WORK-RELATED DRUDGERY IS THE LEADING CAUSE OF BOREDOM WHICH LEADS TO POSTAL WORKER SYNDROME. 

 If it wasn't gonna be on paper it might as well be here. What's that? Here. My work rant.  I got here last August 
 and scoured the Village Voice online for a good week and found a job almost immediately after. Slightly above 
 min-wage I used to say, but it surely wasn't that. I could've been hired to clean out rotslop and I wouldn't have 
 complained. If only the place weren't so bad, or that the employees got fair treatment. But who would've known 
 that I'd move from my cushy soft n' artsy job in Chi (and did I love it there - sure you know why)  to a grungy, 
 staring at the wall sweatshop in the most fascinating place on earth. Yup. New York City.

 Wonder what all that means. Well, it's Wednesday. I remember doing the 10 minute marathon, trying to make 
 it to work on time. A good half mile and end up all sweaty from the effort. Into that mice trap dustbin of a work 
 environment. I CAN'T WORK LIKE THIS! or some other rant would fill the air with amazing regularity. Come to 
 think of it, what was I doing to myself - staying there for the six months that I did? Good thing the experience 
 didn't leave me with any lasting scars. The raging eye infection, the chronic sleep deprivation. The daily crush of 
 taking the 4 or the 5 Manhattan bound trains. Eight hours of standing up at a production job that offered you or 
 anyone a chance to lose digits with machines wielding razor sharp edges. The constant barrage of the tinny 
 speaker not three feet from your head, the whirring hum of the mat-cutter in its inadequate housing whining at a 
 high pitch. Sorry? I can't hear you? Of course I was prolly going deaf too. All this for the measly bi-weekly pay 
 that was consumed by taxes even before it got to me. Give it all to some G-man's weekend golf fund, why not?

 Don't get me wrong. The guys I worked with were honest, hard-working (well... for the most part, well... except for 
 a few idiot slackers) men who were worth their salt, but I'm not about to list what pissed me off. I'm glad I got 
 out of that dingy rathole. They called it ever so affectionate names as "the dungeon", or "slave galley". My first 
 paying job in the big bad city. It's been a month or so since, but I'm still a little disturbed by all that's happened. 
 Maybe all I need's some sleep. The old ghost's coming back. It's been here for the last two weeks, my one-two 
 punch of insomnia-sleep dep. Well, I didn't like Fight Club immensely for NO reason. I just think that there's a 
 fine line between getting the movie ("Oh I get it. Very clever.") to living something like it. I've seen it 7 times.
 Fight Club again. Time for me to see a really good movie and get over it. Did I mention how much I'm into that 
 movie? That's another forum. I'll post my stuff on that a little later. 

 It's TWO in the afternoon already?! I musta been sleeping like a rock. 
 Well. The most I can, you know. Time to make myself useful. 

 Goodmorning! (4-7PM) You now have just four days to do your GDF! taxes. Heh. I finally shook myself from the 
 stupor I'd been stuck in these last few days and filed mine eel-ecch-trawn-eek-olly. That was fun. I'd known that 
 it'd involve the web (well, pushing it back so far into the deadline surely made it the obvious choice) and maybe 
 subconsciously I was keeping it 'til almost  the last minute, but I wouldn't say :savoring: the experience. Now all I 
 have to do is wait the 24/48 hours it takes for the e-file to clear and I'm scot free. What am I doing with my life 
 next? It's been 33 days since I last saw a break room or punched out for lunch. I don't miss the grind, but I 
 could run out of things to do around here. How possible would it be for me to get a decent bike for some serious 
 offroad riding in the Spring? 

 I DREAM IN CODE. I TALK IN MY SLEEP. I WISH FOR A T1'S SPEED. AND SEEK AN END TO ALL SUCKY INTERFACING.

 04 13 : Remembering my first month here in Brooklyn. Re-wrote the blog for that transitional phase right here.
 (The coding on that page turned out to be very well-behaved. I wonder what I did right......) Reminiscing, maybe? 
 Found this modem speed test on cnet.com, saved the results. Distressing little fact, I think, whenever I have 
 to download something useful. That would mean MEGABYTES. I'm still withdrawing from my heavy Napster binges, 
 although it's been pretty good. Last night I downloaded the internet edit of La La La (The Freshmaka), one of the 
 first ever songs I downloaded from the web when I was getting into the whole mp3 thing. And I was a late 
 bloomer in that aspect of net-existence. I also tried dl-ing a track from FreeDrive (warning! service sucks! do not 
 attempt!) that I stored as a back up last year. Since then they've done a cosmetic front page update, but their 
 site pretty much sucks. Lousy GUI (graphic user interface - how the user deals with their progs, &c., bad deal!) 
 and the feed (data transfer) times out in the middle of it. They offer to burn your stored data onto a disc, but do 
 I need that? Data's mine in the first place|Sigh|Some people just keep on jacking their fellow man the wrong way. 

 4AM zombie-surfing. I don't quite know why I'm still up. Maybe Neo would. Wait, that's fiction. IWTBF. Right. 
 Which means nothing to the casual reader. Your acronyms are only as good as they're understood. 

 INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. 

