I went to Korea late October. It was my first trip out of this god-forsaken place, and it was really a refreshing change. Considerably fresher air and cheaper clothes. Too bad the digicam i brought along conked out on me at the last minute. I had to cough up KRW 15,000 to purchase a no-good disposable cam. This lady sold it to me - the unsuspecting tourist - while I was waiting for my cable ride atop Namsan in central Seoul. Here are some pictures I came across, thanks to good ol' Google. It reminded me of the sights and sounds, the experience and the wonder. And most especially, the awe I felt for having met surprisingly friendly folk.

For some of them I met but will never get around to seeing again (since they were mere strangers who helped me and my mom out of a rut we always seemed to steer ourselves into), Kamsahamnida :)

And the pictures I took using the disposable? Uh, don't ask.

There, almost new. I realised that when I was about to edit my booklist that the template was so old that blogger.com had deleted it already. I inadvertently had to change it and modified the new template a bit (a bit? a bit??). For that added flare.

I absolutely hate pink. Its too... pink. But there you go. Eat up.

I was mulling whether to link my personal quiz here but decided against it. Who are you to take it anyway? Go make one for yourself. If you are absolutely convinced that you personally know me and _do_ want to take my quiz, e-mail me.

Note to self: Bring back my links and my book-movie-cd list! I'll have to ask my boyfriend for help on this.

There is absolutely nothing to blab about. I should go out more. I'm always stuck in the office, talking to myself in front of the comptuer monitor. with any luck, in a few years, my hands would have grown bigger than my feet at the rate im utilising them.

"I can't grow any taller, but I can be better." - Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Republic of the Philippines

Well that does it. It mean's I'm doomed if I don't "link" to other web sites. Hah. It's not as if I actually have readers out there.

[Half of the blogs out there have probably written what I just wrote, but nobody's supposedly around to care, right?]

I was never the linking type. I have. In my past blogs. But I'm running out of time of late. My college friends used to quote me that 24 hours is not enough for a day for me. And that hasn't changed a bit.

Only now, I can hardly point what's eating up my time. I have relatively more freedom to do something else since I graduated. I have my sister's car, I get my monthly wages, I go to work really near a district hang-out (wait, what's that got to do with blogging?). What's missing?

"Labor conquers everything (Labor omnia vincit)." - Virgil, Georgics, I

i just tasted green tea frapuccino - a new Starbucks concoction. i must say that i actually enjoyed the drink and would venture so far as to say that it has revolutionized iced tea drinking for me. i've been drinking green tea for as long as i could remember, even back when people on tv documentaries on Japan would make funny faces before, during, and after drinking it. i drink it to make me feel better and for its health benefits. but it is only now that i actually felt happy i drank it. happy or giddy, can't decide which. i think both. happy because i did something adventurous today, and giddy because it cost me PHP 110.

there was this poem/song we took up in Philippine Literature way back college. entitled Tuesdays of My Being Sick, by this local rock group who had a WRK dj for a lead singer. i dont remember the exact lyrics of the song, but it now reminds me of how i feel. i guess its in order to look for it so i could share it to you. let's see.

~im in a daze
~now everything's changed
~it amazes me

When writing a letter of application, the three most important things to remember are the following: proper punctuation, getting to the point, and being nice.

Tolkien wrote his diaries in Elvish, so said Humphrey Carpenter at the Cheltenham Festival in the UK last week. Hmm. This guy, Tolkien, never fails to amaze me.

"The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination." - JRR Tolkien

"I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us." - Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

I'm off to London to marry Prince William!

our little conversations on our instant messengers at work are mundane at times, outragiously funny at other instances, and sometimes, soberingly honest. we are what, within touching distance from each other? what if everyone just actually spoke everything out loud?
great when the boss is around... but you have to limit the shaking of the head and the shoulders when something hilarious comes up in the silent conversation, or he'd wonder if you've become too crazy to be worthy of his payroll.

I've been wracking my brains out on what the antonym for "conducive" is.

