OJT-ING WITH A HEADLESS GRADUATE

I hate it when my post is published on a wrong date. All my posts in my previous blog are projected to have been uploaded a day before. Do I really have to change post dates each and every time? >:-(

And ugh. I had a lot of typos. Braargh. Why does this keyboard can’t comply with my brain? Or I really have a problem with impromptu typing?

On-The-(blow)Job training, that is.

Probably a few know (not anymore) that I am having my internship somewhere in Makati. That I can define how my ojt feels like–air-conditioning, office tables, cabinets, computers, and a lot of talking and walking and traveling and mating–I mean meeting.. Plus the ups and downs inside elevators, and oh my GOD–the heavily crowded human traffic inside the Ayala station during those unholiest ‘uwian’ (homecoming) hours.

Prior to my internship, a lot of things, unforgivably bad things, happened.

That dreaded Monday afternoon reminds me of one Aesop fable about true friendship. We were summoned (summon, like Squall calling Bahamut to attack Cactus monster, so we were flying with radiating blue aura and torrential winds to reach school. Lol.) by our internship professor for some short briefing and how-to’s in our practicum. But before we agreed to meet her for the orientation (which, in fact, I’m the one who disseminated the meet-up info) , we had a consensus that slots for the internship offered by our Speech Communication instructor shall be enjoyed by everyone. Yes, that jolly, cool, ‘articulately perfect’ yet ‘awkwardly humorous’ instructor, was willing to help all of us. That’s great, I thought, thinking over-confidently that I can easily make it to a radio station in Pasay, with my oozing and appalling qualifications and sex appeal. That’s what I thought.

We arrived to school an hour later due to some financial issues in our house (I had no jeepney fare). We sourgraped. It’s just a so-so orientation, anyone who have worked already has an idea about it. But arriving late to school is not the issue.

When we reached (Ichu, Arah, Crystal, and I) the venue, we were welcomed by a blithesome commotion of 7 people. They were already discussing how one can get to Pasay without spending too much PUV fare. Oh, we have no problems, I retorted. Mom will take care of the shortcuts.

“Ay sorry, Neil. Eight lang po ang slots na available sabi ni Sir Bobbit” (Sorry Neil, but Sir Bobbit said there are only eight slots available.)

Implied, “… and you’re not one of them.”

I bloody raged intrapersonally when I heard the notice. I thought Sir Bobbit will only offer if everyone will be accommodated. But it violated my expectations. I didn’t think it would come to a ‘first come first basis’. I had no choice but to leave the area, fetch my friends (who were also not accommodated) and contact every production house and feasible publications in Metro Manila for the late internship application. We did that on that very same day my frustrations and disappointments went big time.

And I prevailed. I’m here at Focus Works, Inc. while two of my classmates are in CreAsia, also a TVC (television commercial) production house. Both TVC (television commercial) production houses are in Makati. (my story about how I managed to get here with some of my ’scrambling’s and misadventures later)

Even if I made it, I still have to enroll for my summer internship subject, which I was (majestically) problematic about. My (simply amazing) mom (succesfully) borrowed money from our 5-6 kapitbahays (neighbors or what my mom called as ’so-called friends’ whom we used to lend cash without paying interests =_= mom’s the kindest mom in the world). Then she went straight to school to pay for the fees while I was here cozying in air conditioners.

After accomplishing the signatures on my clearance sheet, one classmate approached me, with an unlikely brooding look, as if some estafador blackmailed her to approach me.

“Kuya Neil, may sasabihin po ako…”

So that was it. Our Teacher was offering slots to everyone when he called our classmate how many Mass Comm students were going for internships. But this one classmate of mine insisted, “Eight lang tayong andito ngayon. Kung sino lang andito nakarating ng maaga…” (we’re only eight here. Whosoever came here the earliest…) The news came late while the internship slots fled earlier.

(Mouth bubbles. Thunderstorms. Lightning strikes. Intercontinental mayhem. Nuclear doom. Destruction of planet Earth.)

Ganun? (Is that so?)

—————

Later I knew I was the one who was first employed among my classmates. Oh, them? It took them a week before they received my confirmation that I am already Makati-ing while they were stil wait-ing.

HEADLESS GRADUATE

WARNING! Not for the weakhearted. Not for pathetic pretense know-it-all image editors. Not for fun. Not for dimwits.

“Ano? Walang ulo?” (What? Headless?), I cried after my Kuya interjected that his classmate forwarded a class graduation pic of one BS Nursing batch 2007 section in Cavite State University.

I have seen a lot of these kinds of pics. Classmates and online buddies from Southeast Asian countries (read–the defunct-now-extinct SFOGS.com) forwarded to me pictures of headless, if not, limbless individuals captured on photos. I don’t disregard such paranormal activity behind these unusual phenomenon because I believe in this world having another world surrounded by worlds, or perhaps made up by smaller worlds in graduating orbits (which might take a long long long narrative). Basically, I prescribe my perspective on empirical sources. That is, ‘to see is to believe’, but not necessarily ocular. You might probably just, uhm, feel them–hey, why’st so cold in here? You know what I mean.

Our whole family was looking at the monitor to inspect the JPEG photo obscured by the storage conservation of Friendster (I hate Friendster for compressing our pics. Screw you!).

Empirical basis. To see is to believe.