 Which is why this byte article was sortov useful. But that's just plain old Hollywood romanticizing the image/idea 
 of hackers. I'd say it was a recent sidetrip to happyhacker.org that helped me more in my search. Also, the elite 
 at HH tend to have a sense of humor I appreciate. Where their 04 06 splash page reads: 
 "By 2002, approximately 19 million people worldwide will have the skills to mount a cyber attack." 
 -- Frank G. Cilluffo, Director, Task Force on Information Warfare & Information Assurance.
 Where will you stand in this war? 
 Defender     Computer Criminal    Bystander.
 Computer crime news, updated every 15 minutes".... 
 (that's a lot of jolt-induced paranoia there, buddy). And the link to Bystander led to, where else, but AOL.com. 
 Heh. This site's full of info, but nothing I haven't already heard. Another splash below, ripping into AOL.

 Do you use AOL? Want to hack the Internet? Sorry, AOL is a nightmare. Many versions use a proprietary TCP/IP
 stack, meaning you don't get on the real Internet with it. Also, even AOL 6.0 can mess up your network settings, 
 so if you want to run a home network AOL might kill it. If you haven't been able to telnet using AOL, it 
 nevertheless is possible to use AOL get on the real Internet and telnet Click here to learn how.

 (I wonder what the REAL internet looks like) But really now. Nineteen million? Doesn't that go along the lines of 
 the 3 vampire pyramid scheme? (Another lost memory from my childhood) Where, if there were these three 
 vampires and each one had to feed on a human once a night, and feeding on humans turned them into vamps. 
 Very soon the entire world would be turned into vampires. ....or something to do with exponentials. Long time ago 
 it was. But after scouring HH that I decided to download a personal firewall, install it and learn how to use it. And 
 now I'm humming along happily on the net, just like before, but feeling a little safer this turn. When you really 
 really think about it: who would take pains to hack some guy, some private citizen, anyway? But you can never 
 tell. So rather than lose sleep over a (prolly) legitimate reason, okay, I'll go along this time (rare event, take a 
 pic, folks) and knowing that I'm helping make the world a better place gives me a sense of quiet. :Maybe: 

 04 13 day : Hey tax-man. Okay, deep breathe. And the winner gets the prize of.... a refund? In most cases 
 you're liable to owe the guv'mint some cash and not the other way around. I thought I'd complicated the already 
 gnarly proceedings by moving to NYC. Well, not that my business mattered to anyone else, but apparently the 
 guv'mint owes it to you to track where, what, when and how you're doing what you do. Listen up. Helpful insert 
 coming right up. Question 1: If I lived in the state of Illinois (name of state can be changed) for the most part 
 of the year THEN I moved to New York (time of move not applicable) |drumroll please| 
 do I need to file NEW YORK NON-RESIDENT taxes?

 NO. You don't have to. As explained in the following documents prepared by our little worker bees in these pages:
 

 City of New York Department of Finance 
 | http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dof/html/taxforms.html
 | http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dof/html/taxfrm00.html
 | http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dof/html/taxfrm99.html

 New York State Dept. of Taxation and Finance main site
 | http://www.tax.state.ny.us/
 New York State Dept. of Taxation and Finance 
 Individual Taxpayer Page
 | http://www.tax.state.ny.us/pit/

 Department of Taxation and Finance Home Page 
 | http://www.tax.state.ny.us/search/search.asp
 (Run a search for "non-resident")
 | http://www.tax.state.ny.us/pi/commuter_tax_faqs.htm

 04 13 night : It's dark again. I'm tired, but relieved at having gotten my !@#$% taxes done. At least that's outta 
 the way. I really don't have a good reason why I'm feeling grumpy. Supper was good pizza, and I've laid off the 
 after dinner sweets pretty well. I'm sure it's the lack of sleep that's getting to me. Even shows on this page. The 
 ubiquitous, pervasive quality of Fight Club tends to be pretty amusing in small, manageable quantities. I don't
 know where those German HLCS/FC (Half-Life Counterstrike/Fight Club) @ Project Mayhem get their big-on drive. 
 Massive amounts of nic-caffeine maybe? Enough to put a horse down, sure. That's a former life. That's all right. 
 I was just thinking about how I still had some residual FC angst in me that prolly needs to be aired or expended, 
 so that I could finally get some of the rest I deserve. But what comes after that? Going cold turkey on drinking, 
 smoking, heavy red meat consumption, sugar, sodium. What else needs to be eradicated? Who's the next target
 for elimination? I have my disgruntled notes, my notes that roared frustration against an unpleasant surprise that 
 grabbed me by the balls. My newcomer notes. It's all here. If only I could find them. 

 No Lone Gunmen at their usual hour? Darn baseball. I'm sure the TLG estrogen brigade (of course they're calling 
 themselves that) are already at it. Wonder why I didn't take their heads-up into account. Oh well. I'm just tired. 
 Tried Blogger's rules and regs and FAQ, but I'm just not ready for it yet. They should have a more user-friendly 
 how-to sheet. Anyway. (I have to learn proper coding anyway) Thus speaketh the jack of all trades. Yeah, A+ too!

 YUM! Okra information. Enjoy the delicious Northern variety simply boiled or in stews. I scribbled a okra page so 
 that I'd know where to find it when I start planting my first crop of veggies this Spring. Yeah, I know. Planting vejs
 and resuming cycling - too low-key for you, right? I'll see if I can fit some life-threatening sports in there some.

