amusing law reading of the day

credits to charles i. -
The perfect example of equal protection clause

and while this looked like drunken follies of those in their ivory tower, we came across this proposal in Japan to tax handsome men. So basically when you get tax exempt that is the country's way of showing that you are really fugly.

Merry Christmas Greeting

‎"Please accept without obligation, express or implied, these best wishes for an environmentally safe, socially responsible, low stress, non addictive, and gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday as practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice (but with respect for the religious or secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or for their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all) and further for a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated onset of the generally accepted calendar year (including, but not limited to, the Christian calendar, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures). The preceding wishes are extended without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee(s)."

-A lawyers holiday greetings

Reminiscent of recent conversations

Liar Liar.

A movie about a scumbag lawyer

Hits the nail on the head on this one

:P

And of blogging while in a bad mood

and the readers reaction are...

But it wasn't always like that.

it used to be fun.

Then we started seeing fundamental differences in our way of life.

All I want to do is text 

but seriously the phone bill is getting to me more than any smartphone block

My days are running out.

I just need to

This is a gift to myself

Last night may have been one of the most introspective nights I had over the din of Gangnam style,  and various Christmas Jingles and I have compiled a list of things I want to do over the next year. I haven't made any  real new year's resolution for the past three years now and I realized there are some things I really want to change this year.

1. To give myself value. 
   Stop all the self - immolation I have done while in law school. I made it here just like every other honor student who enrolled, and they have had the same heartbreaks along the way as I had. Excellence is reached when the things have gotten so low, yet the person still plowed on with his 10,000 hours. For all the years I've spent fangirling Chicago Bulls, I seem to have forgotten Michael Jordan's biography.
   
   It's time to forgive myself for not measuring up to my own expectations. Its also time to forgive myself because I simply did not have the time. I was consumed with stuff I had to do  with the family, to the point my schedule was stretched, I even got hospitalized.
   It is time to recoup, focus, and just do it.
   
2. To stop forcing the issue; chasing. 
   If it was really meant for me, it would come to me. If someone wanted to give me flowers I will get them out of their own freewill. I never asked anyone to give me flowers and I got it when I was in elementary, from oblation runs, in exchanged gifts.
   
   Last night was particularly illuminating. All I wanted, which became a point of contention for the past two months was a decent skype call from the person who made my world go round this past year, and I didn't get it. While I was getting shit from him despite best efforts on the turn of midnight, suddenly my bestfriend who I didn't tell about my 'issues' greeted me Merry Christmas on the other window. I thought it was the standard greeting. He was cities away with the rest of his extended family. I wished him Merry Christmas back, no sense of spreading my sadness when I know he is in his happy place, then suddenly out of the blue he makes it into a Skype call greets me with his aunty, his cousins, and it was the best Skype call I've had. I couldn't even say anything I was just overwhelmed. There I was sitting frustrated, feeling sorry for myself, wishing I did not go online, and there was my bestfriend smiling back at me and all I could do was wave back and nod and they thought I wasn't speaking because I can't hear them. I just couldn't speak. After that, it just wasn't so bad anymore. I may not have gotten the love I wanted so bad, but I think last night I got one I deserved.
   
3. To do things with value.
   Just noticed how much stuff we do with our daily lives that just consists of consuming, without us per se generating value. Studying has value because it has mental training, reading on the internet about the latest memes, while entertaining, doesn't add anything. Nor is finishing the entire genre archive of my favorite fan ship (I've been in it since 2004, and I've pretty much read anyone worth reading with decent grammar skills on my pairing on ff.net + lj.com). That won't help me for my bar exams either. If I got rid of those I'd actually have time to jog and lose 10 kilograms! by March 8.
   
   
   Ill keep my list a short one. So that by the end of the year I have no excuse. 

So this is why blogging is a personal creative non-fiction.

The best thoughts come when were in the shower.

I can attest to this fact because the words flowed like the water pouring from the bidet while I was in there unable to type, and they are all gone as I go against the blank page.

This would probably be one of my most incoherent writings as of late; perhaps it’s a way to ensure that I do not end up doing the same thing for the bar exams or my SLR.

