Extraordin-eerie Strate-gene

Sa Mangus Mizza?

2006-05-15T11:20:00.000+08:00

Last Friday night I spent nearly 20 minutes walking in circles within Greenhills finding a resto to join some friends for dinner. I went on a beeline for the classic location of Magoo's Pizza which, I just realized, was now gone. And whoever I asked, I was told me there was no Magoo's anymore! Of course, it didn't help that I had misheard my friend (Hi Kat!) say they were in Magoo's when they were in fact at Bangus. Yes, that old joke is true.. cute guys are deaf (Ha? Ano yon?). Well, at least all that sweat was worth the laugh.

Last Sunday, I decided I'd spend some time getting to know an old childhood haunt of mine. Last Friday's incident made me realize that so much has changed and I haven't seen the place in a while. Greenhills Shopping Center had been the first mall I've ever known as far as I can remember. Back during the day, it was family tradition to spend Sunday afternoons after mass in a mall. We made the rounds through all the Ortigas/Mandaluyong malls. But even before there was Robinson's Galleria, Megamall, Shangri-La, and Manuela (Yeah that too), there was the classic Shoppesville and Virra Mall in Greenhills. Even when the newer malls offerred more modern facilities and airconditioning, when you needed something hard to find you'd almost always find it in Greenhills. The family never really walked around together, we just agree to rendezvous an hour maybe 2 later. At Greenhills, we almost always met up at the benches in front of National Bookstore and DEC. Once upon a time there was a giant fountain there reaching all the way up to the 3rd floor. It must have been a wishing fountain because there were coins in the pool at the bottom. Then it was demolished and a train ride for kids took it's place, with bump cars in the middle. Years later, they removed it and put in benches with some food concessionaires in the middle. Today, I walked inside V-Mall for the first time and I suddenly missed the old Virra Mall. I could barely recognize the location from my memory. It was clean, well-lit, and truly far more modern now. There was plenty of space for the IT hardware shops and a lot more toys and hobby shops have sprung up. In my teens those were the primary reasons I'd have wanted to see Virra Mall. I didn't spend a lot back then because I really didn't have the dough, and if I did It would've been a big deal because I probably saved a long time to buy whatever it was I was going to buy. But the emotions built up from many days of window shopping when you were a kid are truly priceless. Today, the mall will just be another new trap springing for your hard-earned money.

Another aspect why Zen philoshopy atrracts me is its belief of impermanence. Truly as the years go by, I do realize that all things really come to pass. Change is inevitable. And acceptance of this keeps me going through life with increased appreciation for those happy moments and rigid steadfastness in the face of challenges, knowing that these things like all others, are temporary.

Awk...

2006-05-07T15:33:00.000+08:00

Why the hell do I feel so damn awkward all the time??? X(

My red kryptonite

2006-04-23T23:47:00.000+08:00

Ahhh so it's true then.. alcohol does indeed reduces inhibitions. 2 weeks into a new job and a glass of spiked punch turns me into an embarrassing cam-whore.

This is from our offsite last April 7. Ed ikaw pa lang ang kilala ko dito a... buti nalang mababait mga tao sa HP :D

Recognize your own voice?

2006-03-26T18:19:00.000+08:00

You guys ever tried listening to a recording of yourself? I can't seem to listen to more than 2 minutes of me on record. I can't stand myself!!! No, I'm no recording artist... I just happen to record phone conferences with business contacts overseas for future reference so I don't miss details. It's so funny that after 28 years in this world I won't think I'll find my voice a stranger after hearing myself speak for that long. Me on tape sounds so... crude. I can't recognize it from the entity speaking in mind. It's like my brain-vocal cord relationship can't seem to adequately cover even a fourth of the meaning I intend to convey. Thinking harder upon it, the voice in my head doesnt doesnt even match me on record... in eloquence, intonation, maybe everything else!

Then I realized... our capability to think precedes our ability to learn language so even before your body learned how to translate thoughts to spoken words, your mind was already processing using a different method which may be superior to what we've gotten used to when we learned a language. I think that could explain some child geniuses and prodigies losing their ability after a certain age when they entered school. Come to think of it, saying "I'm going to eat pizza and ice cream tommorow" maybe takes 5 seconds to say out loud... 2 seconds to say that sentence in your mind... and a whopping fraction of a second for your brain to build the entire scene and intention without putting it into words, which is what it's good for anyway! During my sentimental moments alone when thoughts run through my mind continuously, I hear myself speaking in a streamlined form of English or Tagalog. Hmm... But what if we reprogram ourselves not to verbalize our thoughts (converting them to language sentences) and use our raw thinking pattern then maybe we could think a multitude faster and solve problems more efficiently?

I think I'm going nutty being in introversion for the past months. About time to be joining the work force again tommorow and convert back to extroversion.

