Testing something.

Test, 1, 2, 3.

Public Service Announcement?

First entry up at my creative blog. Why create a new one, when I can just post my stuff here (Multiply + Momeng - Blogger), anyway? Well, this way, only those people who are interested would actually visit and look at my creative things. In other words, I won't be inflicting myself upon as many people who don't actually care, haha.

I'll still be posting entries here, but they'll be restricted to the mundane or silly ones, in general. Yay!

Because I was amused:

Comment on this post and...

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, consider posting this on your journal, to contribute to the meme-pool!

Meme-necromancy!

Fill out my Johari window please! Thanks. (In case you're not familiar with it, you'll just have to pick five or six adjectives out of a grid that you think are applicable to me. Fairly quick and easy.)

I'm interested in seeing how different people see me right now. I guess I'm realizing again that people don't always (almost never?) see the same person that I see myself as.

Sweeney Todd!

Got to watch Sweeney Todd, which I think was an overall fun experience. The bits that didn't quite work (for a movie) seemed to be mostly in the first half (act), while the interesting and funny bits were in the second half (act?). Maybe things started happening faster after the midway point?

Visuals were great, colors and textures and movement. Alan Rickman is, well, Alan Rickman, and you gotta love his voice, no matter what character he plays. (Oddly enough, in the last movie we saw him in (Perfume), he was also playing an overprotective father, if without the, er, unfatherly longings.)

I have to wonder whether it would've been better off onstage, the answer to which is probably yes. Musicals generally work better in the more intimate and whimsical arena of the theater, I think.

(I would have to agree that the young couple come off as plot devices, mainly. Neither of them were especially pretty, either, too bad for them.)

Latin American politics. (No, really!)

What have I been writing lately? Well, it's embarrassing, but, you see, for our Social Science 2 class we were made to attend this open forum on "Recent Developments in Latin America". And, well, our professor asked us for a "critical paper", which is basically his term for something more in-depth than a reaction paper. So, yeah, here's mine.

Not used to writing papers anymore, I must admit. That's actually just a draft, but I'm too lazy to revise it, since it's just for a GE (Generalized Education) class, anyway. And I'd say that most of my classmates won't even bother doing the amount of research that I did, actually, so I think I'm pretty safe with something like that.

Upheaval and other news

Right now I'm a refugee in my parents' room, and I'm typing this out on my brother's laptop (my computer being in my room upstairs). Too lazy to go into the detailed enumerations, suffice it to say that there are a lot of relatives over here, sleeping at our house, and I got kicked out of my room. This is the second night of exile, and I don't know how long this'll last.

Being restricted from my usual workspace is of course a bit jarring, but, hey, the presence of balikbayan relatives also means some home improvements, more (and typically better) food, more solicitous people, and a nice vacation atmosphere. So all in all, it's better than or as good as even.

Speaking of food, I think I've found the stash of chocolates, hehehe. Time to stuff some into my bag, for tomorrow is a day of long breaks. Cheers!

Lethargy and related matters (draft)

[NOTE: Was working on this earlier today, thought I'd completed it already, but upon rereading realized that I wasn't being as clear as I could be. For the sake of posting something today, I've patched it up a bit so the holes don't gape as huge. But this is a draft which may be revised later on.]

Even with all my good intentions, it's all too easy to succumb to plain old-fashioned laziness. I've ten 500-word articles to submit tomorrow night, and yet I've finished only one, last night (EDIT: I've finished them all, yaaaay).

Lethargy must be at least partly due to personality and predisposition. There are those people, after all, who seem to prefer remaining busy all the time. And then there are those people who prefer to slack off and exert effort (when necessary) only at the last possible moment. I think I'm somewhere in the middle, if leaning towards the latter.

What do I mean by "personality and predisposition"? Predisposition of course refers to some innate attitude towards something, but in fact I realize that any predisposition is never simply inborn, but rather is induced. How one was raised, social context, and personal experiences are all possible factors that lead to the formation of these attitudes.