I'm still trying to decide whether my office-mate's electronic cuckoo clock is helping me get my work done. I think, for the moment, that it's driving me nuts.

Dr Sadie Plant's latest foray into unravelling people's love affair with technology has revealed an interesting fact this week - that mobile phones and Gameboys (do they still sell these?) are causing the under-25s' thumbs to become their "new fingers." I once remarked that if man were to evolve that he'd look like a giant thumb, and here is Plant telling me the same thing. According to the noted founder of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick University in London, six months of study on nine of the largest cities in the world concluded that young people use both their thumbs dexterously when accessing the hand-held's keypad, causing "physical alterations" that have surely happened generations before.
And I quote:
"The fact that our thumbs operate differently from our fingers is one of the main things that defines us as humans. Discovering that the younger generation has taken to using thumbs in a completely different way and are instinctively using it where the rest of us use our index fingers is particularly interesting."
Check out the Observer release here.

I got three unsolicited IMs regarding the FIV story. Kermin's said:
[18:28] «Kë®mìN» wheee!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) :) :) buti pa cats! LOL they can have unprotected sex anytime! hahahahahahhahaa

Cats can get AIDS too. I came across this article about the US government approving the production and commercial use of the vaccine for feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). Although that's good news to some, I find myself worried about my cat. They usually get infected through bite wounds as it is the infected cat's saliva that is loaded with the virus. symptoms, which may show five to ten years after contact, include weight loss, diarrhea, fever, and swollen lymph nodes.
No, the virus has no effect on humans, may it be an infection or disease. The virus, however, can attack the feline's immune system, making the animal more susceptible to diseases and infections in contrast with the FIV-free.

congratulations to rachel ramos for passing the bar exams! im proud of you :)

i never thought i'd ever say this... but i've realized how grateful i am for my typing teacher back in 3rd year high. i used to hate her. mainly because i always left her class with sore fingers. after all, we weren't practicing touch typing on a qwerty keyboard that gives a soft tick, tick, tick. it was more of a clang, clang, clang, ding! sort of thing - and worse, your fingers go through the spaces in between the keys if you don't concentrate hard. ouch.
but all's well. :) im happy of how i do now in that department because of her.
typingtest.com has a nifty typing test applet. i scored 66 words per minute, with 1 word error, a net speed of 65WPM, and a 98-percent accuracy. how about you?

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

stratfor.com unveiled satellite pics of North Korean missile launch pads in North Hamgyeong Province this week. Knowing these Koreans (i do?), they'll be condemning the "false reports" - or in this case, false pics? - by the end of next. According to the web site's report, it compared the pictures, taken by US commercial satellite Quick Bird last December, with shots taken some three years ago, and can honestly tell that Pyongyang has been making some renovations. it is reports like these that disturb what otherwise is dormant. it is largely provocative.

i go to work in an office with white doors. it looks funny, because it looks like someone painted the whole room and forgot to include the doors.

:D

catnaps are catnaps. they arent really naps at all. your cat would be so still, unmoving, and you'd begin to wonder what's so sweet about his dream, if you could possibly join him there, or have one yourself. but make one noise and he's instantly awake.
when cats are asleep, however, they really are. azi does not want me touching his furry tummy, and i can get swiped at just for trying. but when he starts to snore, then im in luck :) actually, you could just about do anything to azi when he's dreaming up his sexy girl catfriends slinking in and out of his vision. you could push him around your bed to make room for what's left of it enough to get some decent sleep, or you could shove him off the bed altogether - and he'd still be out cold, sprawled belly side up on the floorboards, and outsnoring my roommate.

Ever since the Lunar New Year came around, a well as when the Full Moon Day came and went last February 25 (what the Koreans celebrate as Jeongwol Daeborum), I've been thinking a lot about the King of the Stars, taraka-raga in Sanskrit. I looked at it long and hard last night, and I was surprised to see it glowering at me. It wasn't hanging up there in its usual bored self. It was alive, breathing, daring me to look some more.
But the sense of foreboding the moonshine showered me hours ago was washed away the next day. According to experts, yesterday's luna was as close to the earth as it would get in its elliptical orbit this year. A Reuters article quoted them to have said that it was "nine percent wider than normal and shone 20 percent more brightly."
And here I was thinking I was going crazy that it somehow knew I was thinking about it, hence the glowering, "how-dare-you" look.
So much for superstition.

