Sometimes, you need to take control

I often feel extra tired and sleepy lately, especially in school. Since September began, I have not been following any sleeping pattern at all. If you were to give an illustration for it, think of a finger painting of a blind 4 year old boy with 1 arm cut off, or your thesis draft.

If you got affected by the latter, I'm sorry. But what I am really trying to say is, I have to start taking control of my sleeping schedule. I have to normalize it or at least give an effort to normalizing it so it won't be a burden anymore. Especially now that semester is going to an end and final exams and deadlines are lurking everywhere, no one wants to carry the extra load of feeling weak.

So if you were like me who has that problem of going to sleep, he're's what we can do:

1. Read a book. It's a good mental exercise and although it makes you remember those essays that you have to do, it gives you another reason to sleep to hide away from it. 

2. Don't drink too much liquid at night. This is a challenge if you are always thirsty like me. But not drinking too much would lessen or fully take away that urge of going to the bathroom every 10 minutes, so it actually makes your butt glued to your bed until you fall asleep.

3. Stay away from the TV. Contrary to popular belief, sleeping actually requires your eyes to be closed. And TV prevents you from doing that. Don't give yourself the reason that you will just watch a boring show, because you know what your fingers will do to that remote more than anyone else.

4. Stay away from the computer, or anything that can access your Facebook profile. Give it a rest. Your Facebook profile has been working hard since the beginning of the year. Plus, it won't go anywhere, swear.

5. Think of happy thoughts. Because maybe you're just too emo to fall asleep.

Not having a good sleeping habit can overcome you. Good thing is you can control it little by little, and ultimately you can control yourself. Because the truth is, controlling something or someone is not always bad. 

This is but mere metaphor

I need to be more careful next time

I'm now counting my blog posts that I left without titles. So far I have 2 now, and both of them emerged title-less unintentionally.

Well even the second one, my take on a book I've read, was not even supposed to be posted yet. I intended to save it as a draft, but it turned out to be published.  And I realized it just today.

Score one for the noob bloggeer.

 Aside from that, I need to be more careful on my lone Manila ventures at night. I have been walking more around Manila at night and it has been treating me kindly lately, but you'll never know when you'll meet that one person who will ruin that perception. 

Randomly tonight, I visited the henna stand in Adriatico where Pat, Joseph, and I went on Pat's birthday to be inked. A weak-one-to-last-for-two-weeks kind of ink. I went there to get my two stars fixed because they needed reshading and another little brother.

Two-week, weak ink

People there were nice. They have a shop in Vito Cruz where you can get a henna, tattoo, or even go get pierced. I was invited to get a tat or get something pierced, but those aren't really for me now. Or will be. Or IDK. Too bad though that I wasn't able to take pictures with them. They really are nice people. Well, I got the number of the artist just in case we have an event in the campus to invite them. 

Something tells me I'll be meeting them guys again soon. 

These are extraordinary times.

This is the introductory sentence of Alan Webber in his book Rules of Thumb, a book containing 52 rules embedding the author’s experiences being the entrepreneur, team captain and player, communicator, and a politician’s friend. The central thought of his book is to rewrite the rules that we know because today is unpredictable and fast paced. He talks about a time that greatly needs sense making due to sudden and exponential rise of globalization’s and technology’s power.

He talks about our time.

One rule a week

 Some rules reflect insights about leadership, communication, change, and conflict management. Here are some of them rules:

Rule 1 When the going gets tough, the tough relax.

Rule 3 Ask the last question first.

Rule 5 Change is a math formula.

Rule 8 New realities demand new categories.

Rule 10 A good question beats a good answer.

Rule 11 We have moved from an either/or past to a both/and future.

Rule 12 The difference between a crisis and an opportunity is when you learn about it.

Rule 15 Every start up needs 4 things: Change, Connections, Conversations, and Community.

Rule 16 Facts are facts; stories are how we learn.

