This is where it all began

We all grew up watching movies like American Pie 2, Reality Bites, Kicking and Screaming, Animal House, etc. These were all movies set around a bunch a of college kids partying hard while facing the shocking reality of adulthood. Of course the venue for these fictional situations were college dorms, apartments and condos. When I was in highschool, I couldn't wait to bust out into college, get a pad, and get the party started! True enough, my dreams (if you could call it as such) did materialize. But it wasn't always like that. In fact, I spent a little more than a semester traversing the traffic-filled route between Ateneo and Alabang everyday. Oftentimes, I spent an average of 4 hours on the road everyday going to and from Katipunan. The riding was hard, and the driving even harder. Most of us weren't familiar driving so far north. Before then, the farthest I had driven to was Greenhills! We had to contend with traffic at its worst. The Skyway had yet to open, there were no E-Pass lanes, and potholes had never been so big.

As a newly registered freshman, I was invited to join the Alabang carpool by some older friends from Ateneo. I remembered, there was this orientation/meeting in someone's house where all the newbies attended to get the lowdown on everything about carpool. We had to submit our schedules and other information, such as if you were bringing a van or if you had a driver. When school started, riding the carpool for me was like the unofficial ORSEM. I got to talk to a lot off people from the higher batches. They would tell me about their war stories in and around campus, which teachers to get and to avoid, and things to do and places to go in and around Katipunan. I probably learned more here about getting started out in Ateneo than what was being taught in the ORSEM. (which was a totally boring experience)

In general, my trips were fun. In most trips, I was with other freshmen, most of which I knew from highschool, so things were all good. As the weeks went on, you would start to have regular set of people per trip, and we all got to know each other a bit more. I had a different group of carpool people each day, each as interesting and as different as the others. Conversations would range from relationship problems and the latest crush, to bitching out on a prof or some irritating guy in your class. I remember one of the more absurd conversations I had in carpool went along the lines of a single proposition: "Ano pipiliin mo? Isang shot ng uhog, o isang shot ng nana?" Absurd, yet strangely interesting.

Of course, being associated with such a big group of people (we numbered around 60-70 at that time), one could not escape having carpool crushes. Of course I had a few, and there was always a possibility that you could get stuck in traffic with anyone of them. Well, there were a couple of carpool romances during my time, and i guess you could have counted me in. It was through carpool that my last relationship blossomed. Oh boy, how I counted my blessings then.

You could also not escape having dreaded riders in carpool. In some cases, you wouldn't want to be stuck with some heinous bitch or asshole, or worse...a major dorko or a chismosa. Bitches and assholes you could always deal with by just not minding them, letting them wallow in their own filth and pride, but dorkos are rare gems. I remember this guy in carpool who was always avoided. People said that that he was such a relentless geek, and that he had the ability to skin you alive with the most uninteresting conversations. During trips where he would bring a car, it was always near empty. There was this one time I had to hitch a ride home since I was off early, and he brought the only car for that trip. I remember feeling one emotion as I got dropped off at my stop: regret. I swear, I had never met somebody who could talk so much about nothing. (that, by the way, is an unmistakeable trait of an Atenean) He was a nightmare. During the trip, I felt like wrapping myself with a blanket in a fetal position and call out for my mother. It's a good thing I got off first. I pity the other rider who had to endure a few more minutes with him. I'm sure he was flayed to the bone.

It also really sucked to be stuck with a group of chismosas during your trips. Man, did I hate being with these self-absorbed people. They just talk about this guy, or that girl, so on and so forth, and to think topics would usually be about other people in carpool. Conversations with them were terribly unbearable, since if they didn't talk about how bad someone else was, they would talk about how great they were, or how nice their lastest cellphone was, or something to that effect. Everything that had to do with them was so plastic. Sometimes, you would wish that they were all locked in a car while you had in your hand a grenade with the pin off.

In general, these people were the exception rather than the rule. I met a lot of cool, steady and interesting people in carpool, and many of them are my good friends now. Although I had been in carpool for just about a sem before I moved into Burgundy, I thoroughly enjoyed the trips and the company. It was great as a freshman, you got to know a lot of other people you normally wouldn't have had the chance to meet. And since was we all came from the south, the carpool was a spot of familiarity in contrast to the vastness of Ateneo. I heard that the carpool now reaches almost a hundred, and I bet it's all good. In the end though, I just couldn't handle the commute each day. I joined the baseball team, and we had practices MWF both in the morning and afternoon, so I had to come in around 6am in the mornings and get off practices at 6pm. So I had to find a place near Ateneo, and i'll get to that next.