Body:

The History of my Education

August 5-28, 2007

Notes for the History of my Education
(or the Rises and Falls of a Schizophrenic)

I. The Little Eagle
II. Half a Student
III. Comeback Kid

I. The Little Eagle
I started really learning when I was around seven years old, when I took up a trade book my mom had on Mathematics. There, I learned about the Fibonacci sequence, double betting, and Zeno’s paradox.

During my prepubescent years, I and my elder sister Marichelle were quite occupied with the concept of Intelligence Quotient. My dad had a pocketbook about I.Q. with some exercises. We also had worksheets at home, from which I gauged my I.Q. to be around 130 and 140.

I scored quite high on IQ tests when I was in prep, that is the year level before grades one to seven in the Philippine Education Student.

When I was in Philippine Science High School, I took yet another I.Q. test, with a score which did not stand out among the others, because Mr. 99++ percentile happened to be Mr. Ferdinand Macalinao, who went on to med school.

I had I.Q. portions in my admissions tests for Ateneo High School, Philippine High School and the University of the Philippines. I’m sure that I did not stand out in any of them.

My family lived in what was then the town of Makati (now a city). My sister and I befriended our neighbours. First, there was Melissa and Jennifer Villacorta, who later moved away to Parañaque, although I later saw them in the all-girls school, Maryknoll.
And then there were the squatters, who lived across us. I don’t think that they rented or owned the piece of land they lived on. Our parents discouraged us from keeping our friendship with the squatters, warning us that we would catch diseases (sakit).

Before I attended prep at the Colegio de San Agustin, I went to a program for kids which taught us how to mold clay, among others things, and then to a Montessori school, where what I remembered best were the cookies and grape-flavoured juiced drinks we had for snacks.

I don’t remember any of my classmates in Colegio de San Agustin, except Patrick, because people always thought he was the slow one. I did not make any friends in San Agustin, although a few of my Makati friends ended up studying in San Agustin when I no longer was there.

Cardona Street was the first place in Makati in which my family stayed in. My sister Marichelle learned to bake courtesy of our neighbour Tita Telly. I drank too much Coca-Cola in my childhood up until at least my thirteenth year of age. My dad had our drinking water boiled, but I mostly drank Magnolia-brand milk and Coca-Cola.

Santa Claus gave me Matchbox cars for Christmas. I remember playing with the modeling-clay smudged ambulance on a mattress with Jennifer and Melissa, and I remember Jennifer most for riding me and Marichelle’s kid passenger tricycle the hard way, sitting on the rear passenger seat while she pedalled her long legs around the front wheel.

A lousy toy I remember was the flying saucer, which was a stupid inch-wide circle of plastic which had cut-up blades you blew at, and it would barely spin. Much more amusing was the Flying-T which was a lollilop stick stuck into a popsicle-stick-size piece of plastic through a hole in the latter. You rolled your hands at a clapping position, spinning the lollipop stick and then the perpendicular blade, which would fly ten feet off the ground. There was also the smily octopus which you threw at the higher part of a wall, and watch crawling down.

As for educational toys, there were alphabet blocks, alphabet refrigerator magnets and an alphabet breadboard. I don’t remember forming any words with them, but just sticking the things wherever they may get stuck.

In one of my pre-schools, they taught us about CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words. “Bus” and “cat” were CVC words. In Tagalog language, there aren’t noticeably any common native CVC words. “Bus” is borrowed (pronounced boos), but there are a good deal of common CVCVC words, such as “sakay” (to ride) and “lapit” (near).

I did either dismally or barely passably in Filipino language classes all throughout my prepubescence. At the start, my parents and teachers agreed that it was because I was born in a foreign country (the U.S.) and was not exposed to the Filipino language until I was already around six years old. But even when they got me the Pilipino-English dictionary, I never excelled in my classes conducted in Filipino, until later in College.

Marichelle and I had some Texas Instruments. We had a calculator, and I believe we had a Speak N’ Spell. We had Lego Blocks, Struts and Capsella. We had a special little orange table for keeping our Lego Blocks (and now and then an Easter Egg would find its way there).

Struts were cool. You had these big plastic blocks you fastened either with white plastic jumbo-bolts or rubber straps (I had poked one of these rubber straps through the blades of an electric fan just to see what to happen… it came out pretty intact, just drubbed with a little scratches).

Capsella were orbs of mechanized gears that you combined so as to have them run in a coordinated fashion. You could attach a propeller to one of the orbs.
Our parents gave us toys they could not even dream of during their own childhoods.
I was never a great artist with Lego. I enjoyed doing it, but I never produced anything worth taking a picture of. I liked making houses with the cute little red door, but I did not organize my colours or patterns.

I don’t even remember what my room look liked in the apartment in Cardona street. I’m sure I didn’t have my own room. The whole apartment was so tight, and now and then flooded with rainwater.

Anyway, we moved to a large apartment along Hormiga street, also in Makati. This time I remember who our landlady was. It was the theater actress and physician, Dr. Rubio. She administered circumcision (tuli) operations in the summertime for regular folk. I had an expensive tuli in a private hospital, whereas my dad just had a guava leaf as anesthetic and the river to jump on when he was young.

The apartment in Hormiga was bigger than the one in Cardona, and it had its own garage.
Our father drove a Ford Cortina 2.0, which always broke down, but never got replaced, just tuned up.

My sister and I were wonder at cleaning up and beautifying our room, although we had house servants, sometimes two or three at a time. I forgot all of their names, but remember seeing one undo her bra.

The other, a tomboy, pressed the finger of my little Sister Richelle unto a hot plate until it got burned black. Of course, my dad fired her, then she dragged along her guy friend to pretend to be a cop, and go arrest him, which did not work out for them. My mom always noted that she smelled of siyoktong, an alcoholic drink.

I remembered a time we had all our house servants fired, and we had to do our own laundry in basins.

In Hormiga, we watched a lot of Betamax, a videocassette format later outdone by VHS.
In Betamax format, we watched a feature on Nostradamus. I remember the cockroaches flying all over the living room that night.

“The Other Side of Midnight” (based on Shidney Sheldon’s novel) was rated R, and my sister and I couldn’t watch it.

What we did get to watch was little sister after little sister being born in Makati Medical Hospital. We would see these new babies after school. They all looked alike, indistinguishable, but they would grow up looking different. Richelle had a soft, white gentle face. My cousin Eugene called Michelle “maitim” (dark), and there was Michaela, with a triangular chin.

It was Michelle that I physically abuse, always grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her hard after she would run her mouth against me.
I found Richelle cute when she was growing up to be a toddler.

I found Michaela to be a nondescript face even as I finished my high school years. It was when she was already fifteen years old that I could begin to characterize her looks: pretty, but capable of indifference and defiance.

Richelle was my favourite sister, although I did more things with Marichelle. One thing Marichelle would do now and then was to threaten to leave the house holding a pillow and a bread knife, wearing a T-shirt and panties. She would actually step out of the gate and go to the opposite sidewalk, but proceed no further.

Marichelle and I would also exercise. At home, all we did was a few push-ups and sit-ups. I was eager to do ten to twenty push-ups when I was around seven or eight years olf, and I could do as many sit-ups, or maybe ten more, but I could not bring up my number of repetitions with either exercise, and I gave up doing either at home before I turned ten years old. I would only get good at push-ups and sit-ups when I turned twenty nine years old and was with the Massachetts Army Reserve National Guard.

We had Crayons at home, and I think it was Michelle who vandalized the house with the red crayon, not really designing anything, but just scratching lines to and from, up and down.

My dad set up a basketball ring in the garage. Every so often, we would break the windown panes of the window to the right of the ring. I had a Mikasa brand basketball. I still had my friends from Cardona street to play with.

There was Richard and his brother Edong. They looked very different. There were the Trillo brothers Luigi, Paolo and Carlo. These three were mestizo or tisoy (fair-skinned and Spanish-blooded). Their sister was Franchesca, who was a mestiza or tisay. It was Franchesca’s habit to smother with kisses any guy friend of her brothers. Not only that, she would make obsessive recitations in a corner of the room when I was with her brothers: “Ramuel, I want to marry you… Ramuel, I want to take a bath with you… Ramuel, I want to have children with you.”

Franchesca was pretty. She had brown hair, but I didn’t feel that I needed a girl until I was in high school.

There was Cookie Orozco, whose parents were both re-married, coming from different first spouses. Cookie was handsome, and his two front teeth were prominent in his smile. He had powerful eyes, which commanded attention and interest.

It was Cookie who first gave me a black eye, punching me once in the face. I had to roll ice cubes over the frozen area. I received a couple of black eyes when I was in grade school. One was from a bumper car ride, but the others were from punches from friends. I never gave any one a black eye in my whole life, although it is better to give than to receive. All my life I have never won in a fight. I have won in sports, but never in fights. I never knocked down anyone with a punch. I never learned how to wrestile.

Cookie always talked about how his family used to be rich, eating fried chicken every day and having tinloads of Ovaltine. His father used to work with the Aboitiz shipping company.

Cookie had a pretty elder sister. Her name was Carla. She studied in St. Paul’s.
Cookie’s neighbour was a prostitute who sold ice candy to us kids. Her ice candy was pretty good, especially the mango one, which had a milky flavour to it. She had a pretty baby daughter by the name of Angel.

On Cardona street, we boys would play “Cops N’ Robbers” and “Agawan Base”. “Agaw” is the Tagalog for “to grab”. What each team would try to do is grab the home base (usually an electric post) of the opposing team.

We ran around wearing rubber slippers, even in our lap races around the block. I would place nearly last all the time. I guess I drank too much Coca-Cola or had one too many a helpings of bacon and rice.

In our Hormiga street apartment, we had a family library. Through a personable salesman, we got the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Britannica Children’s Encyclopedia and the How and Why Science Library.

I barely read the Encyclopedia Britannica, sparingly using the Micropedia for school reports, whereas I read a good deal, but not all of the Children’s Encyclopedia and the How & Why.

Marichelle and I enjoyed reading the Children’s Encyclopedia. One of our favorite features was the “Where am I?” portion. Even our own country, the Philippines was featured in it, noted for its passenger shuttles, the jeepneys.

