week in recap

Xab was supposed to visit me yesterday on Sunday. Instead he came on Saturday and spent the weekend with me. He was trying to keep a surprise but he isn't too good at playing mind games with me. My roommates knew for a week though which is probably why they kept asking me when he was coming, just to make sure I was still oblivious. We watched Bowling for Columbine and Flipside. Bowling for Columbine was pretty good but Flipside was disappointing. I think I hyped myself up for it too much, getting a little excited that I was going to see Filipinos on the theater screen but I felt that there could have been more in the movie. Great ending though.

Also, last week, I attended this 'memorial' in honor of the Bataan Death March. There were a lot of Filipino vets, some of whom survived the death march and all who have not received recognition from the American government. It was pretty interesting, what all the speakers had to say. I also met other Filipino students. I realized that I was born with three pairs of ears but only one tongue. For the first time, I felt handicapped not being able to speak Tagalog or Ilocano. Not that they were speaking to me in those languages. They were only wondering but I felt kind of incomplete. Whoo, motivation to get that Tagalog textbook open again.

I also realized how freakin' ignorant and unwilling to listen my roommates are. I came back from the memorial excited that I actually got an education today, giving them recaps of Philippine-US history. "...and they don't tell you that in history books." "Well, duh, it's bad, why would America want people knowing about it?" Oh, f*ck you. I didn't say that of course. It was just the nonchalant attitude about it all. I tried telling them more, but they wouldn't listen. Just brushed me off so that they speak about movies and music and capitalist crap like that. I wasn't really mad. Just severely annoyed and surprised that they had deaf ears. I think they're not very culturally receptive and maybe it's not their fault because they haven't grown up in diverse areas like others have. Or maybe they just brushed me off as being another Asian talking about another Asian history when they're all very different.

It's hard having a deep, meaningful conversation with them. So I stopped trying. I lock myself in my room and just do my homework instead of wasting my time with them watching tv. I hate watching tv. My other roommate though is Filipino and I told her some of the stuff I learned. She says she's not really immersed in her heritage so she found it interesting and she knew what I was talking about when people aren't listening. Too bad she's never around.

I cried last night when Xab was leaving. Well I didn't really cry. I was just tearing up. I think I was about to make him cry too. I don't know if it's just that I don't want him to leave because I'll miss him or because I just won't have anyone to talk to.