My Yearbook Photos

Haha, we had a fun time creating and tweaking yearbook photos of what we would have looked like in the years gone past. Create yours, too, here. You'll have a blast laughing yourself out. Now back to work!

1956 1970 1980

1982 1988 2000

Sunog Baga: Back to smoking

Now that the Ramadan is about to end, maybe tomorrow or the next day, I have this feeling that I will be going back to puffing till my lungs get reduced to peanuts.

As smoking is not allowed during the fasting hours, I have greatly minimized on the number of sticks in a day that I light, sniff, it's carcinogenic smoke brought into my respiratory system, its nicotine/tar-glazed residue clogging up my alveoli, the smoke then shooting up to my nares and mouth, leaving my teeth stained, my breath smelling like shit. Before, I used smoke about 10 pieces a day, still short of being a chain smoker I'm proud to add (or is it?). I was hoping that I could do away with the vice, but after the breaking of the fast meal, I can't help but stuff my mouth with red Marls. I've never really developed the taste for lights (except menthols), and reds I know, as everyone else does, is lung CA's favorite brand. My friends are noticing how I seem to have developed this frailty for nicotine: Sunog baga ka na man.

This is blog is not meant to encourage people to smoke, or those who took the bumpy road to quitting to take on the habit once again. If it's anything, it's the exact opposite. This is more like I-want-to-but-in-due-time kind of blabber. I know that in the future I would have to pay for what I'm doing with my body, but at this point it is saying that it would take more than an incessant bout of dry or productive cough, or stained teeth and fingers, or a bad case of cigarette-induced halitosis to stop me now at the expense of turning into our family mascot!

I hate rainy days

It was raining. I was on a trike on my way home, listening to the mp3s on my phone as usual, it safely tucked on my sweater pocket. Going on a slanted road, the music suddenly stopped. I froze for some seconds and had this feeling that something terrible just happened. Then it dawned: God, my phone just fell. I hurriedly got off the trike, walked back to the alleyway we just passed and started looking for it. The street was dark; the concrete wet. It being slanted, there was a gushing stream of rainwater because Typhoon Nina was yet to leave the Greater Manila Area. After some time of scavenging in the dark, I saw it: There in the middle of the road laid my N95, soaked and dead.

I took it and patted it dry. I turned it on, and like a fluorescent bulb flickering because it has passed its heyday, it came to life. I breathed a sigh of relief for the good fortune I had, but I was yet to assess the magnitude of what just happened when I got home.

Arriving at close to midnight, I checked it once more because my room was well lit. It died yet again. However, this time when I tried turning it on, it wouldn't anymore. Only three months with me, and this phone is a goner? I cannot believe it, spending that much for a phone that was gonna die like that. I pried it open. Everything was wet: the battery, the sim card, the microSD. It was that bad. I charged it, and for some reason, it came to life, although the LCD was returning a blank screen. I braced myself that this may be the last day that I may be using it and thought that I had to be content with my 2100 in the mean time.

I guess the internal pieces and intricate wirings dried off because after a long wait (and prayers) for it to work, the screen came back to life. I discovered that the parts that were most affected were the wide LCD and the 5mp camera, two of the most prided features of the N95s. Now it has been reduced to a mere music player. I made a mental calculation of how much I would have to spend to have it fixed. You see, I recently had the keypad and the backhousing changed to the original ones at the Nokia Center in MOA. I paid close to P1,500 (because they're installation was a hefty 500). How much would the LCD or the Carl Zeiss camera lens cost then? That's beyond me. I guess I would have to find out sooner and I have to ready my pockets for that.

I checked the phone awhile back, and it's no longer working. Maybe, as a friend put it, something was fried. I feel like there's no longer hope for it to be fixed. I'll surely be bringing it to the Nokia Center with a heavy heart this coming weekend. If it weren't pouring, the damage would have been minimal, like just accidentally dropping the phone (it happened quite a few times already). But with the downpour, the damage was magnified. F*^&, I hate rainy days.

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On Photo: Me and my sister's back (hehe) during my birthday last June, the day I got the phone.

We can be Heroes!

Heroes' season three is anything but Supernatural (and I'm referring to the show from CW). Having seen both episodes, one and two, in their two-hour special premiere yesterday today (kind of confusing, huh?), it's still hats off to the latest installment of the latter. But don't get me wrong. The Second Coming and The Butterfly Effect do not pale in comparison. After having done away with two hours worth of nail-biting tension, Heroes makes it to my top three fave series right now, alongside that show from brothers Dean and Sam and the Connors of T:SCC.

