The Construct

By noon of June 30, we’ll have a new president.

I really find it funny that it’s been declared a special non-working holiday. Well, sure, quite a lot of people voted for Noynoy and those people would probably celebrating once their “manok” assumes position.

Others have been calling for a “ceasefire” on criticism against Noynoy as president for his first few months as president. Grace periods are for pansies.

As a Filipino one can only be hopeful for things to come but isn’t it one’s duty to be vigilant of things. Let’s face it, Noynoy is not the new face of Philippine politics. If he’d be one thing, he’d be the poster child of oligarchy and the repressive elite.

Winning the election is one thing. Transforming the nation to make winners of us all is another. We’ll see.

In other news, the Lakers beat the Celtics in the NBA Finals and that’s just too damn bad.

It’s pretty hard to churn out a blog post these days. When you write for a living, sometimes you just want to do something else for a welcome change of pace.

I’ve tried to steer clear of the political posts for the past few weeks. The election’s done and over with. Noynoy won. Erap came in second. And everyone’s still claiming cheating and pulling the GIGO card on technology.

Pretty much the same old shit.

It’s pretty disheartening really. That in my 26 years of existence, very little has changed in this country. The oligarchy is still in control. And the poor are still uneducated.

Many were shocked that Erap came in second. Didn’t shock me at all. Just proves that EDSA II was nothing but a show of force from the metropolitan elite. In no way did it reflect the true voice of the masses.

Anyway, Noynoy won. The same guy who, together with his posse, feel that it is his divine right to be president. We could all just hope that this guy wouldn’t make a hash of it. ‘Cause change just hasn’t come to Malacanang yet.

I so swear that, when I get to have kids, I wouldn’t scrimp out on their health. Given the possibility that I might give them some of my crappy genes, at least I’d owe it to them to make sure that they will be in tip-top health.

My folks used to think that dental work (braces and such) were just for. Frustrating to have to deal with these issues now that I’m 26 and paying for, I don’t know, 20 times more today for stop-gap treatments.

Last Friday, I had to undergo a minor operation to get one of my impacted molars out. I have four but my age and the complicated placement of that molar made it quite a tricky process.

I used to think that root canal therapy is one of the most uncomfortable things that a dentist can do to you. Found out that was wrong. At least in my case. Having that impacted molar out was the worst experience of my life, well, at least physically. And I already broke an arm.

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Would you look at that. It’s May already. A third of the year’s done. How quickly time flies. And surely, the first four months of 2010 hasn’t been without occasion.

I have to be really thankful that I’ve finally bagged my master’s degree. I actually consider it my consuelo de bobo as many of my friends are now living my shitty pipe dream of being a lawyer. No point in wallowing in self-pity. It took me five years but, at least, MA’s in the bag.

I haven’t really broadcasted it yet outside my friends (and through Facebook) but the bigger thing that’s happened to me so far is that the Dearest and I are engaged. Yup. Wedding bells a ringin’. As for the wedding date, it’s still yet to be determined. It’s going to be a long engagement but at least we’re one step closer to being together.

Now these leave me with the future to take on. It’s quite tricky really. UP wants me back full time. But going back means pursuing years of study for a PhD and getting a PhD means a life sentence to the academe. Quite honestly, I haven’t really figured if I want that.

For now, my motivation is preparing for the future especially with the financial part. Married life isn’t a joke. I wasn’t really able to maximize my money-making efforts working on my MA for the past five years. Now that’s done, maybe now I can.

Facebook has been abuzz lately with the jejemon phenomenon. It appears that someone has finally decided to label those who use a local variety of leetspeak as “jejemons,” which, I believe is a blend of “jeje” (the variety’s phonologically-conditioned orthographic representation of the laugh “hehe”) and Pokemon (itself a blend of “pocket” and “monster”).

Since traditional media has now found social network trends newsworthy, the jejemon phenomenon (jejemonon?) warranted a writeup from Inquirer.net calling the so-called jejemons the new jologs.

So who are these jejemons anyway? I’d hate to cite UrbanDictionary.com but based on what appears to be Facebook consensus, the jejemons are the breed of computer-mediated communicators who use a hybrid code which draws from jologspeak, leetspeak, textese, and gamer language. The code is manifested through their use of media such as SMS and the Internet.

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