Running

"Look back. Nobody is chasing." I always say it to pace myself whenever I jog. Yes, I jog now. Not everyday, mind you, and not intensely but I jog more frequently now than at any other point in my life.

My friends in this "small" city had always invited me to jog with them. And I always declined. I said I don't like to jog and that I prefer to take a walk. And I did walk (daily at one point) for a time. After work, I walked within the lush, green and peaceful Chinese and Japanese Gardens at Lakeside. It was convenient because the gardens are located between where I work and where I stay. And then I noticed something. People around me were running and cycling. I was the only one walking.

"Maybe I should run, too."

And run I did. I bought shoes and shorts and shirts for running. I wanted to run on the same path around the Chinese and Japanese Gardens. But I thought it was too cumbersome to bring running gears to work so I settled in running around an old track near my place. That was four months ago. I'm still running now. Not daily, only whenever I'm not reading something or playing badminton in the evening, but I'm still running.

I hope I'll have the motivation to continue finding time to run even if I stay in this slow pace; to look back and find nobody chasing me whenever I'm impatient to finish the activity.

Looking back on 2014

Inspired by my old year-end list of 2005 where, among others, I listed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as my favorite book of that year (I can't believe it's been 9 years!), I thought I'd do another list this year for posterity's sake and for a nostalgic read 9 years from now.

Television

For the first time in years, my free time was not mostly spent in watching TV shows. At the start of the US fall season, I only followed four tv shows: Downton Abbey, Gotham, The Big Bang Theory, and The Amazing Race (now in its 25th season!). As of this writing, Downton Abbey has ended it's 5th season, and I lost interest in Gotham (not enough Batman) and Big Bang Theory (no longer funny like the first few seasons). I'm down with one remaining show, The Amazing Race, which in itself will end its 25th season this Friday. Between the two, Amazing Race and Downton Abbey, I don't really want to (and don't need to) choose a favorite. Both are clearly my favorites seeing that they're the only two shows that I watched in its entirety. Side note to TV: I also watched season 6 of Master Chef Australia. I like the Australian edition of Master Chef better than the US one: less politics, no trash talks, simply mentoring and cooking competition.

Movies

In the big screen arena, I also saw only a few movies in cinemas this year compared to last year thanks in large part to my big move to a "small" city. I loved How To Train Your Dragon 2 (as good as the first one). I also loved Big Hero 6 (Pixar-level Disney movie). Lastly, I loved Paddington, an origin movie of sorts for that famous plush toy from the storybooks of the 1950's. The movie was great. The plot progressed briskly with both light and emotionally charged moments, especially the notion of being lost and then being found. Side note to Paddington: LOST: 2 main stars left Downton Abbey 2 years ago to pursue movie careers forcing the writer to kill off their characters in the TV series. The movies they pursued were not memorable. FOUND: Hugh Bonneville (who plays the Earl), on the other hand, did not leave Downton, but found time to be in this good movie. The take away here, I believe, is don't leave Downton.

Books

I'll write about my favorite book (or books) this year  some other time. I'm writing this in my coffee break at work so I don't have much time. Au revoir, for now.

Seven years ago

Old Note

Cleaning up and throwing away unnecessary stuff from my room in preparation for that big move. I found this notebook with mostly empty pages, except for the following 3 entries dated October 21, 2007. That's almost seven years ago.

10-21-2007 SUN. Along the road to Happiness you will find a stone called Pain. It's small, but it seems to block the whole path. Go on, pick it up. Throw it away. Wash your hands, dry your wounds. Don't look back. Keep walking.

10-21-2007 SUN. "True happiness comes only when the center of the universe is not yourself." I don't know who said this, but I'm not the center of the universe and yet true happiness is hard to come by. Or maybe I'm just not getting it. Happiness could be as simple as the absence of sadness. The aftermath of pain.

[The third entry, which is also the last one, is apt right now because summer here in the Philippines is at its peak. And it's been a while that summer has been this hot.]

10-21-2007 SUN. SUMMER BREEZE. "Nothing is more powerful than our childhood memories," William Goldman wrote in the introduction to his novel, "The Princess Bride".

When I was nine, the back of the back of our lot was an empty lot. There was a lone mansanitas tree and a lone sereguelas tree. And two guava trees. The rest of the one hectare lot is filled with different grasses, some short, some tall. It is bordered by coconut trees to the east, a group of bahay-kubo to the south, more coconut trees to the north, and of course to the west is the subdivision where I lived, a plethora of houses differently dressed seated in uniformly-shaped lots. Our house belongs to the group at the east edge of the subdivision, or the village as we called it. I needed take only a few steps and I was transported to a world different from what I knew. It's a world where time stood still (sort of) and silence over-sang the noise. I'd go there, sometimes alone and sometimes with my friends, to be in a place where we were the masters, where it took only our minds to conjure a world worth living for.

