remembering the teacher who cures insomnia

I have to admit this time and time again: blogging is very difficult. I blame this on my computer lesson teacher in high school. My goodness! You just have to listen to her voice to get your insomnia cured! I have to apologize for blaming her here, but it’s true. She deserves it. Well, I think showing her a dirty finger is just too much so I’m not going to do that. But I blame my ignorance to her.

Why?

She provoked me not to learn how to use the computer well. The way I remember our classes, she could not explain our lessons very well that I even had to crawl toward our valedictorian’s seat during our exam just to let her teach me how to answer the questions about Microsoft Excel and other programs I have now forgotten. Her teaching strategy did not excite me; it bored me to death that I did not realize I was already sleeping in her class. She is the perfect example of teachers that should re-take the teachers’ Board Exam and then undergo a one-on-one training on how to effectively teach computer classes inside an airconditioned classroom where high school students tend to fall asleep and dream. And another thing: she is struggling with her grammar. I’m sorry.

That’s why I’m way too behind with my peers when it comes to computers. I had developed this weird kind of fear a long time ago whenever I face the computer and then use the mouse and the keyboard. I remember being afraid of using the computer for fear of ruining the programs or worse, deleting them. So, besides Mathematics, cockroaches, snakes, spiders, drunkards, and gangsters on the streets, I was also afraid of computers. It’s really embarrassing.

Well, the good thing though is that I’m making up for my loss. I am actually starting to explore more about the newest programs and learning how to use them. It’s very difficult for me especially when I’m alone. The thing still scares me though. There’s still that fear I couldn’t name, couldn’t explain. It’s just there waiting to prance at me.

I’m writing this because I could not get the feeling off me that I’m such a loser in using this stuff. I wish I could just scream in front of that teacher’s face for one minute and then go.

a sweet, neglected moment in a crowded jeepney

Perhaps, the most interesting thing that could happen inside a jeepney, besides waiting for long hours during traffics, or wiping your glazing forehead, or fanning yourself with your hand and muttering curses under your breath, is when your legs get too close with another’s, and then realizing that all the legs you’re seeing are actually doing the same thing. And you can’t do anything about it.

It’s funny how I realized that just lately. Everyday, I ride the jeepney going to school and back home and it’s when heading home that I usually experience riding in a very crowded jeepney wherein even half of my butt sits while the other hangs helplessly until, if fortune does not come, I arrive at my destiny with my knees shaking and tired. Even legs, I realized, can tell a bit of who their owners are. There are some who prefer showing their smooth, bare legs while other choose to hide theirs. Others have huge ones; some, lean ones.

I think it’s the sweet part of riding jeepneys, even though some of them are too old already and run very slowly, or better, when their covers still shine under the sunlight and have cool surround-sound speakers attached inside. Even though it’s hard looking at this very minute, sentimental detail, I’m glad I’ve seen it anyway. At least I’d have the leisure of looking around different, colorful feet, then up to the varying sizes of legs, and all the way up to the different, blank faces of these strangers, and then mutter a simple thanks for the opportunity of appreciating one of life’s simple, irritating experiences inside crowded jeepneys. Yes, instead of finding myself swearing secretly in my head and hoping that I’ll soon arrive at my destiny.

the ignorant decides to learn

I know the whole world already knows this fact and that I’d have to agree that I’m one of those few ignorant people who have started to step up into this huge ladder of world wide webbing, but I’d have to say this again for others and especially for myself: this online blogging, it’s prodigious!

In fact, while I am writing this first piece of opinion, my fingers are shaking. I remember one of my literature teachers saying blogging is not her type, and that she still prefers the conventional way of putting her thoughts into the paper rather than just typing them on the screen. At that moment, I totally agreed with her and I was convinced that I was swayed by her standpoint. She has that persuasive factor, you know. And as a budding writer, my idea about writing is really the actual writing of words into a paper and making use of the black and blue ink, and seeing too many erasures and circles on it. If I have to press more on its romantic side, I think it’s how I can see my own hand writing on the paper, or the smell of the ink, or the crumpling of its corners, or just the mere presence of the paper in my hands and the assurance that the words are there being kept safe that pulls me into liking the act of writing rather than just the idea of writing but is really typing.

Now that her class had been past for me, her standpoint is slowly becoming a blur in my memory. By looking around and actually sensing the way in which the whole world is shifting right now into something more and more intangible, I begin to have second thoughts about what she said. Besides, too many have already said there’s money in this kind of “online arena.”

That’s why my fingers are shaking. Slowly, I’m beginning to think of learning its know-hows.