Wide-eyed wonderment

Jumping ship

2005-11-20T18:12:00.000+08:00

I've decided to move to Livejournal, for the following reasons:

1. I'm effing sick and tired of all of these companies using my blog to hock their wares online, 'nuff said. Have a look at the 'comment' sections of my recent posts. (Blogspot used to have a security feature that prevented bots and stuff from posting messages in Blogger blogs, but it vanished some time ago - and now I'm wondering if, given how popular blogs are these days, that feature might've been the casualty of some business deal or other? Just wondering. Whatever the reason, if that problem isn't resolved, Blogspot better brace themselves for a rash of 'defections' to other blog-hosting sites. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's pissed at what's going on.)

2. I'd like a little more action online (no, not THAT sort of action). I'm not sure how popular Blogger is these days, but precious few people, whether existing friends or strangers, are leaving their comments on my posts in this blog, so I've decided to do what friends've wanted me to do all along and put up a new blog at Livejournal. Not that I'm the kind of guy who craves attention - I most certainly am not - I just want a little more life in my blog.

My new blog's at [http://www.livejournal.com/users/cssays/]. Will I see you all there?

I'm outta here!

A good way to live life

2005-09-23T09:01:00.000+08:00

Stumbled upon this girl's blog on Lifehacker - this sure seems like a damn good way to live one's life. Take a look and tell me if you agree. I'm going to give it a try.

http://www.metagrrrl.com/discardia/

(Just copy and paste the link in and read away. For some strange reason the entire little menu bar that usually appears on top of the blog-update-entry box has vanished - Flash problems maybe? Will see if I can't remedy that.)

Youch

2005-09-21T07:36:00.000+08:00

Just found out that the formal name for JMD's ailment - to my knowledge, characterized by fever, a swollen throat and all that jazz - is 'suppurative tonsillopharyngitis'. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But he seems to be in competent hands; he's been getting better slowly but steadily (though as of this writing he can't move around all that much just yet and his appetite's still on hiatus), and should be back in action next week.

Peripatesis and the 'Pod nano

2005-09-21T01:48:00.000+08:00

My feet took a licking but kept on kicking yesterday. After an underwhelming lunch with Roj at Super Bowl Gateway (this exceedingly tasteless veggie and rice bowl and suspiciously texture-free pork siomai - to think I paid PhP220 for that junk - we really should've stuck to the food court like we planned), which was made up for by our good conversation, I found myself making my way back to Makati to meet up with R and 'the girls' before they caught their movie at 7 p.m.

As the MRT at the Cubao station was surprisingly congested for 3 p.m., I decided to take the long way to Makati. I ended up taking the LRT 2 to Recto, the LRT 1 from Doroteo Jose (the LRT station of which is, thankfully, connected to the LRT 2 Recto station by an elevated walkway) and the MRT from Taft to Ayala. Haha, make that the LOOONG way around. My Mizuno-clad feet weren't bothered one bit, thankfully (hats off to you good folks at Mizuno, you make killer trainers!), and it was a good way to get some exercise and see the city.

If anyone from the Department of Transportation's reading this, take this advice to heart, Sir/Ma'am - We need more trains! The routes plied by the existing three RT systems are far from the only high-volume routes there are. The bus companies might squeal but so what? They've had their run of the major thoroughfares of our metropolis for some time now; it's about time someone forced them to clean up their act (a well-run MRT and/or LRT system would definitely give these bus companies a run for their money). And the way things are right now, coming up with large-scale projects of this sort would be like pump-priming the economy - putting money into it and making use of idle manpower and all that - all of which the country badly needs right now.

Also, the LRT 1 is in dire need of a redux. Its stations are really decrepit and the trains aren't running smoothly and could use some sprucing up, although it's a good thing they don't stink like they used to. I wonder how much upgrading that system would cost?

I hear there's another such system in the works that's going all the way south, down to Alabang or Laguna or something. Not at all sure about that one, I'll read up on that. Wouldn't that be something though, if they could just keep the costs down! As the people who live and/or work down South know all too well, traveling on our new and improved SLEX isn't exactly easy on the pocket these days, plus gas is of course terribly, awfully expensive right now.

Oh, yeah, over our awful lunch today Roj and I got to talk about Apple's ipod nano. Roj and I both agreed that it was an excellent move by Apple, especially for folks like us for whom raw gigabytes of space don't mean much - ergo, who don't feel the need to carry their entire music collection with them. And of course the fact that it makes use of a flash drive instead of a much more fragile, more complex hard drive means that the device itself can be much smaller and lighter. Plus, well, it's really scrumptious, especially in black. I know I want one, I'm as susceptible to technolust as the next guy, but do I actually NEED a portable MP3 player, especially one that costs as much as the nano does?

Of good relationships, long walks and stifling parties

2005-09-18T06:50:00.000+08:00

It’s the tail end of another one of my long, busy days - this one having been somewhat longer and busier than most.

So what did I get up to today?

(1) First I passed by the supermarket to pick up groceries for the guy I’m currently dating - let’s call him JMD. He’s been sick, bedridden practically, for the better part of two days, and it looks like he’ll be sick for a little while yet. We’d texted earlier and he’d asked me for a loaf of Gardenia Classic bread and a bottle of Cheez Wiz (spelling?), but in addition to those items I also bought a small bottle of Nutella and a three-pack of ponkans. So sue me, I was feeling both generous and solicitous (hey, I LIKE this guy, haha).

(2) Next I had myself dropped off at JMD’s place - he stays with some relatives near Kamagong in Manila - and spent around 15 minutes talking to him (and gorging on his stash of scrumptious Baguio butter-oat cookies). He’s got some sort of throat infection that his current medicine cocktail, which consists of erythromycin and some pretty strong cold medicine or something of that sort, can’t seem to contain. Around an hour or so after I left him, his mom came and whisked him away to their province so that he can recuperate. He’s been putting off switching medicines since his collegues’ve told him to be patient and give the erythromycin another day before giving up on it, and he hasn’t seen a doctor yet for that reason; I’m certain his folks’ll be able to force him to go see one now (he’s hardly in any mood to argue with them). I’m just glad I was able to try to help him get well.

(3) After I left JMD’s I decided to walk from Kamagong to Greenbelt - yes, it’s a HELL of a long walk - but I was feeling up to it, and besides, noontime today wasn’t very oppressive at all, what with the residual clouds and water vapor in the air from all the rain the last two days. Managed to get to the Enterprise Center on Ayala in a little less than 30 minutes; whether that’s a feat or not I’ve no idea, nor do I care. Me being the sweaty guy I am, though, I was drenched and had to stop more than a couple times to wipe my face. (Only after I got to Enterprise did I remember that I’d exfoliated earlier today, it’s a good thing that my face didn’t react to the heat and sun!)

(4) Decided to stop at Enterprise for lunch. Well to be perfectly honest that wasn’t much of a decision, I really would’ve had to take a break somewhere in that vicinity as I was a bit winded. Had mapo tofu rice and beef dumplings at this Mandarin-something place at the foodcourt; the food was indifferent at best, but filling (well, in retrospect I shouldn’t have ordered the dumplings; they were bland and tiny to boot). Oh, and I purchased my first pack of condoms at Watsons on my way out. You never know when one might come in handy. ;) Was a little bit awkward about buying the pack but the salesgirl didn’t even look up as she punched my purchase in; I daresay she and others like her’ve seen that sort of thing many times before.

(5) Hied off to Tower Records and luxuriated in the cold air while listening, or at least pretending to listen, to a bunch of CDs - that is, until I came across Hed Kandi’s stonking 50 three-disc set, which packs a real wallop and, unfortunately, is priced that way - a cool PhP1,750 or so. Expensive, sure, but I’ve GOT to have it.

(6) Walked to Greenbelt and, just to kill time before my engagement tonight, decided to help some friends out with the expo they were organizing in Makati. Got a nice t-shirt, and managed to get my hands on Apple’s new iPod nano for a couple minutes. WHAT a product, it’s another must-have! The demo unit was white and was plenty attractive but I’d really rather have the black version; that one’s just breathtaking.

(7) Having helped my buddies out I proceeded to Glorietta to meet with D and head to M’s surprise birthday party. Sorry, but the party itself was no great shakes. The food wasn’t good at all; the place was overcrowded and was none too comfy; and the company was a bit less than satisfactory. I enjoyed seeing a few people - R and his new date Da (with whom JMD and I had dinner a couple days ago, and whose company we’d both enjoyed), the girl who owned the place and another friend of ours (both of whom I’d met and gotten along with well a couple months back), and D as well - and met a close friend of M’s with whom I got along. Everyone else, while pleasant enough naman, was sort of white noise, even M and J.

I realized a couple things from tonight’s ‘debacle’, if that’s the right term:

a. Dating someone who knows and loves his food as much as JMD does has spoiled me rotten as regards eating out. Enough said.

b. Being with R is like coming home, really. J and M are good friends, yes, but my relationship with them is a far cry from mine with R. I suppose it’s safe to say that R and I understand each other more or less implicitly now (which, I guess, would really be the case if you have a good relationship with someone for a while and, even after you’ve broken up, remain close friends).

c. I really love small, intimate parties. Even medium-sized parties, like tonight’s, can’t hold a candle to the smaller ones.

d. I like Da! He’s a quiet sort of guy, yes, but better quiet than endlessly blabbing about inconsequential stuff, right? Plus he also maintains an aquarium! :)

e. I miss JMD. I would rather be with him than anyone else I met tonight. We always have the most interesting conversations (and some of the longest I’ve ever had with anyone), whether over the phone or in person, that’re fueled by our shared interests - food, books, music, hanging out and ambling about. I’ve honestly never met anyone with whom I shared this much, and to such an extent. I don’t have this much in common even with R. (JMD and I get along wonderfully even in other arenas, if you catch my drift...) Plus he’s gratifyingly mature; he’s unstinting with his resources when it comes to me while still remaining professional regarding his work, and he’s shown no inclination at all to jump the gun when it comes to a relationship (although it makes me feel really good to realize that he’s taking me very seriously). His coming into my life means so much to me, and I can only hope he feels the same about meeting me.

Enough mawkishness. Off to bed now... Goodnight, world! :) Sa uulitin.

In the presence of greatness

2005-07-11T12:31:00.000+08:00

In a difficult year filled with so much uncertainty, it's good to know that in the tennis world, at least, things are as they should be. Federer's claimed his third straight Wimbledon singles title, overwhelming Roddick in straight sets, and the vastly (and unfairly) underrated and ignored Venus Williams has silenced her critics by claiming her third womens' singles title at the AELTC by edging Davenport in three.

That Roger won the tournament came as no surprise to anyone, least of all his opponents. Everyone's been marveling at his court-savvy for years now, most especially on grass, and it would've been a major shock had he failed to win the event, even if he'd lost in the final round. His straight-sets victory over Andy was a breathtaking, awe-inspiring display of his skills and confidence. Andy wasn't playing badly at all, but even he couldn't hold a candle to Roger. As such I'm sure it'll become yet another classic tennis match.

The womens' finals match was even more memorable, a real doozy of a match - one for the ages. Their various errors and injuries notwithstanding, Venus and Lindsay came up with the longest womens' finals match ever, and, more to the point, undoubtedly one of the very best. Neither player would give in to the other, neither would be cowed; it was a true contest of wills, and ironclad ones at that. It was almost as if in revenge for having been ignored and/or underrated by the press and oddmakers alike, and/or to rectify their not having performed up to their potential in the past (much more the case for Venus of course), they'd conspired to prove their detractors wrong. They did that, and then some!

Personally, I felt a little bad for Lindsay - she'd given it her all yet still fell this short of winning. (Imagine having two championship points and not being able to go the distance!) She's got more class than just about anyone else, though, and besides, she hardly played badly, so she accepted her defeat with the equivalent of a smile and a shrug. But I could tell that it still rankled. A good portent for the future; I guess as long as she still feels like she can contest finals and is still healthy, we'll be seeing her around. Here's to more matches like that one, Lindsay (well, I sure hope they go your way)!

Oh, and to end on a bit of a sad note, the tennis world also said goodbye to Aussie Todd Woodbridge, former partner of Mark Woodforde, who retired after a disappointing loss at the AELTC (which of course does nothing to detract from his illustrious career). You'll surely be missed, Todd...

Papilio demoleus larva (final instar)

2005-06-18T17:48:00.000+08:00

Papilio demoleus larva (final instar)
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Here's a good shot of a citrus swallowtail caterpillar in its final instar - the final phase of its life as a caterpillar, before it pupates.

When swallowtail caterpillars in this stage of life are threatened (or when they're in situations which they perceive to be threatening), they do exactly what the caterpillar in the photo is doing - they hide their little round heads near their forelegs. The skin at the top is pulled back to reveal two black spots which closely resemble snake eyes - another sort of defense against predators. I've read that some species go even further than that, rearing their heads up and moving from side to side just like a threatened snake would.

In case doesn't work, these fascinating caterpillars have another trick up their sleeve - they rear up, extrude a gland called an osmeterium, a y-shaped organ located behind the head (behind the segment where the fake eyes are located), and release some foul-smelling chemicals into the air to drive away the threat. I haven't been able to find any pix of a citrus swallowtail caterpillar extruding its osmeterium, but just this morning the oldest citrus swallowtail cat I have in my collection pushed its own bright orange osmeterium out when I disturbed it. As it did so I smelled a sour, sharp scent (akin to the smell of calamansi, albeit much sharper) in the air, which made me wrinkle my nose, and which I suppose must really be offensive to smaller predators like birds.

