful. There was one time I stowed away from a nasty fight at home and being welcomed by a professor in their own home for two weeks.

My classmates and friends were extremely helpful as well. They proved to me that they're treasures in their own right come harsh times. (Sniff) And some of my mass com teachers who really stood by me and understood what I was going through, completed the bunch of streamer-holding support group that I had.

I had to attend the graduation despite the doctor's diagnosis of an early pneumonia. I barely had a bathe for two weeks. Sweat-drenched, with ruffled hair and creased polo, I went up to receive the medal and bowed while flashes of the whole five years or so of my college life passed in front of my eyes. It was one of those moments wherein it could stretch on to forever.

Landing in a job a month after, I realized that harsh times are here to stay. You are faced with the cruel realities of life more than you could ever think of. A year and five months, overworked and underpaid, it seemed that all my rantings went oblivious as it was drowned among the screaming uncertainties of the 7.8 million who's in the same situation. And you'd wish that you will always have that gut to swallow it in.

I look at both ends of my peripheral vision. At the left, its an oversized multivitamin. In the other end, is an empty, dried-up glass.

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