Long Weekends are good. Very long weekends are...

Iskos and Iskas got their much-deserved rest from academic stress this weekend as one holiday after another cancelled two days of classes, giving everyone a four-day vacation.

So what does one do with 96 hours of free time?  What else?  Catch up with more academic work!  Hahaha.

Ninoy Aquino day is on the 21st but we all know our President is an economist so she wants us to spend money to "stimulate" the economy, whatever that means.  Luckily for us, Quezon City day (which falls on the 19th) isn't a national holiday so there's no reason for moving it, giving us a full four days of free time to spend (more like, splurge).

But since work is piling up, many found the vacation only a reprieve from going to school, but not an escape from academic stress.

Thesis, reports, exams and other requirements loom in the distance.  Only the fence sitter would attempt to spend this idle time idly.

I, for one, had to spend half of the vacation studying for and taking a Macroeconomics exam.  Thank God for time to study, because the exam, unlike the first one, was a bit easy and less straining.  The first one really had me guessing quite a lot.  This time, not a lot of guesswork since most questions are obvious.  But sometimes you have to think twice if the question is playing tricks on you.  The teaching fellows do that quite often with our problem set.

Because I had my fair share of academic stress already, I decided to spend the remaining days relaxing and unwinding.  Despite the cancellation of classes, we had our bowling class yesterday, because Coach Noel wanted to max out our use of the bowling center.  That's fine by us, we love bowling anyway!  So yeah, that's one part of the relaxation part.

This morning, IA asked me to help her with the coverage of the QC Day ceremonies.  Since it was dead early in the morning, I decided to take the opportunity and semi-jog along the Acad Oval.  I've been meaning to join Ate Eliza (of PDI Research, where I intern-ed) for so long now but the academic stress just wouldn't permit me to wake up at that ungodly hour in the morning.

This morning, without stress boring upon my shoulders, I woke up at 5am and made my way around the academic oval.

At first, I was quite reluctant to jog since I haven't had a strenuous physical activity for so long.  I brisk-walked at first, and when I saw myself trailing behind a lot of joggers in the oval, I decided to go with the flow and jogged.

But, sad to say, I just don't have it in me.  My knees are weak (and I mean that in the least romantic way) and my lungs... oh, my lungs.  They're like little balloons deflating by the minute.  Haha.  So, where I can't jog, I walked in long strides.

People jogging in the oval had their unique ways of going at it: like the guy who jogs with his hands hanging by the sockets of his wrists; or the teenage boy who jogged like he was floating on air; or the couple who took jogging very lightly and paced together (this one was cute).  I had my fair share of idiosyncracies as well: earphones blaring very loudly, I walked in very long strides, like a kid who's making fun of the exercise.  Haha.  I must've looked very stupid doing it, but who cares?  Only Angelina Jolie could look good while jogging.

What's even funnier in a not-so-funny way (haha whatever that means!) was that while walking, I paced side-by-side a middle-aged couple.  At times I would trail behind them, at times they would overtake me.  When I was about to end, they walked in the near distance.  This made me think that I must have the health of a middle-aged man to be walking that slow!  Hahaha.

To be fair, this is my first strenuous activity in months, so please, don't judge me.  At least now I know I'm better than around five percent of the world who live a sedentary lifestyle!  Mwahahahaha.

When I ended, I wanted to go "sight-seeing," if you know what I mean, so I sat by a stone chair by the sidelines while drinking a bottle of Gatorade.  Unfortunately, there were no "sights" to "see" that morning.  Bleh.

My knees betraying me soon enough, I decided to go home feeling a little bit disappointed, but a little bit fulfilled.

I shall do that again.  I just don't know when.  Haha.

Very long weekends are definitely the best.  =)

*Photo from http://www.the-perfectshape.com/