just came from climbing fake rocks

aaarrghh!

I never knew rock climbing could be so tiring. but then again, i am 220 pounds heaving up a 30 foot fake rock face.

now i understand why minger tried to have me rock climb all those years. its true, its just you and the rock, and everything she said about keeping close to the wall and using your legs instead of your arms was true. i climbed the wall with some form of ease that i never thought was possible.

i mean c'mon! i'm no andy leuterio right?! but there i was fast enough for my own right. i guess the closest you can get to golf is rock climbing. tis the same concept, you versus the earth, but unlike golf, well, people die in rock climbing. guess if i ever take up the sport, i'm going to stick to the indoor stuff. the outdoors is really not for me.

kudos to gertrude yap of ericsson philippines for sponsoring the event. and for mel dominguez of dominguez PR for setting it all up.

the rocks...i keep thinking back on how on the second wall i gave up half the way. it was because it was painful and hard and i had trouble getting up the wall. i knew that if i didn't conquer that wall, that would be the end of it. i would never climb another wall.the people at power-up, well, they were great motivators. they egged me on, gave me some more pointers and i went up that wall. almost to the top on my second try on that second wall, i was tired and exhausted and my arms ached and i was well on my way to giving up.

i thought, is this the way i am? or should i press on. ofcourse, i was just being dramatic because i knew i had to finish that wall. so i summoned what strength i had left, gave it a grunt and heaved on up to the top.

the exaltation i felt inside when i reached that top led me to an epiphany. just soldier on. soldier on, and nothing is impossible old chap.

keep on trudging. just keep on.

EAT THE RICH

I heard on the news on the radio that some Sikhs are angry over a film being shown in India, that it is supposedly titled with a battlecry that is also a religious connotation of somesuch for them. It is sad to think that these Sikhs are so inclined to argue over a movie. Factioning and violence over a stupid movie. Sad. Art is making people want to kill other people. Its just art!

But unfortunately, there really are people out there who still are so close minded over such things as art and movies. Which brings me to the point of this little exercise in typing. My mother-in-law.

Its sad to think that someone with so much education and attention in her life could still be a bigot. How can you be a bigot when you are supposedly a professor of english? In these days to boot!I am a racist. Defined, a racist thinks low of other races compared to hers or his. Don't get me wrong because I used the R word. I'm more a supremacist you might say. I am a Kayumanggi Supremacist. I think Filipinos rock. Prove me wrong. Much like the white supremacists and Black Panthers out there. But i don't act it out by killing other
races, no, i am not a genocide-dist (Not yet, hehehehe.).

As i said, prove me wrong that we kayumanggis are not equal if not better than your race.Well enough of that for now, back to my point, my mother-in-law. I may say racist stuff, but you will not hear me seriously talk about the social disparity brought about by the inquities of wealth on this planet. I will not say the poor are worse because they are poor. But i will say the rich are pathetic because they are.The poor and downtrodden in this world get up everyday and fight for what little they can get from their menial jobs. The rich with all their resources still only manage to do so little in helping others. the poor take advantage of whatever they have and fly with it. The rich? Well, they stay rich.I am not generalizing here, but they, the rich, really can do so much more to help other people. I mean, what is wrong with them anyway? The poor insult the rich for their inactivity and inability to actually use what they have to effect change. The rich insult the poor because they are poor. in retrospect, when you think about it, the rich can eliminate all poverty in this world if they wanted to. But do they?

No, the rich like staying rich. Because they can, and not because they can make do with less.To boot, they like stating the obvious just to insult the great unwashed. Calling the poor, poor. Their defense, yeah, its the truth.

But this truth also exists: You insult human dignity, the one little thing that the poor have a lot of. And in some cases, the last thing that they do have. Taking that away by insulting them, degrades yourself too. So, why do the rich do it?The poor can be mean because they have to fight everyday for their very existence. The rich? They just feel like it.

That is why I hate my mother-in-law. Because she degrades all human society with but a few words of truth that she says to the poor she meets.The truth hurts. This sad truth, hurts us all.

ON LOVE

Falling in Love
(from the book "Letters to my Son", by Kent Nerburn)

It is a mystery why we fall in love.
It is a mystery how it happens.
It is a mystery when it comes.
It is a mystery why some love grows and it is a mystery why some love fails.

