ang blog ng isang engot

2nd essay.
Not sure which one I’ll present, but I’m currently leaning towards the first essay. Company-wide speech contest will be held sometime in November.
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Cramming

“The assignment is due next week right? I’ll do it after playing.”
“I’ll do the project later. The deadline is still 5 pm. I’ll still have time in the afternoon.”
“I know that the essay is due in an hour. Don’t worry. I can do it in five minutes.”

Yes, I am a crammer. I tend to postpone things for as long as I can. It’s not that I have more important things to do at the moment; it’s just that, at the moment, I don’t feel like doing the things that need doing.

For as far back as I can remember I have always been like a crammer. I don’t mean to brag but, even during my elementary years, understanding the lessons were not difficult for me. So even if I review the lessons just a few minutes before an exam, although I may not get the highest score, I could almost always get scores that were high enough to guarantee me a place in the honor’s list. I think this is one of the main reasons why I’m such a crammer: I could get away with it during exams.

Although I have to admit that projects and laboratory reports were a different matter altogether. High school was when I first encountered laboratory reports for science classes, and it was just impossible for me. Having gotten used to the crammer ways, I think that for the whole four years of high school, I was only able to submit about five lab reports on time. And I think that’s an over-estimation. An average person would have changed his ways by then, but I’d like to think of myself as not an average person – my quizzes and exam scores were high enough, that even with all the points deducted from my late lab reports, and even though I was no longer in the honor’s list, my grades actually belong in my class’s average.

I am already working now, and the thing is, I still cram. A lot. I know that I should change my ways, and believe me I have tried. But the thing is, cramming actually works for me. Not only that, I seem to have gotten addicted to the rush of it – the pressure of trying to beat the deadline that is just moments away, the uncertainty of whether I’ll be able to do it or not, and that sense of victory after having actually done it. Another plus would be that my brain seems to work better during cramming.

I have accepted my cramming so fully that I actually was able to make an excuse/alibi/retort: The reason why I was able to pass my exams was because I listened to the teacher while she was explaining the lessons. I asked questions when there were things I did not understand. That was why I understood the lessons without having the need to study again nights before an exam. All that’s left to be done is a memory refresher that could be done minutes before an exam. There is really no cramming done because I have actually done my studying on time.

Side note: As I was writing this essay, I stumbled upon an interesting fact. In Japan, a slang for cramming for an exam is糞勉強, which, if taken by parts, translates to shit (糞) study (勉強). 

I might join my company’s Nihongo speech this November. For that purpose, I wrote two essays (Not really sure if there are differences in the contents of an essay and a speech.).
Since it’s a Nihongo speech contest, I’ll still have to translate what I’ve already written in English.

First one is below. Will Upload the other one in a separate post.

母親の料理 (Mom’s Cooking)

From as far back as I can remember my mom would cook for us almost every meal of every day. She may not be that much of a chef, but, having eaten her creations for such a long time, it no longer makes much difference whether what she made was delicious or not – she made them, so we eat them. Don’t get me wrong; I have eaten from a lot of places and I could judge my mother’s cooking to be above average.

Among the things we almost always request are her adobo and sinigang; those two are some of her specialties. However, having come from a not-so-small middle class family – all in all, there are nine of us – feeding that number of people every day with meat would take a lot, causing for times when we have to make do. And no matter how much my sibling and I protest – the greater majority of protests coming from me – we sometimes have to eat fish and vegetables. I hate fish and vegetables.

Whether mom’s cooking is delicious or not is not the issue here – if it is fish or vegetable, I refuse to it (I think this is the main reason I’m quite short and thin.). And since I refuse to eat, my mom would let me buy from the neighbor some barbecue. Yup, I’m such a terrible and spoiled child. I guess my mom just gave up after all those years that I flatly refused to eat unless the meal has either pork, or chicken, or beef in it.

But circumstances above are up to two years ago. On May 2008, I left Davao City to work here in Makati City. I left home, and as such, left behind my mother’s cooking as well. Now, I can buy all the food I want, eat anywhere I want. Now, all my meals really are just pork or chicken or beef. I never have to fish or vegetable if I don’t want to. Also, I could now eat as much as I want to at Jollibee, or McDonald’s or all those other fast-food chains that I usually could just wish about before. Working away from home surely has great perks!

Curiously enough, it did not make me as happy as I originally thought it would. It’s not that I got tired of eating only pork and beef and chicken; I definitely would still choose them above fish and vegetable. I think it’s partly because of the taste. I mean, every eatery can cook up adobo or sinigang; but it’s not the same adobo and sinigang taste I grew up to love. I’d have to admit that my mom’s sinigang is sometimes too flavorful or sometimes bland, but still, overall it’s the same sinigang. I miss my mom’s adobo and sinigang.

I think another reason for my general lack of happiness over food is that I have to do it myself. By ‘myself’, I don’t mean the actual cooking; these days, I have to think about eating, when before all I had to do was eat. I now have to think of what I will eat, where I will eat – and I guess, for me the whole thinking process takes a lot of the fun out of the eating itself. There’re just too many choices when before there was only the food my mom cooks at home.

But if I am to be honest, I would say that the main reason is that, more than my dislike of fish and vegetable, I hate eating alone. And I especially hate eating alone on Sundays. Seeing all those families eating out and enjoying each other’s company, well, it reminds so much of home that I lose my appetite. Like I said earlier, I come from a not-so-small family, and eating at home is always a riot. No matter how busy each of us is, we always try to find time to eat together the meals mom prepares for us. It’s as if mom’s cooking has some special magic in it that draws to us to the dining table to enjoy the food, and each other’s company.

Yup, there’s no denying it. I miss home, and mom’s cooking. 