PSP Commercials

Jumping on the PSP bandwagon

It started out with colleagues bringing this strange cool device to work. It plays videos, you can surf the internet via wifi, and yeah it can play really awesome games in it too. So I started borrowing, I started playing, I started watching, fingers twitching, eyes glued to the uber cool screen, I couldn't put it down, I was hooked, addicted to this device. I thought about it, slept over it, visited websites, read reviews...finally after all that thinking, my girlfriend and I visited the mecca of electronics they called Greenhills, we shopped around, bartered, yes..bartered, she's good with that, and then finally there it was, sealed, new and shiny...my very own PSP. Well, I just have to wait until school starts again, my gf took it home with her...(sigh)Just a few more weeks and I'll be playing games on the go, imagine a world of endless possibilities, GTA riding the MRT, Tekken at Starbucks..haha. I can't wait.

For some reason I got out of bed hotheaded, hmmm, probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Still mad for no reason...breath deep, breath in...breath out.

man minus God equals?

I regularly check the news online when I'm at work to get updates about news and events around the globe. Recently, I read about two articles that somewhat gave me a glimpse of what happens when you take God out of the school system, what happens when you take prayer out of school, replace creation with evolution. Now imagine if you can, third grades plotting to hurt their teacher, taking with them a knife, handcuffs and tape just because the teacher asked one of the students who was misbehaving to go the the "timeout table"...third graders. In Australia, teenagers attacking teachers and fellow students with baseball bats and machetes, sounds familiar? Remember Columbine? America, a nation I greatly admired, their constitution provided a framework, the foundation for governance. In God We Trust, A Nation under God, phrases, words we have read time and time again, written by their nations founders and forefathers. That foundation, the values and the belief that founded their great nation is slowly being taken out by Godless men in the name of political correctness. I am surprised that they are surprised whenever incidents like these happen. They shouldn't be. When you start teaching young children that they simply evolved from one celled animals to more "advance" forms like chimps, you can be sure they'll start "aping around" or basically act like animals. Why? Why woudn't they? There is no moral reason to act like humans, there is no good, who can tell me it's wrong to hurt or kill another person, I can do whatever I want. A world without God equals chaos and believe me we are already seeing the results of this equation. I take pride in the fact that I live in the only "Christian" nation in SouthEast Asia, I take pride in the knowledge that the top institutions of learning in the country have been started by Catholic priest who believed that God and academics go together if we are to properly train the next leaders of this nation. I just hope and pray that I don't wake up one day to find prayer banned from universities and evolution has replaced creationism as the de facto teaching. God help us all.

"Say"

I love the lyrics to this song, the meaning behind the words, don't wait until it's too late, open up yourself, trust again, love once again...take the risk...say it, say those words...before it's too late.
So poetic, so John Mayer. I'm so glad I made that phone call many months ago (smile)


"Say"

Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all of your so-called problems
Better put ‘em in quotations

Say what you need to say (x8)

Walking like a one-man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you’d be better off instead
If you could only

Say what you need to say (x8)

Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You better know that in the end
It’s better to say too much
Than never say what you need to say

Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open

Say what you need to say (repeat to fade)

GM just came in, VP will be holding a meeting on Monday, we'll be coming in a few ours earlier then go home after the meeting. Thats just a few hours of work with full pay. (BIG GRIN). God is good.

I passed by unknown streets, the night both warm and cold. I stared at the world outside my cab's window.
They all look the same to me, nothing different and nothing new. I sighed and stared all the more.
A day without you is like living with eternal snow. Just a few hours have passed and I am already missing you.
The warmth of your love, the softness of your touch. I embrace each picture, I caress my thoughts of you. I placed a picture of you in my mind so I can always see your face wherever I go. I miss you.

