Anonymous asked: TEAM #37!! :))
whoah :))
“George!” I shrieked, peering out through the small window in the bathroom.
George looked at me with flaring annoyance. But he understood what I was trying to say. Or what I would have said, if only fear hadn’t robbed me of my voice. I was tensed, watching my brother balance himself on the small ledge outside the second floor of our house. The pitch black darkness that enveloped the neighborhood faded in quick flashes of red and blue. On the road directly below him, three police cars waited with the crowd of everyone in the neighborhood, watching with the same intensity of suspense as I did.
The rage in his face was flushed away, and in a sudden he was pale with fear. I doubted that he feared the fall (or dying of it). From where I stood, I imagined what our mother would do if she ever heard of what we did. I can imagine her in fiery anger, shouting at us (“You could have killed yourselves!”), maybe even pinch our ears until they turned red.
Neither of us had thought of the night ending this way. Our mother was out to work. She served as a waitress in a small restaurant in town. Ever since our father left us when I was only four, she had to work for every cent that ended up in our pockets, as well as every bite of what the three of us ate. That night, George challenged me to a bet. He told me he could balance himself on the ledge of our second floor, and he wanted to prove it. Five weeks of my allowance if he could stay there for an hour without cowering back inside. I never thought he would actually do it, and immediately agreed.
When he was finally outside, walking farther and farther away, I was begging him to come back. I was telling him to stop being foolish, and to get his ass back inside. In desperation, I never realized that I had raised my voice to the point of shouting. I had alerted the neighbors. And when they saw big George on the ledge and me pleading for him to get back inside, they thought he was planning to jump and called 911, as well as everybody else who lived nearby. Moments later – though not too long – the cops arrived. And now everyone was down there, watching George in thrilled anticipation.
George was frozen, staring at me. Although from the look of it, I thought he was staring through me, as though I was nothing but glass on the window. In little steps, I saw him struggle his way on the ledge, back into the bathroom. But his legs were trembling and growing weaker and weaker. I thought he was going to fall halfway through. The cops finally came back after a moment of disappearance, holding two ladders, and began climbing for the kid who was going to jump from the second floor of their house.
I was rendered completely motionless, inside the bathroom, waiting, watching to see if George would fall down or make it back into the bathroom. Fortunate for him, though, the cops got him at the moment his right foot slipped and almost fell down on concrete. Our neighbors were both crying and shouting at him, telling him how much of a stupid and selfish boy he was. From the bathroom, I felt the fear fade from George, and what must have been left was a triumphant feeling. He had stayed on the ledge for two hours and he never went back inside.
“I own five weeks of your money,” he said when he got back inside the house, escorted by the cops who had decided to wait for our mother to come home.
My problem, however, showed itself halfway through our conversation, when I saw my mother through the living room window.
“Shit,” George said.
I agreed. Shit.
realisticallyoptimistic asked: I think it's completely awesome that you're writing at 14 and I don't say this to be patronizing because I'm only 20...but it's awesome because I didn't take my writing seriously until I was 17. So, congrats on being ahead of the game! :)
Thanks. Actually I’ve only started taking it seriously. I guess I just found it as a nice way of expressing my thoughts and myself in a way I won’t normally be able to do in front of other people. Also, writing is fun. I know you’ll agree. :)
I want to tell you something. Something that might not mean much to you, but I’ll tell it anyway because it just might be the last thing I do. I was out last night. I went out to get a can of beer from the store, and on my way back to my car, some guy suddenly approached me and held me at gunpoint. I didn’t see his face. His bandanna and cowboy hat covered much of his face that I only saw his eyes that shone grimly in the dim moonlight. He asked for my car. I wasn’t stupid. I was in a deserted street and already too far away from the store for anyone to see me. The road wasn’t a highway, just a wide clearing in the forest that covered much of the town. It was my life or my car. But when I gave him the keys, he shot me down anyway.
He said something to me as he entered the Volvo my father gave me when I just graduated from college. I didn’t hear him well. By then I was in a sort of trance, maybe not entirely, but my mind was already too far away. My entire life was flashing before my eyes. Mere images in a final slideshow just before everything is over. Memories from childhood and the days I’ve spent in my life, even those I thought I’ve long forgotten. All of them went by quickly, but the images that found time to stay in my mind were the memories of the days I shared with you. Part of it was because of longing, another was of fear, because I was filled with the dreadful certainty that I was never going to see you again. That the other night was the last time I’d ever get to hold your hand, and it filled me with sadness as well as fear.