You will never do anymore than take the life out of the experience. Just as life itself is more than the sum of the bones and muscles and electrical impulses in the body, love is more than the sum of the interests and attractions and commonalties that two people share. And just as life itself is a gift that comes and goes in its own time, so too, the coming and going of love must be taken as an unfathomable gift that cannot be questioned in its ways. Sometimes, hopefully at least once in your life - the gift of love will come to you in full flower, and you will take hold of it and celebrate it in all inexpressible beauty. This is a dream we all share. More often,it will come and take hold of you, celebrate you for a brief moment, then move on.

When this happens to young people, they too often try to grasp the love and hold it to them, refusing to see that it is a gift that is freely given and a gift that just as freely, moves away. When they fall out of love, or the person they love feels the spirit of love leaving,they try desperately to reclaim the love that is lost rather than accepting the gift for what it was, then moving on.

They want answers where there are no answers. They want to know what is wrong in them that makes the other person no longer love them, or they try to get their lover to change, thinking that if some small things were different, love would bloom again. They blame their circumstances and say that if they go far away and start a new life together, their love will grow. They try anything to give meaning to what has happened. But there is no meaning beyond the
love itself, and until they accept its own mysterious ways, they live in a sea of misery.

You need to know this about love, and to accept it. You need to treat what it brings you with kindness. If you find yourself in love with someone who does not love you, be gentle with yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. Love just didn't choose to rest in the other
person's heart.

If you find someone else in love with you and you don't love him, feel honoured that love came and called at your door, but gently refuse the gift you cannot return. Do not take advantage; do not cause pain. How you deal with love is how you deal with you, and all our hearts feel
the same pains and joys, even if our lives and ways are different.

If you fall in love with another, and he falls in love with you, and then love chooses to leave, do not try to reclaim it or to assess blame. Let it go. There is a reason and there is a meaning.
You will know in time.

Remember that you don't choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person who brought it alive in you. Give it to others who deem poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in anyway you can.

This is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long without love, they understand love only as a need. They see their hearts as empty places that will be filled by love, and they begin to look at love as something that flows to them rather than from them.

The first blush of new love is filled to overflowing, but as their love cools, they revert to seeing their love as a need. They cease to be someone who generates love and instead become someone who seeks love. hey forget that the secret of love is that it is a gift, and that it can be made to grow only by giving it away. Remember this, and keep it to your heart.

Love has its own time, its own seasons, and its own reason for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it, or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you. But if it chooses to leave from your heart or from the heart of your lover, there is nothing you can do and there is nothing you should do.

Love always had been and always will be a mystery. Be glad that it came to live for a moment in your life. If you keep your heart open it will come again.

Mang Eddie my high school service driver

oo rey. iisa lang ang mang-eddie na may jeep at
coaster. at oo iyung 8 track tapes na iyon eh malabo
mong maalala dahil itinigil na niya iyon nung bandang
HS kami nung 1989. at hindi bastos ang mga iyon. he
played hagibis, hotdogs and juan delacruz band. mga
rockers tayo noon ano. oh he also played a lot of tito
vic and joey. iyon iyung mga natatandaan ninyo na
bastos.

eight tracks rule pare!

ganoon naman dati eh, magkakapatid at magpipinsan
iyung mga nasa service, the agapay brothers, the
olivers, cobarrubias, kaming mga de guzman, etc. etc.
remember kada last day of school, tumitigil si mang
eddie kina josephine bakery sa may concepcion (near
7-11) at nagpapaicecream siya? at nung nagkaroon ng
jolibee ay ganoon din?

actually, i know a lot about him kasi, first kamaganak
ko si tito eddie and second, i rode with him all my
life in marist. marist would not be marist without the
experience i had going and coming from school. how
many times did we laugh and cry coming and going to
school. the heartbreaks, the small fights from
gradeschool about baon and cartoons to girls and
facial hair in high school.

what we must all realize as alumni is that everything
we are now, is because of what we experienced during
those formative years. college doesn't really count,
alam mo na and you wouldn't really get scarred that
way anymore. but how many of us still remember those
embarassing moments in grade school (ones we hopefully
want to forget) and those fantastic times of innocent
bliss and maybe getting those first twinges of a
crush. how many of us fell in love in those jeeps and
coasters.

i can proudly say that i am an alumnus of mang eddie's
service, because i learned a lot in that school also.
many things that i still use up to now. can't say the
same for the things i learned in marist.

huwag nating kalimutan iyung mga iba diyan na
sinervice ni bangus, ni mang tony, etc. etc.

