UP fight!

I had to see the UAAP Cheerleading Championships at the Araneta Coliseum to cover up for my pentiful absences in PE. Ms. Peneyra, my kind arnis instructor, will give incentives--like erasing some absences from her record--to those who'd be watching the competition. Besides, it's a yearly event that every loyal UP student looks forward to.

"So why have you been absent anyway?" you may ask. Let me answer that question.

You see, Physics 71.1 (the laboratory part) is every Friday from 2 to 4pm. Our classes are held at the new building of the National Insitute of Physics near Katipunan road. My arnis class is scheduled every Tuesday and FRIDAY at the UP Vanguard Building where you can overlook the Commonwealth Avenue. The University of the Philippines is a horribly big campus (400-something hectares), mind you, and it is this very reason that has led to the compounding of my absences: it takes me 15 to 20 minutes to hop from one building to another through the Toki jeeps which can, at times, get wretchedly slow I'd wonder whether they're moving at all!

But the cheerleading competition was fun, except of course that for the fourth strait year, the UP Pep Squad has not emerged the champions. UP placed second to the defending champions of last year, UST.

The Big Dome was already jampacked with students from the eight participating schools by the time we had gotten there. Outside, the queue for tickets was as long as those here in UP during enrollment. Unfortunately, there were no more available tickets so those people who had lined up had to leave and go home and get some rest. They should have watched TV because the competition was televised in Studio 23.

UP's performance this year is a far cry from last year. Their stunts were amazing and left us all in awe. "Could humans actually do that? Can I do that?," I asked myself ten times. I don't know, maybe I can if I try hard enough. But then again, that's as impossible as seeing our congressmen doing their jobs as they ought to.