I exercised suffrage last Monday. Of course I voted wisely. I didn't use any sample ballot, I didn't even vote for anyone in the local positions. So there... If you were wondering who I voted for, it was GMA.

Tuesday, I went to Ayala after a long day of work to watch Van Helsing. It was good.

But I wasn't as prepared to actually watch TROY!

The Friday was okay.

The Saturday was alright.

The Sunday was happy although gloomy.

The Monday was Starsky and Hutch.

Friday. Nothing. NO comment. None at all. It was fun doing virtually nothing and waiting for the clock pass by and wait for the end of working hours. The end of a job well done deserves a nice short break. That's what we had. We did read some stuff of Squid, though and still had no idea whatsoever with all the squid this and squid that. I went to Cavite and it was a long travel. The queues were long and BARELY moving. The buses were packed like sardines. It was nice having to come home to a nice place that really is home.

Saturday. I woke up way too late. To my surprise, I got out of bed at noon. I was all alone at home then. So I had my lunch and had my bayth and a marathon of shows on the television. It wasn't fun. But it was relaxing. I needed that after a gruesome work in the city.

At Saturday night, we went to the local fair (perya).After gambling almost a hundred bucks and gaining a few quarters and two glasses and having a boring ride on the ferris wheel, it was a long night as I angrily prepared for the morning ahead. Fiesta in Mendez, I suppose... but no! We were about to buy computers in Manila. I was in anger! Mad! Furious! So I taught my sister a few tricks in elementary statistics which she probably didn't even get.

Sunday. Waking up on a Sunday morning and knowing you would grudgily go to Manila to buy computer pieces. O my wish list was two eighty-gigabyte of Hard Disk Drive, (preferably Seagate with 7200 rotations per minute), a 512MB DDR-RAM, a Black Sony Combo DVD+CD-RW drive, a Pentium 4 processor with 2.8 GHz E and an Inno3D GForce4FX. Of course, I wouldn't forget my flash drive, preferably a capacity of 512MB.
Instead I had one eighty-gigabyte of Hard Disk Drive (still Seagate with 7200 RPM), a 256MB DDR-RAM, a Black Samsung Combo DVD+CD-RW, a Pentium 4 processor with 2.8 GHz C and a Inno3D GFroce4MX. I didn't get a flash drive. My computer was all black it looked so beautiful. We had a good price for it, but the price was good enough to have us starve for two months (estimate). My critics have judged the specifications of my new PC as NICE, COOL, ASTIG and all. One commented, I should have bought silver ones instead because black PCs are all so common. Another commented that I should have bought Inno3D GForceFX instead. Another commented the price was too much for I didn't have any monitor and any printer. Comments anyone. What do you think of my new PC?

Later...

Coming up... I watch Starsky and Hutch at Glorietta and who didn't come to work on Monday...find out on the next blog of DREB.

Food of the Moment : KFC meal 1 and McDonald's meal 5.

It was a long night. After a long day from work, its a long journey to the long SM North EDSA for long lies or queues ahead. It was a long wait for two other housemates after we had a long meal at the very long Pinoy Toppings. I wasn't able to finish my meal, although Astin finished her meal long after I had, she eat more than I did. That's the second time.

Speaking of Second, he came with us to the night of Karaoke.

Food of the Moment: Pinoy Toppings's Bursilog

Well, just arrived from a loong journey from same old SM North EDSA. We managed to persuade one of my roomates to treat us to a karaoke. Of course, I made a list of songs that I plan to sing.
Before that, on our way home... we saw a couple showing off their public display of affection. Now missing one of our mates, we had fun cracking up jokes about what the couple was showing. The guy's hand was on the girls (lower) back.His thumb was inside the pocket of her jeans. It seemed as if he was pinching her and the girl didn't object.

Being the promdi that we are, we talked about it in the transport on the way home, not knowing that the passionate couple was a few seats away from us. We still continued to crack up jokes about the couple. There was one who did know the couple was with us, and all he could do is send signals of "the couple is here" which obviously we didn't receive.

SM North EDSA! Karaoke was on top of the list, after having the most expensive meal I have this day at Pinoy Toppings at the food court of SM North EDSA, we headed for Timezone for a karaoke experience. To our disappointment, it was eight in the evening and they close an hourn later. The girl at the ticket booth didn't sell us any tickets and we ended up... playing arcade games. I lost one game, I lost one coin, and then shoot some hoops where I scored a sixty. Was that good or what? I got seven tickets for that. I only need 11993 more so I can have the Doraemon stufftoy. BIG DEAL.

After the long wait for the transport, we spent our night at the Sunken Garden, one which I always make mistake for calling it the Freedom Park. We told stories, and of course, bar room sex jokes. I told two. Astin told a couple more and we cracked up at the last one. Let me give you a revised version of the joke:


CENSORED!!!


PS. I was able to work out 'HELLO WORLD' in java. Special thanks to Lester Romena and my java instructors (not).