I know that, the other night, the last time we saw each other we haven’t really been hitting the best notes. The night ended bitterly, with the decision that we break up a relationship we’ve been sharing since three years ago when we first met. I sounded sure back then, but just before everything went black and those memories of us were appearing before my eyes, I came to regret breaking up with you. I love you, and to death I know that I always will. I’m not quite sure if there is an afterlife, but if I ever meet you there maybe after a long time when you’ve already lived a good life, maybe with a husband and children who grew up famous, I’ll tap you in the shoulder like I did three years ago and greet you with a smile on my face. It was in college, remember? We were both seniors, and you were out worrying about your exams when I tapped you on the shoulder and said Hello. I remember your smile from back then, oh and how I fell for it too quickly.
I love you, maybe it takes more than saying it once for me to convince you. If you’ve reached this far, I’m hoping that you know by now how much of my heart you own. All of it, love, you own my heart and even when it stops beating, it will still long for the times that it did beat for you. And the times it bled for you. And the times it longed for you. Maybe I’ll miss missing you. Maybe I’ll miss all the moments we shared and all the moments we didn’t. I’ll miss the time I first told you I love you when we were sitting together on a bench in the park, alone in that night watching the stars above us shine like glitters on black paper. You made a poem that night, dedicated it to me, and I treasured it ever since. In that poem you told me you loved me, and I kept it for all my life because those were the words I was dying to hear from you. While I was falling to the ground in a film played in slow motion, my mind reminded me of how much I loved you. And how much I still do.
When I was on the ground lying on a pool of my own blood and waiting for me to take my last breath, there was one final thing that entered my mind. Right before I fell unconscious and everything finally went black, do you know what the last thing was that entered my mind? You. Always you.
What I Learned in Programming Class
The original name of the activity was Programming Camp. But for some reason, either they don’t know the definition of camp, or the word was used to make the name sound stylish (didn’t work, though), the “camp” turned out to be a summer workshop for programmers and hackers.
It’s like taking summer class, only there’s no shame in saying so, and it’s called summer camp even though it’s not really a camp, for the future Bill Gates and the next Steve Jobs. And for only the price of one hundred and fifty pesos (not including the fare expenses of going to Ateneo de Manila college, which is pretty much located at the edge of the world).
Today makes up day two of the workshop, and the topic was conditional statements in Java. Other than the realization that the Java language is dead similar to C and C++, I’ve learned pretty much a lot from today’s lecture.
1 - Computer Geniuses Look a Lot Like Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network
The guy who thought of Jesse Eisenberg’s look and style in the movie was a genius. I now think that Jesse (as Mark Zuckerberg) was dressed according to an underground stereotype of hackers.
Computer Swag
The guy who delivered the main lecture looked pretty much like Mark Zuckerberg as played by Jesse. According to the head coordinator of the program, he graduated from Ateneo some odd few years ago, and was actually the best among the program’s faculty and staff when it came to programming in hacking. In other words, she was saying that the guy was the lord of computer science, pretty much like the messiah of ones and zeroes.
He wore glasses with lenses as thick as the heel of the converse I was wearing, tee shirts under a really thick hooded jacket, and jeans matched with a clean pair of rubber shoes, very unlike the dirty pair I was wearing. His hair was curly and had a flare of hazel-brown when hit by the florescence of the multimedia lab. The first thought that entered my mind when first saw him in day one was: OH MY, IT’S FREAKING MARK ZUCKERBERG!!
2 - THERE’S A SHOW-DESKTOP FUNCTION IN ALMOST ALL VERSION OF WINDOWS
I learned this long ago, actually, when my father finally finished installing the operating system of our very first desktop computer. It was Windows 98 and, believe me, back then, I thought nothing could get better than what we had. Then came my childhood friend who had Windows XP in their computer, and I was caught up in the frenzy of “upgrading.” Less on that, however, the SHOW DESKTOP function has been stuck with Windows ever since the windows on the screen were finally capable of cascading. This would be post-Windows 3.x, when the operating system was finally a standalone software and users didn’t anymore need to learn MS-DOS.