For fans of the Heroes franchise, this season's premiere episodes do not disappoint. It's filled with twists at every turn, with new and old characters introduced and reprising their roles while discovering their new supernatural and otherworldly capabilities. A not-so-new plot in the formula and Suresh's power-creating/curing discovery are presented (thus the blog title), and the finale for the Butterfly Effect with Sylar being &$%$%#@! with Peter and Nathan left me blurting WHHHAAAT?!? Don't read in between the lines so as not to spoil the show for you. Hehe.

Catch the two episodes below before they're gone. Highly recommended.

The Second Coming

The Butterfly Effect

The Proverbial Sun Joke

Before I got a smartphone for my birthday, I used to have a lesser-class Nokia phone for my Globe sim. At that time, I had both sim cards from the biggest telco networks in the country, with my Smart being locked to my N73. I also had a Touch Mobile primarily because everybody back home in Zamboanga are TM subscribers; they also have that kinse-kinse that is all the while practical for long talks.

I had a Nokia 2100 lying around for months after my N95 came and after I lost my Smart sim. The phone has seen better days: It had no batteries and the housing is PINK and chipped in some places with Taz printed all over it. This is not the lesser-class Nokia that I owned though. My sister swapped it for my 6100 (it being colored and having a radio tuner), and she took the batteries. The 2100 is in the ranks of the almost-phased out 3310s, made techier(?) with a winking gif as the power saver and the option to have a photo placed at the back. Well, I think that's what the back pocket is for. The norm nowadays is for people to have two or more phones with them, usually the first one being the new mobile breeds while the other is close to extinction.

Just the other day, I decided of bringing it back to life. I got it a new battery and a blue housing. The tindera called them Class A's. You seem to see them everywhere these days, the Class A's and the tinderas. Everything you need for your mobile gadget they have it. They install themes, applications, games, upload mp3s and videos. Even indie porn (read: sex scandals) can be bought in a mall near where I'm from. And people are, well, people none the wiser that lives are ruined and futures made bleaker with these shorts that are even collated and burned in DVDs.

With the phone ready to be used, what new sim to have became the question I pondered over. I don't know much people that are Smart users, my TM is primarily for their call promo, my Globe is on my N95... the likely choice was Sun. Most people I know are switching (more like have a spare Sun sim) to this network because of their unlimited text and call services. Heck, they were the culprit of the unli craze that others soon joined the bandwagon, to the benefit of their subscribers. I got one at a stall in MRT Ayala, and before I knew it, I was forwarding my new Sun around.

Trying to reach my brother's num down south when I got home from work (around 10:00 pm), disgruntled for not being able to connect after numerous attempts, I had the following text conversation with a friend who's already with Sun:

Me: Pangit ng signal!
Friend: D kaya.
Me: Kanina pa ko tawag ng tawag sa zambo.
Friend: Ahh.. bka dun sa kanila mahina.
Me: Gabi na kc, wala ng Sun.
Friend: Onga no. Funny ha. =P

Lazarus Rising Delivers

Whoa, after months of waiting for Supernatural's latest installment, it's finally here. Well, I got to watch it after a day of its premiere in the United States as I follow some American shows through various videostreaming sites; links to these programs are posted usually the next day. We were left with Dean in Hell and screaming for Sam to help him last season. And I know every aficianado of this show probably asked the same thing back then: How will Dean escape his fate this time? Will there be anymore soul deals between the two brothers?

This season's first episode, Lazarus Rising, answers that, but not until you're near the end (don't worry, no spoilers here). It felt for me though like it was a little sacrilegious bringing a whole new character to the plot who was responsible for Dean's escape from the infernal abyss. No, I'm not talking about Cassiel. I'm referring to somebody omnipotent who commanded this Cassiel guy to save Dean. D'oh, I think I just gave it away. Hehe.

Lazarus Rising definitely exceeds expectations, and it overshadows everything shown this Fall (for me at least). Boy, we're in for a great Supernatural season.

I took the liberty of embedding the video here. Highly recommended.

I Love Tuesdays

I'm beginning to love Tuesday now, for the main reason that this is the time of the week when a number of fresh-from-the-US episodes are made available on numerous video-sharing websites. This also explains why I haven't updated my blog that much because I've been glued to my monitor, multitasking (hehe), and at the same time enjoying my Tuesday dose of American programming. T-Bag showing up in the middle of the square and being chased by Linc and Michael down a cul-de-sac yet still managing to escape in Prison Break, Shirley Manson (of Garbage!) as the new T-1000 archnemesis of the Connors in Terminator... who wouldn't want to be left out on all that action.

