Family Guy and Filipinos

Haha, you know Filipinos have arrived when you see them in primetime TV shows.

Top 10: Affirmations

I was feeling down recently, and started thinking about top 10's. I love top 10's. My favorite part in ESPN for example, are the top 10 plays of the day; I watch VH1's "Top N mostest X" shows. And in that spirit, I'm going to start my own top 10! It will be on a variety of random topics that I come up with. If you have any suggestions, let me know... And I'll be more than glad to entertain and amuse people....

And so without further ado, here is my first top 10:

Top 10 reasons why a girl I met on the street would benefit from me approaching and talking to her.

10. She is probably having a bad day and would appreciate a nice conversation with a stranger.
9. She'll appreciate it if someone finds her interesting.
8. She likes to be rescued.
7. She would like to hear a joke or a funny story.
6. She's waiting on something, and she wouldn't mind being entertained.
5. She likes to get to know someone interesting (that's me.)
4. She's looking to have her feet swept off by some complete stranger (no girl wakes up everyday and pray she does not get swept off her feet).
3. Talking to someone makes her feel connected again with the rest of humanity.
2. She wants to feel that someone is listening to her and values her opinions.
1. She wants to meet someone new.

So there you go. If you find a girl on the streets next time. Perhaps it's not so bad to approach her and make her day or even her week.

Added Calendar

I've been tinkering with Google's suite of online apps lately, and I figured I can add a calendar in my blog. The good thing about Google's calendar is you can actually have many calendars. Me, I created one for my public schedule, and another for my private ones. I can view together and have a good view of what my schedule is, while being able to share the ones that I feel can be shared.

Check it out at: http://www.google.com/calendar/render

The Joy of Weekends

Weekends, lately I found, have been very kind to me. I can sit back and have a nice drink of coffee, or shake. (I like the creamy melon shake that I used to buy from Virramall when I was a kid.) And lazily observe the world go by. It's a time to unwind for me. But more importantly, it's a time that I can pursue personal enrichment and finish up some personal projects.

It allows me to explore things that interest me. What a nice feeling it is to discover new stuff! Not 1, nor 2, but on 3 fronts, whole new worlds have opened up to me the past few weeks. It will probably take more than a lifetime to fully explore everything that has been opened up.

(I know I am sound weird, but I guarantee you I'm not on some medication. I am feeling a sense of renaissance during weekends.)

What I find ironic is that I also am getting a liking to cleaning. Yes! The eternal messy individual that is me now likes to clean. My room is now somewhat orderly. How could that be? We're talking about me here, the infamous room messer (is there such a word? lol). It almost sound preposterous, doesn't it? I betrayed my own habits!

The only downside to all of this of course, is that I often find that it's already Sunday night... and that I have to go back to weekday mode. Aaahh, the good things in life never last.

Non-normal day

Today was a little bit different than my normal routine. Morning was a flurry of demos from teams in my group. It was interesting to know the different projects going on near and around Money.

After that, I had a somewhat productive lunch. My friend Robbie and I have an idea of creating a community site about a specific niche topic. What it would be, I can't reveal yet, but I think there's a market for it, and that the key would be to get people to be aware of it. How exactly do you promote a site? That's what I'm going to find out in the next few weeks.

We're going to have interviews on subject matter experts and some from our experiences and friends. If we're going to fail, it will be a fun experiment at the very least--definitely one of those try-once-in-your-life (TOIYF) experiences.

After that, there was a concert in the campus garden. This time Presidents of the United States was the main group. To be honest, I don't recognize a damn song they sang. There was a Filipino-in-Microsoft picnic just about a mile away and I couldn't wait to get there to see how it is.

Eventually, we decided to leave the concert and walk the mile to the picnic grounds. I met a few people, and I would have to thank Robbie for "anchoring" me. He knew someone and he introduced me to them, so now I kinda know them. There was food, and it was the first time I've eaten pancit canton in 3 years. Man, how much I've forgotten about it. I wasn't hungry, but I had to eat the food just because it has been a long time I've eaten them. lol

Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera so I couldn't post any pics. But there was a softball team (of 12 year olds I think) from Bacolod City who won an international competition against American, European and Latin American teams. That was impressive I think.

Afterwards, the rest of our clique arrive and we chatted. We had a lot of laughs and had a generally good time...

Afterwards, Robbie and I walked back quietly. I had a lot of thoughts. About our site idea and how are plans for the future will put us in divergent paths...

Playing poker without looking at your cards... and other examples of mastery

Ok, ok... The title's a tad melodramatic. I just want to point out that various individuals who are masters of their profession talk something like this:

I saw in TV once a top poker pro who said that if you can play poker without looking at your cards, then you will be successful. The point he was trying to point is to play your opponent, instead of what you have. If you can read that your opponent is weak, and you push, then you can win a good pot. If you can read your opponent is strong then no matter how much you posture, he'll probably is going to call, and you're better off cutting your losses.

