09:49 AM All people from UP Diliman, please read on; this concerns your safety.

On my first day of school this year, which was two Fridays ago, I had lunch at Cafe Diliman, a cafeteria a small jaunt away from the AS building. I was by myself but I had no problem with it. As I left the place, a short fat guy approached me and said, "Hi, I'm Paul." Being wary of strangers, I didn't reveal my name, and I asked him what he wanted. He persisted in asking me for my name, the reason being "Gusto ko lang makipagkilala -- I just want to get to know you." Of course this creeped me out majorly, so I said I wasn't interested and went on my way. And he followed me muttering "I just want to get to know you" until I turned around and glared at him.

I thought that was the end of that, so last Tuesday, I had lunch with my sister and a female friend at the same place. As we left, I was walking just a little ahead of the other two when I sensed someone joining our walk. I heard the phrase "Hi, I'm Paul" and turned around to see the same weirdo trying to introduce himself to my two companions. I signaled with my eyes to them to keep walking. "Taga-CS din ba kayo -- Are you from CS as well?" he asked them, to start a conversation. This time I glared at him again, and he left us alone.

That should have been enough for me to call a guard's attention. Thinking about it now, no guards patrol that short distance from the cafeteria back to AS. You could say it's a blind spot, perfect for predatory people. If I had been a freshman in UP, alone in the big University, I might have naively welcomed the friendship of that strange guy, not knowing what dangers that could pose for me. Be careful out there, people. Don't talk to strangers is good advice.

10:27 AM I applied for an account at Fateback.com, which also supplies free webhosting through the domains Imess.net, Deep-ice.com, and many others. Since they give you 60 megs of space and no restrictions on bandwidth, I decided to move print/scan there. As some people may know, print/scan is a photography and art site my sister and I share.

Now, what do I do with my digitalrice space? Anyone have any ideas?

06:12 PM An extremely large family lives in the house next to mine. Since my room's windows face their veranda, a lot of noise filters into our house; this is all the more compounded since they're composed of a young couple and their many children, maternal and paternal grandparents, and a great-aunt and great-uncle. I am frequently woken by shrieking or wailing kids and slamming doors, yet the major irritant is the old man's radio which blasts AM talk radio into my room morning, noon, and night.

Sometimes it even seems like he turns up the volume intentionally when some pro-Erap (ergo, pro-stupidity) broadcast comes on. I could probably try to appreciate that I'm being exposed to political views aside from the ones I hold, but the arguments are unstructured, frequently resorting to emotion (argumentum ad misericordiam) and so-called "public" call-in polls, which aren't really representative of the public anyway.

I can't not listen, though; if anyone's ever heard Philippine AM radio, they'd agree with me that it's hard to tune out because of the nasality of the announcer's voice and the loud volume at which it's broadcast.

07:17 PM I saw a mouse in a computer store. Not the kind you point and click with; oh no, this type of mouse was the furry kind with a nose and ears and whiskers, and makes squeaking sounds when you chase it around a room. It was kind of disgusting because it was scurrying around in the window display, and no one inside the store seemed to notice it was there. It had long hairs and short hairs, large hindquarters, and it looked nothing like cute Mr. Jingles from The Green Mile. Shudder shudder. The mouse might have even been an imported mouse; it could have come from Hong Kong as a stowaway in boxes containing motherboards and monitors.

Anyway, I got my hair cut today. I finally tired of my long hair; besides, it's too high-maintenance for me, with all my running around campus. I wanted it to look like Mandy Moore's short hairdo during the MTV Movie Awards, but I messed up and selected some other short hairstyle in a catalogue. The picture to the right is a rendering of what my cut looks like, courtesy InStyle makeover. Ü

08:12 AM I'm making Sunday a day to post links to other websites I've liked from the past week.

1. What's this about the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood? Get your own Ya-Ya Name! I'm Princess Young Tiger.

2. If you're in the mood for some offbeat short stories that more often than not have a touch of the ironic or melancholic about them (trust me, they're good), try Catfish on the Table.

