the bashful one by jose garcia villa
POSTED AT 09:02 PM

Blacksword

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

,

 

  

 

 

~ the end ~

beautiful, isn't it?

kulang sa nutrisyon
POSTED AT 11:49 PM

Blacksword

whew, haha. buti na lang mabait ako.

(insert emo stuff here)

(then something about getting ready for tomorrow)

wait. didn't I just talk about those stuff with my last few posts?

hmm. I'm supposed to be ranting about how I'm starting to get better at getting out of other people's warpaths. buuut doing so will be pretty redundant, as this blog has contained too many similar posts. besides, I'm feeling a lot better right now, thanks to the combo jokes they've been cracking over at the brewrats show, so.. I won't be writing a very emo post right now. 

come to think of it, I don't have anything to post about at all, haha. I mean, lessee.. emo stuff, classes tomorrow.. and I don't feel like writing about small stuff right now, so.. I guess that's it.

but.. somehow, my heart still feels constipated. I've already written a couple of paragraphs about some stuff, but I deleted them, since I don't want to echo my older posts. or maybe because I've lost the ability to communicate my feelings and thoughts properly. could be the effects of being lethargic for so long taking its toll.  

whew, that's pretty bad. tomorrow I'll be surrounded by a lot of people, so I will need to crack my box of social skills open once again. I think I have it around here, somewhere.. oh wait, I don't have social skills. 

crap. 

so hmm.. what am I still doing here? I'm supposed to be sleeping, since I have classes tomorrow morning. well.. I dunno. hmm, okay. I'll just force myself to sleep right now. maybe that's just what I need to loosen up my thoughts a bit. and I'm sure tomorrow's gonna give me lots of material to write about. 

but not bad stuff, I hope. 

okay. tomorrow, then.

goodnight.

err..

c'moooon, sleeeeeeeep!!!

fine, fine. 

ciao!

first day high
POSTED AT 09:04 PM

Blacksword

hmm, pang ilang post ko na 'ba 'to tungkol sa first day? hahaha, nevermind.

first day na sa june 15.

oddly enough, I'm not that nervous. probably because I've been through a LOT of first days, I don't even consider it remotely scary anymore. although, of course, there would definitely be a lot of unknown variables come monday, but I don't really care. whatever happens, happens. that's the way how life goes.

anyway, there had been a change of plans. I was supposed to go to this school in fairview, but there were some 'technical' difficulties, so I had to change school (forgot to mention this in my earlier posts, but watdaheck). from here, my new school's a lot nearer than the one I was supposed to go to, so it's really convenient to reach. good thing for me, really, since the roads tend to be pretty congested on the first day. plus I don't have to wake up early compared to what I've been used to back then.

btw, this new school of mine. it's actually a seminary. LOL.

but I'm not going to be a seminarian. no, that calling is not for me.. or at least I think so.. but nah. I don't think that's what my purpose in life is. I've been there and it took me only three months to realize that the way of the cloth is not for me. and besides, there's this particular someone that would definitely get mad if I do become a priest. don't worry, babe, I'm only there to study.

most of my preparations are complete now. yesteday, we bought the things that I needed for monday in a very, very crowded SM north. we hurried to assemble a couple of my uniform, which is a simple combination consisting of a white polo shirt and a pair of black pants. we also got a pair of black shoes. it's kind of a big deal for me, 'cause it's been a long time since I've worn a uniform for anything. to tell the truth, I'm quite excited to wear my new uniform to school. it's like I'm in highschool again (especially when the uniform I'm wearing makes it look like I AM in highschool).
of course, the uniform's just an aspect of my education. it's the studying that I really should focus on. I'm now a student of Philosophy. huge leap from my former course. but it's all in preparation for the master plan, so to speak.

and when I say master plan, I mean my true goal of becoming a lawyer. well, it might look pretty far-fetched right now, but dreaming about it is a start. ika nga nila, libre naman mangarap eh. but, of course, I won't just sit here and let my life go by with only a dream. I'll definitely, definitely work hard to make sure that I reach my goal.

I don't know if it's going to be easy or hard for me, but either way, I'll do my very best. and it will all begin this coming monday. well, all I can say is.. good luck to me!

ciao.

Feeling: good

A tip for the coming 2010 elections: don't be an idiot.
POSTED AT 12:48 AM

Blacksword

So.. let's be honest. with all the corruption and idiocy going on in the Philippine government today, would you still want to vote?

Well, if you really are going to waste your time doing so, let me give you my take on what I think would happen in the coming election. 

