WTF? I'm gone two weeks and Resurrect now costs mana??

Aloha friends!

Yeah it's me. I didn't know the true extent of blog laziness until I saw that my last update was more than three months ago! Anyway I'm back and so so sad to hear that Resurrect now costs mana (now investing in some nulls doesn't sound that stupid). Buti na lang resurrecting one's blog costs much less.

Anyway, enough about dota. Got lots of stories from the Aloha State (yes, Hawaii). I was in Honolulu to attend the 17th Triennial IFORS Conference. Oddly enough, it's not a conference on ergonomics but rather a conference in operations research. But I reassured my boss/thesis adviser that I wouldn't flip flop on my thesis and still do one on ergonomics.

Some basics about Hawaii:
- Temperature is just one degree cooler than here but much less humid (around 60% lang)
- Made up of 8 islands, one of which is also named Hawai'i, erstwhile known as the Big Island; Honolulu is on the main island of Oahu
- A lot of Pinoys there, mostly working in the many hotels and restaurants. Many of them were glad to see another Pinoy, a "tourist" at that
- A lot of ergonomic stuff there (subject of another post)
- Living in Hawaii is so expensive!

Speaking of which, I also suffered from a different kind of lag, that of a "spending lag." When I arrived in Hawaii, I was so stingy with my money, thinking that $6 meals were outrageous. Of course as the days went by, I saw myself paying $6 or $5 per hour for internet and eating at $15 buffet places. When I came back, I was craving for some squidballs so I went out for some. To my surprise, my bill was P50 (with take home to boot!). Wow, less than a dollar, no tip required! When Pat, Chico and I went to dinner at TOSH Friday night, the P200 bill seemed so affordable. BTW, for those who are interested to know, network gaming is a hefty $6 per hour (plus tax!) and their engines are only 512MB RAM (but P-IV naman) compared to the monsters down there at skies! My cheapest meal (other than breakfast because I ate cup noodles and burritos for bfast) was a $4 6" sub at subway.

So, with this, I'd like to announce that I'm back. Some posts to look forward to in my blog:
- Conference report (which includes a couple of cut sessions) - could be boring if done wrong
- Ergo stuff in Hawaii
- North Shore adventure (where Blue Crush was shot)
- "Wild" girls of Waikiki
- Personalities I met

I learned that you shouldn't put one post after the other because the other one won't be read. Also, this should give me some stuff to write...

Aloha! Aloha all!

The Saturday Splash Adventure

H E L P !

would be a more appropriate title for this post, as this is probably the quote of the day (heck, this early, even for 2005!).

The day started out pretty well for most of us. This outing yet again serves as a reminder to set a meeting time one hour earlier than planned. For example, if you want to leave at 8 AM, set a meeting time of 7 AM, which was what exactly happened.

Jam pretty much talked about most of the day's happenings therefore i'm gonna go behind the scenes.

After leaving UP at 8 AM, we went to Shell and met with the rest of the gang. Frank, Ria and Jasmin (belated!!) went to Jam's place.

TIP to the next batch of Splash goers (which would probably be us again): Make sure Jam and some other guys be some sort of advanced party to reserve cabanas because it was really hard to get those shaded areas.

FIRST STOP: Wave pool. Though we have a theory on why gerls take so much time to change, it's still a "robert umali" to us. I think it was Frank who first remarked that: "Nakakapagod naman ito, mag-lunch na tayo." Yes, dito rin naganap ang makasaysayang "help" ni Oliver. Jam said it best when he said that he finds it hard to believe that some mammals could possibly drown... The lifeguard couldn't drag Oli all the way to the shore so he just left him there in the shallower part of the pool "to dry", so to speak.

NEXT STOP: Lazy river. Dito kami nang-bubully ng mga bata just to get inflatable tubes (joking here...). The fun thing about Splash... You can be so lazy that you have to depend on the "Lazy River" to move around the park.

THIRD STOP: Slides!! The supposedly scariest slide will just give you bruises since you won't be using rubber tubes to move down. In the Rio Montañosa ride, only three of us would fit in the slide but back then, 4 of us would have fitted. Only 3 with Oli included.

LUNCH!! Much awaited. Literally. After falling in line for 30-45 minutes, the phrase that met our order was "Sir, around 30-45 minutes pa po, pero pwedeng mapadali..." Lunch courtesy of Chico "The Man" Asan.

AFTER LUNCH: Another round of sliding! Most thrilling ride is the big bamboo but done in reverse!! Yahoo!! Jon was too scared to try it though...

Voice over the PA System (restated in the best manner I could remember):
"Splash Island is open from 9 AM to 5 PM. We would like to inform you that all attractions are now closed. You may proceed to the changing area to avoid the rush. Thank you for coming... for a splashing good time..."

