Audio Books are GREAT

I love Audiobooks. I'm listening to an English translation of Kafka's The Trial. Let me quote something from that audiobook:

"She held Kay apostrophe S hand..."

Another one:

"... he asked 'Where is the courtroom question mark'"

X marks the spot

The burning sensation on my torso is killing me. I've added another one, and counted all 29 of them. That's how long it's been. That's how many times i ended my day with pain for thinking about her. That's how many times i tried to keep her out of my mind. And that's how many times i've failed.

Sisyphus, In His Own Words

Welcome to my mountain, Dear Friend. I am Sisyphus, and I am very glad you could join me here. Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus that "One should imagine Sisyphus happy". Whether one imagines it or not, Dear Friend, it is true- I am happy. Indeed I am amongst the happiest and freest of men. I must walk down to the plain now, but if you will come with me I will explain to you why I should be happy, and why it is that your predicament, Dear Friend, is just like mine.

As we make our way down this mountain to the rock which I must push back up to the peak only to watch it fall again, you may be wondering how it is that I could be happy. It might not seem like an enviable situation, I know. But if you will indulge me, I shall tell you how it can be, that a man as unfortunate as myself can smile on a day like this.

White chocolate capuccino, strange places, and the summer heat

This morning, i slept for more or less 2 hrs (4am - 6am). I tried going back to sleep but my bed wants to kill me by squeezing out every last drop of water in body with its hot sheets. "Nagbara" is the proper reaction for this, as the sheets feel like they've been put in an oven and cooked for 4 hrs in 700Kelvin. Nevertheless, i endured the heat and stayed sweating in bed for 3 hours -- wondering if there would ever be a time i'd enjoy this heat. At 9.00, by remembering the things i have to finish before seeing the sun go down and up again and by fear of dying of dehydration, i decided to get up, get a drink, and go on with my life.

Easier said than done. The heat has indeed gotten to me but there are other things in the crazy head of this self-absorbed egomaniac going on that's to blame for being a bum. Here it is:

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Anyone who can decrypted SHA1+MD5 encrypted messages probably can read that, but i doubt it's worth your time.

Moving on, i procrastinated for a few hours before doing some actual work. I missed breakfast and lunch, but that's nothing new. Valerie, a friend of Patrick who i work for, making the BP Int'l Shipping Corp. website, called reminding me that the deadliest deadline -- when we'll present the actual website -- for BP is tomorrow. I've completed almost everything before 13.00, but there are a few images missing, which i assume that they expect me to generate myself. No biggie. It's just a little crop here, changing color intensities there -- trivial stuff. It would've been better if Patrick's actually finished his job -- the graphics part -- before leaving for Isabela for some Multi-level marketing gimmick.

Deciding to hold the work until i got back home, i burned the cd's for Anna and took a much needed bath.

I was supposed to meet up with Anna at the CAL building, but i ended up waiting at the faculty center -- close, but not quite right. After checking out books in Nat'l Bookstore Katipunan, we parted. She went to eat at Tia Maria's and i went to Johanna's place to meet up with her Dan.

After meeting with the couple about The Project, i walked to Epoy's and Nico's place. It's no surprise that they're not there. They're probably in Mindoro or just out somewhere.

I went back to Anna's place. She freaked when she saw my face just a few inches from hers. Her scream almost gave me a heart attack, so i sat on her bed until my heartbeat and breathing went back to normal. I told Anna i went there to tell her that she has to use WinRAR for the copy of the Nightmare Before Christmas that i gave her. Ha! She told before that she knows how to use Winrar and how to open winrar files -- it follows that she knows what to do with rar files. I just wanted to hang out with her, i guess.

After watching The Amittyville Horror and her smoking a cigarette, i walked home. I wanted to go straight to Commonwealth, then thru Central Ave, but i decided that's too easy. Sinced i've tried that route before.

Going thru C.P. Garcia, i found myself entering the street near Sarah's to KNL (Krus na Ligas). The streets there fumed the heat the asphalt collected the entire day. It gave me a feeling of nausea and self-hatred. It also caused me to have a headache that feels like somebody's mixing my brain using an egg-beater. After half an hour, i escaped the maze of KNL and entered the labyrinth of Teachersville. It took me more than two hours walking around before i got home.