First of all, it won't really matter if you'd vote or not. Your vote will not count. It's either someone's gonna use your identity and vote for you, or you'll vote, but it won't count. As the last election taught us, half of the country's population is in maguindanao, and they're all pro-administration, haha (just kidding, btw). They're only campaigning so that whatever votes they can conjure up would look legit. What I mean is, no matter how educated the public is, cheating WILL happen, whether you like it or not. And no big fish will ever be caught cheating. they have been so adept at cheating that they have developed intricate webs of deceit, with no accountability whatsoever for the inner circles of this web. Not even Marcos was convicted of cheating in a court trial, not even when he was so blatantly manipulating the numbers at the 1986 snap elections (but the public was pretty fed up by that time, so this led to that, and, well, you know what happenned afterwards). So if you're going to vote, then it would be best if you just sold your vote. That way, you don't have to totally waste your time at the voting centers, since you did earn some money. trust me, it still happens in a lot of places, especially in the provinces, where the reach of Imperial Manila and its educated voters are short.

Second, the automated voting process. Seems like it won't push through. But if it did, no matter how fool-proof they may seem to be, when there is a corrupt will, there is a way. There would still be technical staff attending to the machines, who could possibly be bribed. The data could still be corrupted or replaced, one way or another. If they're not transferring the data through a network, there's the possibility of transports carrying the storage devices being hijacked, just like when they hijacked ballots back then. And, from what I've heard, even if the voting machines aren't connected to a network, the final tally would still be sent to the united states for verification through the internet. Which will definitely be vulnerable should anyone try to 'hack' the systems doing the transfer. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for an automated system. But I don't think it would work, with our current situation and all. 

Third, the candidates. 

Good Lord, I could go on forever. 

I mean, would you vote for someone who was accused of plunder together with his dad, and whose only role in the senate was to make ROTC mandatory, and taunt Bolante with the question 'ano ang mas importante sa yo, bayan o meeting mo?' during the fertilizer scam investigations?

Or someone who never did anything meaningful in the senate, wasted the senate's and the people's attention by talking about celebrity scandals, and yet has enough free time and nerve to host a badly-conceptualized rip-off of a show on television and make badly hastened movies just to make papogi? What. The. Fuck. 

We've had enough of those useless idiots. I don't know how they managed to win (I guess a lot of people were equally dumb as well), but at least they're just useless idiots who have no idea what they're doing.

But what about those who do know what they're doing and are actively hurting the nation and it's people?

I don't know the ones whom you should vote for, but I do know the ones whom you shouldn't.

You should never vote for the ones who uses the poor as a platform for their campaign.

Why?

Well, I don't know about you, but in my opinion, they're the ones who are hurting the poor.

Ever since the Philippines became a country, there have been poor people in it. And ever since the nation became a democracy, there have been politicians who have taken advantage of the uneducated masses. 

Why the poor people? Well, it doesn't take a genius to know that they consist the largest percentage of the entire population. Plus, they're really easy to trick. The upper classes, oh, you'd have a lot to do to please those just to include their help into your political machinery. And besides, there aren't a lot of rich people compared to the rest of the population, anyway. For the middle class wage-earners (who, by the way, are the true heroes of the nation and are the ones who should really be taken care of), if you're going to run for office, then you'll really have to be honest if you want to please them. But the poor, oh the poor. Give them food, money, shirts with your face on them, what have you. And boom, instant multitude of votes. 

And then the hurting starts once they win. 

I think they're hurting the poor specifically for the reason of having more easily-pleased voters every election season. The more poor people to 'help', the more votes they can gather. A lot of people are pushed to crime every election time. I don't want to be so pointy-fingered, but if you've lived in this country, you certainly don't wonder anymore why kidnappings and bank robberies occur whenever election season is near. And these evil men continue to destroy the country by manipulating the votes of the masses in favor of candidates who don't even have an idea what they're actually supposed to do with their position. And once they win, they instantly forget about the poor people who developed diabetes because of their sugar-coated sweet promises. They forget about the people to whom they promised to give everything, if they just wrote the candidate's name on their ballots.

What really happens once they win is that those wage-earners and small-to-medium-businesses who actually pay their taxes would be paying the politicians PhP19 billion in pork barrel, or have their taxes spun around in a very corrupt and inept system (which will then be mostly used up on travel money whenever Manny Pacquiao has a fight in Las Vegas, or on gas for their big black SUVs, among other things). While the poor continues to be poor, because the people they voted for have forgotten about them and are busy either paying back the big businesses that helped them during the election. Or doing trivial stuff, like making movies, hosting tv shows, digging up dirt about each other in the form of 'exposes', and then throwing it around so they'd have less competitors the next election. Or investigating celebrity scandals which would be better left to Lolit Solis and Butch Francisco. Or distracting our boxing heroes by enticing them to run for congress. 