When you had a billion open windows and you finally find the need to go to your desktop, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t proceed to minimizing each one after another. Windows 7 users would just go to the bottom-right area of their screen and click that small glass button at the edge of the taskbar. Or for users of earlier versions, it’s still as simple as right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting the “SHOW THE DESKTOP” option. Kids’ stuff, actually, but the first lecturer of the day showed me just how “kids’ stuff” this was. And it shows: it’s not.
I don’t know if he just forgot about the button that’s right there, a dead giveaway for a computer science student, or he really didn’t know about its function, but I was surprised when he went on minimizing each open window - I counted, six or seven were open - until he finally reached the desktop. His computer was running Windows 7, and I think he must be blind to not have seen the glass button in the corner of his screen.
This took time, but not too long. At least, though, it was long enough for me to realize that not all hackers could make lives easier with the help of computers.
3 - THERE’S NO CTRL+C COPY FUNCTION IN COMMAND PROMPT
As I mentioned earlier, since Windows was upgraded from 3.x, MS-DOS was beginning to die. A lot still trusted it, because it was already old and tried and tested to be a good business tool, but by the time Windows XP was released, the nostalgic black screen with gray text was sent to the grave. Perhaps that big computer warehouse in the heavens. But not entirely, because even up now, the era of Windows 7, the last living remnant of DOS is with us.
Introducing, the command prompt. It’s the same display as MS-DOS, but instead of DOS being the primary system and Windows being a software only for file management, it’s the other way around. MS-DOS is still used for sophisticated functions, although it is now a bit crippled and not as powerful and reliable as the original software. Computer hackers and programmers still use it, though, because it still is useful for complicated functions. Also, letting your friends see that you can operate in DOS prompt makes you look so damn smart.
It won’t help you get a girlfriend, though.
The first lecturer, again (not Mark Zuckerberg, though, he still is the lord of computers), tried to copy a file through the command prompt. But instead of using Windows, he went to the command prompt and somewhere along the line, he pressed CTRL + C.
Readers, let me give you a short history lesson. When DOS was made, the internet wasn’t alive yet. Computers still held a sinister connotation (so Jessica Zafra says), and even when they could practically fit inside a room, they still were only for the tech-savvies. There were no graphics on the screen, just an empty blackness where bulks of gray text is the way of input and output. And since the internet wasn’t around, and the average high school student can’t be expected to operate a computer, there was no need and no way to copy and paste anything other than files and folders. The CTRL + C and CTRL + V function still wasn’t born to bring laziness to billions of students around the world.
If you press any of the mentioned keyboard shortcuts, what would display on the screen is a disappointing “^C”. It means nothing because it’s perfectly nothing. It has a use, though, in terminating programs undergoing an infinite loop, but it won’t copy you a text from Wikipedia for your history assignment. So go back and hit the books, Timmy, and type with that typewriter of yours.
4 - COMMAND PROMPT MAKES YOU LOOK SMART. USE IT.
It won’t get you a girlfriend, remember that. And saying that you’re a computer student is pretty much enough for us to understand that the lecturer was a genius when it came to that field. But what I don’t get, however, was why he had to use command prompt when his objective was to copy a file from one drive to another. CTRL + C and V would work well in Windows, he’s using 7, for crying out loud!
5 - THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE YOUR TEST PROBLEMS DON’T UNDERSTAND IT, EITHER
As a finale in each class, all forty-five of us are asked to compete with each other in a friendly programming contest where we are given a set of problems to solve. Upon programming, we are to send the outputs to the judges to be rated and be told if we succeeded or not. For four times in consecutive order, I realized that they, the judges, didn’t understand the problem, too. In all four times they rated the programs that I wrote as WRONG ANSWER, only to find out that they had no reason for rating it as such. Hence, an argument between each judges, and wasted time so I really can’t make it to the top five.
For example, consider the following problem:
The first line of input begins with a single integer n denoting the number of test cases. Each test case contains two numbers in 2 consecutive lines which denotes the number of soldiers in Hashmat’s army and his opponent’s army or vice versa. The input numbers are less than 2^32.