Food of the moment : Sbarro pizza and Chicken Barbeque of Pinoy Toppings

Still worried about tomorrow's presentation, we decided to edit our works so it would look presentable, the report that was generated is fine. Its just that the 'interface' is not good enough. It's not pleasing to the eye.

I really don't like making interfaces... I still made interfaces.

For lucnh, I ordered Chopsuey. I had my heart on eating delicious vegetables with some bits of meat sauced in a delicious... sauce. Oh, chopsuey. How I Love Thee.

But what happened, the other BIG BOSS treated us to lunch outside. It wasn't a fine dining experience. The restaurant sort of reminds me of the weddings held in the provinces. You eat on wooden tables and sit on wooden chairs and the plates all came from the caterers, got the picture? Well, it's not elegant wood, mind you.

But the food was great. At the weddings, all they serve is adobo, menudo and all...

Astin ate more than I did. I had my heart all set on chopsuey.

I'm at work. Yes, I am. I arrived quite early, but not as early as Kristin Joy Ortega. She arrived at time 7:11. The FIRST trainee to arrive at work. And I? I was the third to arrive at the premises of our work. I'll credit my "tardiness" to the fact that I kept on singing and singing and singing timeless OPM hits. Don't get me wrong. It's none of those Hotdog and Sampaguita or Freddie Songs. It's some contemporary modern songs for a man's attitude towards love, work, etc...

"Oo na... mahal na kung mahal kita..."

This will be one loooong day, I can attest to that... and I think I need to get some karaoke to get me back to sanity.

So far, emails I have gotten were connected to work. Nic is complaining. Cindy is tired. Mark Caliston has nothing better to do. Astin kep sending me some files for our report.

REPORT??? Yes. A report! I thought it was just a simple demonstration in the library, but no.... it's a report on a report generation module. (No more particulars... I've got a non-disclosure Agreement with my company... PAYCHECK). BIG BIG BOSS will come.

Today, I went jogging. Yes. Jogging. 2 rounds over the UP Diliman campus. Well, to tell the truth, it was more of brisk walking, about a quarter of my "jogging" was jogging.

I woke up a quater before seven. I quickly dressed for work. We had to finish the module of report generation today. I spent the entire afternoon the previous day trying to figure out... or put into abstract the current database of my workplace.

And so we had it. After a few loud and raised voices over the query, we had managed to put it off!

That morning, Microsoft came to our workplace and gave a talk. There were freebies for software developers like we are, but hey... they are trial versions. It was actually a joke that they were on sale. The technology they featured... for me... was been there, seen that.

One of my teammates was able to use his chat applet in the pages he is developing and the entire afternoon, we were just chatting... making fun of ourselves.

It was dinner and I wasn't able to watch Smallville.

We had our talk at the lobby afterwards and well, not much has changed.

Now, I have just configured some settings in my computer so I can start with my SP right away.

But guess what... I still haven't done a HELLO WORLD program in Java. When was the last time I did that??? A couple of years ago??? Yes.
Food of the moment: Chopsuey. I told Astin I loved the food. =)

It's a moment to blog for.

It's way past midnight and I have just returned from a journey across town.

After I slept at past two in the morning, after getting over frights about the 'ghost' in our room... I was up at 6:30. I forced myself into getting up and taking a bath just so I can be at work at seven in the morning. I was alone in my room, no loud voices, no other forces to get me into waking up or sarcastically pretend to sleep...

I was at the office at about half past seven. I sent my progress report to my adviser, however, I was not able to send him my plans to be his advisee this coming semester for the implementation of my data mining proposal.

It was work, then. I found a way to incorporate a class into our report.. blah blah. I'm sure my work doesn't excite you.

And so it was work (and yahoo! messenger and yahoo! mail and surfing sites). Astin was right beside me as we tell stories about her budding relationship with another guy(s). Astin didn't feel so good because of his beau. Well, enough about her... It was quite difficult finding my way through that PHP issues.

It was lunch and Astin decided to come back to the dorm to rest for a while. After a quickie lunch at the Math Building, I went straight to the office to message her through Yahoo! Mobile. Well, it didn't work. I ended up texting her through my phone.

Work while she was gone was hard. I can't find that attribute anywhere in any table! Damn. And so I'm sure again that you don't want to know more about my work...

It was all work until 5:30! It was so... tiring... you don't know what to do... especially with that damn attribute... (no more about work, please!!!).

Somewhere in the afternoon, I started to miss Los Banos. So I messaged everyone that... "hey, I miss my Los Banos!!!". And despite some answers I have (like "Los Banos sucks!!!", I still miss my Los Banos.)

And so, at half past five, I went straight to Makati. I bought for myself a stored value ticket for the Metro Railway Transit (MRT) worth a hundred bucks. Talk about convinience. =)

It was eight stations, I think, to Ayala. The ride, as usual, was usual. I can't wait to see familiar faces from a crowd of good-looking men and women (good-looking, of course, includes me).