It was the How & Why which I applied in school. In my class recitations, I explained to my classmates how sound waves travel: through concentric spheres of air pressure. My classmates marvelled at me, and said of me, “Masiyado kang maraming alam (You know too much.).”
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Rumusud.
My third grade teacher was Mrs. Faustina.
It was in the third grade, where I first developed the urge to excel academically. I was always in the Top Four, and by the end of the year, I was tied for Top number three.

Now and then, I would ace my quarterly math exams. I’m not sure if I aced my Religion exam once. It seems so, but it’s hard to believe. How could I have memorized all those technical parts that went into celebrating a mass--- the doxology… the eulogy… the liturgy of the Word…. The liturgy of the Eucharist?

I was baptized, Catholic and had my First Communion Ceremonies at Ateneo de Manila Grade School, but my parents did not have me confirmed as a Christian. Around that time they decided not to have me confirmed as a Christian, our family stopped going to Church as a family. Apart from my family, however, I still went to Church by myself or with friends, although only on some Sundays.

We had one chain-smoking priest in our Jesuit school, Fr. Cuerquis. I don’t remember anything particular about anything he said (or even much of what my other teachers have said), but that’s because I have such a poor memory. Anyway, I remember him as being a compassionate man. We all had to make birthday card for him once, however, and a few of us drew cigarettes instead of candles unto a birthday cake for him.

We had this other priest, he was American-blooded. He kept bouncing up and down gleefully whenever he talked.

Fr. Katigbak was our headmaster. I remember him encouraging all off us to sing during our celebreation of the Holy Mass, even if we didn’t all have the singing talent of pop star Gary Valenciano.

Gary Valenciano now and then would have a concert in Ateneo, if not in some other big venue. He could dance as well as sing. He had love-themed songs such as “`Di Bale na Lang (It doesn’t matter),” and he had songs inspired by our Christian faith, such as “Take me Out of the Dark, My Lord,” and “Shout for Joy.”

Fr. Katigbak was fond of remote-controlled model cars and airplanes.
Mr. Abando taught us how to put together scale models of airplanes. My clasmmates Jose Mari Tuason and Andre Palma were particularly good at it. I was horrible. I always put too much adhesive and got confused by the many little parts. I did not even airbrush-paint the models I put together. I had an orange car and a Blue Angels airplane.
I believe my father realized my limitations as he later got me a jumbo plane (not a close model of any real plane) with few and big parts which only needed to be screwed together.
Mr. Abando’s wife also taught at the Ateneo Grade School. Later, they got divorced. Their son Johann was our schoolmate and a pretty good drummer, but the best drummer was Andre Quimpo, who could also breakdance. I remember Andre performing Van Halen’s “Dreams.” He was awesome.
Mrs. Abando once got on my case for being so vocally anti-Marcos. She emphasized to me that there were pro-Marcos people such as her.
Ferdinand Marcos was the Philippine president. At first I liked him and wanted to be like him when I didn’t know anything about him when I was seven years old, but when 1983 came around, a new hero emerged. Benigno “Ninoy” S. Aquino, Jr. was assassinated on the tarmac of the airport as he came to the Philippines from the United States. Ninoy was Marcos’ college fraternity brother who was the symbol of political opposition to Marcos’ presidency.

At the end of Cardona Street, my friends and I put together a shrine for Ninoy, which was composed of stones which spelled out a dedication to Ninoy’s martyrdom. We set his name and assassination date in stone. We showed our shrine to the passing passenger shuttles, the jeepneys.
Back in Ateneo, there was some pretty faculty. There was the guidance counselor, Mrs. Rodriguez. There was the music teacher, Ms. December “Daisy” Ragrajio. For one music exercise, we had to judge whether the music Ms. Ragrajio played on the cassete playor was piano, pianissimo, mezzoforte, forte or fortissimo. I impressed hey by telling her that I based my answers on the appearance of the sound level lights on her cassette player. Three reds meant fortissimio, one red forte, one green pianissimo, a couple meant piano, a few meant mezzoforte.
Our other music teacher was Mr. Valencia, who later in life bought himself three houses.
For recitation, Mr. Valencia would ask each of us questions for which the answers were clearly markered onto some of the Manila paper he postered on his classroom walls. Mr. Valencia was also subject to the joke where a student of his pretend to throw his banduria (little many-stringed instrument) away in the air. “No, no! You’re wasting you’re parench money!” Mr. Valencia had exclaimed, before the zipped up empty leather case plopped down on the ground.
Mr. Valencia taught us how to play theme song from the TV Show “Hawaii 5-O.” He also taught us how to play “Hindi Kita Malilimutan (I Can’t Ever Forget You),” a religious song where Mother Mary speaks to the Lord Jesus. I played the chimes for that song. When I was in the sixth and grades, I got to play “Hawaii 5-O” on the marimba. My concert performances with Ateneo Grade School Rondalla were my most cohesive public performances of music in my whole life. In the classroom, however, Mr. Valencia noted that my timing on the chimes was not perfect.
My classmates and I also formed a combo. I, Jake Sioson, Benjamin Velasco, Jay Tirona and others performed Pseona Dancing’s “More to Lose.” Only Ben, Jake and I showed up for the practice sessions. Ben and Jake would smoke Marlboro cigarettes and talk about how some students in the Regulars Class (We were in the Honours Class) would drink nine beers a time, even at their prepubescent age.
When we performed “More to Lose” we were a mess, we were all playing at different measures or beats of the measure. The end result was not that cacofonous, as there very few notes to the pop song, and Andre Quimpo said our band was OK.

At another occasion the entire Honours Class perform Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba.” The chords were easy C-F-G, and I was proud to play the acoustic guitar. Michael Maraya strummed his electric guitar which did not have an amplifier. He merely tied off the guitar’s cord to a leg of one of the risers.
Mikey Maraya was our classmate who always played the Who’s “Pinball Wizard” on his classical guitar, thinking that it was Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” Mikey Maraya may have stolen my Barong Tagalog, as he was well known as the class kleptomaniac. Once Mikey stole something, and our Fourth Grade teacher, Rickie Mendoza, wrongfully blamed our other classsmate, Getty Atienza. When we all said farewell at the end of our seventh grade final get-together, I saw him tuck away a comic book he had borrowed, before the owner asked it back from him.
During our intramural sports of basketball and softball, Chris Santos would joke out loud “Mikey, do what you to best!!!”… which was to steal (the ball or the next base).

Marichelle and I playes music at home and we took music lessons. We learn to sing the Sofflegio, although neither of us excelled, and we were wishy-washy students of excellent pianists. Our teachers were Mr. Jose and Mrs. Jose. Mr. Jose played to entertain people. He played with vibrant force and lively harmony. He always told us that some Japanese soldiers hit him in the back of his head and affected his memorizing lyrics, but he was a master of the keys. I never learned to play like him. Mrs. Jose was a divorcee schooled in Juliard along with Van Cliburn. I surely remember that she had to point out so many errors in my playing. I never got the feel of classical music, even just to listen to it.
On our own, Marichelle and I faked the riffs and melodies of pop songs such as A-ha’s “Take on Me,” but we wouldn’t play the pop songs in a full-bodied manner.
Marichelle and I would not blossom into musicians, except for that I would impress my friends in college with a few songs I had written.
As a child I already found it hard coordinating both hands into playing their respective parts of the piano piece.
My parents got us an upright piano and then a baby grand piano (when we moved to San Miguel Village, also in Makati). They also got me a guitar, and then (in high school) an electric guitar. Also there was a harmonica. My sister Michelle would get a violin.
My sister and I played a simplified version of “The Blue Danube Waltz” tuned down to C-major and with fewer notes. My friend Matthew noted that my sister played Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” the wrong way. We had children’s piano books, and I joined trying to play parts or segments of the pieces. I don’t think I memorized anything “by heart” as I was encouraged to do by Mr. Jose and Mrs. Jose.
I can still picture in my head the illustrations for the children’s piano books, but I don’t photographically remember tablature.
In my life I’ve impressed people when they hear me play, but that’s because they weren’t looking for the things I’ve been incapable of. When I was a college graduate, I impressed my niece in Zamboanga province (when I played on the very same Trebel baby grand piano I had back in Makati, that piano having been given away to her grandmother, my mother’s sister-in-law), because she was too young to know what was really good playing. “Naks! Marunong ka palang tumugtog (My, you do know how to play)!” my college friend Earl Francisco told me when I started faking “Terminal phase.”
I credit Mr. Valencia, rather than Mr. Jose or Mrs. Jose with bringing out a performer in me.
Mr. Valencia made me do fewer notes.
My sister and I had our delusions about us developing pianist’s hands capable of great extension, with fingers looking ugly of pronounced bones and nerves. I myself was quite proud when my hand could span an entire octave, but I never became a wizard with my fingers, not with the piano, or even typing (My dad had also bought us touch typing computer games).
The history of my education is, except for college, one of parents’ providing more than everything and in return getting mixed results. Although I was not a thing to show off on the piano for all my schoolmates to see, I got high grades in Music Class, because of all the theory I got from Mr. Jose and Mrs. Jose. I learned key signatures, although I couldn’t draw a decent clef of my own, and knew how to identify the elements of duration in music, without being sharp in putting them into practice.
My Honors Class classmate, Jet Arnaez surely was more advanced tham me. He was “Grade Four” on the piano. I physically kicked him in the butt, however, when he was responsible for some game interference during our softball intramurals (and the whole class we behind me when my action was reviewed).
I never idolized any pianist. I don’t even remember what my parents’ Van Cliburn records sound like. I was amused however with the use of synthesizers in pop and rock music. Van Halen’s “Jump” was the first song I ever loved that my dad hated. It was a wondrous thing to hear out of my dad’ high fidelity sound system. My dad was continuously studying audio equipment magazines, so he got a state-of-the-art stereo.
We no longer had to use the bulky audio cartridges (My parents had the Godfather soundtrack on one of them). We got a turntable. We kept our records in the foot of the cocktail bar we had in our San Miguel Village home. I got to pick one of the records in the store: Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair. Our media funhouse was The House of Stereo in Makati Commercial Center.
Beside the House of Stereo was the Magnolia Ice Cream House where I was an expert in eating the daredevil sundae. The daredevil sundae had two wafer cones for hones and had a head of strawberry ice cream, with the other flavors dug into the cup. In the Makati Commercial center, there was National Bookstore, where I looked with confused disdain at the Filipiniana (Filipino books) when I was a grade school student. The books I got were my textbooks and the computer books I put damned well good use to.
I really understood ever thing there ever was on Apple computer programming books. Even the ones I got from the school library all made sense to me. It wasn’t Bach to me.
I understood BASIC. I understood the For… Next loop. I understood the difference between Integer and Floating Point. I even knew some machine language. I was able to crack into Macromind Director.
I was the computer club president. I was in grade school. I was in high school.
My friend Getty Atienza programmed a fun game with moving text characters, “Dodge the Crash.” He even made up a role-playing game, Superhero’s Quest (or SHQ). He and my other friend Dondi once found a secret passage in his house. They went in it. They explored it. Their imaginations soared in spirit. They though that the possibilities were limitless, and then his parents had the hole sealed off. I only got to see where the hole was sealed off.
Whereas Getty used moving text characters, I used high-resolution graphics. I made a game about chasing objects.
Getty, Dondi and I also enjoyed professionally-made computer games.
There were the Beagle Brothers games, which did not use high-resolution graphics, but just the text screen.
There was Broderbund software’s Karateka, with its smooth realistic depiction of body movement.
And of course there was Pacman and Galactica.
My cousin Jay Buñag had an Atari computer game system. It featured low resolution graphics. We played a game in which we were tanks shooting one another in a maze the walls of which bound our bullets.
Jay was a genius. He was what I was not: a student with consistently excellent grades. Although we seemed to be at about the same performance level when I was Top Three at the end of Grade Three and he was still in the second grade, he continued to excel as I later languished in the Honours Class. He was a year or two younger than me, but boy!--- he had a mind. He could do his homework while watching TV.
Jay’s elder sister was Lia. Their mom was Buñag, and their father was Atty. Jose Maria Buñag. Their parents were the godparents of Marichelle.
Once Jay and I got mad at each other in Baguio City. It culminated in his pulling away my seat as I began to sit down in a restaurant. I fell on the rug. But after that, nagbati uli kami (We were on speaking terms again).
Jay once pushed my sister Marichelle into the kiddie pull of the Buñag’s townhouse complex. She wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. Her skirt floated on the surface of the two-feet-deep water.
Jay and I would become schoolmates again in UP, but we wouldn’t be friends there. He was a Business Administration student. I was a Comparative Literature student.
The Buñags were supposed to be the guardians of Marichelle when she began college in the University of the Philippines, but they were no longer loving and caring as they used to be. Aunt Baby even forbade Marichelle to have a debut.

