Bob Ong Summary

The story of ABNKKBSNPLAKo?! is an autobiography of the author Bob Ong starting from his school days, his experiences on his first day of grade school to his disastrous university experience and the climax to his entry into the education sector himself, as a teacher. The book is originally written in Tagalog, the language of the Philippines. The autobiography’s title is meant to be read phonetically, as “Aba, nakakabasa na pala ako?!” which when translated to English means, “Wow, I can actually read now?!” Bob Ong is a Filipino, but that name is a pseudonym and his true identity is anonymous.
The story is told through a series of hilarious anecdotes focusing on four phases of his life: grade school, high school, university, and his working …show more content…
As Ong grows older, his troubles with school worsen. He would skip school to watch movies at the local movie theater. He also miss school to get a long with his peer groups and his best friends. He even experiences the traditional teenage scourge of acne, when he obsessively pursues a beautiful girl that he would refer to as “Special Someone,” and competes with his constant nemesis in math class, all while using his experiences to make fun at Filipino cultural norms and the Philippines’ disappointing underfunded public education system. He also talks about “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” of Dr. Jose Rizal, and how those novels gave students like him headaches. Struggles came to his life when he enters high school, he has to comply all requirements even mentioning his rushed projects, doing assignments every morning and making lame excuses on teachers when he feels lazy and tired. Roberto Ong also shares his experience from the one of the most memorable events in each students’ high school life, the JS Prom where he spent time to be with her special someone. After his roller-coaster experience in high school, Roberto and his friends took the entrance exam of different …show more content…
He so believed that this life would change. He chooses to take up Computer Science, but his university years are a catastrophe. The tone of the story changes in this section, when Ong realizes just how much his university grades will affect his future and the life he so wanted. With being constantly late and most of the time absent, he can’t change himself. With Ong struggles gallantly to master his university curriculum and have good grades, he totally fails out of his Computer Science program and later on finishes up his studies at a vocational school where he then graduates