That's all for now. I'm really not feeling up to scratch today, and I've run out of stuff to write. Ü

07:09 PM Ladies and gentlemen, you are now viewing the website of a Philweavers member. Woohoo! Ü

07:53 AM Grrr! I can't believe my dad woke me up to answer a phone call that turned out to be a marketing gimmick!

Since all my batchmates in UP have graduated save a few, and all of them are either working or looking for jobs, when a batchmate (who I'm not particularly close to) texted me for my home phone number out of the blue, I knew something was up. And she called me at 7:30 AM, for crying out loud, to ask if I have relatives in the States and if I knew their home phone numbers so that her company could call them and sell them international call cards. Of course, I didn't have the information, so she thanked me for my time, and I said it was no problem that she called.

Yet, it was a problem. I couldn't go back to sleep anymore; I was furious with my dad for waking me up. "You should tell them I'm asleep, then ask if it's important," I told him. Lessons learned by my dad and my batchmate: don't wake your sleep-deprived daughter on a Saturday, and don't call your sleep-deprived batchmates early in the morning to ask them stuff that would cost them (or someone they know) money.

08:38 AM I forgot to mention that a few days ago, my Windows ME operating system started going buggy--my computer would freeze up and programs would fail to start. So, I told my parents, "Maybe it's time we tried to run XP again." The computer had been shipped to us with an XP installation, but Edsamail wouldn't work on it. I wanted to see if the compatibility wizard in XP could simulate a Windows 98 environment for Edsamail.

Unfortunately, it couldn't, so I was at a loss; uninstall XP, lose the beautiful user-friendly interface, and go back to buggy ME? Then I found out I had unpartitioned space in my hard drive, so we formatted that and created a pseudo-hard drive on which we installed Windows 98, and then Edsamail. Now our computer can boot up either XP or 98. Sounds flashy, hmm?

09:00 AM My sister and I discovered that the temperature in our house reaches levels at which flowers are naturally dehydrated. Well, not really, but the roses we'd taken home from the party last Saturday are now dried as if they were put into a flower press, except that they're not flattened. This phenomenon happened last February and April to my corsages from the Phi Kappa Phi induction ceremony and College Recognition. What makes this a shocking discovery is that way back during my elementary graduation, I was given a necklace of sampaguita flowers, and I put them in my room. A few days later they were rotting like any dead thing would. Yet it seems the average temperature has slowly crept up the scale to dehydration levels. How scary.

The featured website for today is El Guapo's Log. El Guapo is someone I barely knew from a mailing list (and I can't remember whether I actually met him), but his writing style always brought on a laugh; it was self-deprecating and sarcastic. And the tradition continues on his blog. He writes about his flatulence brought on by drinking milk (which I think is simple lactose intolerance and can be cured by not drinking milk--after all, there are calcium supplements out there), his perception that Kylie Minogue is an airhead and is one of the 80's acts best left unrevived (but she's got smarts, and she never left the music scene anyway; "Locomotion" was her first single, so she should be excused for that), and his blog-banter back and forth between Benj and Charles. He doesn't have permalinks, though, so it's kind of difficult to point out which post I'm talking about, no? Just read the whole thing!

08:57 PM Today was UP's 94th anniversary of its foundation, so classes were suspended at 2:30 PM today. This marks the second class session of Journalism 196 in which we didn't have class, and frankly, I'm worried. What if I'm not qualified to take the subject? The deadline for changing the classes in which one is enrolled is on Friday, and if I don't get to do that, I'll have to drop the subject. If I drop the subject, that would mean not getting a refund, and that would be a waste of cheap, subsidized tuition.

In my Communication 100 class, there's this girl who would be labeled "trying-hard" in our Tagalog-English patois, or a "dork" in plain English. She's overenthusiastic and awkward; during conversations that are already coming to a natural end she tries to force a longer discussion or force a connection toward niche topic she likes. In other words, she reminds me of myself some years ago.

