Tomorrow will be a better day

To redeem myself from today's lousy existence, I stayed in the library till closing time and finished my readings for tomorrow.
Since I wasn't able to read all the cases in Credit, I decided to cut class and save myself from a bad recit and/or a grade of five. This particular prof don't give fives if you got called for recitation and happen to be absent, which makes it very convenient for students (like me) to absent themselves from class whenever they are not prepared. And yes, I was called. sheesh. But then again, I figure getting no grade is better than getting a five.
But that's not what made today a bad day. We had a surprise quiz in Labor and I literally don't know anything about our current subject matter. I have read only digests of the cases and haven't even studied the essential provisions from the Labor Code. Since the professor don't give a midterm exam and its quite easy to work your way through her recitations, I figure I can survive cramming it all up in the finals. Then came this. God, Ive never felt so inadequate answering all those essay questions. This is my wake up call. Maybe I should remember that I have other subjects besides CivPro. How I wish my professor would get tons of sudden workload that she'll consign the checking of those papers to the trash bin.

La Vie Boheme

Rent is on my mind today.
No, not the one I'm paying every first week of the month. I'm talking about the Tony award-winning musical which was adapted to film last 2005. I cant believe I let about two years pass before I watched this movie adaptation. The thought of downloading this movie came to me because of my current frustration in finding a decent Sweeney Todd movie torrent file. When El finished downloading the Rent torrent last night, I immediately forgot all about my cases and excitedly played the movie. I have fallen in love with this musical since I first heard of it. I have a copy of the songs from the original Broadway soundtrack which Ive downloaded a few years back so I am acquainted with the songs and even memorized some of them. Having watched the movie last night brought back the frenzy once again. I have been singing songs from the soundtrack all day today and when I'm not, the songs just kept on playing in my mind.

Rent is about a group of friends and young artists and their struggles with work, love, and life. The plot is amidst the background of aids and transgenderism. The "bohemian" or impoverished artist culture is the pervading theme of this story which I totally dig. Each character is very unique and very familiar at the same time. There's Mark, a struggling film maker who makes a lot of documentaries and who thinks working for big media corporations is a sell-out. Roger is the aids-stricken songwriter and ex front man of a band whose love interest is Mimi, a dancer in a club who also has aids. Maureen is a performance artist who leads the protest against Benny and the landlords of the East village of New York. She dumped Mark for a lawyer named Joanne (incidentally!). Tom Collins is a philosophy professor who also has aids who falls for Angel, my favorite character, a cross-dresser with aids who plays percussions on the streets. I love how this musical emphasizes on the importance of how we ought to relish in living our lives and forget our unnecessary pretensions. There's no day but today.

All but two (Mimi and Joanne) of the movie cast are reprisals of their roles in the original Broadway version. Rosario Dawson's portrayal of Mimi is surprisingly good. I always thought shes a good actress but I didnt know she sings. Tracie Thoms as Joanne is superb. The first time I saw her in the movie I thought, this girl looks really familiar. That's when it hit me that I saw her in "Devil Wears Prada" playing as a friend of Anne Hathaway there. Jesse Martin (Tom Collins) and Taye Diggs (Benny) played roles in Ally McBeal that are very lucid in my memory that I had quite a hard time disintegrating the doctor/lawyer character in them that I was accustomed to. And oh yeah, Adam Pascal (Roger) was Theo, Jack Black's former bandmate, in the flick "The School of Rock".

I have always been a musical enthusiast and ever since I became one, I have been dreaming of going to New York and watch the runs of my favorite Broadway musicals in the New Amsterdam theater. But since that dream is quite far out for now, Ill just settle on film adaptations and singing librettos in the shower.

Klimt's art

Gustav Klimt is one of the renowned artists of the Modern era which covers the French Impressionists, Cubists, Fauvists and Surrealists. Klimt is the latest addition to my list of favorite foreign painters which includes Da Vinci, Warhol, Matisse, Chagall, Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Dali, and Magritte. I just realized that almost all of my favorite painters are Modern artists (except Da Vinci, classical and Andy Warhol, contemporary.) I particularly like the way Modern artists use unusual techniques and daring themes. Its more of their own personal visions and ideas rather than rules and routine. These artists use color, dimension, and perception in a non-traditional way that I always thought to be very appealing and intriguing.