 04 14 : 4AM. Solved a tricky coding problem. Sure enough, but it took me 2 hours. Kew, I'm going to bed though,
 earlier than I have been in almost two weeks. I wonder how helpful valerian root can be in this situation. (yawn)

 04 15 : Easter Sunday snapshots to be uploaded soon. Soon as I figure out how to patch a 98 scanner into ME.
 04/16 : Something tells me the post office is gonna be a helluva long wait today. The posting confusion, for
 just one measly stamp? Got pics from Walg. Saffron getting his head stuck in a vase full of roses, trying to drink 
 the chlorophyll-stained water. Sel's reunion with her best pal Mer. Sel being besieged by Pokemon :) Me doing 
 the dishes after Easter dinner. Need a scanner soon. Musings about being the world's best scanner in a previous 
 life. My habitual over-priced mocha from the kitschy lil cafe on Atlantic, buying beef strog components from El 
 Berirh (sorry - it IS low-fat turkey, though). Sel spends the afternoon with her garden. I opt for the therapeutic 
 value of browsing quietly at Salvarmy for two sipping glasses and one clear candle glass (three and counting!). 
 My errant hypoglycemia gets the better of me - I decide to wander around rather aimlessly in the neighborhood 
 and stumble upon a pile of worsted jeans (degrees better than getting "deconstructed" pairs from any trendy 
 hole), not two blocks away. Abstinence from blue denim since '99: how will this affect me? Back home and eating 
 turkistrog - my first meal in the day! Can you believe! Down to one meal that day. Stayed online til 5AM the next 
 day, tinkering with making web-ready movies. Watched Elizabeth on DVD. Strange glitches, though it filled out the 
 screen (stay ahead of the game by keeping at bay the damn letterbox format). Still a good movie. 

 04 17 : Snuck in a Pokemon episode where Ash and his crew get themselves lost on an island populated by
 gigantic Pokemon! Otaku moment: Pikachu bops Squirtle, Charmander, and Bulbasaur free of their Pokeballs 
 and the four spend most of the episode talking in Pokespeak (subtitled), discussing how to find Ash and being 
 pals with Team Rocket's (the :villains:) Pokemon and tying up Meowth because he was too annoying. Funnycute! 
 If you haven't a clue as to what Pokemon are, check out this Brit's episode guide. Click here to see other
 episodes reviewed. Here's the Pokemon homepage. 

 New York International Auto Show. Or simply, the auto show. Nope, I didn't bring my cam with. Otaku at Velocity 
 Automotive Journal have awesome pic albums. Try to spot your favorites. After thoroughly searching for the most 
 exciting concept cars (amidst the numbing monotony of SUVs, minivans and crossovers) I came up with these as
 my top three: BMW X Coupe, Saleen S7, and for its oojie-boojie cute factor, the Mini Cooper. Found a few sites 
 with good useful content/nice pics ratio. 
 

 I'm sure there are tons of classic VWB sites out there, but chew on this classic VW page for now. (In Dutch)

 04 18 : I had twelve hours of sleep? You gotta be kidding me! Siam Garden makes Thai food barely palatable.
 Most definitely not recommended. Too bad Joya doesn't (and will most prolly never) deliver. I believe I'd left off
 watching Felicity (nee "Scheissicity", haha! Consult your German-English dicto for further info) not because the girl
 I was with at that time decided (out of some demented sense of morbid obsession, I think) to base her 
 interaction with me to that with what was going on at the show. Talk about hero worship. But because the gummy 
 yuppie/teenbopper hybrid of a show didn't really offer anything in my interests. Two years later, I surprised a lot 
 of people by doing :the Felicity: and moved to New York (funny how things turn out). And on a slow, lazy 
 Wednesday with nothing else on the tube, Sel and I settle down for some mindblanking tv. She had caught the 
 previous connecting episode (some guy goes to some party and shoots the crowd full of holes with some gun... 
 blah) and it was kinda amazing how you can not see this show for a month or two and still get what's going on 
 when you tune into it later. It was the season premiere as it happens, and the episode seemed fairly ok. 
 What'd you expect of a teen-centric channel anyways? Intellectual discussion? 

 Kristin Lehman (Invisigoth on X-Files episode fave "Killswitch", best fave. Mainstay on Poltergeist: The Legacy) as 
 Avery Swanson, girl three months back from the dead (no explanation given for apparent game-over). Buying gifts 
 for everyone and hoping to steal Ben Covington from under Felicity's loving arms. The drama. Okay. I give up.
 First of all, as anybody who's ever lived or try to live in NYC will tell you - those apartments that these kids have?
 Impossible on an undergrad student's budget. On-campus housing doesn't offer that much space either. Getting
 a halfway decent (one you can bring your folks in without eliciting a tearful sympathy) room the size of Noel's (the
 existentially depressed/unshaven weeks-old plaid shirt junkfood snacking angst-lite guy, I take it?) denspace 
 most probably eat up your average joe's month's salary. It was nicely lit and filled with wooden bookshelves too. 
 Well I used to watch the X-Files as fervently as any cryptzoologic fanboy/geekgirl would. That is, when they'd show 
 something weird/strange/occult regarding monsters, aliens or spooky places - but never when it was a :conspiracy 
 hiding the aliens: episode. Sure, shadow government... who doesn't know the truth already? 