In my case, I was born the youngest of four siblings, fourteen years younger than the next one in line, in fact. As you would imagine, this set me up for a rather cushy life. Some level of natural intelligence (or at least aptitude) also served to see me sail smoothly through most of grade school, high school, and early college. Hence I never really had to work hard for anything, and this shaped my expectations of the future: that things would largely work themselves out without much effort on my part.

A remark that could be made here is that people tend to have different perceptions of what constitutes "effort". Specifically, there is a certain variable threshold of resistance to different tasks. This threshold is affected by personal distinctions between "work" and "play", between merely tolerable and enjoyable activities, among other things, but the main point here is that this threshold depends largely on perception.

I think that this is a powerful realization. If only it were easier to fool oneself into thinking of all work as play, then the only remaining problem would be to find the time for all of our pursuits! However, it is usually harder, in practice, to trick oneself into liking some (at the moment) undesirable task.

Well, as some of you might already know, I've resolved to (stating it simply) get my act together this year. This resolution of course works under the assumption that my abilities and skills are more than adequate, and the only thing I'm lacking is motivation (which is, I admit, quite a different thing from just relative resistances to tasks, but they're related, in a way that I'm too lazy to elaborate on right now, so there). Or perhaps the willpower to create my own motivations (using the term a bit loosely).

Jomel's goals, indie pop

I've started to try out Joe's Goals. It's got that nifty Web 2.0 thing going for it, and seeing as how I'm all about forming good habits starting this early in the year, well, it should be helpful. Who wouldn't feel fulfilled with all these checks and plus points and graphs? It's almost like a game. (If you check my Blogger, you'll even be able to look at this chart that shows my daily points for the last week.)

Was looking up some bands and artists on Wikipedia, and came across this list of indie pop artists. A quick skim revealed more than a few familiar and well-liked artists, so I'm guessing this is the music genre that I generally listen to? (Not that I have any firm idea of what "indie" or "indie pop" actually refers to, anyway, but there we are.)

For some reason I'm feeling a bit cheerful, but a cold and a slight accompanying headache are dampening things a bit. (Wheee!)

Sick.

Ugh. My head's beginning to hurt, my nose is clogged, my throat is sore. I'm actually wishing that the weather weren't so cold. Bah.

What's new. Nothing much. Some balikbayan relatives are arriving tomorrow, so I expect some disturbance in the lazy weekend routine. I'm not sure I feel up to it at the moment, but it should be fun enough, right?

Right now, I guess I should get some rest. Just dropped by to, you know, keep the habit forming. Ciao.

The list.

I never did get around to making a comprehensive list of the things that I want to do or accomplish or implement this year. (I did list some resolutions a bit perfunctorily over here, I guess I'll give it a shot. In no particular order, or that is, in the order that I think of them, we have...



Exercise and live more healthily in general. I think this is important. My parents are both hypertensive, and I've had high blood pressure at times in the past, as well. And of course I'm much flabbier than I'd like to be. I think I've been making some (tiny) progress on this, having exercised on eight out of the ten days (so far) of this year. Dietwise, well, I'm working on it.



Another thing is to try and 'exercise' my problem solving skills, my physical intuition, and so on. The things that I would need to have in great shape, if I am to seriously enter theoretical physics. As it is, I think my approach is a bit too coursework-centric, i.e., I just study when there's an exam, I just solve required problems, and so on.

Sure, I'm doing well enough grades-wise, but I can't help but still feel inadequate. Other qualities to try to hone include independence and the indulgence and fostering of curiosity. I'm not sure how to go about doing anything about these yet, really.



Get better organized. Some progress here, too, if you can believe it. I've been making a to-do list daily, and have been able to plan for almost a week in advance, at times! (Amazing, I know.) I have yet to figure out how to use my current organizer format (index cards clipped together) for things of longer terms than just a few days. My room is still a mess, though, but, hey, baby steps.



Deal better with stress. I may seem like an easygoing guy, but there are times when small things can get me too uncomfortable. Unfinished problem sets, little things not going according to some plan, or even just the contemplation of the things that I'm missing or possibly doing wrong. (Er. You guys who're still in the same rather confused phase of life as I am in should know what I mean.)

