I am in utter cloud nine.

Thanks for those who commented on the previous post. For some reason, the comments aren't showing. Grr.

I got accepted to the Nursing Department in Cal State Los Angeles.

Thank God. Oh thank God.

CHAPTER 16
Understanding Principles of Persuasive Speaking

Good morning. We are going to educate you about Chapter 16: Understanding Principles of Persuasive Speaking. The benefit of this speech is that it will not only help you in our upcoming final but also would review a little of how to persuade your listeners to advocate an idea, a policy, and etc. One persuasive speaking principle covered in the chapter is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We will be illustrating our points with this scenario:

Mrs. Bulfa: Clarita! Clarita! Would you answer the door, please? Ugh. Help these days. You can never get any competent service. Might as well get it myself, the barbarity. (sees Monsieur LaBarge) Oh, good morning, Monsieur LaBarge. What do you have for me today?

Monsieur LaBarge: Bonjour, Madame, bonjour! You are looking well. May I compliment you on such a wonderful tan—from your jaunt to the Himalayas, I presume? I have been out and about myself, having just come from a trip to Tibet.

Mrs. Bulfa: Magnificent, yes, yes. But I really don’t have time for idle chitchat. What have you got there for me? (points at stuff)

Monsieur: Oh, yes! I was coming to that. I was engaged in an intellectual discussion with the Dalai Lama—in Tibet—mind you, and through the course of our musings on Zen and Mahayana, I have come across this simply delightful, simply exquisite produit! (shows it)

Mrs. Bulfa: Why, it’s a…spork?!

Monsieur: Quite so, my dear, but look, look closely! This is more than a spork. It is a work of art! Truly enchante. (blows a kiss, or whatever French gesture)

Mrs. Bulfa: Yes, yes, one could say that it is that, but what am I to do with a spork?

Monsieur: You see, Madame. As I have said, this is not just an ordinary little product but the newest of its kind, the A300 Titanium Spork. Why, the Dalai Lama has even hailed it the ‘Greatest Wonder of Our Time.’

I have even brought a chart that would explain all of this to you. You see, in Tibet, they have these darling little charts that they use to gain self-enlightenment and I have procured one (with special license from the Dalai Lama, of course) for your benefit! (shows Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid)

I have had pondered greatly, thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a product that could satisfy all the needs listed here? And truly, only by serendipity, the answer came to me! Of course, The A300! Contrary to popular belief, it is not 42 but A300—the answer to all life’s questions.

Mrs. Bulfa: (getting impatient) So what you’re saying is that I could actually obtain my self-actualization needs with the use of this…monstrosity?

Monsieur: (aghast) Madame, such blasphemy from your lips! The A300 is no monstre, as you call it! It has many capabilities! Why, it not only functions as a spoon but a fork as well! Satisfying even your physiological needs during all three meals of the day. And yes, self-actualization is only a spork away. Philosophy! Duality! Just pondering two-valued orientations with a spork in hand can open your mind to questions of parallels, of existence and the universe. Jai Guru De Va Om!!!

Mrs. Bulfa: Charming…

Monsieur: Wait, that’s not even the best part. Sporks are handy tools used to defend one’s self when being attacked by wild bears! The Himalayas can be quite dangerous this time of the year, Madame, and you are known to frequent it quite regularly.

Mrs. Bulfa: I don’t know, Monsieur LeBarge. It all sounds quite ridiculous. Granted it will do all those things you mentioned, of which I all highly doubt possible, you have not yet addressed what it can do for my social needs. I have a full calendar, you know, being quite busy and important.

Monsieur: The A300 comes in a wide variety of colors, including the sporty white and black models. There’s also fuchsia, for the more sophisticated. Imagine mystifying your Ladies Society at tea with these vibrant, chic colors!

Mrs. Bulfa: (takes a foundation case and looks at self in the mirror) That’s fascinating. (sarcastically) I am still unconvinced. Have you got anything else or should I ask Clarita to show you out? I have bridge with the Johnsons at 12. Clarita! Clarita! Where is that dratted girl?

Monsieur: (agitated) But Madame, did I mention to you that it can help during a nuclear holocaust?

Mrs. Bulfa: Never mind that, my husband has already bought us a timeshare in one of those quaint little planets, Mars or some such when it happens. I was thinking of cryogenics for myself, but the cold temperature leaves something to be desired. Clarita, Monsieur LeBarge is leaving now…

Monsieur: You can walk on water with a spork! It has been done!

Mrs. Bulfa: Really, Monsieur. You are wasting your time and mine. Clarita!

