80 DIFFERENT THINGS: Part Four

 Celebrating Me 

College And Graduate School

College is fun as long as you don't die. - Tsugami Ohba

49. It was UP all the way with free tuition through semestral scholarships plus a one-semester Sigma Beta grant which I earned after writing a sob story essay (financial need was the qualifier).

50. I was weird and awkward through most of my sophomore year.

51. I started looking better soon after, thanks to Pond's cream and Maybelline eyeliner and shadow.

52. St. Mark's basketball team chose me as muse. I intentionally arrived late on opening night of the game to avoid parading with the team.

53. I wore my first white pair of one-inch Cuban heels for the UP taditional coming-of-age-for-females ritual parade called Cadena de Amor.

Cadena De Amor. ManilaTimes  photograph: UP: 1963

54. Who knows? Perhaps, I was one of those in the foto above because 1963 was the exact year of my participation.

55. Scooping each side of the tea-length skirt of my pink outfit, I limped through the entire ordeal.

56. A totally awesome fact at the time: my 15-inch waistline (give or take). LOL

57. In junior year, I won second place in a college-wide essay writing on Maria Clara. I titled mine, Maria Clara: Caricature Or Paragon? First place went to a senior law student. 

58. This was also the year I met a certain Vicente Velasco III, first at Christmas camp and later on campus. I thought, What's with the III? Is he royalty? 

59. I had just turned 20 when I graduated from college with a degree in English and Comparative Literature, cum laude.

60. I was hired as an instructor thereafter.

61. While teaching, I concurrently pursued graduate studies toward professorship status.

62. I chose a local Rockefeller Scholarship over an East-West scholarship in Hawaii to pursue graduate studies.

63. I had just turned 26 when I earned my Master's degree in English and Comparative Literature.

Graduate, Master of Arts in Comparative Literature. UP Yearbook Official foto. March 1971

Wedding Bells

When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love. - Rob

64. I got married a month after commencement.

65. Wedding was presided over by three ministers: Pastor Meynardo Jose from would-be-hubby's St. John's Church, Pastor Nathanael Cortez from my church St. Mark's, and the Pastor from UP Chapel (whose name I forget).

66. Dadee and all six brothers wore traditional barong tagalog for the occasion.

67. My attire was an embroidered shift gown made of jusi (pineapple fiber) and raffia-covered heels from Rustan's. 

68. I carried a single yellow rose for my bouquet.

69. Our labandera (laundry maid) Aling Luring, who was a guest at the wedding, said that I looked like Lisa Lorena, a popular actress at the time.

70. My wedding gown still hangs in the walk-in closet of our Columbus home.

(To be continued)