I'm working on this, too. I've been noticing more often whenever I react inordinately to events, and whether these reactions are just brought about by some mood or other (irritable, frustrated, tired, take your pick).



Write more, get better at it. I think this is another thing I've been neglecting. I'm trying to get blogging to become a habit again. I've found that I'm generally more creative if I've been blogging a lot. I guess part of it's the practice of writing itself, even just blog entries. And another part is of course getting into the general vicinity of the creative mindset, if that makes any sense to you.



Socialize. Hey, I shouldn't knock it before I actually try it. I've always wanted to try being nice to people I don't know, but I suspect that that's still a long way down the road. In the meantime, perhaps I should try, I don't know, actually talking to people? (I think I've been improving, a little bit.)



I think that's pretty much it. Typical set of goals, I suppose, if self-centered (well, no duh) and humanistic, but that's the order of the day in my slice of society, so hey here we are.

Meeting the Nobel-winning theoretical physicist

Today was a fairly long day. First event was the conferment of the honorary degree to physicist and 2004 Nobel laureate Prof. David Gross. This was also the first in the UP Centennial lecture series, and so received a fair amount of pomp. The university officials and faculty representatives were decked out in their formalwear, with many of them wearing their sablays. President Roman, the Regents, and the University secretary were in their togas and hats. Also, the Secretary had an actual scepter that she had to hold aloft during processionals! (She would walk right in front of President Roman.)

The UP Singing Ambassadors provided some musical intermissions, which were, hmm, a bit lackluster, some would say messy. Some people gave several speeches, like President Roman and Jaime Zobel de Ayala, who was there as the Philippine chairman of the International Peace Foundation.

And then of course Prof. Gross gave his lecture. He was supposed to have talked about "the coming revolutions in fundamental physics", but he was apparently persuaded to give another, broader talk on "the lessons of science". The talk that he actually gave was interesting, yeah, but I would've liked to hear the other one better, I think. But I guess we weren't all physicists in the crowd, so...

The entire thing had video coverage, and this coverage was webcast to the other UP campuses over the Philippines. I had to wonder about the quality of these broadcasts, since when the open forum came around, we at the Film Institute could not make out what the people from the other locations were asking. They had to transmit the text through other means and have the emcee at our location read their questions out. (Though I guess the broadcast was good enough, if they were able to ask questions at all.)

When it was over I headed to Teriyaki Boy Katipunan with the physics people for lunch. Mmm, tofu steak, sukiyaki, kani fry...

Then back to NISMED at 2 pm for the Dialog with Prof. Gross, this time only with the scientific community. (Mostly physicists and such, really.) It was great, a very interesting and lively dialog took place. People asked generally good questions. I was trying to think of something to ask, but was afraid of looking a fool and asking a question that I could just as easily have answered for myself, anyway, so... Haha.

(It was rather inspiring to hear him talk, actually. He makes being a theoretical physicist sound like a hell of a lot of fun! I just have to figure out whether I like (love) doing this enough to stick with it for reals. Hmmmmmm.)

Waited around a bit at Old, then went with Anthony and the others (Rica, Angel, Aiyin) to Trinoma to look around and have dinner. We ended up eating at Le Maison, and the food was good if expensive. We also ordered too much carbs: their mashed potatoes come in huge servings, and the pasta dish we ordered felt a bit much as a result. Anthony and I also decided to split a fish dish (sole fillet with some sort of buttery sauce), which had a great soft texture and a clean taste made rich by the butter, but I think maybe we shouldn't have. We probably overate (and overspent, but hey, we're stipend kids).

Now I'm tired and sleepy. And I have to make up for the exercise I was planning to get this afternoon! Good night!

UP Centennial Kickoff!

The UP Centennial kickoff celebrations today started off rather slowly but finished rather well.

Classes were suspended at 1 pm, leaving people with nothing to do but wander around mostly at random and spend money on food and drinks while waiting for the festivities to begin. We bumped into a few orgmates: Racine, Aragorn, Kate and Jeriel, Nadi, Paula.. The class suspension/special day atmosphere is always nice, and the carless oval sections were fun, as always.

