Three days

It’s a Sunday night and I am at home. I’m on leave today and it’s nice to not be in the office on a Sunday night for a change. My PC is finally working again. We had to get help from my brother’s friend who owns a computer shop to get it fixed. I’ve always known my way around a computer and I have a lot of resources available to me at the office that I can use to fix my PC but sometimes you just need to get help. I simply did not have the tools and equipment to fix the problem. I think I am mature enough to admit it when I need help.

I’ve already installed and played Empire Earth, just had to play it first before I went about doing everything else that needs to be done. I am now downloading the MSN Messenger. My brother has already downloaded Yahoo companion and I’ve already finished downloading MSN Toolbar and Getright. I still need to download some updates from Microsoft, Ad-aware, and Mozilla. After that I will try to setup my flat bed scanner and install more games.

Post dated…

I saw Shrek last Friday and it was really funny. But like most films with sequels the first one is of course funnier.

I also finally got the black and white prints of pictures I took in Boracay. There are some nice pictures there but a lot of the prints were burned. There were no shades of gray just sharp black and white. I should really find another shop to get my black and white films developed and printed. There is always Hidalgo but it’s a bit too far.

Instead of going scuba diving this weekend I ended up in my old college org’s medical, dental, and circumcision mission yesterday. I was asked to drive some of the doctors to and from the venue, which is in Rodriguez in Rizal province. I suspect that Erl was the one who volunteered me for the job. Oh well, the things I’d do for my org.

I took a lot of pictures there. I used a Kodak ASA 400 black and white film on my SLR camera and another roll on my instamatic camera, colored this time. Someone asked me why I had to use two cameras that day. I said that I use the SLR camera and black and white film for artistic reasons while the instamatic camera is for documenting the events of that day.

After the medmish (it’s a term the org’s members coined) we ended up in a mall for dinner. Afterwards, a few of us had some drinks in Packo’s. Erl, Kim, Ace, and I ended the night by going up the hills of Antipolo for coffee, mango juice, and French fries, at one of those restaurants overlooking the city. Sometimes all you need to have fun and enjoy your self is good conversation with friends.

Bad day…

Scuba dive slated for this weekend was scrapped because everybody backed out. I can’t dive without a dive buddy so I had to let it go.

I have 3 consecutive days off this coming weekend with nothing to do.

I can’t find anyone who wants to watch Shrek 2 with me.

My PC at home is still not fixed.

The price of gasoline is skyrocketing.

One of the car’s headlight is not working when set on dim. So I had to drive with high beams the whole time.

Traffic was so bad that it caused me to be late for work.

Lost my temper again. Yelled at a guy who almost hit the car I was driving while stuck in traffic. Not withstanding the fact that their van stalled and they were rolling backwards. Tsk, tsk, tsk…

Work has become really toxic. A recent development is making work utterly intolerable.

Seems like things are spiraling out of control…

How to say Hello and Good Morning.

I wanted to say hello this morning through the usual text messaging. But instead of sending the worn out, poorly abbreviated, good morning. I opted to send a message in a somewhat different format. I composed a limerick like bit of prose (I dare not call it poetry) in order to come up with an original and at least different way of saying hello and good morning. With the constraints inherent with sms messaging it was not that easy. The whole day went by with out even a reply. I can only come to a simple conclusion that the recipient of my text message thought it was just another forwarded message. The same thing happened last Christmas and New Year when a couple of my friends thought that the message I composed and sent was just a forwarded message.

A forwarded message is often a nuisance. I mean we all get tired of those jokes, greetings, and stuff. We also feel no need to reply to forwarded messages because we think that these are not as sincere as something crafted by the sender. Thus my message this morning went unappreciated. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I should have made it simple and not exerted effort, nor exercised creativity. But there are days when I really just feel like being a bit poetic and I get the urge to use rhymes of old.

Oh well, that’s how things work.

Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage

I just finished reading Jose F. Lacaba’s book “Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage” this afternoon. It was about the First Quarter Storm, and it brought the reader right into the midst of the marches, protests, and pitched battles with the police. It was interesting to read because it gives a glimpse of an era in our history that is often referred to by a lot of progressive or militant people in UP. I suspect that the typical UP student and probably anybody else who wasn’t directly involved in it, would not know much about those events in our history.

That was the 1970’s fast forward to 2004. We are still faced with a lot of the same problems we had then. Although I don’t share a lot of the author’s ideas and beliefs about the our country’s situation and how to go about tackling these problems, it still tells a good story that we can all learn from and is relevant today as it was then. Considering the current political situation and in the wake of the recent upheavals like “EDSA Tres” and constant rumors of coups, it is not unlikely that we will be seeing a lot of protest actions, civil disturbance, and basically more turmoil. Then as now it seems that the masses are often used as cannon fodder to further self serving interests and political agenda. It seems like we never learn.

Another interesting thing I found was that part about Ed Jopson. The author saw him as an apologist, bourgeoisie, a moderate, a typical Atenean who could not really be trusted to fight the people’s fight. That is, until he was killed in Mindanao in 1982. EdJop went underground and fought an armed struggle while a lot of the more militant activists of that time turned away and became lackeys of the dictatorship or simply forgot about the struggle. This reminded me of the movie Troy and how Achilles was given an option of staying and living a comfortable life or going to war to face death and yet gain immortality. Ed Jopson could have opted for the comfortable life of an Ateneo graduate yet he chose a path less traveled and now he is seen as a hero by radicals, militants, and leftist groups. He has been immortalized in stories that are still being told today.

First Post

Being my first post in this all new blog. I somehow feel that I should write something smart, witty, and interesting. Nah…

I don’t see my self, posting blow by blow accounts of how I eat my cereals or check my e-mail. I don’t think anyone would give a damn nor would it make for good reading if I talk about what underwear I wore today and how difficult it was to choose which one to wear (I only wear white, classic, size 32, Jockeys so that wouldn’t be much of a dillemma) I also don’t think talking about relationships would do, because I don’t have much to say because theres not much going on in that department (so much for melodrama). My life is so boring a paraplegic’s blog would probably be more intereting.

So why the hell did I get this blog in the first place? I already had one in Blurty.com. But nobody ever reads that thing which is just as well because I kinda like the idea of having a personal journal that is kept anonymous by the fact that it is out in the open and yet nobody knows about it. Well, maybe it was a case of jumping on the bandwagon. Whatever...

Well here it is. A blog with no point to make, nothing important to say, nothing of interest to talk about, no apologies, nothing to prove, and no one to impress. Probably no readers as well.