A morning walk

It's 5:45 in the morning and I was reading a book for my thesis. I had the urge to walk outside. Wearing only a pair of khakis and sando, I went to a nearby 7/11--a staple place for people with nowhere to go in ungodly hours. I bought the first thing that I saw as an excuse: a bag of Chippy. Red. Salty. Good enough. 

Cue few puffs, walking students in lanyards and uniforms, morning sweepers, a lady, another lady with her son, and a girl buying Red Horse 500mL--I was good to go. 

I walked home taking a dimly-lit road. It was cold. February cold. 

I got home, went to my open computer, and stared.

Can't wait for Sagada.

On Observing

Chuck Palahniuk once wrote that the best way to waste one's life is by taking notes and the easiest way to avoid living is just watch. There is some sense in his words as an observer is bound to to live his live relative to the lives of others, but I do not believe that an observer's life is void of its meaning whenever he observes. He sees things that others do not see, feel things that others do not feel, and experience events that others do not and cannot experience. And these perceptions are just his own. Whenever one walks along the streets of Pedro Gil and observes his surroundings, from the wailing jeepneys to the transient people, one creates an alternative dimension--where meanings are endless and experience is unique. Vicarious living is mere self-sensing that creates another version of someone else's experience and makes it his own. 


Quite frankly, I feel I'm most alive when I just watch. 

Summer Screenshot 8: Black and white

One of the first things I see when I get up in the morning.

Summer Screenshot 7: Graduation

From postsecret.com

To all graduates who are feeling the same thing (cum laude or not), still, congratulations on your graduation. Serve (a) the people (b) your husband (c) both. 

Summer Screenshot 6: Adele

Rolling Stones for Adele

The April issue of Rolling Stone will have the face of that girl who basically nails your heartbreak story in her songs. Even though she said that she doesn't make music for eyes but for ears, cmon, look at her face. Really, cmon. That should give her plus points. 


As if she needs it though. Check where her confidence comes and tell me you don't agree with her. 

Summer Screenshot 5: Misfits

Simon and Alisha shghrrgrjggifjg

Best moment so far.
(What's with me and kisses lately?)

Summer Screenshot 4: Triangle

Locally released as Ghost Ship. I don't know if the change of title is due to an advertising stint or just plain mockery to local audience's intellect. But remembering the movie, I'm pretty much sure it's the former. 


The plot was laboriously written but there were a lot of loopholes. Still, it's some entertaining waste of 2 hours of your summer. 


P.S. It's not a new movie. It was actually first screened in 2009.


P.P.S. It's not the movie Ghost Ship (2002) in this link. 

342:1 ratio -
Cadaver-to-seagull in the movie. Or loopholes-to-movie. Whatever

Summer Screenshot 3: Chris Carrabba

Chris Carrabba

Dedicated to that one guy who practically made instructional videos for guys like me on how to feel. Happy 36th birthday. 

Summer Screenshot 2: Catfish

Personally, this is the documentary that had the most impact. I used to have an online relationship myself, and I'm glad it only brings me good memories. If you haven't watched this, please do.

Litratista in Luneta

At the Rizal Park (Luneta). This picture was taken by Mang Joni, one of the many photographers you can see in the park. 


We were fortunate enough to see how they manually develop their pictures. Seeing the process and hearing his story really gives a deeper appreciation to the somewhat meaningless picture we have in the park. Sad thing is that there are approximately 120 photographers like him in there and most park visitors now have their means of getting their own pictures, so most of the photographers either find a better-paying job or find other stints. Mang Joni is lucky because he get to be the official photographer for tourists sometimes, which pays better. But on regular days, he gets to endlessly walk in the park to find people who are willing to be photographed--retro style. 


Click on the caption of Mang Joni's picture to see the video. And visit Rizal Park to have your own adventure. 

Video link to see Mang Joni

Summer Screenshot 1: American History X

I loved this film the first time I watched it years ago. I managed to get a copy again and I remember why. 

A poem in my wall

In the midst of thriving, breaking
into the realm of all earthly possibilities--
Amid the dark light of
disconcerting pain, troubling hopes, and weeping fate.


As when the crashing waves and the billowing winds
Forcibly weakens his human heart
Casting it under nature's spell
(all artificial)
But never wanes.


For it belongs to a man who offers his human heart
to seek for his wondering joy
Across the seas, the mountains
far away from the land of promises
to a place not barren with love.


It is not now, but isn't not-ever
Knowing one day, soon 
He shall face the smiling grace of Chance
Only to break down and weep
Shattered with fulfillment and raging adulation




"I am home
and I am here to stay."

Random thoughts about the sanest person I know

Random thoughts about Artem:
1. Artem was a puppy (yes, in his past life) - a pu...NO, a poodle.
2. Artem is awesome... when he is asleep.
3. He seldom sleeps.
4. He wants to be a whale. Yes, seriously.
5. Artem is awesome. (When you are in opposite world.)
6. He loves oily stuff.
7.  Artem wants to be forever young. ;)
8. He is random like LALALALA.
9. Oh, he knows that I am typing stuff in his site, and he would never delete this post.
10. Now something positive: HE IS....UHMMM... PRETTY and..... oh well, just that.

This post is not by Artem.

-Pat A. :)

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.