As a nightcap (or at least we thought it was), we went to Rico's to celebrate his graduation (again, congrats pare! you finally made it!). It also served as a belated party for the rest of the April Boys. The food was great (pork BBQ was the bomb), alcohol was overflowing (so overflowing, hindi naubos), and the conversations were the usual fun talk about lots of stuff. Maraming napagusapan but I would not rather publish it here, for fear of slander (btw, is slander necessarily false?). Hehehe. Jae also shared some pics of his fictional (no pun intended) GF. I was just wondering whether he had Angel pics in that skimpy red costume...

Ask me personally if you wanna get some of the juicier details... I actually can't wait until the next LB and frends parteh...

We left Rico's at around 12 MN to go to Bluskies and there was the real nightcap. A 5v5 game of DotA. New recruit Aidz "Japogs" Angeles didn't get owned that much as expected of a newb (or noob as I've recently learned). Overall, it would have to be one of the, if not the best DotA game I've ever been a part of.

My day ended at around 8 AM sunday, after a nice breakfast at the Manasan residence and a lengthy, hot bath at home...

H E L P !

The much awaited...

Quoting from my previous post about a month ago...

Watch out for Part II, which will talk about what happened after the play.

I must have left everyone hanging (including myself). Now a lot of people are asking for the part deux. Well, here's the short version (since this is already stale news).

After the play, the gang went to eastwood to partake on some pizza. Succumbing to peer pressure, Joyce paid for the bill (since it was her birthday). And in a gesture that would make any penny pincher proud, Jonas made a masterstroke and offered to pay for half of the bill (reminding us that it WAS his birthday a week ago). Oh well, we enjoyed the pizza.

And, did I mention Jam brought a date.

Arriving at UP, we were informed that Faye G. (and her date) were having cake at Choc Kiss. We decided to follow them there and finish up what we started at eastwood. The piano music in the background reminded us that we were with Oliver (not that his presence would go unnoticed). With some minor prodding, we eventually succeeded in convincing Oli to play the piano. Of course, Jon needed no such prodding to sing... Somehow, for a moment, the usually chic Choc Kiss turned jologs.

A wonderful nightcap could have been:
a. joining what's left at pisay (Yes, I just recently learned that Christy dG is a DJ!)
b. drinks and conversation at City Jam Bar along Katipunan (shameless plug!)
c. DotA until dawn!

Ano kaya ang napili namin? By now, alam na natin ngayon kung sinong mga addict sa DotA...

Finding our way to the Caterpillar pillar (A Critique on "Hope for the Flowers")

The Review

The following were some of my hypotheses regarding Chewy's role in the play Hope for the Flowers:

• Flower/Tree trunk - with minimal speaking parts or worse, just standing there and blending in with the set
• Caterpillar - crawling around, trying to walk with a thousand legs
  
• Butterfly - sniffling around the flowers (see first hypothesis)
• Cocoon - 'nga naman, kung walang piso, walang P100; kung walang cocoon, walang butterfly
  
• Cogon grass - 'nuff said

Of course, she later told me she was playing the role of a caterpillar. One of a hundred, I thought. "Do you have a speaking part, you know, one that's not part of the chorus?" I asked. She nicely replied, "Yeah, I got a few." Well, at least meron I said to myself. So now, I got three good reasons to watch the play: 1. Chewy was on it 2. Kythe Foundation was a beneficiary 3. It's a nice venue to meet with friends (again!)

The group: Leks, (willing to miss work for obvious reasons), Joyce (birthday girl - happy birthday!), Oliburger (muntik na kaming ilaglag), Jogon, Jam (plus one, I mean Ann), Jem, Pat, Norman (fellow teacher at IE Department), and the late Jinko Misa (sorry, could not resist!)

The venue (Aldaba Hall) looked like the sari-sari store/canteen behind the UP theater. It was much better inside. The air-conditioning was a welcome change of temperature (it must have been 35 degrees outside!). Manila paper/cartolina was scattered all over the place (later realized it was for good reason). There was free coffee too and as expected, Oliver suddenly became a caffeine addict. As remarked by Jogon, the chairs were not ergonomic especially for people standing 6'2" and up (yeah, how many people do you know who's taller than that?). The chairs were fine though. It's no Eastwood Cinema though (what do you expect for a hundred bucks anyway).

As the lights turned dark, the actors came in. To my surprise, I didn't immediately find our Chewy. A few moments later, she came in. We had to adopt a very awkward posture just to see her (and this is bad as this leads to various cumulative trauma disorders or CTD's). To my pleasant surprise, I found a mic on Chewy's cheek. Hmm, malamang marami-raming linya to...

Putcha, 'bat walang nagsabi sakin na bida siya? Of course, Jam mentioned it, but I didn't read it.

