Month’s End

It’s the end of the month, and depending on the company — in my experience, there are those who pay on the 5th and 20th instead — one works for a worker can expect to get their salary today.  That means long lines at ATM machines as well as banks as people either cash out their payment checks, or deposit their well-earned (I’d hope!) money into their savings accounts.

As for me, today is when my folks are supposed to deposit a little bit of money into my savings account to help with the household expenses.  I appreciate the effort, but it only underscores the feeling that I’m technically no longer pulling my weight, so to speak, in our household.  It’s frustrating really, since I still have to pay my half of the month’s household-related bills.

Whoops, its our new President’s inauguration today, which means its a holiday.  Which means that no banks will be open.  Ack.

At least this time around — according to JobStreet anyway — I’m actually ‘Under Consideration’ by  some of the companies I sent resumes to.  There’s a huge difference between that and being hired though, so all I can do is wait at this point.

And it’s not like I don’t things to do while I wait.  Schoolwork aside, I’ve still managed to keep pace with my seasonal anime watching.  The Spring 2010 season was really a mixed bag, though there were a few shows I found worth the time I invested in them — Working!! was especially endearing (and a surprise hit for bloggers who initially brushed it off at the start of the season), though I’ve always been fond of slice-of-life comedies to begin with.  Add me to one of those who want it to get a season season (as it still has four-odd volumes of material yet untapped).

That’s pretty much it for my end-of-the-month musings.  I wonder what the next month holds for me, hmm?

A Bit At A Time

I finished reading the play that I’m supposed to do a paper on this week entitled May Isang Sundalo (There Was a Soldier) this morning, so all I need to do now is to write the assignment.  Scratch off one worry on my weekly list.  The peer reading, as per practice, will be done a little bit later, as I need to select a suitable poem to do a reading on, by a classmate whose works haven’t been over-analyzed by everyone else.

Aside from that, I’m pretty much free for the day.  I suppose I can continue reading on the Art series of books, though finishing Voight’s little guide to Syntax should be given more priority.  The fact that I haven’t even finished it underscores my difficulty in general with academic texts, when compared to works of fiction — for comparison, I finished Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Cadian Blood in one  six-hour sitting — but that’s probably due to the language used, which can verge on arcane at times.  Are they sure that these books were written for college students?

Maa, we’ll just have to see.  What’s important though is that I make the most of the day.  Carpe Diem and all that.

Slow Starts

Slept late.  Woke up late.  No surprise here.  Oh well, it’s not like I have any actual work to do anyway, so I guess I can just continue reading the references for this week’s set of assignments.  It’s a short play this time for one class, and another peer reading of a classmate’s poem for the other.  Nothing too hard, I guess, though I can’t help but feel anxious, as my poor excuse for a poem is up next on the chopping block.  Urgh.

Oh, and bills.  I’ll just have to pay those on Wednesday.

Too Big

The world is too big.  Its sheer depth and breadth

appreciated only by the big

people, who can see the larger picture;

impersonal and unbiased in scope,

where countries are defined by their borders

and not by their natural grandeur,

and each person in it reduced simply

into a number, a mere statistic.

It is all-too neat, too convenient

to reduce all things to simple figures,

to make all things fit in a greater whole.

The world IS too big, but it is also

made up of many simple, little things

some of which are in immediate reach

of a person’s senses: like the bright smile

of a child, and a close friend’s warm embrace,

a bowl of hot soup on a cold morning,

or the pleasing melody of a song.

Agendas

Hmm, so what do I have on the plate for this weekend?

Other than the usual relaxing, I think I’m going to use today to do some poetry.  Yes, I am well-aware that my verse-craft needs work, but even a little practice goes a long way where I’m concerned.

Afterwards?  Maybe I can finally finish the 2nd Company Captain model that’s been sitting in my cupboard for weeks, or start on the Land Speeder Typhoon duo to complete my 1500-point list.

In any case, I want to see things done this time, instead of wasting the rest of my rest day staring at my computer screen.

Nothing to Do

My father would often say that if you don’t have anything to do, find something to do to keep you busy.  Unfortunately I can’t.  Maybe I’m feeling lazy this afternoon, but it’s likely due to the fact that I’m running on just five hours of sleep.  Fatigue and forced industriousness don’t really go hand in hand.

Oh well, might as well take a nap.  I’ll just keep my PC running, and maybe torrent something in the meantime.

When you least expect it

A close family relative of ours just suffered a stroke the other day, so I’m going to run over to where she’s confined.  She’s stable for now, but the medicine required on top of the cost for the laboratory tests that the hospital will run on her will cost her family a great deal of money — money that they don’t happen to have right now.  Guess who they asked for help?

