Breaking the Bro Code

People who know me well enough know that almost 4 years ago, I broke the bro code. Specifically, I broke the prohibition of asking out your bro's sister. A lot of people give me a strange look when they find out that I'm close friends with Nikki's older brother. Nate and I go way back. We were classmates since grade school and when he went to college in Ateneo de Manila and I in UP, we would still see each other from time to time as both schools are very close to each other.

So what possessed me to break the bro code and quite possible put at risk my friendship with Nate? It was series of things that happened but essentially, I found someone worth it. I asked her out without asking Nate first though I think he knew the whole time what my intentions were.

Nikki is a special girl. Looking back, I could say that I saw something in her way back then even when I had no plans to break the bro code. For me, the story started in 2013 while I was working in Manila. It was a weekend in August when a bunch of my friends decided to visit Manila. They were originally supposed to go to Taiwan but decided against it later on. As they had already bought tickets to Manila, they made it a Manila trip.

On the same weekend though, Nikki was celebrating her birthday with a trip to Mount Taal. She told her brothers to invite friends and since we were already in Manila with our other friends, we got invited as well. While everyone was on board with the Taal trip, I saw it as a way to get myself out of spending time with my friends as I needed to finish something at work. A lot of convincing later and I was on the car ride to Taal.

When we finally met up with everyone else including Nikki's younger brother's friends, I noticed something strange. Her older brother's friends were there and her younger brother's friends were there. Her friends, however, were nowhere in sight. I knew that to celebrate her birthday, she plans these little trips and invites whoever to join her so it shocked me to see that her friends didn't come along. She was the only girl among 13 guys that day. I felt sad for her but not enough to strike a conversation. Anyone who knows me, knows I almost never make the first move to get to know people.

The opposite was true for our friend, Mark. He almost always starts the conversation with anyone he comes in contact with. So naturally, he did start talking to Nikki. I can't explain it fully why I felt it at the time but I somehow felt protective of her. I didn't want her talking to a guy who might have intentions with her (we were all single back then). I know Mark was just being friendly but that didn't stop me from feeling all protective around her.

I would make a mental note as to where she was in the resort we stayed at and where my friends were. She mostly stayed with her younger brother's friends which put me more at ease. There was some down time while waiting for the wake-boarding boat and I brought along a deck of Monopoly Deal which we played. I was teaching her how to play so I got spend some time with her.

Now, at this time, I had no intentions whatsoever with Nikki. The bro code dictated I should keep away. She did leave as it was their turn to try wake-boarding. My friends, Hamilton and Lucky had been eyeing me the whole time and they told me they thought they saw a spark between us. I vehemently denied this and said I was just being friendly to her. That didn't stop their teasing though but I maintained that I was not at all interested in Nate's sister, citing once more the Bro Code.

That was back in August 2013. Flash forward to May 2014 and I had just moved back home to Cebu  and I wanted to spend more time with my friends. I decided to host a Game Night in our house every month so we could all hang out together in an inexpensive manner. After Nate had so much fun in the first game night, he told Nikki all about it and she ended up asking to be invited, which I obliged.

I actually had an ulterior motive for hosting game nights. Some of our friends were in relationships but quite a number of us were single. I constantly told the guys who had girlfriends to "Bring friends." This was for all the single guys but most especially, it was for me. None of the guys ever thought to bring their other friends to game night. It was only Nate who brought her sister to game night. And as luck would have it, she was in a relationship.

As it turns out, game night is great for meeting new people but it isn't so good for getting to know other people. We would spend our nights playing with new board games but we rarely talk about deeper topics. As I was the host, I also couldn't engage in one on one conversation with everyone as I would have to explain the rules of the game to everyone. Taking all of these into account, I never really saw Nikki as anything more than Nate's younger sister.

Flash forward again to March 2015. It was Nate's birthday and he invited everyone to dinner. Purely by random, I saw myself seated next to Nikki and we had one of our first long conversation with each other. By that time, I had already dated two girls but those never made it past the first date. What was different with Nikki was that she could challenge me intellectually. She was different and exciting. There were just two problems though - she was still Nate's sister and she still had a boyfriend.

I made it a point that I will never start a relationship by breaking up another couple. And so I decided yet again to do nothing. She was just out of my reach so I had to learn to forget about any chances I could have with her. Shortly after Nate's birthday though, Lucky and I were talking and he suggested again that I should try asking Nikki out. I told him that I couldn't do that as she had a boyfriend. And Lucky told me that Nikki mentioned that they weren't working out - Nikki was in a long distance relationship with a guy from Manila.