Yoko

2006-03-26T17:47:00.000+08:00

May 9, 1994 Sidmouth Int'l School. That's Yoko from Japan, everyone's crush :p Quite a celebrity to let us take pictures with her on our last night :D Yoko pa sana umalis non hehe. Someone better use that fire extinguisher on me before my ears explode. I haven't seen her since... hmm I wonder what she's up to now. I wonder what everyone's up to now.

Back in the saddle!

2006-03-16T01:11:00.000+08:00

After nearly 6 months hiatus from work I'm back in the saddle! Today I've signed up with the company I've dreamed of getting into for 3 years. Known for its legendary corporate culture in the IT industry, it has earned a reputation for being a premiere professional destination in recent years. I'm looking forward to the quickening young hotshots and untiring go-getters bring.

New people, new friends, new memories, new laughs, new culture, new pressure, and a new quest to earn respect all over again. What a rush.

Gullibility

2006-03-13T15:04:00.000+08:00

I enjoy those interesting tidbits that arrive in my mailbox every now and then... but only if they're true. If something comes in that sounds too good or too interesting to be factual, it takes me 10 seconds to dial up google and quickly hit " urban legend" or "hoax" to check it up. Around half the time it's already been busted as a complete fraud or a mixture of fact and fiction that intends to increase its wow factor tenfold. What's really interesting is how long it's been running the rounds already. I've seen some that've already been shot down 3-4 years ago and they're STILL being forwarded by people! It amazes me how people are duped into believing those email stories. Financial scams are on the top of my ^$@# list. My parents would've been victimized by that pesky Nigeria 419 scam circulated through snail mail a long time ago if they hadn't mentioned it to me. And then there are those Marcos gold crap stories running around too. So the next time that interesting tidbit comes in... do yourself and everyone a favor and check it up. I laud the cynic groups below for doing the research on those stories and they're probably not even paid for doing it.

http://www.breakthechain.org/
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.scambusters.org/
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/

Dry skiing

2006-03-08T23:48:00.000+08:00

From the Sidmouth Archives... this was taken on April 30, 1994 at one of the Dry Ski resorts at Plymouth, about an hour's drive away from Sidmouth, UK where we had our exposure trip. Yes, those are snow skis and we're learning to ski on 'plastic' snow in the summer :D It's pretty darn fun until the slight misalignment of your skis force your legs wide open while you're rolling down the hill!! That's me on the left beside Dindin, Andrew, & Isaac.

Homecourt advantage

2006-03-08T20:36:00.000+08:00

This is our backyard circa May, '94. I miss having my old basketball court! It has since been removed and replaced with a garden and house extension when we remodelled the house back in '01. If you wonder where I got my shooting touch, this court is my long lost secret. Every day after class during high school when "Basketball was life and everything else was just details" I'd shoot hoops till the sun called it quits.

This setup is actually the 4th iteration. The original court was only 8 feet tall and had been my Mom's christmas present in '89. That was a house ago in Valle Verde 5. It had nowhere to stay except beside the gate so when I took a shot and missed to the right it went right off to the street. Many a day when a car came screeching to a stop as my ball flew out. If you were one of those who developed a fear of kids and balls jumping in front of your car while driving through that scary part of Cabbage St. back then, apologies to you. That terror was me :p

Graduating through the years

2006-03-08T20:24:00.000+08:00

Normally I'd have buried the old shots of me in a remote uncharted island and treat them as deep dark secrets. But there comes a time in your life when you become proud of your past and appreciate what you were and what you've gone through because they made you what you are today.

I definitely wasn't a cute kid.

In-true-duction

2006-03-08T20:21:00.000+08:00

I finally found time to set up my blog. I'm not a stranger to posting actually. I've been posting privately in a journal since I was 10. I switched from paper to digital when I was 16. These weren't 'Doogie Howser' junk... more often these are descriptions of people and events with a bit of personal commentary inserted. Few people know that I'm very sentimental. Memories are my prized possessions in my life. They make me laugh, they make me cry, they make me wonder, and they make me cringe too. They teach me valuable lessons and will make the greatest slideshow when my soul finally severs from my body.

So what do you expect to see here in my corner of the web? Well for starters, you won't see any private jokes meant only for a few or cryptic stuff that make you try to read between the lines. I think these defeat the purpose of a blog. But that's just me. My life is pretty much an open book and I do enjoy telling stories and providing opinion every now and then. Here you'll find snippets of my past as well as my own personal theories and ideas. Throughout the years, I've been with a lot of different people, learning from and adapting to each of them. I've gotten so used to it that I just keep wearing the same hat when I'm with one group that people might think I'm just that one hat. Hopefully this space gives me more dimension than I let on in person.

Oh, and I just got a relatively good scanner for scanning my old pictures and negatives for archival. I've enjoyed photography for some time and I still have a ton of unorganized film images lying around before I went digital. I'll be posting some scans from way back for old friends. I hope the memories will be as entertaining as they have been for me.