Ok, so it's been almost two months since my last post. A lot has been happening lately. Consider yourself lucky you're reading this...
The main highlight for the month of has got to be the wedding of the decade. Pat and Chico's wedding was a successful bash (If I say so myself). The Best Man did a great job... oops ako pala ito. Well, all I really did was arrive very early at the bride's house (since the groom was busy confessing whatever) and then later on that day spoke of some funny, skewy, detailed anecdotes about my long affair with the bride and groom. I must admit a part of that speech was googled (gasp!) but the greater part of that speech came from the heart and I know the couple is very well aware of that. Of course, what would a wedding be without a wild bachelor's party?? Well, it wasn't exactly wild (Happened the week before the big day). We just drank a few beers and and shared funny/gross stories.
October 15, Oliver invited us to his newly built swank place smack right beside their old house. Of course, visions of Oli growing old with his brood of kids beside his parents' house is a mighty sight to behold. Overall a nice place, so nice it's gonna be the venue of our annual Christmas party. I remember the last one, conversations till the wee hours of the morning... without any alcohol. Of course, this year promises to be different with everything we've planned.
October also marks the frenzy of 1st sem grade submission. This is without a doubt my most pasaway sem, submitting grades a day late (gasp! again!). A funny anecdote could be told about our Chairman receiving a memo for late grades. She snickered at me, to which a replied with a wry smile. Shock overcame her upon reading HER name on the memo, and not mine.
Novermber (and late October) gave me a time for a short breather. However, unlike in previous terms, I didn't find the sembreak to be quite relaxing. I didn't actually have to go to a spa.
The start of classes have been a regular November thing for me (since I was a student in UP). Its quite different when you're on the other side of the fence. Teachers have to prepare more at the start (and the trend of preparation reverses significantly come finals time).
A whole lot is scheduled and slated for the coming weeks. Today marks the start of the 23rd SEA Games. Two good friends are competing for the country and from what I hear (and read), they're shoo-ins for the gold. Mickey (fencing, team foil and team epee, I think) and Sandra (triathlon), good luck and go for the gold (so cliche). In other matters, the usual end of the year signals the start of planning for next year. Being in some position (not necessarily of authority) I'm doing some planning myself. It's on top of teaching kids what happens when we reject the hypothesis and it turns out to be true.
Come December, it will be fast and furious. By Friday, I'll finally have a taste of The Mango Tree, Jonas' latest baby. With a sisig that's to die for (no pun intended, I hope), I can't wait to stretch my taste buds in Iloilo. Less than two weeks of classes, then the break. IE Club will be gunning for its 6th consecutive EWOC. Its likely they'll repeat. Balita ko ang pogi and charming nung adviser nila. Eng'g faculty and staff will also enjoy their own version of Eng'g Week albeit capped by a feast that's enough to feed half of the acad oval.
A couple of Christmas parties with friends are also scheduled. Regi should take care of us from IEC '98/'03. I'm looking forward to a reunion with some PIQC friends. Oh yeah, my only godchild's birthday is on December 19. Lucky ninong.
My thesis docket has been empty for quite some time. High time to get rolling on it.
No pics of my throat getting slashed or me hitching a ride in the wonderful roads of Oahu for now. Just a short update, much like CNN's breaking news. Nothing sensational.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
A Best Man's Tale
This should not come as a surprise to many of us, most especially me. However, when I got this bit of great news I will admit that I was indeed shocked to hear it. I will not go into the details of my reaction (though the bride will give you a vivid account upon request) but more importantly, we should look at how our lives are changing. Jonas predicted that in the next 2-4 years, we'll be going to about 4-10 weddings (lower number for me, higher for him). We were also discussing "sinong mauuna?" The guess was correct. Timing? Way off!!
She announced this with a dagger in-hand. Future husband took photo.
As their best man, I dedicate this blog post to my very good friends Chico and Pat! Best wishes!
The downside is that we won't be able to ask them to play dota a lot now, since they'd now have "bills" to pay... nyay!!
Looking at the bright side, at least they'll get an income tax exemption... :D
She announced this with a dagger in-hand. Future husband took photo.
As their best man, I dedicate this blog post to my very good friends Chico and Pat! Best wishes!
