What do you get when you cross a Macbook, a guitar, and three people bored and lonely while being assigned to work in another country? The amateur video below is a close approximation of my answer. It was made by some of my co-onshore assignees here in Denmark to combat loneliness and boredom, and as far as I know alcohol was not involved.
Last I heard it was an impromptu parody of Marie Digby whom youtube has granted a stepping stone to fame and stardom.
Alright, so it might not be so impromptu as I implied but I swear it is as sudden because I only heard it being discussed while we were driving to work yesterday. Francis, Harold and Lance were yapping about guitar jamming and kidding about uploading a video that I didn’t realize they were serious until they began promoting their first youtube video this morning when we were on the way to the office. 🙂
Was the video good? Of course not, its youtube you ninny! Video quality gets a mandatory downgrade when uploaded to streaming sites. If you were asking about the performance then my answer would be Yes on the grounds that it is an amateur video, an initial foray into video entertainment, and it was made for fun. Nobody with a straight face expects it to be of concert quality, and the technical/onstage mishaps just adds to the clip’s entertainment value.
Things I find funny in the video:
Soy is wearing a hearing aid.
Harold and Lance in the background, giggling and throwing words of encouragement in the background
The rollercoaster mix of vocals, guitar strumming, and laughter. Nevermind that the lyrics or chords sometimes get lost.
The “Pump”.
The patented Tsong Soy stare. Too bad he wasn’t able to pull it off in the end without showing any happy emotion.
I think they are planning to release a second video. Will there be another Maria Digby sensation in youtube? I am optimistic but I am not crazy. However this type of videos can give a different kind of sensation; the rib-tickling kind. 🙂
Trivia: If you stare at the video long enough, you may get a glimpse of Chona jamming with them. 😉
The day after having posted the previous entry my blog went down, or something like it. The site is still accessible but accessing capsule will show the web installation page for WordPress. Oh great, so I will be losing at least two posts since I only backed the site up after the Kronborg post. Better than nothing, right?
And then I found out that my precious backup was next to worthless since it only contained the basic database structure (and not the WP tables at that). Something was wrong with the CPanel database backup routines, which created the minuscule zip file without any errors.
I logged a request to my provider last Friday night and thankfully it was restored earlier this week with all of my posts intact. What a relief! I thought I was going to redo the blog again from scratch. It might have been a good “re-birthing” experience but something that I don’t want to go through if I really don’t have to.
Kudos to the Web.com.ph technical support group for the restoration, but would really appreciate it if you can tell me what went wrong. 😀
Two morals to this post:
Backup your data. Often. And don’t forget to validate afterwards!
I watched parts of an episode of According to Jim wherein it was Jim’s birthday and Cheryl (the wife) managed to coerce their children to giving Jim gifts that she wants him to get. Jim ended up with a hand moisturizer (from son Kyle), a tacky, sleeveless golf vest (from daughters Rubie and Gracie) and a professional painting set from Cheryl. There is only one problem, Jim hated all of it but was pretending that he does like the gifts to avoid further discussion.
The plot thickens at bed time when Jim entered their bedroom and saw Cheryl assembling the painting kit. A confrontation ensues wherein Jim blurted out his feelings about the gifts. He said that Cheryl was doing it every year. Cheryl defended that she always put a lot of thought in those gifts but Jim countered that she was giving him gifts that Jacque, Cheryl’s imaginary ideal alter-ego of his husband, would want. She was giving him these gifts hoping that they will change him, and he doesn’t like it.
The following day, Kyle approached his dad and said that the gift was his mom’s idea and gave him his real gift. It was a long crooked stick with blue ribbons. Cheryl saw it and proceeded to take it to throw it away but Jim said that he likes it because it is a gift from his son who loves and idolizes him for who he is. The next few scenes show Jim flaunting the gift to Cheryl’s chagrin by using it in almost every mundane task. Fast forward in the end and through a couple of comic innuendos, Cheryl came into the realization of Jim’s message and traded the painting set for a large, flat rock with the word “Acceptance” painted at the bottom. Jim found a perfect use for it: crushing nuts.
This is what I love about sitcoms, they present little truths in an exaggerated comical package but if you think about it they are showing the lessons to be gathered from everyday happenings. How many marriages would be saved if both man and wife would begin accepting each other, with all their faults and weaknesses?
I read somewhere that love is not about being able to appreciate your partner’s strengths but rather how you could complement their weaknesses. Marriage is not about becoming one person, but rather growing as two persons who agree on most topics, and tolerate each other on the topics that they disagree on.