 A SENTIENT COMPUTER PROGRAM TARGETS ITS CREATORS FOR EXTINCTION. X-Files Episode 5X11: Killswitch
 SCIFI.com hosts Poltergeist: The Legacy. House Members Database on Kristin Adams (Kristin Lehman)

 All in all it was a good day. Spent most of it in bed (that's not as derelict as it sounds), took a few pictures that I'll
 play with on Photoshop soon, and a quiet evening. My turn on the grill tomorrow. Wonder what I'll make for supper.
 Got over losing a good batch of mung beans to rot. I was going to make some mung and ampalaya stew awhile 
 ago, but never got around to it. Maybe some salmon with a new twist. I was curious enough one day and went to 
 Court Street, where everything is, and bought some at Fish Tales. Sel and I have had it broiled with lemon and 
 ginger or with butter and lemon with a lil soysauce, sprinkled with fresh dill. I make my stir-fried mushroom with
 roasted garlic and onion rice and we're good to go. I'm actually getting hungry as I'm writing this. I've learned to
 cook a few more dishes than just my standby spaghetti and sauce (it's always good, though!) in the last few
 months and will prolly make this something of a full time hobby. In the meanwhile I'm having fun and playing 
 around with spices (almost always a must) and laying off the heavy, fatty stuff. Doc's orders. I'm better off without
 the heart attack.

 04 19  : 1-5AM. Somewhere in the limbo of those hours Jigs (UPLB) pops up on my immer.  Five years, bro. 
 Recently I've been on a quest of sorts, trying to find my old friends from University with whom I spent a good part 
 of my life, hanging out staying up til wee hours in the morning. You know, the usual doing nothing gig. But it goes
 further than that. I had always felt a little lost when Alexis left for the States immediately after our graduation
 from Lourdes High in '91. College was cool, a new experience, but I'd always thought that him and I would go to 
 the same school and keep on with our James Dean/Metallica/San Mig-guzzling I Am The Ultimate Rebel ways. 
 But I lost track of my best friend. I heard that he'd ended up in the US, somewhere in Maryland, and someone 
 from his class called me up with his info and told me to get a hold of him. Better than blood brothers, we used to 
 hang out everyday. And a week after I hadn't heard from him I took the circuitous trike-jeep-bus-jeep-walk route 
 to get to his lola's house in the old part of Malate, only to be told by the security guard at the gates that nobody
 lived there anymore. Confused and broken-hearted, I felt like some mutt that was kicked out for being too needy,
 as if I was begging for scraps from the master's table. It took a long while to live that feeling down. Sometimes
 when I felt like the world had turned too fast and my life at school was going nowhere, I really wished that things
 would've been different. I found new friends in college, and even picked up with my childhood pals from home 
 (a six-hour jeep-bus-jeep-trike commute during the weekends). But Alexis was never there. He never knew that I 
 had joined a fraternity, or co-founded an org, or started writing, or did that whole Jim Morrisson shaman thing. In 
 my barkada everybody was different and cool and hip in their own way, but it a certain sense it would've meant a
 whole lot more if he had stayed. Maybe I would've not gotten into so much trouble or maybe I would've. But we 
 would've been a team, just like the old times, pulling each other out of harm's way. Looking out for his brother.
 Maybe things would have turned out the same. But the differences made out what I experienced, and taught me 
 who I am today. 

 That was sometime ten years ago. Just this last February I received an email from some guy asking if I was the 
 same dude that he went to high school with - and it was Alexis. Man! I was jumping and hollering with joy, jabbing
 at the screen excitedly, like it was the discovery of fire, eureka or something! Ten long years! What a happy 
 accident. I signed up with Alumni.net in '98 or thereabouts in the hopes that someday I would find my old pals
 from back home, or maybe just give a clue to anybody who'd figure to find me. See, I moved from the 
 Philippines and landed in Chicago, Illinois in '96, on the coldest day of the year. A bit before that I had been in a 
 seminary for a year learning cool stuff about the End Of Th seminary for a year learning cool stuff about the End Of The World, Bible-style and hanging out with certified 
 Biblical scholars who did nothing all day but meditate upon the Good Word and do good deeds and generally
 exist in a monastic scenario. Excluded. Not of this world. That's right. Wildchilde me did some thinking, got up 
 early one morning and headed off to the barber shop to have my Indian shaman long hair of three years lopped 
 off (gave it to my mom, she was happy!) and told my family right before breakfast that I'd decided to leave the 
 chaos of this world and enter the quiet solitude "in the hands of God". Well, admittedly I always was a :little: 
 softhearted. But this was totally unheard-of. 

 So I ended up in Chicago. Man, I had never seen snow up close before this. And the cold! I'll get to that in a 
 second. I lived in Chicago from '96 to August 2000, and then moved here to NYC. In all that time I had no real 
 contact with my homeboys (Noah, Cyril, Lee, Rene, Yeng, JP, Rico, Rommel), my college barkada (Joks, Cathy,
 Jopang, Toto, Aura, Sonny, Donna, Arnel), my old RPG crew (Bobby, Jigs, Jax, Paolo, Aldin, Bombi, Bogs, Francis)
 or my brods from the fraternity or my brethren from the Seminary. I was cut off from my pals. I felt so hollow 
 more times than I'd care to admit, but I busied myself with the techno rave scene, hanging out with my Polish 
 Gang (Bart, Justyna, Kacper, Zaneta, Monika, Arthur, Mowie, Julius, Crispy, Magda, Klapa) at Irish pubs and 
 getting abysmally drunk a lot of the time. And maybe fit in a class or two while waiting for the next gig or party. 
 I was all Yang! With my killer bleached platinum blond spiked hair, crazy cyborg-goth clothes and giant boots, 
 loud-mouthed laughing and carousing. I was enjoying the hell out of life because I was living for myself, because
 it meant nothing to me then. I was barely alive when I wasn't drunk or sobering up in an all night cafe, hopped 
 up on liquid sugar coffee and my poor eyes giving up due to chronic sleep dep. I was rebelling again, but this 
 time it was gonna kill me.

