To Aids: I was wondering about that myself.  Will check today.  Aside from blood and gore, there's gravity-defying anatomy, so...  Although kids these days are pretty sophisticated.  We tested the AJWCC games with the grade school last school year.  I asked whether the administrators wanted to preview and veto the games.  They said nah.  And some of the games had bloodspatter, so.  Anyway, I'm due to talk with Mrs. Oracion.  She'll have the final say.

***

Yesterday, I attended a small gathering in honor of our retiring faculty.  Among them were Doc Mana, Ricky Abad, and Dr. Tejido.  The honorees had spent 30 years of more in the Ateneo.  They had made their lives here.

Also yesterday, I had a chat with one of our junior faculty about his future and directions in the Ateneo.  I spoke to him at length about his plans.

Finally, I had a meeting with the annual one-on-one with the Dean about faculty ratings, succession, departmental sustainability and so on.

There was nothing extraordinary about any of these events.  The combination, though, in such a concentrated period of time, distrubed me to the point of distraction.  It was like fast-forwarding through your own life--seeing yourself at the beginning of your career, at the middle and at the end, as if this was all there was to it.  In tracing people's trajectories, you can almost trace your own. The experience leaves you asking so many questions: How much of where I am is where I choose to be? To what extent am I being led and by whom?  Do I like where I am headed?

Don't get me wrong: I do love the Ateneo and being a member of the community is a cornerstone of my life. Most days, I believe the saying that "life is not about the breaths you take but the moments that take your breath away." Yesterday, it suddenly became about the breaths you take. Life in the Ateneo suddenly felt very small.