Was supposed to post this way earlier but I was too bored and tired that I took a two hour nap followed by three hours of Duke fun to iron out the stress.
I woke up at like 2AM in the morning and had a heavybreakfast consisting of meatloaf, a cup of rice, two slices of wheat bread, and a mug of Arabica coffee. Then I took a shower, dressed up, made sure that everything I need is set and began my journey.
It was a very long trip, that it took us preferably 3 hours or so to reach the University of the Philippines. No, it's not because there was heavy traffic, it was early before dawn, hell, nobody's driving at those hours. It's because we were facing a shitstorm and we won't risk running down roads in speeds faster than 50kph. All went well (I think) until I reached my destination.
There were only a few people, about twenty to thirty, waiting in the College of Arts and Letters (my designated testing area) when I arrived. I arrived at 5AM, the exam won't start until the clock reaches 6:30AM. However, when it was at least ten minutes before the planned time, there was already a huge mob waiting behind me, about four hundred to be exact. Most of them won't fit in the waiting garage and just waited outside in the rain. The personnel thought it was a good idea to let us in now (finally), so that the area will not be too congested.
The testing room was nice and dandy, with none of those pre-elementary educational posters posted on different sides of the wall. The only thing stuck on the wall is a whiteboard and a blackboard. The two proctors explained the instructions and etiquette of the examination, and then the test began with a 50-minute time period of Language Proficiency.
It was a piece of cake, and it only composes of "Insert the most logical fragment here", "Which of the following does not follow the formal writing style", etcetera etcetera. I finished in about 45 minutes, and I took the liberty to take a 300ml gulp of water and two loaves of whole wheat bread to power me up for the next round.
The next fight was another 50 minutes or so, this time it's focused on General Science. It's a good thing I nerd'ed General Science in First Year (but stopped in the next year because I had better things to do), so I answered the questions in a breeze. There were some questions I have to skip, since 1/4 of the wrong answers will deduct your correct answers. This is their anti-speedrun system and it worked like a charm. Now the examinees are given brain aneurisms while trying to decide to take the risk of guessing or just skipping the question and moving on.
During the whole Science period, my bladder was against me. I feel excretory wastes (laymen's terms: piss) seriously trying to get out of my system, so I immediately went to the nearest lavatory for relief. The comfort room was clean and tidy, but some parts are riddled with doodles and messages that are written using plain permanent markers. Most of them are pretty civilized and are only there to prove that people are just "marking their territories" or sending a message to the users of the lavatory in form of writings like "Did you enjoy pissing?" on the toilets. It made me lol and gave me more willpower to finish the subtest.
The third subtest is something I'm really pissed about - Mathematics. We were provided an hour and fifteen minutes to answer, which was more than enough ample time to answer 60 mathematical problems. As I expected, it was full of computations that I gave up on remembering formulas and just trust my logic, instead of persistence, on answering the questions based on common sense. After an hour later I took another snack break by finishing a bar of Snickers and another 300 mililiters of water.
The last part was Reading Comprehension, and it was easily the most boring part and I'm fighting my instinct of falling asleep while reading endless, irrelevant paragraphs in either English or Tagalog. We were asked to find the main idea of the paragraph, which is either to give ideal information or just to put us to a short slumber. In the end, I succeeded in finishing the subtest at least 20 minutes before the end of the time, since I just scanned through the paragraphs, munching on another Snickers just to combat the instinct of sleep.
After I'm done, we were led out of the building and I was led into a six lap course circling the perimeter of the College of Arts and Letters, trying to find my ride home. Finally, on my last run I found my mother waiting for me outside the building, and I was so pissed that I asked a barrage of questions about where the hell were they. But walking for a third of an hour around a building perimeter looking for something sure is good exercise. Cardio time!
