SUPREME MISADVENTURE
It has been almost a week and my body isn’t healing as fast as it used to. I have the seasonal influenza. But as I have observed in the past, it only took me 3 days to completely recuperate. But now, I’m still totally bogged down. I have all ailments of the upper respiratory orifices. Colds, cough and sore throat. Plus that nasty fever that won’t go away. Because of that, I was impelled to halt my readings for officially three days now. I am on my fourth subject, mercantile law, and I only finished Corporation Law, Securities Regulations, Banking and Special Commercial Laws. I haven’t yet breezed through Negotiable Instruments, Insurance and Transportation. In fact, I haven’t officially terminated my readings in Civil Law, since I still have Obligations and Contracts and Sales left.
Barely seven weeks left, I still need to study Criminal Laws, Remedial Law and Legal Ethics. I have to make certain adjustments in my daily routine (which means removing badminton from it).
Now, yesterday afternoon, we were attending jack jimenez’ lecture in insurance and SPCL, when we heard the news that our petitions were already notarized and available at the Legal Aid Clinic. So we got it and returned to class. Around 3:30 pm, someone suggested that we file it already, anyways, we can make it to Padre Faura before five o’ clock. Someone of us were hesitant, including me, but alas, I go where my friends go. So, the six of us, boarded the van with the 16*OSG plate number, the driver of which, called up his father-justice of the Court of Appeals and asked for a parking slot in the Court of Appeals. Traffic along España and Quiapo was like the usual Quiapo day chaos. We were doing our annexes inside the van while laughing that any error in writing due to the vehicular movement might cause the dismissal of our petition.
4pm. We just arrived at U.N. Avenue. All the lights in sight were green. And we joked that it was a good omen. We even saw a naked taong grasa in the middle of Quiapo Bridge and took that as a good omen.
Comes now the corner of Faura and Taft. Hell. The go signal only lasts three seconds! It was 4:15 already! Prior to that, we called up the office of the Bar Confidant and asked at around what time does it close. It said around 4:30pm.
After snailing through the traffic in Faura, we reached the gates of the Supreme Court. No time to park the van. I immediately went down and asked the security (FYI: you don’t call them ‘security guards’ in the layman’s sense, since these people are either police forces or military men, or at least trained by the government.) (FYI again: come to think of it, it reminded me of that instance when Capt taught me how to do the ‘neck’ breaking trick in the movies, and it is fatal… and I ain’t telling how to do it! Hahaha!) if we can go in. Courteously, he said that cashier closes at four p.m. That means, that even though the bar confidant still holds office until 4:30pm, we cannot file our petitions until we paid our filing fees. (Basic rule in Civil Procedure, Sunlife Assurance vs. CA… I think)
And so, it was our first taste of “Technicality”. And technicality means so much to us. It means the difference between life and death. We went back to UST frustrated, but laughing so hard as we made fun of ourselves, imagining things like what if we were featured by Mike Enriquez for the primetime news for something like: “Anim na Barrista, nag-amok sa Korte Suprema” and things like that.
The Bar-Ops committee had generously offered to do the filing, but we believe that it should be our own act. The act of filing is so symbolic to us that somehow this means that this is the first ever document that you will be submitting to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and you don’t want anything wrong happening to it, you want everything to be perfect, you want to savor the moment. It is part of the long and arduous journey towards the uninviting portals of the Supreme Court and the Bar.
So, to appease us, I treated the guys to an 18 inch New York’s finest before we called it a day. Like what JV said, it was our break from the monotony of our lives as barristers. A ‘picnic’ in the twisted sense.
Now, I pray that this fever would ward off me so that I can resume my unholy transitory existence.
Barely seven weeks left, I still need to study Criminal Laws, Remedial Law and Legal Ethics. I have to make certain adjustments in my daily routine (which means removing badminton from it).
Now, yesterday afternoon, we were attending jack jimenez’ lecture in insurance and SPCL, when we heard the news that our petitions were already notarized and available at the Legal Aid Clinic. So we got it and returned to class. Around 3:30 pm, someone suggested that we file it already, anyways, we can make it to Padre Faura before five o’ clock. Someone of us were hesitant, including me, but alas, I go where my friends go. So, the six of us, boarded the van with the 16*OSG plate number, the driver of which, called up his father-justice of the Court of Appeals and asked for a parking slot in the Court of Appeals. Traffic along España and Quiapo was like the usual Quiapo day chaos. We were doing our annexes inside the van while laughing that any error in writing due to the vehicular movement might cause the dismissal of our petition.
4pm. We just arrived at U.N. Avenue. All the lights in sight were green. And we joked that it was a good omen. We even saw a naked taong grasa in the middle of Quiapo Bridge and took that as a good omen.
Comes now the corner of Faura and Taft. Hell. The go signal only lasts three seconds! It was 4:15 already! Prior to that, we called up the office of the Bar Confidant and asked at around what time does it close. It said around 4:30pm.
After snailing through the traffic in Faura, we reached the gates of the Supreme Court. No time to park the van. I immediately went down and asked the security (FYI: you don’t call them ‘security guards’ in the layman’s sense, since these people are either police forces or military men, or at least trained by the government.) (FYI again: come to think of it, it reminded me of that instance when Capt taught me how to do the ‘neck’ breaking trick in the movies, and it is fatal… and I ain’t telling how to do it! Hahaha!) if we can go in. Courteously, he said that cashier closes at four p.m. That means, that even though the bar confidant still holds office until 4:30pm, we cannot file our petitions until we paid our filing fees. (Basic rule in Civil Procedure, Sunlife Assurance vs. CA… I think)
And so, it was our first taste of “Technicality”. And technicality means so much to us. It means the difference between life and death. We went back to UST frustrated, but laughing so hard as we made fun of ourselves, imagining things like what if we were featured by Mike Enriquez for the primetime news for something like: “Anim na Barrista, nag-amok sa Korte Suprema” and things like that.
The Bar-Ops committee had generously offered to do the filing, but we believe that it should be our own act. The act of filing is so symbolic to us that somehow this means that this is the first ever document that you will be submitting to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and you don’t want anything wrong happening to it, you want everything to be perfect, you want to savor the moment. It is part of the long and arduous journey towards the uninviting portals of the Supreme Court and the Bar.
So, to appease us, I treated the guys to an 18 inch New York’s finest before we called it a day. Like what JV said, it was our break from the monotony of our lives as barristers. A ‘picnic’ in the twisted sense.
Now, I pray that this fever would ward off me so that I can resume my unholy transitory existence.
Labels: Buhay Barrista
posted by ohme at 9:09 AM
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