Change is inevitable but change does not have to be sudden. Sudden change rarely brings favorable results. Ice age was a sudden change and read about what it did to most species on this planet. The same can be said for trying to suddenly change your partner to bend to your will. The saying from Robert Henlein comes into mind “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” For change to become permanent it must come at a glacial pace. This way the person changing grows accustomed to it, or likes it subconsciously. I am not encouraging people to resort to using subterfuge on their partners to instigate change because that only works until your partner finds out that you were manipulating them and nobody wants to wake up with the realization that their happy moments were nothing but an intricate scheme. The person must want the change either consciously or otherwise.
Food for thought, why would you even want to change your partner? Weren’t they already like that when you began liking them? What do you expect to gain from getting your partner to mirror your likes and dislikes, share your whims and fancy? I hear couples saying that they are perfect with each other since they share so many things in common. They like the same food, music, hobbies, etc. They even share the same taste in fashion and have the same circle of friends. Wow, the only type of people that I know who have the same kind of view are the narcissistic ones. Were you really looking for a mirror image when you were looking for somebody to love? Homogeny eventually leads to monotony. Imagine eating the same food every day, doing the same routine everyday, and talking about the same thing everyday. If you think that is perfect then either you have a very simplistic outlook in life, or a pretty bad liar.
I am blessed in this respect that my wife, Neth, was almost my exact opposite. We have very little in common in terms of what we like in things, in our outlook in life. We were classmates in high school so we have some common friends (some whom we are still in communication with). We went to different schools in college. In the end, fate (with a little help from our common high school friends) led us to each other again and we have been together ever since.
As what is typical in new relationships we strived to make our relationship work. Looking back I can say that even when we were just starting to know each other, we were already changing without us knowing. But this is the kind wherein we were adjusting to each other’s eccentricity, she more than me. We got to know each other, reveling in each little discovery. Marveling in what new thing we would find out about each other, and about ourselves. We spent six years doing that until we decided to get married.
It has been more than three years living as husband and wife, and we are still discovering new things about ourselves. Some are changes that were long in the making. The discoveries are now far in between as we have become familiar with each other’s moods. The little things that we found cute or adorable sometimes become things that drive us nuts. That’s alright in my book as I know that after those spells we will come back to the reality that we love each other. That is called acceptance, not of the inevitable and hopeless but the fact that we are two lucky persons who happened to have found love, marriage and lasting happiness. I think my wife is still trying to change me in some ways that drives me insane but I can live with that as I have accepted that part of my wife. The friendster testimonial I gave her a few years ago still stands:
How do I describe her? I will surely
fail but I will definitely try…
She is the reason why I see the world in
a whole different light. She provides
the contrast of my life; she is my
strength and my weakness; the person who
can send chills down my spine but
radiate warmth during my trying times;
she can make me laugh and shed tears
like nobody else could. My best friend
and confidante. Simply put, my better
half, my passion-embraced. She is my
little spitfire. Her diminutive frame
belies her strong grip on my heart. I
feel so lucky to be blessed by such a woman.
I love you my labsc. I am looking
forward to living the rest of my life
with you.
Last Friday Michael, our Danish ex-expatriate in Manila, extended a generous offer of taking the Pinoy assignees to visit some exciting places in Denmark. He has heard that we were not able to go around and we have been here for more than 4 months! The trip was set on Sunday morning, October 28.
Michael invited us to go and visit the Kronborg castle, the setting of the famous play Hamlet. Michael’s family originally offered to take Girlie, Francis and me but we asked if we can bring some of our colleagues especially those that have been in the country for less than 6 months. As of Saturday night, Tina and Alvin was supposed to come with us but they became victims of a late-starting drinking session in our apartment. Their resolve to come got washed away by some unholy concoction that Girlie was able to whip up using gin, sprite and lemon soda. 😀
Anyway, we took Francis’ car to Michael’s place where we arrived within the designated time (this is what Filipino time is all about!). Michael was skeptical with our light jackets even when I said that my fleece jacket is good of until -3 degrees if there is no wind. Michael’s eyes tinkled with devilish mischief and said “but there will always be wind, let’s see…”. He even showed his the jumpsuits his kids are wearing for the trip. 🙁
Since our Dansk lingual skills are next to zero, I went with Michael’s car and Anette (Michael’s wife) went with Francis and Girlie. The trip to Elsinore was filled with chatting about news about the Philippines, and politics in the office.