I couldn't believe it though I knew I had to tread carefully. I don't want to be the guy who made a girl think he was interested just to keep her hanging high and dry. And I most definitely didn't want to do that to Nate's sister. So I asked shot her a text and asked her out to a very unromantic friendly date - a gym class in the morning. We didn't talk much during the class but we did eat breakfast together and this was when I knew I was in trouble.

I had earlier anticipated that we'd spend a maximum of one hour for breakfast but ended up spending three whole hours together. We talked the whole time and we never ran out of things to talk about. We simply clicked. We did have to say good bye after those three hours but I never wanted that breakfast to end. That's when I knew that I had fallen in love with this girl.

Still, I knew I had to keep my distance. I wasn't going to break up a couple just to keep one of the pieces for myself but I knew I wanted to spend time with her. I remember thinking to myself, "I don't care if she never breaks up with her boyfriend. The worst that will happen is that I'll be friends with this amazing girl." And so I dove in with this mindset.

 I was able to get her to spend time with me playing scrabble. We would play once a week in a coffee shop. And this exchange kept on going on for a good few weeks. She did leave for Manila one weekend to attend her younger brother's graduation and I'll admit now, it killed me a little to know that she was going to be spending some time with her boyfriend. I remember checking her Instagram every once in a while to see if they were spending time together. Pictures of her with her block mates came but none of her with her boyfriend. I dismissed it as her just not being the type of girl who posts her dates on social media, which she really isn't.

She came back from her Manila trip and like we always did, during one day in the middle of the week, we played scrabble. She'd just gotten a haircut and she looked cuter than usual. We kept our conversation plain and simple. Nothing too deep but nothing too shallow. And then she shared that over the weekend when she was in Manila, she and her boyfriend broke up. I was giddy on the inside but I didn't want to show that this little bit of news affected me in any way. It was probably my lack of interest in the news that exposed me. She didn't say anything and more curiously, I never even reacted to it.

I knew I needed to act quickly. My goal had always been to keep a certain distance to avoid being friend-zoned. I told myself I'd give her a month or two to move on. So the game plan was to keep playing scrabble with her until a time when I could ask her out formally. The weekend came and I couldn't help myself. There was a competing idea in my head telling me, "If I don't do anything now, someone else will snatch her up." and "A girl like her don't stay single for long." And so a week later I decided to ask her out after our usual scrabble date. I broke another rule, the three month rule. It was awkward but well worth it.

Among the first things to come out of her mouth were, "What happens if we break up?" Such a thought had never crossed my mind. We weren't even together yet and I didn't want to think about the exit clause. But it was one we had to consider. We both have game nights with the same group of friends and so whatever would happen to our relationship, it would indeed change the group dynamic. So we decided that we wouldn't tell any of our closest friends, except the ones who already knew I was making my moves - Nate, Lucky, and Ham.

In April 2015, we went out on our first official date. And the rest is history. She's still my date and while scrabble is not something we do weekly, we've come to do other things together now. Sometimes, I can't believe that was four years ago when I fell in love. Four years later and we're still in love.

Next year, we will mark yet another milestone in our relationship. As the great Beyonce once said, "If you like then put a ring on it." And so I did and she said yes. In approximately 14 months, we'll be tying the knot and hopefully start a family together. I've never felt so sure about anything in my life and I'll admit it's a scary commitment but one I'm willing to dive in with Nikki.

The Danger of Free Things

Things cost money. Nice things cost a lot of money. Even an 8 year old knows that M&Ms will cost more than Nips or that Doritos will cost more than Chippy. This is economics that even children understand. As such, when people buy things to give other people, you’ll most likely skimp on the quality. So while you might consider buying San Marino sardines for your family, when giving to charities or in packing relief goods, almost always, people will prefer to buy 555 or Ligo to give away (disclaimer: Not looking down on these products.).

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this as the intent is to provide more food given limited resources. This lesson should be so obvious but it’s lost in today’s political landscape especially among the supporters of some senatorial bets. Watching ANC’s Harapan 2019 allowed me to see what some of the senatorial bets are promising the Filipinos if they get elected. To the surprise of absolutely no one, many of the candidates are offering free (fill in the blank) to the Filipino people.