~What I'm currently watching~
Terminator: Automatic for the People.

I have a lot of other journals on draft, but I've been busy with other stuff as well, reading in particular. What with having MobiPocket on my N95 and numerous titles in ebook format waiting to be pored over: A Dog of Flanders by Marie Louise de la Ramee (already done), Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (currently reading), The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (unfinished), Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel among others. I'm also trying to get my hands on books that made it to the 100 best lists of Modern Library and Time. So many to do, so little time, huh?

Tomorrow's for House and Fringe, and I'm beginning to like Wednesdays too (and Friday for Supernatural)! Teehee.

Fall is Here

Following the start of the Fall season in the Americas (tagulan in this country of ours), it's only a matter of time before I get way psyched up with what American TV has to offer, with shows like Prison Break, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dexter, Gossip Girl (weheh) having their series premieres after we were all left on bitin modes for months because these were cut short by the Writer's Strike that affected just like everything shown on American tellies.

~What I'm currently watching~
True Blood: The First Taste.

Tim has already posted quite a comprehensive list just before these shows became the couch potatoes' favorite pastime and the Shangri-la of online streamers (and surfthechannel is the best in the lot), and I'm literally marking my calendar as we count the day when the new seasons of Heroes: Villains, Supernatural, How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, and House M.D.--shows that I watch--grace our boob tubes and computer monitors. And as added bonus, we also get new buzzworthy offerings like True Blood from HBO (which looks promising), 90210 (nothing new there) on CW, and Fringe (I'm yet to watch it) from FOX.

Getting back to reading (and how one book made me cry shitless)

Come on! A 20-something rockish-looking man with all the facial hair crying over a 100-page or so book written in the 1800s? It may be embarrassing to say the least. But I guess I'm one of them few men who's not afraid to blog about how a story of a boy and a dog could break open even the hardest of hearts, not that I have one for that matter. Enter A Dog of Flanders.

I just learned that this book was made into an anime and shown in the early '90s here in the country. What I find befuddling to this day is the fact that I haven't heard of it even though I was told it was such a big hit back then. I may have missed something for not having seen this during my childhood. But thankfully, poring over the book for an hour and a half compensated for it.

The ebook--I read it in its plain text format--is made available on Project Gutenberg for downloading where you can also find a find a menagerie of notable classics written by no-nonsense writers. I first got wind of it over conversation with Edward and Jasper at dinner with the former highly recommending it. My curiosity piqued, I found myself downloading all 78.68 kilobytes of it.

I like reading books that keep me glued to my seat and leaving me voraciously leafing the pages like there's no tomorrow (or autoscrolling on MobiPocket in my case), and A Dog of Flanders offered the same kind of reading pleasure. It's a light read, but the writing could get at you if you haven't read or don't like reading the classics; it's a known fact that authors from the bygone years had their own literay elan. Think Shakespeare.

I need not expound on what the story is about as I'm well aware you know it already if you happen to be a '90s baby. It was in the last few pages of the book that a soft spot in me was hit in piercing bull's eye fashion: Nello leaving Patrasche in Alois and her mom's care, Patrasche escaping from the Cogez's looking for Nello, Baas Cogez trying to make amends with what he's done, Nello and Patrasche inside the cathedral looking at the Rubens, Nello and Patrasche on the floor, under the Elevation of the Cross, dead. It was just too tragic and so much to take that I found my eyes welling up at 6:00 in the morning! Weheh.

Having finished a literary gem, I know that there are countless covers out there that would have given me the same level of intensity and satisfaction if I ever have them within arm's reach, in paperback or in its electronic form. Armed with a techie mobile ebook viewer, I began shortlisting books that I would like to read. I started off with the must-read classics, then the award winners (Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer, et al), then the best-sellers, then the "cults." And given the limited number of free ebooks available on the worldwide web without no need for software installations, I was able to download the following: CS Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, George Orwell's 1984, John Grey's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Remains of the Day, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Mitch Albom's Five People You Meet in Heaven, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and Yann Martel's Life of Pi.

With all these now at the touch of a mobile keypad for my perusal, would I even be able to read all of them (and others waiting to be found yet)? These books would be a good start, and I'm more than willing to be taken away to the very world these literatis have laid out for us, if I ever get time on my hands. I'm thinking, after Flanders, what would be a good, this-book-will-make-you-cry-shitless read? Hmm. How about Eddie and the Five People he's supposed to meet in heaven? I heard a Filipino is one out of five.

Globe betters service with Unlichat

Okay, I've had my fair share of letdowns at having been a Globe prepaid user: "down ang system" for reloading credits, P1 deductions for share-a-loads that didn't even push through, disconnected wap that eats P5 off your credit if you're using "time" browsing. But since most of my contacts are Globe users and the network recently included TM subscribers in their Unlimited and Sulitxt promos, somehow I never got the change of heart.


Now Globe recently launched Unlichat, a wap-based service that let's you log on to Yahoo Messenger anytime, anywhere... and it's free (at least for a month). This requires that you download and install the Unlichat software (also free) by sending CHAT to 2979 or by directly doing so from the Globe portal. After install, you're ready to be "online" for all your Yahoo contacts to see, and I'm loving it.

Unlichat reminds me of Mig33 in that it's like you're chatting through a minimized web browser, unlike the messenger of ph.m.yahoo.com or wap.oa.yahoo.com where you have to refresh the page every now and then to check for new messages. It still needs some tweaking though, like having the capability to edit contact infos, a chatroom (like Mig33's), and an option to change the status message. But these are minor tweaks compared to what you already have: alerts or vibrates when a contact comes online or if you have a new message, the web-like chat window that you can slide left/right, the option to exit but stay signed in, thereby allowing you to receive alerts even if you're no longer on Unlichat and are using your phone for texting and some other purposes.

Hmm, I'll stop now. Globe is not paying me to write this. Hehe. But is it too much to ask the network to have this free service extended or even made permanent? If it is, at least we get our free YM fix for a month and then go unlichat till sawa. Thanks, Globe!

Renewed

After two posts about having my passport renewed, I finally got hold of my new maroon, machine-readable one... last week. I know, a long overdue post. But what prompted me to write about it this time around is the rather swift and inexpensive way that my uncle had his done: two days only of going to and fro DFA and shelling out P500 for it.

Well, if you haven't read my "renewed" entries (here and here), I actually paid P1,700 to have it color-changed and valid till 2013 for three reasons: I hate the long lines, I wanted it expedited, and I'm a sloth that I'd rather have somebody else do it. You'd think that having paid 1,700 would have solved all three, but no. The processing time was the same, there were still long cues but accordingly it was quite manageable, and I could have done away with my indolence if I could save 1,200 from doing so. Like, who wouldn't?

My uncle will be getting his 10 days from now and mine is already with the agency since last week. As I speak, I am still awaiting for updates from them regarding the status of my working visa for Dammam. Now waiting for the results, I'm befuddled with other thoughts: My employer from Maryland emailed to say that I have to register for the state board now as this is one of the requirements for my immigrant visa (that means I have to review yet again and go to Hawaii, the nearest, to take it... and I have to pay for everything), Australia's Migration Experts emailed that I qualified for the Skilled Sponsored (State/Territory) visa and that the next step is to pay $399++ dollars to have it processed, I might leave any moment for the Middle East and this haven't sunk in yet. What am I to do?

As I look at my old, green, passe passport, at least I know what to do five years from now when I have to renew it again: Do it online for P1,300! I still hate the long lines however manageable they seem to be.

Of Self-Restraint and Faith

I actually just broke my fast. Twelve hours or so of no food and water, and you’re probably wondering how we Muslims do it and what for. It’s both the will and the faith, and if you have both, then you will be able to live through the whole month of September, the Holy Ramadan. It’s an act of bringing ourselves closer to God, of cleansing our souls of impure thoughts, to put our feet even in the shoes of our less fortunate brothers and sisters who have little to eat.

Like Kristin who just got her halo back, I feel like I’m wearing one as the day of fasting begins from dawn till sunset, and that's when the act of self-restraint takes on a whole different level. This not only involves abstaining from food and water. It also is a reflection of what we say and do and feel, what we think of. The uninformed would be surprised to learn that even thinking of lustful thoughts is prohibited while one is fasting. Add lying and fighting and smoking to that, even involving one's self in an act of coitus (read: sex), if "lustful thoughts" wasn't rubbing it in. Some people I know would surely not last a day doing what Muslims have done throughout time when Ramadan commences; doing that for a month maybe suicidal (pun intended).

I’m no saint, I admit, so I have no reason to sound all good and flawless. But even so, it helps to think that what you do and say during this day mirrors something worth lauding about, not only because you had proven the strength you have over your mind and body but because with each day that passes, you are bringing yourself closer to the One True God, Allah, and the sacrifice is well worth it.