Your overconfidence is your weakness. -Luke Skywalker
Last night I said that I had an exam in Econ 109 today. That exam was supposed to start at 8:30 in the morning. Guess where I was at 8:20. Hehehehe... I left home at exactly 8:30, and I only got on an FX by 8:45. Needless to say I was already fuming; my temper was already rising to dangerous levels. Sure, I was late in leaving for school since I just had to open up the computer and check my mail and backup my XDA and watch some videos on YouTube, but the FX driver was also to blame for my tardiness because he was not at the terminal when I arrived! Yes. The FX driver is to blame. Not me. Certainly not my addiction to the Internet. No way.
I got to my classroom by 9:15. With only 45 minutes to spare, I immediately started on the exam. I wrote so furiously that my pen actually gave up on me halfway into the second essay question. When it was all over I had filled up one and a half sheets of yellow paper. In 45 minutes. Wow. Of course I was overconfident for a reason: it was an open-book exam. The answers were never more than 5 inches away from me. Two nights before I had already read the two assigned chapters and highlighted all the important details. I expect to see another "1" next week. How's that for confidence?
Your faith in your friends is yours. -Emperor Palpatine
My troubles, if you could call them that, did not end with my exam. There was still that one-page Latin short story to translate. The assignment was given last Tuesday. We were supposed to meet yesterday, but no one showed up at the designated place at the appointed time. History repeats itself. Guess how much my groupmates and I had done by lunch time of the deadline. Translation is not an exact science. You do not just get a dictionary and replace latin word with english word. You have to consider the context of the sentence. You have to take into account the culture of the time in which the document you're trying to translate was written. And you cannot just move on after translating a sentence, you have to polish it up so that it would have meaning in the English language. It's just like writing a paper for grammar class, or a blog, except that you have to be able to choose and use exactly the right words and you have to be extremely careful with the cases and the numbers and the persons and the moods and the genders of every single noun, adjective, verb, and adverb or else what you come up with would amount to pure gobbledygook. So we were only at the third sentence. Big deal. Our Latin class was at 2:30. In the excitement of meticulously poring over the definition and inflection of every single word in the text I sort of forgot to eat lunch. A cup of hot brewed coffee replaced rice. It had such a stimulating effect that all the way into my Political Science 150 class I was twitching and shaking. Come Latin class the fruit of our labor was finally put to the test. Our hard work was not without reward, as we garnered 8 points before the class had to be dismissed due to lack of time. And because of the lack of time everyone was given the full 10 points to be added to the second exam. Weeee!
It is pointless to resist, my son. -Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker
To reward myself for my recent successes on the academic front and to congratulate myself for living through such a hectic and stressful day, I just had to have a plate of California Maki and Tuna Sushi at Teriyaki Boy. My lunch was at 6 in the evening. It's ironic. We're just friends now, and there we were, having dinner at a restaurant after such a long time without ever going out on a date. I had planned on watching Letters from Iwo Jima at the cinema, but unfortunately only Ayala cinemas were playing it. I had no plans of going all the way to Makati at such a late hour. Blue Wave Marikina beckoned, and there we went. When you're in a celebratory mood, stay away from any arcade; it will suck you in and bleed you dry, especially when it has Time Crisis 3 in it! 150 pesos in 30 minutes. Gone. O di immortales!
Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. -Emperor Palpatine
*Return of the Jedi; Emperor's Throne Room, right before the Rebel Alliance launches its attack on the Second Death Star
