State of Culture

A couple of weeks ago I was at a rehearsal for a wedding ceremony. It was held in a Cathedral, and our rehearsal was scheduled next in line to a local college practicing for their Baccalaureate Mass. We were informed that our time slot was for 1:00pm - 2:00pm to use the church. However, it was way past 2:00pm when the college group began (yes, BEGAN) their practice. You can imagine how that hurt the whole daily schedule for all of us waiting. The kids in our group were getting impatient and the grown-ups were getting irritable. That meant additional expenses for snacks to pacify the children, and additional effort to keep our tempers in check.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, the college practice was over, but not before the teacher in charge had a few reminders to her group. I believe it went a little something like this:

"OK, tomorrow, when you arrive, please take the seating positions that you have now. For late-comers, since it will be unavoidable, please try to find seats where you won't cause a lot of noise getting to, to avoid disrupting the ceremony."

Oh, My God! She was seriously saying that being late was a completely acceptable thing (she was very cheery as she said those words, lol). These were college graduates in front of her, and her words implied that for her, they need not be totally conscious of time. We were taught since pre-school to value other people's time, and now, on their graduation day, she is taking it back. Punctuality is not just for school, teacher, it's going to matter a lot more out there in the real world.

I can only hope those graduates make it in time for their first job interview.

Powered by Zoundry

Work! Work! Work!

So far 2009 has been a wicked year project-wise for me, and I guess for freelancers everywhere. I figure because of the recession more and more people are leaning towards outsourcing for competitive pricing.

My site, http://www.mockup2markup.net, a PSD to CSS conversion service, has had lots of hits, despite being still relatively low on the search rankings. That just goes to show that more and more people are looking towards freelance web developers and companies for their projects and web management needs.

On the freelance site where I'm based, I've noticed an increase of around 25% project postings since fourth quarter last year (from ~4K to ~5K+ postings), further confirming my earlier observation.

So if you are a full-time freelancer, or just doing it on the side, now might be a great time to polish up your online portfolio and resume, and start landing those projects.

Social Network Marketing

As a freelancer I always try to get my portfolio out to as many potential clients as possible, at the LOWEST cost possible. It used to be that investing in Google Adwords (yes, I've tried it) was THE way to get targetted traffic to your site, and consequently, to your services. Now, with the advent of social networking, reaching the potential clients is made easier than ever, provided you post the right stuff.

What I'm trying to learn by observing is how the people who've had success with Internet Marketing compose their posts on Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, and other social and professional networking sites. That way, I don't have to waste time repeating what doesn't work, and can concentrate on improving what does.

Happy tweeting!

Favorite Quote

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
- Ansel Adams (American Photographer, 1902-1984)

My A200 is gone.

2:00AM last night, our house was broken into. Among the things stolen was my Sony Ericsson w850i and my 3-week-old Sony DLSR-A200.

Nothing could suck more.

New Phase

I'm going to try something new with my camera. I just ordered a couple of lens filters: a Hoya HMC (multicoated) Circular Polarizer, and a Graduated ND filter. I'm going to see if I can improve my landscape and seascape shots.

Wish me luck.

MSU-IIT Debating Teams Wins it All!

Texters' Choice!

Best Debater!

And the debate goes to... MSU-IIT!!!

L a n d s l i d e ! ! !

My first sunrise!

NEWS!

I love the comments my sunrise album has been getting on my recent post on the group Digital Photography World. Check out the album here

Sun-chasing

I went sun-chasing with my wife and 2 little kids yesterday after I picked them up from school. We had talked about choosing between two possible places where we could catch a sunset (and maybe shoot it). In the end, we decided to go with the more scenic, albeit farther, choice.

We drove for about 30 minutes - we had timed it just right - we would get there 15 minuted before the sunset, in time to catch some great colors and watercolor sky like we'd witnessed several times before while driving past the site. 

UNFORTUNATELY, when we got there, the vegetation had grown very high, and it was difficult to get a nice frame of the setting sun. It made me realize that the world, indeed, looks different when you're seeing it through a viewfinder.

Today we're going to go after the elusive sunset again. This time, in our other choice location. Wish us luck.

Once again, I try to come back

I got my new DSLR last week, a Sony Alpha A200! I'm pretty excited about it. So excited, that I've been taking around 100-200 photos per day. I guess it's good practice, though; the world's top photographers take around 10,000 shots a week! 