Dondi and I both had physicians for fathers. It was Dondi’s father who showed our class a live dissection and reinstatement of a wild frog. Dr. Orinion showed us the digestive tract and the beating heart.
On other occasion, the class was shown the dissection of a chicken. When the teacher indicated the chicken’s gizzard, Emer Castillo screamed. For that reason, Emer got teased with the word “gizzard!” when he was playing our basketball intramurals.
Emer Castillo was great at dribbling the ball and laying up, better than me. Raymond Isada was our other star basketball player. Raymond was what we Filipinos call a “spotter,” someone who could shoot the ball with a quick glance.
I was the captain ball of Team A. I was good in both defense and offense. My father’s training me while breaking window panes in the Hormiga Street garage seemed to have paid off. Whenever I would grab the ball from the other team, I would direct my boys “Sugod (Attack)!” I would then pass the ball to Bong Rollan or take the shot myself after dribbling down the court.
Team A was designated as the class’ weakest team, while team D was the strongest. By the seventh grade, I was in Team C, although I did not stand out there, as I struggled offensively against the tougher defense, and I couldn’t pull as many defensive spots.

Volleyball intramurals was a laugh. Oftentimes, if you just served the ball properly, you already got a point. I was good in volleyball, but not Olympian. I could do some return hits and set-ups.

I was horrible at softball. I could hit the ball, but never with much force (May arms have been weak and thin all my life). I don’t recall if I ever crossed home plate. I much more remember scoring points in basketball in volleyball.

In soccer, I once substituted in as the goalee for Team D. I let one goal get by me when I was one-on-one with the attacker, but my classmates were proud of the overall effort I put in the game, although I guess we lost by that one goal.
My dad got a chess set for me and Marichelle, and neither of us became chess geniuses. We could play mind chess for up to four moves, before our shallow minds would give in. I started out being a sucker for the three-move-mate, and even when I grew out of that, I would never become a visionary in chess strategy. I would win a healthy amount of games, however, and chess was fun.
Melissa Villacorta greeted me once when I got on the school bus. She was a passenger, too, for the same bus served Ateneo and Maryknoll students. I did not acknowledge her, however, and nothing warm developed between us.

Marichelle and I would watch a lot of television (something our parents didn’t have when they were kids themselves). We watched Sesame Street, The Electric Company and the New Zoo Revue. I even had a couple of issues of the Sesame Street magazine, Contact 1-2-3. We also watched Japanese robot cartons in English. There was Voltes V, the anthem of which my high school friend’s Aunt had a part in singing of. There was Mazinger-Z with his triangular grin-like mouth and Aphrodite-A, whose breasts were missiles.

There were the Super Friends, the Super Book, and Flying House. The Super Book and the Flying House were religious cartoons.

I never knew my maternal grandfather, but I remember spending time with my father’s dad, Conrado. Sometimes, we went to Makati Supermarket, which was where my family also did our groceries. Lolo Conrado would buy for me reprints of DC & Marvel comics; reprints were what National Book Store made of American comics, taking away the twelve pages of ads, and leaving the twenty story pages. A reprint cost seven pesos instead of thirty-two pesos for the original American comic. My father would also buy reprints, and I would show my reprints off to Cookie and the Trillo brothers, who had reprints of their own. There was the cowboy with a weird mouth, Jonah Hex. He had a cord of stray flesh off to the side bridging it. There were Superman, Batman and Aquaman. There was the Justice League of America, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

Grammar School Final Report Card
All in all, I was a funny guy in Ateneo Grade School. I had a lot of personality. In an all-boys school, I had failed to connect with girls in any way whatsoever. I was an unremarkable student for six of the seven years I stayed, although I was never kicked out of the Honours Class. I could perform pop music, but not classical music.
I did well in Math, and was ahead of the Game in computers. I never was the star of my English class, although in Brookline high school I would impress three of my five English teachers.
I was horrible in Filipino language (something I would rectify in college). I did not have a good grip of History and Social Studies. I wasn’t a good note-taker. I don’t remember enriching myself by reading my own notes. Some referred to me as “`yung pangit magsulat (he with ugly penmanship).” I could draw, but my oil painting of a plush mascot-type figure did not impress my father, who painted a mug over it (He cherished Marichelle’s oil painting of hanging strawberries.).
I was athletically competent, and was a little piece in the Honours class’ clinching the overall intramurals sports championship.
When I was in grammar school, I did not read fiction outside of school, other than fully illustrated children’s books. I did not follow my classmates in reading Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew or Treasure Island. All my life I would never read one single Hardy Boys novel. I picked up a couple but got lost in the words and the pages. All I remember out them was that they had a fat friend named Chet.
Whenever one of my English teachers would recommend a book for us to borrow from the library and read outside class, I would not take up the book. Where The Wild Things Are was one of the prize-winning books I did not bother to read.
I did one book review, when I was in grammar school, it was on an educational book about puberty. We put the book review in as an article for a class newspaper project. My other conceptualization realized in the paper was an advertisement for a can of condensed milk called Puberty Condensada. Liberty Condensada was a popular Filipino brand of canned condensed milk. My classmate Kokog Alcasabas laughed a lot on seeing the ad. John D. Borja (the spelling bee champ) and Jet Arnaiz (the energetic rich kid) were part of my group that put the newspaper together. In Philippine Science High School, I would single-handedly produce my own newspaper, called Ramy’s Bulletin. It became a hit in PSHS (it contained gossip about Rosebelle Siao and third-year students at the dance, among other things). I was told when I was in UP, that when I left PSHS, my classmates tried to imitate my bulletin, but did not score as well as I had done.

Graduating from grammar school was no holiday. I had two grueling entrace exams to prepare for: one for Philippine Science High School, the other for Ateneo High School. The entrace exams for Ateneo High School were obscene. It may have been six hours long with no relief except for stretching and a small snack and drink.