Papilio demoleus larva (initial or early instar)

2005-06-18T17:45:00.000+08:00

Papilio demoleus larva (initial or early instar)
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Here's a good shot of a young citrus swallowtail caterpillar. (An instar is something like a stage a young insect goes through to reach adulthood.) During their early instars, swallowtail caterpillars look very much like bird droppings, as can be seen in the photo - camouflage to hide from predators. Most of my current batch of citrus swallowtail caterpillars are still in this stage.

The citrus swallowtail, a.k.a. Papilio demoleus

2005-06-18T17:33:00.000+08:00

Papilio demoleus
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Here's a lovely shot of an adult citrus swallowtail, feeding on santan flowers (we have quite a few santan plants in the garden, which I suppose is one reason why these pretty butterflies frequent our place).

The mariposa moth, a.k.a. Atticus atlas

2005-06-18T17:20:00.000+08:00

Atticus atlas
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Here's a good picture of the mariposa moth, also known as the Atlas moth (Atticus atlas), re. my previous entry.

Some interesting facts about these moths:

+The curving, extended tips on the primary wings - the large ones near the head - are shaped and colored like snakes' heads to frighten away potential predators (birds, monkeys, etc.).

+The long, feathery antennae are designed primarily to help males find females - they're pheromone sensors, just like the vomeronasal organs in our noses. (Just a tiny bit of female moth pheromone released at a site draws male moths to it from miles away.)

+The caterpillars of Atlas and many other sorts of moths stuff their faces as caterpillars for the simple reason that when they're adults, they don't feed (not yet sure if they drink water). They apparently exist as adults only to breed. After they mate (and after the female lays her large, pinkish eggs on host plants), they die.

I sleep with butterflies

2005-06-16T12:25:00.000+08:00

When I was a little boy I loved going all around our neighborhood, with empty bottles in hand and my brother in tow (and more often than not with a horde of curious kids following in our wake), in search of insects to raise and grow.

Although I tried so-called ‘community bottles’ for a time - I’d try raising, for example, kapok weevils and other non-predatory insects in the same bottles - I ended up specializing in butterfly and moth larvae. More specifically, the huge, whitish-blue caterpillars of the mariposa (Atlas, Atticus atlas) moth (which in our neighborhood fed on santol and guayabano trees), the slightly smaller, dark green and white-striped caterpillars of a certain sort of hawkmoth that visited jasmine plants, the similarly-sized, light green caterpillars of another sort of hawkmoth that laid its eggs on Bangkok plants, and my overall favorite, because they were by far the smallest and easiest to keep - the little green caterpillars of the citrus swallowtail (Papilio demoleus) that visited calamansi and other citrus plants. There were other sorts of butterflies and moths in the gardens of my boyhood, but they didn’t pique my interest.

I only raised mariposa caterpillars once, because they were really too large to be kept easily - their enormous size meant that they couldn’t be kept in the bottles I normally used for my insect guests, and I had to house them in shoeboxes until they turned into gargantuan, feather-antennae’d adults with enormous wings. The other sorts of caterpillars could fit with ease into the spare bottles we had around the house (albeit the larger sort for the moth larvae), so that’s where I raised them, and over a period of several years I grew several batches successfully.

Then all of a sudden, the butterflies and moths stopped coming. My family surmised that the worsening air quality and the increasing urbanization of the southern areas of Manila forced them to give the metro areas a wide berth. For a couple summers I eagerly awaited their return, but I gave up the wait sometime around the start of high school, when summer tennis clinics and outings beckoned.

Over the years my interest in insects continued unabated. I’d look up insects from time to time on the net, or buy books about them every now and then, but that’d be as far as I’d go. That is, until the butterflies and moths started returning a few years back (ostensibly as soon as they'd adapted to the filthier air), and along with them my love for raising them.

First came the citrus swallowtails, slipping into the garden in ones and twos, feeding and mating and leaving their tiny greenish-yellow eggs on the calamansi plants. Then the hawkmoths started dropping by as well; as they’re noctuid or night moths I’ve only ever seen a couple in the wild, but their green eggs and caterpillars started showing up on the Bangkok plants once again. Since they’ve returned I’ve been raising them in jars on and off; I resumed once again the other day, when I found five very young swallowtail caterpillars on the calamansi plant beside our water tanks (so young they're still in their camouflage phase, during which they mimic bird droppings to be able to sit atop leaves unmolested) and around 15-20 unhatched hawkmoth eggs on our Bangkok plants outside the sala.

I segregated this current batch according to species and am housing them in two separate bottles, a medium-sized glass one for the swallowtail caterpillars and a large plastic one for the hawkmoth caterpillars. As of this writing most if not all of of the hawkmoth eggs’ve hatched and the tiny little caterpillars're beginning to move around and eat, and the swallowtail caterpillars are just scarfing down the leaves I’m putting in their bottle.

I’m happy that the swallowtails and the hawkmoths are back, even if their numbers are nowhere near what they used to be. (I'm not really complaining, of course; it's a miracle that they're back at all.) To date, though, both the jasmine hawkmoths and the mariposas have yet to put in an appearance; I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll be back, too.

Weather storm

2005-06-16T12:21:00.000+08:00

The country’s currently being battered by one of the worst political scandals to break cover in recent years. It’s often been said that a lot of nefarious activities, one of which is vote-buying, are part and parcel of the activities of anyone who aspires to become a Philippine president - but as far as I know this is the first time any sort of “proof” (such as it is) of such actions has emerged.

I don’t want to go into specifics (I’m not too interested in the topic), but I sure hope this mess gets resolved very soon, one way or the other, and that either our leadership shapes up or, failing that, we finally get leaders who’re competent and honest. This scandal’s about the last thing we need right now.

Or could it perhaps be the very thing we need? A wake-up call of sorts, and one whose very magnitude ensures that it won't disappear just like smoke? That way we'd be forced to deal with the situation - but really, what can we do to solve the problem when the problem lurks within each and every one of us?

When the red dust settled...

2005-06-06T11:08:00.000+08:00

Props to Justine Henin-Hardenne and Rafael Nadal, this year’s French Open champs!

Nadal's victory came in four sets - 6-7(6), 6-3, 6-1, 7-5 - over Argentine Mariano Puerta for his first Grand Slam trophy. I guess this is his second birthday gift to himself - on Friday, when he turned 19, he upset world #1 Roger Federer in the semis. Plus I've just found out that he and Federer are currently sharing the top spot atop the Indesit ATP Race with 665 points.

Henin-Hardenne simply overwhelmed the comebacking Mary Pierce 6-1, 6-1 in just over an hour to win her second Roland Garros trophy and fourth Grand Slam title. While I’m not really a fan of Justine’s - it’s either Lindsay Davenport or Kim Clijsters for me (and you can bet I was chewing my nails waiting to hear who’d win during their fourth-round match at Roland Garros this year) - I really had to give credit where credit’s due.

So Nadal ends up on top, and it looks like Justine’s back on track and about to zoom up the rankings again. After a viral infection of sorts and a debilitating injury, she’d fallen outside the top 40 earlier this year. After a couple of stumbles, she now has a doozy of a win-loss record - an astounding 27-1 this year and a string of great wins (titles at the Charleston, Warsaw and Berlin tourneys), after her return from her injuries a few months back.

For his part, Nadal's done himself proud too - he rules the ATP roost with a win-loss record of 48-6 and is tied with Federer again with six titles to his name. Plus he's won 24 consecutive matches to date.

Congrats to both of you! Hope you'll be able to push Federer on other surfaces as well, Rafael! Welcome back, Justine, the tour’s a brighter place with you around again!

Aftermath

2005-06-06T10:16:00.000+08:00

Saw ex Rh last Saturday for the first time since he got back from Europe.

I’d been asking to meet him for a little while now to get back the things he’d borrowed for the trip (nearly all of which weren’t mine, which explains the urgency) and a couple books I’d left at his place, but due to the vagaries of his schedule he hadn’t been available until last Saturday. We arranged to meet in the afternoon at the mall closest to where he stays.

I waited for him at the mall’s fountain with J and M, and when Rh finally walked up to us, toting a big paper bag filled with all the clothes he'd borrowed and sporting his trademark grin, I couldn’t help but gape at him. I’d already known from his latest pics that he’d lost some weight, but I just didn’t realize HOW much weight. Rh’s a tall, sturdily built fellow who used to be more than a bit on the plump side. By my estimate he must’ve lost at least 10 or 15 lbs - maybe more - since I saw him last. He hardly looks bad now, but I really do like him better the way he used to be. ;)

Rh and I talked for just a few minutes before he had to return to his apartment. We only got to exchange pleasantries but that’s no big deal really. A few nights ago we’d managed to chat on Y!M, and I was able to tell him just about everything I’d wanted to say to him since the fateful day he’d sent me THE e-mail. No more details about the chat; suffice it to say that it went very well, that I managed to get a lot off my chest and that I got the answers to the questions I’d needed answered for a while now.

In addition, and more importantly, the most important thing I got from having finally managed to see him was the realization - something bone-deep - that everything really is going to be alright, and that we really are going to be friends. Perhaps not as close as me and the only other ex of mine I’m really close to, Ri, but 'friends friends' still.

A whole host of memories and emotions surged over me as I watched Rh take his leave of us. I realized suddenly how much things'd changed for both of us in the months since his trip, and that I did miss the old days - that I'd missed him very much - and that these changes were irrevocable, that there was no way in the world things were going back to the way they used to be. That said I didn't go to pieces, because without realizing it, in the weeks since he'd broken up with me and in our Y!M chat, I'd made my peace with him and laid those particular ghosts to rest. Seeing him, even if for just a few minutes, just made me realize that I'd done so, with not all that much in the way of help from my friends - that I really was over what'd happened, and that I really was quite ready - champing at the bit, actually - for what's to come next.

In a couple minutes I was myself again (albeit a bit older and wiser, as the line goes). I smiled and spoke to my friends, and off we went to enjoy the rest of our Saturday.

Last Saturday's update

2005-05-30T11:22:00.000+08:00

Typed this one up last Saturday morning, but was only able to upload it now... Begging your indulgence. ;)

***

Yesterday, having nothing definite to do outside the house and no friends to see, and having 1] a whole host of unwatched DVDs and VCDs (some belonging to friends, some my own) and 2] an aquarium that needs cleaning, I elected to stay home instead. As of this writing (it’s 2:46 a.m. Saturday morning) I’ve only gotten to watch two of the discs I wanted to see - ‘Love Actually’ and ‘Animatrix’ - and haven’t yet gotten around to cleaning my aquarium at all (oh,my poor fish!).

I’d actually watched my ‘Love Actually’ VCD, a gift from my last boyfriend, a few months back, and found it no great shakes - great fun to watch, if a tad trite. Just the other day, though, I found myself wanting to see it again, if only for the scenes involving the ravishing Keira Knightley, so I put the disc atop my list of movies to be watched on Friday.

It’s an understatement to say that I enjoyed ‘Love Actually’ much more this time around. I laughed out loud at many of the scenes I’d previously found merely funny, and was moved almost to tears by a couple scenes that I’d shrugged off as being textbook tearjerkers the first time I saw them. Sure, the movie’s over the top in a lot of ways. But then had it been even a little more sedate or plausible it wouldn’t’ve been anywhere near as effective. Don’t you agree? (It’s quite possible, of course, that my reaction to seeing the movie the second time around was engendered by my break-up with my last boyf... Well, whatever. ;) )

‘Animatrix’ I enjoyed too, most especially the segments detailing what was termed as the ‘Second Renaissance’ and the creation of Zero-One, the machine city. If only the Wachovsky brothers, or anyone else for that matter, would consider making a full-length movie, or better yet a series, based on those segments! Something like a prequel to the ‘Matrix’ trilogy. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d enjoy that one immensely.

Off to bed at last, now that my ginormous midnight dinner (a massive pot of noodles [two packs of instant noodles and three [!] eggs], half a ham-mayo-lettuce-and-cheese sandwich, and a bowl of Magnolia's incomparable dulce de leche ice cream) has finally dissolved. Will be seeing the boys later for our usual Saturday lunch ++, so it's high time I got some rest.

Party animals we're not

2005-05-30T11:04:00.000+08:00

In the previous entry I said that my closest friends and I had never been to a bar or club together, and that we most probably would never go to one. Well, the other night we went to Embassy. :)

No, not to mingle with the ‘happening’ crowd - at least not to mingle with them per se, that’s not at all our cuppa - but to attend the launch of Apple’s Tiger OS. J sent all of us invitations to the event, and only R, who’s got his hands quite full with his projects these days, declined. (J and I are Mac users; D and M could care less about Mac, really, but they went all the same - D for the company and M for obvious reasons).

The event was no great shakes - well, to be perfectly honest, it bordered on being a waste of time. The new OS is quite interesting, featuring Spotlight and all that, but it’s hardly a must-buy for me (our trusty old iMac isn’t even running OS X yet, fer Chrissakes. We’ve more important things to save up for). Plus there weren’t even too many cute guys to ogle at, haha.

