Christmas brings back memories

I write this after the University of the Philippines' Fighting Maroons clinched the UAAP men's basketball championship, and after a UP Law graduate (Kyle Christian Tutor) topped the Bar exams.

- JOANNE RAE M. RAMIREZ

Revisiting my first year in UP amid this euphoria is a joyful walk down UP's acacia tree-shaded memory lane.

After 13 years in a convent school, I was a wide-eyed freshman at the University of the Philippines Diliman, which I considered a whole new world, uncharted territory even. The eldest of four girls, I had never before lived with boys under the same roof. Then suddenly! Here I was in a UP co-ed dorm, the Kalayaan Residence Hall (KRH), that I like to describe as akin to the Peninsula Manila. The dorm has two wings connected by a central lobby. The girls stayed on the left wing (if you were facing the building), and the boys on the right. There was a pay phone in the residence, and each call cost 30 centavos.

Kalayaan was really freedom though it was 1979, and the Philippines was still under martial law. I remember joining some rallies at the Batasan, but they were tame compared to the Mendiola rallies of the 70s.

Staying in a dormitory away from home meant the freedom to make daily decisions—from studies to socials.