08/16/09 - Ateneo vs. La Salle

Final Score: Ateneo 81 - La Salle 65

It was the perfect opportunity to road test my "new" 55-250mm Canon IS lens. I was seated in the General Admission section of the Araneta Coliseum.

Some photos were surprisingly sharp, but most shots were blurred and had to be deleted due to the slow shutter speed.

01/03/09 - Psych Block Reunion

The Fort and Bonifacio High Street, Taguig

11/29/08 - "Digitized" College Pics

Baguio

Photos of the good old days.

Now that we are champions again...

It's nice to revisit this blog entry.  

Bonfire na!!!

           I finally witnessed Team Ateneo winning the UAAP Championship live.  Hooray!

          Back in 2002, I had to content myself with watching the game in Moro due to the fact that I wasn't able to secure a ticket.  Araneta typically releases SRO tickets on the actual game date, and at that time I should have realized that the tickets would run out faster.  This time, I vowed not to make the same mistake and woke up early.  I arrived at Araneta around 8am today, and promptly fell in line with about a hundred people ahead of me. 

          My major mistake was my failure to eat breakfast before falling in line.  (I last ate a full meal 8pm the night before.)  You see, they were only selling Gen. Ad. tickets and we were forced to enter the premises after getting the ticket (with the condition that re-entries were not allowed).  It took 4 hours before I got to enter the venue, and another 4 hours before the game began.  Sure there was food sold inside, but they were overpriced (and if you know me, I only buy expensive food if the taste is worth it...which unfortunately, can not be said for the food sold in Araneta.)

          So there I was, starved for 8 hours and surrounded by Chris Tiu fangirls in the Gen Ad section.  I can't complain though.  A lot of those fangirls look great ...in a Nabokovian context (hehe, eeevil! )  Seriously, is it just me or have college girls gotten hotter since my time?

          Anyway, a really nice thing happened today.  I met up with my "Get That Ball" buddy Paolo Gillego, with whom I spent a lot of UAAP wars in the past, cheering our throats hoarse until until our heads hurt badly from the effort.  He introduced two of his female friends to me - Aga (a former schoolmate in UP law, I found out) and Carol (a former Guidon reporter).  Both were from ADMU batch '97.  Paolo unfortunately had to leave us in the Gen. Ad. section because he had to accompany his future father-in-law in the Lower Box.  That means I was left with my two new acquaintances.  But it was ok, they were nice to be with.

          It turns out that Aga was engaged in a continuous texting effort to get better tickets while we were already seated, and was actually able to have someone secure Upper B tickets for her right before the jump ball.  She was supposed to get tickets for herself and Carol only, but since she felt particularly generous (or she might have taken pity on me ) she asked her contact to get one more ticket for me.  (Yeheey!)  The best part of that is, it didn't cost me anything!  (Yeheey again!)

          And so, upon confirmation of the existence of our tickets, the three of us made the seemingly-ridiculous scene of leaving our "good" Gen Ad seats (which we have been occupying for about 3 hours) just when the game was about to begin.  We found good seats very near the DLSU side.  Actually, we were already in the DLSU side because, for some reason, DLSU fans were vastly outnumbered today.  The audience was around 65-70% Ateneo supporters.

          It was a good thing that DLSU gave a good fight and actually got us scared a number of times.  It made the victory all the more sweeter.  Aga and Carol proved to be formidable cheerers and we three had a great time shouting and cheering for Team Ateneo (and jeering the Greenies). 

          And when it became apparent that Ateneo was going to win, all hell broke loose.  I actually needed some space to run around, shout, and flail my arms over my head and so I did just that.    I went up to the walkway between the Gen Ad and Upper B sections and I ran around like a madman.  The last time I did this sort of thing was when Gec Chia made that miracle shot back in 2002 against UE.  It was at this point where I completely forgot about my hunger and soaked in all the great feeling of witnessing the Blue Eagles become champions.

= = = = = = = = = =

          It was only later, when I was having a hard time going home when I realized that a full 24 hours have passed without me having anything to eat.  I was craving for Taco Bell but the entire Gateway Mall was packed with ADMU and DLSU fans, and so I ended up in Goldilocks in Farmers' Plaza where I consumed Fresh Lumpia and Bola-bola Siopao.  Going back to Gateway where I intended to hail a cab, I noticed that Taco Bell had almost no more customers, and so I had a second dinner, hehe.

= = = = = = = = = =

          What a day!  I'm happy I came to watch.  I'm happy I met up with Paolo again after a long time.  I'm happy to meet two new friends both of whom I will never forget for as long as I live.  And I'm happy that the Blue Eagles finished the job!  Thank you for the great memories!

          One Big Fight!

10 Years Ago today

10 years ago today would have been a Thursday.

It would have been near the close of the first semester of school year 1998-1999 during senior year in college.

I would have weighed around only 140 pounds, with a waistline that never went beyond 30 inches.  I would have remembered that the year before, it was only 28 inches, when I experimented with a vegetarian diet.

I would have woken up late, and possibly missed my first class for the day - either Bobby Guev's Theology of Liberation, or the History of Psychology under a teacher whose first name is "Gerry".

Having gone to school, I would have gone straight to the ACMG-Kaingin-LiKaS-Musmos Room in Colayco Hall, when it still existed.  I would have heard the Eucharistic song practices of ACMG members (many of whom were gay), the boisterous jokes of the Kaingin boys (most of which were green), the not-so boisterous huddles of Musmos (a number of whom were rather portly), and of course the wholesome chatter of my fellow LiKaS people (many of whom were Biology majors.  But I wasn't.)