The downside is that we won't be able to ask them to play dota a lot now, since they'd now have "bills" to pay... nyay!!
Looking at the bright side, at least they'll get an income tax exemption... :D
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Productivity Lows
I think I may be suffering my worst streak of low productivity... although a part of me thinks it's due to an immense workload never before seen in my two and a half year career.
***
After I finished printing my exam for today, I burned my time reading other people's blogs and following links everywhere. Got this from Jae... (this is probably more than two years old now!!)
***
After I finished printing my exam for today, I burned my time reading other people's blogs and following links everywhere. Got this from Jae... (this is probably more than two years old now!!)
Friday, August 19, 2005
50 more reasons why we love surfing the net
Inasmuch as I wanted to work hard on a Saturday to finish a huge backlog of papers and commitments, Time Magazine's list of the 50 coolest websites gave my productivity a huge blow.
I've gone through the entire list and I've seen probably less than five of these sites. I've visited only a few and the sites were really good. The blogs are a new category this year and some of them are really hilarious. A sample quip (from Overheard in New York...)
Hobo #1: Do you know what time is it?
Hobo #2: Yeah I know.
Hobo #1: Thanks.
I've gone through the entire list and I've seen probably less than five of these sites. I've visited only a few and the sites were really good. The blogs are a new category this year and some of them are really hilarious. A sample quip (from Overheard in New York...)
Hobo #1: Do you know what time is it?
Hobo #2: Yeah I know.
Hobo #1: Thanks.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
lab exercises and research in ergonomics
One of my tasks in IE 134 (Ergonomics) is to come up with laboratory activities for our new equipment from Vernier (thanks to Angelica of Velca). My students were surprised to note that we were using the same stuff Physics 71.1 and 73.1 (lab courses on Mechanics and Thermodynamics) classes were using.
Most of the exercises I designed were really exercises, as in my students would have to do some sweating to get their project done. Research in this line of ergonomics would be allied with what they're doing down there at the CHK (Human Kinetics). We're trying to look at anthropometry, its applications, and its implications on human performance.
I hope we do some justice for our room's name, the Human Performance Laboratory.
***
I'm sort of disappointed to note that none of my students decided to conduct research in this field of ergonomics, preferring the safer route of ergonomic evaluation of everyday stuff. At least, there's a saving grace since some students decided to pursue research in the field of industrial ergonomics, or the ergonomics in the workplace. Since the IE program in UP Diliman is really manufacturing/industry oriented, we might as well focus our research in this area. Another area I find interesting is cognitive ergonomics.
More on my Hawaian adventure next week...
Aloha!
***
Happy Birthday
18 - Leks
22 - Pat aka Raven
23 - Wilbert P.
28 - Chewy
sorry tinamad maglagay ng links
Most of the exercises I designed were really exercises, as in my students would have to do some sweating to get their project done. Research in this line of ergonomics would be allied with what they're doing down there at the CHK (Human Kinetics). We're trying to look at anthropometry, its applications, and its implications on human performance.
I hope we do some justice for our room's name, the Human Performance Laboratory.
***
I'm sort of disappointed to note that none of my students decided to conduct research in this field of ergonomics, preferring the safer route of ergonomic evaluation of everyday stuff. At least, there's a saving grace since some students decided to pursue research in the field of industrial ergonomics, or the ergonomics in the workplace. Since the IE program in UP Diliman is really manufacturing/industry oriented, we might as well focus our research in this area. Another area I find interesting is cognitive ergonomics.
More on my Hawaian adventure next week...
Aloha!
***
Happy Birthday
18 - Leks
22 - Pat aka Raven
23 - Wilbert P.
28 - Chewy
sorry tinamad maglagay ng links
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
delayed...
For those whi didn't get to view this properly...
***
It seems that whenever I want to post something, a lot of things go wrong. As a colleague of mine would comment "Murphy is hard at work..."
For this post, I had lots of trouble posting pic on the web. I thought it was a prerequisite for posting pics on a blog (to have html tags on your pics). Well, I just learned that you can upload pics from your computer (Chico's voice saying COMPUTER!!). I was asking Jae how to upload pics and he gave some relevant advice. The saddest thing was I had to resize all my photos (for this set, thanks to Bern and Stenie!!) since each was about 1.5-3mb big!