Mad Monday

Start of the work week for me. Paquiao won yesterday, Military and even the MILF agreed on a ceasefire just to watch the bout. Everytime Manny does his thing inside the ring everything seems to stop, and for once the country is united. We are hungry, desperate... I may not be a politician, or a political analyst for that matter but let me give you my two cents on this issue. We are a dying race, diaspora is happening and the best of us are leaving this country for better opportunities in other countries. Government says economy is doing well, all I see is high inflation rate, high price of gasoline which basically translates to high prices of everything. You know what else I see? I see doctors studying to be nurses, the majority of students are taking up nursing with one thing in mind..going abroad. Now let me see if I can get this straight, good economy = our educated young people going abroad? hmmm.. something just doesn't connect if you get my drift. Going back to Paqiuao, man, as I've said we are hungry for change, I think we are looking for a catalyst to point the way, to give us our pride back. We need more Lozadas, more people who ain't afraid to speak the truth. I don't want another Edsa, I don't freaking care about what the opposition say's, all I want is change, for better opportunities for everyone, for the common man and without going to another country to find it. I do hope I see it in my lifetime.

I'm basically trying to eat healthy this past few months, currently munching on two pieces of raisin bread and chugging on a bottle of sola apple green tea while auditing...to sustain my sugar level, need energy while working. My voice still sounds funny, hoarse and husky since Wednesday. Anyways, summer's here already and none too soon. I know my GF can't wait to start her vacation, it had been one heck of a busy month for her and she deserves it to have a vacation, I do wish we could do some traveling together before she heads home for the summer. Have some things planned out this summer, including a possibility of taking some lessons on digital photography or some summer classes on classic literature..that would be awesome. Ooopps, lunch time. gotta go.

Still me, silence my shouts and cries.
Bring me to a place of quietness.
Restore my soul, lead me to a path of peace
be my refuge in the midst of my personal storm.
Still me, lead me to a place of rest.
Let me listen to everything that's gentle, everything thats real
Quiet my soul.

some minor annoyances

Thank God its Friday already, I'm one of those types who live for the weekends, counting the days till Friday and dreading those Monday blues. After days of listening in to all these calls, my head is ready to explode anytime. I need a breath of fresh air, some good old conversation, a good cup of coffee...need to get back to sanity. Thank God for the weekends.

Gasping for air...

Do you ever get that feeling that you're supposed to be doing something other than what you're doing right now? I do. I've been feeling like a fish out of the water lately, out of place. I have been working in this industry for almost..4 years now. It was just a rush being able to work in an entirely new enviroment from what I'm used to, that is with church, ministry and all that stuff. I remembered going through interviews during some pretty weird hours in the morning, nothings more weirder than getting a call on your cellphone with someone telling you to come up to this floor of that building at 4:am in the morning, 4:00...wow, took a cab from my apartment to makati...it was surreal. everything looked different. I'm used to normal things you know, daylight, sunlight..you get my point. It was like going through another world were people suddenly wear jackets, people live on convenience store food, weird colored drinks.... I thought man this place is weird.! I hated all the people faking and having these weird accent, what the!? Now, several years later, I'm actually one of them. Working as a QA has a lot of perks, you're somewhat like one of the bosses, you can decide who stays, who doesn't..power and yeah, a normal mon to fri sched that doesn't change, the pay is good, better than those white collared folks who decided to work through the "normal" working hours. But now, things are different, I'm getting tired of all this, I'm tired of conversations that doesn't really make sense, where people live from one paycheck to the next, where all you talk about during your spare time is money, more money, credit cards, the latest phones, girls, partys..and yes..more partys. Tiring. I don't want to be a hypocrite, I've been there done all that. But you know what, I think I wasn't really made for this, I think there's something better out there waiting for me. I remember a lot of things you know, a lot of things that I really miss; missions, travelling, talking with real people who care about a lot of things other all the material stuff, I long for sense, for depth and yeah for something real. Maybe its time to turn the key and go back to the normal life, to what I was really created for.

What am I to do? How do I begin? I am bursting inside. Truth has changed me...and I can't help but tell the world around me...how love has changed me.