A friend pointed out to me something quite unbelievably poignant that I'm surprised not to have noticed it myself. He said the weather today outside is perfect - perfect for kite-flying. And for a person who hasn't really tried any degree of flying in general, kites especially, I was totally in agreement with him nonetheless. And anyway, kite-flying would be better than working anytime :)
Have you ever flown a kite? I think I should. I think it as one of the simple pleasures of life. And just as any other thing that we make and call our own, my kite would not be huge, space-aged, nor rainbow-coloured. I would like it plain white, red or blue and supported by sturdy but light bamboo sticks.

i wonder what Uri's got to say about overly long meetings. !@#$!$%!#!#$!

Uri Geller intends to lead a day of spiritual meditation marking today's very rare triple palindrome. 20:02, 20/02/2002. GMT, EST? It don't matter, as long as you find yourself still alive by the end of the day. Next one's in 110 years. See you then.

On this day in 1930, the ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto, was discovered.

Such a drab, drab person in such a drab, drab world. One more of these and I'll surely be convinced that I am actually a closet-fatalist.

Have you ever heard of the Doogie strain?
Click here for intelli-mice and other pointing devices.

More on Arda.

Of interest is their new section, "The Fellowship of the Ring: A Movie-goer's Guide," which lists 11 major differences between the film and the book.

And I quote:

"Finally, it has to be said that, though Peter Jackson's movie is undoubtedly stunning, it doesn't come close to the depth and beauty of Tolkien's original work. No-one can blame Peter Jackson for this - to be loyal to every nuance of the book just wouldn't be possible. If you haven't read The Lord of the Rings, but you've seen and enjoyed the film, just imagine what you're missing!"

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. - Isaac Asimov

Ah, the wonders of the Net. The greatest invention of the 20th century.

Salon has a few Tolkien audio clips - both interesting and rare. This collection includes a poem in elvish and a Two Towers excerpt being read by the man himself. Nope, you can't download them for you own unending enjoyment. But hey, at least you get to listen to it here.

A tidbit of information I'd like to note down. In Tolkien's Second Edition preface, he said that "The Shadow of the Past" (Book 1, Chapter 2) is the most important and crucial of all the chapters in the Lord of the Rings, because it is the oldest of all the lore he had ever created about Middle-earth that was referred to in the book.

In any case, _the_ history can be found in the Silmarillion. I found this German web site about the book.

What do I, George Washington, Fréderic Chopin, Sidney Poitier, Cindy Crawford, and Hubert de Givenchy have in common? No, not any source of some talent or intelligence, or I wouldn't be skulking in this corner of the cyber-universe telling you how much of a sorry ass I am. Eiael is what's common. The unselfish and giving Eiael, the Third Angel of the Angels, rules over changes and longevity of life and material things. He governs the occult sciences. Come to think of it, its not that bad to have an angel for an idol, huh?

Angel eyes
That old devil sent
They glow unbearably bright
Need I say
That my love's misspent
Misspent with angel eyes tonight
~ Sting

We did not even deserve to be mistaken as geeks back then. We were... mice. Or should I say, mice-y?

And look at you now. So proud, so responsible, acting like one of those important people who get to be bothered only by appointment.

You used to love it down here. Or is it - you used to love being with me.

They say my soul's urge is to confront people (or things?) because then, I would be able to gauge how far I have become such a success in my quest to master my environment - those who (or that which) surround me. That hit home.

They do think of everything these days, now do they? Go on, have a laugh, take a look.

Azriel kept me up last night with his snoring. Are cats supposed to snore? Bet the feline would say he doesn't - he just "purrs very, very loudly."

this is my third blog post.

this is my second blog post.

this if my first blog post.