At home, i quickly logged on to my pc and worked on my stuff while drinking white chocolate capuccino. It is apparent that at this point, i don't feel like writing anymore.

Dad killed me in my dream

Does anyone know how to interpret dreams? Yesterday, i dreamt that i forced my dad to kill me.

This is the first dream i had -- or the first dream i remembered -- for weeks... months even. I should also mention that this was after our wall-climbing night last Monday. My upperbody's aching. I couldn't type as fast, and i can't even play the guitar without saying "ouch," "argh," or at least bite my lip.

The dream happened in a room that looks almost like our kitchen. My dad was holding a knife, cutting meat or something. As i remember, he seemed quite stressed. And i tried to get to his nerves by doing or saying something stupid -- i can't remember right now.

I'll tell you more details if you need.

Musmos sa Lansangan

Here are some of the photos i've taken for our project in LTS 2.

A digital camera was used for convenience (this was done in only 24 hrs) & money (we're all broke).

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe

The following is a short story starring Zaphod Beeblebrox that is included, among other places, in the posthumously released collection The Salmon of Doubt. We hope you enjoy it.

A large flying craft moved swiftly across the surface of an astoundingly beautiful sea. From midmorning onward it plied back and forth in great, widening arcs, and at last attracted the attention of the local islanders, a peaceful, seafood-loving people who gathered on the beach and squinted up into the blinding sun, trying to see what was there.

Any sophisticated, knowledgable person who had knocked about, seen a few things, would probably have remarked on how much the craft looked like a filing cabinet-a large and recently burgled filing cabinet lying on its back with its drawers in the air and flying. The islanders, whose experience was of a different kind, were instead struck by how little it looked like a lobster.

They chattered excitedly about its total lack of claws, its stiff, unbendy back, and the fact that it seemed to experience the greatest difficulty staying on the ground. This last feature seemed particularly funny to them. They jumped up and down on the spot a lot to demonstrate to the stupid thing that they themselves found staying on the ground the easiest thing in the world. But soon this entertainment began to pall for them. After all, since it was perfectly clear to them that the thing was not a lobster, and since their world was blessed with an abundance of things that were lobsters (a good half a dozen of which were now marching succulently up the beach towards them), they saw no reason to waste any more time on the thing, but decided instead to adjourn immediately for a late lobster lunch.

At that exact moment the craft stopped suddenly in midair, then upended itself and plunged headlong into the ocean with a great crash of spray that sent the islanders shouting into the trees. When they reemerged, nervously, a few minutes later, all they were able to see was a smoothly scarred circle of water and a few gulping bubbles.
That's odd, they said to each other between mouthfuls of the best lobster to be had anywhere in the Western Galaxy, that's the second time that's happened in a year.

The craft that wasn't a lobster dived directly to a depth of two hundred feet, and hung there in the heavy blueness, while vast masses of water swayed about it. High above, where the water was magically clear, a brilliant formation of fish flashed away. Below, where the light had difficulty reaching, the colour of the water sank to a dark and savage blue.

Here, at two hundred feet, the sun streamed feebly. A large, silk-skinned sea mammal rolled idly by, inspecting the craft with a kind of half-interest, as if it had half expected to find something of this kind round about here, and then it slid on up and away towards the rippling light.

The craft waited here for a minute or two, taking readings, and then descended another hundred feet. At this depth it was becoming seriously dark. After a moment or two the internal lights of the craft shut down, and in the second or so that passed before the main external beams suddenly stabbed out, the only visible light came from a small, hazily illuminated pink sign that read, the beeblebrox salvage and really wild stuff corporation.

The huge beams switched downwards, catching a vast shoal of silver fish, which swivelled away in silent panic.
In the dim control room that extended in a broad bow from the craft's blunt prow, four heads were gathered round a computer display that was analysing the very, very faint and intermittent signals that were emanating from deep on the seabed.