The guava tree that looked just like any other guava tree transformed into a fortress as I rested on its branch eight feet from the ground. In that fortress I made time stood still. The summer breeze took its time to blow away my worries.

Libera was in Cebu

I attended the Libera concert in Cebu last October 28, 2011 exactly two years after I attended my very first Libera concert in the exact same venue. Surreal. They've improved a lot since their last visit. I simply loved how they setup the stage this time around. There was no screen in the middle of the stage, but there were two large screens at both sides that showed some closeups and panning shots of the choristers during the performance. At the back of the choristers were a string quartet, recorder and keyboard, and percussions. The last time they were here they only had Fiona Pears playing the violin at the side. Also, this time around, I can name majority of the group (all of those that went here in 2009 and some new faces), which made the experience even better.

My favorite song in the concert, if I could only pick one, will have to be "Eternal Light" with a perfect solo by Stefan Leadbeater. He is older now at the concert compared to the one in the Peace CD used in the video below and his voice is even better than the one in the CD. And the soaring harmonies is so uplifting. I thought this is what chorale music should be. To brighten up your day. Stefan is clearly at the peak of his treble career so hopefully Mr. Prizeman will be able to compose some more songs for him and Libera for future CDs.



My second favorite will have to be their special Libera arrangement of a popular Pinoy Christmas song, "Himig ng Pasko". The solo was done by Ralph Skan. Ralph has a different kind of voice that suits this song quite well. Mr. Prizeman, their musical director, knows the voices that his group have very well and assigns them the perfect part of the song for each. I could only imagine what it would have been like if he was our musical director back in high school when I was a member of our school choir. With that kind of training, I probably would have a singing career by now. :)



These two, Stefan and Ralph, were new touring members of Libera (not all of them tour) when they first came here two years and now they practically carry the group. I already have a copy of their Christmas album and looking forward to own a cd that contains their version of "Himig ng Pasko" in the future.

Surreal

Today was surreal. Something happened that up until now I thought could only happen in movies. I'm tempted to describe it tragic, but then again I don't really know the reason why it happened. Hopefully everything turns out okay to all parties. Surreal.

Away from work

It was nice to spend one full week without thinking about work. While I may have done a lot more walking for the past seven days than the whole of last month combined, I still enjoyed it. It was refreshing not to think about work in a place where the weather is often just right (not too hot and not too cold, for me at least). Not once did I think about opening work email. How I wish I have enough money to stay there for a month or two.

On this day in 2009

Noticed this in FB on the right hand side today.

On This Day in 2009:

Yesterday, I turned down a 1-year assignment in another Asian country, which would have commenced on October 1. I'm just too happy to be back home last week to entertain the idea of an even longer term foreign assignment in such short notice. But I did think it through and decided that Cebu is best for me at this time. Today I've learned that the replacement will be another Cebu resource, so I guess all is well. :) [posted September 11, 2009 at 11:05pm]

Change really is the only constant in this world as I no longer feel the same way after two years.

Easter weekend

For the first time, I spent the Easter Weekend far from home. It was both tiring and restful at the same time. But I was so feverish starting on our first night and all through out the second day that I thought I'm going to call in sick today. But I got better on the third day. However, I still had to miss work because I was greeted with a broken water pipe at my apartment when I reached home last night. Don't exactly know when the pipes cracked, but when I woke up this morning it seemed like the hole grew twice its size than when I finally decided that I don't have the necessarry tools to fix it myself and that I'd better sleep and report the damage to my landlord the next day, which is today.

Another vacation leave down the drain, just when I was saving them all up for another out of country trip this September and of course the usual vacation on Christmas week. But I didn't really have a choice. I'll worry about my remaining VLs when the time comes.

April 1, night

In my room. On my bed. It's so quiet here. Except for the wind rumbling in the distance and the tone of an upcoming rain.

In two days I'll be leaving home again. I've done this enough times already that one would think there's no sadness anymore. And yet there still is. Even though I'm only here for a few days total in a year, this is still home.

Far away

February 6, 2009. Night. I got a call about my mother being admitted to the hospital back in my home city of Cagayan de Oro. Details were blurry back then. It sounded like she's going to die. I quickly checked the available flights the next day and went to sleep. Yes, I was able to sleep. It took some time. But I was able to sleep. Thanks to the reassuring, soothing, heavenly voices of Libera. I listened to one song only. I put it to a loop. That song was Far Away. It's a beautiful song sung by the best vocal group in the world with a solo from Michael Horncastle, one of the finest soloists the group has ever had.





