To my fellow Bosconians

Do you still have your diaries with you? I mean all the diaries you had since you started schooling in Don Bosco? If not, why didn't you keep them?

I've kept all my diaries, from Prep to Senior year high school. In fact, I still use one of them, my diary from my junior year in high school. I use it primarily as a paperweight. But once in a while, I find other uses for it, especially when I need to know conversion factors, time conversions, or domestic zip codes. Yes, it is still practical and useful.

Once in a while I also look at the morning prayers (but don't pray them). Are you aware that morning prayers 3 to 5 are actually simplified, chopped-down versions of the Lauds, the official morning prayer of the entire Church? In other words, we have unknowingly prayed the Divine Office when we chanted alternately the psalms in choir. Didn't you have fun shouting your part of the psalm against the other half of the assembly?

I find it funny to reminisce with my diaries. The first entry or rather remark in my Prep diary was made by my adviser, Ms. Diaz on June 17th 1987. It says: "nameplates given today" [hehehehe]. After that comes the repetitive entries: "see N-7, practice writing, hear Mass on Sunday." My 4th year diary is a lot more complex. Among the entries in the latter pages of that diary were lists of customers and the items they paid for: "Ibarle - P70 - suspender, assault pack; Masangkay - P220 - mess kit." KAKA wasn't the only one making money in the corps [hehehehe]. If LtSG. Trillanes and his gang knew of this, they would probably have staged their mutiny in DBTI [hehehehe]!

The diary is perhaps the most important paraphernalia for the Bosconian. We don't go anywhere without it. From the classroom, to the gym or pool or even outside the campus, it is as essential part of us as our own uniform. Much like an ID card, we used the diary to borrow stuff, to make use of school facilities or simply to gain entry to sensitive areas. But the diary, as utilized in DBTI, basically made IDs redundant and useless. We were issued IDs, [we had to get our photos taken for it remember?] but we really never got to the point of really using them, or even bringing them, have we?

In college, the ID gave us access to university facilities and the right to borrow stuff. But it wasn't as useful as the diary. It couldn't make things like prayers, the student handbook, maps, conversion tables, world time conversions, time zones and tables, calendars (especially the perpetual calendar), useful bits of trivia, and other stuff, available for us anywhere, anytime. Plus the ID, being smaller, tends to be an item that's easily misplaced or forgotten. I think I have experienced forgetting my diary at home. I just don't remember how, when and what happened because of it. But I have never lost one. I still have them all here.

In DLSU, there's something similar to the Diary: the student planner. It's of bigger than the diary, but there's not enough inside to make it interesting. Plus you can't borrow stuff with it. You can't pray with it. Nor try to find conversion factors for that simple equation that escaped your head momentarily. 'Twas just a waste of paper! I pity those trees…

Of course, who would forget the fact that the authorities would impose their authority upon us through diary? The diary was also a sign of their domination over us. The remarks area where our parents would be forced to monitor our conduct and performance in school was much feared. I'm sure many of us tried to make our parents sign our diaries without them looking [hehehehe]!

You might ask me: "you ninny, what sort of stupidity crept in your head this time for you to extol the virtues of that damn diary? Don't you have anything more important to do?" Well, Frankly I don't. I just have a nagging pain in my nape that "inspired" me to stay up at 3 am to write. Yes, it is debilitating, but it can be freakishly inspiring as well. Anyway, I told myself, who's going to read this? I certainly don't read the entire posts, especially ones with the uninteresting headings… So I'm fairly confident that nobody will read this at all. And if they do, they would probably lose their interest in this reflection while reading the first paragraph [hehehehe].