It's like I'm seeing a personality mirror of myself; of course, she doesn't look like me, but she wears glasses and retainers too. She obsesses about the same stuff I used to obsess about--computers and anime. She remarked in class during a discussion about artificial communication, "I have a very intense relationship with my computer," all the while looking like a mildly rabid dog. Much as I'd like to make fun of her and her strangeness, I am reminded that I was once like that. I, too, once sought company in the presence of a computer, a tabula rasa that didn't talk back and only did what I wanted it to. I, too, once sought comfort in the world of anime, using it as an escape and consequently deteriorating in real-life, interpersonal relationships. I needed to be understood, needed to be given space and time to grow into my own identity--one that I didn't manufacture from a patchwork of borrowed personalities that were popular.

All this connects with our discussion in that same class: we communicate because of four needs, one being the need for identity. By communicating with other people, we learn to distinguish between ourselves and the selves of others. We begin to determine what we like or what we don't like. In short, we find out who we are, and this identity becomes the base (or frame of reference) from which we make our decisions in life.

07:39 PM I went to a friend's eighteenth birthday party last night. It was pretty much fun--my dress fit well, my friends were there, and most importantly, I didn't feel so insecure about my weight. The debutante is somewhere around my build, so there were no discussions on the "oh you're so thin" topic, which frequently happens when I go to some of my other friends' gatherings.

After the program (it was a semi-formal affair), there were dance instructors (what we call D.I.'s) who went around pulling people out of their chairs to dance the swing and reggae. I had a turn on the dance floor, and I was getting along pretty well when my D.I. swung me into a spin and inadvertently let go of me. Now, I'm an accident-prone sort of person around high heels and skirts, so I skidded, landed on my butt, and promptly kept skidding on the floor! Fortunately no one was looking, the lights were low, and I had the presence of mind to keep my knees together to avoid exposing myself. It hurt--not only physically, but my pride was wounded. I have a really high grade in my Social Dance class, and I must say I was showing off just a little. This always happens to me. Ü

I've been feeling a little sick in my stomach today. I figure it must be the red wine I drank as a toast to the birthday celebrator; it might have irritated my stomach lining or something. I didn't even get to enjoy the lechon my mom brought home from her trip to Cebu. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll feel better.

12:15 PM Little by little I'm realizing that I'm outgrowing Portland. Nearly everyone on my links list is getting hosted, and I'm feeling kind of lonely here on free space. I'd like to be part of someone's community. And since it looks like my plans for buying a domain will be falling through (maybe I'll finally get it in December, but no concrete plans yet), I'm looking for a host. If you're interested, you can email me or sign my guestbook. Thanks!

11:59 PM My Friday Five will appear here in a few moments...

Okay, here it is:
1. How often do you do laundry? We hire someone to wash the clothes twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.

2. What's in a typical wash load? Clothes and delicates, mostly. Bedsheets are washed once a week.

3. Front or top loader? Powder or liquid detergent? Our machine's a top-loader, and we used to use powder detergent. Our aunt gave us this huge bottle of liquid detergent, though, so that's what we're using right now.

4. Do you use fabric softener in the rinse cycle? I guess so. My mom buys six packets of Downy every week. Ü

5. Dryer or clothesline? Both, actually. It would take way too long to hang all the sopping-wet clothes out to dry on the clothesline, not to mention that the line might break under the weight.

All this talk about laundry brings to mind Shakira's "Laundry Service" album. Not that I'd actually listened to it, but I wonder why she named it that way.

06:00 AM Pilfered from The Tinyblog by following a link from this site, which I found through my referral list. Ü Ah, BlogSnob rules! I suggest you get the complete survey through the link above. I've deleted some irrelevant questions in my version.

Blogger Pride! The Blogger Survey

Ethics/Personal Life:
Has a blog post ever got you into trouble? Not really, since I don't express my opinions too strongly. When I did, most people who read my blog agreed with me. I don't like stepping on other people's toes, so I walk on eggshells and don't usually respond to what other people write.

How many people do you know face-to-face who read your weblog? Among my relatives, my cousin David and my other web-savvy cousin read this. Other than them, as far as I know only Nix, Benj, and JM read this blog regularly.