At least they had an open bar (although none of us really ‘took advantage’ of it. We had orange - Sunkist, for God’s sake - and really good cranberry juice, Coke Lite and mineral water. Teetotalers all).

After the event ended we made our way to Cafeteria, the casual-dining resto beside Embassy, for a late dinner and a good jaw. Had a simple but good meal - caesar salad, some sort of sandwich or other, a couple really good omelettes, great bitter-herb sidings. Well-priced to boot, we paid less than PhP200 per head. Then we capped the night with FIC's top-flight ice cream - oh man, they serve a MEAN raspberry ripple!

The company and the food were the best things about our little night-out. Oh, and the new Jack Spade portfolio I got from M isn’t exactly chopped liver either! I’m a happy boy, I am. :)

Today's mish-mash

2005-05-23T11:17:00.000+08:00

ABORTIVE ENTRY. I’ve been working on and off on an entry about my family, into which I’ve made some headway, but which I’ve decided to shelve for the time being. I’m finding out that sorting out my thoughts and emotions regarding my family is more challenging (more frustrating, even) than I initially thought it would be. Saka na lang.

Plus, well, it’s hard to write about such a topic when you’re trying to remain anonymous.

***

GUNSLINGER GIRL. Thanks to my brother (and to a friend of his, who originally lent him the discs), I’ve managed to watch the first three or four episodes of this anime series entitled Gunslinger Girl, and I’ve found it quite riveting, rather disturbing - and overall very poignant.

Set in a version (or perhaps vision is the right term) of modern Italy, Gunslinger Girl revolves around a bunch of destitute little girls who’ve been rescued by an Italian NGO known as the Public Corporation for Social Welfare. No babes in the woods these, though, and neither is this your typical Orphan Annie story. The Corporation’s actually a government-backed agency that handles some of the under-the-table, eyes-only work that can’t be traced back to the government, and these girls are ‘conditioned’ - brainwashed, operated on, cybernetically enhanced and trained extensively - and made into assassins.

Each girl works in tandem with an older guy in an arrangement called a fratello; these guys act as the girls’ partners-cum-guardians-cum-supervisors. The fratello relationship’s at the center of the whole operation, and the conflicts that characterize this relationship between the girls and the guys handling them are what the series is really concerned with. Some of the guys treat their charges like little sisters - Jose, for instance, takes his girl Henrietta stargazing, and Captain Raballo takes his Claes fishing on their off days and gifts her with his vast collection of books -but others treat their girls callously, or worse, treat them as they would machines, with little or no regard for their well-being beyond how they perform when out on their missions (which squares with the hands-off, clinical detachment adopted as policy by the Corporation's higher-ups). Problems the girls might experience are interpreted by most as a need for ‘more conditioning’ (three guesses as to what that might mean).

The girls are trained hard and well, and as a result they’re regular Valkyries in battle. Jose and Henrietta are sent to harry down a man wanted by the Corporation, and in the course of doing so Jose asks someone one too many questions and gets attacked as a result. Henrietta goes berserk, beating the attacker off Jose and proceeding to gun down the rest of his gang in a cold, efficient manner (only showing emotion afterwards, when she realizes she’s taken a bullet in the arm). But this ingrained viciousness can make the girls bulls in a china shop, so to speak, in situations that don’t call for violent resolution. In a later scene Jose and Henrietta are dining at a restaurant when Henrietta sees something she interprets as a threat - the waiter, while clearing the silver from the table, accidentally holds a knife a smidgen too close to Jose - and in one swift motion she rushes to the waiter and slams him down on the floor, preparing to slit his throat. Jose hastily hauls the poor man up, slips him a 500-Euro note and sends him off to the kitchen, while a nonplussed Henrietta resumes her seat.

As can be expected the girls band together, realizing that the concern shown by some of their ‘older brothers’ notwithstanding, the only real friends they can make are potentially within their own ranks - no one else can or will understand what they’re going through, and bringing outsiders into their world is simply impossible. So in the privacy of their rooms they try to maintain a sort of normalcy - they sit and have tea, and do their laundry together, trying desperately to find happiness and solace while and however they can. This might be ‘just anime’, but I really do feel for these girls.

Gunslinger Girl’s truly a touching series, and it’ll make you think. It’s perhaps the best anime I’ve seen yet (okay, I know I haven’t seen too much anime, but still.) Watch it if you can.

(P.S. The song from the show - the Delgados’ ‘The Light Before We Land’ - is an absolute treat as well. Another must-listen.)

***

MUSIC FOR THE DAY. Yesterday, I erased the contents of my ‘Alternative Mix’ Minidisc - the songs on it were getting a mite stale - and recorded the following songs into the same disc (in LP2 mode still of course), in the following order:

INXS’s 'Not Enough Time' and 'Beautiful Girl'
White Town’s 'Your Woman'
The Foo Fighters’ 'Monkey Wrench', 'My Hero' and 'Everlong'
Tori Amos’s 'Cruel'
The Verve’s 'Sonnet' and 'Lucky Man'
The Smashing Pumpkins’ 'Appels & Oranjes', 'Drown', 'Today', '1979', 'Zero', 'Eye', 'Ava Adore', 'Perfect' and 'Stand Beside Your Love' (I miss these guys very much)
Depeche Mode’s 'It’s No Good'
Nine Inch Nails’ 'We’re In This Together'
Coldplay’s 'Clocks', 'Daylight' and 'Warning Sign'
Toad the Wet Sprocket’s 'Good Intentions' and 'All Right'

The contents of my ‘Classical Music Mix’ Minidisc are still interesting, so I’m not touching it for the time being; this is what’s in it:

Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s 'Marche Slave', '1812 Overture' and 'Swan Lake' (the finale)
Ludwig van Beethoven’s 'Eroica'
George Gershwin’s 'Rhapsody in Blue'
Gustav Holst’s 'Mars the Bringer of War' and 'Jupiter the Bringer of Jollity'
Aram Khachaturian’s 'Lezhinka'

Great music to help me while away lazy afternoons (or mornings, or evenings)!

***

GOOD COMPANY, AND THEN SOME. I spent last Saturday afternoon with two of my best buddies, J and M. We talked a mile a minute and, when we weren’t talking, we were EATING. It started out nicely - we had a nice healthy lunch (a couple of salads and a grilled fish steak at this health resto in RCBC Tower), but after that it was downhill all the way and in a hurry - cappuccino McFlurries at McDo Rockwell, three servings of bottomless nachos at Chili’s Greenbelt, and a handful of S’More candy bars (product samples handed to us for free) at the Greenbelt 4 theaters. All that after my massive, multiplate, two-hour-long breakfast with another friend at Circles in Shang Makati. I tried to make up for all that by not having dinner, but still. (Back to the point now.)

I’m really happy to be part of a group with whom I really click - this is my first real barkada. Not that I haven’t found friends before, or that these are my only friends - a bunch of other guys I know are pretty damn nice too, and I’m pretty close to a couple of them. But this is the first group that I can really say I’m close to. Groups are very different from individuals, after all, and up to this point I really hadn’t had much success, if any at all, at getting along with a group, until these guys and I coalesced. I get along with all of them just about as well as I get along with each of them separately, and I’m already pretty close to each of them individually - all of which is nothing short of a major miracle for me.

We’re very much alike, all of us - five non-scene gay guys who’re far from being outgoing. We neither smoke nor drink, we all like books and music, shared meals and afternoon gabfests, road trips and window shopping, gadgets and watches and clothes and what-not. We’ve never been to a bar or club together, and we most probably will never go to one. Most of us aren’t sociable; as a matter of fact D and R are almost hermits at times. Plus I don’t mean to sound elitist or anything, but we’re all English-speaking, which is perfectly fine with me (as you can tell I’m much more comfy with English than with Tagalog - not that I look down upon Tagalog speakers of course, I’m just not all that good at it). We’ve similar educational backgrounds as well (although we’re from different universities - J and I are from one university, M and D from another, and R from a third). We’re all conversationalists, or at least when we’re together we end up talking no end. I can say that it’s our particular joy to sit down and talk about whatever we feel like blabbing about. I’ve been particularly happy to discover that D is also into dinosaurs, just as I am (and although it’d be nice for one or another to develop a liking for military stuff, geopolitics and the other shiznit I’m into these days, that’s asking for too much I suppose).

I like also that we’ve each got our own lives (or semblances of them, haha) and we’ve no need to keep in touch all the time, or even see each other too often. None of us is particularly clingy either, for which I’m very thankful.

Here's to you guys! :)

Blogthings.com's 'What Does Your Birthdate Mean?' quiz

2005-05-09T11:29:00.000+08:00

Got this test from a friend's blog and gave it a try just for the heck of it. The results are spot-on - it's so me! :)

Your Birthdate: November 25

Your birth on the 25th day of the month (7 energy) modifies your life path by giving you some special interest in technical, scientific, or other complex and often hard to understand subjects. You may become something of a perfectionist and a stickler for details. Your thinking is logical and intuitive, rational and responsible. Your feelings may run deep, but you are not very likely to let them show. This birthday makes you a more private person, more introspective and perhaps more inflexible. In friendships you are very cautious and reserved. You are probably inventive, and given to unique approaches and solutions.

ohwhattasong!

2005-05-05T15:02:00.000+08:00

‘Gabriel’, by the delightfully offbeat English group Lamb, is one of the most wonderfully evocative songs I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to (and which, according to Google, is in the CSI Miami OST. Whoever put that one together’s got good taste!).

It doesn’t have the big-band feel of ‘Trans Fatty Acid’ or the dramatic impact of ‘Gorecki’, the two other Lamb songs I love, but it’s got a flavor all its own. The way it’s put together, layer by layer, is just a treat!

Here are 'Gabriel' 's pretty lyrics. (The songwriter was supposedly inspired by a verse from the Koran praising the angel Gabriel, by the way.)

***

i can fly
but I want his wings
i can shine even in the darkness
but I crave the light that he brings
revel in the songs that he sings
my angel gabriel

i can love
but I need his heart
i am strong even on my own
but from him I never want to part
he's been there since the very start
my angel gabriel
my angel gabriel

bless the day he came to be
angel's wings carried him to me
heavenly

i can fly
but I want his wings
i can shine even in the darkness
but I crave the light that he brings
revel in the songs that he sings
my angel gabriel

my angel gabriel
my angel gabriel
my angel gabriel

my angel gabriel
my angel gabriel
my angel my angel
my angel gabriel

***

Lovely lyrics, really, but please do yourself a favor and give the song a spin, and turn the volume up when you do. It’s just beautiful. (Try buying or downloading the other two Lamb songs I mentioned, while you’re at it.)

Down but by no means out

2005-05-05T14:41:00.000+08:00

Sorry for having been silent so long. The past two months’ve been pretty bothersome, and the story’s not over yet, either - but I’m happy to say that I’m coping, and then some...

For starters, as some of you know, I’ve been jobless for a little bit. The little company I was working for was forced to downsize, and as a consequence a number of us were left out in the cold, so to speak, and up to this point I haven’t had any luck finding a new job. The market for job hunters who’re unqualified for sales and marketing jobs (and modesty aside, who’ve held high-level positions) is apparently down these days.

I’d been LOS - “living off (or is it on?) savings”, in yuppie parlance - for a little bit, and I was beginning to feel the pinch, when my parents took me aside and told me that they’d be very happy to help with my bills and give me just enough money to help me get by, until I could get back on my feet again. Ergo, I’m back on allowance; it's not as much as I was getting back in college, of course (and it certainly FEELS smaller, thanks to inflation and all that), but I’m not complaining! Thankfully my folks didn’t rake me over the coals for having spent so much - they know that back then I was earning more than enough to justify it. Even if they’d’ve been sarcastic and all, I’d’ve made myself eat humble pie, as the saying goes; I wouldn’t‘ve let pride get in the way of their assistance.

The best thing’s that my folks and I have begun to put our heads together and make plans for our future. That’s about all I’ll say about that particular topic, for now at least.

Secondly, and more significantly, just as I felt my life was beginning to be a little less problematic, my boyfriend broke up with me, a little less than a week ago.

He’d just returned from his whirlwind trip to Europe when things started (in retrospect, at least) to go awry. Even during the best of our times together, he’d never been the most communicative of fellows due to his busy schedule, and I’d accepted that as par for the course. During the weeks immediately preceding his departure and for the duration of his stay in Europe, that situation only worsened, but I wasn’t bothered; I’d gotten used to how he was, and besides,what sort of person would expect their significant other to constantly text from Europe?

Impatient to hear from him after weeks of not having been with him, I tried calling his cellphone a little bit after he was supposed to have arrived in Manila, and managed to get through - only to have him hang up on me after a blunt exchange of words that lasted just seconds . He was tired after the trip, I thought, so I decided to just let him rest, and to wait for him to contact me. But aside from a rather vague text message from him, sent a few days after his arrival and pleading for my patience, another from his best friend explaining that he needed to be alone for the time being, and a blog entry on his European experiences (and his newfound reticence), I heard nothing either from him or of him for weeks after his arrival, my best efforts to contact him notwithstanding.

