Watching The World Burn

Except maybe for Tiff, if she had reached this far. But I guess my point is that for you sucke… er… those of you who love a good love story, one of the best love stories ever written is in a Playstation game! And here’s an excerpt, featuring the two main characters, Squall and Rinoa

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Rinoa: “What’ll become of me?”

Squall: “Don’t worry about it. There’ve been many good sorceresses. Edea was one. You can be like her.”

Rinoa: “But Edea’s still… I can’t guarantee anything, either, if Ultimecia possesses me again… You saw me. She controlled me   in outer space and made me break Adel’s seal. What might happen next time? What will I end up doing? Will I end up fighting everyone? …Scary thought, isn’t it?”

Squall: (Rinoa…… Even if you end up as the world’s enemy, I’ll…Â I’ll be your knight.)

Rinoa: “If I fall under Ultimecia’s control again… SeeD will come kill me, right? And the leader of SeeD is you, Squall… Squall’s sword will pierce my heart…… I guess it’s ok if it’s you, Squall. Nobody else. Squall, if that ever happens…”

Squall: “That’s enough! I’ll never do anything like that. The sorceress I’m after is not you, Rinoa. My enemy is the sorceress from the future… Ultimecia.”

Rinoa: “Ultimecia lives in the future and possesses me. She uses my body as her extension in this world. How? How will you save me?”

Squall: “I’ll come up with something… There’s gotta be a way.”

Rinoa: “……”

Squall: “Don’t worry. Trust me.”

Rinoa: “…I trust you. Well, until you find a way, maybe… Maybe IÂ should stay in Esthar, at that memorial? Wouldn’t that be better?”

Squall: “No… That’d be pointless. I’ll just end up going after you again. Rinoa… Just stay close to me.”

Rinoa: “Oh… Those words!”

Squall: “What?”

Rinoa: “That’s what started everything.”

Squall: “What are you talking about?”

Rinoa: “You don’t remember?”

Squall: “Something I said?”

Rinoa: “Oh, just forget it!”

Squall: “No, it’s because of the GF. That’s why I forgot.”

Rinoa: “That’s just an excuse.”

Squall: “Feeling better?”

Rinoa: “Yeah. Can I tell you a story? I had a dream. It was a scary dream. We make a promise. We promise to see shooting stars together. I get dressed up an put on your ring. But the thing is, I can’t remember where I’m supposed to meet you. I start to panic. I really want to see you, Squall, but I don’t know where to go. I start running through the mountains, the desert, the plains… Through Timber, Balamb, and Galbadia… When I realize I can’t run any longer… I…I just want to see you so badly… So I scream, Squall, where are you!? Then I woke up. I was crying. I’m sorry. You don’t have to say anything. I just felt like I had to tell you.”

Squall: “It was just a dream… It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry about it.”

Rinoa: “…I guess you’re right.”

Squall: “How about this… I’ll be here…”

Rinoa: “…Why?”

Squall: “The reason why you couldn’t find me was because we haven’t promised yet.”

Rinoa: “Promised?”

Squall: “I’ll be waiting for you. If you come here, you’ll find me. IÂ promise.”

I remember this line Tom Arnold mentioned in the movie True Lies.

“Women. Can’t live with them. Can’t kill them.”

Ahahaha, no, this is not a knock against the idiosyncrasies of the female half of the species. Like I said, necessary evil. Those things that do more harm than good but at the same time have become indispensable in your life. Like a sucky job, a high-maintenance car, or an obnoxious “friend” that you still keep around so you could have someone to borrow money from.

Or cell phone companies.

Specifically, the concept of “unlimited texting”. I’ve been hearing a lot about it for quite some time now but hardly paid it a second look, mainly because it doesn’t concern me (I have a post-paid line). It was only earlier this evening when my wife explained it to me in detail that I realized how devilishly ingenious these cell phone companies are. Yes, devilishly. I mean exactly what the word connotes. In order to avail of unlimited texting, let’s say Globe’s, you have to register a fixed amount depending on the number of days you want to have unlimited texting. Like for 5 days unlimited texting, register 80 pesos. Which means if you bought a 100 peso load and registered in unlimited texting for 5 days, that’s 80 pesos (81 if you consider the 1 peso maintaining balance) gone forever. Sure, you get to send as much text messages as you want to any Globe number within 5 days. That’s a lot of savings. Yes, you have to purchase an extra load balance to use your phone to text other non-Globe numbers, but so what? That’s what you used to do anyway, buy load to text people, no matter who their providers are. At least here, heavy users could save if they send more than 80 text messages in 5 days if you’re only sending to fellow Globe subscribers.

Like I said, devilishly ingenious. A production scheme that markets itself. Because in order to make full use of this, Globe users would then have to convince their family, friends, business contacts and everyone else whose names are in their directories to use Globe sim cards or buy a separate Globe sim card (for the lucky ones who have more than one phone) so they could all share in the savings. Pretty soon Smart and Sun will be following suit with almost the same exact scheme, and their subscribers will do exactly what Globe users are doing right now. Result: slow but sure polarization of cell phone users. Globe users only contact Globe users, Smart users only contact Smart users, and same with Sun. Freaking great savings, guys! Who cares if I couldn’t say hi to my mom anymore? It’s her fault for keeping a Smart account when she knows I have a Globe sim.

But hey, business is business. Never mind that it cleverly circumvented the government requirement for telecomm providers to interconnect. It’s actually something to applaud, right?

It also smacks of greed.

Here’s a question: with the cross-provider text message rate being at a constant 1 peso per message, why does Globe keep its “unlimited texting” scheme to Globe subscribers only? There’s no overhead in opening it to Smart and Sun providers, is there? If their intention is really to help their subscribers save money, they’d do this, right? Maybe increase the registration fee a little bit, like make it 160 pesos for a 6-day unlimited texting to cover the profit margin. It would still save people a great deal, regardless of their cell phone service provider. More importantly, it wouldn’t have to polarize people based on their cell providers.

But we all know this is not their intention no matter how much they trumpet it, right? This is big business. Big bucks. Big greed.

But sorry, the world as it has evolved today needs these cell phone service providers. So, no, can’t kill them.

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…