puñetang mp

my original plan was to finish the mp, get a haircut, and buy the candles for bau. naturally not one of those things happened. i should be able to wrap up the mp during biocol1 though [thank god all the labs have telnet and c++].

my dad was watching a hindi movie called lagaan so i took a break from playing diablo ii doing my mp to catch the last hour with him. he told me that the movie was based on a true story wherein a village in india gained independence from britain by winning a cricket game against the local military. of course in order to understand the movie one first has to understand cricket [which is so complicated that only the british could have thought of it] but once that was out of the way the remaining 15mins were good enough.

i'm still planning to go with bj, frytz, and geric to batangas this weekend even if i have some academics due this monday [encomp2 specifically]. hey, it's not like i'd work on them if i stayed at home anyway.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 3:43 AM
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warning: obscenely long post ahead

i was reading the inquirer's lifestyle section last thursday when i caught a glimpse of a familiar face on the front page. double-checking with the caption revealed him to be none other than james deen, who had toured us around csb during our scholarship orientation. evidently he had written an essay on food that had garnered him a place in some food-related award. after reading the grand prize winner's essay [who works for the inquirer and so naturally got published] i wish i could've read his too. given his quirky personality, i probably would've enjoyed it more.

yot had invited me to go to manila bay with her and others among the new staff to again watch the sun set. unfortunately by the time i got off from class [around 5pm] it had rained and clouds were blocking the view. since i had to meet up with dandi anyway to borrow her copy of the sky over dimas [which i now recommend, alongside stephen king's on writing], yot asked me to meet them at starbucks. i had expected mostly new staff but half of malate was there, and by 7pm three-fourths were in attendance, with even sir allan popa dropping by for a spell. that was when i opted to hit the road. nothing noteworthy happened on the way home, with the exception of some guy in white jokeley sunglasses walking up to the jeep i was in at the bicutan interchange asking the driver "hey man could you tell me how to get to pasay?" in an obviously contrived californian accent. i don't know what tipped me off more, the scripted dialogue or the sudden emergence of the manileño accent on the word "pasay". he even had the guts to say "thanks man, peace out" when the driver answered his question. what a moron.

our christmas tree isn't up yet but i don't really care. in fact i wouldn't be that bothered if christmas was cancelled this year. i guess it just doesn't hold the same meaning for me anymore. or maybe it's just taking me a little longer to get into the 'christmas spirit' now that i'm older. anyway after the fiasco with that english-spokening jolog, i was walking past the guardhouse into our village, which was bedecked in the kind of lights that blink on and off in time to annoyingly tinny even-less-than-midi-quality christmas carols. i remember trying to guess on what day the guard would finally snap and shoot the damned contraption. hell hath no fury like christmas commercialized.

saturday morning i managed to wake up on time [for habitat take two, remember?] and in fact made it to dlsu with 20 minutes to spare, but lacking a packed lunch. tintin was kind enough to cover me though. throughout the day i never considered what i did to be 'work' although technically it was manual labor. i guess i was having too much of a good time. highlights of the day included julian's constant cologne commercial reenactments [i believe the brand he endorses is mang tomas], doppelgangers for both frytz and bj, life as a node of type structWorkerType [scroll down for more details], five-peso-at-a-time food trippings, and endless rounds of eternal soul with the policeman somehow always turning out to be loyvin. my personal favorite would be the game i affectionately refer to as "isang paa sa hukay", in which bricks go flying through the air in order to 'save time'. of course the first thing i did when i got home was to figure out the algorithm for brick-passing, which was what we did most. i finally came up with the following function:

typedef struct workerTag
{
   struct workerTag *pNext,*pPrev;
   int bBricks,bBucket;
}structWorkerType;

typedef structWorkerType *ptrWorkerType;

void habitat(ptrWorkerType pFirst,ptrWorkerType pLast, int nMaxBricks,int nMaxCement)
{
   ptrWorkerType *pRun;
   int i;
   for(i=nMaxBricks;i>0;i--)
   {
      *pRun=pFirst;
      while(*pRun!=NULL)
      {
         pRun->bBricks=1;
         if(pRun->pPrev!=NULL)pRun->pPrev->bBricks=0;
         pRun=pRun->pNext;
      }
      *pRun=pFirst;
      if(i%nMaxCement==0)for(i=0;i<4;i++)
      {
         *pRun=pLast;
         while(*pRun!=NULL)
         {
            pRun->bBucket=1;
            if(pRun->pNext!=NULL)pRun->pNext->bBucket=0;
            pRun=pRun->pPrev;
         }
      }
      else if(i%nMaxCement==nMaxCement-10)for(i=0;i<4;i++)
      {
         *pRun=pFirst;
         while(*pRun!=NULL)
         {
            pRun->bBucket=1;
            if(pRun->pPrev!=NULL)pRun->pPrev->bBucket=0;
            pRun=pRun->pNext;
         }
      }
   }
}