I used my photobucket account for this but as of press time, most of the pics are loading. I'll post a link for all the pics in my next post.
Conference Stuff
I was sent to Hawaii for one main purpose, to present a paper on Probabilistic Dynamic Programming (try searching for this, hehehe). I was scheduled on a Thursday and that gave me lots of time to prepare for my presentation.
What's Ergo Boy doing in an OR conference??
Now I'm trying to stress a point. The "stressed" session chair seems to react positively to my inquisitive and highly intelluctual points.
My session included mostly maintenance stuff and there was more than enough for me to chew for that session.
The other sessions were very interesting.
DAY 1 - First session was the application of OR in the criminal justice system. Though the presentation was mostly for R&D allocation of high-tech police weapons, there are similar stuff that we can adopt in our SC project. I dunno if I can even mention it. Oops, I guess I just did... The next session for the day was the application of OR in healthcare. It included an assessment of Israeli hospitals and optimization strategies for NZ ambulances (interesting to note if they rescue sheep down there, which enjoys a huge numerical majority over humans). The day's last two sessions were on practical optimization applications and six sigma.
DAY 2 - I attended a session on recent advances in metaheuristics...
Uhh, ok. So I didn't. Sue me! Bern and I decided to cut the afternoon sessions and go to the mall. We went to Ala Moana Shopping Center (no pics... didn't feel like taking pics in the mall). The mall reminded me of SM Baguio. No A/C, nice surroundings. Went to Macy's and discovered that it's quite expensive there (but a sale was forthcoming). Less than a week later, AMSC would serve as my take-off point for my North Shore adventure (more on this in the succeeding posts)...
Waiting for a bus to the north shore just outside the Ala Moana shopping center... more pics and stories to come...
DAY 3 - Excursion day! Got some pics (in my kuya's iBook) and I'll post these pics from the Polynesian Cultural Center, Polynesia's equivalent to our Nayong Pilipino. As a side note, I actually asked my 19-early 20's students if they know about Nayong Pilipino and they all exclaimed "Syempre naman Sir!"
Maybe a post about this excursion??
I also had a sumptuous dinner at the house of Bern's Aunty Ala in the upper portions of Honolulu. The winds felt like a storm was brewing (in the middle of summer?!?) but they said it was normal.
DAY 4 - My big day!! Interestingly, I only attended my session and decided to go to Nordstrom later that day. It was also luau day. I got some pics from the luau but this is all I have now...
Me (Aloha shirt c/o Aunty Ala), Bern (in her lovely Aloha dress) and our Taiwanese friend Zhi Ping (fresh from Maui). I actually met Zhi Ping on the flight going to Honolulu from Taipei. Gumana ang nerd-dar ko, hahaha!
Oh, BTW... I have a pic with Frederick Hillier. You might not know him but I bet you Torveks knows. Also ask any IE you know. I'll post these as soon as I get a grip on my small photo collection...
Day 5 - Having spent Thursday night drinking at Planet Hollywood (with $5 beers!!), I woke up late on Friday and decided to just hit the beach instead. I went with some Italian economics professors to soak in the sun of Waikiki Beach. Later that afternoon, we (Bern, Stenie, Aunty Marge) went to Kuhio Beach Park. Pics below...
Hanging loose by the beach
It's 6pm but no sunset in sight... (Actually the sun doesn't set until 8pm. Wohoo!)
Nakapayong sa beach... Tsk...
Later that evening, I had another dinner at the Cua's. Moreover... I got to wear a grass skirt and dance Hula with Bern's niece...
Innocently watching the girls do Hula...
Innocently trying on the grass skirt...
Innocently trying to do my version of Hula... Parang kulang get-up ko???
Innocently trying on the coconut bra...
And to top it off... I innocently tried on some necklace adornments and a silk flower ala Jasmine Trias
Hmmm, did anybody notice my wonderful tan???
With that, I end this post...
***
It seems that whenever I want to post something, a lot of things go wrong. As a colleague of mine would comment "Murphy is hard at work..."
