01: U.P COOKBOOK

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Get a mixture of cross-country relocations, family issues, crippling self-criticism, constant existential dread and a tendency for unnecessarily dramatic introductions, boil it in the fires of philosophical “enlightenment” and love for music, and then what do you get? Probably a number of self-righteous, know-it-all and also socially crippled students who think they’re on top of the world. I’d wager that here in the University of the Philippines you could encounter them on a daily basis, but they all come in different flavors. Sprinkle in the name of a famous monument from a country our family has literally nothing to do with (as though things couldn’t get quite insufferable enough), however, and you get Taj Samuel Aguirre Lagulao specifically, in all his unabashed glory.

Everyone’s a certain type, and no one is exactly like another person. After all, everyone is the product of their own personal kitchen and experiences. As the youngest child of three, my siblings and I have had to learn how to survive on their own at an early age, as circumstances early on in our lives prompted our father to separate and our mother to work abroad. Passed around like lost puppies, the three of us lived with distant relatives from all over the country: first in Roxas City, then Iloilo, then Makati, then Pangasinan, then Quezon City, and now finally Los Banos, where I have stayed long enough to say that I’m a citizen here. A travelling life full of menial tasks and unmemorable experiences, only few things have given me constant solace. Video game addiction is a real thing, mind you, and I used to have it in spades. More productively, however, is my fascination with the written art, specifically literature.

Writing in all its forms has never failed to intrigue me. It is a cheap pop advertisement, it is graffiti in the bathroom stalls, it is erotic fiction and other unsightly combination of words, yet it is simultaneously an art form, a method of communication, and a device of development. Writing is so many things. It could be anything you wanted it to be. A subservient squire, it is willing to give itself up for your use. It could be literally anything, but like the decorated sword a knight wields, it is up to you the writer to navigate through its complex ocean and curvatures. Writing is not anything without the writer.

The stage is set for this little stew of experiences to take the spotlight. Does he crumble like bread or does he thrive like a mouse in an unkempt kitchen? Who’s to say? Only two things are for sure: One, I’m in U.P taking up Development Communication as my course, and two, I’m here to stay. Nothing else is certain, so why don’t we just see how the story goes?