Point Of Difference

ASCM video. Miss my seminary days

Arguing the Upside of Being Down

Arguing the Upside of Being Down


Eric G. Wilson, author of 'Against Happiness,' argues for the necessity of sadness
author of Against Happiness, argues for the vital need for sadness in the world. Wake Forest University

Read an excerpt from the book.



All Things Considered, February 11, 2008 · Author Eric G. Wilson has come to realize he was born to the blues, and he has made peace with his melancholy state.

But it took some time, as he writes in his new book, a polemic titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.

At the behest of well-meaning friends, I have purchased books on how to be happy. I have tried to turn my chronic scowl into a bright smile. I have attempted to become more active, to get away from my dark house and away from my somber books and participate in the world of meaningful action. … I have contemplated getting a dog. I have started eating salads. I have tried to discipline myself in nodding knowingly. … I have undertaken yoga. I have stopped yoga and gone into tai chi. I have thought of going to psychiatrists and getting some drugs. I have quit all of this and then started again and then once more quit. Now I plan to stay quit. The road to hell is paved with happy plans.

Wilson has embraced his inner gloom, and he wishes more people would do the same.

The English professor at Wake Forest University wants to be clear that he is not "romanticizing" clinical depression and that he believes it is a serious condition that should be treated.

But he worries that today's cornucopia of antidepressants — used to treat even what he calls "mild to moderate sadness" — might make "sweet sorrow" a thing of the past.

"And if that happens, I wonder, what will the future hold? Will our culture become less vital? Will it become less creative?" he asks.

Wilson talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy — how it pushes people to think about their relation to the world in new ways and ultimately to relate to the world in a richer, deeper way.

He also explores the link between sadness, artistic creation and depression — which has led to suicide in many well-known cases: Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway, for instance.

Wilson says perhaps this is "just part of the tragic nature of existence, that sometimes there's a great price to be paid for great works or beauty, for truth."

"We can look at the lives of Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane and others and lament the fact that they suffered so. Yet at the same time, we're buoyed, we're overjoyed by the works they left behind," Wilson says.

The husband and father of a young daughter also acknowledges that melancholy is "difficult terrain to negotiate in domestic situations." He says there are certainly times when his family hoped he would be "happier," and yet they would not want him to pretend to feel something he doesn't.

Wilson says that by taking his melancholy seriously, his family ultimately will get to know him more deeply and develop a more intimate relationship with him.

"To get to know your partner, your spouse, your friend fully, you really have to find a way to embrace the dark as well as the light. Only then can you know that person," he says.
Excerpt: 'Against Happiness'

by Eric G. Wilson

Cover of 'Against Happiness'



Conclusion

The gene pool — before and beyond time — froths and sloshes. What flops up onto the temporal shores is a matter of chance, a product of the waves' whims. At some point this teeming reservoir of DNA spumes forth a saturnine gene, a double helix destined to produce melancholy dispositions. From this instant onward what we know as human history begins: that striving, seemingly endless, toward an ungraspable perfection, that tragic effort to reach what exceeds the grasp, to fail magnificently. This gene, this melancholy gene, has proved the code for innovation. It has produced over the centuries our resplendent towers, yearning heavenward. It has created our great epics, god-hungry. It has concocted our memorable symphonies, as tumultuously beautiful as the first ocean. Without this sorrowful genome, these sublimities would have remained in the netherworld of nonexistence. Indeed, without this genetic information, sullen and ambitious, what we see as culture in general, that empyreal realm of straining ideas, might have never arisen from the mere quest for survival, from simple killing and eating.

We can picture this in the primitive world. While the healthy bodies of the tribe were out mindlessly hacking beasts or other humans, the melancholy soul remained behind brooding in a cave or under a tree. There he imagined new structures, oval and amber, or fresh verbal rhythms, sacred summonings, or songs superior to even those of the birds. Envisioning these things, and more, this melancholy malingerer became just as useful for his culture as did the hunters and the gatherers for theirs. He pushed his world ahead. He moved it forward. He dwelled always in the insecure realm of the avant-garde.