The problem asked us to make a problem that (1) Evaluates the number of cases, meaning how many times it will execute a function, and (2) Execute the function, which is to compute the difference in men of each army. The problem gave out a sample input, which I followed in demonstration to prove that my program works:
3, 10, 12, 10, 14, 100, 200
Like instructed, the first digit, which is 3, tells the program that it is to loop the function three times. So 10 and 12, 10 and 14, and 100 and 200, were the pairs of numbers for each of the three cases. It worked, giving me the difference of each pairs, but according to them, the program was wrong because the input allowed only seven integers and leaving the first digit the odd-one-out. Also, they argued that the program didn’t perform the function on the first digit, which is also impossible because it skips this case.
But the 3 there was only the reason why it allowed three cases, because it tells the program how many times it will execute the function. I explained them that the program was asking for (1) the number of cases and (2)the pairs for each case. This caused the guy I had presented my demonstration to to argue with the others for clarification. In the end, they rated my program as a YES, but only after an extra five minutes, a difference that proved fatal to my position in the top five programmers during the contest.
And this didn’t happen only once, it happened FOUR times. Either the judges really hate me, or they need clarification on the problems they, themselves, wrote for us.
6 - SKYRIM JOKES ARE ONLY FUNNY WHEN ONLINE
Mark Zuckerberg (the main lecturer, not the real Zuckerberg) initiated his discussion in a lively tone. And I praise him for having been able to keep that tone even to his last delivered word for the day. He said a lot of jokes, a dead most of them being Skyrim jokes like “You can’t argue with a programmer, they can kill you with an arrow to the knee,” which, in all honesty, wasn’t funny. His mates at the back laughed for him, but none of us students found it humorous.
Proven, almost every boy inside the multimedia lab play Skyrim. We laughed at one of his first joke, which also adds to my realization that funny jokes don’t stick to the mind for long. A lot of his jokes were based on Skyrim, and at the moment I wanted to raise my hand and say, “Excuse me, sir, but Skyrim jokes are a lot like internet memes: they’re stale when not online.” My statement wasn’t funny, either, but it was true. If he wanted to make a Skyrim joke, I would suggested he post it on facebook, tumblr, twitter, or 9gag. They would have been welcomed better with tons of “LOL” comments.
But saying that would have destroyed me, especially since this Mark Zuckerberg guy was the instant idol for me. I didn’t worship him, no, but I did praise him for his ingenuity in finding loopholes to the rules in the Java language. Also, I think he’s multilingual, in a computer-geek sort of way, because he seems to know every freaking programming language ever made.
Instead, I ate all the words that would have come out of my mouth if not for my extreme respect for him. I remained quiet, and listened in the same silence throughout the whole lecture. But inside, I was still dying to tell him how stale his Skyrim jokes were because that was how internet jokes really were. Jokes online - including memes - aren’t rated for their humor content. When LOLs and praises are given to your ARROW TO THE KNEE joke, it means you’re clever. Cleverness is the new humor, online. And sadly, cleverness won’t make your students laugh out loud in reality. So, people, keep your jokes to yourself if you’re thinking of Skyrim or a lolcat statement.
In spite of all this, I would just like to make it clear that I am not, in any way I know, criticizing the activity or its coordinators. I am enjoying the camp, to be honest, even through the torment of going to the college everyday. And one final note: the Mark Zuckerberg lecturer needs to be the new judge. At least he understands what’s going on. And maybe I’ll stand a chance, at least once, to be the top programmer of the day.
Last Man on Earth
The day he left the palace - which wasn’t Oz after all - Duke continued on his walk due west. It was late afternoon, the sky already fading in a gradient of blue, red, and yellow from right above his head and to the infinity of the horizon. The place he was leaving was a ruin, like all other places he had come across. On the ground, the grass still grow, which gave him the assurance that he wasn’t the last being to remain alive. Windows of houses and buildings were formed by shattered glass, the highways filled with cars abandoned everywhere.
He had no idea where all the others had gone to. The church-people would have called this “the Rapture,” or the second coming of Christ. But he was one of the church people for as long as he could remember, and still he hadn’t been lifted up. Not that he knew of, though. The atheists, the irreligious, and the damned who once made up more than half of the modern world’s population were gone too, and Duke saw it as unfair if they were “raptured”, too. Something else had happened, and Duke didn’t know what. Everyone who could have known, and even those who didn’t, were gone. He was the last person to walk on the Earth.