When we arrived in the parking space near the Castle entrance I got buffeted by strong winds coming from the open channel. The temperature was somewhere between 8 and 10 degrees but the chill factor is making our body shake. Girlie and I were only wearing T-shirts. My pants were even low-waisted and my shirt is not tucked! Chilling winds? How about chilling winds that gets free access to your skin? 🙁
When we got to the castle grounds we got a little reprieve from the winds. I never got the chance to read the posters at the entrance since doing so means I have to stay a little longer on the mercy of the winds. I don’t think the information is worth that much. The comfort room was directly after the entrance so the it was my first stop so I can tuck my inner shirt. Imagine what comfort a simple thing like tucking shirt tails can bring.
Erin and Soy
Michael doubled up as our tour guide in the castle. We got tickets for the #2 package which includes the visit to the Royal Apartments and the Casement (or what I would like to call as the Dungeon). The weirdness in me manifested itself because between the artsy Royal Apartments and the gloomy dungeon, I would pick the dungeon anytime.
In the dungeon, we met Holger Dansk who is fabled to wake up from his mighty slumber in the bowels of Kronborg castle if Denmark suddenly finds itself threatened. I was a little bit disappointed in our dungeon pictures because they were not able to catch the almost pitch-black “ambiance” of the dungeons.
After the dungeons, we had some more picture taking at the ramparts. Michael must be shaking his head in shame with the three crazy Filipinos acting weirdly and snapping pictures. 🙂
Since it was too cold, Michael and Francis went ahead to pick up the cars and we waited in the castle ground entrance. A car parked in front of us and I thought I caught a glimpse of Michael in the driver’s seat. I noticed that there is a single child seat on the backseat (the other one was transferred to Francis’ car for Maya (Michael’s daughter) so I opened the second passenger door and invited Jonathan (Michael’s son) to hop in. Jonathan, who doesn’t understand English, just looked at me like a crazy nut then the driver got down started asking me questions in Danish. Imagine my shock when I realized that the car was not Michael’s!!! Anette and Girlie were heckling me about giving Jonathan away to strangers. I guess I earned my 5 minutes of foolishness at that moment. 😀
From the castle, Michael decided to take us to a side trip on the beach front where the affluent lives with their huge houses with water front/beach front vie,w and super expensive luxury cars. We were going to “the Forest” but stopped in a bakery to buy some bread as we haven’t eaten lunch and it was already 3PM. When we got to the forest we decided against strolling since it was too cold, there is a slight drizzle, and Francis can take us back there if we want to. We rode again and went to this Arne Jacobsen building to appreciate “Modern and Contemporary Danish Art” but the building was closed so we just ended up walking around it. 🙂
After that we went back to Michael’s house for some Kapeng Barako (which Francis promised to replenish if he will come back to Denmark on January) and some cake. We went home after the coffee and some exchange of pleasantries.
Good thing Penpen lent us his camera or else we won’t have anything to show for it. As this blog is hosted on a thrifty 100MB space, I decided to hunt around for some free image hosting service. Picasa won over Flickr for its large free space, and the fact that it is hosted by Google. 🙂 Anyway, here is my Kronborg picasa album for those who want to see more of our pictures. 🙂
Last night I decided to continue digging around the problems I had with my spanking new Mandriva 2008 installation. Booting my laptop shows that the wlan0 device is still missing during network initialization. This is going to be a problem so I lug my laptop and power brick to the living room so I can have a wired connection to help solve the problem.
I am assuming that the problem is somehow related to the way the wireless connection is being brought up. I read some information about ndiswrapper and iwconfig and decided to do some tinkering. I decided to shutoff the wired connection to better know when I finally get my wireless connection working. This is when the proverbial s#17 hits the proverbial fan.
Shocker of the night #1.
After clicking the system tray network utility to close down eth0 the processor then starts to do something. And then somewhere between something and nothing. Ten minutes and I still haven’t got anything and the menu windows has started to be rendered as blank squares.
Mouse works. I can move my pointer but the keyboard is dead. The capslock, numlock and scroll lock keys are not inducing any reaction. Since the mouse is still usable and I am in KDE then there is still a way out. I clicked on the K button, and proceeded to restart the laptop.
Shocker of the night #2.
Shutdown seems to work but stopped during the shutdown of the mandi service. My only option at this point is push the hard reset button with a toothpick. Exasperated and since the night is still early I decided to perform another clean install over my new Mandriva 2008 installation.
Installation #2.
Same drill. I just selected to reuse my partitions since I don’t want to mess with the partitioning. During the package selection I checked the manual package selection option (like always) and then proceeded to the next screen.
Shocker of the night #3.
The installer proceeded with the installation. What!?! Where did the manual selection screen go? I was thinking when I saw that the installation will take around an hour. I don’t want this selection as the default selection will consume about 90% of my root partition where my /usr resides. I think streamlining the packages afterwards is going to be far difficult than starting all over again. Out cames the toothpick to press the hard reset and restart the installation process.