Whereever I go
Far away and anywhere

Time after time you always shine
through dark of night calling after me

And whereever I climb
Far away and anywhere

You raise me high beyond the sky
through stormy night lifting me above

Venite Spiritu et emitte caelitus
Venite Spiritu et emitte caelitus
Venite Spiritu Venite Spiritus

Far away beyond the sky

Whenever I cry
Far away and anywhere

You hear me call when shadows fall
your light of hope showing me the way

God spared my mother's life. And whatever happens in the future, knowing that everyone dies in the end, I'm grateful to God that she spared her life in that instance. Whenever I hear a Libera song, I am calm. And the song Far Away always bring me back to the night of February 6, 2009. Where all I could do was hope and pray.

Star Trek

We had two choices last Friday night. Either we go to Angels and Demons on opening day or go to Star Trek on its second weekend. In the end we decided to avoid most of the crowd by going to the latter. And boy did we chose the right flick. I heard from some colleagues who went to Angels that it wasn't that good.

The young and fatherless James Tiberius Kirk was growing up to be a troublemaker. One night at a bar he got into a fight with some Starfleet cadets. It was the night that changed his life forever. Though if you knew at least some general knowledge of the original TV series, the night actually steered his life towards what was always his destiny, which is to say as the captain of the USS Enterprise.

This is a very well-written, well-directed, well-acted reboot of a popular old franchise. I have never seen (that is to say, completed) a single episode of the original TV series when the reruns were shown in a local station (RPN 5 in Cagayan de Oro) in the 1980's. I thought it was boring. I never got around to watching any of the 10 movie adaptations that came before this new one. I don't know much of the characters except for some of their names. But this new movie was awesome. I want to watch it again. JJ Abrams and his Fringe-writing team wrote a very adventurous, action-packed, and funny reboot of the Star Trek story and with lots of lens flare and camera-shake. This is not to be missed in theaters.

***

How about that win by Roger Federer of the Madrid Open 2009? He beat Rafael Nadal on his home turf and on his favorite surface. The French Open just became interesting. Many say it was because Nadal was tired. Excuses. Right. Pretty much what they said of Hatton, and of De La Hoya, when they were pulverized by Pacquiao. Just as they can't accept the fact that Pacquiao was the better fighter in those two fights, Nadal fans can't accept that Federer was the better player in the recent match.

Susan Boyle

Afternoon, April 14, Tuesday. I took a logical break from work and checked what's trending in Twitter. People are twittering about "24". I clicked. Immediately I was bombarded with spoilers from the latest episode, which I planned to watch that evening. The episode was spoiled, but the spoilers made me anticipate watching the episode even more. After checking out other familiar stuffs that are trending in Twitter, I went on (like I usually do) to check the unfamiliar trends, things that don't ring a bell. One of those trends that afternoon was "Susan Boyle", a 47-year old hopeful in the regional auditions for Britain's Got Talent and in the tweets are links to the same Youtube video. Video streaming is blocked at work. So I sent an email to my personal email account containing the link to the video so that I could check it when I went home. "Susan Boyle" wasn't really trending very high then, and I figured she wouldn't be trending anymore by the time I check twitter trends at home. I couldn't have predicted how unnecessary that was. It's Saturday already and "Susan Boyle" is still one of the top trends in Twitter.

That audition clip, uploaded to Youtube, which as I wrote this has 19.6 million views, was truly one of a kind. It got all the elements working for it: Susan Boyle's life story and the perfect song choice. I have seen my fair share of American Idol episodes, and in that type of competition, song choice often made or break you. Boyle couldn't have chosen a better song to sing in that audition. She was there in the auditions to try to lived her dream of becoming a professional singer. And she chose to sing I Dreamed A Dream from the musical Lés Miserables. The orchestral accompaniment, which the editors have used as background music in the post-audition interview and the "three yesses" and then in Boyle's exit of the stage, where she blew a kiss to the audience was perfect. All these elements coming in together made for some very dramatic moments that rivaled any scripted TV. It's the best feel-good moment I have seen from any reality series or competition so far (at least from those that I watched).

Of course, song choice was just one factor. She still had to have the voice. And her voice was amazing. Some people would say it was nothing extraordinary. That maybe, she herself admitted on television that there's room for improvement, but I have heard several versions since I watched her Youtube clip, and her's is still the best that I have heard. A recording she made in 1999 for her local town's charity cd (only a thousand copies were produced), in which she sang Cry Me A River surfaced on Youtube recently. And it, too, was brilliant. I could just imagine what it would have been like if she was "discovered" at the age of 20. She would have by now 27 years of singing career under her belt. She would probably have been one of the judges in Britain's Got Talent. Although, considering how beautiful her voice still is at 47, she'd probably be busy touring the world to judge a talent competition.