This primitive visionary was the first of many such avant-garde melancholics. Of course not all innovators are melancholy, and not all melancholy souls are innovative. However, the scientifically proved relationship between genius and depression, between gloom and greatness suggests that the majority of our cultural innovators, ranging from the ancient dreamer in the bush to the more recent Dadaist in the city, have grounded their originality in the melancholy mood. We can of course by now understand why.

Melancholia pushes against the easy "either/or" of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the "both/and." It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to irony, that ability, temporary, to play in potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds.

Indeed, the world is much of the time boring, controlled as it is by staid habits. It seems overly familiar, tired, repetitious. Then along comes what Keats calls the melancholy fit, and suddenly the planet again turns interesting. The veil of familiarity falls away. There before us flare bracing possibilities. We are called to forge untested links to our environments. We are summoned to be creative.

Given these virtues of melancholia, why are thousands of psychiatrists and psychologists attempting to "cure" depression as if it were a terrible disease? Obviously, those suffering severe depression, suicidal and bordering on psychosis, require serious medications. But what of those millions of people who possess mild to moderate depression? Should these potential visionaries also be asked to eradicate their melancholia with the help of a pill? Should these possible innovators relinquish what might well be their greatest muse, their demons giving birth to angels?

Right now, if the statistics are correct, about 15 percent of Americans are not happy. Soon, perhaps, with the help of psychopharmaceuticals, we shall have no more unhappy people in our country. Melancholics will become unknown.

This would be an unparalleled tragedy, equivalent in scope to the annihilation of the sperm whale or the golden eagle. With no more melancholics, we would live in a world in which everyone simply accepted the status quo, in which everyone would simply be content with the given. This would constitute a dystopia of ubiquitous placid grins, a nightmare worthy of Philip K. Dick, a police state of Pollyannas, a flatland that offers nothing new under the sun. Why are we pushing toward such a hellish condition?

The answer is simple: fear. Most hide behind the smile because they are afraid of facing the world's complexity, its vagueness, its terrible beauties. If they stay safely ensconced behind their painted grins, then they won't have to encounter the insecurities attendant upon dwelling in possibility, those anxious moments when one doesn't know this from that, when one could suddenly become almost anything at all. Even though this anxiety, usually over death, is in the end exhilarating, a call to be creative, it is in the beginning rather horrifying, a feeling of hovering in an unpredictable abyss. Most immediately flee from this situation. They try to lose themselves in the laughing masses, hoping the anxiety will never again visit them. They don inauthenticity as a mask, a disguise protecting them from the abyss.

To foster a society of total happiness is to concoct a culture of fear. Do we really want to give away our courage for mere mirth? Are we ready to relinquish our most essential hearts for a good night's sleep, a season of contentment? We must ignore the seductions of our blissed-out culture and somehow hold to our sadness. We must find a way, difficult though it is, to be who we are, sullenness and all.

Suffering the gloom, inevitable as breath, we must further accept this fact that the world hates: we are forever incomplete, but fragments of some ungraspable whole. Our unfinished natures — we are never pure actualities but always vague potentials — make life a constant struggle, a bout with the persistent unknown. But this extension into the abyss is also our salvation. To be but a fragment is always to strive for something beyond oneself, something transcendent — an unexplored possibility, an unmapped avenue. This striving is always an act of freedom, of choosing one road instead of another. Though this labor is arduous — it requires constant attention to our mysterious and shifting interiors — it is also ecstatic, an almost infinite sounding of the exquisite riddles of Being.

To be against happiness, to avert contentment, is to be close to joy, to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is the call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the elation of circumference. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.

Excerpted from Against Happiness by Eric G. Wilson. Copyright © 2008 by Eric G. Wilson. Published in January 2008 by Sarah Crichton Books, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.