There was not the faintest idea in him of where he was or exactly where he was headed. He owned the world, for crying out loud. And he could go anywhere. Once a common New Yorker going broke, Duke was now the richest son of a bitch alive. Of course, the depression was there. It was inevitable, but he always found a way to solve it with a movie in a mall or theater that he happened to be passing by, or driving at breakneck speed with a car in good condition and the keys left in the ignition. There were a lot of those in the highways, and Duke rode in each one he could get his hands on. Back in a populated New York, this would have been impossible. He didn’t own a license. Duke was fifteen.
The rapture - or what he calls, the world’s “Moving On” - happened one day in September. Winter was on its way. New York was populated, and the cars he drove around in every day were still owned by other people, people that were still alive. He was walking home from school with his friend David, talking about things he couldn’t quite remember anymore. This happened a year ago, the year Duke was fifteen. When the rest of the world disappeared, they took his perception of time with them. Now time were just ideas based on what he could see. There was yesterday, today, and tomorrow - each separated by the morning, noon, afternoon, and the evening. Whether today was March or April or June, he didn’t know.
There was a restaurant growing nearer and nearer as he continued walking. Evening has come, perhaps six o’clock if there was a clock he could look at. The restaurant had no name. The sign was removed, perhaps being worked on when the people disappeared. The menu was still there, in front of the door beside the table that held the sign “PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED.” Out there, the place looked dead. The lights were on, the yellow dim lamps that gave it a common fancy ambience. The place still had electricity, but he was sure it wouldn’t hold on for long. New York was a large city. Or if he wasn’t in New York, the country was still fairly large. Perhaps every single building was left with the lights on. A year had already passed, more likely, and it could hold on for another, but it wasn’t very long.
Duke entered the restaurant. Hey Jude was playing from the speakers on the ceiling. The tables were well-made, the scent of the place still remained. Somehow, he thought, the place still looked alive. Maybe it was moving by itself. In a way or another, at least.
He roasted chicken in the kitchen far behind the place. To his surprise, there were no dishes to be washed in the sink. Nothing in the trash bins. The powder for iced tea was there, unopened. He took it and made his drink. A pitcher ought to be enough. He went back to the restaurant, at the table where all the cold coming from the air conditioner seemed to be concentrated. His table was made, dinner served.
His place was at the corner of the restaurant, giving him a fair view of its entirety. He imagined everyone still there, eating food and talking with each other. Waiters and waitresses roamed around with trays of food straight from the grill. The sizz from each plate filled his ears, and then there was the smell of roast beef, roast chicken, and soup. The smell, the sounds… they were all real.
“Enjoying your meal, mister?” A waiter approached him.
He didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes. It’s delightful.”
“Would you like a drink with that, sir?” he said. “Perhaps a glass of bourbon?”
He emptied his wineglass of iced tea and held it out for him. “Tempt me,” he said.
The waiter poured bourbon on his glass. “Enjoy, sir.” the waiter said and walked back to the kitchen.
He drained the glass quickly, swallowing its contents in one big gulp. The drink felt hot as it moved down his throat. He took deep breaths, savoring the flavor of this drink. He had never had anything more than Coke before. His father would have been against this, but he didn’t care.
I own the world, he thought and went back to his steak.
It was an entire hour of delight for him, in the company of many others in the restaurant. He finished his chicken, the whole of it, in his ravenous hunger after his journey to the palace, wherever that was. The waiter returned many times, offering him wine and gin and bourbon, until his throat felt like closing down. His eyelids felt heavy and insisted to close for many times. Taking one last sip from his iced tea, Duke blacked out. It was the most satisfying sleep he’s had in a year.
*Author’s note: this is the unedited version so forgive me for any grammar correction, errors in typo, or other literary faults. I’ll fix it when I get the time. Schedule’s been screwed up, lately. -Dom
My Parents
When I was about seven or eight, I always woke up in the middle of the night and watch my parents sleep. I’d watch them breathe. And when I couldn’t see their chest moving, I’d carefully lay my hand on them and feel their chest – or abdomen, in my mother’s case – for signs that they were still breathing. Every night I’d feel the rhythm of their breaths and make sure that they were still alive.