Out of the 150 or so pictures I take each day, around half make it to import, and a lot less make it to the "picks" folder. That leaves me with around 5-10 chosen picks a day that I post here as an album. Of those that i've chosen, I can only hope that even one of them catches your attention, or the attention of some other passerby, who just happened to glance at the right time at the right place for his/her attention to be caught.

That is inspiration enough to continue squeezing the shutter the next day.

meet my brain

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others. Left Brain Dominance: (9) Right Brain Dominance: (10) Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

Chains

i'm not throwing a fit
but i gotta admit
that I've had enough o'
this chain letter shit

so i've decided
to write me some verse
and you gotta excuse me
if i can't help but curse

presenting my mind
to all o' y'all kind
this is gonna hurt
but i gotta be curt

check this out

why don't chain letters just bring good news?
someone tell me why
somebody always has to die?

i'm sick of reading fake titles,
sick of op'ning sum'n that seems vital,
sick of hearing lies, sick of getting sand in my eyes,
tired of reading some shit about when the next breakup will hit

sick of reading through addresses, tons of addresses
only to find some crap about, something nobody even cares about
i don't give a damn what goes down if i don't believe, or even pretend
just leave me out of it, and maybe I'd still be your friend

don't mail me that crap, think it'll fix your widening gap?
no letter can save you, if your man doesn't want to
don't mail me that BS, we all know it's a PoS
so quit the stupidity, quit mailing no validity

no, it's not cool, you fool, don't you know e-mail's a tool?
you wanna waste your time, go right ahead
but just remember, you've only been suckered,
you've only been tricked by some sick m*therf*cker
and no you're not funny, it's closer to looney
if you dig all that shit that some sicko just spit

i know y'all can feel this, i know I won't miss
so think about it a bit, before you transmit

you + me

Baby,

we've come this far after goin through some shit that have come and gone and now that they gone and things have been said and things have been done, yet we still holdin on,

and i, i remember when people said that our love'd end up dead,

that we'd be,

sooner or later breaking the vows that we made on that day when I promised you and you promised me that we'd,

never let go, that we'd

always hold on, and no wind could move us, no matter how strong,

sure they ruffled our hairs, they blew sand in our eyes, but they always blew on, coz we saw through the lies, right through the sand, and...

we realized

we got more than those promises, more than those memories, more than cute stuff...

we have more than enough. we have more than enough.

we a family.

you, plus me.

refill

It has taken me quite a while to refill my inkwell.

After several silent years, several thousand fettered feelings from my last poetic piece, I found myself once again drawn to the empty pages of paper that used to be the ears to which I poured my persuasions. (mouthful?)

What exactly triggered this hunger I am not sure. Perhaps it was the months of squeezing every last bit of creativity out of my brain to develop my freelance projects that finally unblocked me. Or perhaps it was the attainment of relative stability, that feeling of standing on firm ground, for my beginning family, that finally removed the stress enough to once again let me indulge my emotions. Either way, this is definitely a welcome reunion with my old self, and hopefully this will, in turn, fuel my creativity for my freelance design projects. That way, I can only win.

I am once again beginning to write essays more than two paragraphs long, an extraordinary achievement by the last several years' standards of my writing. Last night I penned a very detailed account of my current state of health, concluding on the note that tomorrow I may very well be admitted to the hospital for a semi-serious respiratory ailment. Oh well, if that ever happens, I guess I'll just have to bring my pen and paper to the hospital so I can write away all that spare time sucking food through my veins.

Hypocrisy 2

On my way to work today I met a couple of interesting people. The first one was a fellow passenger on the jeep. I didn't notice her until she asked the driver to stop. People in our city usually say "Ilugar lang" to signify that they want the driver to pull over so they can get off the ride.

She said, "Ilugar lang."

Driver says, "Sa unahan lang, bawal dinhi." (roughly translates: OK, we'll pull over up ahead, it's not allowed here.)

Lady goes, "ILUGAR LANG!"

Damn, I mean she said it herself. When you say "Ilugar lang," you are actually telling the driver to find a decent place to pull over. That way, it's a lot different from saying "Stop the car!" or "Halt!"

The rest of the passengers ended up snapping at her for contradicting herself.

...

About a couple of hundred meters down the road the driver hollers to a street vendor to buy a stick of cigarette. I was thinking to myself, he's not gonna light up here...

He did. Right in front of the "No Smoking" sign on his windshield.