Easter 2009

It's day 9 of the very long weekend that I talked about in my previous post. It's the last day of that weekend, which means I go back to work tomorrow, which means I'm sailing back to Cebu tonight. I wasn't able to do much of the things that I thought I could do during the long hiatus from work. I didn't read any book, didn't watch much TV or DVDs, didn't buy a digicam, didn't write anything at all, and didn't even surf the net that much. I did watch some TV and surf some, but certainly not as much as I did the previous long hiatus from work back in December. Odd thing was that every night (except for a couple ones), I actually slept one to two hours earlier than I normally do back in Cebu. And I didn't compulsively check my work emails, only quickly went through them once every day (mostly at the end of the day and only if I happen to go online that particular night) unlike the previous long hiatus where I checked my emails everytime I went online. I made an effort to give myself a real break and I believe I achieved it.

Happy Easter!

AS/400 is all that

System iNEWS magazine recently published the "Top 10 IT Problems We Don't Have with IBM i". I don't want to paste the whole thing here and I don't want to put the link because it needs a subscription and people who don't know IBM i really shouldn't bother subscribing. So I'll just mention two somewhat-related items on the list.

#2 Unplanned Downtime
#7 Rebooting as a "Solution"

For four years, I worked for a company that ran AS/400 (a.k.a. iSeries a.k.a System i) along side another system, which I won't mention. And it got the reputation of the most "non-problematic" system. I mean the box itself was a dwarf compared to the racks and racks of servers needed to run the other system, and yet it's very stable. And it's not stable because it's rarely used. In fact, it's used 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, and up 24/7. The other system had, in total, more users than the AS/400, but in context, the lone AS/400 (with just one CPU) handled more users per CPU compared to the other system. The only time that I could remember it was taken down was because of a problem with the power supply of the data center where it was located and then for system upgrade. In the same span, the other system was taken down unplanned several times because of, among other things, problem with the database (several times), and problem with something that I didn't entirely understand (it refused to let anyone sign in). Of course all these are just based on observation, as a developer for both systems. Just anecdotes and aren't scientific. I didn't really know the root causes of what happened. The AS/400 just appeared stable. It wasn't even part of the yearly planned downtime (during long Holy Week weekend of the year) per se because for some reason it wasn't needed, though it's still affected because the network itself was taken down for maintenance.

Day before Christmas

Last year, I didn't go home for Christmas. And since all the people that I know went home for Christmas I was left to fend for myself. But it wasn't really as dramatic as "fend for myself" made it sound. I spent the whole day in SM Cebu. And I discovered that perhaps people make their last-minute shopping two days before Christmas. SM Cebu on December 24, 2007 was the emptiest I found the mall that year. There were still many people, of course, but compared to the usual day it was by far "emptier". There wasn't even a line when I took my lunch in Chowking at around 12:00 noon. At the same time any other day and I would have been at least tenth in line with four lines total.

***

Going home that day I bought season 3 of House so that I had something to be busy with in the hours leading to Christmas and on Christmas day itself because the malls were closed for the holiday. Luckily, the 3rd season had a twist in that House fired all his staff and conducted a reality-tv-like contest to search for his new staff. It was an interesting season and kept the series fresh.

Aside from books

My former college classmate, let's just call him RonMyks for privacy reasons, reportedly took a day off work so that he could finish his Gossip Girl season one marathon. The series must be that good. Besides, I've read good things about the series before. So last Thursday after checking out what changed and what did not change around the city, I bought the season one DVD. I watched the first three episodes last night and I thought it was written well. Can't wait to watch the rest of the season.

***

I also bought The Unit season one and watched the first two episodes yesterday afternoon. Well, it wasn't bad. But I thought it wanted to be something more than what its budget was capable of and its writers were capable of writing.

***

The acoustic guitar that my parents bought me when I was 14 for my high school music class is still alive. I thought it was given away a long time ago. I never really got the hang of learning guitar back in high school. But maybe in this long vacation, when I don't want to read books or watch DVDs anymore, I could take time to learn how to play the guitar again.

Packed and ready to go

I just finished packing the stuff that I will take home to Cagayan de Oro. Majority of them are actually books that I won't be taking back to Cebu. My luggage will be about 60% lighter in my return trip. Once home, I plan to take advantage of the Christmas sales to buy a new pair of sneakers that I'll also leave home in Cagayan de Oro. I'll be taking steps that will help me travel light in my future trips home.