Do you modify or delete posts? How often? Why? Sure, I do that all the time because of grammar and spelling mistakes. I also modify posts when I find out what I expressed then has some sort of logical fallacy or misinformation. Why? Because I don't like looking like an idiot. Ü

How much is your weblog a part of your personal identity? Do you feel like people who don't know about your blog don't really know you? There are no secrets here, so those who don't know about my blog aren't really missing anything except for updates on what I'm currently doing or thinking. I reserve private things for my offline diary, which others are not meant to read anyway.

How has blogging changed your life? I write a lot more here than in my offline diary because it's easier to type than to hold a ballpen for several hours, so it's definitely helped me put my thoughts in some tangible medium. When I read back on what I wrote last year or last month I also get insights on how I think, or on how I used to think.

Technical/Design:
Do you know how to code at all? Did you learn how to code by blogging? I know how to code (in fact I validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional Ü). I knew how to do some basic tags before I started to blog, but I used to use Netscape Composer to put my pages together. It became really difficult to keep updating my blog using that method, so I learned. Fast.

What weblogging tool do you use and why? Pitas was the first blogging tool I used, but on the whole I update my blog manually. No Greymatter, no Blogger, no MovableType, though I've tried the first two tools.

Is your design an integral part of your writing and presentation? Frankly, I find that design gets me a whole lot of visitors, and judging on my own preferences I like reading blogs that have good design and presentation as well. So, yes.

How many times have you changed your weblog design entirely (or nearly so)? Monthly. I shall refer you to my collective to answer this question.

Readership/Motivation:
How many people would you guess (educated guess based on hit counts/logfiles) read your weblog on a weekly basis at least? I don't really know, but I get around 60 hits a week. Most referrals come from 15 people, at the most.

What have you done to get more people to look at your site? I've submitted to Google, and joined some webrings and BlogSnob. I also sign people's guestbooks and link to sites I like.

What one or two characteristics make a blog really popular? Interesting commentary--stuff that makes people think and want to respond by blogging back. And design.

What really popular weblog do you think most deserves it? Brownpau offers a really great mix of internet and programming blathering, musings on a personal God, and tidbits of his personal life. And Wil Wheaton is cool, although his massive following can partly be attributed to his fame. Ü

Influence of Other Bloggers:
What other blogger is most responsible for you starting your own weblog? That would be Tin, back when she was on Pitas. We visited a net cafe once and she started typing in all this HTML code into a text box, and I saw her responding to what other people on her links list had to say. I wanted to get in on the action, too.

Who was the first other blogger (that you know of) who put you on their sidebar? How did it influence your blogging? Tin knew about my blog, so she linked me. I didn't have a tracker or a guestbook, so if anyone clicked through at that time I didn't feel self-conscious about what I blogged.

What other blogger do you most admire for their writing skills? Josh gets my brain whirring because of the topics he discusses.

What other blogger do you most admire for their design skills? I must say that the first blog I remember noting for its layout was Clarissa's, and she's kept at it. She's still one of my major influences for layouts.

Who is a blogger you think is really good but doesn't get nearly the attention they are worthy of? JM writes good essays and talks about the city in which we both live, but he doesn't get much attention because he updates sporadically. Get the hint, Mr. Butiki? Ü

Do you feel obligated to link people who you never read? Once I put them on my links list, I read them faithfully. I do forget to list people sometimes, but when they turn up on my referrals list I get pangs of guilt for not linking back.

Bonus Question:
Do you fear The Booge? No. As a matter of fact, I adore it--or him. Are you talking about the person or the blog? Ü

08:30 PM While waiting for enlistment in Journalism subjects to begin, my sister and I were waiting outside the Mass Comm building when the strangely-familiar security guard suddenly posed me a question. "Kapatid mo ba yung nasa AS?" he said, asking if I had a sister who was a student in another building on campus. Because my sister was right beside me, I immediately denied it. Perhaps I had a lookalike? He asked if my older sister studied in the AS building. I answered that I was the older sister, and that the girl next to me was the younger sister, and we were only two. It turns out that he had been assigned to the AS building last year. Since my sister and I shared a locker and were often seen going about the building together, he knew us from sight.

