![]() ![]() Instead, I hung out with my co-workers who were mostly in their late twenties to forties. I had to decline whenever they invited me out as I was either at work or sleeping. I became a corporate slave, and for four months I had nothing in mind but bills, money, credit cards, insurance, and loans.ĭuring that 4-month summer, I had never seen my college friends. We were revolutionaries (or at least we felt and thought we were). We planned and schemed and made speeches and drank and sexed aplenty. It was the most passionate time in my college life. Our Catholic university, the biggest university north of the country, was rotting in the dark ages and we, the student leaders with big ideas and enormous confidence, were going set it ablaze in the flame of progress. If the characters were in college, I’m sure bouts of excessive drinking and sex would be included.įortunately, my old friends and I, in our university clubs, were living that ideal picture during the last semester of my sophomore year. To me, that film embodies the picture of a fully-lived youth: Optimism, idealism, passion, energy, and teenage ardor. Studio Ghibli’s From Up on Poppy Hill tells the story of a group of high schoolers in the 1960s, at the peak of Japanese student activism, banding together to stop their school administrators from demolishing their decrepit-but passionately used-Latin Quarter. 92 percent of my life burned on a cycle of sleeping, preparing, and commuting to chase money, and then chasing money. 9 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 3-4 hours of commute, work preparations, and meals. Employeehood offered a safe, respectable, super okay life.īut I’m not happy with “okay.” I’m not happy that 9 hours of my day, 5 days a week, is spent on something I would never do unless I’m paid to do it. It reeked of security and stability-something we, the poor, always struggle to find. That word reverberated throughout my being. In the comfort of a regular job, I could imagine my life as an office worker: Work my nine-to-five (or 10 pm to 6 am, in my case), anticipate breaks and log-outs, wish that tomorrow is my day-off, travel to some beach or overseas city for vacation, apply for loans, build a sizeable credit score over years of tenure-become a typical, office employee. ![]() Then I go outside, buy coffee from the smoking area’s vending machine, and enjoy the fresh, evening breeze.ĭuring these moments, I found myself thinking, “I’m okay.” I would arrive an hour or so before my graveyard shift, drape my jacket on the cubicle chair, prep my headset, refill my water tumbler, and set up my workstation: Turn on the PC, connect the headset to the phones, login, sip some warm water. #SOULLESS MEDIA CENTER FULL#My government scholarship required a full class load, so I scheduled my classes outside work hours and quit the university clubs I used to be very active with. My junior year rolled in, and the job stayed. Pay is like a pack of addicting chips: You always need to take just one more. The taste of adult money weighed deliciously in my brand new jeans’ pockets. It was a boring, soulless job, but it paid. But as my mom says, the only sure plans are insurance plans (and if you need life insurance, please take one or two from my mom).īeing poor enough to be officially categorized as “Indigent,” (third-world-country indigent) I was reluctant to return to broke-ness. The original plan was to resign after buying basic filmmaking equipment. I bought my first camera in two months, became “regularized” on the third, and snagged a decent laptop, for video editing, on the fourth. I needed a DSLR camera for my media course, so I applied to and got accepted at a call center that paid above-minimum rates to unskilled undergrads like myself. I sat there, mulling over our conversations, amazed at what I have lost without even noticing.Īt the end of my sophomore year, my university changed its academic calendar, which resulted in four months without classes. ![]() They remind you of the dreams, convictions, and passions of your younger days.Ī lunch and a quick dinner later, I peer at the drizzle-filled city alone, through a commuter jeepney’s window. Meeting old friends is like bumping into your past self, some parts good and some bad, obscured by age and forgotten with time and new habits. But the full realization came during a chance meeting with old friends, one Saturday afternoon. ![]()
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