Dogbert’s Whip

Well I’ve been afraid of changing

‘Cause I built my life around you

But time makes you bolder and children get older

And I’m getting older, too…

–Fleetwood Mac in “Landslide”

Two and a half years ago, I was a struggling graduate student who was in dire need to finish his thesis. At that time, I needed a place that’s quiet enough to make thesis writing conducive, and at the same time, should be within the campus to make matters more economical. By accident, I stumbled on a house in front of the UP Hotel (formerly PCED Hostel), and was quite impressed by the lush greenery and the landscaped garden that greeted me. Ate Bhems, the caretaker, explained that the lady boarders get to reside with the landlord in the big house, and are entitled to enjoy lush amenities like access to the television, refrigerator, and round-the-clock hot water. Male renters, on the other hand, are housed in makeshift shelters in the garden.

Before moving any further, let me provide this background check: UP employees are provided with cheap housing in form of bungalows or condominium-style abodes from the administration. To augment their meager incomes, UP employees usually lease a room or two of their homes to eager students who prefer to live on-campus. Some more enterprising UP Housing beneficiaries would build shacks in their gardens to accommodate more room hunters, and in the process, earn more bucks.

If one were to analyze the above mentioned scenario, it’s rather shrewd and illegal for UP employees to construct run down shacks, let alone lease rooms, in a property that does not belong to them in the first place. However, the Machiavellian part of me thinks that if the morally challenged actions of these people would help students secure precious on-campus housing, then it won’t hurt if we cast a blind eye on this practice since “the end justifies the means” after all.     

Going back to the house in front of the UP Hotel, Ate Bhems proceeded to show me around the makeshift-shelter-in-the-garden that a college friend still describes as a “gahd forsaken place” up to this day. This place is, for the lack of better words, a dilapidated patchwork of termite-infested plywood, beat up galvanized iron roofing, and sloppy concrete work. This crumbling abode has five rooms in all, and is equipped with such life-saving amenities like rickety bunk beds, miniature cabinets, wonky tables, and faded monoblock chairs.

Each of the 12ft x 8ft rooms could accommodate three persons, Ate Bhems explained, and for two thousand pesos a month, I could share the room with two absolute strangers. For the essential toilet needs, a narrow passage between rooms B and C leads to a wash area with two sinks and two cubicles. Each cubicle is equipped with a toilet that you have to manually flush, a water pail, and a tabo. “Sorry but the shower does not work in the meantime,” Ate Bhems said. “I’m not even sure if the flush will ever be repaired,” she added with a hint of an apology in her raspy voice.   

In all honesty, I’ve seen worse places that are being leased by shameless landlords for more exorbitant fees. After much contemplation, I decided to take the bed space anyway since I was really desperate to live on-campus. After paying the requisite two months advance and one month deposit, I hauled my stuff into the place (room A) that I would call home until June of this year.

Within that two-and-a-half year span, the house in front of the UP Hotel saw me scamper through my thesis about surface faults in a geothermal field. In the same duration, I was able to socialize with six different roommates. One of them, the Perpetual Soul Searcher (PSS), became a good friend of mine in the process. Two months after defending my thesis in March 2004, I was offered a job in Makati City but I refused to leave that place. See, despite the crammed conditions of the room, the hopeless situation of the bathrooms, and the long distance that I have to spend commuting everyday, Quezon City (particularly the UP Diliman area) will always be my security blanket. It’s one of the few remaining places in Metro Manila where the air is still filtered by tree-lined canopies. Most of my friends also live within Quezon City, making it convenient for me to crash into their places whenever I feel bored.

Just when I thought that I’ll never leave the house in front of the UP Hotel, a number of occurrences changed my mind. Early this year, I developed an eye allergy that my ophthalmologist misdiagnosed as viral conjunctivitis, or more commonly known as sore eyes. Up until now, I’m not 100% sure as to the actual agent that caused my allergies. But I have a gut feel about it: termite dust. The whole house is essentially covered with wood dust from termite colonies. There’s termite dust on my shelves, on my bed before I go to sleep, on the floor, in the bathroom, and heck, even the mango tree in the garden is lined with termite nests! Coupled with newfound stress in the workplace, my immune system probably tanked and decided that I’m going to have an adverse reaction to termite dust. Thus, whenever I wake up in the morning, I would sneeze like there’s no tomorrow. And to top it all, my eyes inflate like plump tomatoes if I fail to dab uber expensive anti-histamine eye drops before I sleep at night.    

Amid slightly reddish eyes one time over breakfast, I was ranting about the termite problem of my place to my self-proclaimed techie officemate, the Queen of Pain and Tardiness (QPT). In passing, I also mentioned of the hopeless bathroom conditions, and it didn’t take long for the posh condo-living QPT to blurt out: “Wha-at?! Kailangan mo pang magbuhos para ma-flush yung toilet?! Umalis ka na dyan!”

While I once valiantly proclaimed that nothing will ever drive me out of the house on-campus, the termite and toilet problems finally did me. Besides, I wasn’t getting any younger, and if I truly want to get hold of my life, I have to start changing my perspective by getting my own room. In retrospect, I also realized that living on-campus sort of had a suspended animation effect on my part. At the end of the day, the environment where I lived in still made me feel like the slacking and happy-go-lucky person that I’ve always been. And if you’re stuck in the corporate world where every tardy minute is logged by your company’s security and human resources departments, it won’t help if you simply brush things off with the brazenly cheeky attitude of a delinquent graduate student once you get home.

Armed with this truck load of rationalization, I’ve succeeded in finding a space of my own. For more than a month now, I’ve been leasing this miniature room (around 6ft x 10ft) somewhere in UP Bliss. Yep, you heard it right. I am now a proud occupant of one of those run down condominium buildings that reek of Imelda Marcos stench, or fragrance, depending on your political convictions. My new room has even more meager amenities than my old house in-campus: all it has are a small wooden cabinet, a shoe rack, and a single window that exposes my naked glory since it overlooks the main street – it is not the most pleasant sight, if you could imagine. In the meantime, I have been reduced to sleeping Japanese-style (read: floor mat and a thin mattress) until I find the time and save enough moolah to buy me a decent bed.

News about crib change has earned flak from my friends. Most of them thought that the most logical next step for me is to look for a place somewhere in Makati. A place in Makati would surely cut travel time significantly, and in the process, would increase my chances of not getting late for work. Some of them are also baffled by my decision to move to UP Bliss. Ironically, the place is far from what its name suggests: since UP Bliss is quite old and densely populated, the buildings are sorely dilapidated, the pollution is severe, and the crime rate is high. To sum up their sentiments, my friend PSS even remarked: “Ang alam ko kasi, basta Bliss, pang-mahirap…”

As we thread in this pothole-rigged road that everyone calls the real world, we’re likely to encounter things that were once alien territory: rent money, phone bills, anniversaries, pleasing the boss, Saturday night-outs, blind dates and love handles. Aside from innate wit, creativity, and a dash of good luck, it is essential that we possess a sound sense of responsibility and maturity if we want to increase our chances at survival. I believe that everyone has to start from somewhere, and if this “blissful change” will succeed in making me the well-rounded person that I desire to be, then I probably made the right decision.    

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