weird, wonderful, whatnot...

thursday afternoon, classes had been called off earlier. i passed by lsac and was watching the news before going to powerplant to have a really late lunch.

joan came by...

ryan: hay naku, sayang ang ice cream sa pen...

joan: oo nga eh. punta kaya tayo dun, baka discounted ang mga cakes...

ryan: sige!

(laughter ensues)

-----------------

if that disturbance (i refuse to call it anything other than a disturbance kasi nanggugulo lang talaga sila) brought me anything good. yun ay walang prac court dahil wala pa kaming pleadings. haha!

# posted by ryan quan @ 9:34 PM 4 comments

i realized i haven't written anything on issues and all in my blog for the past months. it was intentional. for sometime now, i took a shot at being less involved in these things. i somehow got tired of having to always analyze things and giving my opinion after weighing both sides of the story. but i guess it's in my system . with what happened in makati the other day, i just have to write something.

my thoughts...

first on trillanes. he may probably have nice intentions or great ideas for change in society. i give that to him. but thursday's incident was outrageous (for lack of a better term). did he actually think he could suddenly topple down the government by walking out of a hearing, then going to a posh hotel to duplicate his failed oakwood seige? (in fairness, sosyal, at kelangang sa hotel pa talaga) the guy is really adept at getting media attention. he would later surrender. which makes me think, what is really his intention? to grab media attention? to get the people's sympathy? or wala lang, trip lang talaga? kung gusto talaga nya, eh di sana, patay na lang kung patay, walang susuko.

the thing that really ticked me off (leading me to make this post) is the arrest of the media people who were covering the event. while the media in our country may be far from ideal, the fact remains that they are humans whose rights deserved to be respected. these people were just doing their jobs, and to be accused by the police of getting in the way of their operations was utterly unfair. the media people were treated like a bunch of criminals stuffed into a bus to be brought to bicutan. really degrading... so much for dignity of the human person.

speaking of the police and military, i think what they did was an overkill. sinira ang hotel, nagpasok ng tank sa hotel lobby (tama si levie, it's not everyday that you see a tank ram into a hotel entrance), name it, (gagawin o ginawa na) nila. doing their job is one thing, but doing it properly is quite another. grabe, how they think themselves as gods who would succumb to no one in order to, as they claim, do what they are told to do. while they can arrest the people violating the law, they should give respect to the rights of these people, they still have basic rights as human beings. i remember during the last elections, my dad asked me why i didn't vote for trillanes or lacson. my answer was quite simple. i have a bias against people from the military and the police, because of their "outstanding" track record in terms of observing human rights. while i concede that there are (a few) good men and women in their ranks, the presumption for me is that they always tend to disregard human rights.

overall, the entire country is at the losing end in all aspects (political, economic, etc.) we really have a knack for making a fool out of ouselves in front of the whole world. hay...

feel free to disagree with me. we're in a democratic country, after all.

# posted by ryan quan @ 9:24 PM 0 comments

it's that time of the year again when i still have a major hang-over of the sembreak that was. i haven't quite gotten back to the groove of studying. more accurately, i'm still too lazy to even think of studying. (it is during these times that i can say that in more that 3 years of law school, i have mastered the art of pretending to study)

but fate has it's own (harsh) way of telling me that it's back to reality for me. in 3 days, i got called in remedial law review class twice, and yes, i was asked to sit down twice also. in other words, hiniya ko na naman ang sarili ko. (as flory would put it. haha!) i'm thinking... that i should be used to this by now. in a way, i am. pero pangit lang ng feeling. oh well...

i hope to be able to "break-in" after this week and get back on track (as if i had any choice).

# posted by ryan quan @ 8:41 PM 0 comments

"tingnan mo, yung pinaghirapan nyo ng isang taon, mabilis lang matatapos..." this was what one of the suppliers told me as the wedding ceremony was about to start. i then started to sink in that the day we've all been waiting was already there. while i have been extremely busy preparing for the event, the questions that kept bugging my mind were "did we miss out on anything?" or "what else should we do?" or "who should be followed up?", it was only minutes before the wedding did i realize that this was "the day."

last sunday (11 november 2007), my brother ron got married to his fiance-now-wife arlene. we (both of them, my 2 cousins lelyn and grace, and myself) have been preparing for this event since october or november of 2006. since day 1 of the preparations, i sort of placed "unneccessary" pressure upon myself to make sure that everything would turn out great on the big day. i relied much on the thought that lelyn and i were so used to organizing activities back in college. but at the back of my mind, i knew that this was not "any activity." it was a "real" event and it couldn't get more real. for the love of god, it is my brother's wedding. more pressure. so we got ourselves together and summoned all our seemingly-rusty event-organizing skills and started to prepare everything. from project plans to calendars to checklists, name it, we've go it.

the yearlong preparations (in between my law classes, lelyn's masters classes and her teaching job, and grace's nursing classes and hospital duties) really went by fast (as with everything), but not without the countless coffee-shop hopping for late-night meetings (as lelyn and/or i were only available after class hours), endless laughter, (my) rare flare-ups, occasional meetings with suppliers, and late nights in front of the computer to satisfy my obsessive-compulsive nature (either encoding stuff or having art attacks). not to forget, the staple orange clear folder and lelyn's pink notebook with the minutes and deadlines. plus the (bonus) tagaytay-batangas summer trip which was for pictorials but we made it a convenient excuse to go out of town for a much-needed summer vacation.

the day before the wedding, we checked-in the hotel and instantly turned the hotel room into a war room of sorts. what with the laptop and printer set up and all the labeled paper bags neatly piled in different corners of the room and the papers and post-its on the wall. it was quite a sight. haha! it was a sleepless night, maybe because of excitement or the caffeine fix we had at the last minute. (yes, i badly needed to go to starbucks to do some last-minute unwinding.)

funny how i kinda put a time in the schedule for everything that we had to do on the wedding day. grace made sure that we were on time with the scheduled activities for the day. (note, we even had time to take a 20- or 30-minute dip into the pool that morning. to relax for a long day, as grace puts it). and to cater to my vanity needs, i had to ensure that i would look good in the photos, i had to rush to the salon that same morning to have my haircut. hehe! then everything commenced. church. back at hotel. check preparations for the reception. checking sounds, etc. then the reception proper (which i call pistang-bayan, with the number of guests). good thing, we had very able and efficient coordinators for the day so weren't as ngarag that day. (much thanks jen, cathy, mich, tina, and... i didn't catch his name. hehe!)

the following morning, i found myself in the jacuzzi after breakfast. i was busy relaxing that i sort of intentionally didn't attend to any phone calls or SMS that morning.

the wedding went well, i think. or at the very least, none of the minor problems that came up were left unresolved. despite the sleepless nights, countless cups of coffee (and frapps), the pressure, high emotions, inggitera bitches who didn't (or we're not willing to) help out (even with simple things like putting cheesecakes into the fridge), food binges and diets, seemingly endless phonecalls and text messages, and everything in between, i could say that the wedding went well.

to our suppliers, we couldn't thank you enough for making our lives (or at least the preparations) much easier.

to my co-organizers lelyn and grace, congrats to us! we nailed this one down! hehe!

and of course, to ron & arlene, congratulations to you both. we are so happy for you! god bless! :)

the "first event" is done. on monday, i go back to law school...

[more pictures to follow]

# posted by ryan quan @ 1:27 PM 0 comments