I reached Glorietta4 twenty minutes after I boarded the Quezon Avenue station. I began to look amongst the large crowd watching a fashion show. I messaged Nic and Dale via SMS that I would head straught to the fontain in front of McDonald's. And guess what??? There is no fountain because of that fashion show I did not even bother glance at (well, maybe once and was I disappointed... I was tooooo far away).

I saw Nic and Renee afterwards and we had our usual... "omigod-you're-here-and-i-miss-you-so-very-much". I saw Dale, too wearing his "Dance Instructor" outfit. Talked about work. WORK!!! It's all we ever talk about... I am beginning to sound like an adult... (The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery).

We decided to watch a film... what? It's yet to tell. On the way, we saw some brods and sisses (from COSS)... We ordered some Wendy's (yes, Wendy's again. I proposed Tokyo! Tokyo!, but we didn't bite) before we watched the movie, Paycheck. It stars Ben Affleck, and Uma Thurman. Uma Thurman plays Affleck's mother whom he developed the Oedipus Complex with. Or so I believe. Hehe.

Unlike Hellboy (which I believed the best part of the movie was seeing the Spiderman trailer), the best part of the movie was sitting right next to two of my bestest blockmate-friends: special mention to Nicolo and Dale. Not only did we have our laughs about the movie (Uma Thurman's love for younger men and all), we predicted the storyline (yes, we can see the future too and we don't need no machine).

We went our separate ways after that. I took a bus to Fairview that will pass by PHILCOA in Diliman, Dale took a us to San Pedro, and Nic walked to his apartment in Makati... and Renee was with another friend). We texted each other along the way. Yes, it was a nice night. I wasn't able to do my shopping for my contact lenses, but it was alright.

I was about to call it a night when I messaged my friend and batchmate, Roger, about my night. He was on his way to UP too, and he'd like to meet up for a small midnight snack. I accepted the offer and we had a talk somewhere at the back of the university.

Well, it's half past one already... huh... what... yeah.. sure... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

and so... i finish in a proposal that there should be a food of the moment! And the food of the moment is... Starbucks Coffee, and the Peach Mango Pie from Jollibee which I got after loading my phone with measly fifty bucks.

I tried to start doing my SP. After making small progress report to my practicum adviser, I decided to start doing my SP. Hmm... maybe a few Java surfing will help.

Then I realized, I have no SP adviser at all. My SP adviser has resigned the previous semester... yes, without even giving us a notice that he has plans of transferring to a different organization this year. So I am left with no adviser at all.

My SP adviser (let's not mention his name...) approved my topic the previous semester. I had proposed a topic on data mining. Well, data mining, as my research had taught me, is a new field in Computer Science where we search a database for existing patterns.

But that's not the interesting stuff... so here I am in front of my monitor... typing away. Thinking, I should start with my SP immediately if I want to graduate the next semester. My SP is quite a lot of tedious work.

For those who kept on wondering what the f*cking hell SP is... SP is "Special Problem". It is a requirement if you want to earn a degree in Computer Science in my university, University of the Philippines. It is a requirement if you would not rather do a thesis. SP is where you develop a software... I believe. Maybe you can also propose an algorithm... Just an application of what you have learned in CompSci.

Well, nothing obviously happened to me. I cannot even compile a "Hello World" java program. I tried... It wouldn't work.. It just wouldn't.

I want everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions, no more no less. Ask me anything you want (though I reserve the right to not answer, or to answer evasively). Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (including me) to ask you anything.

A whole day of work can really make you feel very tired.

I arrived at my workplace at about 8:30, afew minutes away from being branded as late and a salary deduction to come through.

This day of work is very different. I still can not get my Yahoo! Messenger to work. (I work in a Linux workstation, so don't ask and don't say I don't know nothing about computers.) The system is looking for a Java plug-in which I am sure I have installed. So I installed Universal Instant Messengers (eg. Gaim) that supports Yahoo! I still can't get anything to work since "Your server does not allow port tunneling". My port number is 3128, I don't know what it means. Can smebody tell me? I changed the port number to 8080 but then it wouldn't work.

We had the usual programming in the morning. At lunch, we had the usual lunch at the Math Building which is right across the street from where I work. I had a Ham and Cheese sandwich worth Philippine Pesos 23.00. It' was worth it. But after, I bought donuts, and cheeseticks and a LOT of juice. Astin told me her convincing words... and got the others to do as well. I guess I'll just have to live with that.

The usual programming followed... then by a cheering practice??? Yes, a cheering practice. That was no error. There would be a game tomorrow, and hell, am I going to go "Pamela One, ASTI is the best blah blah blah".

Work, then Astin changed her status to something different making everyone in hwer friend's list... ask her about her mood.

As for me, I will just live without my Yahoo! Messenger. Huhu.