It hasn’t dawned on me that it’s finally June till I was walking home this morning to find, no, not traffic just yet, but sleepy kids in their school uniforms. And I was suddenly, oh, right. It’s June now.

Back maybe four or five years earlier, this would be my favorite season—it’s the time of the year when you go around sighing loudly for everyone to hear that omfg, it’s school time again; yet you’re secretly excited because it ends the yearly era (meron ba nun?) of your parents nagging you nonstop to clean the house or at least clean your damn room, since you’re on vacation anyway. That, or maybe the plain fact that as a lowly student dependent on your parents, it’s no baon = no gala, and summer isn’t exactly as fantastic as it really is till you’re working and you have all the money but no time to go around splurging it on vacays. I know my professors would differ if I would say I love school. Tardiness streak aside, I loved it. And I specifically loved college because La Salle Dasmarinas is nothing if not for trees and splendid amazing people.

So walking around with these kids lamenting their late night tv marathons and cursing the alarm clock, I was forced into nostalgia by my jealousy—not the uniforms, no, definitely not; but by the exciting things awaiting them when they get to school. They say you never really learn till you’re out in the real world, but you’ll never understand how powerful the four walls of a classroom can be because it somehow shaped the idealism that would mold you into how you would further learn from the real world. Whilst the real world can be rough, the walls teach you that you’re the best and, plainly, YOU CAN. And if you hang on to your ideals long enough, you just might go through the real world thinking you indeed are the best.

When I got home, I popped in one of my old CDs and browsed through some of the pictures. Amusingly—baby faced grins aside—we all looked mayabang. Not the same yabang that we all have that’s clearly made by the salary and position, but the yabang with idealism fresh from college. The yabang that “we’re equipped, and we’re here to change the world.” Grabe, I miss that uncorrupted pride. Haha.

Ikaw, do you miss school?

More pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=118285&id=656793975&l=e7ac4237b4

So Cha was asking why I don’t smile in pictures. I think it was a little too evident–or at least more so earlier–when after posting a series of images on the net for sharing (Facebook) and I got to reviewing them that I realized,  I was serious in most of them. If not, I was simply not smiling.

See, the problem with that is, personally, or even through email or sms, I’m generally a bungisngis person. Giggle around, mock around, kulit around and virtually your all around grin whore. Save for the past weeks that I was on 110 v (low batt, ika nga), I’m usually into the whole smiling thing.

But see, I’m vain. I’m very vain. I take so freakin many images and choose only which ones to post, and sadly, I feel I’m cuter when I look serious. Cute, being the operative word, of course. Till I start doing Miss Universe poses, I’m staying with that term. Vanity hasn’t permitted me to smile yet. Manager ko siya, eh, and a very demanding manager at that.

And then, I remember how Ger told me before about taking pictures of me–I was too multi-faceted, that, if a picture would be taken, it wouldn’t really encompass the whole JC idea. It’s a side, yes, but sadly, not a side she prefers. She likes me jolly. I like me serious. Curiously, life wise, we prefer the opposites. I wonder if these choices then simply mirror what we lack–if not forget– in our lives? (Wait, I lack seriousness? Oh. Come. Fucking. On!) But see, that’s the funny thing: this is how I project myself. If I know myself to be not this serious on the actuality, why would I feel the need for another facet like this?

Ikaw, baka kilala mo ako. What do you think?

…why didjoo delete your Facebook account?!