I was watching ETC there was a commercial of the new MTV series, Catfish. It talked about how people in an online relationship seem to sell a different persona than what they are in real life. There are those which have even gone so far as to give a picture of a different person, which then reminds me of a conversation with Martin in the library when we were talking about all the black propaganda during the elections. He was lamenting the fact that there are certain rumors totally based on lies and if they wanted to spread around lies they should have made those that are not easily verifiable to be debunked.  I am planning to watch that show and say to myself “Thank God I don’t have that problem.”

I never realized how much typing on blogger bothered me when I couldn’t make the paragraphs justified and that there was no auto correct on the program which would have caught on my typos and lack of words when my brain thinks of things faster than my fingers can type. Sometimes it’s a struggle to write the next sentence because my brain has already jumped into a new one and I forgot the thing I had to say.

For the fourth time I finished the book of Malcolm Gladwell, Blink. It talked about thin-slicing, the process of our brain in making snap decisions based on experiences gathered over the years, perhaps over ten thousand hours (as listed in his succeeding book Outliers). According to this book our series of human interactions have a pattern – from how an athlete manages to know exactly when to hit the ball with a baseball bat, Andre Agassi tilting his wrist exactly at eight degrees  when the tennis ball slides down his racket, or why the psychologists at the testing center could predict with 95% accuracy whether the marriage of the couple they were studying would end up in divorce within the span of 15 years.

Reading that part with dread, the researchers concluded that for a relationship to last there needs to be a ratio of happiness to unhappiness ratio of 1:5. So for every bad moment there needs to be four good ones, and somehow they were able to determine this by studying one hour clips of a couple’s interactions on a topic they do not agree upon. For example, the couple had a dog, which the guy clearly didn’t like, while the girl absolutely loved. The dynamics of their conversation were recorded and compared to their recording of retelling the examiners how they first met.

Arguing was good, disagreeing allowed couples to look for solutions where their minds would reach an agreement. Just like 1206 of the Civil Code where it said a contract was a meeting of the minds. But contempt was not. It looked down on the other from a different plane establish a difference in levels and a reason for disengagement.

Every day we are taught that the words we have are our weapon. Latin maxims are our last dagger. I was so intent on winning him over failing to realize that there was no competition and I ended up killing the love I was trying to win. All my words did not have any actions to temper them. I. on disagreements felt I was slighted, that I was losing him to a bestfriend that wanted his attention as much as I did, that whatever my bitchy personality was lacking I could have won him better with my other attributes to the point that it did nothing but prove that all I was after was to show how I was better than him, that when all I wanted was to show how much I valued his presence over anything else that I ended up talking to him instead of getting ready for class that I had to subsequently drop while he could not be bothered to skype with me once a week on the only day I have a decent internet access,  I became one of those clingy girlfriends that men habitually complain of during drinking sessions.

So this is what its like to be crazy in love with someone huh?  It’s consuming. When we started the relationship I was just excited, happy, floating on cloud 9. He had misgivings, what if we never worked out then we would never see each other again just like that? Maybe I should not have thrown caution to the winds. It’s the 20^th tomorrow, am I spending it alone? Maybe. The worst thing in having a phone is knowing it can receive messages from anybody but not the one you were waiting for. 

I thought I had the girlfriend role down to a t. I knew exactly three dishes to cook so at least if we ended up married he can choose among steak, stew or spaghetti. For dessert I can make a creamy refrigerator cake. I’ve been introduced to parents. I wasn’t a slut, in fact based on 9gag I would have been awesome because I played games. On retrospect, previous relationships didn’t work out because A was a jerk where after we fought he would list down every good thing he did for me, while L can’t be bothered with loyalty until he found himself a continent away. Dates that did not last two months? My old guy pals rationalized it that these guys who never me knew before wouldn’t have been able to distinguish had I been joking or not with the language I employed if they didn’t have a basis of comparison, but they said there was hope for me yet since I had them as friends after all for the past 12, 10, to 6, and 3 years.