Similarly, I heard from a master conversationalist "the material you use does not matter much in captivating your audience." I got his point right away. You can walk , for example, to a group of people in a party and if you got the skills, you can captivate them with little to do with material.

Robert Kiyosaki also mentioned in one of his books about making money without having money. But just doing deals and matching buyers to sellers. He once made 50k for a few hours of work and no money from his own hatching up a deal.

For me personally, this is one of the most intrinsically rewarding aspects of mastery of a field. I play poker competitively and program software professionally. And when I'm in a state of flow, it's like I can do stuff because I knew what to do, and it had nothing to do with what cards I had or with what programming languages I know.

As I learn new fields of study, I just hope I get to that level of mastery in them...

Softball Saturday and Other Stuff

I played softball with a few pinoys and taiwanese last saturday. It was ok. We won.

After the game, me, Robbie and Ronald separated from the main group to go out and eat dinner. I was craving for chicken wings, and it seems that there's only one such place nearby. So, we went there.

We had a nice chat, but the main topic of discussion was Ronald's "abilities" to woo girls. Mind you, it does not matter what type of girl, he can get her. I was still skeptical, but I can see how he can do it. He's good with words and how he makes the other person feel good about themselves.

Anyway, after that, we had more chat over coffee. After that, we went to Borders and searched a books. Despite the 3 of us's varied backgrounds, we like the same books--programming, finance and of course, how-to-get-the-girl type of books. We connected on those topics, us 3 being the few bachelors in our local community.

After that, Robbie wanted to go home to rest. I was tired myself and wanted to do the same, but Ronald made a proposition that was hard for me to resist. He will lend me a book--the bible for picking up girls. I wasn't that familiar with the book, but I wasn't oblivious that such books do exist.

Unfortunately, Ronald lived about 20-30 minutes away, and it will be a long drive back once I got to his place. But I felt that this was a good opportunity. So, I followed him and his cool ride.

After a few chit chat, I got what I came for and was eager to read and watch it at home (he gave me a few DVDs as well).

At home, I couldn't sleep right away, and read part of the book. I slept dead tired, and woke up 4 hours later. I thought I had slept for only an hour or so because it was still dark outside. After that, I couldn't put the book down, and kept on reading. I've read halfway. And I'm simply blown away. All I can say is:

"It's time for a motherfucking change."
--Neil Strauss (aka Style), The Game

More on this in the next few days/weeks...

New Blog Layout

I just redid the layout of my blog. I like what Google did, adding pluggable, configurable UI elements to the blog. What do you think? What else should I add?

Cleaning Lady

Walking one day to the bus stop nearest my campus, I saw my friend Robbie wave to a lady in this humongous, obviously expensive SUV.

"Is she a high level manager or something?" I inquired, after the SUV plowed through the street.

"She's the cleaning lady...", he nonchalantly replied.

It was probably sarcasm... He probably didn't want to admit that he was well connected in the campus.

But I didn't relent. "No really, who is she?"

"The cleaning lady." And I knew he wasn't joking or anything. I looked back and tried to remember the SUV again. She could afford that? Was that even possible? That SUV was probably at least 40k.

Lesson: Don't underestimate the cleaning lady.

Funny Scene

I saw a funny scene today.

At work, I am near the hallway so I hear people passing by every now and then. A while ago, there was this more than chubby woman passing by. She was breathing heavily than normal. At first I thought she really needs an exercise. With her figure, and her being out of breath for just walking, she really needs to do something about it.

But I noticed she was pushing a cart. The cart was about 2/3 her height and it looked heavy because when she pushes, it looked like it took a lot of effort.

Ah, so that explains it. Anyone will certainly be exhausted pushing something heavy. Now, thoughts like "she needs help," or "she must be exhausted" came to my mind. I'd love to help her.

That is, of course, until I saw the cart's contents--it had lots and lots of chocolates, biscuits, and other yummy snacks.

I tried not to laugh... hard...

Campus Concert

We had a concert at campus today. It was a cool summer day. The sun was gentle, the leaves slightly wet. It seems to remind you more that fall is just around the corner than actually being a summer day.

The band playing is called "Harvey Danger". My friend Robbie keeps on telling me the guy in the office next to mine was in that band. I didn't know them, but I took his word for it. Turns out, they got an mtv. The person Robbie was pointing to was the guitarist at the left side.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xzxDRA93Nk (they disabled embedding, so I'm just putting up the URL)

And here's a spirited rendition of the same song that I saw a few months back and didn't know the guitarist of the band was just sitting a few feet from me!

I LOVE this video... It's very ingenious and spontaneous. I have watched it so many times and I haven't gotten tired of it.

Knees Hurting but Otherwise Ok

My knees hurt all day today. I've been upping my distance every week. And at first everything seemed fine. When I reach the 4 mile mark, my knees start to hurt. But it's fine. I can still go at it.

My longest run is 6 miles. I've done it twice now. And it's getting a little bit easier to run. This week, I might rachet it up to 7.5 miles. But I'll need adequate rest before I do it. Otherwise, I might just get injured.