The irony

The irony. When I'm in a project, sometimes I get very busy that it's very tiring and I long for the days that I'll be in bench again. But when I'm in bench for a long time, it's boring and I long for the days when I'll be in project again. They say I should enjoy the time I have in bench. Well, I enjoyed it, of course, but I can only enjoy it for so long until it becomes too boring. I feel like rust is starting to form in my brain. On top of that, we were "encouraged" to take a very long leave of absence, effectively about a month's worth of absence starting Monday, December 15. Paid, yeah, but I want to save some VL credits for the Holy Week next year. But hey, the Holy Week will still be a very long weekend no matter what. There, the silver lining in this irony of a life in an outsourcing firm.

***

The Day the Earth Stood Still. In the words of one of my co-workers that watched the movie with me, "Mao ra to?" ("Is that all?")

***

Bolt. We enjoyed this movie a lot. With the merging of Disney and Pixar, Disney's back with producing quality films. The last time I enjoyed a Disney animated movie was when they released Mulan. And that's a long time ago.

Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park

It was after my first week in my freshman year in high school. For five days I had gone to the city by myself to attend school. I lived some 16 kilometers away from the city and for the most part I was confined to our barangay (village) since I had been attending a local school. But high school was different. I got a scholarship from a school downtown. A few classmates from elementary school and I decided we should celebrate our first week of going to school in the city by watching a movie. So we went to the city, to Lim Ket Kai center, which was new back then, to see a movie. We went to see Jurassic Park.

We enjoyed it a lot. Residing as I did that far from the city, with parents who were never into movies, I rarely went to the cinemas. Jurassic Park was the first movie with awesome special effects I saw in a theater. I was blown away by the special effects. It was as though dinosaurs, extinct for millions of years, were back and roamed along side humans. Afterward, we agreed to watch it again.

It was only later that I learned it was based on a novel by Michael Crichton. I borrowed a book, "Congo", from a classmate in second year high school, and though published much earlier, the recently released paper back listed "Jurassic Park" as one of Crichton's novels. I've put off reading the book for a while. I went on to read the author's "Airframe", "Timeline", "Andromeda Strain", and most recently "Next". And then weeks ago, came the news that Michael Crichton died. I thought it's time to read "Jurassic Park". And so I looked for my copy, which started to gather dusts, and started reading.

It was good as always. I've yet to read a Crichton novel that bored me. I don't want to say that the book is better than the movie. I'd say that it was as enjoyable as the movie was. The book certainly digged deeper into the characters as only a book could do, but just the same I wouldn't prefer it over the movie that I enjoyed so much, that my friends and I enjoyed so much one Saturday afternoon, after our first five days of going to the city by ourselves.

That other vampire movie

If you want a more compelling love story between a vampire and a human, you'd want to see Let the Right One In. The vampire is the girl and the human is the boy. They're both 12 years old. You get to see the vampire be like a vampire and the human be more like a human. It's a love story within a horror story.

I have to give the writers credit for convincing me to care for the vampire that, unlike in Twilight, actually did vampire stuff (like killing an innocent stranger for blood). Hey, it's not everyday that I sympathize with vampires. When I was eight, there was this certain time when I and my friends wore red arm bands as protection from vampires rumored to be roaming around preying on children. On hindsight, it was very naive of us to believe that a piece of cloth of a particular color would protect us from the bloodsucking creatures of the night, but the most interesting thing was that it was our parents who actually made us do it. It was as if all the parents in our neighborhood unanimously agreed that vampires did exist, infiltrated our peaceful village, and the red arm band would spare us. It was a very rural thing. And it was my childhood. And here I am, actually caring for this bloodsucking vampire in a way that Twilight never made me, however tame the vampires in there were compared to this one in Let the Right One In.

Go see it if you get the chance. It's a Swedish film based on a Swedish novel.

***

Speaking of writers who made me care for characters whom I normally wouldn't, I can say the same thing for the writers of the Prison Break TV series that is now in its fourth season. It takes time for a US series to come here in the Philippines. At first, I mainly only heard about this series in its pilot premier. I heard about it from the Fox News Channel. They were predicting it to be a hit and I thought I'd never watch the series if it ever came here in the Philippines. When I was young and whenever we heard news about a local prison break, our neighborhood would become alert all of a sudden and our parents would barely let us out especially if the escapees included murderers. I'd imagine, if that breakout from the first season of this popular TV series happened in our city, my parents would never let me out the house and play with my friends until all of them are aprehended or killed. And here I am, many years later, actually sympathizing with the escape convicts from the series. The writers should get an award for each season the series is on air.