now you know how boring second term is. my apologies btw to non-techies - the fact that your understanding of the previous 44 lines is minimal gives me a feeling of logical superiority.

i didn't get any rest after 'volunteering' for habitat since paco was celebrating his birthday that night at the rock radio café. bunny, paco, and i had a nostalgic conversation on the way there. to paraphrase:

arun: the best bullshit technique is taught in zobel.

bunny: or by its proper name, 'the obfuscation of a lack of content with the use of rhetoric'.

paco: yep. only a zobelian would think of writing down 'no hairless mammalian biped is composed of a soil sample naturally existing surrounded by a compound composing 75% of said biped'.

arun: 'no man is an island'. nice.

i first considered it unfortunate that 11 bands were playing that night [you try holding up after eight hours of construction work] but i later found out that among the bands was the reunion set of violent playground so off i went. i had my free poster signed by musicians from every band, excepting chicosci [whose music i'm not that partial to] and sandwich [whose set i somehow managed to sleep through, to the amazement of the by-then half-deaf people with me], as well as by zach of imago and mikey of ciudad, who both just happened to pass by. beng, the lead singer of trip, asked me if i was in a band so i said that i was in an acoustic set, although after seeing how jaw-droppingly well the bands played that night, i feel like returning chami's guitar and just sticking to programming.

perhaps the best part of the evening's events was this dumb-ass kid who [a] won a cd and two tickets to this years nu107 rock awards for answering giveaway questions, [b] moshed a girl into the tables to our right then later groped her while pretending to help her up, and [c] stagedove without anybody bothering to catch him. i used to think that adults hated teenagers out of jealousy but now i realize that they're just really annoying. i finally got home around 4am and smelling like a cigarette factory but to hell with those details. they say that every trip to rock radio takes 10 years off your life. to quote rumi: "what a bargain".

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 4:26 PM
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making the most of bad situations

my dad woke me up at 4am to have me help him with a powerpoint presentation. i just discovered that we actually have until lunchtime to prepare the slides and that the only reason he woke me up so early was that he thought i was leaving for school by 7.

the bible quiz team i was in was disqualified in the elimination round. this really pissed me off because we would have gone into the intermediate round had it not been for a teammate insisting on a wrong answer for the first question and a spelling error on my part later on. what a waste.

i found the compro2 deptest relatively easy [translation: it could've been much worse] although i won't speak of scores just yet.

sir anthony casully mentioned during one of his bitchmode transitions that he could count on his fingers those who passed the biocom1 long quiz. if a maximum of only 25% will pass a test that almost guarantees a retest but i'd rather be one of those who passed anyway.

and to add insult to injury i just realized that the chorus of the song i'm composing sounds exactly like the chorus of parokya ni edgar's barkada. how depressing.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 5:07 AM
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"announcement, fast lang!"

i caught the prisoner of azkaban trailer online, thanks largely in part to frytz' persistence. i must say that it promises to be quite better than the previous fiascos in the series. book three remains my favorite so they'd better not ruin the experience for me.

the deptest in compro2 is tonight and i don't know a thing about files. well maybe i know a little but an extra hour or two in the linuxlab won't hurt. i just don't know when that'll happen since i have no breaks today [not even ubreak since the bible quiz is today as well].

i have to submit a paragraph outline of my speech [what speech!?] for encomp2. i'll just bullshit something up within the next five minutes since she doesn't read them anyway. or at least i hope she won't read them this time.

we had a long quiz in biocom1 yesterday covering everything from the start of the term. it was the kind of test where in hindsight the questions were relatively easy but you somehow fail anyway. over the weekend, reggie told me an amusing anecdote about how people would approach him after a test asking what his answers were to this or that number and he'd just belt out the chorus of the eraserheads' 'wag mo nang itanong:

'wag mo nang itanong sa akin
'di ko rin naman sasabihin
'wag mo nang itanong sa akin
at 'di ko na iisipin

my sentiments exactly.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 8:13 AM
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the fourth annual malate writers' workshop

i couldn't retrieve my workshop kit but there were a lot of extra copies in the office so i just swiped one of each [with permission of course... although in that case swipe, which denotes an image of thievery, would therefore be an inappropriate verb for this particular situation]. the workshop was a blast, both in the negative and positive sense. sir bart is right in that losing is a myth - you either win or learn. appending to that, more often, learning is the greater victory [and you can bet that the workshop was quite the learning experience].

i was planning to write a lengthy post narrating all the exciting events that took place during the workshop [such as the gumagalang hubad, or popistas and popal visits, or "damn it, woman, i'm playing!"] but on second thought, some jokes are best kept private. hmm... i seem to have left my habitat sweater at the pabellon colorado. 'tang inang cresta monte 'yan.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 7:09 AM
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lobo lobo lobo-o-o / gagamba gagamba gagamba-a-a

geric convinced me to watch the ccs acoustic night [or whatever it's called] and i suppose it was worth the 40 bucks i paid, if only to hear sir bart and bigote. but don't even think of asking me about the other bands. i doubt even an icepick lobotomy will undue the damage they've caused to the auditory centers in my brain.

julian and i somehow scraped our way past the bible quiz elimination round and are now in the finals. that should be good for a laugh, especially since my entire block is going to watch, supposedly to give us 'moral support'. right.

i managed to lose the envelope of works to be critiqued during the workshop this weekend. unless i find it by tomorrow afternoon, i'll be neck-deep in shit come friday morning.

owel, that's college for you.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 11:40 PM
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the sky is falling

frytz got a blog. yey.

in other news, the number of teachers i would want to file a grievance against has risen to two. s15 knows who they are.

i know that i have to submit something for encomp2 but since i absented myself the last two classes, i have no idea what. plus our printer chose today to run out of black ink, so all my motivation is quickly draining away.

friendster is now dead. i have 189 "friends" [discounting espiptin, which is my block's account] and i really don't see the point of it aside from being an online popularity contest.

just in case i haven't mentioned it yet, dlsu has blocked my access to mirc, even with the http-tunnel. no big loss on my part anyway, but i can't help thinking [based on the type of error message coming out] that this was more serendipitous than deliberate.

i'm thinking to add links on the sidebar to the blogs i regularly visit. if you read my blog and think that i don't read yours, please fill out a comment and let me know so that i can include you in the 'links list' [gox joke, never mind].

i started playing diablo ii again, with a new character. still a barbarian of course; i'm not that adventuruous. the enemies seemed dramatically weaker than i remembered [to the point that i had thought that they had removed the "players8" option] but the item drops were about the same.

well then, i'm off to do more hacking and slashing.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 7:14 AM
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another wasted weekend

would you believe i overslept saturday morning and got left behind? it would've been funny too, if only jerwin didn't keep texting me about how much of a good time they were having. i had initially planned to do my mp in the afternoon but couldn't find my function specs [i had lent it to jp]. well, you know what they say: kung gusto, may paraan; kung ayaw, may dahilan.

anyway i spent some quality time with chami's guitar instead and managed to nail the riff to dave matthew's crash into me. i also tried out creed's one last breath and the acoustic version of alanis morisette's ironic. both of which turned out to be relatively easy, just lengthy and therefore difficult to memorize.

i downloaded the v1.10 patch for diablo ii, although i don't have much motivation to start playing again. especially after i went exploring the blood moor in hell difficulty [with a level 99 hack] and got killed by a quill rat. most likely if and when i become bored enough to start over i'll just finish normal difficulty then rest my case.

i was channel surfing yesterday and caught an episode of hulk hogan's rock and wrestling on abc5 [or what used to be abc5, anyway]. i can't believe that show is still running. or that i still remember the names of the characters. scary.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 6:23 AM
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revelations and revolutions

luckily, donna was in the malate office this morning so i was able to consult with her on how to make my poetry suck less. that meant cutting encomp1 [again] but really, what would be the point of being a dean's lister otherwise? if the workshop doesn't prove to be that traumatic, i'll more likely post the poem here sometime afterwards.