A Wednesday journey to the stream of consciousness

When I woke up today at 11:00, I was 2 hours late for my first class: the lights are dim as my room gets no light outside as always, and the air is cooler than usual that made me fall asleep again as I have placed my netbook on my lap to do my Psycholinguistics homework, which is my second double-period for the day.

The next thing I remember is turning the lights on at 11:45 after a sudden jolt of wakefulness coming from the heat of my netbook that had been placed on my lap for almost an hour; from my desktop, I opened the PDF book that flashed p. 253 showing a syntactic tree as an aid to discuss Ferreira's study in 1996 on the left side while placing the unsaved word file that I have created for my homework on the right side, making both of them visible at the same time in my 10" screen.

Still half asleep at 12:03 I was done making a table showing 5 studies discussed on the 11th chapter of the book, enabling me to vaguely  discuss Brown and McNeill, Fromkin, Roelofs, Astell and Harley, and Boomer and Laver, in 1968, 1996, 1992, 1973, and 1966 reversely, making myself ready to take a bath only to almost accidentally wash my face with conditioner--Clear conditioner--then come to school for the second period.

 My tweet earlier today summarized my early venture in less than 140 words, but I learned stream of consciousness today as a literary device, I just had to use it!

Nothing spells Sunday to me better than waking up late and doing nothing. Earlier today, I woke up at 1 carrying with me 18 hours of sleep, officially baling me out of the state of sleeplessness I was in last week. And this Sunday, that nothing came in a form of a movie called Choke.

Choke (2008) is a film adaptation of director Clark Gregg from the book by Chuck Palahniuk bearing the same title. It’s about Victor, his loser life, and his genius plan of faking to choke in restaurants so wealthy people can go and save him. His so called “victims” then will feel that they have saved a person and in return continue to help him by sending him financial aid—money that he uses for his insane foster mother’s medical bills. The way he sees it, he sells senses of fulfillment to those who need it in a cheaper price. It’s like adopting a foreign baby he said, only that it is he that these people have adopted. 

Not a bad idea, selling feelings. Especially a worthy feeling at that.

The story is twisted, as other Palahniuk produced plots. His will depict introductory bombardment with realistically horrid details and individually build them up only to concoct them in a giant bomb that will timely explode just before the ending. His will give you confusion coated with contentment, and as much as this movie tuned down the plot’s mindfuckedness, I still was satisfied.

Fanboy-ing aside, let me give you my take of the film.

For the most part, the movie showed multiple clips of Victor’s modus operandi. That together with his narration of how badass he is because aside from a liar, he is also a Med school dropout turned medieval tour guide, a sexaholic who can’t feel for another person,and a total jerk resulting from an upbringing by his unconventional mother (Not to mention at one point he was convinced that he was a half-clone of Jesus.) Little did he know that the state which he is often in—choking—is a metaphor from the labels the world gives him. 

As  he was relieved from choking after he gave it a final attempt while in the interrogation room with 2 policemen, he drew a conclusion and let go of all labels attached to him.

“We’re not evil sinners or perfect knockoffs of God. We let the world tell us whether we’re saints or sex addicts, sane or insane, heroes or victims...we can decide for ourselves.”

 Epiphany.

Photographs

Some have babies in it.

Some have dogs.

Some make you remember that cool movie you've watched.

Or that last turbo dinner you had before going home

That you were busy that one night

...even thought it's PRTSC and was totally taken just for this post.

Some photographs signal beginnings, those that make you think of what's going to happen next.

And will happen soon.

Dimension frustration

3D has been the biggest revelation to the movie industry so far. More than well-built plot, interesting characters, and skillful cinematography, moviegoers also take account of the experience they have when watching movies. It's like dining in a fancy restaurant. Aside from exquisite meals and variety of drinks they have to offer, they also sell the ambiance that comes with the package every time diners go to them to eat. It's the same bananas with watching movies: 3D facilitates the creation of your unique experience contributing to the overall feel of the film.

More than facilitation though, some movies are just pleasing to the eyes.

A friend and I watched Resident Evil:Afterlife in 3D at Midtown last night. Judging the previous installments' content and the game-turned-movie nature of the film, we were more excited on the experience rather than substance. 