My dad made me go to Philippine Science High School.
I belonged to the section named Opal. I made a great first impression with my classmates when I first saw them. I had a lot of energy and personality in doing our acquaintance exercises. I remember Jan Espino joking to anyone he’d meet, “Hey, man! Are you English-spokening dollars?”
The Opal students wanted to vote me for class president, but I was sick the following day (election day), so they voted Joseph “Jake” Sioson instead.
My English teacher in Philippine Science High School was Mrs. De La Vera. She showed us the school library and told us PSHS was still trying to be competitive in the subject area of English.
I think our Physics teacher was Dr. Llaguno. I remember her teaching us about adding and subtracting vectors, as well as getting their dot (and maybe even cross) products.
My classmates romantically linked me with a certain Rosebelle May Ylanan Siao, a girl I would never kiss or date, but would write me letters across the seas when I would end up in the United States.
Although we were a science high school, what I remember best from the single semester I spent at Philippine Science High school as being a major academic assignment was the literary work, the novel of our National Hero, Jose Rizal. Before November (when my entire family would leave the country) my class would have to read only the opening chapters of Noli Me Tangere. Our teacher, Mrs. Monton, told us it was a work of great genius. I barely put any effort into reading the book, which we were to read translated into the difficult accentuated Pilipino of Guzman. I didn’t have a good command of the Pilipino language until I was in college, so I didn’t really have any reading comprehension of the novel. The novel would be the first among many novels I would fail to properly read throughout my high school life (even in Brookline high school). When called in class by Mrs. Monton to provide some synopsis of the novel, I started saying that the novel was set in San Diego, California, USA. The whole class laughed. The San Diego the novel referred to was in Laguna province, right in the Philippines we were in. My best friend Paolo told me, “Ram, it’s not SAN DEEE-YAY-GO! It’s Sanjego!” It was in college that I would become better at reading the Noli me Tangere, even in the original Spanish. I would also use the more accessible Tagalog translation of Patricio Mariano, besides the Panitikang ASEAN translation my Philippine Institutions 100 would require. For my college professor Dr. Josefa Baldoz Schriever, I would translate orally and on the spot into English a whole page of the Noli Me Tangere, just to show how accessible the original Spanish language of Dr. Rizal was even a hundred years later after he wrote his masterpiece. So, in college I knew not only where Rizal’s San Diego was, but where the two Hebrew words in his novel came from in the Bible (the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s).
Anyway, after I failed to read Noli Me Tangere in high school, I would fail to read A Tale of Two Cities, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Huckleberry Finn, Crime and Punishment and the Great Gatsby in Brookline high school. I’d read only a few pages out of them and from there put together my term papers, class recitations and exam responses.
I would only get to enjoy the rich description of Tom Buchanan overlooking his estate when I was thirty years old. I would only get to read Cien años de soledad properly when I was in college. In college I did a damn good job of reading Cien años, as well as Marquez’s other novels. I read Cien años cover-to-cover in three days around Christmas back in 1998.
Anyway, the Guzman translation of Noli Me Tangere was the only book I remember from whatever books we had to use in Philippine Science High School. I bought it again when I was starting in college, then sold it quickly for small cash I needed, and years later would read the Patricio Mariano translation in the the Ayala Museum Library or the Panitikang ASEAN edition I had bought for Mr. Melecio Fabros’ Philippine Institutions 100 class.
I was not a book guy when I was in Philippine High School, nor do I recall there being any computer club there, there was just basketball with Paolo, Donald and Jan, and joking around in the cafeteria, and I was the king of joking. I would be all popping hormones, unless Rosebelle was around, people noticed, especially Oliver Esguerra, who’d tell me, “Ba’t `pag nandito si Rosebelle, tahimik ka lang (How come if Rosebelle’s around, you just keep quiet)?” I still remember my Crayoning a little picture of Rosebelle with her lush black hair, flesh-colored face, yellow sweater, green notebook and brown Philippine Science High School skirt. I did not draw her chinky eyes, nor her appetizing smile.
I liked Rosebelle, so did my classmate and later college friend George Paragas. The other people in Opal, however, especially Paolo Reyes, would assert that Mrs. Rosebelle Paragas would not sound right. They’d rather have Mrs. Rosebelle Raagas. Outside of Opal, an elder year student, MARJAF, Mario Jose Fernandez, was obsessed with Rosebelle, and would etch his name together with hers onto a classroom desk. That, and he, appalled Rosebelle. “Ang saklap ng pangalan (What an ugly name): MARJAF!!” Oliver Esguerra would say.
Rosebelle had beautiful penmanship. I still remember what had been her phone number in Surigao province. She would go on to the University of the Philippines in Manila, taking up Public Health, and grow huge breasts to go with her thin arms. The last time I saw her in my life, she was with her platonic friend (and fellow PSHS’er or taga-Pisay) Mikey Serafica across Julio Nakpil street from me where I was eating dinner by myself. I had no desire to rush over to her, just as right now I have no desire for her, but in college I had written and tape-recorded songs for her. She would be Romantically linked with Melchor “Tsoy” Sacramento, Vince Gaston, and some guy from the Philippine Military Academy, but never with me. Anyway, her classmate Armie was amused with my persistent desire for Rosebelle. Another taga-Pisay George Pujalte helped me find her college freshman classroom. My organization-mate (or org-mate) from UP Philosophical Society (Philosoc) Ronnie Sadac called me a “Stalker” perhaps over this whole Rosebelle thing. Ronnie may have learned from Alain Espino, Jan Espino’s younger brother. Even our other fellow Philosoc’er Earl Francisco found out how I lay down asleep like a bearskin rug in front of Rosebelle’s dorm room door in Vermont Towers along Julio Nakpil street. “Next time, be more responsible,” Rosebelle told me over the phone. Anyway, Rosebelle’s now married and teaches in the very same College of Public Health building I used to stalk her in. Professor Azcuna, that’s her name. What an ugly name. You can count on me, however, to flash my face in her classrooom, if I get to the Philippines.

Philippine Science High School Final Report Card
I left Philippine High School as a champion of popularity. I did not stand out in IQ or grades, but my grades were as passable as my PSHS admission scores, although I don’t have the exact figures. My high school class made a humungous surprise farewell party for me in the school cafeteria, and made out a huge greeting card with all their signatures and farewell messages. “Let the good times roll,” said Rosebelle, at the dead center of the illustration board. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” said Jeremy.
We seemed to do less sports in PSHS than in Ateneo. In PSHS we just had a new basketball court with fiberglass board installed. I never played an officiated game there. I waited to be substituted in, then gave up and a walked out of the facility, although later Paolo and Donald told me that they were about to put me in.
I finally had girl classmates in PSHS, although I did not them that well. Gold Mina Brillantes admitted she had crush on me. I never went out on a date with any of the girl, but on November 12, 1988, I got the address tip from Gold Mina as to where Rosebelle was and I visited Rosebelle. She received me, but she had too many relatives in the house for me to try and put any moves on her.

When my whole family arrived in the United States, we first stayed with the Divinos. That was in Edison, New Jersey. It was my birthday, November 14, 1988.
From there we moved to Travelodge in Natick, Massachusetts.
Eventually, my dad got an apartment in Brookline, #60 Glen Road. For the first time in my life, I finally had my own room. My four sisters all had to stay together in one room.
I first got sent to Lincoln School. A toughie of a fat kid B.J. patted me on the head. I was too much of a coward to get back at him.
I got to do a chemistry lab, although I forgot what the lab purpose was.
At Lincoln we played an abominable ‘sport’ called “bombardment.” It was at least true to its name. The gym class would divide into sides, head for opposite walls and then hurl rubber balls at each other. Our History teacher did not like this school sport, neither did I. At one point, our history teacher called aside a boy Renan, who purposely flatulated in class. I was to take French in Lincoln. I remember Brian O’Neill being perfectly amused at the French word for roast beef, le ros bif. I remember April Monroe greeting me with her beautiful brown eyes. When we were in Brookline High School, however, we did not communicate each other, which was my fault. In Lincoln, they made me take a math aptitude test. I aced in one third of the time required. After that, I was accelerated to high school.
My mom got on Marichelle’s case for not getting accelerated herself.

Lincoln Grammar School Final Report Card
My stay in Lincoln was ever shorter than my stay in Philippine Science High School. I looked presentable, but was a coward (letting a complete stranger touch me). The math exam that got me accelerated into Brookline High School had not the rigor of the Philippine Science High School or Ateneo High School entrance exams, but it showed as proof my capabilities for taking tests, as I reviewed my answers carefully.

Hitting the Line for Brookline
In Brookline High School, my morning class was Legal Education. I forgot the name of my teacher, but she was impressed by me. Maybe her first name was Renee. She found me articulate and brave in expressing my views. I was the only who voiced out a pro-life opinion in the class abortion debate. We also had a mock trial conducted in class in which I did a good job of questioning Mark Lewinter, who even stumbled in recalling his own character’s age.
One piece of writing my Renee found thoroughly impressing was an outline I had prepared. I had learned to make outlines from Ateneo Grade School, and never stood out, but now in Brookline High School, I did. Renee also was touched but how concerned I was about the use of illegal drugs (especially marijuana) in our school. I learned that drugs were being used by students from my music class.
I had a music class with Mr. Doctor. Mr. Doctor loved Mozart, but taught electronic music. We recorded our works on four-track machines. My classmates were convinced that I could rap, when I made an ad with the lines “….starring Shirley McLane / It will drive you insane.” I also made a lame Joy Division-esque song with the lines “You want it all to end. / Despair rules then.” The star of the music class however was Frank Metting, who would wow us with his out-of-the-world productions and his sharp lines (“Me and my woman / You know what I mean.”). Frank had his own equipment at home, and could play the guitar well.
For English teachers, I did well with Mrs. Nielsen, Ms. Ringwall and Mr. Yesner.
I was an abominable student of Mrs. Metz and Mrs. Metzger.
My first English teacher in Brookline High School was Mrs. Nielsen. She had us read A Raisin in the Sun. She was impressed with my command of language and my level of insight, so she had me promoted to a higher level of English class.
My next teacher was Ms. Ringwall (who, a decade later, in Vermont would be the English teacher of one of my platoon-mates in Fort Benning, Private Smith). Mrs. Ringwall had us read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I read it in our little family kitchen, standing up. I read it over and over, drinking up to four glasses of whole milk and/or Citrus Hill Orange Juice with Calcium. I took the details to heart. The following day, I impressed Ms. Ringwall with my recitation in class. I recalled very vividly how the black box for the lottery was construed. Our class debated whether there was any similarity between the tradition depicted in the story and what used to be the military draft. After class, Ms. Ringwall kept me for a moment and told me that she was impressed with my opinions and my reading comprehension and that she was promoting me to Level 3, the highest level of English class.
Level 3 was Responses to Literature. Mrs. Metz was the teacher.
Mrs. Metz had us read A Tale of Two Cities, which to this day, I have never really read. All I remember from the great novel was the introductory paragraph which emphasized ironic dichotomies. I forgot what else Mrs. Metz had us read, since I know I didn’t realy read them or even the Cliffs Notes. Apart from not absorbing Charles Dickens, however, I did a splendid class-shocking report on the poetry of e.e. cummings.
Mrs. Metz’ favorite student was Awat Schlosser, my friend, who went on to Columbia University. Mrs. Metz would tell Awat even as I was beside him that his level of thinking was “way beyond” her expectations. It was not only on one occasion that she would praise him.
My classroom with Mrs. Metz was the same room used for my Home Room. Home Room is where students who formed part of the same house (I was in Lincoln) would get together and discuss school issues. I did not socialize in Home Room. There were lots of girls in home room, and I didn’t get to know any of them. Nora Flaherty would become friends with my friend Odie Teken, although I would not know her up close myself. There was this short girl Laurie who didn’t even acknowledge me when I greeted her in the Cleveland Circle Movie Theaters when I was with my friend Victor Wong. In home room, there was no one who cared to know me, no April Monroe to flash their beautfiul brown eyes, no Rosebelle to communicate with.
Anyway, my other teacher was Mr. Seymour Yesner. “Sey” would author a textbook I would find in my college library. He was a veteran of the Korean War. Mr. Yesner wrote the recommendations for the colleges I applied to. I once went all the way to the apartment of Mr. Yesner to meet a deadline to submit a two-page paper. It was hand-written and received an A+.
Mr. Yesner, said I was a good critic, although he thought I was almost not quite open-minded in questioning whether James Fennimore Cooper (an Anglo-Saxon Protestant) had the right to write The Last of the Mohicans. In the end, I admitted that the author had the right to take the perspective and narrative point-of-view of a native American, but I had argumemts to the contary. Anyway, I have forgot all about my arguments, the novel, its plot and twists and turns.
Mr. Yesner also had us read The Great Gatsby. He started a class discussion as to whether there was any irony in the title. My classmates saw it. One of my classmates, Lilah Place, pointed out Gatsby as being a man not of greatness, but of limitations. I didn’t see the irony, because I did a poor job of reading the novel. A couple of my classmates had seen the Robert Redford-Mia Farrow movie, which I myself would see around fifteen years later.
In order to complete reading Gatsby, Mr. Yesner recommended we take the book fifteen pages at a time, “Then, you’ll be done in no time.” I would read about eight pages here and there in a non-sequential manner and would never finish reading the book.
Only when I was thirty years old would I come to assess that there weren’t any really likeable characters in the novel. Gatsby is prodigal. Daisy is too affective. Tom cheats on his cheating wife, and he even uses cheap women in his cheating (a chambermaid right around the time of his marriage, and the wife of a loser mechanic). Jordan Baker may have cheated on her golfing game. Nick is an observer rather than the champion of anything. Mr. Wilson kills the wrong guy. His wife is indiscrete (calling up at dinner time).
Thirty years old, I would still find it difficult to follow Fitzgerald’s flowing language, although I at least would have a grasp of the plot.
Gatsby was an achiever who ended up wanting too much. He could have had many women, but he chose to devote himself Daisy. Although Gatsby viewed himself as being true to Daisy, he wasn’t true to her in the beginning, by way of his making up assurances to Daisy about the security of living with him. In the end, he cannot even secure himself against the misled rage of a lowly mechanic. In a way, Mr. Wilson killed the right man, because Gatsby took full responsibility for Daisy’s actions. Gatsby may have been a master of shady financial dealings involving men from various states of the country, but its his affair with a woman that does him in.
Mr. Yesner also had us read Richard Wright’s Black Boy. All I remember from the book was the scene in which the naked white, blonde woman was indifferent to his presence.
Mr. Yesner was my Shakespeare teacher. And the Shakespeare class was the first class in which I had a teaching fellow. I forgot her name. She sat next to me, and had a lot of insight. For Mr. Yesner’s Shakespeare class, I remember playing some lines of the pimply Bardolph. We read Hamlet, Macbeth and Twelfth Night.