Whatever happens, once they win, we lose. 

Now, it's not like I don't want everyone to vote. But with this kind of political atmosphere, would you stilll want to vote? 

Right now, there are a lot of organizations that are conducting campaigns to push for an honest, clean election. But let's be realistic. What can we really do against the established machinery of the corrupt politicians? Who are we going to go against? There's no definite organization or individual that we really can put a finger on. You catch a group of goons stealing ballots, and all you'll ever accomplish is jail the grunts of an organization that's so intricate, it's most likely that you won't get any undeniable evidence pointing to a mastermind. Everything's deniable. No 'big fish' has ever been convicted in a trial on cheating, or even held in one, for that matter. No one can be accused of anything, except the grunts who just wanted to make some easy money by doing the dirty jobs. It's like trying to fight smoke with your bare fists. 

Besides, there's no use fighting it. It's not as if you had a choice anyway, with the selection of candidates that we have right now.

So.. the only advice that I really can give the voters this coming election is to pray. Start getting close to God, because he's the only one who can save our country now. 

By the way, if I have touched some nerves with what I've written, I apologize. I'm particularly cynical when it comes to politics, which I rarely talk about. I'm not a political anaylist as well. Just a regular citizen of a nation besieged by power-driven politics.

So, before some black ops knock on my door and shoot me in the head..

Ciao!

Feeling: the urge to pee

God hit it on the nail
POSTED AT 11:24 AM

Blacksword

On this day of your life, Andy, we believe God wants you to know... 

 

... that humans learn only by trial and error, and that includes you. 

You've got to live life, not think about it. Step into the midst of things, try and fail and learn and stand up again. The question is not whether you will or will not make mistakes - you will. The question is do you want to learn and grow, or do you want to shrink back and be stuck? Take that step you've been avoiding. You can succeed, or you can get feedback that it didn't work, but in either case you are sure to feel alive. 

Got this from facebook, actually. buuut, well.. God moves in mysterious ways, they say. so who knows. I mean, he must've been seeing me with eyes glued to my pc screen for a long time, so I guess he knew how to reach me. 

 

 

FUUUUU-
POSTED AT 01:23 AM

Blacksword

damnit, I thought I could sit my lazy ass here in front of the pc for a few more days. I was wrong. FUUUUUU-

I thought the first day of classes at my new school was on june 15. turns out, it was actually june 8. that really caught me off-guard. my lazy cells are panicking right now! but, well, they're not panicking as much as they should be. because fortunately, my enrollment procedures would be greatly simplified by.. let's just say, a lucky advantage. maybe someday I'll talk about it, but not right now. we don't want that advantage jinxed, right?

since my days of being a house-ridden bum are almost at an end, I'm going to start sleeping early, so that I won't go into shock once school starts.

ermm.. it's past midnight right now, but let's not rush things, shall we? besides, I still have 5 days left. that should be enough to prepare me for next week.

there are a lot of things that I am very nervous about right now. and all of them are connected somehow to the coming week. I just hope I can survive whatever they're going to throw at me once school starts. this is my last shot, and I really need to do good this time.

5 more days. 

anyway, I finally managed to reformat my old pc. well, before that, my sister asked me to reformat hers. and man, did that give me a headache. I was supposed to switch her older 40gb drive and her 'newer' 120gb so that the one with the larger capacity became the system drive with the smaller one as the backup disk. unfortunately, that 'newer' hard drive wasn't very cooperative. it had disk read errors when I tried to switch it from slave to master. I tried all the jumper settings, cable select, flashed the MBR, boot records, you name it, but to no avail. in the end, we decided to just use the old configuration.

and, then, a day later, my pc was suddenly unable to play videos without crashing the system. I still don't know what caused that problem. I knew it was graphics driver related, but I don't know what kind of fix I should do. so, after more than a year of a stable system, I finally had to reformat once again. it was quite a task, but at least my pc's clean now. plus I had the chance to really fluff up my desktop with widgets and stuff. she looks very, very nice right now, with her digiclock and calendar. I can't be more proud. 

hmm.. what else.. ah, they've been talking about katrina halili and hayden kho's sex scandal on tv for a while now. I know, I'm already late in jumping in on the bandwagon, and I'm supposed to have an opinion about it, but well, I don't really give a damn. as long as they don't show it on tv that much, I'm fine with it. that is, IF they don't show it that much. I mean, yeah, it's news-worthy, but should you really be talking about sex scandals in front of viewers who could potentially be minors? elementary students have civics for a subject, which means their teachers would have to discuss sex scandals in the classroom since, after all, the media's buzzing with it. current events, 'ya know. and a scandal is a scandal only when it is scandalized (LOL). just stop talking about it and it will go away eventually (and I just contradicted myself with that statement, haha).

so anyway, it's really late, and I have to sleep now if I'm going to repair my broken internal bioclock. 

prayer for tonight: I hope I can make my remaining free days count.

ciao!