 I didn't get into any major trouble of any sort (fox's luck, as the Japanese say), but it was thinning me out. My
 spirit waned and alcohol couldn't prop me up long enough nor was the endless partying doing me any good. I was
 looking for something. For sure it wasn't the next week-long girlfriend nor was it another wild party. In '99 I did 
 some surprisingly clear-headed thinking one day in October and paid my barber a visit. She was a little surprised
 but didn't jive me about having all my hair shaved off. Everything except for a little queue in the back that would
 serve to remind me of where I've been and where I wanted to go. The queue's still there. The blond anime hair
 and its crazy misguided antics are gone, but their lessons are remembered. About time to put them to good use.

 I changed my life. Met this girl. Got this email. Moved to New York. Found my friend. And I found my life again.

 Well, it doesn't end there just yet. But it is four in the morning here, and I've heard about this thing called sleep.
 For sure I'll pick up this blog again. It does end with a happy ending, if you were wondering. Since early this year
 my life in Yin (the diametric opposite of Yang) has quieted immeasureably, most pleasantly. Joks emailed me,
 then Lee, Alex. I've gotten word about Kia, Bobby's in Cali, Jigs is taking a cruise (reunion in summer!), Cathy's
 email, along with a link to Symbio (an org in UPLB) led to Amiel (APO brod) and an email from Lizza Nones.
 There's been a lot going on, and my past is catching up to me once more. You ever see that movie Blade Runner,
 with Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer? First ever cyberpunk, all dystopic and gloomy, but with the glimmer of hope 
 that's not readily visible to the casual observer. These lab-grown humans with four year life spans were created as
 slaves for a variety of purposes, but incomplete without cognizance of empathy or memory. The latter quality was
 rectified by an addition of pre-fabricated programmed memories, installed into each unit, making the Replicant 
 truly believe that it lived a happy life as a child somewhere in the suburbs. And other fake pleasantaries. These 
 Replicants owned little but one could always find sets of photographs safely hidden. Treasured possessions. Well,
 I've lost all my pictures from when I was a wee babe to when I first set foot here in the States, thanks to a grave
 mistake that I still kick myself in the head for everytime life gets rough or I'm dealt a bad turn by the karmic 
 lords. Someone threw away all my pictures. Along with them a lifetimes' worth of smiles and long-lost relatives.
 When I was in Yang and didn't care I didn't know the value of those photographs. And my mind slept carelessly.
 Now in Yin that I must make the best of what is left behind, my memory of the past is strengthened. Memories
 that I re-affirm with every line that I write here. And life's a little better. I am happier now that I can remember.

 At last we have all our channels back, the most important being Bravo. This channel offers good stuff you'd stay 
 up for. Most recently The Godfather saga (a very blurry, snowy GII, but I stuck through til the end!) and Kama 
 Sutra, (enticing how-to turned tragic, see splot below) which we were lucky enough to fit the entire movie sans ads 
 on tape. Visually alluring, though I'm inclined to agree with one reviewer who said that the story telling could've 
 had more work. I wanted to see it when it first came out but fell by the wayside, busy schedule and all. 

 Kama Sutra: A Tale Of Love ( 1996 | Romance | TV14 | 114 min. ) Mira Nair’s voluptuously photographed film 
 centers on a 16th century Indian princess and her servant who use the teachings of the ancient Kama Sutra in a 
 high-stakes romantic chess game. "Hell hath no fury like a hunchback princeling scorned". Okay. Go see it.

        links to reviews | The Kama Sutra homepage | Salon.com | Sulekha.com |

 Well, Bravo did cut out the more :choice: scenes and butchered the editing (thus a rental is in order?), so it could
 squeeze into the ratings, but I would recommend this film to anyone who's in the mood for something exciting + 
 interesting and not at all Hollywood. Similar choices would be The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman, this
 one Maori/Croatian flick I saw four years ago... Broken English, I think the title was. There is one title that always 
 comes to mind whenever anyone asks me for a foreign pick, and I'm always hesitant to tell anyone about it. I was 
 in Dr. Dee's (hi Doc!) film class with nothing better to do but to come in late all the time and plop down in the 
 darkened room for a nap when this one Tuesday she told us not to miss class and sure enough, that day's 
 screening of Once Were Warriors left such an imprint on my mind (I missed out on my daily nap for this one) that 
 since then I have watched this very powerful film three more times, each time sharing it with a group of friends 
 whom I know would enjoy the multi-faceted complexity of such work. Don't watch it with kids, though. Once Were 
 Warriors tackles some sensitive issues that take a mature mind to process. And besides, that's why these things 
 have ratings. As a footnote, I'd like to say that Film was one of the best classes I've ever taken and one that I'd 
 suggest to anyone who's either in need of an arts credit in college or just plain interested in really good cinema.