I entered UP Diliman in 1992.
My sister handled my registration materials for the first semester. I did horrible. I even merely passed my algebra class. In my algebra class, I met Dante Lagman.
for the Comparative Literature 166 TFU class of Adelaida A. Figueras Lucero, Ph. D.
October 20, 2000
Llosa: No Loser

I read:El pez en la agua ,Conversacion en lo Catedral Elogio de la madrastra Los Cuadernos de don Rigoberto Lituma en los Andes La Tia Julia y el Escribidor .
Mario Vargas Llosa, along with Alfredo Bryce Echenique (author of "Anorexia with Scissors") is one of the major fictionists/novelists of Peru. Llosa, however, is even more a man and citizen than Echenique, having taken up a political life, albeit not without hesitation. Unlike Neruda, Llosa took up the challenge of running for the presidency of his country.
Llosa wrote La ciudad y los perros, Quien mato a Palomino?, Pantaleon, and Tia Julia y El Escribidor.
La vida del autor: El pez en la agua
A great writer who does not get shot by his political enemies has enough time to write a telling and insightful biography. Such was achieved by Llosa. Llosa makes no bones about telling all. He does not mind telling a global audience about what had been his most personal problems, such as family matters. Llosa may be a bit indiscrete, but when he gets around to telling the brazen truth, his logic of reasoning becomes quite conspicuous.
Llosa had the genes of good looks both on his mother's and his father's side. Good looks, however, did not suffice to secure a good marriage for his parents. The marriage of Llosa's parents only lasted five and a half months. Llosa (cf. El pez en la agua) attributed the failure to a paranoid and unreasonable extent of jealousy on the father's part. His dad did not even want the mother to visit her own relatives (his own in-laws). Llosa also noted that there was an imbalance in social status between his two parents.
The family of Mario's father had taken a dip in social status, from blanco to cholo. The Peruvian cholo status is perhaps akin to what is colloquially called in Manila as the jologs.
At a certain point, Llosa's dad (Ernesto J. Vargas) had adequate money, having won a lottery. The money went quick, however. Fortunately, he managed to graduate before it ran out.
Llosa ran for president but lost to the ethnically Japanese Fujimoro. One of Fujimoro's cheesy campaign tactics was to claim for himself Llosa's grand Japan plan. It was Llosa first who worked hard with negotiations with big Japanese business. Llosa had been impressed with four Asian countries--- South Korea being another of them.
Llosa's grand Japan plan comprised of extensive negotiations with Japanese investors.
Llosa, like Raul Roco, doesn't like political bossism. Unlike Roco, however, he did compromise with political bosses in the process of running as president. Llosa was a consistent front-runner in pre-election surveys even as early as 1997. He attributes his loss to no reduced single factor. He notes having not optimized his popularity potential as a non-player to the game of pre-established political bosses.
Alberto Fujimoro has renewed his regime this year, in a one-man contest. Fujimoro's chief opponent (Alejandro Toledo, a "Stanford-trained economist", as stated by Yahoo!News) backed out at the last minute. As you said on June 23, the ethnically Japanese incumbent president of Peru now wants to hold on to his power by dirty means: i.e, manipulation of votes. Fujimoro now has his third term--- one more than the Belaunde of Llosa's sympathy had had.
El pez en la agua (A Fish in the Water) is Llosa's biography. It opens up with the author meeting with his dad. The biography also discusses Llosa's intellectual development, particularyly under the care of his uncle. It mentions Llosa's love of Lorca. Llosa was an ardent believer of Sartre, for which he was called a sartecillo. One chapter discusses his bohemian life as a journalist. Llosa snorted crack only once, but his political detractors were able to drawn on this during election campaign time so many years afterwards.
In chapter four, Llosa narrates how he succeeded in getting Bedoya and Belaunde to agree upon the Frente Democratico's policy for the 1990 municipal elections. Llosa put a premium in reconciling the Christian Popular Party and Popular Action. Llosa found Belaunde quite honest and eloquent, although he also noted that the latter was not much a man for dialogues--- evasively hogging all the hog time, and thereafter walking out on other parties supposed to be negotiated with, such as the Apristas.
Llosa was very good in mobilizing rallies--- be it at Plaza San Martin, Piura or Arequipa. Not all of his rallies were successful however. He was now and then misunderstood by peasants whom he was actually ideologically sympathetic with, but ignoramuses among them would boo him.
In chapter four, we get wind of how important literature is in Peruvian society. A Llosa novel, Pantaleon, was taken for some fragments to be chopped out of context and the pieces thereof were to be promulgated by government authorities unfavourable to Llosa's political ascendancy as a text which allegedly did not speak well of Loreto women.
In El Pez's twelfth chapter, we see a Llosa who envisioned economic progress for his country to the extent that the four Asian dragons had achieved: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. Llosa was aware of Lee Kuan Yew's repressiveness and authoritarianness--- two things he himself did not believe necessary for outstanding GNP figures. Llosa does not hesitate about the cultural violence which escorted Singapore to superlative progress, as he believes it tolerable a price a pay to move beyond the mosquitoes and crocodiles which were the island's state of nature.
Llosa went to Europe a lot. He went there on October 2, 1987. From that trip, he saw his own play La chunga staged in Madrid. He also started drafting Elogio de la madrastra. In fact, when he considered withdrawing from the presidential race way back in 1989, he thought of going to Germany with his wife to learn the language there.
Llosa ended up living in London. He also spent a good deal of time in Germany, especially in Belgium, where he wrote a good deal of his autobiography
****
The rest of my written report on Llosa had some more insights on his writing and facts on his life, but I didn’t put any big ideas into the paper. My oral report was so much better, and given 108 days advanced in schedule when my classmate who was supposed to report wasn’t ready.
***

