At this point I don't really care if this is well written, I just want to get it out. I just want closure.

Tuesday two weeks ago, Fr. David, my theology professor, assigned 500+ pages of reading for the next day. I had already been cramming all of my studies to make room for The Republic so I'd forgotten to write an essay assigned for another class that day. When I went home to work on the essay during my hour and a half class because I'd left the questions at home, I discovered that MS Word was bugging out. This happened once before and after deleting some big files, it worked again, so that's what I did. When that didn't work, I turned the laptop off and when I tried to turn it on again, it just didn't do anything at all. I ended up writing my essay on lined paper and not submitting my design homework that was saved on the laptop.

The next night, my mom totally surprised me when she said I might be able to get the mac I was supposed to get the year before. Soon after, I was brought down to earth when I saw her again and she said it would be better to get a cheap laptop and wait until I'm working to get a better one. That was our game plan. I would have to wait another three years at least for my mac.

On Sunday, coming from my grandma's house, we stopped by gateway to canvass on laptops. To my surprise and delight, my dad was ready to buy a laptop that they had for sale only they didn't have stock. My brother, being my brother, hit me while I was down in asking my dad if I really even needed a laptop. Of course I didn't, of course I don't. I don't really need anything but oxygen if you really think about it. But having a laptop did make my life a hell of a lot easier especially since MS office on the Desktop was a trial version that had expired months ago and there I was required to submit a type written essay without a proper word processor.

The next Monday while I was minding my own business trying to catch up for David's class my mom says, "Lets buy it!" I wanted to study but my dad had called and told my mom to get it as soon as possible so that I could use it for school. Long story short, we called half a dozen shops and finally at 5pm we decided on a good deal at PCcorner on Gilmore ave. We weren't sure if we would make it before closing at 730 but I didn't want to have wasted all that study time and have nothing to show for it, so we went. And as luck would have it, there was absolutely no traffic on the way. It felt meant to be. We bought an even better laptop than the one we wanted and I went home more than satisfied.

On the same night, as I was closing the gate after my brother had parked his car in the garage, I told him the good news. He told me the bad news. He gotten, that day, a discount for a P83K laptop, he would only have to pay P45K for it. My heart sank in my chest. We told my dad, we pointed fingers and I thought that was that. Sure I would like to have had a better laptop but with how fast I got it and the fact that I got one better than the one I had set my lowered expectations on made me feel satisfied at getting a good deal.

Yesterday, coming home from Mt. Sembrano, my sister asked me if the laptop had a webcam. Then and there I realized that the flier said it did but I hadn't actually seen the webcam. I thought this might be grounds for returning the laptop so that I could get the more expensive one or at the very least I would get a free webcam so I told my parents about it and I went to the store today with my mom. I went in alone because she couldn't find parking.

Right off the bat, they offered me an external webcam. I also noticed that the old fliers had been replaced. My motivations being secretly beyond the issue of webcam, I asked if I could just return it. What they offered instead was an inferior model with a built in webcam plus P2000 credit a their store. I didn't bite. I SMS'd both my dad and my brother for advice and (after calling her cellphone) I discovered that my mom had parked too far away for her to join me at the shop and to help me argue my point. Basically my dad told me to ask my brother and my brother told me to take the free laptop. I made my last feeble attempt at a refund before calling my mom to come pick me up. While waiting for her outside, my dad SMS'd me telling me not to give in but just then, my mom arrived honking at me to get in the car already because of the traffic she was causing. From the car, I called my dad to tell him what happened and I told him that the 7day replacement policy would expire after today and that he should get there before 730pm if he wanted to try to argue himself. He said that he wouldn't be able to make it. Again, I left thinking that everything was finally over and that that was that.

Again I was wrong. My dad was pissed. He told me that I shouldn't have given in. He told me that the webcam wasn't enough and he told me that he would go back himself tomorrow and try himself. When he asked me for the flier that with the claimed webcam, I told him that I didn't have it, that I'd left it behind. He stormed out.

Later that night (this night), he told me it was like buying an Altis and being given a Vios. He was still bothered by it. He still planned to go to PCcorner the next day an to get everything straightened out. I told him that it might be better to get it replaced with the P83K laptop that my brother had a discount on and then have the discount reimbursed. With his regular employee discount, that's how it worked. But this was a special discount, my dad told me that, for this discount, we would have to pay by cash or by check. I did not know this. Had I known this, I wouldn't have been disappointed all week about a false prospect. I wouldn't have been stressing at all because I really don't care about the webcam that I'm never going to use anyway. I could have been happy from the beginning.

The thing I got from my father was that it was the principle of the matter.

If we're talking principles, is it better to fight an uphill battle for something that you don't really need, just to prove a point even if you already got a free webcam out of it? Is it really better to stress yourself out and to stress out everyone around you and to hassle the salespeople who are just doing their jobs just because you feel like you've been cheated out of something you never really had? If the original issue was to get me a laptop as fast as possible so that I could use it for school, where are your principles in delaying the whole thing just to appease your ego?

Try This!

My Lakbayan grade is C-!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

Why I Write

After having gone through some essays of famous writers about why they write, I would like to say that it is my passion to write. I would like to say that writing is in the very core of who or what I am, animating my body and that writing is as much a necessity in my life as the food in my stomach or the roof over my head. I would like to say that I cannot stand not to write or that my writing serves some abstract higher purpose, far beyond the gratification of my own ego; that I’m on some kind of quest into the frontlines of the human mystery. I would like to. But as they say, I would like to but I cannot.

I can say that I have a strong affinity to writing but I also hate writing every now and then. I think all writers do sometimes. We write to our master pieces in the security of our bedrooms under the disguise of “just a little something I’m working on” and we pour ourselves into them until they begin to reject us and they we hand them over to our friends to critic and we say about our master piece “Please read, it’s nothing much.”

I can say that every time I spot a new irony or discover an idiosyncrasy or even when I realize see something infinitely familiar in a completely different light, my first instinct is to mull over it in written words. But even these words sometimes have a tendency to mutate for the worse when the prospect comes along of having an audience. For some reason, the snot from my nose becomes the perfect color of avocado or the gum under my desk at school is fondled by a virgin lover.

I can say try to be profound and say that why I write is exactly to discover why I write. And then I can turn around and write a piece of short fiction with no other compulsion than that which comes from requirement as an assignment in FA 111.4 Writing Workshop 4: Fiction under the Fine Arts Department in the Ateneo de Manila University.

I can say that stuff, I can probably think of more stuff to say or I can just write!