For this post, I had lots of trouble posting pic on the web. I thought it was a prerequisite for posting pics on a blog (to have html tags on your pics). Well, I just learned that you can upload pics from your computer (Chico's voice saying COMPUTER!!). I was asking Jae how to upload pics and he gave some relevant advice. The saddest thing was I had to resize all my photos (for this set, thanks to Bern and Stenie!!) since each was about 1.5-3mb big!
I used my photobucket account for this but as of press time, most of the pics are loading. I'll post a link for all the pics in my next post.
Conference Stuff
I was sent to Hawaii for one main purpose, to present a paper on Probabilistic Dynamic Programming (try searching for this, hehehe). I was scheduled on a Thursday and that gave me lots of time to prepare for my presentation.
What's Ergo Boy doing in an OR conference??
Now I'm trying to stress a point. The "stressed" session chair seems to react positively to my inquisitive and highly intelluctual points.
My session included mostly maintenance stuff and there was more than enough for me to chew for that session.
The other sessions were very interesting.
DAY 1 - First session was the application of OR in the criminal justice system. Though the presentation was mostly for R&D allocation of high-tech police weapons, there are similar stuff that we can adopt in our SC project. I dunno if I can even mention it. Oops, I guess I just did... The next session for the day was the application of OR in healthcare. It included an assessment of Israeli hospitals and optimization strategies for NZ ambulances (interesting to note if they rescue sheep down there, which enjoys a huge numerical majority over humans). The day's last two sessions were on practical optimization applications and six sigma.
DAY 2 - I attended a session on recent advances in metaheuristics...
Uhh, ok. So I didn't. Sue me! Bern and I decided to cut the afternoon sessions and go to the mall. We went to Ala Moana Shopping Center (no pics... didn't feel like taking pics in the mall). The mall reminded me of SM Baguio. No A/C, nice surroundings. Went to Macy's and discovered that it's quite expensive there (but a sale was forthcoming). Less than a week later, AMSC would serve as my take-off point for my North Shore adventure (more on this in the succeeding posts)...
Waiting for a bus to the north shore just outside the Ala Moana shopping center... more pics and stories to come...
DAY 3 - Excursion day! Got some pics (in my kuya's iBook) and I'll post these pics from the Polynesian Cultural Center, Polynesia's equivalent to our Nayong Pilipino. As a side note, I actually asked my 19-early 20's students if they know about Nayong Pilipino and they all exclaimed "Syempre naman Sir!"
Maybe a post about this excursion??
I also had a sumptuous dinner at the house of Bern's Aunty Ala in the upper portions of Honolulu. The winds felt like a storm was brewing (in the middle of summer?!?) but they said it was normal.
DAY 4 - My big day!! Interestingly, I only attended my session and decided to go to Nordstrom later that day. It was also luau day. I got some pics from the luau but this is all I have now...
Me (Aloha shirt c/o Aunty Ala), Bern (in her lovely Aloha dress) and our Taiwanese friend Zhi Ping (fresh from Maui). I actually met Zhi Ping on the flight going to Honolulu from Taipei. Gumana ang nerd-dar ko, hahaha!
Oh, BTW... I have a pic with Frederick Hillier. You might not know him but I bet you Torveks knows. Also ask any IE you know. I'll post these as soon as I get a grip on my small photo collection...
Day 5 - Having spent Thursday night drinking at Planet Hollywood (with $5 beers!!), I woke up late on Friday and decided to just hit the beach instead. I went with some Italian economics professors to soak in the sun of Waikiki Beach. Later that afternoon, we (Bern, Stenie, Aunty Marge) went to Kuhio Beach Park. Pics below...
Hanging loose by the beach
It's 6pm but no sunset in sight... (Actually the sun doesn't set until 8pm. Wohoo!)
Nakapayong sa beach... Tsk...
Later that evening, I had another dinner at the Cua's. Moreover... I got to wear a grass skirt and dance Hula with Bern's niece...
Innocently watching the girls do Hula...
Innocently trying on the grass skirt...
Innocently trying to do my version of Hula... Parang kulang get-up ko???
Innocently trying on the coconut bra...
And to top it off... I innocently tried on some necklace adornments and a silk flower ala Jasmine Trias
Hmmm, did anybody notice my wonderful tan???
With that, I end this post...
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
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!
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!
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