Category: Uncategorized

First of all, I accept the fact that people have their own subjective preferences i.e. biases about everything. I’m cool with that. Others have reasons for liking things that I myself couldn’t stand being on the same plane of reality with, e.g. telenovelas. That’s fine. Kanya-kanyang trip*. But sometimes when you get a peep into the minds of people and realize their reasons for ranting about something, well, that’s when “ridiculous” gets into the picture.

For example, I LOVE Pirates of the Caribbean. I know many do. But I also know that many don’t, and it just sticks to my craw that a movie that I consider one of the benchmarks of its genre would get a “rotten” rating in rottentomatoes.com. Okay, we all have our preferences. But reading into the reviews that gave it a rotten rating clued me in on just how piss-poor some movie reviewers do their jobs. Almost all of those who gave POTC: AWE negative ratings jawed about the so-called confusing plot, centered on the characters doing seemingly aimless decisions that gave the film a pointlessly convoluted story. What? Will Turner allies himself with Sao Feng, and then with Lord Cutler Beckett, and then with Hector Barbossa. What the hell is going on here? Now I’m lost.

I was merely summarizing the rants. I, personally, am not lost. You see, one cardinal rule in understanding the story is understanding the characters and their motives. You can forget I said anything if you only see movies to enjoy action sequences or special effects. That’s fine, I have no beef with you. But people, especially reviewers, who describe a film “a cacophony of contrived and disjointed plot devices” without really paying attention to character motives are no different from programmers estimating the amount of time to fix a bug while having no idea whatsoever how the code looks like. In this case, the motive is actually quite simple: Will wants to rescue his father from Davy Jones. Understanding that is understanding two-thirds of the story already. But no one seemed to have given the time of day to do that one simple thing.

My pet peeve: people shooting their mouths off without knowing what the hell they’re talking about.

*To each his own

New habit I have, coming out of the need to be in the office at 7am. For not so subtle reasons (which are here and here), the spirit of some long-ago dead race car driver takes control of my mind and turns me into a speed junkie whenever I listen to Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way and The Cardigans’ My Favorite Game.

It’s a little uncanny when I think about it. But then, music has always dictated my mood since long ago. And pretty much my ambitions. Time was when I aspired to perform in a concert. But that dream has already dissipated, helped in no small way by me actually performing in a concert. Good experience, all things considered. And it taught me that I should be thankful I’m not in a line of work where I do have to do concerts and tours at least twice a year (concerts are damn exhausting).

Well, at least that was one aspiration I could finally put to bed.  But thinking about it during the drive to Don Antonio to pick up my wife from her badminton game made me realize those other things that I maybe should have gotten into, instead of I.T. Now don’t laugh because some of these can be outright ludicrous.

Lawyer - Whenever I practice my reasoning skills, my wife always tells me that I should have been a lawyer (it’s her way of saying “All right, you win.”  ). Well, I do seem to enjoy crushing other people’s arguments to the ground, especially those who have the audacity to get into debates without bothering to fact-check.  The problem with this profession is sometimes you really have to compromise your integrity. And that’s something I’d want to avoid if I could.

Police officer/detective – Never mind the whys, I just wanted to be a cop. Maybe this stemmed from all those cop series prevalent on TV during the late 70s to the early 80s that kind of influenced my formative years. Problem: being a cop in the Philippines is worse than being a lawyer, for the very same reason.

Novelist – I’m a late bloomer when it comes to this, having found out that I could write when I was already 29 years old. And I do fancy creative/fiction writing (as evidenced by this 56-chapter fan fiction that I started six years ago and have yet to finish). Maybe someday I could publish something that’ll put me in the New York times bestseller map, but trying to accomplsh that would require a lot of sacrifice. Graham Taylor, author of Shadowmancer (the Christian alternative to Harry Potter?) sold his motorcycle just to get his book published.

Race car driver – And no, this is not a Gran Turismo influence. In the first place, I dig Gran Turismo because I’m a car nut and a racing freak.

Fighter pilot – Probably the one item in this list that I will never, ever attain (which relegates me to mere dreams of flying a Joint Strike Fighter). But then, this is where knowing how to write comes in to help reduce the impact of unrealization. Like:

Edge: “Blaze, what are you doing? The enemy has a missile lock on you and you’re still not engaging.”

Blaze: “Heh. He could missile-lock me all he wants, but his missile firing mechanism is fritzed and his guns are out of ammo. All bark and no bite, so to speak.”

Edge: “So he’s just trying to piss you off.”

Blaze: “That’s an affirmative, Razgriz two.”

(excerpt from Great Heroes in the Sky, an Ace Combat 5 novelization)

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Aahhh, we could always dream…

I used to have a friend at my former work place. And I really like her. In fact, everyone likes her. If ever the term “amiability incarnate” ever applied to one person, it’s a safe bet that it’s her. We used to be close, yeah. Certain events kind of conspired that made it a little awkward for us to talk openly, but I thought that’s okay. At least, I thought, I could still call on the friendship whenever the need arises again, or if ever the air gets cleared between myself and one of her friends.

Turns out that’s already impossible. I thought the only reason we haven’t been speaking the last few months is awkwardness. But it isn’t. She’s actually mad at me. Extremely.

Why?

Someone seems to have told her that I have been spreading some very unpleasant things about her to everyone.

What. The. Fuck.