...

These encounters reminded me of the recent issue (well, actually it's an age-old issue) where ANOTHER college student was suspected to have died after going through hazing trying to join a fraternity. A LAW fraternity at that. I mean, what's the point of taking law when they break it even before graduating? Repeatedly, and intentionally. These people kill with no remorse.

Since 1970, there has been at least one hazing-related death on a US college campus each year(HTTP://www.greeklife.uconn.edu/hazing_stats.html)

Given that there are hundreds of campuses in the US, you figure out how many kids are murdered by the organization they're trying to join every year. It's crazy. No, it's stupid. They invite people to join them, and then kill them when they try? They're worse than serial killers. At least those guys didn't promise their victims anything.

Hazers should get far worse penalties than serial killers do.

Hypocrisy 2

On my way to work today I met a couple of interesting people. The first one was a fellow passenger on the jeep. I didn't notice her until she asked the driver to stop. People in our city usually say "Ilugar lang" to signify that they want the driver to pull over so they can get off the ride.

She said, "Ilugar lang."

Driver says, "Sa unahan lang, bawal dinhi." (roughly translates: OK, we'll pull over up ahead, it's not allowed here.)

Lady goes, "ILUGAR LANG!"

Damn, I mean she said it herself. When you say "Ilugar lang," you are actually telling the driver to find a decent place to pull over. That way, it's a lot different from saying "Stop the car!" or "Halt!"

The rest of the passengers ended up snapping at her for contradicting herself.

...

About a couple of hundred meters down the road the driver hollers to a street vendor to buy a stick of cigarette. I was thinking to myself, he's not gonna light up here...

He did. Right in front of the "No Smoking" sign on his windshield.

...

These encounters reminded me of the recent issue (well, actually it's an age-old issue) where ANOTHER college student was suspected to have died after going through hazing trying to join a fraternity. A LAW fraternity at that. I mean, what's the point of taking law when you break it even before graduating? Repeatedly, and intentionally. These people kill with no remorse.

Since 1970, there has been at least one hazing-related death on a US college campus each year(HTTP://www.greeklife.uconn.edu/hazing_stats.html)

Given that there are hundreds of campuses in the US, you figure out how many kids are murdered by the organization they're trying to join every year. It's crazy. No, it's stupid. You invite people to join you, and then kill them when they try? You're worse than serial killers. At least they didn't promise their victims anything.

You should get far worse penalties than serial killers do.

sleepy

...buzz...
he awoke with a start
and tried to rub
the sleep from his eyes but
the sleep clung on

even as he,

s l u g g i s h,

grabbed his towel
and walked,

l a z i l y,

to the bathroom

past the dining table where
from a cup
coffe steam licked at his nose
beckoning him
to "sit and talk a while..."
(no, i'm not going
to quote the whole thing)

he ignored the steam.
and was greeted by cold
in the bathroom.
he used his hands
.
.
.
to sprinkle some water on
his bare chest
and face
to drive the sleep away.

eventually he would win.

but
not
for
long.

sleep would have it's victory.
at work.

updates, updates...

i'm now connected with Iligan Light and Power, Inc, would you believe, as a PROGRAMMER? basically i've just completed my career switch process (haha murag big deal) from being a Physics instructor to the IT field.

anyway, that's really not important to the story right now. what i really want is to share this amazing hallmark moment of my kids. ehehehe...

click to see a bigger image...

balance

I had a great time singing at Dzyr Resto-bar last night. It felt so great that we sang for two hours longer than usual. Yep. We sang from 7:30 until 12:00 midnight, dividing our songs into two sets only. That would work out to about 2 hours per set! Anyway, I lost my voice in the end, but it was worth it. hehehe.

Sadly, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and slapping you in the face with an anaconda when you start to let down your guard. I got that slapping this morning - I lost my phone.

Need I say more?

derek & mulan

you were a sunbeam across my dark, dusty cell,
showing me a single bright spot on the roof
where you entered, without warning and without hesitation
to pry my eyes open with your warmth and light

and for the first time i saw
where the voices were coming from
and who they were, that they weren't inside my head
but from my closed heart, waiting

to be set free and out of their cages
to allow me to feel again, emotions
long shunned and shut in,
to never be heard from or felt again

as the bright spot grows with you
my eyes see more, (i see a little outside now)
and sights i'd long forgotten wash over me
pulsing, surging, almost drowning me

but not quite.