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BINHI Reflection

 Going out on an exposure trip is nothing new to me. I have been going out on exposure and immersion trips for years now. The community we went to was a Gawad Kalinga village. I honestly cannot say that this trip felt any different. If anything, I resented going because I find the entire concept of Gawad Kalinga problematic at times (I always believed that charity work without work to change the systematic conditions that keep people impoverished is ultimately useless). However, other than that fact, I was able to talk to the people there with a better understanding of the situation they lived in. We had been sitting there, talking to the mother of the household when the differences between our realities became clear.

She had been nursing her child as we talked (I tried to carry the baby but it would cry when I tried holding it). Duterte somehow came up in the conversation and to my shock, she was a supporter. Being in the posh and highly scholarly Ateneo for more than a semester, I realized then that I never actually met someone who wholly believed and supported Duterte in real life; I always saw them as faceless trolls on the internet. But here she was, and this was not the image of a Ka-DDS that I have always had in my head. There in front of me was a working mother of four children who wanted to finish her studies to provide for her family. The belief and confidence she had in Duterte was genuine, and I knew she truly believed things have improved ever since he came to power. According to her, ever since Duterte came to power, the streets she lived in no longer had drug addicts getting high right outside their streets. They felt so much safer.  

It hit me then how different my habitus was from hers. There I was, on top of that hill, using all these academic lenses to see all the anomalies of the administration but I never dared traverse the ground to see what was going on there. I got lucky in life: I live in a middle class neighborhood, I have a loving family, I have food on the table every day, I get to go to one of the most prestigious schools in the country. I have all these dispositions in life because of whom I was born to. I get to see things in a way that is unique to those who share a similar habitus.  Others were not as lucky. Others do not have enough money for a quality education; they do not even have enough to have three meals a day. We see the world differently because of the positions life had put us in.

I am not about to give you an entire spiel about how grateful I am. If anything, it is a reason to be indignant, indignant of the broken society that keeps perpetuating this cycle of inequality. While I am all for using our privilege for the betterment of others, let us also not see ourselves as saviors of the poor. We are not. The only way to even the playing field known as life is to fix the system itself, so that our privilege becomes a human right, so that we may create an environment for others that is gives them the same chances we do.          

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Online vs Offline Identities (told through Avengers memes)

Offline Identities

My parents see me as a virtuous and dignified person, the kind that studies hard and tries her best all the time, just like Captain America, who always tries to do the right thing. They just see me as a good kid.  

During night outs,  my friends see how much I drink and they also see how cocky and aggressive I become when I drink too much. Even outside of the bar however, my friends see how much I love martial arts and they like making jokes about how people should not mess with me. Valkyrie also likes to drink and is a great fighter. Nonetheless, she still fights for what she thinks is right (even if it takes her some time to come around).

Captain Marvel is a powerhouse and you can only hope that she’s part of your team. My classmates and blockmates see me as a very useful and reliable person when it comes to group projects. I even carried an entire group’s grades once during the first semester (I was the leader who did 70% of all the work because no one else was doing it). 

Online Identities 

Just like Tony Stark, I seem to be very confident and intelligent when I am on Twitter. I do not care much about how others think about me so when I wanna rant about something or if I want to call someone out, I do it on Twitter. I am also more honest with who I am and I feel like I do not have to hide it when I am on that platform.

I feel like I have to be more careful about divulging information on Facebook. Just like the spy Black Widow, I have to be aware of who I am sharing this knowledge with (e.g. I cannot openly state that I am pansexual because I have conservative relatives). I also have to have the ability to “change my persona” because the people I am connected with through Facebook are very mixed; I have friends, families, teachers and more.    

Though I do not use this platform as much, i used to write poetry and post it on Tumblr. Some of that poetry are really dark and sad. Scarlet Witch is probably one of the Avengers who had the most taken from her. She has a lot of angst that I think is reflected with the content I posted before.  

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Bonus Blog (Spring Awakening)

Growing up can be hard. Your body starts to change and you begin to feel all these strange urges you cannot explain. Now imagine growing up in 19th century Germany, Where, to speak about matters of the sex is akin to signing your name in the book of the devil. We see our young heroes enamored by matters of the sex but shamed into silence. 

The taboo we see in Spring Awakening regarding sex was the norm at the time. If one were to ask Sigmund Freud however, this is completely normal. Although wrong with a majority of his ideas, his idea of sexual repression was somewhat true. Although it may not necessarily lead to hysteria, it could definitely lead to confusion. We see our heroine ask her mother, beg her even, to explain to her where babies come from. However, the mother refused to tell her child the truth, saying that babies were born from the love of a man and woman. 

