Menthol-Guy

Both of us housemates were watching White Noise. His body was completely lying on his back–his head on his pillow, his hands in charge of the remote. I was lying on my chest, my head absorbed with the 36-page handout our delinquent professor had given us prior to the exam–and I still have seven hours to review everything about accounting.

The semester was blooming its way to vacation. My housemate had nothing to do but to give me company; he is totally aware that my being sleepyhead would knock me down within two hours of continuous wide-awake mental work. With someone to talk to, my battery life expands up to unhealthy durations–maximum of three days straight. It was one a.m. and it was fulfilling for me to carefully paraphrase (paraphrasing is my way of reviewing notes) and summarize the entire chapter, at intervals we share stories and jokes.

“It should be C.”
The sound reverberated for a while and our extra-conscious ears distinguish C from C-minor.
“I don’t think it’s C,” I told him.

We were playing Thunder. Boys Like Girls. Not our kind of music. Satisfactory teenage-rock with what I consider as shallow lyrics and a failure when it comes to personifying things (I don’t think there’s something in common between thunder and a girlfriend). Of course I had to sing with the guitars but there’s a part of the chorus where we had to pause and think of better, more exact chord.

Rico Blanco plays Yugto on MTV. It was its third time to air the song within a couple of hours and our ears were getting used to the video, it’s not even exciting to watch. It was 3 a.m. and our yawns were getting more frequent.

“Fourteen pages to go,” once again updating him with the progress of my reading. It seems to both of us that I’m only concentrating half of my mind to the chapter. This was obviously depicted by my frequent storytelling and his frequent jokes. “I don’t think you could finish reading all of this,” he said victoriously, riffling the charts, graphs and the accounting statements printed on bond paper with his thumb. “Don’t worry, he’s too kind to give you a five.” Whatever, I told him. No matter how lenient he is in terms of giving out grades, I would still read this. I rarely give my best with exams so give me this very moment to do this. It’s the last exam I have to take this semester.

“Six pages to go,” I said. It was 4:30 am. We have finished watching Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet, another tagalized horror movie at PBO (featuring worms and alienated zombies), a Hall of Fame episode of MTV Cribs. He was already fighting his way to sleep. We then decided to hit our sacks. I set the alarm at 5:30.

I woke up at 6:30. This always happens. My fingers are programmed to unconsciously snooze my cellphone. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, stuffed a ballpoint pen and a Blue Book I found somewhere in his study table, changed my shirt and went straight to the much-anticipated 7 a.m. accounting exam. On my way to the room I saw my orgmate who happened to take the same accounting exam, though with a much stringent professor. “I’ve been reading your blog and was wondering if I could make my own,” he shared. He wasn’t the type of a guy who reads a blog or anything online. “I want to doodle.” I then told him the necessary arrangements (of course I told him that Wordpress.com hosts for free) and wished him luck with his doodling blog.

7:15 a.m. The professor told us that he’d be making the exam a take-home kind of exam (wherein you are allowed to scan everything on the handout and even ask people for help). My sunken, lifeless eyes stared at him with rage and disappointment.

“But sir, with all due respect, I think this.. this take-home exam thing is unnerving! Probably the entire class had reviewed your handouts–handouts which are obviously half-baked due to your delinquency as a professor; we skipped meals and everything just to swallow your at-this-juncture type of lesson module. I don’t think it’s fair for us to comprehend all those graphs within seven hours if it’s a take-home exam! We shouldn’t have reviewed so long; we shouldn’t have tortured ourselves and forcefully drank coffee! We shouldn’t have gotten all the hassles of waking up at 7 a.m!”

But of course I can’t help but zip all my ramblings. That’s why I put them here. To hell I care with search terms, goddamn him.