 Once Were Warriors homepage | Alan Duff on OWW | Inconnect review | Julian Arahanga, that guy with the oh!so 
 kew facial Maori tribal tattoos who appears in Broken English, was Apoc in the sci-fi FX special The Matrix. 
 This just in: What Becomes of the Broken Hearted (1999) is the sequel that takes after OWW. Can't wait to see 
 this one.

 links to WBOTBroken Hearted: Wakahuia | Upcomingmovies.com | Nzine.co.nz | Yahoo Australia | song lyrics
 Film Studies &c.: Blood Simple | The Professional | Citizen Kane | Rear Window | Restoration | The Last Emperor

 I think I'll dig up Monika's number and call her up to thank her. For all the times we hung out at her place to 
 watch these fantastic samples of cinema, for the awesome sandwiches and fresh brewed tea. And just the kew 
 atmosphere of it all, a cozy bedroom just off Golf Road where for an afternoon or two you could hang out without 
 a worry in the world. Thanks Mo.

 NOTSORANDOM THOUGHT ARCHIVE: Wonder how long I can keep this sleep-dep thing up before I go bonkers.

 04 20 : 1-3AM. Caught up with email. Updated the omus page. Rebuilding/augmenting my cd/mp3 collection.
 04 20 : 1-5PM. Took some work, but finally routed the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death). Several reboots later
 I have 4X730MB worth of data stored on disc as back-up. Safely? I  wouldn't bet my hard drive on it; but multiple
 copies of data synched every now and then will prove to be very smart in the future when I'm scrabbling for a
 specific file. Cleaned up and tacked on a Mini Cooper poster on my corkboard (the real thing, but you can get an 
 electronic one for use as a screensaver from mycorkboard.com). More anti-Yahoo rants in my email from all over.
 I'll post my otaku lists somtime today (maybe). I've got to cut out the dead wood and see if I can get into some 
 really useful ones. There's a search I've been running for a movie club of some sortin my area, preferably one with
 members whose interests match mine (Pokemon 3? You betcha!) and who'd appreciate a nice traditional chat after 
 viewing. Yes, the old-fashioned kind of chat, discussing the movie we just saw in real-time over coffee. I was 
 thinking about Groups @ Yahoo, but their service just hasn't been that reliable (abysmal's more like it) recently. 

 what BSOD? | BSOD Eliminator (of course it's a joke!) | Troubleshooting System Instability, Reboots and Crashes

 As it turns out I spent the entire afternoon, well into supper trying to restore the audio set-up on this POC (piece
 of crap!) computer without even making any headway. Completely disappeared. I can't listen to any of my stuff.
 Good thing those back-ups got done in time. It's still a pretty useful machine, but I guess it couldn't take my 
 megamultitasking (feh!) demands on it. Saw the preview tape of Carmen, which is amazing with its Lippizaner
 stallion prancing on the stage (you gotta see it) and enjoyed the lively Friday evening conversation with my family.

 Pleasantly surprised to find that Cathy (a good friend from my UPLB days) had emailed me back and then I wrote
 her back with a two-hour long email - I have no typing skills whatsoever - and I updated this page. I found the 
 Symbiosis Alumni page and posted hellos. Found several friends through their listings and fired off several 
 emails. Wrote this lengthy blog reminiscing about the past five or so years in a nutshell as much as I could
 (see Life from Yang to Yin, above) and gradually becoming more hopeful by the time I'd finished it. See, I don't 
 think that I sleep dep just so. I think it's something deeper than just your plain old garden variety Fight Club
 wannabe inspired restless aggravation. 

 When I was thirteen or so I started staying up later and later, well into not sleeping at all for days on end. I'd 
 always have a little bit of something more to write. In the summer when I turned fifteen I was sketching plans 
 for :silly: stuff like variable opacity glass and micronized silicate powered energy cells which, surprisingly are 
 becoming extant in today's world. Maybe I should've patented my drawings? I remember my dad quietly 
 checking, trying to see whether I was asleep, while I would sneak a light on to finish one more schematic. 
 Those were my sci-fi years.

 In the future I would be drawn to such things as vampires, werewolves, faeries, ghosts and magic. But there was
 always the curiosity and wonder over the secret knowledge of :stuff: Sometimes when I'd exhaust myself and turn 
 in before midnight I would wake in the middle of the night and scribble my vivid dreams on a pad by my bed.
 I had notebooks full of those dreams and sketches. In the summer of '87 my good friend Noah introduced us to
 roleplaying via elves and goblins. Of note, I have all but one of The Dreaming books by Neil Gaiman. Plus dozens
 of other closely-related material, sometimes esoteric, but never straying off the path. I've always loved books.
 Visits to my Lola Rosa were spent in her great library, poring over encyclopedias, almanacs, journals and papers.
 She was a history professor at the Philippine Women's University and a student from one of her classes made her 
 this palm-sized clay model of an Egyptian sarcophagus, complete with a Pharaoh's mummy, scepter and jewels!
 It was my favorite thing to play with at her house. I don't know what happened to that item when she moved to 
 the US (she stayed in Florida with my godmother), but I remember feeling very good, surrounded by all those
 books. I eventually built my own library with an eclectic collection of very interesting material, but had to give it up
 when I had to left for the US in '96. Presently I have modest little bookshelf with a gem or two (and a rare 
 hundred-plus year old Blue Flower, by Henry Van Dyke!) but I'm building it up slowly. Taking my time. Savoring 
 new finds and recovering old favorites I'd previously lost. Maybe it'll be as great as before. Maybe it'll be better.
 