 

Feeling: unsure

current status: bored
POSTED AT 11:18 PM

Blacksword

yep. I'm starting to get bored.

I have a fully-decked gaming rig that I'm very proud of, with a wide selection of games and accessories, plus a relatively fast internet connection. the television's always there. dvd player's also good, with a wide selection of movies. can't really complain about my huge mp3 collection. and I can always read books if I wanted to. 

and I also have my really cute pet cat bruno. and a very happy dog named obama. 

well, thing is, I've been enjoying all those stuff, regularly and without restraint,  for the last two years. I guess that's the reason why I'm really bored.

I can probably go out with my friends, if that's what I really needed to do. but then again, I'm lazy. the only time I get to see them is when they come here themselves. and besides, it only gets interesting when we have money. that's the time when we could do stuff other than talking and shit. that's why I don't really bother with friends that much.

so.. I guess I can't do anything much right now.

the only good thing to come out of this is that my boredom is bad enough to be the motivation that I need to go back to school and do something good for a change. I mean, if it meant having new stuff to try and new things to do, then I'll gladly go and leave this paradise of yawns for a few hours each day.

yeah, that's right. I'll cut my leisure time once school starts. for a change. 

of course, that doesn't mean that I'll stop enjoying my dear gaming rig. no, no, no. 

just lessening it for a bit, ne?

anyway, status update for my future self.

current games: mafia wars on facebook, forumwarz, wh40k dawn of war dark crusade, medieval 2 total war.. aaaaand that's about it. most of my time is spent on the small stuff, like surfing the net, or watching videos/movies, and listening to music. hoping for money to fall from heaven so I can finally exchange my overworked graphics card for a better one. 

current activities: still house chores. mom is becoming increasingly reliant on me for such chores, much to her amusement. another reason why I'm really looking forward to my return to proper education. 

edit: fuck. I forgot fowrchan (misspelled it so an-on won't track me here). FUUUUUUUUUUU-

love life: same old, same old. but at least the remaining days are going fast. hopefully she'll come back. that's what she tells me, and that's what I'm going to believe. 

future: still bleak, but is starting to clear up a little bit.

and.. that's about it.

I hope something exciting comes up tomorrow. please, please. 

ciao.

Feeling: bored. bored. BORED.

green goo
POSTED AT 01:04 AM

Blacksword

my head's swirling right now. 

at the moment, I'm drinking my friend james' own home-made custom brew of vodka, what we here call 'green goo'. 

we had no idea how strong our brew was. and unfortunately, we made a whole batch of it yesterday. a whole pitcher. obviously, we never finished it. I mean, we've drunk vodka before, but not like this, LOL. and we've never been dizzy on the first glass. first time for everything, I guess. 

anyway, it was my sister's 21st birthday yesterday. 

had a lot of fun yesterday. 'twas not a big party, but the food was nice. we had some friends come over, but some of them didn't come, unfortunately. oh well, their loss. we had 3 pizzas, lots of junk food, and some softdrinks and our 'goo' on the side. and some of those jawbreakers that arrianne brought. my teeth still hurts from chewing some of them. 

well, since we were just a party of 5, we didn't do much. still, we had lots of fun, at the least. 

I gave my sister a teddy bear as a gift. 

and.. that was it. 

happy birthday, sis :D.

anyway, another long post gap. just when I was declaring my return to blogging, this happens. well, at least it wasn't my fault. my monitor finally broke down last week, and I had to wait 'til tuesday to have it replaced.

yeah, tuesday. 

so.. why did I wait for sunday to post here?

err.. I mean.. c'mon, I practically endured more than a year of using a broken monitor on my pc. I think I deserve a few days of gaming with a decent display, at the least, haha.

well, my determination to chronicle my life still stands.

here's a toast to my blog. cheers. 

now let me finish this glass. I need my green goo fix right now.

ciao!

Feeling: dizzy

Of schools and hospital visits.
POSTED AT 12:19 AM

Blacksword

I had a lot of fun today. 

Today, my sister and I decided to initiate my long-planned return to formal education, a plan we've been brewing ever since I tried to grow a spine and actually think about my own future (Which was yesterday, I think).

