deal breakers

attention university of the philippines diliman smokers!!!!

my former teacher who works at the registrar's office just told me that peyups is about to unleash a new university-wide ordinance that will again signify that the university is taking a few dozen steps back into the dark ages.

after banning alcohol in the campus (the one that comes in bottles as hard or soft), they are now going to enforce daw the no smoking ordinance chenes anytime soon. which means no more yosi breaks anywhere in the campus. in effect na naman ito in several areas, like bawal na sa loob ng enclosed airconditioned rooms and such places. pero now, even in the freaking parking lot iba-ban na daw. pati daw mga kotseng napapadaan lang sa campus that happened to have a smoker smoking inside the moving vehicle will be banned. what the fuck di ba? labo kaya nun. imagine being stopped by security like this : "bos, bawal pasok UP kung di mo patayin sigarilyo." labo.

again, when i heard this, like when i first heard that alcohol is banned on campus, napabulalas ako ng "huwaaat? kelan pa tayo naging ateneo?" not to offend our jesuit-trained friends but hey, at least doon kasi may grounds kung bakit may such bans sa mga vice products like alcohol and yosi. even miriam already did that and it was quite a struggle there as narrated before by ms gigi francisco. the truly feminist ones of that school indeed put up a fight! pero wala rin, the "cleaner" people won and when we were in miriam for a meeting before, we had to walk more than a hundred steps towards a small patch of land with a small tent thing near the creek place designated as the only smoking area of that campus. ang labo. i asked if peyups will implement the same thing, put up tents and designated smoking areas and such, and my teacher is not yet knowledgeable about the details of the fine print. shit hits the fan itish!!!

well, let me tell you, that just sucks. i mean, thanks for being concerned about people's health and all, but the point of being people is just that: we are free to choose whatever the hell we want to do, buy, eat, drink and all so long as we are not directly harming people in any way. but outright banning? man, that's just the pits. para siyang censorship during the time of the dictatorship. bawal kahit ano, lalo na kritisismo. labo.

sa upfi na lang where i work, deds na kapag may ganyang chorva. like our meetings and even thesis defense comes to a halt when majority of the faculty decides to have a yosi break, and of course we allow ourselves that, as a release and break from the work and all. hey, it's not like we're smoking marijuana or anything like that di ba? ewan. labo. sabi ko nga kay mam heidi who told me, malaking away itoooooooo. tignan na lang natin how cao will handle this one! faculty una niyang kaaway dito patay siya hahahahahah! tabako pa naman tinitira ng iba riyan. hay nakuh.. hm man, speaking of that, i miss my panatelas... makabili nga.

this smoking thing came to my mind because i was watching the season2 rerun of sex and the city earlier and the ep was the one where carrie first meets aidan and she tries to switch off smoking just because he hates smokers. something like that. sabi nga niya, how much was she willing to trade off or sacrifice for a cigarette. pero tama rin naman siya e. dapat people will accept you no matter who you are, and you just do minor alterations to fit each other's lives in a relationship. to demand for a wardrobe overhaul would be criminal. that means you went into a relationship and wanted to control your partner's everything to suit your own thing. now that is just not sound, just and correct.

sabi nga ni billy joel "don't go changing to try to please me...i love you just the way you are." now if some person told you that, how much of that is true kaya? i've seen friends do 180 degree turns just to please their mates. i, for one, used to do that in the past but thank goddess i snapped out of it. if you meet somebody whom you think you could be with but they demand so many changes from you that you won't even recognize your own self once they are done with you, man, better get the hell outta there. some friends naman were just so dying to be changed that they welcome this kind of overhaul 100 percent. again, to each their own, man. to each their own.

sometimes in order to fit into a beloved's beliefs, you change your own to suit his or hers. perhaps we could chalk it up to symbiosis, but if it becomes too much that you lose your identity, now that's just plain weird. are you willing to do that? if you ask me, after 4 major relationships in this lifetime, no. clarification: not anymore. yes, folks, i was once a sap. too much of a sap, to be exact, that's why i am doing my own overhaul. i owe my intelligence that.

i've always gone by the rent credo of "i'm looking for baggage that goes with mine" because you really cannot separate people from their past, let alone their baggage, no matter how hard they pose the opposite. but if you seek to help your partner with their baggage and attack you for it, man, that's just weird, di ba? labo nun pero i've seen many friends attacked by their mates because of that. same here.

my friends and i have been talking before about this, na ano nga ba ang deal breakers namin when it comes to relationships. iba iba ang sagot diyan, siyempre depende sa mga current nilang kasama o mga nakasama na nila before. i know jealousy is one, lack of honesty and trust is another, and of course who could ever forget non-attentiveness of the other's concerns? or downplaying other's concerns as if theirs is more important than yours. like i had this ex whom i wanted to make damay sa akin regarding a family problem, concerning my mom pa no less, and all she did was dismiss me needlessly and said that more destitute and poorer people in the philippines have bigger problems than me because these people don't have their own houses and their lands are being snatched away from under their noses blah. which got me thinking, na hey, wala rin naman akong sariling bahay a (at that time) so what the fuck? but hey, you know what happened to that relationship. i was really glad i got out of that zombie mode.

so if i find myself treading on familiar grounds again, perhaps it's time to just up and leave, right? maybe. well, let's see how much of a deal breaker this is, because it is sounding to be like one...

sad.

that's why i never believe in soulmates. my friend teta once asked us that before, what we think of that concept. i said i believed no one person has one soulmate, for i believe people have chunks of one soul embedded in them, and it's just about finding the biggest chunk of the same soul in a person. kaya it's possible they could relate to more than one person because more than one came from the same soul, or they share the same soul fragments. something like that. kaya wala yung concept na "she's the one" blah for me. if you find someone sharing the same chunk of soul with you, no matter how big or small the chunk is, it's up to you two to work things out if you belong to each other for a long time or a short time only. then you move on. kaya dapat open tayo lagi sa moving on phase and we shouldn't be stuck with the "waaah it didn't work" stage, whether moving on means finding another person or enhancing your own persona -- but i prefer the latter, actually.

pessimist as it may sound but there will always be more people who will break the deal for you rather than make the deal. that's why we shouldn't be so closeminded about meeting new people or being with other people. dapat bukas tayo sa ganung posibilidad. saka dapat lagi ang bottomline dito e improvement of one's self, kasi yan naman talaga ang tunay na bottomline, kahit ano pa man ang deal na ma-break ninuman.