MANILA, Philippines ? Last night I dreamt I went back to the University of the Philippines Diliman, circa 1950s. I wish I had never woken up.

Because I'm afraid that, except in my dreams, I may never be able to go back to the UP of my youth. It's been five long decades now, and it's hard to mentally travel that far back. Many images have blurred off, but a few have remained distinctly clear, indelibly imprinted and lingering. Some facts, particular events and distinct ways of doing things, keep coming back.

Back then most of the 15-kilometer stretch from Quiapo to Diliman was cogonal, green, and virginal. The entire bus ride cost 15 centavos. Everything was priced within reach. A perfectly balanced meal at the H.E. cafeteria was only 60 centavos. H.E.'s ?turo-turo? anticipated today's fast food restaurants and was the place to be seen with one's current flame. It was a fertile source of the latest campus chismis and afforded one maximum exposure.

Diliman at night was pitch black, with street lights few and far between. The back of the Main Library gave Luneta's Quirino Grandstand a good run for its money as an open-air motel. Engineering students unabashedly trained their sight at the girls' dorm windows.

It was a time of heightened but largely unfulfilled sensuality, an era of bittersweet fantasies, many of them whetted by wild tales of what went on behind the Infirmary's sawali walls during those mandatory fluoroscopy exams come registration time. Every male UP student fantasized about the campus belle of the day.

Diliman summers were hot but serene. It was no fun to go to Balara as it was always teeming with ?native tourists.? One could better cool off by going to the movies in Quiapo. Back then, Cubao and Makati had barely emerged from their bucolic roots.

Inside the campus was a happy mix of earnestness and carefree abandon. The pressure of studies didn't always spoil the fun. Bumming around was a welcome and needed interruption in the regular grind of classes, term papers and exams.

Very few of us seemed to have been preoccupied with national politics. The ?in? topic of the day were broad, insoluble, eternal questions on philosophy, religion and Virgie Moreno. The graffiti on the walls of the comfort rooms were inflammatory - but sexually, not politically.

It was not good form to talk of other local schools, save perhaps for Silliman. For there were no other schools, except PWU, where the girls were. Ateneo, UST, La Salle - these and their sectarian ilk were relics of a casique-dominated past, where basketball was the all-consuming obsession.

True, each generation will have its own UP to recall. But the UP of my time was, like Nobokov's Lolita, the UP of my loins - a UP of sweet sexual dreams. And that's how, recalling the UP of my time, I am enraptured, once again, in a reverie of concupiscence.

The UP Grand Centennial Homecoming is slated on June 21, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Araneta Coliseum. For details, call Laida or Dehng at 920-6868,or e-mail upalum@ yahoo.com.ph or up.alum@yahoo.com