So, my sister woke me up early this morning, in the hope that we'd accomplish all that we're setting forth to do before lunchbreak. Unfortunately, my mom was awake as well, and she had the uncanny ability to make you sit in front of her and listen to her talk about small nothings (and actually make you enjoy listening to it at the same time). Also, both my sister and I were quite unused to the morning rush, due to it being summer and all. So we were moving pretty slow this morning.  And so our attempts to be early birds failed. We managed to leave the house at around 11am, one hour before lunch, the time that we've expected ourselves to be able to return home at. Oh well. 

Anyway, we headed off for a college that I was eyeing for quite a while now. It's a bit near, there were a lot of routes that led to it, so it was very efficient to commute to. When we arrived there, we were surprised to see that the campus was really nice and organized. Even my sister, who came from a decent college, was surprised at the level of efficiency that this particular school exercised. Everything was within reach at every step of the enrollment procedure, which actually started once you entered the gate. Regardless of status, new student or old, you were handed guides on the enrollment procedures, which included practically everything you needed to know. That was a relief; I thought we had to get ourselves lost in a place we were visiting for the first time just to find someone to talk to. In fact, we never had to talk to anybody for info, and yet I was very well informed on what I had to do and the stuff that I had to bring. That's why our stay there was short. Oh wait, there was these two little punks that had the nerve to 'po' me while I was talking with them. I swear, if I see them again, I'm going to chop off their heads and turn them into keychains. I. AM. NOT. OLD. And I don't look old as well. I swear. Sheesh. Anyway, after a quick call to ma, we decided to head towards my sister's soon-to-be med school. 

It only took one quick ride to get to her school, since it was very near to my prospect college. And one quick look at the facade just made me go "woah". If the place that we came from was a model of efficiency, this place that we were standing on was a monument of intimidation. It didn't look like a med school. It looked like a research laboratory that had a hotel lobby for an entrance hall and a posh food court for a canteen. Obviously, they were sending a message to everyone who entered the place: only the best of the best can study here. Makes me marvel at the proverbial balls of steel that my sister had (and which I probably never will have. I mean, her first course was about sticking needles on people and taking their blood, and now she's trying to learn how to go elbow-deep inside people's guts. wtf?!?). Anyway, she toured me around for a bit. Saw a lot of foreigners and pretty doctors, took a quick look at the buildings, and then we were out of there. 

Next stop was the hospital that formerly employed my sis. She just quit a couple of months ago to go to med school, and now she's going after her separation pay. At first, I waited for a bit at the hospital lobby. But then I got bored, and decided to move towards sis just so I could she what she was doing. She saw me and noticed that I was bored. So she took me along while she got her clearance signed. It was pretty exciting and almost seemed like a tour for me (yeah, so it was a hospital. for a non-med-related guy, I don't get too many chances to go around inside one just like that). Anyway, she took me to a lot of the hospital sections and described to me some of them. But after a few signatures, I was again back at the hospital lobby, since she was going to go inside the staff-only places. 'twas pretty boring, plus there was a storm raging just outside the hospital, so the atmosphere wasn't really nice. While I was waiting, I got on that weighing scale that was really calling for me since I sat at the lobby. I am currently 180lbs. Not bad for a fairly tall guy like me. Anyway, after an hour or so, I think, she finished what she was doing. Got the money, took a last look at the place, and then we went out.

So finally, amidst the rain and the wet streets, we got home at around 3pm. I missed my pet cat Bruno (don't ask). She's currently in heat right now, so she always goes out to try and look for male cats to make kittens with. Really annoying. I wish I could get her neutered one day, if only she's not afraid of being taken away from here.

One of my cousins and her husband just left here about a couple of hours ago. They just visited us from out of nowhere, but I'm never surprised whenever they're here since they're one of our relatively frequent visitors. They'll probably sleep over here tomorrow. I really hope they don't. I don't like visitors, even if they were my cousins. Especially if they're sleeping over. It always messes with the comfy feel of the house. Well, I guess they're okay with me, but I hope they don't stay for too long. 

Well, that's it for my day. A bit long for one of my posts, but that's because I had a lot to write about. Even if I did leave out a lot of detail. 

Nothing too profound to spout out right now. That's a good thing.

Oh but there is something to be sad about (for me, at least). One of my fave daily sites is going through tough times right now. I hope they don't close it for good, or else there'd be one less site for me to visit to when I'm online. I don't browse around a lot of sites lately, so the ones that I actually frequent to are pretty special to me. So, again, I hope it doesn't go down. 

And one of my fave guilty-pleasure sites is currently under a DDoS/Virus combo attack. *facepalm.jpg*

And did I mention that there's currently a storm raging right now, just around the corner?

Tough times for everyone, including me. I hope everything turns out fine next month.

Oh well.

Ciao.

 

Feeling: mellow