Installation #3.
Same drill except the installer now hanged after the license screen. I waited 15 minutes before taking out the magic toothpick. Man, this toothpick is my McGyver’s all-around magic utility tonight.
Installation #4.
Same installation drill. I am beginning to hate the Mandriva 2008 installation background. No fiasco on the package selection and I would only need to wait 26 minutes for all selected packages to be installed. Neat. I think I spent more time than that during the past few attempts.
At the configuration page I decided to skip the configuration of the network. I figure to do it once the system is functioning. Restarted the Linux system twice just to be sure (I think I am developing an OC identity 😀 ).
Booted into KDE and then installed ndiswrapper which prompted the installation of other packages. I also installed the prism54 firmware that I have saved in /storage/packages/NoArch. After this I tried configuring the wireless connection first by using the Intersil Javelin drivers (prism54). At the end of the configuration wizard I still don’t have any wireless connection. The system can’t even list the wireless routers in the vicinity.
I fired up the network connection wizard again and selected the ndiswrapper option. This time the system is able to list the connections found in the apartment. I configured the parameters for our router that uses a WPA PSK. I still can’t get any connection. Just for the heck of it, I rebooted the machine and LO AND BEHOLD the dreaded error message is back informing me that the wlan0 driver is back.
Hell. I give up for now. If I don’t get my wireless connection up within the week then I am ditching Mandriva for now since my 2007.1 installer is in Manila. I will take this as a sign for me to try other distributions in this laptop.
On one of the leadership seminars (just humor me. they want to make me a leader) I attended one of the speakers addressed the participants in this way “you are now in the cross roads of your careers. you are now in place to be the mediator of the management and the rank and file. you are no longer wholly part of the rank and file since you have to begin looking at the business side of the equation.”
Ok, so that is already a paraphrase of what the speaker said. Regardless, my understanding of the whole thing makes me feel giddy inside. Why should there even be a distinction? Is the rift between management and staff really that wide that they can never meet? This might be stereotypical but the staff generally views management as people who doesn’t care about the life of the ordinary employee while the common perception of management is that the staff is incapable of understanding the big picture thus incapable of making the correct decisions.
Why can’t a person be both? Why do we have to choose? Does getting promoted really means swimming with the sharks? Does achieving the next level really require a shift in ones belief and norm? Does one have to compromise one’s principle to cross the perceived rift?
Instead of a cross-road I am finding myself walking in a tightrope. I still want to view myself as one of the staff since technically I am still a staff member. I just happen to be in a place where I ideally viewed it as a place wherein I can effect more changes. These are the same changes that I have always been clamoring when I was still below a lead position.
I think my problem is that I am cursed with this desire to be neutral but at the same time have this streak of idealism burdened with a lot of pragmatism. I want to have my cake and eat it too. Why can’t I have it both ways with my decisions? Why should every decision be viewed and weighed if it was tainted by management or staff concerns rather than being weighed on its own merits?
It might just be a transition phase (or in staff parlance, my heart is still beating) but I am getting tired of being cut off for every non-trivial decision I make. This is where I abhor being a leader, rather being happy with being an adviser. The latter have the luxury of letting others with the ambition run the show but at the same time have enough inputs to steer the greater master plan.
Paraphrasing something I have heard from a friend;
Don’t walk in front of me for I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me for I may not lead.
Walk beside me so that we may learn from each other.
Why can’t the life of (middle) management be like that?
Living beings are said to have a biological 24-hour clock called the circadian rhythm which has an effect on our day to day lives. But there is a less commonly known version of this biological clock that extends for longer periods of time. It is called an infradian rhythm which explains things like the menstrual cycle, yearly migration of fowl during winter and the start of the reproduction journey for salmons and penguins.
The segue is to put into writing why I feel miserable every mid-september. I term this as my calendar days of depression. For reasons I cannot fully rationalize I feel so miserable during this period. During the college days there were even years wherein I have contemplated in committing suicide just to end it all. Thankfully those severe bouts of depression no longer happen, but still I feel miserable and depressed for two to three weeks of the first -ber month.
What is so special in this period? To mark the irony, my birth date falls in this period. A period that most people consider special and mark with flowing wine and uninterrupted supply of food. For me my birth date is a period wherein I just want peace and to be left alone. Usually I just stay at home even if my wife keeps on bugging me to celebrate. How can I celebrate if I am feeling so down? I don’t want to act like everything is ok when I don’t feel like it. There is nothing more depressing than to hear one’s own hollow laugh.