The weather didn't cooperate much, though, and by midafternoon the heat was making everyone uncomfortable. We were almost about to go home at this point, at nearly four o' clock, but we were already in position to watch the skydivers land, so.

They landed, yeah. One of them apparently missed the target quite a bit, but three of them did manage a nice fairly synchronized arrival. A few more stayed in the air, we're not sure why, but they must've come down eventually. All in all, pretty anticlimactic. I don't know what we were expecting of the skydivers, but, yeah.

Then some more aimless wandering (after meeting up with Jeanne's sister and her gay best friend), during which we met Ryan Cayabyab along the oval. (Bodjh had his picture taken with him, haha.) Eventually met up with Bodjh's boyfriend, er, Mark (?), and dropped by Quezon Hall to see what was happening.

Nothing much, so we got some food first, so we wouldn't go hungry during the concert and the fireworks display afterwards. Adora's shawarma equals not very good. If only there weren't hordes of people at nearly all the Babba's and Khaleb's.

So then back to Quezon Hall. We stayed at the front part near the clearing there for a bit, trying to get a glimpse of the pep squad performing, but soon rushed to the ampitheater for the concert. We got into pretty good positions, thankfully, although it was crowded enough to make for uncomfortable seating positions. Had to keep shifting my legs, which wasn't really easy with all the people being squished together.

There were a gajillion people at the ampitheater, seriously. When the camera shows the crowd, it looked like a shot of bleachers or seats at some stadium. Really packed.

The concert had its moments, but maybe about halfway through I bet many people were already impatient for the fireworks to go off. (I know I was, at times.) But yeah, there's nothing like feeling the ground tremble beneath you as an orchestra crescendoes into a climax.

Speaking of the orchestra, they were playing while the fireworks were going off! Very very spectacular, bombarding both the eyes and the ears. The entire crowd seemed to react as one organism, oohing and aahing at the flashier parts of the display as if on cue. (No one could help it, I think.)

No pictures of the fireworks this time, though. We thought that we would rather enjoy the fireworks display live by not worrying about taking videos or pictures, and I think it was worth it. Yay. The fireworks used were already familiar from previous years' Lantern Parade displays, but tonight's display did seem... grander, which of course translates to bundles more expensive. It couldn't have been just the orchestra, could it?

The smoky exodus was rather picture-worthy too, I thought, but we doubted we'd be able to capture the visual qualities of the scene that we would've wanted to (and besides we were tired and lazy by then), so we didn't bother trying.

[Requisite senti bit coming up, sorry.] Some people would take this opportunity to talk about how the university has changed over the years, some would say for the worse, and maybe others for the better. But I'd just like to say that, all in all, I think I don't regret choosing UP over Ateneo. Whee. Happy 100th birthday, dear UP!

(Pardon if it's a bit less smooth than normal, I need to go sleep now.)

Exercise, music

I'm finding exercise to be a great pick-me-up. It helps to wake up from afternoon naps on the weekends, and also to boost my failing energy on weekday evenings. (Yes, I'm saying this partly to convince myself to stick to the habit. Listen, you.)

I'll also get to try exercising in the mornings, because of my Tuesday-Friday 5:30-7 pm classes. I think I'd rather get my daily exercise done in the mornings on those days rather than when I get home from school, since by that time I suspect I'll be pretty tired already. Now since I leave the house at 6:30 am everyday, I'll have to get up pretty early to squeeze some exercise in my morning routine.

I have successfully gotten up at 5 am many times before already, but usually this is followed by a blissful thirty minutes of laying about and enjoying the fact that I can afford to snooze a little bit more. (Incidentally, I find that dreams are more likely to occur in this half-asleep period.)

Anyway, tomorrow's a Tuesday, and furthermore the UP Centennial Celebrations are going to be kicked off. I'm looking forward to the fireworks display, promised to be grander than the one at last year's Lantern parade. This means I'll be getting home rather late tomorrow, meaning no time for exercise in the evening, meaning that I should get my lazy ass moving tomorrow morning, yes.