bj invited me to watch the matrix revolutions with him, frytz, and jerwin, but i was hesitant about spending when i already knew the ending so frytz convinced me otherwise by offering to pay. when opportunity knocks, ethics fly out the window. mabuhay ka, frytz. anyway the movie was much better than i had figured and so i recant my earlier statement: it is in fact worth the customary hundred bucks. in comparison to the matrix reloaded, at least.

i am currently listening to one-winged angel, sephiroth's theme from final fantasy vii. lester had lent me the ost [4 cd's!] so i was happily contemplating converting a good number of tracks to mp3, until i realized that in this case ost really stood for original sound track - almost all were midi-quality, the lone exception being the aforementioned one-winged angel. nevertheless nobuo uematsu still kicks major ass.

i have to get up in three hours to go to school. our habitat for humanity stint is today so logically i should've gotten some shuteye long ago.

owel.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 12:41 AM
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when you don't want to post but feel you're obliged to

it would seem that the worse the poetry, the more the poet is prioritized when picking workshop fellows. and to add insult to injury we are going back to the pabellon flamingo. this situation reminds me of what that guy from scariest places on earth keeps yapping about, how places where a lot of people suffered and died trap a lot of demonic energy.

i finally got the chance to hang out again with anna the other day. after too long, i should say. she's one of the few people whose company i enjoy naturally so it was refreshing to just sit back and talk about nothing sensible.

i met up with reggie afterwards [since my gox friends left me hanging, evidently to give me 'personal time'. saul would've loved that] and i remembered that he had asked me to teach him how to play the guitar [now that is rich]. i am of the opinion that you can't teach guitar any more than you can teach programming but est solarus oth mithas, so i showed him the chords to two or three easy songs as well as how to read tab. scary how well he picks up.

i got a 2.5 for my midterm standing in encomp2. i was expecting just that but the computation showed that i had gotten a 1.5 in my written midterms, equivalent to nine mistakes. i couldn't doublecheck since i was 'indisposed' last friday, when it was given out, so i'll have to let that one pass. at least things can't get any worse, right?

in consolation, i was able to increase my introds deptest score by seven points, now giving me a grand total of 90%. this means a minimum 3.5 average in the subject so far, and since sir bart promised us +0.5 in the final grade, i'm still on my way to a 4.0.

in compro2 meanwhile, i got an 85% score but since frytz got 93% i asked for reconsideration on four items so that i'd have a line-of-nine score too. hahaha.

speaking of which, he's trying to convince me to play final fantasy ix, which after some of his professions doesn't sound as bad as my zobel classmates made it out to be. perhaps this summer, by which time my computer will hopefully have been upgraded.

i saw more advent children screenshots. i thought it couldn't get worse but my god it did. the background graphics are absolutely stunning though.

i asked bj to narrate an overview of the matrix revolutions to me since he had caught the premiere but after hearing how it ended [my exact reaction was "huwaaat!?"], i lost all motivation to watch the movie. trust me - you don't want to know.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 7:30 AM
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the day the logic died

despite my valiant efforts, donna still included me in the upcoming malate workshop. omg it'll be the pabellon flamingo all over again. i had submitted the poem i wrote for mitzi's debut fully expecting that i would merit an instant rejection but it would seem that the malate mind works on an entirely different and unintellegible level from my own.

i had been happily making fun of sir levi's pronunciation of the term "gigabyte" with an initial hard /j/ until today, when i learned that /ji•ga•byte/ is in fact the correct pronunciation by international standards. oh, right.

what reason is there for dogs having to be stuck together after mating? i cannot see how this phenomenon of pangangamatis contributes to the survival of the species.

often making sense of life is more trouble than it's worth.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 12:42 AM
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happy halloween

rachelle's debut was fun, to say the least. more fun than i expected and refreshingly candid. chami's guitar was a big hit, thanks in no small part to jonat's rockstar delusions.

although the turnout wasn't that great [it was halloween after all. and traffic was heavy. and it was raining] the 'after party' was. those of us who could still think straight trudged off to sbc and basically just sat around for an hour or two. i even ran into kince there. go figure.

anyway, jonat brought up the fact that college had changed all of us and i had to agree. for the most part though, the changes seem to have been positive. or maybe i'm just dense. but hey, when it's 13-year friendships you're talking about, a little tolerance here and there never hurt anyone.

sige ingat.ü 
posted by stani at 3:32 AM
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