In UP , I wrote the President, text as follows:
For:
President Francisco Nemenzo, Jr.
Office of the President
Quezon Hall, University Avenue
University of the Philippines, Diliman
1101 Quezon City, Metro Manila
November 16, 2001
RE: Special Request for Registration Materials
Dear Dr. Nemenzo
I, Mr. Ramuel Mendoza Raagas, of student number CAL 1992-79204, do hereby ask for your assistance in my obtaining registration materials for this commencing second semester.
Your esteemed office, the highest in the system, is the sole recourse for my tenth-round condition. I am not the first in the field of literature to invoke its aid for the cause of securing a degree near completion. I may be the least worthy of what may be cherished as your office's beneficiaries. I do, however, avow that I fully deserve the mundane favour I ask of your position.
What I have requested from more conventional channels since the start of registration for this term a week ago has been approved by such channels up to the level of my college Secretary, Teodoro Maranan.
The processing of the release of my registration materials via an extension of residency has been blocked however at the Office of the University Registrar by two desks. The first to express an inability to sustain my endorsed papers' movement to the target Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs was Mrs. E.E. "Baby" Capalungan.
Year after year, I have carried the fate of being one of the very most beleaguered students in our university when it comes to the mere fetching of registration materials for matriculation. This ordeal started in November 1996. I felt crushed even during my birthday then (the 14th).
Once more this November, I come to face with the morbid recurrence of peers, org-mates and hang-out-mates, wheezing past me with their registration materials whilst I carry instead appeal letters on my hands. I eat the same food as these advantaged people, and even pass at least as many subjects as they do.
Most people steeped in service within my particular college, the College of Arts and Letters, would and do desire my continued enrollment. At least two Associate Deans (Professor Jose Wendell Capili and Dr. Norma Respicio) have appreciated the actual and official service I had performed for them in the capacity of a student.
Professor Decenteceo is not the university; he is only is its registrar. It was arrogant of him, right in front of my face even, to repeatedly label me as an "unofficial" and "provisional" student, in an office-staged delivery marked by facial expressions characteristic of a villain straight out of a run-off-the-mill Hollywood PG-13 movie and executed in what seemed a most scripted manner.
Registrar Decenteceo is only the second person in the planet to have ever characerized me as an "unofficial" entity. The first to do so was Jo Eastman Abaya, a classmate turned enemy, and the niece of a powerful administrator, the director even of the omnipresent Office for the Inititative of Culture and Arts. I have seen the hand of his intervention try to creep into one of my General Education subjects temporarily administered then by a friend of his from the Theater Arts department. The love of pregnancy had fortunately aborted this.
I am no mere provisional student. Rather than that, I am even far closer to being a providential student. Although I have been fondly jibed at by colleagues in the Department of English as feeling either "greater than Nietzsche" or alternatively, that I have been "God's gift to the department," I have contributed academic performances which have indeed been at par with my classmates and schoolmates who readily pick up their registration materials by default.
Decenteceo's insistence on resending my SAT scores and High School Transcript to the relocated OUR building (I had very submitted them to the old office based in Palma Hall Annex.) before his permitting my appeal for residency extension to progress to Dr. Guevara's desk is not feasible.
Decenteceo's privileging of mere high school documents over and above my substantial track record as a college student is infantile. If he is so dogmatic in such prioritization, then he needs better be a high school principal. I had scored a perfect 800 in Math for the PSAT and SAT tests administered by the commercial monopoly that is The College Board. This I cherish less than the 2.5 I had picked up in Math I for our General Education program, from which I have learned far more. I had scored a healthy 680 in English for the SAT. This I cherish far less than even the 2.75 I had acquired from one of many English major subjects, Comparative Literature 153 (Philippine Women's Literature in English).
A single term paper of mine carries more weight than even both SAT tests. My term papers are posted on the internet, and these have been both appreciated and criticized by real people, be it Fil-Ams based in California or even the adversarial Jo Abaya.
I question Decenteceo's intentions in stating his demands. The demands seem routine enough, but they have been shoved against an absurd timetable. There are not even four days to serve as legs for such a table.
Everyday, I validate the authenticity my being a student of our university. When I am alone, a habit blown up by on-lookers, I read books (especially the newly-bought, hard-copy ones you had noted for their fragrance) and set off to share my thoughts via the Internet, although I cannot even afford a computer for myself. In the company of others, if ever I have been unofficial in the capacity of study, such incidences have only reinforced the official and authentic core of belonging to our school. Yes, I have been an unofficial audience to Professor Allan Deus Pasamonte's discussion of Schopenauer and other topics in the kiosk of Proprietor Manny Albao. I was an unofficial then, because I have not been a member of the UP Atheists' Circle he had co-founded, a Christian believer as I am (Of course, UPaC proudly and rightfully holds claim to having had two duly-admitted members still practicing the Christian faith, one even an adherent to the Opus Dei pathway.).
I am a de facto student of our university. My value as a de facto student has lifted me above mere eidetic provisions. Although a few of the grades for major subject grades that I had enrolled in had dipped below the 2.0 mark that my department had requested of me through its papers of having readmitted me twice-over in the years 1997 and 1999, it has supported my continued enrollment because I have delivered often enough line of one (1.xx) grades for department subjects, seventeen (17) times.
I am an organic intellectual. Although I am no entity in the society of celebrities, I have my stable circle of discussion mates, be they organization mates in UP Philosophical society, or other philosophy majors and instructors.
Although I am no phenomenon as a published writer, I have maintained the Socratic ideal of warmth and spontaneity in the dialectical existence of interacting individuals. Time and again this dialectic had even led to praxis, such as sweeping off a clerk from our nation's Senate to an art exhibit attended by Reuben Ramas Cañete, who had been a regular columnist for the Philippine Star as well as my canteen buddy.
Registrar Decenteceo can take nothing away from me.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Respectfully Yours,
Mr. Ramuel Mendoza Raagas
CAL 1992-97204, BA Comparative Literature
ramuel@hotmail.com
rraagas@yahoo.com
raagas@lycos.com

#80 Esteban Abada
Loyola Heights, 1108A Quezon City
BA Comparative Literature
Asian and Third World Literature Concentration
Checklist
First Year
First Semester
1.5 Communication I (Readings) Dr. Lilia F. Realubit
2.75 Natural Science I
(Physics and Chemistry) Profs. Abastillas & Josefina Flores
2.5 Mathematics I Prof. Zarco
2.5 Kasaysayan I (Pilipinas) Propesor Ginang Pimentel
1.75 Philippine Literature
Panitikang Pilipino 190 (Nobela) Dr. Domingo G. Landicho
2.75 First Physical Education subject
(Skin Diving) Divemaster Louie Mencias
Second Semester
2.0 Communication II
(Composition) Prof. Topsie Ruanni Tupas
2.75 Natural Science II
(Geology and Biology) Prof.'s Jun Obille and Dr. Lopez
2.25 Kasaysayan II
(Asia and the World) Dr. Alejandro Casambre
3 Social Science I Prof. Cuchiongco
1.75 Panitikang Pilipino 187
(Panitikan at Kulturang Popular) Prof. Jimmuel Naval
3.0 Second P.E. subject
Street Dancing Prof. Jerome Alcantara
Second Year
First Semester
2.5 Humanities I
(Intro to Literature) Prof. Tupas
2.0 Communication III (Speech) Profs. Amihan Ramolete Bonifacio
and Christine Castillo
2.0 Social Science II Dr. Estrella Solidum
2.0 Philosophy I Prof. Jennifer Arevalo de Villa
1.75 Free Elective I
(Filipino 170)
Malikhaing Pagsusulat
ng Maikling Kuwento sa Tagalog Former Dean Rogelio Sikat
1.75 Foreign Language
Spanish I Prof. Ana Ventanilla
3.0 3rd PE 2: Cheerdancing Prof. Jonathan Cagas
Second Semester
1.5 CL 30 (Intro to European Lit.) Prof. Noel Canlas
1.0 CL 50 (Survey of Philippine
Literature in English) Associate Dean Jose Wendell Capili
1.5 Free Elective 2
(Art Studies 170) Dr. Norma Respicio
1.25 Foreign Language 2
Spanish II Father Felipe Rufes
(to be either
completed
or re-taken) 4th PE 2 subject
(Table Tennis, Social Dance for Males
or yet another sport) Mrs. Rachelle Santiago,
Professor Tom Peña
or another College of Human Kinetics faculty
Third Year
First Semester
3.0 CL 100
(Introduction to Comp. Lit.) Dr. Luisa J. Mallari-Hall
1.25 CL 122 (Critical Theory) Prof. Angelito L. Santos
1.5 CL 53 (Survey of Third World Lit.) Adelaida Albano Figueras-Lucero, Ph. D.
1.75 CL 56 (Emergent Lit.) Prop. Edelberto Espiritu Garcellano
1.5 CL 145 (Japanese Lit.)
(First Concentration Subject) Prof. Capili
1.75 Foreign Language 3
(Islamic Studies 10: Arabic) Ustad Esmula
Second Semester
1.5 CL 150
(Philippine Lit. in English
before World War II) Dr. Nonilon Valderrama Queaño
1.75 CL 147 (Third World Fiction)
(Second Concentration Subject) Dr. Lucero
1.25 CL 166 (Latin American Readings)
(Third Concentration Subject) Dr. Lucero
1.0 CL Elective 1 (170)
Folk Literature Consolacion R. Alaras, Ph. D.
1.25 CL Elective 2 (185)
(Translation Studies) Josefa Baldoz Schriever, Ph. D.
1.75 Foreign Language 4
(IS 11) Prof. Esmula
Fourth Year
First Semester
2.25 Philippine Institutions 100 Prop. Melecio Fabros, III
1.5 CL Elective 3 (184)
(Gay Male Writing) Prof. Jose Neil Carmelo Garcia
1.5 CL Elective 4 (123)
(Theory) Dr. Priscelina Patajo-Legasto
1.5 CL 105
(Film and Literature) Marra PL. Lanot
2.5 CL 199 (Research and Thesis) Dr. Schriever
Second Semester
2.0 CL 144
Literature of China
(Fourth Concentration Subject) Dr. Lily Rose Roxas Tope
2.25 CL 140 (West Asian Lit.)
(Fifth Concentration Subject) Carminia Añonuevo Yaptengco, Ph. D.
1.5 CL Elective 5 (108)
Literature and Gender Prof. Thelma E. Arambulo
2.0 Science, Technology and Society Dr. Ramos-Dr. Danilo M. Yanga
2.0 Departmental Elective
Creative Writing 110 Dr. Jose Yap Dalisay, Jr.

ramuel@hotmail.com rraagas@yahoo.com
#80 Esteban Abada Street, Loyola Heights, 1108A Quezon City, Metro Manila
Republic of the Philippines.
After graduating from UP, I tried looking for work.