 04 21 : Sleep was ragged, and none too plentiful. All this from memory. I remember the day in snippets, like
 some attention deficit. I wanted to write about Key Food and how I like going grocery shopping. How calming it is,
 similar to browsing for the perfect glass vase for three hours at thrift stores. The ghost-like smell of pre-owned 
 clothing. The quiet thrill of finding something you can use that someone had cast away. Why is getting a new 
 computer better than having it repaired? Because present day society would rather throw away something than
 take the time to fix what's wrong with it. But that's politics I don't want to get into. I'm happy with my cool trash. 
 My sidewalk finds. New York style stoop shopping you don't need money or cred for. The subway being what it is,
 most New Yorkers don't have cars. So garages are few and far in between. In eight months I have not seen a 
 garage sale anywhere. Cars are parked right  by the curb. You store your gomi in a cavernous basement. You
 string discarded clothing on your fence for passers-by if they're interested. You leave gizmos or cds by the stoop.
 My favorite finds are the three chairs in our living space. One with a velvet seat and wooden arms, the two a pair 
 of metal and leather objects. Fully functional, stylish, someone else's garbage. 

 At five PM my day starts. Brush, shave, shirt, shoes I'm out the door. Helped Sel clean up and get out of work 
 early, beating the last minute stragglers that extend your day into maddening unnecessary overtime. My bagful 
 of croissants gets dissed by a homeless person. "I don't want that" and I wonder. I should've listened to Sel's
 practical cynicism - it's not food that they're asking money for. On the way home there's a ton of clothing on 
 both sides of the street. Complete outfits and shoes, but none the right size. Five doors down I pick up a cache 
 of cds - Garth Brooks (?!?), New Orleans jazzy lounge ragtime and a techno compilation even. Supper was
 broiled salmon and lemon pepper angel hair with roasted shrum/garlic/onion. Saturday eating is always good. 

 There's something about doing the dishes that makes me feel better. The method of it, the sureness of water 
 being the universal solvent. No tough grease can  stand up to the vigor of the steel wool. It's sesshin. It's Zen. 

 Television is panacea. 
 Dangerous Liaisons for the umpteenth time  on some other channel, losing by one vote to The Deer Hunter. 
 Maren arrives and we help trunk her stuff up from the basement unto the rain. I am tired and it's time to go 
 online. 

 You might be mistakenly thinking that PCs are supposed to make life easier. - attributed to Steve Bass 

 Tried my luck at installing the scanner for two hours, downloading patches, reading the readme, rebooting
 reconnecting re nothing happening. Plugged out and scoured FAQs for the fix-its. After 4AM it's either illusory or 
 something's finally working like the manufacturers  told you it was supposed to. Cleaned out duplicate DLLs but 
 the elusive rogue VXD remains at large. More techtalk and I'd go crazy. Maybe. Downloaded Sandra, supposed 
 wonder app. Emailed geek joke to help clog my friends' boxes with more gomi (doing the spam du jour). 
 Microsoft ME page offers solutions to the irritating closing freeze.

 Gomi - Japanese slang meaning "landfill" or, junk. Knick-knacks, riffraff, flotsam. You name it.

 Cool Flash animation kung-fu stickman fighting distraction from stileproject.com. Click. 

 04 23 :  6AM. Mainsite on Tripe Odd (nee Tripod.com) was down the whole nine hours that I was on. This is
 getting to be just as bad as when I put up my first site ever on Gee Old Shit Ease. Bothered to mirror the blog 
 ( HERE ) by using my space on Groups (that finally became useful after a year's hiatus). Uploaded the files one 
 by one in the most tedious fashion ever. This is no way to update, I tell myself, thinking about how to get started 
 on building my own servers. Not unheard of, I actually know people who have the stuff in their bathrooms. 
 (Takes measuring tape out and scales the bathroom) 

 6:30AM-3PM like the sleep of the dead. I have to do something about this. I can't keep away. That must be it. 
 Resolved to start sleeping thirty minutes every night so that I'd be in bed by ten. So far, instead of working that 
 way I'm getting to bed later and later. Found a few glass things at Salvarmy. A big sturdy bowl, squat rectangular 
 vase, two short tumblers for under seven bucks. Doing my civic duty. The plant store next. Two bags of fancy dirt 
 (at eight pounds each, the cart's starting to make sense), a hanging plant (ask Sel, I don't know one from the 
 other) and seed packets for shade flowers. She's planning to make an arboretum of sorts in the back. Planting 
 sounds like a good idea to get into this summer. Unfortunately I don't think that Alfred (an aloe plant I received 
 from her on my birthday) is doing particularly well. Makes me feel doubtful of whether I should start at all or just 
 keep my creative endeavors to online pursuits. More street treasures as I double back for a perfectly good bin. 
 I make my way home and start chopping vegetables for spaghetti sauce. Kielbasa is the magic ingredient! We 
 eat supper outside in the garden. It's still light out at half past seven. I was actually thinking about seeing a 
 movie, but domestic affairs kept me indoors for the rest of the evening. Before I realize it, ten PM rolls by and if 
 I'm ever going to start sleeping early there's no time like the present to get started. 

 np: Alice in Chains Unplugged (1996) for no particular reason. Well, maybe there is one.

