Senior Year Jitters

If you're in first year college, taking your first beloved steps inside the campus can be breathtaking. It's a whole new world. "Will I fit in?", "I wonder if my seatmate's going to be someone cute?", you think to yourself. You show up in your best attire. Your newly ironed skinny jeans are  waiting to be noticed, your rubber shoes glow whiter as the sun hits, and your sports-branded, collared shirt screams "I'm ready for anything!" Still, your palms are a bit sweaty and your breaths a bit heavy. Your body is hoping you adjust well.

In your first week in class, you don't really study anything. Your professors barely come in because of the transition period. Those who do show up though, are automatically branded "terror." You are left with more than enough time to adjust to your social climate. Who's awkward? Who's cool? Who are the nerds? Your eyes wander around the classroom, waiting for something to happen. A week later, everybody's identity starts to make a print and where you belong isn't something you can choose. No sweat though, before you know it, July has passed and tossing green jokes back and forth have become your gang's idea of fun.

Sophomore year is a whole different story. Connections between pals have become stronger. Some might even swear they're best friends to death. Couples begin to form and you begin to jive with people you don't normally talk to last year. Academics start putting on more weight than it used to, and professors that are already household names in your college now have their chance to grill you. You now know where it's cheap to eat and where it's good to hang out. You're still underage, so unless you're tight with the kids who fake I. D.s (bad decision), clubbing isn't really an option yet. By this time, getting past university processes like enrolling, borrowing from the library, joining and transitioning between clubs, and chasing horrendous deadlines should be falling slowly into your grasp. By the way, if you plan to show off on your resume, now would be the time to join contests. Most students overlook the value of having small achievements in college.

Junior year is when it all slows down. You find yourself wearing only slip-ons or sandals to class. Your "I'm ready for anything!" shirt has faded and you just look tired wearing it--but that's not enough to stop you; not like you'd care what you look like anyway. By this time, half the couples from freshman and sophomore year have already broken up. Advanced versions of the subjects you took up in your sophomore year prove to be no cakewalks, and it's the year when irregular students pay your class semester-long visits. If you're not careful, you could be asking for yellow paper from a complete stranger, while looking the other way. But in this year, the freshmen gaze upon you with respect. Why, to them, you know all things university! If you have a crush on somebody from their ranks, it's high time to attack.

This has been Bachelor in Journalism 3-1D's journey through college so far in four short, grammatically questionable paragraphs. It's quite far from the wild frat parties and the feral club dancing you see on TV. This semester, this class becomes Bachelor in Journalism 4-1D. Each student has one foot out the door now. In a small matter of time, internships will be over, and each would be left to their own amid the dizzying lights of the city.

So finally, what excitement is left for seniors? Well, a senior get to choose what kind of professional he or she want to be. People in liberal arts have a vast field of options. Some might go on to direct great documentaries, some may write historical masterpieces, some may become magazine editors, and some may, well, write in the paper. If college was a staircase, senior year is the final step before you reach the ground, which is "the real world." That's it. The climb down itself is the adventure. How you spend your senior year is entirely up to you. Look upon it as a void or as an opportunity; in the end nobody loses or benefits, but you.

How To Pirate Like A Pro: Movies On Discs

There is no sane way to justify piracy. There just isn't. Just because something beautiful is made doesn't mean everyone has a right to it.

"How about fire? When it was invented, it didn't need to be marketed."

Well, in the case of fire and Facebook, the crime of piracy does not apply. When the prehistoric man made fire, did he patent it for profit? When the modern man (more specifically, Zuckerberg) made (or ripped of) Facebook from a Harvard network, did he put a fee on using it? No. Because fire and Facebook are two things the world is almost sure never to run out of... and Facebook is now worth billions.

Get it straight--when you have something made for you, you're supposed to pay for it. When you buy ready-to-use, 2-ply toilet paper at the supermarket, you pay for it. When you buy a ready-made lunch at KFC, you pay for it. When you buy a ready-to-watch movie, you pay for it. It's that elementary. Those self-righteous nuts at Pirate Bay really need help.

Anyway, enough with the guilt trip. It's impossible not to support capitalism, especially in this modern world. Piracy is only one of the many renegade faces the everyman can take solace in. At the time of this writing, a Tom Cruise movie, Jack Reacher, recently hit the shelves at the price of roughly USD 10 a copy (based on ebay.com and Amazon.com). Convert that to peso and it would cost around P400 to P500! Of course, you can wait until next year to buy it for half the price or rent it, but by then Tom would have made two other movies (the first one, Oblivion, is already in theaters), and if your friends are movie buffs as well, you'd be a year late for the buzz.

We, the common man, have only two options: not to watch movies at all or to go to the marketplace for a pirated copy. We know it's wrong. We know it's a form of cancer in society. But we do it anyway and we can't justify ourselves--so we won't.