"That's it," said the owner of one of the heads finally.

"Can we be quite sure?" said the owner of another of the heads.

"One hundred per cent positive," replied the owner of the first head.

"You're one hundred per cent positive that the ship which is crashed on the bottom of this ocean is the ship which you said you were one hundred per cent positive could one hundred per cent positively never crash?" said the owner of the two remaining heads. "Hey"-he put up two of his hands-"I'm only asking."

The two officials from the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration responded to this with a very cold stare, but the man with the odd, or rather the even number of heads, missed it. He flung himself back on the pilot couch, opened a couple of beers-one for himself and the other also for himself-stuck his feet on the console, and said "Hey, baby," through the ultra-glass at a passing fish.

"Mr. Beeblebrox . . ." began the shorter and less reassuring of the two officials in a low voice.

"Yup?" said Zaphod, rapping a suddenly empty can down on some of the more sensitive instruments. "You ready to dive? Let's go."

"Mr. Beeblebrox, let us make one thing perfectly clear . . ."

"Yeah, let's," said Zaphod. "How about this for a start. Why don't you just tell me what's really on this ship."

"We have told you," said the official. "By-products."

Zaphod exchanged weary glances with himself.

"By-products," he said. "By-products of what?"

"Processes," said the official.

"What processes?"

"Processes that are perfectly safe."

"Santa Zarquana Voostra!" exclaimed both of Zaphod's heads in chorus. "So safe that you have to build a zarking fortress ship to take the by-products to the nearest black hole and tip them in! Only it doesn't get there because the pilot does a detour-is this right?-to pick up some lobster? Okay, so the guy is cool, but . . . I mean own up, this is barking time, this is major lunch, this is stool approaching critical mass, this is . . . this is . . . total vocabulary failure!

"Shut up!" his right head yelled at his left. "We're flanging!"

He got a good calming grip on the remaining beer can.

"Listen, guys," he resumed after a moment's peace and contemplation. The two officials had said nothing. Conversation at this level was not something to which they felt they could aspire. "I just want to know," insisted Zaphod, "what you're getting me into here."

He stabbed a finger at the intermittent readings trickling over the computer screen. They meant nothing to him, but he didn't like the look of them at all. They were all squiggly, with lots of long numbers and things.

"It's breaking up, is that it?" he shouted. "It's got a hold full of epsilonic radiating aorist rods or something that'll fry this whole space sector for zillions of years back, and it's breaking up. Is that the story? Is that what we're going down to find? Am I going to come out of that wreck with even more heads?"

Next Page

Walk to the past

The day and the night were all drawn up for the story of two (still nameless) frogs. That story would've taught them to respect others cause not everyone has the same basis for what they believe in. It should've been the first ever activity that i solely executed, or at least played the biggest part of its execution. It got me down that i didn't get to do the story-telling bit yesterday. There's still gonna be a next time, tho. From the foundation, we did the obligatory routine of going to Shang food court and planning what to do next.

Marcello & Landlady Allan made plans to go to LB, and i volunteered to come along thinking that i'll probably do crap on my SP again. I walked home again after that. The same usual stuff.

Jarek came to our house yesterday afternoon. He forgot that it's Saturday and i have a class. However, after eating some of my cousin's b-day food, Jarek came and ate more with me. I asked him if he wants to join our road trip -- Mark plans to drop off Allan & his desktop there, and go back home right after. He said yes.

The trip started awkward. Jarek made a comment about the Chinese -- how they're all the same tea-pickers -- and Mark told us he came from a line of conservative Chinese family. Apologies and a long silence followed. But they eventually gotten around to talking after that.

In LB, we had a brief chat with the people hanging out the House of Second Chances, then waited for Vida who'll go back with us to Metro Manila.

Icebag Tarugo

Have you seen two blind men lead each other? It's a sad thing to see.

They started the play with the part where two dying people were used by other dead people to settle their affairs that they failed to settle when they're alive.

It's a classic "Life is wasted on the living" business.

...

The part i liked most is the one about the twins joined at their backs fighting over a guy.