Yes, this situation is so screwed it merits a full and uncensored F word.

Now what kind of depraved, demented, sanity-impaired sorry excuse for a human being would invent such a totally baseless, pointless, bullshitty and out-of-thin-air lie, and then actually tell it to her? How could someone be so Satan-fixated?

That lie completely ruined everything. It’s no different from detonating a nuclear bomb between me and that friend of mine, decimating everything between us.

You know, I’m into boxing. Only been at it for two months so far so I’m not very good yet. Still, my first pair of gloves didn’t last three weeks. My trainer said I pack a powerful punch.

I’d hate to have to use that on the person who told that lie about me.

Okay, just wanna ask you guys to give me a little bit of slack here because it’s not going to be easy to say this. But I have to.

Right now I’m watching the replay of American Idol: Idol Gives Back, a 2-hour special AI show dedicated to charity. It’s wonderful watching the show, and I often remarked that it’s good that American Idol is giving back after the phenomenal success it enjoyed in its last 6 seasons so far. The show itself is star-studded. And okay, people who know me well could tell you that I couldn’t care less if every celebrity in Hollywood participated in the show – if there’s one thing that I’m not, it’s star-struck. But I did love how different personalities with contrasting backgrounds got together for one noble common cause. Like, can you imagine Bono, Jack Black, Josh Groban, Ewan McGregor, Seal, Celine Dion, Homer Simpson (yeah, really), Annie Lennox, Rob Lowe and Madonna in one show? Okay, you probably could, but it still doesn’t happen much.

The program was touching and at times, heart-wrenching, and only someone with a certified heart of granite (like someone I know) wouldn’t be moved by all those stories of children and HIV-positive folks who desperately need our help. Ellen Degenres put it best. “This is ridiculous. We should do something.” And yeah, I agree. I wish there was some way I could do to help.

Hehe, wishing for ways to help poor African HIV-positive kids when I had the chance to do the exact same thing with our local homeless children… and I didn’t.

I’m talking about the Christmas program SVI prepared for orphan kids in place of the company Christmas party. I still remember the argument with Hana because I wanted to hold a Christmas party for the staff, insisting that ‘charity work is good and all, but the Christmas party is supposedly the reward for us employees for toiling hard the entire year. We deserve to have that party, why give it to someone else?’

Why give it to someone else? It’s like asking why give to Gawad Kalinga that 50 pesos you were reserving for a strawberry milkshake.

Now that I think about it, I want to hit myself on the head with a hammer.

Especially when recalling how much fun the SVI volunteers had in participating in the activity. I wanted a party for the employees? Well, making orphaned kids happy – even for only a few hours – rates on the fun meter just as much as any other party. And it’s more worthwhile because we get to help people.

Well, since the charity event won out over a clubhouse party, in the end I did decide to acquiesce and volunteer to help out too, if at least to make myself less of an ass. But it would have meant something if I’d actually made it

Says in Wikipedia:

“Vehicles will often come into conflict with other vehicles because their intended courses of travel intersect, and thus interfere with each other’s routes. The general principle that establishes who has the right to go first is called “right of way”, or “priority”. It establishes who has the right to use the conflicting part of the road and who has to wait until the other driver does so.”

You know what they are, don’t you?  If not (and I do hope you don’t have a driver’s license if this is the case), I’m giving some examples of right-of-way rules:

1) When two cars reach an intersection at the same time, the one on the left yields to the one on the right,

2) In roundabout roads, a.k.a. rotundas, those who are already in the road yield the right of way to those who are just entering it,

3) Intersection again, but this time three vehicles get to it at the same time. The “right-side” rule no longer applies. Instead, the two cars who are facing opposite each other have priority over the third.

 There’s actually a lot more, but this post isn’t a tutorial on basic right-of-way rules. At any rate, no matter what the rules are or how different they are from one country to the next, there’s an instruction common to all countries:

DO NOT INSIST ON YOUR RIGHT OF WAY.

Which makes a lot of sense, really. What if you’re against a drunk driver who couldn’t see you if your plate number is five inches away from his face? Insisting on your right-of-way would almost certainly end in disaster, right?

Sadly, though, as a long-time observer of traffic in Metro Manila, I could say without reservation that the “not insisting on your right-of-way” policy doesn’t apply here. Why? Two reasons:

1) The few who have been schooled on the right-of-way rule usually only remember the “do not insist” part. Of course we would, that’s an instant loophole to get our way of the highway. Since you’re not supposed to insist on your ROW, the other motorist would expect you to do this and therefore try to get one up over you. How many times have I seen this happen: running full throttle into an intersection to get the better of those motorists who looked first before proceeding; turning left on unprotected intersections without regard to oncoming traffic; merging into traffic without regard to motorists who have merged in before you. And when accidents do happen, the one who’d be adjudge at fault is not the one who proceeded without a right-of-way, but rather the one who insisted on his. Maybe in the Philippines, we should be required to insist on our right-of-way, because the opposite is turning out to be ridiculous. Like, “Officer, it’s his fault because he insisted on his right of way!”  How stupid is that?

2) Second reason much simpler. As evidenced by the way drivers behave on the road, an estimated 6 out of 10 drivers do not know what a right-of-way is.  Two out of 10 do not care. And 1.9 out of 10 think they’re always right.

I know someone who rear-ended me while I’m at full stop, and she still thinks it’s my fault.

:rolleyes: