I Am Now 100000 Years Old

Y'know, in binary.

So, yeah, I'm now 32 years old, at exactly this time, 3:30pm.

Me

I'm one year older, not that much wiser.  I try not to worry too much.  I used to overthink a lot of things, but over the past couple of years, I've learned to sometimes just let things go.  It was hard, learning that.  The result, feeling lighter and happier, is definitely worth it.

But, man, do I feel older.

Work

I feel I'm quite happy at work.  There were a few bumps on the road we had to deal with, sadly.  I also feel I could've done more, been more productive.  I also miss doing development work, coding.  But, overall, I'm really not that disappointed.  I'm a bit bummed about not getting a raise this year, though.  :-p

Home

So this year saw us move into a new home.  Kei and I are enjoying living by ourselves.  We've buffed up the place over the past 4 months we've been here -- new sofa, picture frames, and other fixtures and furnishings.  The chores, however, do have a tendency to feel like, errrr..  chores.  I only really sweep when there's already an undeniable feeling of filth (read: visible) when I walk barefoot.  That's around every 2 weeks.  Heh.

Family

Now that we have our own place, we're already expecting visits from family.  Kei's family is coming this July.  Mama and Tita Alice are coming on September.  I'm really excited to have guests -- to help out with the chores.  XD

Kei and our baby

Kei told me last night:  this will be my last birthday that I don't have a baby.  Our baby is due next month!  We're both very, very excited and, at the same time, very, very anxious.  Kei's pregnancy is going well, for the most part, so I'm confident that she'll breeze through labor and delivery.

I can't wait for Baby Elise to start walking and talking!  I want to teach her so many things.  Things that do not involve Disney princesses and fairies and dolls and purple dinosaurs and touch screen devices.  Things like building blocks and puzzles and old-school physical games and letters and numbers and math!  Math and stories and imagination!  We'll watch Super Book and Flying House and Powerpuff Girls and Phineas and Ferb and Bill Nye, the Science Guy!  What fun!

Pop Quiz

June 12 is celebrated in the Philippines as our Independence Day.  This year here in Singapore, a bunch of organizations came together to give us Filipinos staying here a whole-day event to commemorate the holiday.

Out of the entire program they publicized, one thing stood out to me:  The UP Alumni Association of Singapore was hosting a Quiz Bee competition!

My friends would know that I'm very fond of quiz contests.  This one, I felt, I couldn't miss -- especially after seeing that the prizes were well worth competing for.  So I signed up to join it.

When the day arrived, I made sure to get to the venue early.  I didn't want to miss the qualifying round just because I got lost.  To my relief, the place was quite easy to find.

The qualifying round would cut down the number of contestants to fifteen.  This first round was a written exam, scheduled for one hour.  At 10am, the scheduled time of the qualifying round, there were just a handful of us.  A fellow contestant joked that they shouldn't disqualify late-comers, which would ensure that the five or six of us present at the moment would surely go to the next round, since we were way below the cut-off of fifteen.

I finished the exam in fifteen minutes.  All the questions were mutliple-choice, so when I didn't know the answer (which was more than half the time), I just quickly put in my guesses.  The questions in the exam were mostly really obscure Philippine trivia, and I wasn't so sure of my chances of qualifying, if it all came down to everyone guessing through the exam (throughout my quiz contest career, I've always been horrible at guessing).

The organizers said they'd give me a call or send me an SMS around an hour before the next round (at 1pm), if I qualified.  I went out for lunch, walking and sulking, waiting for that call.

I was biding my time going up and down the escalators of Plaza Singapura when I received the call.  What a relief!

The next round of the competition would be held on-stage.  I've always thought I've already overcome my stage fright, but this time I felt a little bit nervous.  It's been so long since I've been on any kind of stage.  Most of my anxiety was from my fear of embarrassing myself if I couldn't answer correctly.  That'll really hurt my pride.  :-p

For the second round, we were given four huge flash cards for letters A through D.  The game master will read the questions out loud, and then he'll read four choices of answers.  We'll then be given three seconds to flash the card containing the letter of our desired answer.  The top three scorers at the end of the round will proceed to the third and final round.  I answered nine out of ten questions correctly.

When the results were announced, I was indeed qualified for the final round.  There was a tie for third place, so we had to wait for their clincher round.

For the final round, we were given whiteboards, markers and erasers.  We will be asked ten questions and we had to write down the exact answers -- no more choices.  The questions were very difficult.  At the end of the final round, all three of us finalists each got only one correct answer.

To break the three-way tie, we went to a sudden-death clincher round.  After almost ten questions, this one guy failed to answer what the other guy and myself answered correctly.  He was declared the third-place winner.  We continued to battle for first place.

After what seemed like more than ten questions, our tie was never broken.  The allotted time of one hour for the competition has elapsed, and we were told that we had to leave the stage to give way to the next event.  The sponsors were very mindful of the time that they bought.  Because of that, we had to continue the clincher round in the backstage.

Backstage, we were seated in an air-conditioned room and there was only a small group of spectators, so it was less stressful than when we were on stage.  But my nervousness never left me.

I think it took us twenty questions of giving the same answer, whether right or wrong, until a spectator remarked that we finally answered differently.  To add to the suspense, the game master took a couple of seconds before checking if one of us gave the correct answer.  He peeked at his question sheet and announced what all of us had been waiting for:  we have a winner.

See the official announcement of the results here:  PIDC Quiz Bee Winners

See photos of the event here:  PIDC 2011 Quiz Bee etc

Close Your Eyes

I'll pretend that I'm kissin'
The lips I am missin'
And hope that my dreams will come true

Up And About

Man, it feels nice to.. uhmm.. not feel bad.

This past week, I've had quite awful nights.  My body ached and felt stiff, and my hip threatened to act up again. I'm glad I didn't force myself and rested early.  I actually (foolishly?) over-stayed in the office, and when I got home, I had nothing else in mind but dress down, hit the sack, and end my day.

A lot of my planned activities had to be shelved for a while.  I had to accept that some social network backlog, I needed to ignore (which comes pretty easy these days).

I did enjoy the extra rest I had.  However, I really miss how sharp and active I could stay way into the night.  This growing old thing?  I, fortunately, don't have the extra energy to feel bad about.

PicLyf #2

New gadget in town: the HTC Sandwich - Ham, Tomato and Cheese! XD

Content Farms Are Amazing

/sarcasm

I've known about such Web sites before, but it's become more pervasive in my line of work after Stack Overflow (also known as SO) boomed.

Stack Overflow's content comes from the hundreds of thousands of programmers from all over the world who post their programming questions and answers in the site.  SO licenses their content under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.  This means that what the SO content farms are doing is perfectly legal.  Even if they simply mirror the original Q&A page from SO, as long as they link back to it, they're covered.

However, I'd say that what they're doing isn't different from what the ad farms and SEO-mongers do -- they hijack search results traffic from the original source of information, which in this case is SO (that they link back to SO doesn't matter).  It's legal, but it's not something to be proud of.  Personally, I frown on them.

Jeff Atwood, one of the co-founders of SO, has already written about the issue of rip-off sites in his blog post Trouble In the House of Google, although he did focus on faulting Google in their failure to keep the content farms from out-ranking them.

What pushed me to write about it was my surprise in seeing how seemingly instant this hijacking occurs.  I just read about Google's Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, and it reminded me of this issue. I installed the extension and I tried to search for a question I asked in SO several hours ago.

A content farming site topped the search results -- and SO was not even in the top 5!

See how the site complies with the Attribution-ShareAlike license by linking back to SO:

And here's the original content in SO, and notice how fairly recent it was posted:

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not incriminating this particular content farming site.  They might be totally legit and "nice".  It's just that I think it hit me hard enough to feel uneasy about it.

Creepy Kid

Last week, I ate dinner at a hawker center.  I shared a table with an elderly man who was with a boy of around 8 to 10 years old.  The boy rambled:  "I'm going to sell it for a million dollars.  A million, billion dollars. No, a zillion-zillion-zillion-zillion, trillion-trillion-trillion-trillion, billion-billion-billion-billion, million-million-million-million--"  He takes a deep breath-- "thousand-thousand-thousand-thousand, hundred-hundred-hundred-hundred, ten-ten-ten DOLLARS!"

I was impressed that he got his decimal groupings right, so I listened on, curious of what he was talking about.

The boy stood up, went closer to the old man, stretched his arm, reached towards the old man's chest and continued, "I going to take out your heart, and sell it for lots and lots and lots of DOLLARS!"

Then an elderly lady arrived, and they left.

Caught Myself Staring At The Mirror

Because all I have to do is stare above my laptop screen, and I'm already looking at the mirror.  =p

I, Fan

I've been caught up in Isaac Asimov's stories ever since my library membership here began. Even if I found them in different library branches, Asimov's books were still very accessible that I couldn't pass them up, especially since I've wanted to read his Robot books for so long.

I've only gotten started on the Foundation and Empire series, and the Robot books I've read are Robot Dreams and The Complete Robot.  The Robot novels are almost always unavailable, on loan.

A couple of weeks back, I suddenly remembered that I haven't watched the movie I, Robot.  Last weekend, I finally did.  Here are my thoughts (I took notes while I was watching =p):

• It's a swell Will Smith movie.
• I read that some people hated the Converse product placement -- I thought it was amusing.
• The liberties the movie took with Asimov's characters (okay, specifically -- or maybe, just Susan Calvin) were a serious disservice to the fans of the books. What endeared Calvin to readers, her cold attachment to robots they stripped off, and I didn't like her slight interest/fascination(?) with Will Smith's character. The Calvin in the movie was simply.. someone else.
• I didn't think they should've played off the robot-as-monster theme, since.
• I know that Asimov did write some action scenes (though not in the Robot stories), but the way they did it in the movie just didn't work for me. For example, I hated the revolving cameras in the final action scene.
• Forgivable changes:
• What happened to Lanning in the beginning of the movie. It fit the plot quite smartly.
• Robertson's A-hole-ness.
• It was nice how they integrated the central ideas of many of the robot stories:
• the lost robot
• robot + detetive -- weeell, I wouldn't call it a partership, just a pairing
• the dream
• the different interpretation of the Three Laws
• I was hoping to see a Powell and Donovan cameo. =p

(WTF -- Ctrl+P in Blogger's editor means Publish.  But I'm not done yet!)

Overall, I still liked the movie.  =)

So, naturally, I felt that I had to re-watch that other movie based on Asimov's Robot stories:  Bicentennial Man.

And it was AWESOME.

I haven't read the novel, The Positronic Man, yet, but it was quite faithful to the short story. The parts that differed from the short story were subtle changes that didn't touch the core of the story. While I was watching it, I felt the same way as when I was reading it.  Simply fantastic.

Didn't Everybody

..else back in high school wish they were a Super Saiyan?

Hello, Lamppost!

After sooo long, I finally added a header background to this blog theme of mine!  Can't remember when I first applied this theme, but it's got to be more than a year now!

Kinder

This is how I remember myself back in Junior Casa in Asian Montessori Center in San Fernando, Pampanga.  I was 4 years old, and I felt everyone was watching me.  It didn't help that my teacher made me sit in the middle of the class with her (we usually formed a circle around her) with my head tilted aback, whenever I got a nosebleed (which was unusually frequent).

This'll Take Some Getting Used To..

Kei gives the most wonderful gifts! This is just one of several gifts she gave me.  :)

This And That

I've been here in Singapore for three months now, working for slightly more than two.  The initial sense of awe I had for the country has definitely worn off.  It's safe to say that I've fairly gotten used to living here.  There's only this lingering feeling of amazement at some of the high-tech aspects of life here that I think I won't ever get rid of (for example, the linked public transport system -- I can't get enough of that!).

I somehow still can't make up my mind about it, though.  Part of me feels like:  "It's been 3 months already? I didn't realize I've been here that long. I guess I can't say 'I'm just new here' anymore."  On the other hand, I also feel like: "It's only been 3 months? How much longer can I stand being alone here?!"

I simply distract myself from getting too down.  I amuse myself with my surroundings:  the buildings, the people, the birds, the weather.  When I'm in my room, I guess I feel that I need to be extra-distracted that, most of the time, I skip some household chores until I can't afford not to do them anymore.  Right now, my floor has a slight shade of gray where I haven't walked on.  I'll sweep it later.  My sneakers have a tinge of yellow where it should be off-white.  I'll wash it tomorrow.  I think my stock of rice grain already has weevils -- I should get to that right away.

Right now, I'm glad that it isn't too sunny and hot, so it's not too uncomfortable to move around while I attend to my laundry.  The dim view outside my window feels a little too gloomy, however.

I'm trying not to over-think things.  I've already proven that over-thinking gets me nowhere.  So, my usual state of mind for the past couple of months here is that of a certain kind of calm.  Like I'm floating on my back in a swimming pool.  I'm not just drifting aimlessly and "going with the flow", as if I'm on some wild river going uncontrollably downstream -- I'm feeling comfortable in the pool of my choice, enjoying every square inch of buoyancy.

Oops.  I heard the washing machine beeping.  My laundry's done.  Gotta go.

Tekken Movie Reactions

I was able to watch the new Tekken movie courtesy of Mike.  Several minutes into the movie, I just had to take down some notes as it ran.  If I hadn't I would've just forgotten a lot of my reactions.  In hindsight, I guess it would've been better if I had timestamps per reaction.  =p

Here goes:

[Spoiler warning:  If you do watch the movie, your day will be spoiled!]

• I'd let the lame backstory pass.
• No respect for the characters whatsoever
• Raven?  No hints of being a ninja?  Dead, just like that, in a gun fight, not in a match?
• Steve?  No hints of being a boxer?
• Christie?  Not capoeira?
• Jacks?  Mere foot soldiers?  Jackhammers. Anvil. Yeah, yeah.
• Dragunov -- since when was it spelled "Dragonov"??
• And why does he look like he's always just about to laugh?
• Nina didn't look cold enough.
• The fighting styles aren't obvious!
• They should be since they're a huge part of a fighting game character's personality!
• Why insist on Kazuya's facial hair?  He would have looked great without it!
• The bed scenes were totally unnecessary. Especially, Kazuya's.
• Jin's portrayal is actually good!  Probably the only aspect that's properly done?
• Well, almost -- Jon Foo's Irish accent is showing.
• Bryan is good, too!
• "Heihachi Mishima is dead"  --  CRAPPY DELIVERY!
• Could've been a nice reference to the game
• What's with the weapooons????
• What's with Dragunov's "Hwoooaaah!" like he's Law or something?
• Oh.  Raven's not dead.
• Yeeees..  Jin is the right amount of emoooo..  :p
• Why do they pronounce Miguel's last name Rojo as row-haw?
• Wow, a pep talk from Raven?  *raises an eyebrow*
• Finals already?  We didn't see Anna fight?
• THAT'S NOT A MACH PUNCH -- that's Jin's move!
• Why so many wall jumps??!!
• People cheering at the TV now?  Way too lame, even for a kiddie movie nowadays.  And, this movie isn't supposed to be for kids.
• Kazuya's attitude seems just right for his Tekken 2 phase, I guess.
• Even Kazuya uses weapooooons..
• Parang PBA championship lang kung magreact mga tao..
• Cung Le's name was misspelled in the credits:  "Cung Lee"?
• Bryan's name in the credits is "Brian"
• Nice after credits extra scene!

How's This For A Realization

I don't get homesick.

I don't think I would really miss a place.  Hindi ako namamahay.  =p

What I really miss, though, is the company of particular people.  If they could just be where I'm currently at, then I'd be fine.  Kahit sa outer space pa.  =p

But if that still counts as some sort of homesickness, then I'd be ready to take back my first statement.

---

Sub-/alternate title of this post:  How's This For A Comeback Post

Blogging Then, Blogging Now

Then:

• Only a few were online and connected to me (just my closest friends), so I had nobody to, uhh.. hide from.
• I was a whiny nerd-boy.  I ranted a lot.  Luckily the lot were blind items.
• I had little else to do.  Being online was a big part of my lifestyle then.

Now:

• I have a lot more interesting things to do offline.
• Professionally, I am not allowed to write about some things, however exciting they may be (goes for the opposite, too).
• Practically everybody (officemates, family) is online.  I have to be tactful and mindful of what I write. Also, I *am* older now, and I have to act like it.

Breaking Routine

I had a fun day yesterday. :)

Kei is taking a short course at the UP ITTC. Their classes are on Saturdays, 9am to 5pm. The first day of class was last weekend, though, but I wasn't able to accompany her then because it coincided with our company outing. I was so ready to ditch our company outing, but Kei insisted that I go. :p

So I went with her yesterday. We departed Makati at around 7:30am. It was a long time since my last MRT ride; almost half a year, I think. I bought a stored value card, since Kei's classes would still go for another three weeks.

We got off at the Quezon Avenue station. I was surprised that the mini-mall right by the MRT station, Eton Centris, was already open. The queue for UP-bound jeepneys was by the mall.

