Updates

Entry re-published from my friendster blog. I promise to really update my blog soon.

It took me sometime before being able to face a PC and to write coherent sentences again. The 5-day and 4-night non-stop typing and case digesting which I had to endure for a subject requirement had made me want not to see a PC for sometime and not to do anything which involved the PC keyboard (except posting in Peyups and sending occasional messages to friends thru Friendster). The requirement should have not been really a problem. We divided the 100+ cases to be digested among the class and I have been digesting a few cases myself from time to time. But the OC in me got in the way, which compelled me not just to edit or rephrase the digests made by classmates, but to go over the original cases themselves and add on to the digests. I hated myself for that.

So, despite editing, rephrasing and re-digesting for 5 days and 4 nights (stopping only for meal times, The Amazing Race, American Idol, Pinoy Big Brother and 2-3 hours sleeping time), I found myself cramming the case digests during the last hours of March 30, the submission date. I beat the deadline, but regretted that I failed to have my digests hard bound.
I simply rested during the Holy Week, watching marathons of Gilmore Girls and Seventh Heaven and okay, Let the Love Begin on TV (we don’t have cable) and attending church activities to atone for my sinful life. I joined the Good Friday procession for the first time and walked after the carrosa of…(surprise!) St. Jude, owned by my parents’ friends. I vow to join the procession from now on so that even this early, St. Jude could already intercede for my special prayer- to pass the bar.

I have nothing to do for the summer so I plan to finish reading and writing notes of the provisions of the Insurance Code (which I assume you find boring). I had to drop Insurance (after reading about 300 pages of the book and digesting 30 cases) last semester because the subject fell on the same day with Labor Law, an equally demanding subject, not to mention that the teachers in both subjects demanded too much as well. As of last Monday, I am still on Section 8, regarding the prohibition on insuring public enemies. My progress has been delayed by (leisurely) reading 2 books which I bought at Book Sale at least a year ago, but have not taken the time to read.

One book, The Overseer is a suspense thriller, similar to the works of Robert Ludlum and Dan Brown. The story revolves around a 14th century political treatise, entitled On Supremacy, which prescribes a brand of statecraft even more sinister than Machiavelli’s The Prince does. Written by an obscure monk, Eusebius Eisenreich (who incidentally was from the Order of St Benedict), the manuscript serves as a blueprint for world domination. It contains instructions on how to bring about political, social, and economic chaos, on a detailed schedule, and to establish in its place a New Order. The manuscript fell into the hands of an organization trying to put the theory into practice and the first trial was to be made in the United States. A series of destabilization attacks occur in Washington supposedly to be concluded by the assassination of the President and the assumption into office by the Vice President, who is a member of the organization. The new state was to be divided into three realms- the political, the economic, and the social- each to be governed by a Prefect. Each realm must appear to function separately and independently from each other, so as to give the appearance of balance among them. The government of the three realms was to be overseen by The Overseer (pardon the redundancy), who must have the insight of an Aurelius and the self-command of a Cincinnatus. The preservation of the Supremacy involves the continuous manipulation and deception of the people, making them believe that actually have a stake in the government, and the cultivation of hatred among them against a common enemy, to unify them.

Thus, the protagonists, Xander Jaspers, a political theorist from Columbia University and Sarah Trent, an agent of the US Secret Service, must not only solve the mystery behind the identities of the Overseer and his Prefects but find the third copy of the manuscript, which contains the schedule of the attacks, in order to stop them from happening. The plot is similar to the Langdon-Neveu chase of the Sangreal, but the book was published ahead of The Da Vinci Code. The academician in Rabb, however, made the book far from being a light reading material that it should be. The construction of sentences and the choice of words would reveal that the novel is first and foremost an academician’s work. This is the reason why it took me this long to finally read the book (Though the book is still better than Hector De Leon’s Comments and Cases on the Insurance Code, which made me finally read it.) What got me interested about the book is that it revolved around an unusual material and that its protagonist is a political theorist. How many authors would make a scholarly political science major as their novel’s protagonist? (I majored in Political Science, by the way) Plus, the author, Jonathan Rabb, a political theorist himself, even wrote the supposed On Supremacy in Machiavellian fashion, which is also included in the book. Overall, the book is still an engaging and interesting read. Although I wouldn’t put it in my beach bag (if I were you) as the Washington Post prescribes. I would rather bring a porn mag. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.