Dear Dr. Tope:
It was months ago that I picked up your yellow Post-It Note on your door which asked for me to explain my background. I haven't responded since because I haven't gotten to round things out. Even until now.
I still don't have the money to sort out my immigration and citizenship paper problems. February was the time to solve them, but my parents weren't just up to it. I'm back to merely getting hamburgers.
Other things from outside school haven't materialized (i.e., a secure residence free from drug addicts) , and all I've got to talk about now prospectively is the enlistment I have now drafted upon registration materials I have gotten most expediently with the help of two experienced senior student assistants.
The academic agenda I have laid out for myself this semester is at least as ambitious as any to date, especially when considered alongside my enrollments since 1997. I could even quite argue that my proposed enlistment at hand will prove my most ambitious enrollment.
It is not a mere matter of putting things together from different colourful fields, which certainly didn't work for me during my second semester here in UP back in 1993, when I was charted out to begin studying like four civilizations, and when moreover my "guardian"'s financial meddling had given me enough cause to simply walk out of Metro Manila and come back just in time to celebrate a Filipino poet teacher's birthday, and pass stuff for only his class.
I am now at a crossroads, and although the path is bound to be fourfold, it could stand out as a nexus if fulfilled.
1. I have now been granted an enlistment slot for Spanish 20, having passed Spanish 3 just this past summer. As such, I may literally complete my revised DECL foreign elective requirements, having twelve (12) units concentrated in one language. Such language befits the Third World aspect specified for my concentration. The Spanish language serves third world literature such as the American authors (Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others once put together in a draft textbook by Prof. Teresita Sicat, as well as chicanos and chicanas, as Prof. de Guzman would know well). In Asia, Spanish only considerably serves Philippine literature, but hey if those silly Ilonggos insist that their licensed edition of People Magazine is People Asia and not People Philippines, then Spanish may be considered at the hub of Asian literature.
2. I have also been granted an enlistment slot in the Master's Units class that is Filipino 207. I had conspicuously opened the door for me to shift to a BA DFPP course from 1992 to 1995. Even as I started taking my first three CL subjects, I passed officially my eighth non-GE DFPP subject. Now, after seven years, I come back to the DFPP for nourishment, at a higher level.
3. College of Science student assistants stationed in Pilar Herrera Hall since Monday for enrollment proceedings have told me they are ready to enlist me in Chemistry 16 once I simultaneously enroll in the co-requisite Math 17. I tried to enlist in such Math yesterday, but the conference room was still closed. Today around 2-3 p.m. is the scheduled alphabetically-allocated tri-college time slot for me to approach once more the Math building connference room.
4. I am crest-fallen that I cannot simultaneously enroll in both the Military Science and Community Welfare options for the National Service Training Program, but I am now taking Military Science 1.
________________________________________
As for all previous enrollments, I think that the 1st Semester of the previous School Year 2001-2 has proved my most en grande enrollment. The 1st sem. 2001-2 was a grave, heart-rending imperfect success. Even accomplishing my enlistment, I knew that I had the choice of either taking it easy (only STS and Three PE's) or challenging my already wearied self (and too weary I proved in early morning hours). I took the road which I thought would lead me to cut sleep and add on alert hours. The 1st sem. 2001-2 brought me credit, but did not make me as good a waker as I had been just one and two summers before it. I can say for myself that I have been a better waker when a working student, but this June I haven't even secured employed.
It was certainly a success that I eventually passed three PE's needed to go with with the passed single PE allowed the non-graduating semester before then to obtain my PE fulfillment certification . My STS report and paper were both successes, although neither proved to be the group project it was meant to be.
Since I passed 12 out of 18 academic the 1st sem. 2001-2, I had thought in hindsight when I was without residency the following semester, why did I not just enlist in 12 instead of 18 units? I guess that had I enrolled in 15, I would only passed 9.
.The disaster of 1st Sem. 2001-2 was not being able to maintain a wake-up schedule.
I enlisted so as to encourage me to wake up 6 a.m. at least on Mondays and Thursdays. How I failed to perfect getting to school Tuesdays and Fridays by 11:30 For such a heavy load as1st Sem. 2001-2
Althogh I failed CL 30 1st Sem. 2001-2 , I also passed it 1.5 same semester (as completion of a matriculation the semester before that). To pass CL 30 a second time would have been too expensive, considering that the main product that my teacher sought was no less than an anthology of European literature. We wouldn't have to lay it out and bind it ourselves, but it was not even to be a group project. To compile (not just write, but even lay-out) myself an European Literature anthology would prove thrilling to me, but only if I had fifty thousand pesos a month to do it over three years.
My waking-up and house-departure schedule for 1st Sem. 2001-2 was bungled from the start and stayed that way. I guess that a bad misconception I had about waking up for ROTC was that it would be best achieved by not going out on a Saturday night (that otherwise healthy college habit encouraged by a couple of my Communication III teachers), just staying at home reading for STS until come sleep, then getting up at 6 a.m. A more expensive, but promising way for me to be up and ready for ROTC 7 a.m. would be to have left the house 2 a.m. Saturday for a gimmick, even catching up with org-mates (who'd be drinking since 8 or 10 p.m.) and then coming home 6 a.m, , freshening up changing them, going straight to ROTC and sleepiong till early evening after noon-time ROTC adjournment. (Actually the summer before I handled 7 a.m. class Monday to Friday by working across our school's Commonwealth Avenue panel from noon or afternoon until dawn, then going straight to the College of Science Auditorium.)
The conspicuous disasters.
Why I priortized laundry over bi-weekly casual one-page papers and basic attendance for Shakespeare was all my peasant instinct. It was not even an issue of my having such few articles of clothes that failing to do laundry at any of the many times I attended to laundry instead of Shakespeare would spell wearing over-used clothes or jiving household short pants with chambray. I just relished how automanic laundry was a P100-saving exercise. Could I not do my laundry in the evening or earlier in the morning? My biological clock just wasn't up to it.
Sure, I was fond enough of Dr. Ick's teaching to buy her class-pertinent book right after the first exam.
________________________________________
Please approve as adviser, the sem program I've charted out now, because despite fiascos such as aborted Sunday morning marches and Shakespeare, I've actually fulfilled requirements left and right. My proposed schedule is even not dipped into morning hours, vbeing all tucked away that ios my friendly to my body.
.
The future is uncertain.
________________________________________
Leaving unaccomplished a couple of DECL 198 subjects, and haven't even secured undergraduate work for the English author, the English bard or even the Engish novel, I don't think that I'm up and ready for DECL master's units. As for the DFPP, I feel that I am needed there. Besides, I believe that there are more leftists there, and political alignment is necessary at this time, especially since all of PDP-LABAN must be crushed. Well, Ople may show his face all around Filipiniana, but I believe that the DECL leans toward cafe life, (They will have strewn Lacson's short trip with snobbish restaurant babble and cosmopolitan goobledy-gock.) whereas the DFPP will at least, even inadvertently, glimmer of linguistic weapons to use expressly against PDP-LABAN (not necesssarily for the glory of the imperfect but resilient Lakas party--- if the asset-strapped Crispin Beltran progresses again in his public service in the national level that would be for the best).
________________________________________
No amount of work is going to change things with me within the department. I do not have the logistics to thrust into foreign language learning as are more qualified but not so old learners, who can obtain sources with credit cards.
"Nothing's gonna change my world."
Since December, I've had something up my sleeve, but it is not even yet ripe. I am shocked that I haven't drawn up much considering that lack of money hasn't seemed lacking for it.
I'm not happy about not having gotten to leave the country this year. I have not anything outright new to do. I am quite fed up of going about Metro Manila.
________________________________________
In many areas for the past recent years, I doubt if I could have gotten better marks. I made the most out of STS (except benefit from tie-ups with classmates as study partners, which proved unfeasible). I made the most out of my Creative Writing subject, although I had appreciated more my Filipino 170 lectures.
One sad exception was CL 56. Although for it I had bettered my mean grade point average of 2, I didn't feel utterly satisfied with what I put in into, especially in terms of attendance. Also, how I had lost two newly-bought cheap but paper-pertinent books, both obtained from a single-outlet distributor, after I had left a dimly-lit Harrison Plaza computer rental shop really frustrated me. I didn't feel so bad about being a shade late early in the semester. What terrified me was how I missed class after class late in the semester just to stay in my sanctuary in Project 6. I would have been more at peace had I earned a 1.25. A better grade was even obtained from the same teacher and subject by a younger student who even submitted far less paper work than I had, because he earned it through perfect attendance.
I could have only gotten a higher (but not perfect) STS total grade if a classmate with consistently higher exam grades than myself had agreed to my repeated calls for joint study.
I had thrown in all personal expenses and STS and Creative Writing, and especially PE 2 Social Dance. I don't need take so many more subjects, that when I get to spend all money I deem fit for a subject, I will secure a grade of 2.
________________________________________
Second Sem 2001-2 was a terrifying sem. Second sem was a gimmick. Only by being a gimmick, could I keep it keep from getting me sick. My processing of citizenship papers didn't fall into full circle. I would have to cap off fruitless days in the Bureao of Immigration with coffee. It would have brightened things up if I got to the point of completing English 198. I did touch up on my draft for a late final paper for English 198. By that time, a class-mate's complaint against Power Books for only producing one title for the dozens listed in our Professor's syllabus had proved to be dated. At mere plain view were more than a dozen book titles directly relevant with what had been our English 198 material. Not only had Powr Books stocked Cunnigham's The Hours, but even another novel of his.
My decision not to throw it all in for English 198 as I did that time for PE 2 SD was formed with political and economical considerations. Why should I squander so much money on Power Books, with its warped policy of not valuing customers who are not dressed up in velvet? By investing money for PE 2 SD, I got to dance with that tall lovely personable 19-year old girl, Jed from Bodega. There were no such return incentives for spending in English 198 and the PowerBooks "sales" staff are even so ugly, not at all handpicked with the good taste that California Pizza Kitchen waitresses are.
One school administrator rightfully took pride in telling to me how he teamed up with other academicians in telling off the National Book Store administration about its consistently lousy service.
________________________________________
What terrifies me is not so much pursuing an MA in the DECL with 2-ish grades, (a 2-marked MA is worthless, according to common knowledge), but having to look at the same map, although with more thorough depth--- with hardly any new people. I am quite exhausted.
Further work on my part will not prove much in the eyes of fellow UP students and teachers (administrators, on the contrary, yes, but one of them has just retired this June). For the most part, further work won't make me more of a colleauge.
At least I may say adequate consolation that Drs. Alaras and Capili have been inspiring figures. They need not be so close to be so important. All other teachers, within the DECL that is, are competent, but a conspicuous lot of several among them cherish another language, which is not English per se, but the snatching silence of crass materialism.

rraagas@yahoo.com * raagas@lycos.com
Mobile Phone Number 63 918 5213940
Philippines' country code Smart Network code phone number proper
#56 Sto. Niño St., Purok Dagohoy, UP Diliman, 1101 Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines.

After graduating from UP, I tried looking for work. I applied to E-Telecare. I applied to other customer service jobs I did not get in.
I found my grandfather Conrado in Silliman University Hospital. He was so sick. He did not even recognize me when I first came to see him.