Despite my financial trouble, I’m more than willing to help out, but since my sister currently has more saved it’s from her savings that we’re taking the money out of.  Needless to say she wasn’t pleased, though I think most of her grumbling was brought about by the fact that she had just gotten back from work and needed her rest, and not by the request for aid itself.  Crankiness aside, tatay or nanay will reimburse her eventually.

Anyway, I better be going.  It’s quite a ways to our relatives’ home, and I’ll admit to being nervous since I’ll be carrying a fair amount of money with me, but it’s for a good cause this time.

This is one of those occasions that I regret not working — if I had work I would have been able to give on my own, and not have to bother my sister or my parents.

Musings on NVM Gonzales’ Bread of Salt

In the course of this researcher’s reading of N.V.M. Gonzales’ short story two themes have made themselves apparent, each parallel through the narrative.  The first is how reality doesn’t quite match up with many of the idealistic expectations one might have, while the second is how class differences can be a hindrance to meaningful interpersonal relationships between members of disparate social status.

Although the story is ostensibly a fond reminiscence of a particular period of the narrator’s youth, we can see the first theme at work in the initial few paragraphs, as the narrator describes the morning habit of his classmate Aida—greeting her elderly uncle on the veranda of his home—as “her assent to my desire”, and how even the path she took to school was “fixed” just for him.  The narrator’s infatuation with the girl serves as inspiration for him to better himself, both in academics as well as in playing the violin, in order to be worthy of her hand; it doesn’t occur to him at all that Aida might not have even noticed him in all the time they’ve been classmates.  His increased proficiency in the violin beget even more grandiose delusions of grandeur, which still continue despite his country aunt’s wry observation that, for all his hard work, “musicians always eat last”.  Despite dismissing it offhand, his aunt’s comment comes back to haunt him in the end, finally dispelling his illusions and opening his eyes to the reality of his situation: that the love he had was one-sided, and that he was just a ‘poor’ boy aiming for something way above his station.

Speaking of social stations, the theme of socio-economic differences was also made apparent at the onset, through the description of the narrator’s early-morning runs to buy the eponymous pandesal, which even today is still breakfast staple among families belonging to the middle class and lower.  While not poor, the narrator’s family is not exactly affluent when compared to the family of Aida, whose uncle Don Esteban still owns a large estate in the town.  This gap in social caste becomes all the more apparent later in the story, when the narrator and the band he is part of are invited to play in the same estate, and he bears witness to the lavish preparations Aida’s family is capable of on relative short notice, which is a far cry from the small amount of savings he’s been able to collect over the course of a few months.  There was also the spread laid out for the guests; the arrangement and amount of tableware “confused him”, and he seeing the food he admitted that “my ignorance appalled me”.  Finally there is the fateful encounter with Aida, the object of his infatuation, catching him stuffing his face with food—not quite a social impasse, but enough to make the narrator keenly aware that Aida’s world was very different from the one he was born in.

Taking Sights

I know I should be concentrating more on this week’s Writing Project for my poetry class and putting down my thoughts on NVM Gonzales’ Bread of Salt, but I just couldn’t concentrate.  All the normal distractions aside — I’m looking at you, Guild Wars — I just can’t gather up the urge to, well, write anything.  I guess the result of my job interview yesterday is still eating at me.  I would just love to work again, and wouldn’t mind a night shift at all, but the shifting schedules that BPO companies keep are really narrowing down my options, especially when one realizes that my class schedules are inviolate.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

Oh well, one application down, about seven more to go.  Let’s see if the other companies I sent my resumes to have schedules that don’t conflict with my classes.

At least the day wasn’t a complete loss.  Results of the interview aside, I was able to pass by the National Bookstore branch at the Gateway mall.  With three floors, it’s pretty much the biggest store of the franchise I’ve ever been to, and given its size it’s no surprise I was able to find a few books there that were not available in the other branches.  While my savings account has yet another reason to hate me, I think the purchases this time were worth it: Joan Silber’s The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long As It Takes, James Longenbach’s The Art of The Poetic Line, and Donald Revell’s The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye.  The latter two books are especially important, when one remembers my weakness with regards to everything poetic.

*sigh* Poetry.  Like my waistline, it’s something I really need to work on hard just to be able to see the most minute of improvements.

Bland Optimism

I wish I could say that the job interview that I went to today went completely like I expected, but it didn’t; although I passed everything up to the interview with the HR manager, when the subject of schedules came up everything went ploin-shaped.  Apparently, the fact that I can’t work Saturdays — due to my post-graduate classes — is a major blow against me, despite my work experience and specialization.  Heh, I’d never thought I’d see the day that taking up higher education would be a hindrance to finding work.

What worries me is that this issue might come up again in all the other jobs I applied for.  At this rate I might just have to grit my teeth and take the Civil Service examination so I could find work in the government, since the unstable schedules BPO companies keep will inevitably conflict with my classes sooner or later.