Monsieur: But—but! It can make for a really exquisite mirror!

Mrs. Bulfa: (snaps case shut) Huh?

Monsieur: (brings the spork close to her face) Witness! The sheen, the luster! You can see your beautiful face so clearly. So flattering! And you can always whip it up discreetly during those luncheons you go to! Like your twelve o’clock!

Mrs. Bulfa: Hmm…(takes spork and begins to admire herself in the mirror)

Monsieur: And …the spork…it looks….really good.

Mrs. Bulfa: Oh yes, how truly, utterly perfect! Let me just get my checkbook.

VoicePost 586K 2:41

(no transcription available)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for coming here today to remember a dear but fleeting friend, Originality. Truly, I have not had contact with him for quite some time, and only upon witnessing the changing but recycled fashion trends, the more outrageous but yet still-derived ideas pervading our time, the insistent reruns of Friends, the devolution of most traditions as nothing but repetitive, meaningless clichés, have I realized that he has truly left us.

Indeed, I am sorry to tell you: but this eulogy of mine does not quite honor this tragic loss. Like all of you, I will have to do some signposting, and with my apologies to Prof. Van Horn, the repetitive quality of this practice is something Originality might have frowned upon. So dear friends, first I will tell you how regrettable it is that Originality is no more, and secondly, tell you what is to be done.

Well, gone now are the times when Originality would lend a new song, different chords not to be repeated in another melody, when Panic at the Disco was still locked up in some unheard-of garage, along with Britney Spears. Gone now are the times when the word “love” was probably something of a scientific curiosity, a novelty not yet understood. Like most clichés, we consume our “love” with too much books, TV, that in our heads it has devolved into something quite typical: roses and a pick-up line, anyone?

What is to be done now my friends, now that our beloved is not here to guide us? There is nothing we can do. There are no new ideas, only recycled words and thoughts. What is the latest computer technology but a highly-modified abacus? What are war strategists but boys grown, having their fun in a bigger playground? Even change is what we call a constant. “Originality is the art of concealing your sources,” Benjamin Franklin had said. “Many a man fails as an original thinker because his memory is too good,” Nietzsche once wrote. I suppose borrowing and forgetting might be our only answers.

Now I have first shared to you my regrets about the passing away of Originality, and secondly, the futility of doing something about it. Truthfully, I want to end this eulogy, saying, “Originality: we can not let you die just yet.” But that is unfortunately another borrowed quote, and well, he is already quite dead.

THE WOMEN OF DAN DANCE WITH
SWORDS IN THEIR HANDS TO MARK THE
TIME WHEN THEY WERE WARRIORS

I did not fall from the sky
I
nor descend like a plague of locusts
to drink color and strength from the earth
and I do not come like rain
as a tribute or symbol for earth's becoming
I come as a woman
dark and open
some times I fall like night
softly
and terrible
only when I must die
in order to rise again.

I do not come like a secret warrior
with an unsheathed sword in my mouth
hidden behind my tongue
slicing my throat to ribbons
of service with a smile
while the blood runs
down and out
through holes in the two sacred mounds
on my chest.

I come like a woman
who I am
spreading out through nights
laughter and promise
and dark heat
warming whatever I touch
that is living
consuming
only
what is already dead.

--Audre Lorde

finished the dictionarydotcom crossword puzzle in 16:35 mins. my goal is 15. mwahaha.

^
^
dork

we will be studying amines and amides in the lab this wednesday, i think. ah, the fragrant smells of sardines and cadavers waft.

in other groundbreaking news, my sister bought a jump-rope and we started skipping in the backyard a few minutes earlier. we wanted to jump in synchrony but we couldn't do it. geh. exercise is fun -- i am convincing myself that it is.

i'm going to mt.sac tomorrow to start on my nursing application for their program.

i am so into veronica mars.

also: *is swamped with schoolwork*

Well, I was actually being very insecure earlier.

But anyway, I got over it (for the moment) and enjoyed an eight-way Yahoo! conference with my relatives. My cousins from different parts of the world just so happened to go online, all at the same time. Wheeee. We can't really understand much of what was being said, on account of so many of us talking simultaneously. Hehehe.

we will be going to the beach.

well, little tokyo first since my sister wants to shop. she didn't get to go last time.

lalalala.

Friend got me a rose because she knew I hated Valentine's Day. I don't hate it with a passion or anything but I wasn't that indifferent. Anyway, we pretended that I had a secret admirer when people asked about the flower. Pathos, pathos, pathos.

I checked my Physio final and I got the highest score in the class (209/200.)

I love myself right now. (Thanks so much, Stephen!)