One thing I know is that Tatay (my grandfather) passed away on my birthday. I was just four years old then but until this day I can still see in my head the white walls of the hallway of the Doctor’s hospital in Cabanatuan. Damn it, I just felt my whole body shiver as I typed that one in!
They say that four year olds do not retain their memories at that age but I think that is the earliest memory that I could remember. I can still see my parents and relatives trying to show a brave front especially in front of a child. I think there is where the trauma stems. I don’t think I even know it was my birthday so don’t ask me how to explain how I correlated the two.
Nanay lived for quite long after Tatay passed away but guess the period when she finally left us . Yes, it was in the same period. Four days after my birthday to be exact. What a coincidence! I always associate the period with something bad. September was always our lean month, the time wherein the family experiences financial difficulties. Maybe that is another reason why I don’t want any celebration. There is always something better where the money can be used, no need to splurge it.
Consistently my depression period does not disappoint. I usually hear something bad happening to a family member or friend during this period. I usually wish September will pass away very quickly so that I can breath easier without the fear that something will happen to my love ones. I know it is psychological but that is just the way it is.
This year my calendar days of depression came earlier. Maybe my being away from my wife has something to do with it. The good news is that the universal balance of life is not passive. My depression is already lifting. I can now laugh without it having a hollow sound. I can smile on the little funny happenings. My colleagues probably still see me as a stoic person but I don’t care. I can sleep tonight with a smile on my face and that is good enough for me.
Yesterday the subject of Friendster accounts came up when Ynna (now called Tsang Ynna as a sign of respect 😛 ) mentioned that our nearly troglodyte manager opened up an account. The opening of the account itself is a milestone in itself.
When I opened up my gmail account, I saw again some notification from Friendster. My friends, or whom would like to still call me a friend, know that I rarely login to my Friendster account. It was an account that I opened _just because_ and maintains because my wife tells me too. I don’t request for friends but do approve requests that come into my account so my friend count is still way down. I don’t mind, which is why I didn’t open a myspace account since maintaining a single spammer smörgåsbord account is enough.
Occasionally it serves its intended purpose and I get some messages from long lost friends like She , our always-harried college class president. Anyway today I got a message notification from Manny aka spyder aka “si kulot na lapitin ng mga maligno at multo”. I decided to login and see what the message was about and while I was there I decided to do some exploration of what Friendster has to offer since I last looked (maybe a couple of years ago?).
Overall I don’t think my Friendster activity will see any upward surge. I was hoping to update the blog link to point to this blog but I can’t find it anymore. I swear that it had that option before but now I think you can only link blogs from their sister site. No thanks, I am renting this space because I want some degree of control over whatever measly content I am dishing out.
One of the message notifications I got was that a friend has updated her blog. Looking at her account I noticed that she already got married so I got curious and jumped to her profile. Lo and behold, I am denied access because even if I already got her listed as a friend the system does not recognize the link. Crap.
In Friendster’s defense, they have made leaps in terms of increasing the security of their site. It is still a spammer’s smörgåsbord but at least they are doing something in making it harder. I just wish the members understand the options and not select the default option.
And another thing I am not sure if I like or hate is the customization part. I visited some friend’s accounts and was greeted by a blaring audio file that I don’t know how to turn off. I thank the Universe for Adblock plus since it showed me the blockable items and I was able to turn off the script that blares the cheesy sound clips. I don’t know if they have audio controls or the customization skins are just too ghastly.
Will I keep on using Friendster? Yes because friends are still using it. But I don’t like the fact that they are forcing people to use their partner services. People should have a choice so I am making mine not to use their partner services. No skin off my nose.
Welcome to the new home of the boredom of ramfree17. Who would have thought that this incarnation of this blog will reach 100 pages and would survive the transfer to another host. I have spent a week trying to get this site up and running. I switched provider to Web.com because my previous provider killed of the starter package (1000 pesos per year which includes 100mb hosting and domain registration) and Web.com is only 100 pesos more expensive than my original one.
I also switched the domain name because the old domain registration is already blocked by the irritating big W implementation in the home office. Too bad I cant repoint the old domain to this one but those are the sacrifices I have to make.
This is also my first month on this offshore assignment. Well technically I have already been 34 days here in Denmark but it still feels like yesterday since I still do not have a hang of the things. I have already been to the Tivoli amusement park wherein we have conquered most of the adrenaline pumping rides. The only reason we were not able to conquer the dragon was because it broke down while we were on it. I have also been in the Little Mermaid park but I still don’t get it what is exactly great on this tourist hot spot.
Hopefully more posts about my assignment here in the land of the Danes. 🙂
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