This security guard was an answered prayer, in a way. I'd started to feel the jitters since last night because I had never enlisted in a subject in Mass Communication before. All the people I'd known who had studied in that building had either graduated or I'd lost their cellphone numbers. I prayed that God would somehow make this enlistment process easy on me. I've never been the friendly or bold type, and to enlist in UP you need both and either of those attributes to get the subject you want. I needed some psychological support, and the presence of a familiar face eased some of my fears.

07:19 AM Is today Father's Day? It isn't listed on any calendar in this house. In any case my family's going to National Sports Grill in Greenbelt to celebrate, since my mom won't be around next Sunday because of a business trip.

Why am I awake so early? Perhaps the beat of 60's music was too much for my brain to keep still. At first I thought I was hearing Lou Bega--and I don't particularly like his music. Too irritating and dated, which brings to mind that Jimmy Ray guy. I shudder in horror.

A friend found this site accidentally. We'd both been part of the Jonny Quest Mailing List, and we met around three years ago during one of her visits to Manila. The last time I saw her was two years ago because I unsubscribed last year from the JQML and haven't been in touch. I've added her to my links list now, so I don't lose track. Ü

11:50 AM While surfing, I usually bookmark pages that I'd like to come back to sooner or later, or pages that I want to mention here. Somehow I keep forgetting to discuss them or to add them to my links list, but today I was seized with the urgent desire to clean out my Favorites folder.

1. Ever wanted to blog some thoughts, but were too afraid of people who know you reading them? Anonymous gives bloggers a place to rant without being identified. I'm thinking of trying it, but I already blog at too many places. I don't want to feel "like butter scraped over too much bread", as Bilbo Baggins says.

2. I thought I was a good website/graphics designer, but matched against these people at Half-Project, which is composed of the top Philippine designers, I feel like the plankton that small fry eat.

3. For those who find it difficult to wake up in the morning, but hate drinking coffee, here's a product in which you might be interested. Caffeinated Soap, from the folks at ThinkGeek, is supposed to deliver a caffeine jolt to your system through skin absorption. Wait a minute, isn't that how LSD was delivered to little children? By putting stickers on them? It gives bathtime a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

4. Mikko and Macy have done it, and now it's my turn! InStyle Makeover is such a cute tool. Here are my makeover results.

5. Watch a beginner blog. Actually he's not new to the Internet, but self-admittedly "fought long and hard with the Blogger web interface". I like how he writes, though.

6. If you think a low-carbohydrate diet is bad for you, here's one site written and maintained by a normal person who's struggled against the battle of the bulge, and is winning--the low-carb way.

I've also added a ton of links to my daily reads.

07:11 AM MTV broadcast its 2002 Movie Awards yesterday in the US. It wasn't a live telecast, and the winners have already been awarded. Unfortunately, MTV Asia viewers will only be able to see the program on June 22. For the curious, this article discusses who ruled the night.

Speaking of MTV Asia, has anyone noticed that it's been replaced by MTV Indonesia on ParaÑaque Cable? Or is this true for all Philippine TV cable providers? MTV Asia had good programming, without the distractions of MTV Lokal and other OPM artists. Now all I have as an alternative are these Indonesians (no offense meant, Selene) who speak in a language totally unfamiliar to my ears and eyes. It's painful.

Still on the topic of music channels, Studio 23's MYX has changed its format and its VJs. One of the new VJs is Franco Mabanta, AKA "Jasper" of the Coca-Cola commercial. Will we still be seeing Ed Feist? Ü The major change here is that MYX now looks like a videoke channel, and they show more of the pop rather than the alternative and indie side of music. All the music videos have cheesy-looking subtitles for the song lyrics. I mean, yeah they can have their "new attitude" and all that, but the least they could do was make it look decent! Something like a different font, smaller letters, things like that. Before all the changes MYX looked like a respectable alternative to MTV. Now, it's still an alternative, but a less respectable-looking one.

05:49 PM I just got the invite to post at the No-Clue group blog! I've never been part of a group blog before. Ü Well, there's the Prepaid Blog, but that's more of a review board for prepaid internet cards. No-Clue is a general-purpose blog where I can just hang out.