It would have been the FInal 4 season in the UAAP, but most people in school wouldn't have really cared because at that time, the old Blue and White wasn't a basketball powerhouse yet.  (It would have been the final year of what Atenean basketball enthusiasts would later on refer to as "the dark ages".)

Visiting Austrian Professor Clemens Sedmak (from the University of Innsbruck) would have been my Philosophy of Religion teacher, and I would have thoroughly enjoyed his lectures - even though I would not have understood a good one-half of the discussions.

The Eraserheads would have still been popular at that time, but they would have also been undergoing the slow denouement that characterized their later years.  But I would not have really cared because I never was an Eraserheads fan.  This would have also been at a time when I was a sucker for 70s and 80s senti songs, which I would have pirated using cassette tapes.  (During that time, CD burning was almost unheard of.)  

This being the day before Friday, I would have earnestly anticipated the weekend - Friday being almost always reserved for some org activity or what was known then as "Coffee Nights" at Beanhoppers.  (Ah, "Beanhoppers", that's one name I haven't heard in a looooong while.)  And this anticipation would have rendered my afternoon classes a dreadful bore.

I would have spent the early hours of the evening hanging out in school or in McDonald's Katipunan, because for some reason I did not like going home early.  Speaking of McDonald's, I would have ordered my favorite meal which was the Cheese Burger meal.  And it would have cost the astonishingly low price of P50.00.

Going home, I would have ridden one of the jeeps that plied the UP-Katipunan route.  If one was not available under the overpass, opposite National Bookstore, I would have walked all the way to the jeepney terminal near Aurora Boulevard.  I would have gotten off at Nawasa, and walked towards the jeepney stop in front of Vinzons Hall in UP.  

I would have taken another jeep going to Philcoa, where I would have finally ridden a bus up until the Batasan stop in Commonwealth Avenue.  There would still have been a lot of tricycles that could take me inside the subdivision I live in.  But since this would have been at a time when I still had an inexhaustible amount of energy to burn, I would have just walked until I reached my house.

Lying on my bed at midnight, I would have wondered what I would be like 10 years from September 3, 1998.

Funny Picture (a.k.a. my pre-UAAP special edition blog entry)

Ho-ho-ho!  It's gloating time, baby. 


So here's the background story:

During the second round of the UAAP wars last year, when barbs and insults between Ateneo and La Salle were reaching fever-pitch, the DLSU side came up with the mother of all insulting banners which is shown above.  The message is derived from the then-current 2006 Times Higher Education World University Rankings - which placed DLSU at the 392nd spot, and the Ateneo at the 484th spot.  When this particular banner was unfurled, there was a collective groan on the Ateneo side.  There simply was no possible smart-alecky retort for that "I'm-pissing-on-you're-face-and-you-can't-argues-with-facts-haha!-try-to-beats-that!" assault.

La Sallites everywhere, including it's own school administration, took advantage of this judgment of a disinterested third party by pubicizing its feat with great fanfare in every possible medium it could get its hands on.  After all, the Ateneo ranking above La Salle is old news.  BUT La Salle ranking above the Ateneo? - it almost exists only in the imagination of La Sallites.  That very picture above was spread to different online fora, presumably without the permission of the photographer (who, if he's a La Sallite, wouldn't have minded, I'm sure.)  Similar pictures spread, and tens of thousands of pro-La Salle blog comments sprung up like weeds in healthy garden soil.

Suddenly, Ateneo's own "Suspended" and "Wrong Spelling" banners against La Salle ate the dust.  They weren't funny anymore, and worse, DLSU went on to become the 2007 UAAP Mens' Senior Basketball Champions in spectacular fashion.  More collective groan.


Now here's the funny part:

It appears that just a few months after that infamous banner incident - when La Sallites were still gloating, and Ateneans were still sourgraping - the 2007 rankings came out.  (Specifically, it was November 2007).  And according to that list, the following are the Philippine universities that made it to the world's top 500:

(#398) University of the Philippines; and

(#451) Ateneo de Manila University

What?  No DLSU?  Yup, that's right.  No DLSU in the top 500.  Oh wait, they're there.  In the footnote - ranked # 519.  HA. HA. HA. 

This time, it was the La Sallites' turn to be dumbstruck - like, "What's the f*ck is just happened to our celebration?  You're mean we're loosers again?  But aren't we the championship?"  Here's what happened my dear greenies:  You. Got. Served.  (<--- This, in homage to an anti-Ateneo blog entry I came across recently that had those exact words as its title.)

Now, the Jesuit administrators of the Ateneo (i.e. Nebres, et. al.) were way too classier than their DLSU counterparts, so there was almost no official comment on the Ateneo's vindication.  The rest of the blue-blooded population, however, bordered on false modesty by publicly trying to brush the whole thing off and claiming we couldn't be bothered by rank-consciousness... if only to be consistent with our sourgraping when the 2006 rankings came out. 

[^ If a given population collectively undertook the widest and most conscious effort to be consistent with a previous year's behavior, then that achievement belongs to us Ateneans between November 2007 and today. ]

But false modesty aside, you just know deep inside we're all having a huge laugh at La Sallites.  And for good reason.  Once again, we are witnessing another glaring example of La Salle's one-time motto of "Bring Out the Best in Ourselves" catching up with them.  (I swear, I didn't make that up.  They really had that motto in the 1990's.  Yeah, talk about shooting yourself in the foot.  )



But look, the new UAAP season is approaching!  No room for false modesty here.  Once again the time is almost ripe for childish banter and irrational (and not so irrational) insulting on both sides.  No surprise that most of them aren't remotely related to basketball.  It's time to cheer your throats hoarse, and be a rabid fanatic for three glorious months.

Let the games begin!!!