They still are alive, and I hope they’ll stay with me while I still can’t bear losing them.
Being a child, I was always worried about my parents dying. Thank God, they’re still alive. I don’t know how I would be, right now, if they’d passed away and left me here. I think it’s my fear of death that has so often disturbed me since I watched my grandmother’s casket get buried in the cemetery. Most kids have it happen to them, I guess. Most kids get the sudden worry that in one unexpected moment, their parents would leave this living realm we still are new to. The sorrow, I imagine, would be unbearable.
About a year ago, I had this sudden dream. I still remember it, because it was one of the few that actually leave a mark on me. The impact was amazing. In the dream, I was reading this Almanac that my father gave me for my birthday. The Almanac wasn’t very relevant, when I received it, because it was for the year 1997. My father explained, however, that 1997 held the most important day – because it held the day when I was born. It was one of the special gifts, but due to the fact that we move houses almost every year, I’ve left it in our other house. That other house still is in our ownership, fortunately.
Back to the dream, I was reading it while a friend of mine was talking. The dream began exactly at the moment this friend mentioned my father’s name. I began crying. Sorrow fell on me like heavy precipitation during a rough storm. I held my face against the pages of the book and began crying. I was crying because in that particular dream world, my father was dead. He was dead and I was missing him. He was dead and the grief that I had because of it has rendered me just as lifeless.
My father and I haven’t really been the best of friends, these past few years of my “growing up.” We had fights and disagreements that often began due to my rebelliousness. During those times that my father punishes me for my misdeed, harsh thoughts like wishing I had a different father cross my mind. My father’s hand is a bit heavy, you see. I think God has been very generous to me, for not having made that wish come true. My father, this father that I have right now, is and forever will be the best man I’ve ever known. And I will be forever grateful to him for the person he’s made me (as well as to my mom, but that’s the subject of another post). I don’t know how I can repay him, and I don’t know what will happen to me if I was born to someone else.
Now the feeling’s come back. Only my father has had his rest for the night. My mother is on the phone, my three siblings are playing, and I am here, in front of the computer, writing this post. I suddenly felt the urge to write about this. Sorrow, I meant. The sorrow and sadness that always fall on me like heavy rain whenever I think about my parents dying. I want to watch them every night again. I want to feel them, I want to listen to the melody of their hearts beating, and I want to show them my love and appreciation for them because there might not be much time left for me to do it.
But I do hope that I’ll still get to see them alive and well for a longer time. I put in God’s hands my faith and hopes. Whatever happens is for his will, I only wish that I’ll still have this family even when I have started my own.
Mario
Mario – yes, from Super Mario Bros. – is an ideal representation of a true man. Luigi, too, never forget the plumber in the wacky green clothes. They represent men who are far more courageous than the Greek soldiers who joined the war of Thermopylae (think: 300). Because they didn’t fight for glory or for freedom, they went on a perilous journey to pursue their princess. They travelled far and wide, over a great distance, risked their own deaths, and faced their strongest enemies – all this, only to reach the girl.
Mario was not a warrior in shining armor, neither is he a prince who owns true love’s kiss, but he is a brave man. A man, nothing more or less, but a man who was brave enough to pursue his princess. He is a plumber, yes, and fictitious, too. But he still is better than boys and men of reality. Who here would travel different worlds with different risks and dangers, and fight their strongest enemy, only for a girl? Who would walk a thousand miles from day to sundown and even through midnight, to reach the princess?
Perhaps Super Mario wasn’t just a game. Maybe it was made for a purpose, perhaps a moral lesson, to every single boy (and men, any age) who’s played it? (Assuming correct, the stereotype that boys who play video games have no girlfriends.) I don’t really see how moral, this moral is, that I’m speaking of. But Mario (and Luigi) embodies the very person that we men should be: the person who’s not afraid to take risks, who takes a leap of faith, and sacrifices everything for the girl.
*Note: not an original idea. Got it from a Group SMS, credit goes to her.
To a Culture of Peace
The road to peace is yet to be trodden by the youth who are believed to be the panacea of ills in the present and the fountain of hope for progress in the future. They are patriots and heroes in the making, with their minds with still so many lessons to learn, and their thoughts with still so many questions to ask. Their mere existence dictates solution as they hold the crucial decisions to be put forth as the next generation’s policy-makers, civil servants, and citizens.