In retrospect, again, his failure to get in touch with me for so long should’ve set off alarms in my head. But friends I’d asked said that behavior such as his wasn’t at all unknown (in fact, something like that did happen to one of them upon his return from an earlier trip to Europe) - and moreover, I myself didn’t feel that there was anything worth getting worked up over. Make that not all THAT much - initially I did get distressed over how inconsiderate it seemed of him not to tell me how he was doing, but later on I simply decided that there was nothing really wrong and that he just really did need a little time to get back to normal.

I even prepared the following ‘open letter’, as I termed it, to post in this very blog for him to read:

(Start of the letter)

It’s been a while since I’ve heard from you.

Our contact since you’ve returned home has been quite irregular, even intermittent at best. We last spoke on the phone for all of 15 seconds, and that was almost a month ago. At the time I chalked it up to bad timing - after all, you were struggling through Immigration at the NAIA when I called - and your exhaustion from the trip and the long journey back home had left your voice threadbare and your temper short, so I decided not to push it and left you to rest.

Not that I don’t understand or appreciate personal space (you know I do). It’s just that I expected you to get in touch with me as soon as you’d gotten a little sleep (anyone in my position would’ve expected that much). Little did I know that sleep was far from the only thing you needed, and that your recovery period would take much longer than a few short hours of rest and relaxation. Your readjustment to Manila life - a process that’s apparently still ongoing - had just begun.

The next few days were a mite tough on me, of course. I was both scared (I didn’t know what was going on) and angry (I thought that I of all people didn’t deserve to be kept in the dark like that). I was worried about you, and to a certain extent about us, even - I won’t apologize for that; I think it’s but natural given the circumstances.

My sentiments, of course, were compounded by the fact that up to some weeks ago I had little to do with myself except look forward to my tennis and track sessions. Since then things’ve eased up greatly for me. I’ve had much less spare time to burn (I decided to keep myself busy because I felt I was wasting my time being idle). I’ve been doing odd jobs for the ‘rents - working on project proposals and what-not, running errands; I’ve been catching up with my reading, and then some; I’ve been playing more tennis and gotten more serious with my running; I’ve been seeing my ‘core group’ friends quite frequently; and I’m on the verge of being employed again (what a relief). In addition, your latest blog entry, although it stopped tantalizingly short of explaining everything, went a long way towards elaborating why you decided to do what you did. And then of course there’s the invaluable advice I received from a friend I opened up to, who also went through what you’re experiencing. I won’t recount what he told me in this or perhaps any other entry, but suffice it to say that I now have a better understanding of what someone in your position might be going through.

In the last text message I got from you from you, you apologized for being such an “asshole”, as you put it, and said that you’d explain everything (although, tellingly, you failed to say when you’d do that). While I’m still waiting for you to do so, I’m not doing it with bated breath.

Just take your time. I’ll be right here when you’re ready to open up again.

(End of the letter)

Last Saturday morning, I went online as I usually do, and coincidence of coincidences, was preparing to upload that putative entry when I saw that he’d sent me quite a long e-mail.

I opened it with bated breath. In it he told me (in so many words, of course, and with the expected pacificatory statements) that our relationship was no longer working for him - that it hadn’t been for a little while, as a matter of fact - and he was very sorry, but he had to end the whole thing, and over e-mail as well, as (shades of a previous relationship!) he didn’t think he could say it to me personally.

My heart didn’t stop when I read that e-mail, and I didn’t break into tears either. I picked up my cellphones and broke the news to my friends. My head was such a tight knot of thoughts, though, that I could make neither heads nor tails of what I was thinking or feeling at that moment, and only later could I pick said knot apart; only then did I realize that what I felt at the instant I realized he was breaking up with me, and all of which was replaced by a sort of numbness after just a few moments, was a combination of pain, shock, some anger, and even a tiny bit of relief.

Not relief that we were through, of course. Not the “oh, is that all?” sort of relief either. Relief that the seemingly interminable wait I’d endured for him to get in touch with me was finally over, and relief that he was alright. Relief coupled with the stark realization that the relationship we’d spent so much time and effort building up over the past eleven months (yes, this is the THIRD successive relationship of mine that’s fallen just short of reaching one year) had just come undone.

I met my closest and very best friends - couple J and M and “quasi-couple” D and R - for a late lunch that very same day, and they kept me company that entire afternoon and into the night. We didn’t talk very much about the break-up, such as it was; they realized, without my having to blurt it out, that I didn’t need their counsel so much as their company. I didn’t feel the need to delve too deeply into why that was so, and perhaps there really isn’t too much to it; I mean, it’s but natural to want one’s friends around when troubles of this magnitude cross your path, isn’t it? At least it is for me.

That afternoon we were as loud, as boisterous as we usually are together, which was just what I needed. And thanks to them, the next day I wasn’t feeling too bad. I wasn’t right as rain, and perhaps I won’t be for a little while longer, but I’m definitely on the road to recovery.

Although it really would be nice of people to ask me if they could help (and no, I’m not making parinig here), that’d be completely unnecessary, thanks very much. I still have to think about what my ex wrote (I'd better get used to referring to him that way) - I do still need to get back to him - and I’d rather not have other people affect how I think or feel about the issue, now that I know what it’s all about. I and I alone can achieve closure for myself. It might take a little while to achieve, but I’m fully functional in the meantime, and I’m neither distraught nor carrying on.

My life’s sure been dealt a couple of strong blows over the past few months. With the help of the people I love dearly, though, I’ve picked myself up and dusted myself off, and I’m ready, able and eager to finish this round and get to the next one, to whatever’s coming next.

Bring it on, bitch. ;)

Nike Free shoe test (first take)

2005-04-28T11:11:00.000+08:00

I've had my Nike Free 5.0 "training and conditioning shoes" for quite a while now, so I thought it was high time I posted my review of them, such as it is.

Actually, I've only taken them to the track twice. The first time I tried them out I ended up just going walking instead, so I went for a nice slow half-hour-or-so walk around the Ultra track oval - I got lazy (so sue me).

Then I thought I might as well make good use of them since I'd elected to invest in them in the first place, so a couple nights ago when I packed for my Tuesday night run, I elected to go with them instead of my Mizuno Wave Riders or my Nike Air Pegasus 2002s. Didn't slack off either when I got to the track Tuesday evening, and I duly put them through their paces.

I had a great run - almost 30 minutes of nicely-paced running and brisk walking (I don't want to run 30 mins straight, my left knee used to creak due to my ill-advised attempts to run on asphalt), and I'm sure the shoes had a lot more to do with that then my technique.

Bar none, these are the lightest, most flexible running shoes I've ever tried. The Frees are training shoes for increasing running efficiency, so their designers left out all the parts of a traditional shoe that control or restrict natural foot motion - including a rigid sole and upper. Pick one up and you'll see that due to its deep grooves, the sole's really flexible; you can even push the shoe's foresection all the way up and make it touch its hind section. The cloth or suede upper's also got deep cuts in them that not only reduce shoe weight and thickness even further but also make sure it doesn't tear when the wearer flexes his or her foot.

They were so light, as a matter of fact, that more than once I actually had to slow myself down (I was finding that I'd speed up without knowing it) and I'm not a very fast runner to begin with. I was just floating around the track, and the most interesting thing was that my feet and ankles never got tired like they do sometimes when I'm using my Nikes. Makes me wonder if, light as they are, they're too heavy for me.

Despite their light weight, my Frees didn't lack for cushioning at all. I'm a heel-striker, and the Air cushioning unit built into the Frees' heel did a great job of shielding my feet from impact shock. The Nike site says the shoe's construction forces the 20-odd muscles that control the human foot to work harder at doing it, which will strengthen users' feet in the long run. Too early for me to tell if the technology really does work, of course, but my toes were so much more active last Tuesday - toe-off's so much better, and my feet felt alive, that's the only way to describe it!

The bottom line, after that inaugural run, is that I'm quite happy with Nike's Free 5.0 shoes. They're very light and yet are quite comfortable, they're flexible in all the right places, and they even make excellent post-run shoes. Will use them again next Tuesday.

Assorted thoughts

2005-04-18T14:15:00.000+08:00

NUKES WON'T DO THE TRICK (NOT ALONE THAT IS). Read an article the other day (still looking for it, argh) stating that the Dubya administration may be considering jumpstarting America's nuclear weapons program by replacing the aging warheads of its Trident submarine-launched missiles. Something like that.

This makes sense if one considers that the US needs (in its own view) to consolidate its position atop the heap. The USSR might've collapsed, but other nations've come into possession of nuclear weapons; moreover, some of these countries are now capable of making their own nukes. So it's important for the States to keep itself as powerful as possible, vis-a-vis everyone else. Much better of course if the simple threat of using them proves sufficient to keep the peace, but in case it doesn't, well, the weapons'll be ready for use. (God forbid that this'll ever be the case.)

Of what use, however, would such weapons (and their related concepts like MAD) be in the War on Terror, where the enemy's neither a single nation nor confined within any national border? The terrorists've gone to ground due to Dubya's perhaps ill-planned invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and brandishing nukes around won't be enough to root them out. America can call them cowards, but let's face it. The terrorists have so far proven resistant to just about everything America's thrown at them, and they've continued to do considerable damage around the world.

A better solution's needed, one that requires a paradigm shift and a change of mindsets. The world's seen over the last couple years that Big Power politics and tactics won't do very much against today's terrorists and their ilk. But where do we start? And how?

GIVE IT UP, GUYS. I read today that our government's purportedly planning to tax the Church to try to increase the country's perenially low tax collection figures. That's definitely not going to go anywhere. If PGMA goes for it, I'll bet that'll be the end of her for sure. (Where do I stand? I'm all for it, actually. The how's got me stumped, though.)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. If you're down in the dumps for whatever reason, chew on this and take it to heart: Happiness is never out of your reach irrespective of whatever circumstance you find yourself in. You can decide to be and stay happy - it's not as elusive a state as most people make it out to be.

New look for the summer

2005-04-12T15:03:00.000+08:00

I junked the dark, dour old template and replaced it with a fresher, cleaner, simpler one - just right for summer, methinks. :]

Life finds a way

2005-04-11T12:50:00.000+08:00

Out of all my memories of petshops, and I have a lot of ‘em, one stands out in particular.

Years ago I was looking at the aquaria in Bio Research Makati when one tank caught my eye. I’d been meaning to buy a couple small fish for my little tank at home, but what I saw completely drove that idea out of my head.

The store guys’d crammed a bunch of six- or seven-inch cichlids of some sort into a 15-gallon tank, as they're bound to do, and in itself of course that’s nothing extraordinary. What made this particular set-up different was the fact that two of these cichlids’d paired off and were preparing to breed. They’d cleared a little of the substrate from the front of the tank, and before my astonished eyes, were taking turns to clean it with their mouths. Their colors were bright and beautiful; the female’s ovipositor was protruding. (Their hapless tankmates, having been bullied into submission by the breeding pair, were hiding behind the tank’s lone undergravel-filter airtube.) All of this of course I'd read about in books, but iIt was the first time I’d ever seen that sort of thing take place, and a crowded, ill-maintained aquarium at a petshop was just about the last place I’d expected to see it in.

Since then I’ve learned a lot about desperate conditions and how they stimulate the survival instinct – not necessarily the survival of the individual but of the species. Which is why in times of duress many animals, and even man, seek refuge in sex. Perhaps that’s even the reason why it’s comforting for men and women to do so in perilous times.

This knowledge, though, does nothing to change the awe and astonishment I felt back then (and which is still as sharp now as it was) as a little boy, coming across breeding cichlids for the first time, and in such a habitat to boot. Wide-eyed wonderment indeed.

You go, girl!

2005-04-11T12:32:00.000+08:00

Hail the conquering hero comes...
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

It was a bit of a struggle, but she won through in the end, like the great champion she is. Lindsay Davenport got through Italy's Silvia Farina Elia 7-5, 7-5 to win this year's Bausch and Lomb tourney at Amelia Island, the first clay-court tourney of the year. (This by the way is her third Bausch and Lomb champions' trophy, and her second title of the year after her victory at the Duty Free Open in Dubai.)

Gotta hand it to Lindsay - she's simply on fire this year. Out of the six tournaments she's joined, she got to the finals of every single damn one, save for the Aussie Open warm-up in Sydney (she withdrew from her match against Samantha Stosur in the quarters). Prior to this tourney, she lost to Serena in the Aussie finals in three sets, Sharapova in the Tokyo finals in three also, beat Jelena Jankovic in the Dubai finals in three again, and lost the Indian Wells final to the comebacking Kim Clijsters in three (after double-bageling Sharapova in the semis, imagine that). What a way to start the year. Incidentally, she's also the first woman with more than a million US$ in prize money already (and it's only April!)

Her success is all the more meaningful given that early last year she was suffering from a lack of motivation and was beginning to float the idea of retirement. This of course before she went on a tear and won all those hard-court tourneys before losing at the US Open to eventual winner Kuznetsova, ending the year at No. 1, winning the Porsche Race (and a Porsche Cayenne S!), earning US$2,220,005 in 2004 for an overall total of around US$18 million (the third-highest career earnings of all time) and had 63 singles match wins, a Tour-best shared with Amelie Mauresmo, among other achievements. Wonder what changed?

Anyway, way to go, Lindsay! Hope the rest of your year's just as good, if not even better!

Fascinating, fascinating

2005-04-11T12:09:00.000+08:00

Therizinosaurus cheloniformis (artist's rendering)
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Therizinosaurs are a group of herbivorous dinosaurs so odd they seem to be in a class of their own. As a matter of fact many scientists agree that they're quite simply the strangest dinosaurs ever discovered.