Meh.

 We actually drank coffee first before entering the movie house for better effect (my idea, of course).But the outcome was far too mediocre to talk about. It's not purely the fault of the film itself though. Somehow Midtown cinema (which I love) contributed to the bad effect of the film. The projection was relatively dim, 3D glasses are quite loose and rather uncomfortable wearing, floor lights are incredibly bright, and buckets of free popcorn were too small.

Well, the latter is not really a part of my ranting. They're so tiny it's actually kinda cute somehow.

We're so tiny we're gonna die

Still, it's a good way of spending an early evening. Making fun of a crappy film is always entertaining.

Keeping it sane

I guess I should start now.

I changed the header of my blog today. My previous title signifies nothing about me and I find it annoying everytime it pops into my screen. So I changed it to something I can relate with, something I need:

Sanity.

A friend always tells me to be sane everytime we say our goodbyes. I find the advice sensible but mostly helpful.With that, I always find little ways to keep my sanity intact-- to venture outside daily routines but still find reasons for doing what I do.

Fear of empty spaces

Here are 3 activities I do lately to keep me sane:

1. Walking alone at night

Walking alone gives me time to reflect and muse on the people and places I pass by. I couldn't do it at another time of the day because (1) I don't want to have skin cancer (2) I may be just sleeping during that particular time. Still, walking at night has its own faults. It may not seem safe, being in Manila and all, but when you've been around the area for the whole of your life, some places just seem safe to you.

2. Watching science--in a form of an American series 

Forensic-themed shows come and go. I have loved and left CSI, Cold Case and Law And Order, and retaining probably 7% of what I have learned from them. This time it's Bones. The interplay of forensic science and anthropology interests me, plus the show's relentless bashing to social sciences particularly psychology is entertaining. Not because I agree with them (hey, I study social sciences too), but it's rather comical for characters being portrayed as super smart to forget that the world is not governed by purely sciences. And with that, I feel superior somehow. Ha. Ha. That and well, Emily Deschanel portrays the lead.

Dr Temperance Brennan at your service

3. Micro Video Blogging

I've been trying microblogging via Twitter for a month now. So far so good. Plus I'm doing random video recording when I feel like it. It makes it easier to verbalize your thoughts sometimes because you don't have to write or type them anymore. Plus this one, too. This contributes to my blogging activity that I hope I can maintain.

Hey, anything to keep you sane, right?

Sir, I believe it's a primordial soup

I have been thinking the whole day today on what the theme of this blog will be. As I have read some blogs, I see that most of them have  underlying theme that they incessantly talk about. Some blogs talk a lot about academic lives, some blogs rave about science and math jokes, some focus on ventures of tasting different iced teas, and some...well, you know what I mean.

But I still can't figure out what this blog will be. I am not a one-sided guy and I enjoy a lot of things. Well, maybe too much of things as they can be disoriented at times. I often get comments about how weird I am because I talk about Greek mythology at one minute, and then talk about how I like to study sociolinguistics or forensic anthropology then next. Well, that's just me being random.

So let me not define what this blog will be and let us see as it runs its own natural course.

(Let me tell you, it may not be pretty.)

Still, let me strive to fulfill the purpose of this blog. And by doing that, well, I'll be needing less restraining.

Mmmm.

Shhh...

It's always difficult to start. You always want to make your works seem creative and incomparable for them to stand out. Why wouldn't you? In this age, standing out has been a necessity. Everyone wants to acquire their place in the platform. Everyone wants to share what they did, who they went out with the other day, how painful their heartache is, and how optimistic they are into saving the world. 

But maybe not everyone wants to stand out. Or more accurately, maybe not everything one creates is made to stand out. Maybe some things are created to make little ripples; maybe some blogs are meant to suffice nothing but to channel emotions into writing. It doesn't mean though that silent works are not meant to be appreciated or be thought less of a product of those exhaustively broadcasted works. Maybe its sheer softness among the boisterous channels produces its own uniqueness, it's own beauty.