In Harvard Extension School, I studied Calculus, Chemistry, Physics and Biology.
In Harvard Extension, I did Calculus homework in a way that was proper---- doing what I had failed to do as a Calculus student in Brookline High School.
To: Teaching Fellow
Science Center
Harvard Extension School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1.
a. 7.5 is the first product, because the least number of significant digits for the data is two (coming from 3.3)
4.4 x 10-12 is the second product
9.2 x 10-7is the third product
b. Exactly 199 graduating class members were not surveyed.
c. 1.9 x 102 milliLiters = 0.19 Liters is the volume.
d. 3.1 grams is the mass
 = mass / Volume
mass =  * Volume
2.
a. 1.4506 is the sum.
1.334 x 10-3 is the difference.
b. 1.7 lb = 1.7 pounds
c. exactly 46,656 cubic inches = 46 656 in.3
3.
a. Ca3(PO4)2
has Calcium with a +2 oxidation state (as is literally told in the website http://www.cameron.k12.wi.us/high/chemistry/writing.html) The webmaster Mr. Fanneti also tells us that -3 is phosphate's oxidation state, but therefrom we must figure out what are the oxidation states of the constituent elements phosphorus and oxygen. Oxygen actually has its typical -2 oxidation state, and Phosporus has its typical +5 oxidation state.
b. Dear Teaching Fellow:
The following are my answers to our first (1st)
Problem Set homework.
c.
o [H+]= 1.862 x10-7 M
o [HCl]final= zero
o [NACl]= 1.24 x 10-7 M
o [Na+]= .14999876 M,
which is still pretty close to .15 M
o [OH-]= zero; it has all aquified
(i.e., been consumed to produce more water in the already aqueous solution)
o [NaOH]= still zero (ain't never going back again)
o [H3PO4]= 1.24 x 10-7 M
o [H2PO4-]=
o [HPO42-]=
o [PO43-]=1.624 x10-7 M
d. 1.24 x10-7 moles of hydrochloric acid had been added
3. Eight point one (8.1 mL) milliLiters of .15 M NaC2H3O2 and 11.9 mL of .1 M HC2H3O2
4.
• [H3Cit]=.02837
• [H2Cit-]= .00425 M = .0042512761
• [HCit2-]= .0042512761 M = .00425 M
• [Cit3-]= .317 M = .3173618606 M = .31736 M
• [H+]= 4.2 x 10-3 M = .004236774 M

Physics E-1a Homework Assignment #1 Fall 2003

instructed by Wolfgang Rueckner, Ph.D.
Douglas Giancoli Physics Fifth Edition Problems Chapter 2
Problem #9).045 hours = 4.5 x 10-2 hours = 2.7 minutes
v0 left = v0 right = 95 km/h imminence rate of passing by = v0 = 2v0 = 190 km/hr
190 km/h towards sharing x-coordinate
time duration before friendly contact = initial distance separation
________________________________________
rate of impending juxtaposition = 8.5 kilometers
________________________________________
190 km/h = .045 hours = 4.5 x 10-2 hours = 2.7 minutes

algorithm for Web-Assign changing data:
answer= distance datum/twice speed datum dimensioned into minutes
________________________________________
Problem #12.) 6.73 meters/second is the bowling ball's speed.
________________________________________
Problem #26.)average acceleration = 390 m/s2 = 40 g's
.8 meter = 8 x 10-4 kilometers
90 km/h
________________________________________
1.7777... x 10-5 kilometers = ninety kilometers per hour
________________________________________
1.8 x 10-5 kilometers
Average velocity = 90 kilometers/hr + zero km/h
________________________________________
2 = 45 km/hours

t = 8 x 10-4 kilometers
________________________________________
45 km/hour

Average acceleration = v
________________________________________
t = 5 062 500 km/hours2 = 5.06 million km/hours2 = .39 km/second2 = 390 meters/second2

________________________________________
Problem #30.)She should STOP! as by availing of her car's maximum deceleration, she would eat up less than sixteen of the thirty meters allowance Prudence would allow for.
Flooring her gas, on the other hand, we will gever her only a sixty km/h average veolicty which will haver clear only thirty-three and a third meters--- short indeed of the requisite forty-five meters for getting all the way across.
sgo = 45 meters = .045 km
sstop = 30 meters = .03 km
v0
= 50 km/h
decelerationmaximum = six meters/second2
Whatever her reaction time may be, let's hope it be better than that of the driver from Problem #26!
fifty km/h = 13.888.... m/s = fourteen meters/second = 5.06 million km/hours2 = .39 km/second2 = 390 meters/second2

________________________________________
Problem # 53)
a. The train has its greatest velocity at the fifty-second mark.
b. From around the 86th second up until the 107th second, the train's velocity stays constant, although nowhere in the graph is a constant non-zero velocity demonstrated for any appreciab;le time intervals.
c. The accelertion stayed constant for the first forty seconds---- constant, positive and non-zero even.
d. Although acceleration is a vector quantity, if we consider just the magnitude with no regard to the Vorzeichen, the the seventy-fifth second would mark the steepest acceleration.
________________________________________
Problem #56
a. The first minute gives around 167 meters. By the fortieth second, we lose the trapezoidal integratopnm area characteriozable below the velocity plot. 980 m,eters osis the trapezoid tally (not square meters--- just plain meters froom the product of Length/Time and Time as seconds dimensions.
b. Whereas the trapezoidal approximation method (brought up in math books such as Hughes-Hallett, Gleason et. al.'s Calculus) works in three steps --- [0,40 seconds], [40, 50] seconds & [50, 60} s--- works frofor the first minute, the second minuitee's topolotgy has roughly (but ironically, curvilinearly a right triangle with a [60,85] second edge and a right-handmmnost pbump I will round off as a hundred (10 x 10) plain non-square meters---- the 990, 107) second plateau being of no beariong---- 850 meters is the second minute's accumulated distance.
________________________________________
Problem #66) vlast = 30 meters/second = 25 m/s = 24.5 meters/second
The last car always shares the velocity and acceleration of the train's front when we confine the train to a one-dimensional space track.
A two-dimensional track which has a train different from this problem would call for phase shifts in  (angular velocity) between front and back end as the train veers off, as when the Framingham-terminaled Commuter Rail train must shake off Waverly Street in order to cross Route 9.
For our uniaxial situation, however, s = at2/2 = 180 meters
________________________________________
Multiple choice questions
1. B.As may be gleaned from Fr. Rueckner's September 16 lecture, there must be constant acceleration (gleichformige Beschleunigung, as Einstein might put it) if the average velocity must equal the average of a monitored objects initial and final velocities (vi + vf)/2.
If there be no acceleration (keine Beschleunigung)--- as the unoptimal choice 1C suggests, then average velocity = vi = vf... a trivial case in which the algebra gives us no furthe development of value--- heck, with choice 1c's situation, we can use either of mean, median or mode type of average to wind up with the same thing.
2. C is the answer.
All Earth-borne objects are accelerated equal.
At first, I thought that the object thrown downward would enjoy the kinematic advantage, but gravity sure isn't one of the four fundamental forces for nothing. The same prerogative by which gravity on Earth bothers not note whatever pittance of mass man may assemble around its surface--- pulling down for an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2 in all but the most exceptional circumstances (i.e., satellites such as Stardust, etc. escaping our Earth's atmosphere... the latter's gases bearing fiscal authority to hold away the implementation of the g = 9.8 m/s2 acceleration)--- is the same prerogative by which any mass difference between question #2's objects would not figure into our non-numerical considerations.
The thrower in this problem does not cast a full Game-Behind on the upward-thrown object, because the Earth will readily mock the man's flipping of his oen throw direction by echoing the exact same magnitude of v0 with a vreactio.
3. The textbook-standard equation v = at assures us that b) twice as far is the answer.
*******
Midway through my fall term at Harvard Extension, I bought Ritaline online. I took the Ritaline with Red Bull.

August 12, 2007
Last night, I dreamt about organic chemistry. I did not discover any insights about the science. It was no Kekule-like dream. Rather, my dream was just about being a student of organic chemistry and the difficulty involved. First, we were in a laboratory figuring out in pairs or individually what to do. We had a titration to do. There was a brown fluid that turned clear and produced a precipitate. In the dream, I was reading the lab instructions, although all I remember seeing was CHO3. I can’t even tell if such a compound exists. Come to think of it, I don’t think it does exist. Anyway, I exited the lab, to grab my textbook. Next thing I find myself in a help room for Organic Chemistry. One of my college friends, Rolly Sison, asks the teaching fellow, “Why don’t they call Organic Chemistry ‘Advanced Biology Chemistry’?” The teaching fellow (Sarah Teasdale maybe?) responds that it is already clear that the subject is advanced. She then goes on to tell the students not to feel alarmed when we lose an Organic Chemistry student: it’s as normal “just as if we’d lose a Herpes student.” Did she mean a Herpes Studies student? Harvard has a Science of AIDS class, but where in the world do you get a Science of Herpes class? Only in my dreams.
I then left the help room to take a jeepney passenger shuttle going back to the lab, which was at the corner of Aurora Boulevard and Anonas Boulevard. The jeepney station was where the old dust-caked supermarket at the corner of Katipunan and Aurora Boulevards used to be. Once the jeepney got in motion, I discovered that I was just wearing red short pants and didn’t have enough coins to pay the full fare of one peso and fifty centimos. I look at the jeepney driver and worry for a while. Then, I ask the boy in front of me to help me out. He tells me why am I asking him now that he is all ready to get off, then he asks me how much I need. I need around seventy centimos more, but ask him for a full peso, he gives me a stack of coins worth around double that. I thank him, then we get off together, at Anonas Boulevard. A girl also gets off. The three of us exchange phone numbers. My nickname, Ram, is the headline displayed on my cell phone screen (In real life, the network service provider Cingular is what shows). I call up the girl and sing out an obnoxiously loud song of courtship. “Sana’y manood tayo ng sine (I wish we could go watch a movie),” was the last line I sang to her. She stopped listening to her phone before that--- actually, midway through the song, she stopped. I and the guy then go to a friendly Filipino home, where we can join in enjoying some lavish preparations of food, chief of which was fish with fresh tomato sauce. I grab the fish head. A man looks at me, then I wake up.

Sincerely Yours,

Ramuel M. Raagas
http://mail.yahoo.com/