Looking up Klimt's work is what I have been up to lately ever since my blockmate, Jing showed me this rather expensive planner she got from Fully Booked featuring a few of Gustav Klimt's famous works. I really like the way he uses vivid colors in his portraits and his sort of Byzantium mosaic style is very captivating. His works are characterized by common themes of life, death, sex, and love. Here are a few of my favorite pieces. (please click the image for a larger view:)



Tree of Life
(notice the intricacy of his style and the underlying theme? asteeg!)


Adele Bloch-Bauer I
(his best portrait for me)


Beethoven Frieze (The Ode to Joy)


The Kiss
(its currently my PDA wallpaper:)


Water Snakes
(this one's on my laptop desktop:)

Study Sessions

I think this sem is the most stressful one that I have had so far.
Well, that's what I always say about a present moment semester and the subsequent semester always tops it off. It just keeps on getting rougher. Surprisingly, I never came to a point that I became seriously burnt out. I'm still my cheerful and carefree self. Law school may have taken a pretty big chunk of my time which I prefer to allot to other interesting things but it didn't make me dull. I may be struggling quite hard with the demands of law school but I am still happily unworried. I guess its because of my positive outlook and strong character. I never give up. I take every nerve-racking day one at a time and just wait for those straining moments to pass even under gritted teeth. The secret there is not to take grades too seriously. I never do. Of course I make a conscious effort not to fail in any of my subjects but I never study just for the grades. Man, there's life besides law school.

For the past three weeks or so, I have been spending my late nights in a Dunkin Donuts branch along Aurora blvd, studying. Ive been a law student for a year and a half now but Ive never seen myself to be this diligent. I guess its because of CivPro. This subject is a five-unit course and the Professor is very exacting. This is why I was forced to fix and device an efficient study habit which I never really have. I can never study seriously at home because I am easily tempted to lie on my bed and sleep without even knowing it. And though I considered studying in coffee shops before, I never really got to it because of my tight budget. Given my meager allowance, I cant afford to spend more than a hundred pesos everytime I study out. Thanks to that Dunkin Donuts store, I now have an inexpensive place to hammer away into my readings. It's also very convenient for me since it's only a block away from my apartment. Several med and law students (no UPLaw) also frequent the place which makes the atmosphere very conducive to studying. The fact that there are no UP law students there makes it even better. For some reason, I am easily distracted whenever there's someone else I know from UPLaw in the coffee shop I'm in.

I was really thrown off when a friend started kidding me that Im so "cheap" I study at Dunkin Donuts. It didn't ever came into my mind that Dunkin Donuts is cheap, in the colloquial sense of the term. I even think the Caramel Cappuccino of Dunkin tastes better than Starbucks' cappucino. Its the size of a Grande cup in Starbucks but it only costs 60PhP. Plus, they brew and froth it fast. I dont go to Dunkin thinking Im cool or cheap or whatever. I go there to study. I love coffee shops and I often go to one. There are a few times that I study but most of the time I go there to hang out with friends and talk. I think coffee shops are more suited for that because its the experience they offer that makes your overpriced frappes or lattes worth it. In any case, what they said didnt made me reconsider my choice. I'm definitely going to study again in Dunkin Donuts. It's all about different strokes for different folks.

my public blogging debut

Though I dont have my own internet connection and I dont have much time to spend on the internet, I decided to create this blog to serve as my diversion from law school. I have a Multiply account and I used to post a few not so candid blog entries there but its just too--how do i say it..exposed? This is why I dont really give blogging much thought. I think my life and my thoughts are just not for everyone to examine and evaluate. Im still not very comfortable with the thought of people reading my stuff but for the heck of it Im giving this thing a shot. So here goes nothing.