On Episode III

UUUUGHHH!!!

tama ka jing, those were pretty cheesy bad lines and stuff, but
remember, this is for kids supposedly, so...but still it was bad
writing. maybe they weren't putting too much weight on haydn
christensen's acting prowess so they kept it to mimicry. but
yeah...padme made me want to puke.

let us not forget the fact that jarjar binks, though shown twice in
the movie did not utter a single sound. thank the force for that. i
wanted to see an episode 2.5 that goes sommething like this:

on screen:

Long ago in a galaxy far far away...

opening music cue scrolling text

EPISODE 2.5
JARJAR BINKS MUST DIE

Darth Maul, due to insistent public demand has risen from the dead
for one final mission for the dark side! To kill the insanely
annoying JarJar Binks!

fade in jar jar binks standing in a common coruscant world room

jarjar: helo! misa jar....

BGSFX:(pssssh!psssh!)

pan left to darth maul with dual bladed lightsaber goes into a
spectacular attack combo at jarjar

SFX: (whang!whang!whang!whang!whang!)

jarjar: aaaaaaaaaaahhHH!!!!

jarjar is cut into little annoying wiggly pieces, darth maul poses
in clearly defiant yet satisfied sith way

darth maul sheathes lightsaber and walks away from annoying
quivering masses of jarjar flesh

SFX:(psssshpssshfft!)

jarjar: gurgle! gurgle! gurgle!

fade to black

enter EPISODE III

------------------

> and, i don't even remember R2D2 being that agile in episode 4 to
> 6! side booster rockets? kainlan pa? watch episode 5 and see how
> helpless R2 was at the dega ba system.

about R2D2's agility. episode 4 happened nearly 17 years later from
episode iii. by this time, R2 for a time has been with the JAWAs of
Tatooine and obviously has been cannibalized for parts, and any
fuel that has been in his rockets would have been used up. thus his
inability to fly in episode 4. if you remember, that electric
shocker he used was still around till episode 6. thus we come to
the problem at degoba. one could simply say, because he sank in the
water...yada yada yada. but its absence in his repertoire could be
much more simply be returned to the JAWAs of Tatooine who have
those said thrusters.

> also, erasing the memories of the two droids at the end of the
> movie was a clever trick of lucas to put the patches n the holes
> that has been bugging the entire star wars universe.

actually i think it was only C3PO's memory that was erased. R2D2
kept his i think. thus his importance during episode IV as leah's
personal assistant. i have to watch it again to be sure.

> breaking out from his clutches, newly appointed darth vader
> shouts "NAOOOOOOOHH!! - bad acting at it's best! har har har!!!

it would have been cooler if instead of breaking out of his bonds
like he was walking in mud with a hernia, he could have just
"forced" his way off then strode off and then screamed the
"Naooooooh!" as you quipped, without the stupid shoulder armor
getting in the way of his arms.

> natapos din thank god!

but you have to admit, that first breath of vader, and the scene
where sith master and apprentice were staring romantically side by
side watching the rising of the death star was pretty cool.

VADER: You are so beautiful!

PALPATINE: It's only because I'm so in love . . .

VADER: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.

PALPATINE: So love has blinded you?

VADER: Well, that's not exactly what I meant . . .

PALAPATINE: But it's probably true!

pan out and to right focus on new death star

INTRO BGM: Imperial March

FADE TO BLACK

what a fake!

yeah right people actually have photo shoots in exotic beaches just to
have the product put on friendster...jeez.

aaaarrrghh! manhunting with aivie

is there such a thing as gaelic baking while windsurfing? what do you
call a gay man baking gaelic bread? a gay gaelic bakerette?

damn.

still with/from aivie

malaki birdie ni gregory...he's from brussels...does that make him a
brussel sprout?

with aivie

i'm sitting with my buddy aivie here at netopia. lowenz is in the
cubicle 2 rows behind me. she's thinking of buying a computer. i'm
still wondering if i can buy that new P4 3.20 XE HT that i want for my
home gaming.

i hate swan songs. why me?

confusing

nakakainis itong blog. nakakalito kung ano gagawin mo
pag bago ka! shet.

giving in to pressure

its official. i'm a blogger. after holding out for so long i give in to the pressure. i mean its about time.

i've been hooked on the net for the past what? ten years now? i was surfing even before a lot of my countrymen even heard of computers.

come to think of it, even now, a lot of my countrymen still have not heard of a computer. even in this age of convergence and synergy, there are filipinos who have yet to click a mouse.

the pressure to blog came from a lot of of my colleagues in the business. the journalism business that is. i am a journalist. ten years running. i have been in countless magazines and have worked for two major dailies. this is now to be my voice on the net.

true, i have other more regular means of putting stuff out. but, these are different times. very different times.

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley