It’s a bit assuming for someone to write something about his/her daily life. How did you ever get the idea that some bore flesh will spend a few minutes pondering on how interesting it is that you ride a jeep every day? Or that you cannot pass a day without coffee? It may not be very assuming if it is Katy Perry or Kris Aquino writing. Who wouldn’t want to know what is the brand of Lady Gaga’s toothpaste?
But then it is only me who is writing. Very assuming indeed! Pardon me, but it just seems to me that these past few years, I’ve been being fed up with stories of someone else’s daily activities that I feel like I don’t really want to know but being informed in every tick of the clock anyway, whether in effing phone or online. So I just got bottled up and thought literary revenge will do well.
THE MUNDANE LIFE OF A HEDONIST, ELENIA TUMANDAO
Every day she wakes up groping in the dark for her beeping phone three hours ahead before her first class. She wakes up groggy in between dreaming and waking. Lying coldly for some minutes under covers until she realizes that time is running and she wouldn’t want to be left behind. She goes downstairs and the smell of coffee enveloping the air hypnotizes her senses. She gulps down the first cup of coffee for the day.
Seconds into minutes, she washes off and prepares herself to get inside her uniform which she abhors for the last 4 years. She remembers then the time she had an argument with the University Student Welfare officer who took her I.D. and marked offense to her record for wearing a P.E. uniform to her non-P.E. day. She asked what exactly the reason why it is not allowed to wear P.E. uniform when you don’t have a P.E. class. The officer went on to a long narrative explaining to her why. But she wasn’t satisfied with the answer and defended herself for wearing the P.E. uniform. In the end, the officer asked her why she’s taking I.T. and not Philosophy. She could have given him an explanation but instead she just gave a laugh knowing she’s already late for her next class.
She leaves home supposedly an hour before her first class. But that’s not always the case and she doesn’t understand why. Even though she wakes up early, she still manages to get inside the classroom 30 minutes late panting because she had walked too fast.
Elenia doesn’t have much to boast to as a student. She’s an average student whose everyday problem involves a ¼ sheet of paper and pen. She’s the typical who draws doodles on her notebook instead of writing notes and gets reprimanded for talking or laughing too loud. She cheats and lets other copy her answers but with an equivalent payment in return.
But let’s give her credit for the sweet victories to her mundane student lifestyle too. Like the time she got the highest exam score though it was not very impressing considering that she’s an irregular 4th year student to a block of 2nd year BCS students.
In between her classes are the long hours of waiting spent in hanging out at rotunda with her friend Ella. Sometimes, they talk about man’s cruelty towards animals and their desire to form an organization which will uphold animal’s welfare. But that is only sometimes, most of the time, the hours were spent doing weird stuffs like eating ice cream and mais con yelo while the world around them is freezing, walking with one umbrella under a storm while fighting and shouting unfair to each other. Two aliens laughing, lost inside their own world.
After her class which ends when it’s already dark, in chance, she might go out with a friend for a bite or spend some time alone to visit Book Sale before going home. She gets home, eats and then goes online. She never watches TV at night. Once a friend called her abnormal for not and it made her smile, for the thought of being such a non-conformist person appeals to her.
She usually stays up late especially during vacations. She likes the idea of being awake on the time where everyone is usually asleep. It is in this time she tries to write mushy poems or cram for the projects and assignments due in the morning. Eventually she’ll realize drowsiness is creeping inside her, she’ll then be under covers when already the world is starting to wake up.
This is her every day. It happened today and will happen for the next days to come. She gets tedious now and then though she’ll always find an escape to this world of endless replays through the enchanting cheap paperback books she reads, sharing dreams to dear friends, making acquaintances and small talk to interesting people and then saying goodbye, discovering the music of unknown musicians, walking alone between the stalls of second-hand books sold for almost nothing and dreaming for the day she’ll open her own public library, creating things she doesn’t know what to call, and day dreaming. A lot of day dreaming.
This is her life, a story still in progress. She doesn’t intend to keep on telling the same story again and again. She will tell new tales and will write and un-write if it’ll be possible and she will never get tired of writing in third persona no matter how weird she feels about it.
