Samsung ST550: My gift to myself

This month I bought a Samsung ST550 digital camera. I am extremely satisfied with it.

It is 12 MP and it has an LCD both at the front and at the back.

I bought it at a really cheap price: just almost 14K pesos at Kimstore.

The next time I will buy a gadget, I will buy it at Kimstore.

I remember my mother series: 3. Fake apologies.

I remember my mother telling me...

"Sorry, kung feeling mo may nagawa akong mali..."
(Sorry, if you feel I did something wrong...)

She almost killed me and all, and then this is the only thing she has to say...
This is basically an offensive verbal attack disguised as an apology.

I just want to say that whenever someone apologizes to you along these lines, never ever accept it. The sincerity of this person is dubious to say the least.

It is the equivalent of saying:

"I believe that I did nothing wrong to you. But sorry anyway, if that is what you want to hear..."

Anybody who apologizes in this manner should be rejected and not be trusted.

Ebooks gallore

An officemate introduced me to a great source of free ebooks,not just IT but any ebook under the sun. Cool. Here is the url:

http://avaxhome.ws

Project using my very own MVC Framework

Gosh, it has been a long time since I last posted in my blog. I just want to put here a project that I finished a couple of months ago. What is special here is that it was made using my own MVC framework.

Here is the url:

ifa-edu.cn

As to why I am making my own MVC framework despite the proliferation of other frameworks out there, well, that is a topic for another blog.

New Laptop

I just bought a new laptop last April 5, 2009. It is a Toshiba Satellite L310.

I bought it at Glorietta during the last day of BPI's Installment Madness promo for the season. Ofcourse, I used my BPI Credit Card to purchase it.

Among the freebees I got were, a free additional 2GB of RAM for my new laptop, a new optical mouse, a 2GB USB thumb drive, a new Nokia cellphone and a palabok value meal from Goldilocks.

Well, it was worth the price (I think) for all the things I received, considering the price is only at 35K.

Cute and Amazing Cat Video

I saw this on Youtube. This is probably one of the cutest, funniest and most amazing cat video I have ever seen. :) LOL

MUN for a Practicum

When I was taking up my course in International Studies, the Practicum or On-The-Job Training (OJT) that we had was Model United Nations (MUN). For those of you who might not know what MUN is, it a simulation of the United Nations conference organized by the UN itself, so that students can practice becoming state diplomats. Sounds awesome?
Well the glitter ends there. I really do not know why this should even be considered as an "OJT". I really cannot find any practicality in it.

Anyway, I will continue on.

After I graduated, whenever I applied to a company, the interviewer will always ask you about your OJT experience (like all other fresh graduates). Whenever I tell them about my practicum, I always see my interviewer suppressing a slight laughter. There was even one interviewer who did not know what MUN is and when I explained to him what it was, I just cannot forget the look on his face afterward. He smiled at me with his eyes full of pity and disbelief. I can still remember his reaction up to this day. I remember that the job I was applying for at that time was an admin assistant that deals with office type work.

The look on his face can be for the following reasons:

1. I am applying for a corporate job. My course was totally unrelated to business and my chances of getting into the corporate world is slim.

2. And then, my practicum was MUN. How is that going to help me in my job in the future should I end up working as a admin assistant? How pitiful.

3. The only job available to you might be for foreign affairs or government jobs. But how many openings are there for government jobs and how many people pass the Foreign Service Exam out of the multitude of IS graduates and takers out there.

Oh God, I can only say that MUN as a practicum is so totally far fetched from the reality out there. You are already being trained as a diplomat, when there is hardly even a job opening for a diplomat for fresh graduates. International Studies as a course is too idealistic, impractical and unrealistic. Granted, that a few of my college mates ended up working for an embassy. Most of them ended up working there for only months. But how stable of a job is that? How many embassies are actually offering regularization to new employees. In fact, how many embassies out there actually have job openings?

You know what the saddest part is? The saddest part is that MUN is held in the United States and that you have to pay for it just to participate in it. The school did not give any financial support to the students. All the expenses, from the airfare, to the hotel accomodation up to the fee for the conference itself are all shouldered by the students and their parents. Isn't OJT or Practicum supposed to earn you some money? In the end, the IS students ended up expending tons of money for a practicum that will not even be useful for their careers in the end. How sad... I want to cry.

I remember my mother series: 2. My very first traumatic experience.

I was watching a segment on Bebe GandangHari (formerly Rustom Padilla) on a TV show recently. There he gave details on his very first traumatic experience as a child, and how that experience stuck to his head and affected the way he is while growing up. He told the interviewer that he was only 3 years old at that time and he suffered physical violence at the hands of his father. His mother then just allowed his father to beat him. He was so young and yet he still remembers it vividly.

OMG. I can totally relate to this. I also had my very first traumatic experience with my mother while I was around that age like BB. This experience I still so remember vividly.

I remember I was being scolded by my mother because I could not write the letter X properly in my name. (pauses to hold back the tears...). I tried my best, but I still cannot get my writing to be correct.
Then she started to shout and yell at me. She was holding my hands while I was writing. She started writhing and squeezing my hand. I was in pain. She started cursing me, like (p*t*ng ina mo... and other obscenities.) I was just 3 years old.