I think you met me at the worst time in my life. Whatever good you’ve seen was buried under the daily stress, fatigue and chucking of self-esteem. I guess that’s why in law school they have a classification of relationships. Those that were formed before law school and survived 1L are bound to last, because they knew the person how he was before law and how he can be again after the bar exams, while those who got in a relationship while in law school never last because they only see us in our most horrible moments for the next few years until the bar exams are over and think of it as truth. Heck even most under the first category ended up getting married right after law school to the point we have bar babies being born, while the people in the second category according to my professor had a new relationship every semester like school supplies.

What am I writing for? To ignore the compulsion to check my phone ever few minutes to see if there’s a message not trusting my senses that there’s no buzzing in the front pocket of my pants anymore. No good morning, no good night, no message as I was leaving home for the next 5 days. It was easier to ignore when there was a lot of things going on. Now it’s a damn holiday and things are slowing down. Its all coming back to me now. I have outlined my faults, but what can these do? Am I apologizing for the things I said? I apologize for the way I said them, that I wasn’t there to show you that there was no real venom in my voice and no spite, but I had to say them somehow. I was not comfortable with how much you valued her, how different our views are towards education, that you moving away bothered me so much to a degree that regardless of what I know it didn’t stop me from feeling that I was losing you. Tomorrow is the 20^th again and I am starting to dread it.  

What is it like to have free time on you hands

• There's "ME" Time for the personal beauty regimen I sometime's never get to do especially on hectic weeks since I only have one day off. I bought these items on a whim and its the first time I tried them and I'm glad that a.) I am not allergic to them, and b) they proved to be worth my money.
• Watson's Glam line for Nose Strips delivered its promise of effectively removing blackheads from problem spots ! At only P 99.00 for 12 strips, usable 2x a week in between 3 day intervals, not bad!
• I used Beauty Bar's Apple and Evening Primrose Mask after using the nose strip since my skin felt a bit tight and dry! and now my skin is shiny (not in the mood to add a pic of my face and scare you all off). This one is sold for P 39.00 each but if you buy 2 at a time, the set costs P59.00 only and this one can be used daily in place of your moisturizing creams.  

• I get to read random internet pages without feeling guilty that I was not reading my cases!   
• Just like this Cracked article which basically gave sense to the roller coaster of emotions I could not adequately put into words whenever law school chucks my self-esteem down the window. Dare I say, it took him 13 years to come up with these realizations, I went to law school and got a crash course.
• Another bout of series cramming / movie hopping as well
• Like a discussion on "Who is Gossip Girl?" and its none other than Dan - Pathetic - Humphrey.



• Rurouni Kenshin the Movie ! 
• Oh-god-its-so-so-awesome-iamdeadsigh-o/ Because it was sooooo fdamn gooooood, instead from a limited run of 5 days (December 5 to 10), SM Supermalls realized they had a sleeper hit and decided to extend showing until December 24, just before the Metro Manila Film Festival forces every foreign film out of the cinema in favor of some original Filipino flop movie (self-hate much I know, but I shall continue to diss until they find an original plot).
• It totally captivated the essence of the anime. In fact I started watching my anime cd's right after I got home and the movie got everything in the first 3 episodes right even with the lone strand of hair in Saitou's face during the opening!
• Sadly the movie ended just around the first arc, which was only until the introduction of Megumi into the plot, so sadly we don't get to see our dearly beloved Aoshi and Misao :< 







• Cloud Atlas
• This movie spans for three hours with about six different plots running at the same time. As one youtube comment put it, "its determined to confuse in the first hour." Its not an "awwww" gushing movie; However I found the movie to be running on one general theme only but depicted in the six different scenarios set in multiple eras not depicted linearly (because each scenario started with the past then went back to the future then somehow explained everything in the present) . 
• On top of that it only had like 8 all star actors portraying the six different roles which was what made the film amazing because they were in character and one can really see the range and mettle of skills that they had to differentiate one from the other.
• On other news I can see my floor again! Joke, but at least I am not having dreams that my paper stacks of readings would topple over me. 

Why exchange gifts with close friends is fun, on the reverse!

Whoever you are :D

It was unexpected, but appreciated.
Arigatou Gozaimasu!