Crazy bird

I was looking out my window earlier this afternoon. First time in a while, and now that I have glasses I appreciate the view a lot more - even if it is mostly just of our backyard and of the landscape of middle-class houses beyond.

Eventually I came around to watching these two birds perched on our neighbors' television antenna. On a whim (maybe I had just woken up from a nap, I don't know) I started whistling at them, trying to chance upon some bird-enough-sounding whistles to get their attention, and I don't know, just make them look in my direction or confuse them or something. When all of a sudden the smaller one takes wing and makes to fly directly at my face, but I jerked away from my window and it swerved hard to the left.

What was it thinking?

Yawns, stretches, looks around.

Been more or less slacking off this week. Feeling a bit guilty (from a deep-seated inability to loosen up most of the time, I suppose), but am working on it, trying to enjoy this sudden (if more or less unwarranted) leisure.

For some reason whenever they cook spaghetti here at home (with more or less Filipino-style sauce), I end up overeating. And eating the stuff for both lunch and dinner. There was even some ice cream, happiness. Oh to relive those childhood days when the only problem is what to have for merienda and how to use up the time.

Well, tomorrow's going to be a new day, I expect. Should really get moving again, am feeling flabby. But such is life, more or less. (Some sort of realignment should be in order, I guess. Tomorrow.)

Another meme! (Tagged by Racine)

a. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
b. Tag seven people to do the same.
c. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."


1. I keep my Gmail and Google Reader tabs open all the time in Firefox. I check them, along with various friends pages, every so often whenever I'm online for extended periods of time, provided I'm not concentrating on anything in particular.

2. I have a rather high tolerance to alcohol (as several people could attest to :P).

3. I guess I can be rather uptight at times, in the sense of overly worrying whenever things don't go exactly as I planned, or about not keeping above a certain threshold of productivity, and things like that. I'm guessing that I seem rather carefree to most people, but I'm not like that all the time.

4. Given #3, I can still be amazingly lazy at times. It's a crazy pendulum, which I have yet to really set at equilibrium, i.e., my balancing skills are still somewhat lacking, but improving.

5. I keep an "organizer" of sorts in the form of 3"x5" index cards held together by a small black binder clip. What it actually is is just a collection of daily to-do lists/reminders that only stretch for a week in advance, at maximum. I've been meaning to rethink its organization to make it a bit more useful, but haven't gotten around to doing so yet.

6. I sometimes snore, a little, I hear from people. But not overly loudly..

7. I love playing RPGs, usually old console ones. I'm no judge of game greatness, I just know what I enjoy playing, even if people might see some of these games as rather flat, repetitive, or boring. I shrug and continue suspending my disbelief of these tiny video game worlds, if only for just enough time to finish with them and move on to the next, until it's over.


Now, because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to come up with seven names and am not sure there are that many people who'll read this anyway, I tag everyone who reads this sentence. Yes, you. Tell us your secretsess.

Just dropping by!

Pretty busy week, with org activities (apps' night last Wednesday, the booth at CAL this entire week) and other, ehem, extracurricular activities (physics people dinner++ last night, Vimmy's despedida later, etc).

Fun times, got to try new things, but I'm feeling a bit guilty about happening to neglect things like schoolwork and research. Ahem.

Well, anyway, I have to be on the go again in a bit. No real rest until tonight or tomorrow, by which time I think I'll be trying to catch back up anyway, but yeah, cheers!

Trashspotting - filthy purple bag.

A roll of masking tape. A small roll of Scotch tape, a bigger roll, a pair of scissors (pink). A stapler (pink). Used index cards (white), unused index cards (purple). Small black binder clips. A calculator whose batteries are dead. Two containers of different brands of mechanical pencil lead (but no mechanical pencil). A "daily refreshener" spray thing, a hair brush (slightly used). A black and pink frilly umbrella. Notebooks, loose paper, readings. Watchmen. A pack of seasoned seaweed strips, packed in threes. Two pieces of finger-sized pepperoni. Some sesame brittle in a Ziploc bag. A bar of Meiji Black (slightly used). Coins, old envelopes, a draft of an essay. Old movie tickets, play tickets. Scotch Brite High Performance Cloth - something to wipe my glasses clean with. (Later: a GTEC pen, an index card organizer thingy, a UP ID. Previously: two wayward PET bottles.)

Watchmen

We got ourselves a copy of Alan Moore's Watchmen recently, and I have to say that it really is some piece of work. It's immersive, richly detailed, populated with complex, interesting characters, clever, and eminently worth rereading. (Which I am doing, once I get it back tomorrow. Whee.)

Moore himself says that structure was one of the major aspects of Watchmen: repeating motifs at various scales, the whole comic-within-a-comic, and so on. But even as a straight story, it would work, on the strength of its characterization and pacing.

(I also have to say that Alan Moore makes a pretty good interviewee; his interviews tend to be lively and engrossing.)

If only graphic novels weren't so expensive - but I'm beginning to see how the better ones might be more than worth it.

The Italian Job

So this semester is supposed to be the second (and final) semester for our CWTS, right, but we haven't really been working on it, because, well, our CWTS is really rather boring (either administrative office tasks or spending time at the NIP Library doing nothing at all), and the fact that the coordinators are rather ineffective, too. Seeing as how the semester has only two months or so, left, we finally got around to worrying about it again, and a few of us managed to snag a translation job that we can do at home and will be credited with an equivalent number of CWTS hours.

Basically we're translating problems and solutions from the National Italian Physics Olympiad. They have a good archive online, but entirely in Italian. So far, it's been surprisingly enjoyable. I'm guessing it's because the part-time job (cranking out search engine optimization content, website filler, etc.) has upped my tolerance to drudgery. And this translation gig actually makes sense, and is going to be useful for my adviser - he'll be training the Philippine contestants for the next International Physics Olympiad this summer, and these problems should come in handy.

I'm about 60% done with 2003's Theory Test and its solutions, might post it up somewhere just for kicks when I'm finished with it. For now though I guess I'll get some more work done on other schoolwork things. The past few days haven't exactly been productive. Bye, blog, for now.