In achieving a culture of peace, education and support are the keys. If we seek answers for the dilemmas of today, then we must entrust our hopes on the shoulders of our children. We must rally their cause and equip them appropriately with fundamental knowledge to empower and enjoin them in the campaign to avert the horrors of wars borne by the arrogance and apathy of today’s world leaders. As Albert Einstein, who witnessed the Second World War himself, profoundly put it: ““We must inoculate our children against militarism, by educating them in the spirit of pacifism… Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred. I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate.”
If we so affirm the power of education, then we need to re-evaluate the knowledge that we are imparting to the youth. More than teaching them history, math, sciences, and languages, we must feed their curious minds with information coupled with the implication each lesson in history imparts; realizable applications of theories involving numbers; and strong understanding of scientific concepts. Moreover, we must fuel their characters with discipline and their hearts with values that will enable them to materialize their knowledge with the benefit of many in mind. To teach peace is to remind them what security, freedom, and understanding are.
The government with its might and resources is continuously striving to better the plight of our education. Yet, we continue to lag behind our foreign counterparts. More alarmingly, the notion of education in the country has shifted as more and more graduates from all levels score below those from the previous years in the National Achievement Test. And no matter what curtain we pull, we cannot cover-up the injuries brought by such debacle. We may attribute this to the advent of technology. But ascertaining the issues to just one factor is quite immature. Condescending as it may sound; we must recognize the errors of books and acknowledge that not all teachers are qualified to teach. If we so affirm the emancipating lessons that education brings, then we need to rehabilitate the books that we hand to our children along those whose hands hand them over. The pages of history cannot be rewritten but it may be told in a new fashion – where we are not only told who or what happened but why and how the events of the past unfolded. Even better, what could have been done to deliver less painful pains? We must let them be part of our history by leading them to think they will soon be part of it. To teach peace is to remind them what the digits, formulas, and equations lack – common sense and options.
The rehabilitation of the books that we feed to our children’s minds must be coupled with vigilance in the other forms of media. Nowadays, hatred is fueled by the nonsensical shows, magazines and news which appear to have left us in Romanticism. Yes, it is true that they highlight stalwart Filipino values or current issues but they are also filled with violence and dialogues that bring hatred and vengeance to a whole new level of advertisement. We allow giant media corporations to suck out the innocence of our youth by leading them to think that in life evil abounds and that the only way to survive is to fight back which should not always be the case. Moreover, sex is patronized as if everyone, even those who can barely understand its intricacies, should join the bandwagon. Civility and patience are replaced with angst and contempt as we listen to the larger than life characters invented to rake in millions for profit. We should be saddened by these slumps in morality. If we so affirm the affective values of pedagogy, then we must demand more from the media. They cry foul whenever their rights are stepped on yet they are too selfish to be more civil and professional in the manner they report, advertise, or produce outputs.
We do not simply stop at educating the youth at school. Another form of education, the one that changes the manner in which a person lives, starts at home. Who would forget the warm tale of the firefly, told so deeply by Jose Rizal’s devoted mother? This education begins in pocket-lessons and small talks we share with our loving parents. The bond we form at home is a lasting bond that must be nourished with love. If we so affirm the value of school, then we must in anyway let our family strong with love. Gone are the patriarchal days of authoritative infamy. Gone are the cyclical beatings to induce fear. Let us let the youth experience what real family is, the one that let them be while those around guide them to be.
The road to peace is yet to be trodden but its foundations are already in the mill. These building blocks spelled YOUTH must be carefully placed in the right spot to prevent leaks and breakage. They must be aligned perfectly because one wrong move may send us back to the drawing board leaving a dusty, muddy, and impassable highway to freedom. If we so affirm the youth’s role towards a culture of understanding, then we have to carefully spell out that there is no “I” or “U” in “PEACE.”
A Requiem for Books
We still have bookstores around, publishers still follow the printed format, and they still are available in large numbers. But we all know, right at this very moment, that the lives of books are numbered. In the internet age, when you want to read a book that’s just been released, it’s normal to go to the nearest bookshop, although it might not be there yet. But most people just go to amazon, hit up a few search keywords and buy the book directly to their computer or the new e-book readers that are dominating the market. Hell, it’s even lucky for the publishers to have a customer buy the book through amazon, because most people just get it straight from torrent sites without even having to pay a cent.