Only a few fossil remains of these animals've been found to date, but paleontologists say they must've looked like the unhappy offspring of giant sloths and geese. They had extremely long foreclaws to hold down branches from trees to their mouths so they could feed; enormous bellies to digest all that plant matter (herbivores of course need longer intestines to digest what they eat); and massive pubic bones to support their weight (like sloths they sat on their haunches most of the time to feed). In addition, some of them were apparently feathered, so it's not too far off to speculate that they might've had wings too.

The kicker's that after years of uncertainty as to which group they belonged, thorough analysis has placed them firmly in the maniraptorid camp, the group to which Velociraptor and all those predators belonged. Believe it or not. I wonder what made them turn to herbivory when their relatives were some of the most viciously efficient hunting machines the world's ever seen...

When I'd first heard that it made me wonder about some other once-predatory animals that also 'converted' to herbivory - this ancient Australian crocodile, some oviraptorid or other, and even the giant panda, which IS a bear, after all, and which does feed exclusively on bamboo. Apparently this is such a poor source of energy that pandas must feed often throughout the day, and despite this they are quite lethargic animals. The interesting thing is that they're apparently not far removed from their carnivorous (omnivorous?) roots - one book I've read says that they can be lured into traps by the smell of roast pork. Stranger and stranger. Why the radical transformation? Could it be due to overcompetition, the loss of prey animals, or both? Or something else perhaps? Scientists have their work cut out for them.

Like sloths, also, these animals were apparently quite successful. They ranged from eastern Asia to Canada and the US and existed for about 65 million years, notwithstanding the fact that for at least part of the time they existed, they shared their range with their relatives the tyrannosaurs and other such formidable predators. Given the formidable claws most of them sported, plus the sizes some of them grew to (Therizinosaurus cheloniformis, rendered above by artist Matt Martnyiuk, apparently grew to around 30 feet long and stood 20 feet tall!), they probably were hard to hunt, just like the sloths. Climate change and the resulting change in vegetation, etc., probably did them in.

Such a pity, they'd've been so fascinating to study alive! While this holds true for most if not all dinosaurs, the therizinosaurs are my favorites, y'see...

So goddamn close, but STILL no 'seegar'...

2005-04-11T11:31:00.000+08:00

Chris DiMarco at the Masters 2005
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Woke up early enough this morning to catch the last few minutes of this year's Masters golf tourney. (I'm not really into golf, but the action this morning was just too riveting to ignore.) A resurgent Tiger Woods, winless at the Masters for a long while, faced off against this guy Chris DiMarco, who came up with the goods to push the tournament to an extra hole, but Tiger being who he is, he just wouldn't be denied his victory.

One series of shots at the 18th hole, if that's what they're called, was particularly memorable, maybe even agonizingly so. DiMarco had a real chance to even the score at 12 under par, but his ball skirted around the rim of the hole and/or glanced off the flag and ended up a few feet outside. Dad and I gaped and watched the poor guy fall to his knees - he was devastated (hell, I would be too if that'd happened to me!). After that it was just a matter of time before Tiger claimed his fourth Masters jacket, his first Masters win in two (?) years. He might not've performed as well, relatively speaking, as he did in previous tourneys, but the fact that he was able to keep his cool under fire and eke out the win says it all, in my opinion.

The rest of the event's a blur to me, but I won't soon forget the look on that poor guy DiMarco's face after the whole thing was over. DiMarco'd done his best, given his all, against Tiger himself - he'd pushed him to a playoff - and yet came up short, by just a smidgen really. The poor man looked devastated yet accepting, and my heart really went out to him. As a matter of fact I teared up a little bit when I saw him quietly sitting in the midst of the celebrating crowd.

I sure hope he can recover from his defeat, because it was really more of a near victory. Had his shot not ricocheted off the flag, who knows? It might've been his day instead of Tiger's. It's nothing more than a moot point now of course.

God only knows if DiMarco's performance in future events will ever match how he did today. He's something like the Kim Clijsters of the golf world, I've just discovered; he's come so close to winning major tournaments but fades out or gets beaten in the end. I'll be rooting for him and hoping he can get over that hump (and watching more golf) from now on!

I'm beginning to love being idle (uh-oh...)

2005-04-07T13:48:00.000+08:00

SNAP REVIEW. Am currently reading my latest book, celebrated nature writer Barry Lopez’s nonfiction stunner ‘Arctic Dreams’, which I bought last Sunday atPowerbooks Greenbelt after having had a great time with good friend Ry (thanks heaps, buddy boy). It’s a breathtaking novel, both beautifully written and exceptionally informative, BUT (but what? Read on).

An excerpt from the blurb: "The masterpiece of one of the most widely acclaimed writers working today, Arctic Dreams is an unforgettable study of the Far North, the marvelous and mysterious land of stunted forests and frozen seas, of muskox and narwhal, where sunrise and dusk are seasonal rather than daily phenomena. Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world - its terrain, its wildlife, and the history of the Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on its icy shores." Interesting, no?

A lot of Lopez’s prose reads like poetry, which is something of an eye-opener for me. I’ve read many such nonfiction novels before, but this is the first one I’ve picked up whose author’s proven to be so,well, poetic. For example, he sums up the uniquely oppressive Arctic conditions - short springs which are akin to winter in more temperate parts of the world, and winters which can drive even the most seasoned Eskimos insane - to a T in this line: "In the feeble light between the drawn-in houses of a winter village, you can hear the breathing of something with ice for a heart."

Lopez may be quite a wordsmith, but to his credit he also proves to be an excellent documentary writer. He’s spent hours immersing himself in the Arctic, living and traveling with both whites and Eskimos and painstakingly observing natural phenomena (the calving of icebergs, the Aurora Borealis) and the behavior of animals (the polar bear, the belukha, the narwhal), all of which he writes about in impressive detail. He links everything into one cohesive picture, a framework for understanding - and more importantly, appreciating - what remains to this day one of the least understood areas on earth, despite all the efforts of scientists the world over. Never a dull - or uninformative - moment.

Given all this you’d probably expect me to conclude that this book’s a keeper and all that. The funny thing’s that I'm halfway into the book but I'm not sure what to make of it. I feel I’m not really getting into it all that much. It’s more than a little different from the other nature books I’ve read, given the somewhat flowery language Lopez uses from time to time - perhaps that’s why I feel that I’m not absorbing too much of what he’s penned. Maybe as a result of how it’s been written I’ve been reading it a bit too fast for me to actually absorb a lot of it (I’m hardly the most patient reader around, after all).

I’m thinking of reading it again from the top before I close the book on this book, so to speak. A tad slower this time around, and perhaps I should limit my reading to a chapter a day or so. Just so I don’t get overwhelmed again, if that's what it is.

AFTERNOONS RULE. Spent a wonderful Wednesday afternoon in the BF Phase One area, quite close to the house. Had a nice quiet time by myself - ran a couple errands for my folks, had a long lazy late lunch at this little Singaporean food stall at the Tents (chicken curry with potatoes over white rice, and tofu with shredded chicken, washed down with mineral water. Sarap! I’m going back!), and bought a few new fish for the aquarium (handsome little marbled hifin mollies, Poecilia latipinna, two males and three females. Fed them for the first time yesterday evening and was pleased to see them eating already. Nothing like hunger to acclimatize new fish) at this small but very well-kept place near the supermarket. Made my way home full and happy, cradling my newly bought fish, slightly drowsy from lunch and basking in the indirect afternoon summer light. Who needs the beach when you can enjoy afternoons like this practically in your own backyard?

HE’S COMING HOME! After a memorable (exactly how memorable, I’ll have to find out) three weeks spent in Europe, Beh’ll be arriving home tomorrow. Got a bunch of things planned to celebrate his arrival. Can’t wait to see him again, 'nuff said. ;]

Down with Starbucks!

2005-03-31T14:12:00.000+08:00

kohikan
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

This is the reason why I've resolved not to patronize Starbucks any longer (well, at least when I'm in the Greenhills area). Kohikan is a little Japanese coffee shop - think UCC but with much cheaper food - that takes pride of place in the new swathe of restaurants fronting Greenhills' theater mall. I go there specifically for their 'bottomless' hot green tea (I exaggerate, but not by too much - it comes in a deceptively delicate little pot that's good for at least four steaming cups and which is bound to make you run for the CR at least once, if you're there for an hour or so. Oh, and the highlight of the tiny-but-well-maintained bathroom's this exceedingly high-speed hand drying machine that puts all else I've tried to shame. It's Japanese, too, of course). Plus their sumibi coffee, whether cold or hot, is really quite tasty, as are their cold fruit shakes. The kicker's that the shop caters mostly to the older, more mature crowd, which seems to be anathema to the noisy, poorly regimented kids that're the scourge of Starbucks outlets Manila-wide (and thank goodness for that, too). Now if they only served cheesecake like Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf's peerless pistachio...

The nice day manager says that business has been good since they opened - so brisk, as a matter of fact, that they're planning to open branches in Makati and Alabang. I can't wait! Here's to more lazy afternoons spent quaffing their matchless hot matcha!

What the... ?

2005-03-31T13:58:00.000+08:00

rice
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

My mom and I saw this on an otherwise matino sack of gourmet rice at the Shangri-La Plaza Rustans supermarket just this morning. She laughed her head off, but I was nonplussed. Could it be the rice company's (slightly off) attempt at humor? The different color and the line's placement suggest that. Or am I just overthinking as usual? ;]

Fab fare for the common man (with apologies to Copland)

2005-03-31T13:51:00.000+08:00

fabfare
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Pictured are the components of one of my favorite budget meals, courtesy of fastfood giant McDo - chicken nuggets, a large Coke Lite, an apple pie and a scoop of rice. Damned if I know why, but chicken nuggets (or their equivalents from restos that don't serve 'em per se) satisfy me every time, whether they're from McDo, Jollibee (chicken pops - although they seem to be on their way out) or KFC (Hot Shots served with too much gravy, that's a big budget lunch for you).

Fastfood, gotta love it!

Quick bites from the sickbed

2005-03-22T12:16:00.000+08:00

I guess my lack of exercise is really starting to tell. Had to curtail my usual end-of-week activities late last week to deal with what I thought was a run-of-the-mill cold - something momentous in itself given that I hadn’t been sick in ages - but over the weekend it blossomed into the flu. And not just any ordinary flu, either. Three days ago I couldn’t get out of bed ‘til around 11 a.m., and my rapid rate of recovery notwithstanding, I got woozy yesterday afternoon doing nothing more strenuous than washing a batch of dirty dishes.

I’ve really got to start looking after myself better!

Being sick at this time isn’t all that bad, though - my mom says these last couple days’ve been sweltering, and it’s cold comfort, pardon the pun, that I’ve been too feverish to feel the heat. Plus I’ve found the time and space (well, it’s not as if I’ve had any choice, haha) to pick up and read some of the books that’ve been lying around the house, which is just about the best way to spend idle time, in my opinion. Had my brain not been all addled I’d’ve whipped up more new entries for the blog, but I started thinking clearly again only yesterday. Besides, this Saturday and Sunday it was all I could do to sit up, slurp my soup and watch Return of the King (which of course gave my dreams a strange flavor, but then again, when you’re sick they’re bound to be weird no matter what).

Even though by my best guesstimates I should be fit as a fiddle by tomorrow pa, I had to make my way out of the house today. There’s a bunch of things that needs doing, and I won’t have the car tomorrow. Plus given that it’s Holy Week this week,there won’t be anything to do this coming weekend, and I’d really rather try to go out as much as I can while the malls and what-not are still open.

Other stuff:

OLD WOLF, NEW WOLF. Found out just yesterday that Dubya’s picked none other than Iraq war proponent Paul Wolfowitz, his Deputy Sec of Defense, to take Jim Wolfensohn’s place as head of the World Bank. None of the Europeans seem happy about the selection at all (which is not at all unexpected - he's one of 'em 'hawks' after all), but as The Economist reports there’s precious little they can do about it as both the Bank’s biggest shareholder (the US) and its second-biggest (Japan), have backed the selection - is that in any way surprising? This on the heels of Dubya’s selection ofthe equally hawkish John Bolton as American ambassador to the UN. Why am I not surprised? Birds of a feather, and all that. It’ll be really interesting seeing how the WBI works – or doesn’t – under Paul W. (It’d’ve been more interesting had Carly Fiorina been tapped to take over, as The Economist told us an issue or so ago, but we won’t see that happen now.)

I SO WANT TO GO SEE THIS SHOW! It may be grotesque and a travesty to some, but not to me! Fascinating stuff! Click here, and here, to see what the fuss is all about.

WELCOME BACK, KIM! After months of being out with a bad wrist injury (and quietly working her way back into shape – there’s a lesson for me), Kim Clijsters shot her way back to the top of the womens’ game with a bang – she defeated current #1 Lindsay Davenport in the final of the Indian Wells tourney, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, and by doing so became the lowest-ranked singles champion of a Tier I tournament (due to her inactivity she’s currently ranked 133rd, although I’m definite that’s going to change given how she’s playing). Kim and Lindsay are two of my favorite tennis players ever (the other one being the sorely-missed Monica Seles), so it doesn’t really matter that one or another won this match. (Lindsay was actually playing pretty well this entire tournament – hell, she double-bageled Sharapova in the semis!). More details right here.

