I was tagged in the midst of my mental turmoil...

perforce, this is voluntarily done, for the sake of having something new in my blog, despite my monastic existence of post-lawschool studies. Seven random things about me, and here it goes...

1. When I was young, way young, I accidentally locked myself inside the bathroom, which had a glass sliding door. I freaked out literally, thrashing everything inside, throwing water unto myself and at the glass door in the hope of melting it away, while on the other side my mom, grandma and all our househelp were frantically instructing me how to open it from within. Panicky as I was, I didn't understand a word. Eventually, our carpenter pried opened the ceiling and hence my liberation. I was scared to death... and that explains my claustrophobia.
2. Again, when I was way young, I spent one new year in the hospital, my first and last time I got confined, due to measles. I remember the fireworks exploding outside the hospital windows.
3. I am a greenbelt shorin-ryu karate kid. Too bad I stopped after the green, which is nothing more than a single step to so much more before I reach the blackbelt.
4. Around ages 7 to 10, I started reading encyclopedias... Collier's, Britannica, Disney's Encyclopedia, and of course, my favorite, Charlie Brown's Encyclopedia. I had, earlier on, a penchant for history, historic figures and foreign countries.
5. I have this ability of quickly comprehending languages. Once, during a vacation in Iloilo, and after being exposed for two days to the Kinaray-a dialect, I can answer back simple questions, of course, in tagalog; and unknown to them, I can understand almost everything they said. My chinese friends would ask me basic questions in Fookien, I can answer back, again in Tagalog. I can read quite a bit of Latin, Portuguese, Italian, French, and of course, plenty of Spanish, and understand them, though understanding is quite different from speaking it. To think of it, I wanna brush up my Espanol unotro vez... Quiere a estudiar en Instituto Cervantes?!
6. I only took two college entrance exams, UP and UST. In UP, I took up Biology (or so I think) and Music, in UST, I took up MedTech and AB Philosophy. I passed the entrance exams in Music, however, the practical exam was set on the date when the results in UST were already posted, hence my dilemma. I picked UST, wherein I passed both choices. I ended up graduating as a Bachelor of Arts Major in Legal Management... and then the rest is history. Prior to that, I had other options in my mind for a major course, such as Journalism and Economics.
7. Compendium of Significant Firsts: I first started smoking in fourth year highschool. I first got drunk in first year college. My first plane ride was in fourth year high school. The first major physical and mental endurance test I had to endure was to see John Paul II at the balcony of the Nunciature during his visit. We were at the LRT along Taft since 2am. He went out of the balcony around 9 am or about noon time, I think. It was also the first time I got pickpocketed. (probably a non-catholic. hahaha) We were standing on monobloc stools and cheering wildly, when I saw this guy below me, who just stared back. I don't even recall if he was holding my wallet or what... those were the grade school years... and hiphop shorts were the trend, hence, pockets are quite easy to be picked on. I eventually found my wallet lying on the street. All he got was around 20 bucks (think of the FOREX rate back then! It's worth more than you think. hehehe.) Those five or ten minutes of seeing John Paul was worth it... and an experience of a lifetime, you can literally feel the holiness drawing out of him and unto the crowd. Plain and simple collective ECSTACY. (For a clearer reference, see the first two items in the wikipedia entry on the word ecstacy.)

Now, I tag Anya, Kaduwa Areiz and Geng