Now, how do you pirate like a pro?

Walking down the street and coming across a pirated movie store, you say, "Hey. I think I have time for a movie tonight." You walk to the bustling storefront gazing at the bright lights and the glossy plastic covers. The vendor invites you in closer as he inserts a disc in a DVD player with Chinese characters, "testing" it for another customer. In the mountains of movie titles piled among the make-shift shelves, how do you know what to look for?

The most basic thing to do is to look for a DVD copy. A DVD copy is a movie burned to a blank DVD using a DVD burner--a device intentionally made to put data (like movies) to DVDs. The source is the original DVD of the movie. Make no mistake: when you play a true DVD copy, it has to have a menu, correct subtitles, and at times, special features like a director's commentary and audio in other languages. The quality of the picture in DVD copies should be as clear as the original's. If it isn't and it doesn't have subtitles and a menu, your pirate is ripping you off. He's technically a criminal so don't be surprised. A DVD copy should also cost no more than 30 pesos a pop. If the vendor charges you more than that, he's full of crap and it's not worth it. A blank DVD only costs 8 pesos a piece at CDR-King and a DVD burner won't cost over 2500 pesos. Imagine how much they make in a month. No wonder it's a booming business.

Another thing to do is to look for a so-called Blu-ray copy. Doing this requires a looser budget than normal. It costs around 60 pesos a disc and it's an iffy thing to do. Most pirated movie stores don't have DVD players that play Blu-ray discs. Blu-rays and DVDs are two very different things. Blu-ray discs require high-end players because they play in high resolution (1080p) and they usually require a high definition (HDMI) capable television to play. DVDs on the other hand, play on almost every player out there today. Most pirated movie stores have a knock-off DVD player which sells for under a thousand pesos in Quiapo, as do most households that buy pirated. However, if you know your stuff: you have a Blu-ray player and a TV that can handle HD, then you can enjoy the clearest moving pictures modern man has ever laid eyes on--in the comfort of your own home and for less than a hundred pesos!

One thing to not do, is to forget to ask if what you're buying is a DVD copy. Movies in pirate stores that are neither Blu-ray or DVD copies are cam-rips. A cam-rip is the produce a pirate makes when he brings a camera in a movie theater and records the movie right there. This is the lowest form of piracy. The picture quality is worse than your drunk best friend's phone video of your wedding, and the sound quality is comparable to dramas played in a phonograph. People who make cam-rips are a shame even to pirates. What's worse? They sell it to you at DVD-copy price and they put new movies which are not yet out on DVD (hence, cannot be copied yet) in the front-most part of the store.

The biggest no-no when buying pirated movies is buying a DVD9. A DVD9 is basically just a DVD that can hold twice as much data. A DVD can hold 4.7 gigabytes of data while a DVD9 can hold 8.54. So why is buying it such a wrong choice? One, because it normally costs 50 pesos. Two, because pirates stuff it with so much data everything is a mess. Videos in DVD9s are usually cam-rip quality to save DVD space (the poorer the quality, the smaller the space it takes), and it's mostly just 4 to 5 movies shown in different chapters in the make-shift menu and on the cover. You'll see ridiculous titles such as "Johnny English VII," "Rush Hour 3 IV," and many more.

There is an exception to the DVD9 warning, however. If you're a fan of TV series like Two And A Half Men, CSI, Spongebob Squarepants and what not, the only way you're getting it is in a DVD9. It's a tricky gamble because a lot of vendors sell DVD9s with incomplete episodes. Sure, the cover may read "Complete Season X," but don't count on it. And if you're smart, you wouldn't count on anything else made in China either. Japanese, Spanish and British series like Gokusen, Operation Love, Marimar, and Sherlock among others may come with incorrect subtitles. In some cases, there would be no subtitles at all. So before you go off buying one of these, search the series you are looking for in Wikipedia. It'll show you how many episodes are in each season. Then have it tested before you buy it. Don't allow the vendor to fast forward like he's just letting you comb through the entire thing. Watch it straight for at least one minute. If the subtitles are understandable, the episodes are complete, and the picture is decent in quality, then make the purchase.

Bottom line, remember that you are buying from a crook (though in doing so, it makes you a crook as well). It takes real smarts to know you're not being ripped off. Though pirated movies are much cheaper than the original, you are still paying good money for it and you deserve quality. 

So that's it. How to pilfer like a pro. If you have anymore tips, please feel free to comment below.

Champagne Wishes, Caviar Dreams, And A Blueprint

"Maangas" is Filipino for "overly aggressive;" the exact attitude I plan to have in my nearing professional life. There's a reason girls call me daddy in college. And if you think that I think I'm smarter than you, you're right. I do.

