sunken garden - Cerebral Insights

I guess every once in a while, specifically every 2-3 months, I must make it a point to return to my Alma Matter UP. I have never been more nostalgic of a school than UP. When I left CSI (now USI) or Pisay, I never had any nostalgia for it as severe as the nostalgia I now have for UPD. It seems that for the past days I keep on seeing in my mind the daily school scenes – the crowded AS lobby or FC walk which I regularly pass to go to my classes; the slippery AS walk during heavy rain seasons; the CS-Coop complex where the PMS tambayan is located as well as the small Coop store with Ate Elsie; the crowded CASAA whose menu seems unchanging but I am desperately missing now; the IB lobby and the IB classrooms including Pav4 which witnessed my calvary trying to pass my Bio subjects. I even miss the Math building which I swore I will never return to after my ideal last semester of Math subjects only to return to it for 2 more semesters because I can’t seem to pass my last Math subject.

I never thought I will actually miss UP. After overstaying in its walls, not because I got admitted to another degree or a position in the University but because I had overextended my studies, I thought I will never pine for its charms once I get lucky enough to leave it. Now I have not yet officially left the University but I am already pining for it. I miss the fresh smell of the Sunken Garden during the early hours of the morning, when only a few students are milling by for the 7am classes. I miss the light breeze coming from the large Acacia and Narra trees lining the Acad Oval – the Acad Oval that has been redesigned into the Walk of Fame in celebration of the UP Centennial and to raise funds for UP.

I miss the sight and smell of UP. The influx of joggers during Sundays; the multitude of soccer teams in the Sunken Garden; the UP Ikot and Toki with their color-coded roofs; the crowds frequenting the isaw stands in front of Kalai; the throng of people in the SC rushing from one photocopier store to the next. I miss even the festivities. The festive atmosphere of the Lantern Parade (which I think I will watch this December even if I have to specifically travel to UP for it); the competitive spirit of the UAAP season especially during the cheering competition – that ultra-jam packed UP side in the Araneta coliseum where sweaty bodies stand next to each other, hollering at the top of their lungs and nobody cares because you’re all joined in one spirit – the UP spirit. Heck, I even miss the frequent rallies – the red shirt days or black shirt days; the conglomeration of students to protest the latest absurd government or school policies; the activists who occasionally disturb classes with their message of reforms and change. How I miss the good old UP days.

Why am I being struck by this nostalgia now, I do not know. Is it perhaps because it’s been 12 weeks since my last visit to the school that has been my home for 5 years and which has shaped a lot of who I am now or is it perhaps because I am constantly dissatisfied in this world I am moving in right now, constantly feeling that my mind is severely rotting away.

For whatever reasons I may have, the nostalgia is deep within me – pure and raw. I just hope it doesn’t translate to another semester of residency else I will be on MRR (maximum residency rule).

*Note: The pictures were taken by other people. I just made a Google Search for them. Perhaps when I re-visit UP this month I will take my own photos. 😀

I had always wanted to take a picnic in the UP sunken garden. The wide expanse of the grassy field and the majestic narra trees surrounding it, have their aesthetic appeal to my gustatory senses. This is a wish that thanks to my busy UP schedule, I wasn’t able to really fulfill. And so during my recent UP visit, wherein I had time in my hands, I opted to eat my lunch at one of the benches facing the sunken garden.

UP Sunken Garden (source: ChrisVillarin.com)

I was enjoying my bolognese pasta and chicken, the breeze softly blowing, when all of a sudden two pitiful impoverished kids went near me. They were insisting that I give them my food! Can’t they see that I am not yet finished? Sometimes, I swear that the beggars of the UP community have a certain attitude already – demanding that you hand over your unfinished food because they are hungry and poor to buy any for themselves. Not that I disagree with that but whatever happened to basic courtesy? And what irked me more was that their mother was just in the vicinity. I came to the rash conclusion that she instigated her kids to come near me, disturb my peaceful lunch, and beg their way to my pocket!

I scurried the kids away. I am not normally heartless to the less fortunate citizens of this country but at that point, I had no intentions of being compassionate. Having successfully ignored and driven the kids away, another kid, a much younger one and more pitiful looking came to me. He was the younger brother of the two and I think the mother, seeing that the two older kids didn’t succeed thought she can appeal to the compassionate nature of my heart by sending her youngest kid. And it was harder to get that kid off. So I simply ignored him. Since the youngest had no intentions of leaving me, the two older kids went back and resumed their begging. So now I had three kids, begging in front of me, while I was finishing my lunch. It was even worse than eating at the window table of a restaurant and having street kids stare at you from outside! To get rid of them, I hissed that I was almost mad and they wouldn’t like to see me get mad. That got them to stop and scurry away. No doubt, they, and the people who could witness us, thought of me as a very heartless bitch.

Source: Pinggoy Danguilan's Multiply Site

But what can I do? I was really mad that the mother won’t try to device of some other way to feed her kids than have them begging for food from hapless students like me. (I am an official student since I’ve just enrolled.) I am also angry that there are poor people in this country – though I do not really know who to blame for that. And I am equally angry that no one is now allowed to enjoy one’s lunch or eat in the public spaces of UP without being pestered by these beggars. Not that I am being coñotic and mata pobre but then doesn’t anyone have the right to at least eat in peace while enjoying some scenery?

I know I really came out as harsh, evil and whatever that day. I finished the last morsel of my lunch in peace – the beggars long gone after giving up all hope of touching my compassionate cord. I fumed for a while over the incredulity of the situation, then rationalized the matter over and tucked it away in my mind to be pondered on for another point in time.

I have been doing charity work for the longest time I can remember – maybe it is not much but it is what I can do. I wonder now how long will charity work be needed in the country? How many more Filipinos would need to rely on charity for their survival? Will there never come a time when charity will be a somehow obsolete thing because everyone has learned to survive on their own means and resources? And because the government has learned that instead of providing charity to alleviate the dire situation of most citizens of this country, they’ve provided rewarding jobs and opportunities that would really build a nation up?

Outreach in Pampanga (UPCYM Caravan 2008)

Must the Philippines always rely on charity? What if charity grows tired and jaded? What would our country do?

Tag: sunken garden

Nostalgia

too much charity is not healthy