'Cept that after this revelation, my mother proceeded to depress me with talk of church and relatives.


***
During the family party last Saturday, we were watching a video of our relatives in the Phils. One of my nieces was being her pretty precocious self (in the video) which was cute but at the same time, very annoying -- or actually, very disturbing. Says my cousin (here) hearing her speak English, "She must be intelligent! Wow, for her age to learn another language like that!"

NOT.

What my cousin doesn't know is that there is this stupid trend going on in the Filipino middle class wherein parents vigilantly teach their children to speak English and nothing else. I myself underwent this type of "brainwashing", if you will, when I was a kid, though I stopped speaking only English when I was exposed to public school. My mom, like most middle-class parents, probably believed that I would have the advantage in school and in the workplace if I could get used to fluently communicating in the global lingua franca early on. Perhaps, but so would learning Filipino first, or simultaneously with English.

Besides the most likely error of learning English in a grammatically-incorrect manner, kids also cultivate the notion that it is a better language than the national Filipino. Ergo, the English-speaking kids therefore think that they are better than the Filipino speakers. Oh colonial mentality, so alive and well. I remember my mom used to tell me that I couldn't leave my room if I didn't ask her if I could leave, in English.

I am not a big fan of patriotism or ethnocentrism but I do believe that for a person to understand and appreciate the culture they are living in, they have to know the language, and know it well. There are certain words that are present in one language and not in another, only because they might mean something truly significant to only that one culture that speaks it, or because they are associated with certain things, practices, that only one culture really possesses. A person has to have some sort of cultural identity (as a social being, we have that need to belong) so for me, a Filipino (born and raised in the Phils. -- I am not talking about Fil-Ams), considering English as my first language  is not only an insult to my ancestors but to myself as well. I have to remember that when I speak English, I am still speaking the language of a country that has colonized my land, keeping it occupied for 50 or so years before "bestowing" independence, using up MY country's natural resources, ingraining the stupid love of foreign brand names and foreign products that in turn arguably shut down the Filipino economy. I mean, I don't believe that all American influence is that bad (public schools, health care), but still. I have a culture of my own, a language of my own (actually, several), diluted as it may be.  It's like family; you hate it, you love it, but at the least, it's still yours.

I do speak English, write English, and perhaps I get on in life better because of English, but there are just certain things that the language won't give me. There is the enviable musicality of a Tagalog piece (which I cannot reproduce, damn my Filipino high school teacher), the swear words that roll off my tongue just right when screaming in Ilonggo, the beautiful nuances of Cebuano sentences that only a person who is intimate with its cultural references can appreciate. I want the kids growing up in the Phils. to have that. Speaking another language can enrich culture (ironically, we have more than enough), but a people should not lose their sense of self. I am afraid that is what's happening steadily to the kids there. It's sad, but with this trend, I suppose the majority of Filipinos will always be abroad-based nurses and now, home-based telemarketers. Admittedly, these professions are a more of a survival thing but they also mean servilely catering  to the white, middle-aged men who run the world . Tragic. :|

Beh. Who am I to talk about this stuff? I'm not even in the Phils. and I myself am gonna be a nurse. Well, regardless of politics and ineffective governance, I really still love being Filipino. It's a label I could do with, though of course I wouldn't want it to be such a limiting definition that I am not seen as an individual but only as the part of a collective.

Anyway. YEAH.

I guess it just annoys me to see my niece acting uppity (to borrow Stephen's term, hehe) and  growing up to think she's better than everybody else just because of the purported language superiority. English is a good language but never superior.

P. S. And she has to have the opportunity to write in Filipino in the future! I have been denied that pleasure because my Filipino teacher kept speaking English during lectures. Gahh.

P. P. S. I do think it's unfair that the Filipino language is more or less standardized Tagalog, with just a smattering of words from other dialects. But I will reserve that list of grievances for another entry.

Went to the Museum of Tolerance today. Would have been more into it if not for hungry, cranky siblings raring to eat.

So we were going to Chinatown for the food and we ended up driving all the way to Malibu.

Yeah.

looked up my grade report: a solid 4.0.

yay!

i'm gonna cut my hair today. my scalp is hurting, probably from the weight.

it's sad sad sad sad sad. my long hair.

:(

Arghhhh. I can’t take it! She is the cutest little girl. I’m watching it five hundred more times.

Btw, that blog has really funny cool vids.

She’s seen me there for weeks now and is commenting. When I asked her how she came by all these Tagalog phrases (which are according to her, "Konti lang."), she says, "Maraming kaibigan." Hee.