HIV has recently posted a fantastic nostalgia piece in FB about things that the youngsters of today would no longer experience, such as making a harmonica out of a Nintendo cartridge and using a pen to repair a recently munched-up cassette. Good nostalgia bits, if only to assure us that we weren’t the only ones doing it out of poverty. We only had one cartridge for quite some time then–Super Mario Bros 1–because we were poorita and dad just got us the damn family computer (DFC) from Raon so we would shut up, so imagine our consternation when the DFC would make inarte and not read the game. And when it finally does, we would have to endure first… the 8-9 hour daily brown-outs. Even when fully medicated I sometimes have a hard time believing that we’ve endured such long stretches of brown-outs, but they were real, because to deal with the heat I would go to the ref, open-close the door quickly, so I could feel the remaining cold which always smelled like fish. The boredom, loneliness, and the darkness of those long brown-outs also opened my eyes to a lot of… discoveries, which we are not allowed to put into detail here. Yes, we have opened up this revolving door of nostalgia, and we know nostalgia is a portal we wouldn’t want to open as it lets out all sorts of worms, crap, and vermin.

Also classify under things we’re happy you kids no longer have to endure because having to endure things sucks: UP Diliman college registration pila. Wherein you go to CSSP and fall in line for some philosophy class and hope the slots don’t run out when it’s your turn, then run to the College of Science for some STS or Nat Sci slot, then run to the gym hoping you would at least get a Stretching class, and so forth. Because being a Pre-Rog reeks, with people having to declaim, sing, dance, or draw lots just to get in a class. In my first year I got into Stretching, and it rules. All you have to do is stretch, except I always get screamed at by our prof: No bouncing! I would no sooner be under this monstrous professor again for… Philippine Games. While my batchmates were doing archery, and back flips, and shooting ball, and going to the mountains I was playing… piko. Graded piko at that.

I finally did get some interesting PE class in my last sem, as I was able to get a slot in Bowling. In UP Bowling we get three small balls (duckpin) which we could throw along a sometimes crooked lane. I was no good at all, and I would like to think that I was just being charitable to the poor guy at the end of the lane who puts up all the pins at the end of each throw.

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