delinquent me

Juggling work and school and of course, my responsibilities at home, has left me in a sorry, disoriented state as of the moment. good thing rachele (my girlfriend of 30 months and a half who works in Manila) came home to Bacolod for the long weekend. Her presence lightened me up. But work and school remained demanding. I survived the long weekend but not without getting unsatisfactory grades in Journ 216 Writing for Broadcast and missing an important assignment in Journ 259 Theories in Journalism. The recent events have also denied me time to blog. Again, I am a delinquent blogger, which was my official status during the summer.


Rachele and me with the nasty zit

My recent failures have again thrown me into the depths of self doubt. I overcome this feeling when I churn in what I felt was a good, well-written story on my page. I'm bracing myself for the worst this week with three other long stories due to another publication where I contribute. I know I'll pull through and when I do, I'll have to buy something that I deserve. For now, though, I don't deserve anything. Not even a pat in the back or a dime.

On a positive note, Im taking this opportunity to congratulate a few close friends who are now registered nurses after passing the June board exams. Kudos to Camille and Lime.


nurse Camille

waiting for the rankings

I'm sleepy and aching to get a hold of the controller of my PS2 console at home. But I can't go home yet. It's just one of those days when I'm held hostage by Page 1, Page 3 and the Jump Page.

Yeah, you know them. As much as I love the challenge of laying them out and feel a sense of satisfaction of seeing them on print the next day, closing Pages 1, 3 and the Jump Page is so damn tiring. I closed the sports page really early, bracing myself for my Page 1 adventure.

I'm sitting on my boss' comfy chair, which is quite a luxury actually since I'm confined to a monobloc chair on normal days (sometimes, i don't have to scour the other floors in the office just to get a chair). So okay, I'm waiting for the rankings of the story determined by the editor-in-chief.

I guess I would have to deal with this tonight. I'm going to do this again tomorrow but I'm not looking ahead.

Time to put the paper to bed.

Spellbinding!

I'm currently engrossed reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's timeless classic "love in the time of cholera". Yes, I know what some of you are thinking... SHAME ON ME for reading the book this late in my life.

I know I should have read this last year when nanay sent it in one of her balikbayan boxes. But no, I didn't. I was too busy balancing work and school. But now, that I am having a break from my MA in Journ classes, I try to read more. GGM's classic is the fourth book I have gotten hold since June. I have yet to finish the three others, two of which I got on sale, a reflection of my erratic personality and short attention span.

So far, Im on page 24. And GGM has got me under his spell. The descriptions are vivid. The laws of reality are suspended, which makes reading the love triangle evolving in the book a great luxury.

Actually, it was a friend, Marc Reyes of Inquirer, who introduced GGM's work to me in one of our drinking sessions in Iloilo City, where we were covering the 2005 Palarong Pambansa. I've been eyeing the 100 years of solitude book at NBookstore but didn't push through with my plan buying it. Instead, I waited for my nanay to send GGM's works to me.

How GGM weaves his stories and links descriptions and takes you to a surreal world are stuffs writers should emulate. His book is a good reference for creative writing classes. Speaking of creative writing class, the book could have come in handy when I read it prior to my CW class under Rayvi Sunico. It would have conditioned my inept brain, squeezed out a little creative juice as I did assignments in class.

Return

I'm back after taking a break from blogging for a week. Truth is I wanted to stay away from the Internet but there's no escaping it. I need the wires for my sports page, I need to check my email for possible stories. Speaking of emails, I have this phobia of opening my gmail account and see something from Ms. Ingrid Rotmann of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the sponsor of my MA in Journalism studies at the Ateneo. My report is long overdue. Last April, she suspended my scholarship because I failed to submit my report. (So finish it immediately!). Fortunately, she didnt relay the news of the suspension of my scholarship to the Asian Center for Journalism class, hence, I was enrolled and got to spend the summer in the big city and had loads of cash, perhaps the biggest in my 23 years of my existence.

****

In the local sports scene, I am closely following the turn of events involving the Bacolod-Negros softball team which is scheduled to compete in the Junior League World Series in Kirkland, Washington from Aug. 12-18. Members of the team were granted visas yesterday and are all fired-up for the tournament. Problem is they ain't got no tickets yet! Philippine Airlines is one probable company which can help out but that remains to be seen. The team has actually reserved tickets for a Thursday flight to the US but it is unlikely it will be released by the local travel agency, which granted them a fly-now pay-later deal last year. Unfortunately, their fund-raising campaign in the US last year wasn't enough to pay for everything, hence the unsettled account. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been covering the team since 2004. That year, three Bacolod teams made it to the World Series in Portland, Kirkland and Sussex, Delaware. Back then, the Ba-Neg girls carried the name Bacolod Central. Most of the players were students of Education Training and Center School.

It's a bit sad that the girls are hardly meriting attention from the national media. I recalled reading a feature on the International Little League of Manila Major League 11-12 squad that was also bound to the US. In full color and with several portraits and candid shots of the girls having fun, the feature came out on 2Bu of Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Reading the feature actually prompted me to rush to ETCS as well to gather data for my long-overdue feature on the Ba-Neg girls. I published my work the following day and actually got a positive review from my journ professor, Sir Allen Del Carmen. I sent the story to Inquirer, hoping to see it printed. But the sports pages have been tight the past few days and I was pretty much disappointed that it hasn't been printed. Self-doubt hovers whenever this happens. Was my story not good enough? Still, I remain hopeful.

*****

Meanwhile, the Philippine Basketball Association, Asia's first play-for-pay league, has suffered another blow with the resignation of disbarred lawyer Noli Eala as its commissioner. Eala's resignation came a week after the Supreme Court ordered his disbarment because of gross immorality.

It's been an awful August so far for basketball. An NCAA player, Paolo Orbeta, was arrested for alleged point shaving last week. And the well-funded Philippine Team missed out on an Olympic berth. Hope these three incidents would convince marketing people to stop putting their money in basketball.

There's always football, which still doesn't have a professional league, and of course, boxing, the sport that will give us our first Olympic gold medal.

On late deadlines.

I did not intend to write about the RP-Lebanon basketball game in the 4-nation Manila Invitationals because I had no idea if it will be aired by ABC5. But the network did and because I set another "late" deadline for my page, I wrote a game story, knowing that the broadsheets may not be able to include the game story because of their early deadline.

One advantage of working for a provincial newspaper, like the one that I work for, is that we have a very flexible deadline. And sometimes, I tend to abuse it. hehehe. Since my return from Manila late in May, my attention has been called a couple of times by our editor-in-chief on my deadlines.

But as much as I want to put my page to bed early, its just not possible, especially because I am a one-man army in the sports page and readers expect a page full of local stories. So my apologies to DAILY STAR readers. I can only do so much.

I dont want to justify my ocassional incompetence. Im just assuring those who follow the DAILY STAR that Im doing my best to make their sports page as good as possible. And when I say good, its not just the design or the layout, but also the fact that the stories are accurate, factual and objective.

The late deadline has actually given me the luxury of watching the Asian Cup and the Philippine Basketball Association as well as the RP Team's games recently. I call it a luxury because I am passionate about sports.

Writing about the games is just a bonus. *