During the time heard that Stephen King had written a book made especially for the Kindle, amazon’s infamous handheld e-book reader, I felt sad. And that wasn’t just because I didn’t have a Kindle to read his new work, it was because it had marked the incoming passing of an age. A very long age, indeed, yet something I’ve learned to love. Not just me, mind you, but also every other bookworms around the world. Amazon’s Kindle poses a threat with its amazing features and increasing number of users. It poses a threat that at any time soon; print publication will just die out.
Imagine what would happen if books don’t have value anymore? When every new piece of literature could just be downloaded from the internet. Like the issue that the music industry faced when the digital age came, the book industry faces the danger of massive copyright infringement. If every book that was once sheltered in bookshops could be downloaded from the internet in its digital form, things would be a whole lot easier, especially for those who want the book but don’t want to pay.
Look at how the music industry is turning out. People download music from sharing web sites liked 4Shared, mediafire, megaupload, etc. They don’t pay; they get the music, transfer it to their devices and enjoy it like any other paying customer. And the paying customers gain the knowledge that such people do this, and think of it as unfair. Of course, why continue paying for something that almost everyone can have for free? They join in, at least a whole lot of them, and the story goes on.
This would be the future if print publication died out or got pushed back into obscurity. People won’t buy the books anymore. Oh, Suzanne Collins just published a new book for the Hunger Games series (which is comfortingly impossible, by the way)? Don’t bother going to the bookstore. I’m sure they have it uploaded at mediafire. It would be a nightmare.
Imagine the future. Libraries, instead of shelves, get rows of tables with Kindles securely placed on the tables. The entire library has been digitally imported to the memory, and all you need to do is to secure your place and use the Kindle that they provide. You read it there. And when you want to borrow a book, they’d mail you a copy of the e-book for use on your own Kindle. The future looks easy, I know, but who wants that? The so-loved smell of old paper in books that’s been common in libraries for ages will be gone. The entire feel of reading a book will never be the same.
If, of course, people don’t even have to pay for a book, imagine where all our authors would end up? Do you know how we have authors like Stephen King? They are the kind of people who work by writing, doing it full-time and living only on the royalties that the publishers pay them - which, in turn, they collect from the paying customers. That is why only bestselling authors can live as full-time novelists, because the royalties they receive are actually enough to support a living.
But if people don’t pay for the books they write, what would they live on? Especially full-time writers. Imagine how Stephen King would manage to write the next book in his Dark Tower series if he won’t be paid a cent for what he will be working on? I know authors like him say that the audience and the money are not important to a devoted writer. But if they receive absolutely no money at all for their work, then they’d come to the realization that writing will never support them. They’d stop writing full time, of course, especially for those whose money for food and life comes from the book they write. They’d just die if they continue, so they might as well just get a job.
Oh and if print publication dies out, just how will their books be made available to the public? Unless, of course, they do it independently. If everyone can publish independently for everyone to read, the quality of literature will decrease. In the process of print publication is the proofreading and editing, where they point out errors and inform the author about it. But if the errors are still very minor, they edit it themselves. If the work is too horrid, they send it back with a rejection letter. This process actually ensures that what gets out of the printing press is something what people will read. Something people will enjoy, because it’s a work of art. But if everyone could publish and bypass this process, we’d have millions of books that just might be as bad as or even worse than Twilight. Let’s admit it, not everyone can cough up a literary masterpiece.
Of course, some readable authors will remain. But who will continue publishing them, if publishing houses don’t get money for earnings and bills. The reason why there’s a price tag on books is because the publishing house has to pay for the paper, the printing, the ink, the binding of the book, shipping and delivery, and all the other things they have to pay for to continue their business running. If publishing houses get broke just because no one pays for books anymore, they’d all close down. Forever. And where the hell are we going to get our books?
Literature will die. Culture will die. Literature is an imprint of human culture. Without the authors and the publishers that keep it alive, everything will fall apart. Human intelligence, knowledge, creativity, and even the very humanity that makes up who we are will fall apart. It’s an entire Literature apocalypse, waiting to happen. Right now, everything is on the balance. Just one little move decides what happens next.