Some rather silly questions and my answers (well, maybe they’re not all that silly)

2005-03-14T14:49:00.000+08:00

Adapted these from Lance Arthur’s blog (which is, ladies and gents, no less than the best blog I’ve been lucky enough to stumble across so far, everything considered!).

Favorite household chore. I love washing dishes, believe it or not. Call me a stickler for punishment (or a neat freak, or both), but there’s something infinitely gratifying about tackling an entire sinkful of filthy, grease-laden dishes and cooking implements after eating. Makes a better end to a meal than dessert if you ask me. My favorite part’s soaping everything up after I've gotten my hands all filthy scrubbing the big bits off the plates and what-not. (Cleaning my aquarium, by the way, does not in the least qualify as a chore, so that's definitely out of the picture.) Oh, and you can stuff the 'housewife' jokes where the sun don't shine :]

Fantasy career/s. Over the years I've dreamed of being a paleontologist, a cryptozoologist, a fighter-jet pilot (this is the plane I'd commit genocide to fly in), and, most, recently, a hotshot entrepreneur (this despite the fact that I've yet to display any entrepreneurial skills - how's that for a pipe dream? ;] ).

Favorite place to shop. The Ayala malls are some of the nicest looking and best-designed buildings in the country, plus they're simply unparalleled in terms of the sheer numbers and sorts of shops that they showcase. Gateway Mall simply doesn't do it for me (a bit ambitious of the folks behind it to call it "the best mall in the world" or words to that effect) and the SM malls, Podium included, are just boxes, their recent redesign notwithstanding.

Superstitions. I've believed in ghosts since I was a little tyke, and my fear of them's continued unabated up to this point (so nelly of me, no?). After watching movies that get to me (the most recent having been this one) I have a little trouble sleeping. What a tiger.

Morning routine. All pretty predictable. During the week I'll wake to the sounds of the birds at my window, and a lot of very nice sunlight if I'm lucky, at around 6:30 or 7. I'll roll out of bed and water the little potted palm tree that lives on my desk, then hie off to my closets to pick my clothes and shoes for the day. Then I'll stagger to the toilet and take my first pee of the day, then follow that up with my bath, and exfoliate and shave if it's the day for those things. Before I head downstairs I'll pack my bag with all the stuff I'll be needing for the day - tennis or running gear - and change the MiniDiscs I listened to the previous day. I'll throw my clothes and shoes on, feed the fish and stuff my face (favorite breakfast food - hot cooked oatmeal with milk and brown sugar!), and run out the door. On Saturdays I'll wake at approximately the same time in my boyf's little apartment to neither sun nor birdsong. I always wake up before he does, so I'll fix up a nice slow breakfast and enjoy it while waiting for him to get out of bed. Then I'll start prepping for my afternoon tennis session. On Sundays I'll wake up late and loll around in bed with a book and with the radio, CD or MD player on, and I'll proceed with what I've to do that day in a slow, relaxed manner - unless the preceding Saturday's stay at my boyf's place's been extended.

Favorite memento. I value my belongings immeasurably, yeah, but nothing 'for old time's sake' - I haven't any mementos.

Favorite place in the house. I love my room; just about everything of mine (save for my dirtier shoes, and that'll change in a bit) is inside - I've got the computer and all my favorite books and CDs and MDs and what-not in there. It's a wonderful place to while a lazy afternoon away, and afternoon is, coincidentally, my favorite time of the day.

Best thing about being you. In my humble opinion the best thing about me is that I'm not at all a simple guy. I need constant (mental) stimulation and I'd go nuts if I were too long away from books or a computer. That may make me a little tough to deal with, but if multi-topic conversation's your cup of tea - and if it is, you're my kinda person - I'll be able to oblige you in spades.

What's your reputation. Not too many people know me awfully well, but to the ones that do I'm a smart, sharp conversationalist with a good sense of humor and a contagious laugh (hey, those're their words, not mine!).

Favorite movie. I haven't one single favorite movie, honestly, but the one that comes to mind first is Alexander Payne's superlative Sideways, which I reviewed in some detail in a previous post. Just beautiful. Watch it if you haven't yet.

Book to recommend. Richard Adams's Watership Down is just effing gorgeous. It's a kids' book, sure, but it's a brilliant one - and, hey, a lot of kids' books are far, far better written than their adult counterparts. Written from a naturalist's point of view, it's about a bunch of rabbits and their struggle to find a new home for themselves.

Your welcome mat. I've this black plastic-and-cloth thing just outside my door that I also use to hold said door open when it's warm. It's nice and plain; it's got no text on it whatsoever. Serves its purpose very well.

Little big toy. That'd have to be our trusty old Snow Apple iMac, no elaboration necessary. We've a lot of electronic gadgets at home, but only this one is worth its weight in gold (the others come close, though).

Last meal. Gee, a toughie! Off the top of my head - It's gotta include all of the following: seafood, especially crab and shrimp, cooked in chili sauce or coconut milk; Rufo's tocino over hot garlic rice and sunny-side-up egg; Banana Leaf Curry House's incomparable chili clams; and my mom's beef sinigang tuna misono, spaghetti with Spanish sardines and Korean beef stew. All washed down with ice-cold buko and orange juice, none of it sweetened. My, how my tummy's rumbling ;)

Technology item/s you can't live without. My cellphones. The aforementioned computer. My Palm PDA. My MiniDisc recorders. The car, if it qualifies.

Idea of the perfect party. I'd have it nice and small, just involving my best buds - and maybe a couple people they'd bring along to stir up the mix. It'd be at someone's house so we'd all be a little less 'behaved'. Dinner's a must, and so is alcohol (not that I like drinking, but I find it eases conversation, which is what I'm into). It's gotta be one of those long, lazy, relatively quiet parties that're slow-paced and last until morning, or even later. Best if it'd be held somewhere far from where we usually are, like Tagaytay or something. Everything else can vary.

Topic you wouldn't bring up at a party. Everything's game, and I mean everything. Or it should be.

Fictional character you most identify with. Gave this one a little thought and, well, there isn't any, honest :]

Favorite decorating technique. Got none. I just throw things wherever I feel like throwing 'em. I'm Martha Stewart's worst nightmare.

Thing in your house you're fussiest about. Where the computer is. It's gotta be in my room, please and thank you. I could care less about everything else, even the aquarium (just that it's accessible).

Procrastination technique. I'll read and read and read until my head starts to hurt, or waste lots of time and money online. I can really waste a lot of time doing those things :]

What's by your bedside? My terrific JVC stereo, these large plastic bins with my MiniDisc stuff and some of my CDs, a tall CD slot-case, a squat table with my bags, my bedside lamp and all the charging equipment for my gadgets.

Pets. A bunch of aquarium fish (see below).

Recent purchase. This nice Samsonite backpack I can't find online, and my tennis and training kicks.

Always in the fridge. Lots of milk, butter, cheese, bread and my dad's fried and preserved fish (yuck-o).

Nagging injury. Thankfully, despite my sports I've been more or less injury-free. My left knee used to ache a bit during cold snaps and/or after a long tennis or running session, but it hasn't in a while, thank goodness.

Collections. I don't collect anything, really.

Fitness routine. My sports activities aren't frequent enough to be routinary, but I do try to play tennis and run at least twice or thrice a week.

Recurring nightmare. Got none, thankfully.

Idea of a perfect day. It'd involve my boyf, my closest friends, tennis/running and books, music and movies, somehow - we could be out somewhere far from the madding crowd, hanging out and having fun. The rest of it should just happen as we go along - I love surprises, don't you?

New running shoes!

2005-03-01T15:04:00.000+08:00

Nike Free 5.0
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

I'd read about Nike's Free series of running and training shoes months ago on the US Nike website, and was quite intrigued by the concept. For years, athletes've trained barefoot because they discovered it strengthened their feet. The Free series shoes mimic the natural mechanics of the human foot to reawaken atrophied muscles and strengthen feet, which has obvious benefits for all sorts of athletes, tennis players included. More details on the Nike Free website.

Anyway, I found out just last week that Nike Greenbelt's already begun to sell the entire Free line (men's and women's running and training shoes) here! Catch is - at least for now - that only the holders of a certain Nike card (which I found out was given out only to attendees of some Nike seminar or other) can purchase them until March 8, next Tuesday. Just right, since I've been needing to replace one of my current running shoes or at least augment the two I alternate between.

I'll be first in line next week to pick up a pair of Free running shoes in whatever color's available - I could care less, really, and my feet'll be all the better for it whatever color I choose. ;)

New tennis shoes!

2005-03-01T14:41:00.000+08:00

Adidas Clima Ultimate
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Because the nice white Diadora tennis shoes I bought a couple months back've hurt my poor toes one time too many, yesterday I bought a pair of Clima Ultimate tennis kicks, my first-ever pair of tennis shoes from this company. Got them for around PhP1000 off, believe it or not; the Adidas store in Shang mall's going to be renovated soon and they're putting some of their shoes on sale to compensate for being closed for a while or something like that.

Am breaking them in as I type this; will give them their first workout tonight. Had a couple of fitting concerns early this morning, when after about an hour of usage I discovered that the shoes' midsection was a mite tight. Apparently Adidas constructs its shoes a tad narrower than Nike or Diadora. After a little while, though, the shoes relaxed and now I'm happy to say that they fit just fine. Hopefully they'll perform as well as, or even better than, my old Nike Air Profilers.

Quick bites

2005-02-28T15:45:00.000+08:00

Movies. Saw The Aviator and A Series of Unfortunate Events over the weekend. Was quite impressed with the first one (excellent plot and cinematography, nicely filmed, and great job, Leo diCaprio and Cate Blanchett!) and a tad underwhelmed by the second (beautifully done, too - kudos to the set designers and the special effects people - but I found Jim Carrey's antics a mite OTT). Not sure I want to watch Ray; am in the mood for a good, hearty, red-blooded action flick a la Tom Clancy or something. Can't wait to see War of the Worlds!

Books. Finished Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart Mysteries over the weekend. I'd bought the first two books - The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in the North - a few weeks ago, and after having finished those two books I'd no choice but to buy the last one, The Tiger in the Well, and the follow-up book to the series, The Tin Princess. (In addition, Beh, who'd also read and enjoyed the first book, was urging me to buy 'em up, and I couldn't very well say no to him, could I?) All great reads; Philip Pullman's really an author to be reckoned with! That said, though, the Sally Lockhart books aren't quite up to the standard set by the His Dark Materials novels. All other things being equal (the quality of Pullman's narrative is nonpareil, and he brings his characters to life equally well in both series), the HDM books showcase the awesome power of Pullman's imagination far better than the SLM books. Well, whatever. I enjoyed them all THOROUGHLY. I'm very happy to have added these to my collection.

My aquarium. Things are getting along, well, swimmingly, save for the fact that my last spotted plecostomus catfish, which’d managed to survive various scrapes and scares for years, finally gave up the ghost a couple weeks ago. The rest of the fish (I’ve four rosy barbs, three Bolivian rams, three gold-variant blue gouramis, two green tiger barbs, an assortment of kuhli loaches, one panda corydoras, one albino bronze corydoras and one otocinclus) are doing really well. The tank’s planted thickly with Java ferns and this little round-leafed, slow-growing green plant that I’m not familiar with and which doesn’t seem to put out a lot of roots (a lot of individual strands end up floating at the surface since they aren’t very firmly anchored in the substrate). The plants and fish get more than adequate light since that provided by the lamp’s augmented by the sunlight that streams in from the sala (all of which make sure that my little oto has a lot of brown algae to eat! I might just buy some more otos to keep him company.) Months ago I tried to make do without a UGF, substrate and live plants – I sure as hell won’t make that mistake again! This topic deserves a longer post with pix; I’ll do something about that next time.

Movie reviews

2005-02-21T14:14:00.000+08:00

Watched two movies in the past couple days. Saw the first, Sideways, on Friday evening with good buds Joey and Marco at the Rockwell cinemas. Enjoyed that one immensely - it’s one of my favorite movies now.

Sideways is the story of two middle-aged friends, Miles and Jack, who take a road trip into California wine country a week before Jack’s wedding. Miles is a struggling author who tries to keep body and soul together by teaching English. He’s had little success in his personal life either; he’s estranged from his wife, and as can be expected from someone who’s as uptight and self-conscious as he is, he’s far from over her. Jack is a two-bit actor who stars in daytime soaps, and who’s flighty, impulsive and full of overweening confidence - the perfect opposite of Miles. (Perhaps that’s why they’re buddies?)

Miles’s organized the trip as a last hurrah for Jack. His carefully planned itinerary includes nothing more than wine tours, food trips and golf sessions; all he wants is a relaxing week with his friend. However, things spiral out of control. As it turns out Jack’s got plans of his own - he plans to maximize his last few days as a bachelor by having a final fling (or two). Jack sets both of them up with two local girls named Maya and Stephanie, and since Miles in a previous trip to the area has taken a trembling, uncertain liking to Maya and the feeling appears to be mutual, it seems sure that Miles’s meticulously crafted plans are all headed for rack and ruin. Which they are, but in a very nice way - you’ll have to see the film to find out exactly how!