We see sex in this play as something to be desired by our primal instinct, our id. The children can be symbolic of the ego with the adults being the superego. There is a clear battle of whether or not to gratify that desire, but because sex is never talked about, and only felt, the heroine did not know the consequences of making love. She was curious, all of the kids had felt curious and enamored by sex. She became pregnant with our hero’s child. When she found out, she cried out to her mother “Mama, why didn’t you tell me?” At that point, our heroine is slapped. Our heroine was then forced to have a risky abortion, resulting in her untimely death. When our hero, our heroine’s lover, finds out, he nearly kills himself. One cannot help but think of what would happen if only they have known what could happen, if only they were told. If there is one thing that Freud got right, is that to want sex is natural for humans. Spring Awakening stresses the importance of being open with one’s sexuality, while being responsible in our indulgence of our desire.      

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What I think she thinks of me VS What she really thinks of me

When the prof announced that we need someone to write about ourselves, I got nervous. I got nervous because no one really came to mind right away. Everyone else seemed to know the person to approach for a description except for me. So I just wrote what I thought what people generally thought of me. Neutral adjectives because I am neither proud or self-deprecating.  

A day or two later, my old friend from UPLB suddenly messaged me, asking for advice. We started talking again, Nagkamustahan kami. Then I realized that I could ask her for a description. So I did.  

I was surprised with her descriptions. I would never imagine to describe myself that way. She did not describe me in a way that was too overwhelmingly positive, nor did she say anything malicious. She described me in the honest way that she sees me. She mostly used adjectives I would never use to describe myself. Other than “straightforward”, there was not really anything in common in our paragraphs. 

And it is strange because even I do not see myself that way, but oddly enough, I understand why I would come across to her that way. I do put up certain masks around certain people, i just never realized that that is what my impression on her is.   

I guess it just made me realize about how different we exist in the minds of others, as well as their own. 

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FREE HUGS!!!

So we decided to give free hugs last week and this is how it went. 

My groupmate Teo and I felt a bit embarassed going around the campus with these signs but hey! We give (and get) free hugs. Here’s some of the wonderful people who availed of our hugs. 

This is our blockmate, one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. 

TRAIN HUGS 

This is my friend who was too busy doing math to get a hug but she eventually gave in! (I don’t like math but I love my friend hence this picture) 

You might be wondering, “why hugs?”. Well, according to our an article from time.com, hugs help reduce negative emotions because it allows us to show how much we care.  Research has suggested that this is true regardless of age, gender, race etc. 

So starting today, I will always give away free hugs. 

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Things I was grateful for today (March 6, 2019)

1. I was on time today. I have been late a lot to my 8 am classes this semester. It’s my first time commuting this early, this often. I could never quite gauge the traffic in Marikina because the FX drivers would take different routes depending on who’s riding. And I know that the common response to this is that I should leave my house earlier. But I think this kind of thinking shifts the blame. Traffic is a real problem that costs our country billions of pesos everyday, as well as wasting hours of our time. It’s a broken system we all have to sadly adjust to. AT least I have been able to do it today though.     

2. I got to spend time with my friends and I feel myself becoming closer to them. This is something I always take for granted. Hanging out with my friends and blockmates have become such a normal thing for me that I forgot that there was a time that I was terrified I would not be able to do that. I used to be scared that I won’t have any friends in college but now that I do, I forget to be more grateful to have them now. Also, a friend is opening up more to me. He’s generally closed off and the fact that he feels comfortable enough to finally open up a bit means a lot. Lastly, I got to help a friend out. She had forgotten to submit an assignment but had already left campus.   

5. I got to commute home with my crush. I recently learned that we live in the same barangay in Marikina so with the prompting of my friend, I finally worked up the nerve to ask him if he wanted to commute together. He said yes! I also ended up learning a new route that saves money.  

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My lips may speak English but my mind is for the Filipino. 

Being a writer is an integral part of who I am. I mainly use English whenever I write (be it creatively or formally) because it is the language that I was brought up in. All the books, shows, movies, and music I was exposed to were in English, because of this, I actually learned English before I learned Filipino. There was a time my family thought I was unable to speak at all because I cannot respond to them. As it turns out, it was only because I did not know how to speak Filipino. That changed over the years of course, I could speak Filipino easily without any accent. Writing and reading in Filipino, however, was a different matter whatsoever. I was never really able to master either. As a writer who is also a Filipino, this could be devastating to me at times, because how can I claim to love my country if I cannot write for its people? The truth is, I cannot say that I will ever be able to fully master the language to the same extent that I have mastered English. That does not mean I am not trying though! I have recently begin trying to read more basic Filipino literature to practice myself. I fully believe that I am no less a Filipino if I do not use the national language as the medium of my writing.I still believe that I can still use my skills as a writer to serve the country, even if it is in English. At the end of the day, I was born and raised in this country, I have experienced what it is like to be Filipino. 

In a way, writing about Filipinos in English might allow me to better introduce my country to this shrinking world.