I've never explored the UP Diliman campus before. I only have a vague recollection of the few places I've been to way back in high school. It helped a lot that Kei showed me a map of the campus last Friday.

Map Source: http://iblogph.org/images/up_map.jpg

With my extraordinary memory, I was only able to remember the location of Ang Bahay ng Alumni relative to the ITTC building. It was a relief it was that easy.

Just walk straight along this street, then turn left at the 3rd corner.

Why Bahay ng Alumni? We wanted to eat at Chocolate Kiss! I first learned about it from Aldwin and Joe-e, when they suggested that we get together after our *ehem* victory, but it never pushed through, due to some time constraints.

When Kei and her classmates went to class, I walked to Bahay ng Alumni. Recon. :p

There was a commencement ceremony at the time, and Chocolate Kiss was packed. I asked if they took reservations but, apparently, they didn't.

As with any other new place I've been (whenever I have the time), I walked around campus. Luckily, it was partly cloudy and I didn't have to suffer the sun. I was a bit glad that I was finally getting around UP Diliman by myself. The last time I was there, alone, was way back in 2nd year high school. I was a kid who didn't get out much, who just lost all his money from his last jeepney ride. I had to ask passers-by for coins so I could call and page Ate (that's right, _page_ -- kids these days wouldn't know what that meant! :p). It took a while before I collected 2 pesos but, after I did, I ran around looking for a payphone and called Tita Nery instead, hoping that Ate was in Marikina -- she wasn't. It suddenly dawned on me that I could collect more but, this time, for jeepney fare! I can't remember if it was 6 or 7 pesos, but I was able to pay for a ride back to Quezon Avenue and I managed to get back to the dorm safely.

Back to yesterday. There was barely any activity, probably due to being a summer weekend, so I easily got bored. I decided to get on the next jeepney that passed by. Just like that, I found myself back at Eton Centris. There were fairly a lot of stores open already. I went into a used books store and noticed that the air-conditioning still wasn't operational. I didn't see anything interesting. I decided it was time to get back to the ITTC building. I took the UP Ikot jeepney this time.

When lunch time came, Kei informed me they were going to work through the break. I went back to Chocolate Kiss and had lunch there. I liked their dinuguan. I also liked their iced tea, which seemed like brewed tea that I had to squeeze calamansi and pour honey into.

After resting for a while, I wanted to go around the campus again, but this time on a jeepney. I got on another UP Ikot. I was surprised that it went outside the campus walls at some point. I got off when it reached the SM North jeepney queue. I was, once again, bored. I decided to go to Trinoma.

My original plan was to go to Coffe Bean and Tea Leaf and spend the afternoon online. When I got there, I just didn't feel like it anymore. I just felt like walking, so I walked around the mall. When I felt myself tiring, I went to Powerbooks so I can while away the time sitting down. I was able to finish How to Train Your Dragon before I had to return to UP. I liked how the book reads, and how it greatly differs from the movie. I described the differences to Kei later, and she said that the movie wouldn't have been as awesome if they stuck with the book. The book is interesting enough that I'm considering to collect the series.

I went back to UP after reading.. and buying a couple of books: Ender in Exile and A War of Gifts (both on paperback -- Randell got these on hardcover, if I remember correctly). After my time at Powerbooks, I suddenly felt that I missed reading books. I might just be a bit more picky this time around.

After Kei's class ended, we walked to Chocolate Kiss. I didn't know that their 2nd floor was on the other side of the building. We asked the waiter for recommendations and ended up ordering them: Beek Sukiyaki (a 2nd floor exclusive -- a surprise that they had those) and Garlic and Mushroom Spaghetti. They were okay, but I wouldn't order them again nor would I recommend them. We'll definitely be back, though.

Before returning to Makati, we stayed for some time at Trinoma. Kei had to get a couple of items for their apartment.

It was a long day! It was quite tiring, with all the walking that I did. But it was very, very enjoyable. :) It took me a while before I could convince Kei to let me accompany her next weekend. :p

SIM Card Not Available

If you get this error when you try to open your SIM card's Phonebook, you might have Fixed Dialing set to On. Just turn it off, and you're all set.

Breaking Fast

Imagine that. My last post was more than half-a-year ago, and it was a recap post. Great.

My online presence has dwindled a lot these days. I rarely update the social networking sites I pay attention to. I did a ningas-kugon for the local tech communities. Just great.

I'm still feeling groovy enough. Honestly, I am! And that's great!