Healthcare, check-ups, college, allowance for college, housing, etc. – these are only some of the things being promised this election season. Now, free things sound great. I mean while San Marino is better than Ligo, Ligo is still better than no sardines at all. There is no doubt about that. The problem comes when you think about who’ll end up paying for all these free things? At the end of the day, government gets money from taxes and government then decides how it’ll distribute these taxes to the country. So with limited resources, you’d expect quality to go down just to provide this free thing to everyone.

This is easiest to see through an illustration. Take free check-ups, a promise by more than one senatorial bet. Doctors spent a lot of money going to medical school so asking them to offer free services is definitely out of the question. Government will have to pay its doctors a fare wage. That doctor’s salary is paid for by the government, which gets its money from taxes which – surprise! – is paid by you, the taxpayer, whether or not you avail of the service.

I’ve been to a number of public hospitals in crowded cities and they’re not pleasant places to be in. As there’s a promise of free check-ups, doctors will undoubtedly see more patients in a day and as such will have to allot less time for each patient. Now, while there are doctors who are able to provide a quality check-up in very limited time, such is not the case for all doctors. Most will have to rush through their patients just to provide everyone with this free check-up. Again, quantity wins over quality.

Sad as it may sound, quantity healthcare is NOT what we need. What we need is quality healthcare. Actually, we don’t need quantity anything. What we need is quality things! And it applies to practically everything! Here’s a list:

• ·         We don’t need more roads. We need nice roads.
• ·         We don’t need more bridges. We need quality bridges.
• ·         We don’t need more education. We need quality education.
• ·         We don’t need more laws. We need good quality laws

I’d like to share with you a story about cheap tertiary education as opposed to quality tertiary education. I’m part of UP Batch 2006 (which means I entered UP in 2006). We were the last batch in which UP charged students Php300/unit. That would go for roughly Php7,000/semester including fees and other miscellaneous items. Considering how much college tuition is in other universities, UP education was a steal! In 2007, UP raised its tuition to roughly 20,000/semester for all new students to address the dwindling subsidy by the government.

It was in my first year that I saw how “okay” the quality of education was in UP. I mean, the teachers were amazing – don’t get me wrong. They were brilliant and could teach very well! Though I had heard they weren’t compensated as well. The common point being raised was that UP professors taught in UP out of passion, not money. The “okay” quality I’m talking about was from the state of the facilities. Our classrooms were cramped – they’re half the size of the ones in ADMU. The chairs were old and dirty and there were vandals written on practically all of them! Our Chemistry lab instructor had an embarrassing moment where the iron ring she was using was too big for the funnel but the lab wasn’t equipped for the funnel so she jokingly said that we had to improvise and she ended up using masking tape to “reduce” the size of the iron ring. In my computer programming class, we were all assigned one of those big clunky computers in a very cramped computer lab but out of 25 units, 4 of them didn’t turn on so there were times when two students would have to share a computer. The computers were running on outdated software as well. From my recollection, I believe they were running on Windows 95… in 2007!

I loved my teachers and they deserved a better working environment so they can teach to their fullest potential. That means multiple sizes of iron rings, a fully stocked laboratory, clean tables and chairs, complete laboratory equipment. Sadly, that wasn’t the case for my first years in college.

Contrast that to after 2007 when the new tuition fee had been implemented. The College of Engineering had just renovated almost all of their classrooms including the computer lab, which it now had many of. Our Physics labs featured equipment like motion detectors which would be hooked up directly to the computer so we could study uniform accelerated motion. Later on, I was able to take another computer class and this time, it ran on Windows Vista and on new hardware! Another engineering class featured a teacher using a camera which was pointed down so that we could see how he solved engineering problems. He used this in conjunction with his PowerPoint presentations which made a (quite frankly) bright but boring professor teach more effectively to the students!

I’ve seen UP when it didn’t have money and I’ve seen UP when it did have lots of money. And though they had to charge more for it, the quality of the education that we got was undeniable even by those opposed to the tuition hike. I wept when UP (and all state colleges and universities) was made to make tuition for all students free. This means UP will have to become a slave to the Philippine government, the entity that controls 100% of its budget now. If UP continues to have students who will oppose the current or the next administrations (which it will always have), it can simply choose to cut funding and leave UP to deteriorate like it once did.

Free things don’t mean they’re free. Free things simply mean that government officials will have more say in who gets funding. And so while you and I was willing to give our taxes to fund college education, it may still not go there.

If you’re familiar with the Midas touch, the government has the opposite effect on everything it touches. Oppose free things. This is what we should be fighting for in the upcoming elections.