tribute to FG

flat cap, graceful strides, carefree face, and a smile when you pass by him. that must be FG. the professor known for his notorious all-or-nothing exams in biopsychology. when i was his student, i had all the guts to sit right in front of him, which turn out to be the most breath-taking experience i had inside a classroom. no one made me so proud being a psych major then but FG. he had consistently electrified our neurons to fire and fire while he did so neatly those well-drawn brainstem or indole ring or neurotransmitters. he was loved not only because he was a genius or an artist or an idealist or a realist. he was loved because he loved life and shared it with us, his students. we all love him. as for me, i will never forget him. whenever passivity or humdrum is around, i play the video tribute made by the psych department for him during the wake. i play it and i see once again and love life. i wish to be remembered exactly as how i remember FG.

i will never stop reading and remembering these lines he shared...

"Live with a high mean and low standard deviation."
"Genius is obsessive. Laziness is contrary to genius. Kung tinatamad ka, hindi mo kaya. Rationalization lang iyon."
"You read behind words. You think."
"When others are hesitant to take the first step, take it."
"When the resistance is very, very strong, then the will must be stronger."
"Mitochondria - they are like the Meralco of the cell."
"Namulaklak ang cerebral hemispheres ng tao kaya nagkaroon ng temporal lobes"
"Don't aspire for it. Earn it."
"Domestification of the human male is one of the greatest achievements of the human race."
"300 million sperm in one ejaculation. Talagang overkill, noh? Tapos isa lang makakarating doon."
"Intelligence allows us to inhabit any place on the earth."
"You have no right to destroy what you did not create." (regarding suicide)
"Philosophy is the unscientific study of the mind."
"The females inherit the earth. And the suffering thereof."
"Mathematics is simplification and contraction of notations"
"The μ is the most democratic measure because it gets from every value."
"Psychology is the greatest of all in CSSP. Mayroon bang Experimental Sociology, Experimental Economics, Experimental Philosophy? Only Psychology offers empirical evidences from experimental Psychology."
"I do not know many. I only know enough to teach my classes."
“You do not fall in love. You rise in love. That's how you love rationally...”
“Meanings we find are the meanings we make.”
“What you learn in UP is to go on and never give up. That if there be one person left standing, let it be me. Let Ateneo fall first before UP...”
"I wish I could write a poem that would be the song of my race. That would be the most beautiful song."
"Perfect correlation rarely exists in nature. It only exists in force."
“The last domesticated animal is the human male.”
“There is no predestination. Only a matter of probability or chance.”
“Just be observant. Divine comedy is always happening in our midst.”
"I still pursue my north star."
"My last love is Psychology. I was raped by Psychology."
“A rational man doesn’t extricate himself and blame it on the environment.”
“Even great men make mistakes…which may be great mistakes, too.” (After explaining Aristotle’s mistake regarding the brain’s mechanism for regulating temperature)
“I just come to class to tell stories, and when I remember, I teach.” (After realizing that he has strayed quite far from the topic)
“Thinkers are absent-minded because they focus on their thoughts.”
“Just like other professors (in UP), they (professors from other universities) just croak... ‘croak-croak-croak.’ ”
"Do not live long enough to be worthless."
“I’m not a wise man. I’m just a plain teacher, and I’m happy with that. My life is an anecdote. Just one big joke.”

"What's a measure of a man as a social being? The measure of a man is how many doors he has opened to other people, especially to those he doesn’t know, to those who refused to open the doors for themselves and to those who cannot open the door for themselves."

“Life is serious. Life is funny. Life is comical.”