The stand-out moment for me is the conversation Miles (played to perfection by Paul Giamatti) has with Maya (fantastic work, Virginia Madsen!) on their first date, when they’re seated on Stephanie’s front porch trying to pick each other’s brains over glasses of wine. Will try to see if I can dredge up their lines - all I can say right now’s that it’s stand-out first-date-conversation material. So beautiful it gave me goosebumps. (Not that the conversation Beh and I had on our first date wasn’t scintillating, because of course it was! The one in the movie is just, well, spectacular.)

No big-name actors here, but stellar acting all around, and fantastic story and screenplay too. Plus you get loads of comic scenes as well as lots of bonus info about wine and stuff on the side - what’s not to like? :) One fantastic movie. ‘Nuff said. Go out and watch it!

The second movie, Constantine, I saw yesterday afternoon atAlabang Town Center. Didn’t like it all that much. It irrepairably mangled the Hellraiser comic/graphic novel series it was based on - don’t feel like elaborating - andthe worst part was Keanu, who can’t really act. (Methinks he deserves a Raspberry for those faked coughing fits of his! Effing cringeworthy!)

Tilda Swinton as the angel Gabriel was absolutely breathtaking though, the saving grace (no pun intended) of this otherwise lackluster film. Not only did she really look the part - essential for a movie of this sort - she carried herself in an utterly convincing manner. She bowled me over right from the start. I’d last seen her some years back in this somewhat obscure movie, The Deep End, which I’d liked, and she’s also had roles in The Beach and Vanilla Sky. Will be looking out for more of this terrific actress.

Reality bites - not all that hard, though

2005-02-21T13:29:00.000+08:00

Played tennis last Saturday and yesterday - doubles on Saturday with a friend against a couple of (very) young hotshots and singles yesterday against JR - and did poorly on both occasions.

As is usually the case when I play people I haven’t met previously, my game on Saturday was awfully spotty. The cornerstone of my game, my forehand, went on hiatus and to make things worse, so did my footwork and weight transfer (trust me, it’s worse than it sounds). We split the two sets we played with the kids. My partner and I lost the first set 4-6 trying to play our usual game (lots of sledging drives from the back court) which the kids just ate up, and only took the second set 5-7 because we tried mixing our shots. We tried dropshots and very softshots with a lot of spin, which the kids had a bit of trouble with.

Yesterday, much to my relief, I was hitting rather better than I was on Saturday. My forehand came back somewhat and I had the occasional good shot off both wings, as well as the rare clean winner. My service and backhand, however, faded in and out, I was just too inconsistent, and I wasn't moving very well or bending enough to boot. I was flopping around the court like some sort of beached whale. (In my defense, the heat and humidity were really high and I never do well in such conditions, and after all I did play a couple of tough sets Saturday). Plus, to give credit where credit’s due, JR’s shots were smoking, especially his groundies and service. I ended up losing 1-6, 7-5, 2-6. Kudos to him, he’s learned to hit with tremendous pace and good placement; he just needs to cut down on his errors and occasional mental lapses. What’s rather depressing is that I haven’t won against him since some time last year, when Istopped playing tennis regularly due to my changing jobs. As a matter of fact the set I won today is one of the few sets I’ve managed to take off him in awhile. Strange that our head-to-head's been lopsided from the start - for months I was beating him, now he's wiping the court with my sorry ass! :)

It’s a good thing that I honestly love tennis so much that it doesn’t matter all that much to me now if I win or lose matches. I end up feeling really good if I’m able to eke out a win against a tough opponent or get through an easy match, though of course the former is much better, and it’s not all that bad if I lose, especially to a better player than myself. Although losing matches still does chafe (especially to someone I know I can beat), at least it isn’t the major issue it used to be when I was younger. Back then I used to be so tight during matches, and I’d throw my racquet and act like the kid I was when I’d encounter setbacks or lose. The worst part was that I didn’t really have the game to back any of that shiznit up.

My game’s come together in the last few years, albeit not as much as I would’ve wanted it to. I've realized that it plateaued at a certain level a while back and I know it’s not going to improve any longer, at least not substantially. All I can hope for now is that I play as well as I know I can play and maybe exceed that a little bit, which is a tall order given that I’m not as fit as I should be, but isn’t that what even the pros aspire to do?

Now that I’m more mature and know myself, my game and its strengths and limitations far better than I ever have, I’m trying my best to learn to focus on the good stuff and just have fun on the court, whether I’m winning or not. It’s a tall order, but I’m doing my best! (Not like I’ve much of a choice, really - it’s either that or end up a sore, embittered loser, and that I'd rather not be!)

Howsaboutit, people? :)

2005-02-18T16:43:00.000+08:00

Got this from a friend's blog. I'm wondering what you fine folks'll post. :)

If you read this journal, even if I don't speak to you often, post a memory of me. It can be anything you want. It can be good or bad, just so long as it happened. Then post this on your journal. See what people remember about you!

Too late in the day?

2005-02-18T16:34:00.000+08:00

Sony MZ-RH10
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

The wait's been well-nigh interminable, but FINALLY, here's a new MD unit from Sony! And what a unit it is, too! Users can use it to record from multiple sources (USB, Mic, analogue, digital) to store data, video and audio files of different formats - Word, Powerpoint, JPEG, MPEG, ATRAC, MP3 (at long last!), WMA and WAV - on a single 1GB Hi-MD disc. Up to 45 CDs of music on just one disc, baby (albeit with ATRAC3plus compression)!

I'm just wondering if this'll be Mac compatible, though. If I know Sony, despite the unit's USB compatibility, it won't be (heck, it uses effing ATRAC3plus). Major bummer.

Oh well, at least this means that Sony hasn't killed the MD format just yet. From what I know it's belatedly trying to enter the MP3 market it ceded to Apple and all the rest when it stupidly decided to stick with its proprietary format. This I'm sure is one of the products meant to swell Sony's ranks. Dunno if it'll be good enough - I don't think very many people are into MDs these days...

On the recent bomb blasts

2005-02-18T15:34:00.000+08:00

Just a few days ago the country was jolted by massive bomb blasts in three main cities, General Santos, Davao and Metro Manila itself. Up to 13 people were killed and scores of others injured. The Manila explosion took place outside the Ayala MRT station, which my family and I usually pass beside on our way home. Even scarier - my dad and I were actually in the area itself, less than half a kilometer away (around five minutes or less from the area given the state of the traffic at the time), when the bomb blew up. Having heard the news we were able to avoid the resultant traffic jam and arrived home, to the collective relief of my mom and brother, without incident.

I guess these terrorist attacks're hardly unexpected. The government's been pounding the Muslim rebels quite hard down south, and if they're to be believed they've made some headway into rebel territory, so it's only natural for these guys to do something like this in retribution for having been besieged. The Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Solaiman said as much when he telephoned local radio stations and read a statement claiming AS responsibility for all three explosions, adding that they were a 'Valentine's gift' for Gloria.

Plus if he's to be believed, we should prepare for more attacks. I quote (with thanks to CNN.com): "Our latest operations -- planned and executed with precision by the gallant warriors of Islam -- is our continuing response to the Philippine government's atrocities committed against Muslims everywhere... We will find more ways and means to inflict more harm to your people's lives and properties, and we will not stop unless we get justice for the countless Muslims lives and properties that you people have destroyed." Standard fodder, really, but it raises my hackles nonetheless.

I think the government, having had some success in its efforts to strike back at these terrorists, shouldn't tone things down (a course of action some sectors are beginning to advocate) but should hunker down and continue to blast away, so to speak, while continuing to try to win over the marginalized Muslims' hearts and minds. Beat the insurgents into the ground; just don't play into their hands by making this seem like a war on all Muslims! We can afford neither to lose what gains we've managed to eke out nor to look weak in the eyes of the international community.

If that'll be the case, we'll just have earned ourselves a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. We'll have managed to rid ourselves of the current crop of terrorists, but by doing so we'll just have laid the groundwork for their successors to make plans of their own. Plus, whether we win this fight or lose it, we won't get very far at all without help from abroad - that's something we can ill afford to lose at this point.

The sun's setting in the West - or is it?

2005-02-14T11:30:00.000+08:00

The recent success of the elections in Iraq (now pronounced 'EYE-rak' by some - is this for real?) notwithstanding, I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that the US fell flat on its face when it blithely came into Iraq thinking the whole 'democratization' thing was going to be a cakewalk. All the high-tech weaponry the US could muster only served to drive the remnants of Saddam's forces underground, and instead of coming up with some all-out offensive, they've managed to stymie the occupiers by making small but vicious sorties against priority targets, guerrilla-style. What makes the situation worse is that some Iraqi tribal chieftains've been actively backing these entrenched fighters. Both the US and the democratic government that's just been set up have their hands full with trying to deal with their opponents. Plus, both in the US and in the international scene, America's come under fire for its mishandling of the situation (a good thing that this's died down somewhat - a few months ago everyone was just vitriolic!).

Should it really surprise everyone that the States, after years of arms reductions and military-base closures, is beginning to assert its might once more, or at least attempt to do so? For years, after the USSR collapsed under its own weight - with a little help from the West, it must be said - America was content to relax and watch the rest of the world embrace Democracy and Capitalism. It realized, though, that the very same trends that brought down the Commies were also inexorably working against its own dominance. Countries around the world got very much richer through trade and all that, which (and I realize that this may be reductionist, drop me a message if you think so and let's talk about it) enabled them to become ever more influential and thus less and less likely to meekly accept the dictates of the West. Plus, with the common threat of the USSR gone, the other nations and cultures which once marched in lock-step to the beat of the Western drum began to do their own thing. So we have such nations as Germany and France, and even more tellingly some Muslim nations and China, speaking out and reacting - sometimes violently - to what is now seen in some quarters as America's blatant abuse of its power. America can no longer act as the world's 'policeman' and expect the rest of the world to be thankful, or even accepting, of its actions. The rest of the world's waking up, and it's not damn likely to go back to sleep when the conditions are now ripe for the ambitious to get what they can while the getting's good. Pity the Philippines has neither the political will nor capital to take advantage of how things are and how things're shaping up.

Of course the States isn't about to lose its power and influence, at least vis-a-vis other nations and cultures, too abruptly. Sam Huntington and other pundits say that it'll take some time before America's forced to step off the pedestal it's still on. Plus it's not about to go without a fight, or fights - Afghanistan and Iraq are Bush's first examples of this - and in addition the US is much too subtle and knowledgeable of the ways of power to simply attack this on one front. It's going to try a couple things on the side, like more arms reduction talks for instance, to keep it strong, at least relatively speaking. But the fact is that America is relatively weak, weaker than it's been for decades; and everyone knows this, or is at least beginning to see it. Many nations and cultures are carving out larger niches and slots for themselves in their own regions; some of the most ambitious will of course be starting to jockey for power, with the ultimate aim of actually supplanting the US as The Superpower of The World.

Or have they started already?

'Power to the People', my ass!

2005-02-14T10:09:00.000+08:00

Gotta love the good folks at the NTC, who've just overturned Globe's and Smart's attempts to crush Sun Cellular's 24-7 promo. Globe, through Innove Communications (which operates Touch Mobile), and Smart, through Pilipino Telephone (which runs Talk N' Text), separately petitioned the NTC to kill that promo because, they claimed, by doing so Sun was guilty of 'predatory and discriminatory pricing'. Oh please. Thank goodness the NTC was sensible enough to laugh both petitions out of court.

Although I'm sure Sun doesn't entirely have the public's interest in mind - who does, really? - the 24-7 promo's hands-down the best offering yet from any local TelCo.

Better luck next time, Globe and Smart! (Why can't you guys just get in the game instead of trying to cry foul, eh?)

Side view (just look at those buttresses)

2005-02-07T12:27:00.000+08:00

San Agustin-Paoay-2
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Here's my shot of San Agustin Church's mammoth buttresses. These and other anti-earthquake features inspired some to name this sort of church 'Earthquake Baroque' - and this particular church looks sturdy enough to stand a millennium more!

San Agustin Church, Paoay - front-side view naman

2005-02-07T12:24:00.000+08:00

San Agustin-Paoay-3
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Another view of San Agustin Church, with fellow tourists for perspective's sake (it's really huge!).

Noble stone shrine - no, not THAT San Agustin Church

2005-02-07T12:21:00.000+08:00

San Agustin-Paoay-1
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Was going through my pic files in my hard disk at home and stumbled upon this beaut, taken with buddy Rich's superlative Canon Powershot (thanks heaps). I took this sometime a couple years ago during during my one and only trip to Laoag City.

I sincerely regret that I didn't get to enter the thing (thanks to some people who wanted to go somewhere else)! That just means I'll have to make my way back there. Another goal for Yours Truly, perhaps sometime this year - and with my boyf in tow, too, maybe? :)

Taking up the cudgels for nuclear power in the country

2005-02-07T10:56:00.000+08:00

I've always been an advocate of nuclear power. Whatever the raving mobs say, they can't change the fact that it's light-years ahead of coal, gas and oil; they're nowhere near nuclear power for cleanliness and efficiency of power production. All you really need on a day-to-day basis, as far as input goes, is clean water, as the nuclear fuel itself will need changing every few decades (though of course the coolant fluid might need to be changed rather more often).