She actually played Yellow, the female lead of the play opposite Stripe. Too bad, Leks wasn't wearing stripes. And she was good. I always thought she had a good voice, being in a "band" and all. I just never imagined her to be that good. She wowed the audience with her Broadway-like voice that seemed to be a perfect fit for the role of the caterpillar who was left by her BF (Leks wouldn't have left you for a freaking tower made of drums), made good and became a butterfly.

Like in any romantic play, there's bound to be some love scenes, where the characters show off the affection for each other. In this case, it elicited more than the usual "aww" as we had a stakeholder in the audience. I had to stop myself from making hirits as I was already affecting my seatmates' concentration.

Stripe was contemplating on a trek to the "top of the pillar," only to find out later that it was lonely at the top and it wasn't worth the climb. In the meantime, our girl Yellow's been left crying (abangan na natin sa labas si Stripe...). I wonder how would I have reacted to this play if I saw it when I was seven years old. Would I have gotten the message? Darn, it's supposed to be a children's book...

Pat had something to say about the costumes, but had to keep it to herself when she was introduced to the costume designer (by Cris Tanseco).

Overall, the play was good, but I honestly wouldn't have watched it if Chewy wasn't there.

Watching the play made me very proud. Kilala ko yung bida!

Let me end this review with what Tita Chato (Chewy's mom according to my phonebook) said after watching the play...

"...."*

*Portions of the statement were deleted.

Watch out for Part II, which will talk about what happened after the play.

Desperate American Race

Watching TV is absolutely one of my favorite things to do. Jae mentioned that he was watching reruns of TGIS and I'd have to admit that naiinggit ako... wish ko lang 1990's ngayon...

Back to 2005. Two of my favorite shows are now on-air. American Idol and Amazing Race 7. I'm really excited about these shows. My take on these shows:

AI: It's such a joy to watch these fellas sing. The thing I mentioned about the judges: No matter how the contestants hate him, Simon's always right.
Favorites (F): Amanda Avila, Carrie Underwood (M): Scott Savol, Constantine

AR7: I find it weird that Rob and Amber joined the race. Oh, they want more money... I don't find it weird that the others really want to beat them. Oh, and I was almost disappointed when the roomates were coming in last...

Why desperate? 'coz i got my hands on a copy of Desperate Housewives' first three episodes. The first one had a lot of promise. The story is very much character driven. I hope this show hits Philippine TV screens soon...

School election fever in UP

I've heard a lot of comments that UP is a microcosm of Philippine society. True enough, UP students (and faculty) can hardly be stereotyped. There's the pretty kolehiyala, the stud, the nerd, the 'tibak, the anak ng politiko, the working student. Heck, meron ding Lasalista at Atenista in UP.

One facet of UP life that mimics real life is politics. Politics suck here in the country and in UP there's no difference. There's the tarpaulin posters (who's paying?), walls plastered with tons of paper, constant protests, poll watchers (but they were nice), insincere handshaking, among others. As with Philippine elections, UP elections are counted manually. Not bad, you might think. But have you tried counting 386 ballots? It doesn't work out as easy as it sounds. Given my background as an IE, I could probably optimize the voting procedure (and hopefully make it more ergonomic).

I think we were the second to the last to finish in Eng'g (around 12MN). It was very tiring. Would I do it again? Absolutely.

Welcome (oh what a boring title!)

I've been meaning to start a blog as early as August last year, when I started writing for the Pisay 98 blog during the Volleyball tournament. Procrastination got the better of me, and it is only now (with enough prodding from my good friends pat and chico) that I am starting my own blog. This has been further delayed as I have have been meaning to launch this blog on my birthday.

In giving my blog an identity, the first thing that came to mind was a reference to my gameshow days. I thought that a blog entitled "Who wants to be the weakest link?" would stir enough interest to those who remembered. But clearly, I should get over my days as a gameshow contestant.

Though my blog would contain mostly my random thoughts, I figured that I could use it to inform my friends/fellow bloggers about one of my passions/interests. Ergonomics is a field of Industrial Engineering that focuses on the human aspect of various (everyday) systems. Derived from the Greek words ergon (work and effort) and nomos (law or surroundings). Fit the task to the worker (human), and not the other way around. Ergonomics isn't techie stuff. You have to deal with it in your daily grind. How many times have you noticed yourself stooping down just to get a more comfortable view of your PC monitor? Do you think the MRT handrail is too high for you? How about that pain in your neck and wrist after playing 6 hours of DotA? (ok, so I'm speaking from experience...)

Ergonomics is a word you usually associate with chairs, tables, and other office equipment. Well, believe it or not, most "ergonomic" equipment are not actually ergonomic. More on this as we go along...


what?! an "ergonomic" toilet?


the usual ergonomic keyboard