Thinking BIG

Our Filipino presentation, called sagala, will be tomorrow. At first, I was sort of hesitant to join the whole project because the task was to create---get this---a float. No, not the delicious kind with soda and ice cream, that would have been simple enough. By float, they mean one that can hold a lot of people standing on it and waving perkily to the adoring crowd. Think Annual Rose Parade in the US. Normally, a project of this caliber would be enough to spark my interest and get me all eager-beaver-ish over it, but not really this time. Why? Not because I was lazy to work with my blockmates (A1 rocks!!!), but because I couldn't comprehend something this...BIG.

In high school, probably the biggest project I've ever worked on was a bulletin board, roughly 1/3 the size of a regular classroom blackboard. That's nothing compared to a float, a rolling, mobile contraption. I agreed to participate in the sagala, but until now, I couldn't picture in my mind the image of a "float".

Awhile ago, I went to school (despite having free cuts the whole day) to help with our sagala. Our concept is a children's story about "Ang Pambihirang Buhok ni Lola" (Lola's Extraordinary Hair) , which is about a lola who has uber long and strong hair. First task: untangle and straighten the roughly 5 meters of strawball tali ("hair"). Talk about disaster! After swimming through the strands for around an hour, we finally managed to put a semblance of order in lola's locks. A little while later, our PolSci groupmates produced our makeshift kubo, to serve as the main part of our float. And that time of laughter and funny moments gave me a fuzzy feeling...

Hey, we can actually do this.

Sometimes, I guess it's going to take a REALLY BIG project to remind me that I'm not in high school anymore, that my world isn't closed or limited to what I see before me. The world is now at my feet---there is less conservativeness to make me feel small and unimportant. Now, I can expand my horizons, opinions, capabilities...to think BIG.