Now the country has been making use of the so-called 'alternative' energy sources for decades; we've geothermal and hydroelectric plants, and solar, wind and 'wave' power have been talked about as possible alternatives to reduce our dependence on oil (and foreigners). Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I know these are relatively high-cost and low-efficiency sources, and despite the fact that there's a lot of investment being made in them, they're not likely to become competitive with the existing sources for a little while (barring, of course, a breakthrough of some sort).

While of course there are major issues related to nuclear power, such as security, having to deal with the waste (it's highly radioactive and some sorts of nuclear waste can be used in bombs and the like) and making sure that the technicians are competent enough to operate such complex machinery, I believe that we can leave this to the experts, foreigners though they may be. Most everything to do with power generation, etc. has after all been privatized in the Philippines, and things may have improved somewhat, but does anyone actually thing NAPOCOR et al are doing a good job? Perhaps it's time to let the foreign power professionals bring in the nukes. It might be argued that this is detrimental to our sovereignty, but what the heck - if what the papers are saying is true and we're to have a looming power crisis in the near future, shouldn't we be trying out different solutions to help stave it off?

Plus the anti-nuclear (environmental) lobby's basic points appear to center around the high cost of construction and maintenance and pollutive capacity of nuclear plants. I won't dispute that they are potentially very dangerous, but aren't oil and gas, too? And as the example I'm about to cite will show, perhaps the solution is a series of smaller, more efficient, well-managed nuclear plants, instead of a few large ones.

This is my example, and I think it's a good one. For years now, the little Alaskan town of Galena has depended on diesel plants barged in during the Yukon River's warm months for electricity. However these arrangements have made power prohibitively expensive there - it costs thrice the national average in the States! Toshiba has offered to help remedy the situation by installing its extremely small and efficient 'micro-nuclear' 4S plant in Galena for free. The town is to pay only the operating costs of the reactor itself, which will drive down power costs to almost a third of their former level. Read more about this at http://www.primidi.com/. It sounds like a hell of a solution.

Perhaps Toshiba - and the Philippine society - can be persuaded to give this a try over here? We'd have to overcome stiff opposition to the idea of course, but what are the alternatives? Our antiquated, inefficient, anticompetitive system of power generation and distribution is bound to collapse sooner or later, leaving us with poorly developed alternatives. We might be back to the bad old days of brownouts before we know it. Such a situation would bring us to our knees, or worse...

'Conspicuous' consumption

2005-02-04T16:17:00.000+08:00

Been having a doozy of a week here, my not-so-little problem notwithstanding. I’ve been playing tennis with a new group thanks to a friend’s invitation (thanks heaps, Francis! I owe you one). The tennis is high-quality, the company’s quite interesting, the venues are great (Oakwood and CSA) and I get to hitch a ride home every time we play. What’s not to like?

I ended my post-holiday moratorium on spending on so-called ‘nonessential items’ a few days ago (which included books, of all things!). I bought Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason’s spectacular Rule of Four, a literary-suspense thriller in the vein of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code but far better researched and much more cerebral without being unpalatably dry and academic. The writing style is tops, too; the quality of the narrative is top-notch… Will come up with a formal review once I get my copy back from my brother. I hear the authors have another novel in the works. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for that one.

Yesterday I picked up a couple more books by Philip Pullman – The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in the North, the first two books of his Sally Lockhart trilogy. Breathtaking stuff, if somewhat less riveting than Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels. I also bought Richard Adams’ engaging Watership Down, which I’d last read and enjoyed in college, and this other book whose name escapes me at the moment. (It’s this cute kids’ book about a Parisian hobo who goes out of his way to help a destitute family). Got them all in the kids’ section of National Book Store Katipunan, which puzzles me somewhat given that only the fourth book I talked about is a kids’ book per se, but perhaps I shouldn’t complain given that most bookstores hereabouts charge less for children’s books.

Today, less than an hour ago as a matter of fact, I picked up a faded green long-sleeved shirt at Marks. I knew I was a goner as soon as I tried it on out of curiosity. It makes the most of my shoulders and arms, and my (“nicely rounded”) tummy hardly shows when I wear it. I really should be buying more shirts like this.

Off to get a haircut now. Will be spending the evening first with some friends and then with my boyf.

Hang on, guys!

2005-01-29T14:14:00.000+08:00

I've been raring to update this site for days, but a few developments've kept me from putting anything up in a while.

More on what happened in a bit (and hopefully by then I'll have found a way out of my quandary).

My 2004 in a nutshell

2005-01-17T14:43:00.000+08:00

This is sort of late, but what the heck... Better late than never, as the saying goes!

2004 was quite a memorable year for me - here are some reasons why...

I started a wonderful relationship with the best guy in the world :) Enough said. Just because, Beh!

I outed myself to someone (a former officemate). There's nothing cathartic about my having done so; I've been alright with myself for ages, plus my closest friends know about me and they're more than OK with it. Maybe I just needed to know what it'd be like to spill the beans about myself. (Not that I enjoy shocking people, of course.) She was more than alright with it.

I got my first big break and landed a fantastic new job that’s light-years away from my old one in every respect. Although I sometimes end up feeling like I’m on my first job again, I feel like what I’m doing is helping me grow – plus we’re trying to help the country, too - and that makes all the difference.

Didn't buy too much music this year, but I got to listen to Bjork's eye-opening, groundbreaking Medulla (perhaps a bit too much, 'cos it's now languishing in the dark recesses of my CD drawer... But then again except for Oceania, none of the tracks on it qualify as easy listening music). R.E.M.'s Aftermath is the snappiest song from their latest effort, Around the Sun (pretty good in its own right) and my current favorite song. 2004 was also the year I got my first taste of Snow Patrol (it took me a while to get Run out of my head) and Rilo Kiley (I had Portions for Foxes on heavy rotation for a couple days a little while back). Finally got the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack I'd been pining for for so long now (thank you Ron!). And thanks to buddy Roj I got to listen to a lot of very nice classical music; it was all good, but I enjoyed the Barber, Sibelius and Copland pieces the most - thanks heaps!

On a lark, I picked up Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) and was very happy to find out that it's a keeper! Fantastic, original storyline, tack-sharp narrative and a gorgeous plot; quite a pleasure to read, and I was sincerely sorry when I was done. All impulse buys should turn out this well. Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) is another major must-read; he's another original thinker whose prose reads beautifully, and even Pullman likes his books! Lastly, after having had a nasty experience with his last book (which was really the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, as I've been unhappy with the series for so long now), I had an epiphany of sorts and hereby resolve not to pick up another Robert Jordan novel until he's cleaned up his act.

I got serious with my 35-gallon aquarium (again) and stocked it with easier-to-maintain fish this time around – a bunch of golden gouramis, rosy and green tiger barbs, corydoras catfish (panda, paleatus, albino aeneas) and kuhli loaches (Pangio spp.). Had a massive green hydra infestation midyear – actually bought the gouramis because I heard they loved hydra, but they wouldn’t touch them! – and so had to clean everything thoroughly. I’m currently battling a brown algae infestation and I’ve lost a few fish to hole-in-the-head disease, but I’m coping and will buy a couple more fish to replace those that died.

I got a Sun Cellular line, which along with (somewhat) more judicious use of my regular line and a very generous reimbursal set-up at work, helped me lop off approximately a third of my monthly Globe bill.

I didn’t get to play tennis and run as much as I wanted to last year after I switched jobs – and man, did it show! – but due to better scheduling I should be able to exercise a lot more this year than I did in the latter half of 2004.

I stumbled upon Kinja, a weblog portal that collects news and commentary from some of the best blogs on the web. You can browse items on everything from food to sex, or create a convenient personal digest to track favorite sites. What a site!

Last but certainly not the least, I managed to forge great relationships with some new people (you good folks know who you are), while deepening a bunch of my existing friendships – as well as my relationship with my family. All in all I've been quite sociable this year, and you know what? I like it. :D Oh, and I got to see my ex, J, not once but twice - and although we aren't as chummy as I'd like us to be, at least I've achieved closure.

Best luck to all of us this 2005!

This I gotta try

2005-01-13T12:06:00.000+08:00

Stumbled upon this this gem of a dessert recipe on Bruce Cole's website sautewednesday.com, which I found in Kinja.com's food section. He in turn got the recipe from Amanda Hesser, a writer for the New York Times. It's simple and it involves bittersweet chocolate and olive oil - what's not to like?

TOASTS WITH CHOCOLATE, OLIVE OIL AND SEA SALT

Time: 10 minutes
8 1/4-inch baguette slices
8 thin 1-inch squares of best-quality bittersweet chocolate
Extra virgin olive oil, for sprinkling
Coarse sea salt, for sprinkling.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lay bread slices on a baking sheet. Lay a chocolate square on top of each. Sprinkle with a little olive oil and sea salt.
2. Bake until chocolate is molten but not seeping through bread, about 3 to 5 minutes. Bread should crisp slightly but not toast. Sprinkle with a little more olive oil and salt, and serve immediately.
Yield: 4 servings.

Copyright © 1999/2005 The New York Times

Apple's latest computer!

2005-01-13T08:42:00.000+08:00

Mac mini
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

The Mac mini is a full-featured, cutting-edge computer that starts at US$499 sans keyboard, mouse and screen (no price for the Philippines just yet; the friendly ladies at the Greenbelt Mac store say they should be stocking it in a month and a half or so, and until then they don't know - or can't say? - how much it'll go for.) It comes with a 1.25 or 1.42GHz G4 processor, 40 or 80GB hard drive, a slot-loading CD-R/DVD-ROM optical drive, 256MB DDR SDRAM and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics chip with 32MB dedicated DDR SDRAM, weighs less than 3 pounds and measures 2 in by 6.5 in by 6.5 in - in plain English, mega bang for the buck despite its positively tiny dimensions! Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are optional, although I'm not sure why you'd need Wi-Fi for a unit this small and light, and you can opt to equip your Mac mini with a SuperDrive in lieu of the CD-R/DVD-ROM.

Asia.cnet.com's reviewers think this isn't really much of a budget desktop computer, as you'll have to buy a monitor and peripherals to use it - but they think this is a smart way to try to win over Windoze users who've already got computers and peripherals. I agree with them on both counts.

Would I buy one? In a heartbeat! The eMac might be a more complete package, but this one is way cooler, even if I'd still have to purchase a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse (I can most probably get all of those things for around 10k if I shop around). I might just choose to blow my midyear bonus on one of these... ;)

Poignant pic

2005-01-13T08:25:00.000+08:00

tsunami_two
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

The second photo I mentioned. The father and daughter are on the lower left. (I'm in a morbid frame of mind right now apparently - looking at them made me think of those famous Mount Vesuvius plaster-cast tableux of people caught in their last few moments of life. I hope to God I'm wrong about these guys.)

One mad wave (re. the previous post)

2005-01-13T08:18:00.000+08:00

tsunami_one
Originally uploaded by WideEyed.

Here's one of the photos I got from my friend. Take a gander at that!

On the tsunami disaster

2005-01-12T17:05:00.000+08:00

I've just gotten a glimpse of how it must've been for those hapless victims of the tsunami that ravaged Asian coastlines just a few weeks ago. A friend just e-mailed me some pictures of one of these terrifying waves caught coming into land. Nothing I’ve read in any newspaper or magazine or seen on TV captures the essence of the disaster better than this particular batch of photos. The most touching of the lot is of a man racing away from the wall of water that looms behind him, bearing a terrified little girl on his shoulders.

Only an event that displaces an enormous amount of water like a large undersea earthquake, a large-scale collapse of an undersea volcano, or a giant submarine landslide, for instance, could've caused tsunami of this magnitude. The quake that spawned this series of tsunami was a monster. It measured 9-point-something on the Richter scale, strong enough to alter the planet’s tilt a little bit and lift some islands higher. On land a quake like that would've been more than powerful enough to level many large cities and lay countries waste; the fact that its epicenter was under water (somewhere off the coast of Java in Indonesia) amplified its effects immensely. The waves left a wide swath of devastation across several thousand square kilometers. We’ll never know for sure how many people died, and a great many more have been left destitute. Thankfully people haven't been slow to respond; a vast international aid and relief effort's been mounted by many countries and NGOs.

Not everyone suffered, of course. It’s one of the quirks of fate that this's given the Philippines’ tourism sector a boost of sorts, although at such horrifying cost!

An ECONOMIST article says that had there been a good tsunami warning system in place around that ocean (there are such safeguards in the Pacific, I hear – warning buoys and the like – since the area is far more prone to this sort of disaster), the body count might’ve been lower. But let’s be realistic here – warning systems of that sort’d only really work if people are given enough time to react and spread the word. If another such quake or a large undersea volcanic eruption, for instance, were to occur near the coastline of a country, well, all the technology in the world wouldn’t be enough to stave off disaster.

Still, of course, we should do everything we can to avert such catastrophes. Anything to prevent this much suffering if and when another such calamity takes place!

Not another new blog, Chris!

2005-01-12T17:02:00.000+08:00

I'm unhappy with how my other blogs are progressing. My entries there are just too carefully written - they might be grammatically correct, but they lack the flavor, the soul, the brio I want them to have.

I'd like this new blog to be a great deal more dynamic than any of my previous efforts. It might be a mite less polished than any of the others, but if I can make sure my new blog'll be smart and snappy at the same time, it'll really be worth the fuss and bother of starting from scratch.

Here but for the grace of God... :)