Mental Blabberings

Trying out some neat features offered by www.blogger.com... And if I may
say so, if this message gets published at my blogsite, it should
definitely be something worth looking at.

No more logging in through the website, and aside from that you could
send email from practically anywhere nowadays that this feature makes
blogging so much easier. :)

Chill...

Ok, just a chance to maybe make some money out of this blogging thing... :) So friends and welcome readers, please scroll down a little and click on the right hand side where it says "Please Click". :D That should be enough to give me some cash to deal with someday. :D

As for the swimming, It's going great -- doing 15.89 on 25m sprints. Might try timing the 50m swims, but maybe on a longer pool. Anyway, I need to think about life seriously right now since the deadlines are fast approaching. Must get serious fast.

Chill...

P.S. -- Moved the ads up a little so that they get more attention... Better placement like they always say is crucial for an effective ad campaign. Location, location, location...

Been taking the swimming training seriously and yesterday I did a whopping total of 1900m swimming. This set includes: 20x25m easy swim warm-ups, 16x25m side kicks, 20x25m one-arm pulls, 10x25 fast/easy interval freestyle laps, and 10x25m cool down laps. Feeling really great, but unfortunately the tropical depression did not allow us to train today. I could only hope that tomorrow I can get some easy swims in the morning, and the training sets in the afternoon.

I'm currently contemplating on whether I should graduate ASAP, or get 12 more units for next semester so that I could at least join the SCUAA games next semester. Either that, or I finish all the requirements this semester, except for my manuscript so that I could be eligible to join the games. I feel the urge to train and represent UPLB after all the things that UPLB has done for me. I feel this is one way I could somehow repay UPLB a little while I am a student.

Unless someone talks me out of it, I'm decided on doing …

Last night, I had two. Today, I had 1 for lunch. If this goes on forever, I'm not sure if I could achieve the sexy body I so long to have someday. But then that's more for me than for anybody else, so I need to get motivated. FAST.

I sure hope later the electricity will allow us to train in the Baker hall pool. So that I could burn off all the energy I amassed from yesterday till today. The chicken sandwiches with tomatoes (?), onions, pickles, and cheese work their way into the digestive system at a snail's pace... and I hope they get to my muscles in time for my training later tonight.

BTW, the concert has apparently been rescheduled since the flooding in the Manila area has rendered the office of the record company. So it looks like we'll be having more time to practice for the concert... :)

Chill...

Got invited to a party. A very important person invited me to a party. And I went, saw, and enjoyed. Bon voyage to Ms. Sacha Chua bound for Japan.

Ok, there are a lot of things happening in life, and I am very eager to say that I'm swimming again. I have the nerve to say this after 2 chicken sandwiches from Burger King, after not swimming today. But nonetheless, I am now starting to train myself again for competitive swimming -- although I might not qualify for any of the regional contests as a member of the UPLB swimming varsity. I do this, because I love swimming, and I know that swimming will help me achieve a sexy body I so yearn to have someday... But then again, I'll take it one step at a time.

Been hacking on problems using Java, and I'm rediscovering the joys of libraries, ready to use ADT's, and lowe and behold: Object Oriented bliss. Now I'm in touch again with my object oriented paradigm of work, and getting the hang of it as I go along. However, I need …

Need I say more? Just jump on over to www.xulplanet.com and find out for yourself what XUL (read: zool) can do to your application development life... Might change your perspectives on old web technologies you thought were just there because of the "hype". But then again, we can all just stick to what we know. That works too. :D

Chill...

I'm really amazed that there are actually people that read my blog. I always thought that I'd be very lucky if I had someone other than my friends reading my blog -- more because I asked them to. And somehow, I'm beginning to think that there is such a thing as luck.

I spent last night with my lady friends from the College of Development Communications in UPLB, and a group of high-ranking army officials being trained by my friends from the college of Dev Com. Friday the 13th started out as a good day going worse every hour I spent. That's until it was dinner time, wherein I rediscovered the joy of intellectual discussion and why I enjoyed it (and debating) a lot.

The proposition was, that the educational system of UP promoted rebellion and being "leftist". Of course we from UP wouldn't agree to that. We love being critical and vocally enjoying our rights, that the mere notion of the UP system promoting something other than critical thinking is practically…

It's been not a long while since my last post, but what the heck. I've had first hand experience from trying out TopCoder's Single Round Match very early today -- started at 1 AM and ended 2:30 AM here in the Philippines. I got 137.5 points for the 250-point problem, but not knowing that unsuccessful chellenges take away 50 points, I blew almost all of it out on 2 unsuccessful challenges. Talk about stupid mistakes. At least now I know what NOT to do when in a Single Round Match.

Going solo on a programming contest is a nice experience, giving me more reasons to go out of my way and polish my skills in both C++ and Java development. These exercises prove that knowing the algorithm is just half of solving the problem -- the other half is actually implementing it. And with this, I shall work on all the pending projects I have lined up in my computer with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

Ah, but lowe and behold: the magic of forums and blogging and real interpersonnal communicat…

I just came from an STS (Science, Technology, and Society) class where we had NO ELECTRICITY (yet again) to power the building facilities -- no lights, no aircon, no electric fan, and a lot of sleepy people. I realized a lot of things while sitting in my armchair and wondering why the University of the Philippines couldn't afford to get electricity from Meralco instead of the lackluster and less than desirable service of Napocor. Why UPLB cannot afford a lot of things beats me and is beyond my control/knowledge but I nevertheless could say a lot of things regarding OTHER things.

We touched upon the issue of brain drain, and why Filipino researchers and scientists tend to give knowledge away to foreigners or people from other lands easily or with less fuss than expected. It seems also that the socialist idea of knowledge/property for everyone is parallel to the rationale behind file sharing and open source. But I will be talking about that later.

First off, people who would like to…

Nope, this is not an academic post. More of a reflective and wrote-because-i-was-enlightened type post. Anyway, I just passed a paper on Rizal's notion of a nation according to Quibuyen (a local writer who devoted a book -- A Nation Aborted -- on his treatise on Rizal). Chapter 6 was an interesting read, and a definite eye opener. Rizal all of a sudden became interesting, especially to someone like me who could care less.

It seems that most of what Rizal aims for and wrote about is still evident in today's Philippines as I see it. I wonder why I didn't get to appreciate Rizal and his work when I was still in high school -- might be the fault of the high school and the curriculum, or might be because I was still considerably immature then. I wasn't able to understand most of Rizal's writings though even if I got to reading them basically because they translated from Spanish to Filipino/Tagalog. I don't have problems with Tagalog, until you put it in writing. I p…

Let's get it on... Weekend of such delight. I won't share details online, because that's for me to know and for you to find out. But there are certain things I descovered that are worth taking note of. One of them is that the favorite word while doing it is "shit" and the phrase "Oh my god" is a very good indicator of good things. Now only am I satisfied to hear them, I found myself saying it over and over and over...

New things are happening to my life -- thanks to my conscious efforts. Not only do I feel great, but I'm thinking clearer now and I feel very complete. I like this feeling, so satisfied and calmly going about business. Now I know why successful people like having partners -- they feel complete. I feel complete, not only because I have a partner, but we're both so the same and think alike that it's very very easy to make a connection at a deeper level.

Now I understand why some people look for it a lot. And I understand why peop…