I spent the entire Saturday morning plowing through the PoS 180.25 readings for the week. I managed to finish Jose Casanova's Secularization, Enlightenment and Modern Religion from Public Religions in the Modern World and Talal Asad's What Might An Anthropology of Secularism Look Like? from Formations of the Secular. I still have the David Herbert selections to read, annotate and reread but it looks like I'll be ready for this week's class. Only about ten students are enrolled in Prof. Raneses' three-hour class (Contemporary Democratic Theory: Interrogating Secularism) so it's impossible to feign knowledge of the readings if you only quickly browsed through them. You will get asked to participate in the discussion at least five times and the length of the class period means a one-liner won't do. He also gives each student a grade per session based on the student's contributions to the discussion and the average of the student's grades per session will constitute 15% of his/her final mark, so you risk a low mark if it becomes painfully clear that , for whatever reason, you didn't carefully go through the readings. I got an A in the last session but I'm really looking forward to the next session because RR devised a cool star-moon-sun-cloud (?) system of grading. Haha!
I went to Gateway a little after lunch to pick up a stick of tea tree concealer from Body Shop then headed back to Katipunan to meet up with Shivs Parmanand at Seattle's Best. I hadn't had SB's chocolate milkshake in a while, so I decided to abandon my 1500 kcal diet (not self-imposed, mind you--my orthopedist says I have to maintain my weight or lose a couple of pounds so that my back stops giving me trouble) and ask for extra ice cream. In SB, the only drink I'm comfortable getting is the chocolate milkshake. I've gotten so used to Starbucks to bother trying anything else. We both lamented the fact that Seattle's and Kenny Rogers now share space (Their counters are only maybe ten meters apart). SB is the go-to of students who need to study or write papers when Starbucks gets too crowded. However, Kenny Rogers is frequented by families from the Xavierville area and rowdy students celebrating after grueling long tests, so the new arrangement makes it impossible to study/have a proper conversation unless you managed to nab a table far from the Kenny Rogers counter. Thankfully, because of the rain, there weren't a lot of people when Shivs and I got there.
I updated Shivs on my weird schedule and she told me about some of the more hilarious things that happened to her in the past week. Important realization: Never think everything's peachy and nothing can faze you--something's bound to surprise you and make you realize you haven't seen it all! Haha! Shivs is leaving for Auckland this week and the run-up to the trip has been quite exhausting for her, I think, so she deserved her coffee.
I had to leave at around 9:30 because my dad called to say he was on his way to Katipunan from the airport and I promised him we could have a late dinner together. On my way to Xanland, something really weird happened--but that's for another entry, and one I'm not going to write anytime in the near future.
Sunday was a bit more hectic. I had lunch with family and family friends who were in town then met up for coffee with Vic Baguilat. Vic Baguilat had a strawberry milkshake while I decided to experiment (gasp) and order a mocha cappuccino. I regretted my choice, though, when I saw how much Vic was enjoying his milkshake. He realized a bit too late, however, that he's lactose-intolerant. Whoops. We had fun catching up and sizing up random people in the vicinity. Haha! I had to leave a little past 6 though because the family decided to have dinner with Tita Rose Napao and her daughter, Yvonne. Oh, before I forget, congratulations to Vic for getting his own place in Taft! Housewarming party? Haha!
All in all, I had a pretty relaxed weekend. I have a bad feeling the next two weekends (at least) won't be as mellow. Oh well.
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