My First Entry in My Very First Blog

TWENTY SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME:

1. I was born on March 17, 1980. On my fourteenth birthday, Flor Contemplacion was killed. I remember that day. I remember crying when our teacher in Work Ed interrupted our mat-weaving session to break the news.

2. The earliest clear memory I have is of a cat jumping at me, ready to scratch my face.

3. I hate ketchup and I’m allergic to shrimp.

4. I accidentally spilled champagne on Australian Prime Minister John Howard. For real.

5. I can’t swim.

6. Or bike.

7. Or drive.

8. But I’d like to think I can do a whole lot of other things — which I’d give up in a nanosecond to be able to sing well.

9. One time, I asked my friend, Dianne, if I was nice. She said: “You’re not nice, you’re interesting; which is better than nice, but it’s still NOT nice.”

10. I’ve found my soul-issue: Agrarian Reform. I think we should all find our soul-issues before we turn 30.

11. I went to St. Scholastica’s College for grade school and high school, and UP Diliman for college and law school. I failed high school math.

12. I can eat salmon sashimi forever and ever.

13. I need to be with a man whose world view I can respect.

14. I’ve said it before. And I’ll say it again. And again. And again. Even if I get so blue in the face, stop breathing and keel over and die: Social justice is impossible without procedural due process. A society will, at the end of the day, be judged by the way it treats its most reviled.

15. My happiest College memories were spent under a tattered green tent that leaked when it rained.

16. In law school, I was more scared of humiliation than of the actual consequences of failure. I studied primarily because I didn’t want to look (too) stupid.

17. Because I’ve interned at GMA-7 and did the graveyard shift – crime beat in 1998, I’m no longer afraid of the dark.

18. I think “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is the greatest book of all time. I thought “Catcher in the Rye” was overrated. But, ya know, what do I know?

18. Sunsets always make me just a little bit sad.

19. I’m a sucker for brazen claims in advertising. I once impulse-bought a foundation for P2000 because it claimed that “(my) search for the perfect foundation has ended. My logic is, in this age of strict regulatory mechanisms, you wouldnt make brazen claims if it werent, at the very least, in the province of truth. The foundation sucked, by the way. Haha.

20. I have a decade-old crush on Kevin Bacon.

21. When I’m sad, I go to the UP Chapel and cry alone. It always makes me feel better afterwards.

22. My carbonara is the best carbonara I’ve ever tasted.

23. I’d rather be a writer than a lawyer.

24. If I could name just one thing that I am grateful for, it would be that I have the greatest, greatest friends. I know nothing can go wong as long as I have my happy little barangay around me.

25. I get lost ALL the time and can’t follow directions. My motor skills are so bad I’m convinced it’s an undiagnosed illness.

26. I believe in destiny. I believe in kismet.