 It wasn't because of the grunge movement that had finally hit the old country, though AIC was my all time 
 favorite new band way back in college, thanks to a progressively forward listener roomie of mine (Juan C. Juan), 
 who in the future would take up such endeavors as reconstructing cat skeletons (well, he was majoring in Bio) 
 and tippling warm beer before going on a banging books and kicking doors shut sort of tantrum. Happened fairly 
 often, and we had a third roommate - a frosh ever so precisely named Dick who would go on to steal soap and 
 spend enormous blocks of time in the loo. Don't ask me. I rarely stayed in. Moreso that if anybody ever wanted 
 to find me, they'd know to stop by the front of the Humanities building or head up to Bobby's. This was waaay 
 before anybody had pagers, celphs of text messaging. At that point in time anyway, I was always with my group. 
 Whenever we needed to find anybody we'd just go down the hill and make the rounds, gathering everybody up 
 and getting ready for whatever Bobby was throwing our way that night. RPG, or role-playing games; more 
 specifically the ancient d20 system before anybody was calling it that, was the order of the day. 

 04 25 :  Found a site online for UPJC, a student org that was founded in 1994 in UP Los Baños by Jopang. 
 That is, in 1994 our shenanigans from previous years were finally catching up to us. People were getting 
 suspended from classes, dismissed from the college, getting into serious trouble, moving back to Manila or 
 simply falling off from the face of the earth. Jopang had moved the barkada from its unofficial headquarters 
 in Mr. Joel Ramos' townhouse compound near campus and into this two bedroom single level house that was 
 located at the end of a dead-end street, and was wedged between a farm and a murky-green creek. You prolly
 wouldn't have known that there were people there unless someone took you directly to the place or you were 
 some sort of mythical forest creature. It was that isolated. The place was so close enough to campus that you'd 
 make it to class in twenty minutes if you could cut straight through and walk briskly, but there weren't any roads, 
 and the streets were sturdy boots-only unpaved dirt. Our next door neighbors were the Amongos, Arnel (still the 
 best guitarist I've heard ever) and his family, and they ran a little store that was our groceries-and-everything 
 source. Kind of what a bodega in New York would be, only smaller and less expensive. 

 Anyway. The living room was bare of furniture. Toto's drum set and guitars, speakers, a mike and other band 
 peripherals took over, but since we had virtually no other stuff it was quite all right. The windows were squared 
 off with egg carton-sound mufflers, and there was a squat little table littered with playlists, magazines, and 
 cigarette cartons. We'd eat sitting down on mats, Nippon style and brought out benches for people to sit on
 when jamming sessions were on or we had guests. It was always packed with people and the only real quiet time 
 was during weekends, when everybody would head back into Manila and our little hut in the woods would be 
 deserted until we came back for classes on Monday. Well some of us were still in classes.

 Back to UPJC. I'm glad that something we started from our wild times at university survived and has a presence 
 on the internet. Cheers to the resident and alumni members who have kept strong and are still involved in the 
 club. Hope to see you all in our next jam! 

 Extra reading : just like the last time/A day in the life of/A gig in 1994 (UPJC on my mind)

 Babalik ka rin - The Adventures of My Dad Back Home in the Philippines 

 Got up at three and stayed on til around eight, so it wouldn't be so early in Chicago. Called up my Dad to wish 
 him well and tell him to be safe on his flight back home to the Philippines. He was still half-asleep but said ok
 to everything I told him. Asked him if he could keep a short journal and to take as many pictures as he could. 
 Later I'd have the material to write a webpage for him. That'd be a worthwhile project. Asked him to photograph 
 landmarks, people, places, the traffic jams, everything! I said hi to Mom and then Dad had to go, saying
 that there was somebody else on the other line. Turns out it was my sister Chris. I found out when I called her a 
 while later to catch up. We always have a good time talking to each other on the phone or chatting online. She's 
 really fun and witty. Talked for a bit and then I logged off to get some much needed sleep. It was eight AM. I 
 couldn't remember being more tired. But at least I got to talk to my Dad and my family again. That was a good 
 thing. I went to bed, but not before making a mental note to keep in touch with my loved ones more often.

 04 26 : For me, a standard approximate internet day is from 10PM-6AM. But today I stayed on a while longer, 
 reacquainting myself with ICQ. 7AM rolls by, and I'm chatting with a new-found friend from somewhere in the 
 Philippines, telling him about my search. He thinks it's crazy - how he normally doesn't do any favors for people 
 he's just met. Maybe I'm crazy too, asking him to look up directories and enlisting his aid in finding where my 
 old friends are. Joined the usual lists on ICQ interest groups: cyberpunk, occult, cool weirdness, &c. Got a 
 cool/funny email about Windows.

 04 27 : Spent five hours organizing and uploading more pictures on my yahoo page. Upload pics and posted at 
 the Orbital boards.  the Orbital boards. Took me two hours to download 24.1 (70%) of the Style mpg from Loopz. Quite frustrating,
 but that's the peril of using dial-up for ya. At least it didn't freeze up the computer.