can be the most interesting, at times.

i'm now officially a tea junkie. okay, maybe not high-quality exotic tea like jasmine or chamomile or something, just off-the-supermarket-shelf lipton tea. as of friday night, i've drank over 15 mugs' worth of tea, 5 of which from this morning. it feels great to find something so refreshing yet healthy to be addicted to.

bowling is actually proving to be a productive pe 2 lesson. albeit the costs of commuting and use of the facilities, i'm actually learning something. our first official game left me with a score of 133, probably half of which came from the defective scoring system in our lane. we had that taken care of (manually) this afternoon, and i came out with a score of 91 and 141. now, not to be boastful (okay, maybe a bit), the 141 came from a line of strikes, spares, and 9-pin frames. in fact, 2, 5, and 3 respectively. to put it in a cliché, "i was on a roll."

the salubungan ng mga tala came after our bowling class. we took a lot of time preparing for this, meeting for choir practices with 2010, cutting the cellophane stars for the costumes (so cute!), and spending so much extra time for the practices than for other stuff (namely sleeping). too bad it had to turn out like it did. it was... disappointing, to say the least. not that the program was bad by any means. we enjoyed prancing around upm, transferring the parols (haha, super misuse of taglish right there) from one building to another.

but the thing about it is, it was so informal. just the group of people parading and carolling around, a short song by the faculty, then moving on to the next one. in fact, we were the only ones in costume. heck, we were the only students! our well-practiced chorale pieces, composed by 2010's musical virtuosos, then seemed to be inappropriate for the festive, flexible theme of the event. we became the event's portable choir, parading along with the group, singing one song every stop. we ended up singing 3 of our original 5 songs, but we totally blew the atin nang salubungin piece with 4 voices. i enjoyed singing pasko na, sinta ko with only the male voices since it was the closest piece to informal we had. oh well, at least we know what to do next year: not to overthink it, and just to have fun.

after the program, we watched campus idol. it's a sort of american idol-ish event, first in up manila then among different colleges. 2 imed batchmates participated in the event, i think they were the only freshmen in it too. robee was a bit nervous at the start, he kept eating his words and breaking on the long notes. but towards the end, he just hit the high ones like nobody's business. but it was vj who surprised us the most. he's usually reserved and quiet during classes, but what met us during the show was a singing sensation. the deep baritone voice just blew everyone else away (in my opinion). his choice of song was just right for him, and one could see the imed girls just swooning over him down the stage. god, i wish i had a voice that deep and resonant. oh yeah, the emcee also had a great bass voice. puberty, just a few more steps please...

now i'm at home, and should be packing clothes for the trip but am too stubborn to listen to my dad. i'm also fretting about my costume for tomorrow's christmas party. we were asked to wear something we wouldn't normally wear. so any suggestions please, aside from the all-too-common panty/bra/napkin comment. i'm thinking uber-large shirt (all i wear are my slim-fits nowadays) and super-short shorts (swimming trunks, actually) and it looks like i'm not wearing anything for the lower part.

but maybe something not *too* drastic.