I've written before about Jens Lekman (as I reread it now I find that it is a bit too gushy and, I don't know, a bit musically clueless, but there we are anyway). I've uploaded several of his songs that I especially like over here, so listen away, people. If you're not taken in by his charm, then I don't know what I'll do with you. (Probably nothing. You would be beyond help.)



Speaking of exercise and music, shameful as it might be to admit, I think I might actually enjoy, you know, those things that have you flailing around and getting sweaty in time to music. But seeing as how I don't actually live alone, well, I don't see how I'd get to seriously try it. I wouldn't pay for membership to some gym where I'll have to do these things with and in front of other people. (Maybe I should get a Dance Dance thing. But the PC's upstairs. And, anyway, no.)

Some technical difficulties.

A while back, when I decided to actually make use of this Multiply account that I had signed up for in order to view some contacts' content, I went crazy and imported all of my entries from my other blogs. Not a bad idea, but it did flood my network's inbox for a time. (Sorry about that, network!)

I usually post entries onto my Blogger, but then by some magical Internet power the stuff I was posting there ended up getting grabbed automatically by Multiply, too, within a few hours. A bit less work for me, then, to cross-post from there to here. Until it stopped working this month, by some opposing magical Internet power, I guess.

I manually imported the few entries that weren't here yet from Blogger, and in the process also fixed some timezone anomalies. Now I'm trying to decide whether it would be better to post entries from here, and just cross-post them to Blogger. Hence this test entry.



Procrastinatingly yours,
Jomel

Reporting for duty.

One.



Two.



Three!



Had no classes today, basically just hung around at the usual places: coffee at Vargas in the morning, sat at Sunken, had lunch at Mashitta, sat around at Katag. Then over to her place to try cooking tortang pancit canton and fail twice; by the third time we had achieved a moderate success, but were sort of sick of the concoction already, haha (from already having had two, not because tortang pancit canton is a bad idea).

We also got lens cleaning cloths, yay. Our glasses shall be smudged no more.

That's pretty much it, for now. (The day might not be over yet.)

Sticky noodles

I was planning to try writing something here everyday, but the DSL was down last night when I got home (yet again, crappy PLDT service), and it was nearly midnight, and I was a bit tired and sleepy already, so I just went off to sleep.

But last night was fun. Spent the afternoon and had dinner at Vilma's boarding house, thanks to her urge to feed us spaghetti. Jeanne and I brought some bread, and prepared a green salad with mango and orange, yay. Had some wine after dinner, while working on a box of chocolates and watching an amusing but fairly inscrutable Italian film. We even lit some candles stuck into empty wine bottles. Never mind if it looked more like the electricity had gone out rather than any sort of romantic.

First day of this year's classes, today, only one of my professors showed up, and we just discussed the answers to the exam we had before the break. Met with the ExL execom to discuss org-related matters. All in all, a pretty good day, I guess.



Pardon the rather uninspired writing, I'm not used to doing this anymore. Too easily distracted now, and it's not like I usually have a point, to begin with, so you see. I have a theory (read excuse): I need to get all this crap out of my system first before I can go back to my old (relatively better) ways. Yeah. Pardon the phlegm.

Let's start off the new year, shall we?

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

Even though, if you think about it, the transition from one year to the next is largely arbitrary, it still marks a beginning. I said in a recent post that I wanted to get blogging more regularly again, so, yeah, here we are.



The new year arrived here at home much like previous years have. The kids lit up some lucies, the grownups lit a few fountains and the requisite Judas belt. There was the usual assortment of food for the media noche: ham, pasta, (cheap, haha) red wine, fruit salad and so on. Nothing remarkable, really.

(Well, except that they all had a few rounds of beer afterwards, I think. And I got invited, but seeing as how I don't like how beer tastes, and since it seemed a bit awkward, still, I decided to decline.)



During these first few days of the year, I think I'd like to get a clear view of the things I'd like to implement or accomplish, sort of like, you know, resolutions. I'll come up with a final-ish sort of list by tomorrow.

For now, let's all just have a happy new year! :D