09:09 PM Not that I'm discontented with my current blog links, but I'm looking for more reading material. If you'd like me to take a look at your blog or online journal and link to it (and believe me, I will link to it if I like it), sign my guestbook, or email me.

08:59 PM I found this site, Troubled Youth, through my referrer list. I must admit, Post-It graffiti does appeal to me, in a weird, against-the-flow way. I read all the graffiti found on bathroom stall doors, and while I'd like to add my own comments to them, I often find that vandalism irks me. At least with a Post-It, no harm done--and you'd have managed to share your thoughts as well.

11:34 PM Someone once recommended that aspiring writers keep paper and pen at hand to jot down whatever comes to mind. Otherwise, you could forget that flash of inspiration you had during calculus class while your teacher droned on about integration and differentiation. Ü Today I took up the practice while waiting for my line at the registrar's office to move. So, what was I doing at the Registrar's Office when I supposedly have already graduated?

I completely missed the deadline to enter the master's degree program in Journalism (or Broadcast Communication) this coming semester, so I face sixteen weeks of nothing but sitting in front of the computer typing out yet more entries for this blog/journal. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly not the way I'd like to live four months of my life. So, I hit upon the novel idea of taking some additional units in my university as a way to prepare myself for eventual entry into the MA program. After all, I come from a different college within the campus than that of Mass Communication, and there are different cultures and conventions endemic to each college.

I needed a University admission slip to be able to enroll in the subjects, so I hauled my big butt all the way over to Diliman to get it. Unfortunately, today's activity also coincided with throngs of freshmen enrolling. You can actually tell who they are by the way they peer at signs and by the presence of a companion, usually a parent. Additionally, there were a number of Korean students who wanted to enter the University in order to learn English. These persistent freshmen with their companions and the Koreans with the language barrier eventually riled the female guard at the entrance.

It was really refreshing to be able to record my thoughts on paper as they occurred rather than to wait until I got home. The female guard admitting she spoke broken English, the freshies asking all sorts of questions about where what building was, or what subjects to take--writing down all these things set off a train of thought that eventually turned philosophical, in a self-realization of sorts. I wrote, "I am not wise; I am prudent, according to Hobbes." Prudence of course being the sort of wisdom acquired by observation, and then in the future being able to tell which phenomena occur when some other phenomenon happens. The University is familiar ground; I am wise in its ways, of frequently long lines, sometimes incompetent officials, and the occasional Korean transfer students.

My eyeballs are sticking to my eyelids now, so I need to go to bed. G'night. Ü

08:33 AM What I was talking about yesterday was that while watching How to Live like a Pop Star on MTV, and later Urban Legends, I realized that in everything that I want to become, whether it be singer, writer, or athlete, I want to be a famous singer, a famous writer, a famous athlete. Even in my endeavors on the web, one of my hidden agendas is to be linked by a lot of people, to be admired by a lot of people. I always knew I was a teensy bit materialistic, but this just tops the charts. It's taken me a lot of guts to come out and say this, and to admit this to myself affronts everything I thought I knew about me. Ü Ain't it funny?

09:47 PM I'm watching Urban Legends: Final Cut on HBO right now, and I suddenly got this idea into my head that I want to explore being a filmmaker. I want to be so many different things. Ü More on this tomorrow. I need to concentrate concentrate concentrate... focus focus focus... hello? hello? hello? echo echo echo... Ü

03:21 PM Oh look! I validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional!

12:48 PM Ah, June... the month right in the middle of the year, the month of weddings, the month when I change my layout. Ü

I got the idea for this while watching a Kylie Minogue music video on MTV Europe. It was a fluke, actually, because we weren't supposed to be getting that channel on cable. After I'd watched a few minutes of it, the channel suddenly started showing movies. In any case I'd gotten my inspiration.

I've also begun taking steps toward making my site W3C-compliant. Right now I'm putting it through the checker just to make sure that my coding's valid. Ü All I can say is I've made a big change in the way I make my web pages, and it's much easier now.

I wonder if my cousin is back from the US already. I've found a wonderful cheap host and domain registrar. Hey David, if you're reading this, text me, please?