I once thought of turning this blog into a personal diary and filling it with entries of my valiant quest to earn my first million pesos. But then I thought no. It's too shallow. It's like making a big deal of your 2-year quest to buy a Hyundai while paying rent.

I also considered using this space for movie, music, and food critiques. But critics--who takes them seriously? Sure, it could land a couple thousand in my pocket every month but I'm a slop with adjectives and I don't think it's worth sleeping with a thesaurus under my pillow for.

This summer, I applied for a job at a call center. A job that could get me around P200,000 a year. But before I applied, word was already around about that line of work. It's filled with gay people, lesbian people, people who are both gay and lesbian, people who are both male and female, and in extreme cases, hermaphrodites. Though I'm cool hanging out with them occasionally, these people aren't my crowd (Charisma exempted). I'm a bit homophobic. (Glad to get that out of the way.)

So, what exactly have you read in the last three paragraphs? It's my desire to earn some green and to finally be independent. A desire which I believe, is inherent in every man (and woman; welcome to the 21st century.) From childhood, I've always looked forward to the day when I would be left to fly alone and make something of myself. But it's just a couple of years away now, and up close, it's a whole different story.

My worst nightmare as a person is becoming what we Filipinos call a "tambay." It's slang for a sluggard who does nothing but chase skirts all day among other nefarious activities. You commonly see them walking around half-naked in the slums of Manila. (A city which I think deserved its new title as the "Gates of Hell." Its city hall is shaped like a casket though, which the great Dan Brown could have used instead of exposing the world to our pollution.)

("Sup?")

My worst nightmare as a professional would be being stuck in the newsroom. Aside from being a waste of my time and wit, in there, people are always under high pressure and are criminally underpaid. Imagine it. Everybody's taking phone calls, flipping through pages, and walking back and forth to the print room. It's all a bustle as your work gets chopped and diced by the proofreaders, editors, and lawyers upstairs who have their eyes out for libelous statements. Hey, look at the bright side. If you're a really good boy, you could make senior partner in 40 years! 

("Yes, hello. This is Dave from the Manila Times calling... *Puts phone down.*")

Old people whose view of life is it's a dark place where you have to gut yourself for money have a term for my kind of ambition: "Champagne wishes, and caviar dreams."

I don't want to be 30 and still be driving a Kia. By 25, I'm thinking of already putting down mortgages. By 40, I want to be driving a Tesla around town in Givenchy. By then, I'd be bedding 22 year old models just to see if I've grown immune to Cialis. The only thing I'll be worried about is my liver--since I would have had much Glenfiddich by then. 

A wise man once said "If people don't laugh at your dreams, you're not aiming high enough." So are you laughing yet? No? Then Google Cialis.

Professionally, my dream would be travelling around the world and soaking myself in its cultures. I want to write about Coachella, SXSW, The Bamboozle, The Warped Tour and Lollapalooza. The Eurockeenes, Hellfest, and especially about the Sonic Protest. My eyes ache Festival de Cannes, Glasgow, Actionfest, and TIFF. I want to play Egypt's u'd, Japan's koto, heck, even the didgeridoo!

My mom made it to Narita, Calgary, and Los Angeles. Now that she's in a call center, it's her turn to envy me.

Now, from my extensive use of proper nouns that made it sound like I'm talking gibberish, you can derive an ego complex in my person. Like, "Gosh. How obvious do I have to be?" This gave me an idea to take up law, though it's a lesser choice since I'll be studying for at least another 5 years. (It takes 3 years to earn Juris Doctor in a U.S. school, 1 year of study for the LSATs, and another year of study for the bar.) Having a lawyer in the family is always a hallmark of prestige because your brain (almost literally) has to bleed for it.

Another dream of mine is becoming a film writer and director. I mentioned Glasgow, so you might have seen this coming. If I pursue this, I want to start in television. Every time I lay eyes on a Filipino matinee and even  on "Primetime" shows, something burns inside. Shows today are either remakes of something done before or silly ideas forced together to form a plot. Take "Be Careful With My Heart" for example. Sure, it's sweet and riddled with one-liners. But a young, handsome aviation tycoon falling in love with a provincial maid? As far-fetched as that premise is, it has been done so many times that if you watch every piece of film with the same story line, you'd be watching for eternity. And have you seen "Indio?" If you haven't, then good. It's ridiculously scripted, unimaginative, and is downright awkward. I mean it's a history lesson with fairies! It's as if a twelve year old read his Sibika book and wrote the whole plot. If I ever come to film, I'm gonna recreate television while preparing myself for making movies.

So, that's it. A few pages of my future's blueprints. Before I reach my 21st birthday, these could all have changed. It's only human to acquire new aspirations as you move on in life. But right now, I am in love with culture. And I am hoping it loves me back.