I remember I cried. But this only made her more furious. (pauses to hold back the tears...). She took a leather belt, and then she started whipping me with it. She said that if I cry, she will whip me more. Tears just flow from my eyes. I could not help it. She started whipping me harder. It was painful. I had rashes in my legs and back after that. I was only 3 years old. I remember my father being there behind us all that time. He was just observing what was happening. While being whipped by my mother, I looked at him and my eyes pleaded for help. My mother got angrier. She whipped me harder. My father just nodded at me as if he was silently approving of my mother's violence. I did not even get help from him. He just sat there and did nothing. I was traumatized. (pauses to let the tears fall). I was still trying my best to write the letter X on paper. At every mistake, I get a whip lash from the leather belt. I hear more curses. Tears get to fall from my eyes uncontrollably. And then, the whip lash gets harder. I mustered all my strength there to hold back the tears. No one was there to help me. No one was there to feel for me.

After what seemed like forever, I finally got to write my name correctly on paper. The cursing stopped. The whipping stopped. But I did not get any congratulations or any sort of affection for my effort. I never felt my mother regretted hurting me. I was still crying at that time. But I was crying from the inside. From then onwards, I had a very different view of my mother and my father. I became scared to cry even when I have to. Things will never be the same for me again.

Chris Crocker's new song: Fell for the Enemy

I cannot get enough of this song - "Fell for the Enemy".



This is such a beautiful ballad. And the most interesting part of it is that it came from someone you would never expect to create something like this - Chris Crocker. :)

I remember my mother series: 1. Horrible Memories of my Mother

When I think of my mother, only bad things come to my mind. I cannot even begin to describe the horror. I do not even know where to begin my story... But with this blog, I may be able to put down the things that haunt me... This is a series that will list down some of the events associated with my mother... Needless to say, I do not like her. I do not love her. She is sadistic. More to come...

Just bought another Sun Voucher for SCWCD

Yesterday, I just bought another Sun Voucher. I am planning to take SCWCD some time in June. Hay, pwede naman pala magbayad sa Sun Microsystems Philippines office ng diretso eh, nagpunta pa ako sa Banco de Oro Tordesillas Branch. It turns out, magbabayad ka lang sa bangko kung wala pa silang voucher at hand. Pero since they already have a voucher at hand, you can pay directly to Sun's office at the 32nd floor in Philam Life tower in Makati. You will get your voucher and your OR right then and there.

Pooh and Pokwang jokes about AMA Computer College

I was riding an airconed bus this afternoon, and the show that was playing on the DVD player was Pooh and Pokwang's stage show in America. One of the jokes there was about the schools that some of the show's presenters had graduated from. Pooh and Pokwang gave funny names of non-existent schools. However, one of their guests gave this joke:



"Di ba, sinabi nila na kapag ang paaralan pinangalan sa bayani pampubliko ito, tapos kapag pinangalan sa santo, ito naman ay pampribado. Pero wala kayo sa school ko. Mas mataas pa to sa bayani at santo. Ano pangalan ng school kamo: AMA Computer College. AMA, ibig sabhin si Lord na yon... Ang course ko BS CS... as in BS in Counter Strike major in Dota. ... (more followed)..."



The joke was funny but then I stopped laughing because I realized, dito nga pala sa school na ito ako napilitang mag-aral. Oh well, like all the graduates of that bullshit school, I am also subjected to this kind of humiliation all the time. If I am proud of that school, I would have felt outraged by this joke. But the truth is, I myself really feel resentful of that bullshit AMA school and all its subsidiaries. I thought to myself, well, at least, when people hear this joke, fewer and fewer students will enroll in this school (which is a good thing for innocent students). These jokes serve as a subtle warning to those unsuspecting people to avoid this school at all costs. While it hurts, I cannot really be angry to those people who crack up these kinds of jokes.

There is at least one person I am angry at for me having to endure these kinds of humiliation everyday. My father. I would not have ended up in that god-forsaken school had he been logical and generous enough. Well, its a long story... I will give a complete detail about this story in another post. Well, bye for now.

International Studies... is it a fool's game

I always feel sad of how naive I was when I was studying International Studies back in college. Back then, I did not really pay full attention as to what kind of career awaits me after I graduate from this course. Besides, the topic of job hunting and resume building was almost always a topic that my teachers avoided to discuss to us. And whenever we hear an IS graduate that became a flight attendant or a call center agent, many of my teachers had an indescribable contempt for that person that they some foul language and curse is being hurled at without that person even knowing it.

Here are some of the most memorable reactions:

"Kung magiging stewardess lang naman kayo pagka-graduate ninyo, eh wag na kayong magpakita dito kahit kelan..."
(If you will only end up as flight attendants or call center agents, never ever come back and show your face here ever again.)

"P*t*ng *n*! IS pa naman sya! Bakit sya sa call center, sayang lang pinag-aralan nya!!!"
(Son of a b*tch! He was an IS student, how the hell did he end up like that! All his studies were for nothing!!!)

I personally feel these reactions are uncalled for, overly reactive and suspicious at best.

These reactions probably explain why so many IS graduates never come back to tell their experiences about job hunting and the type of careers they end up getting into.

What is the motivation or reasoning behind these reactions?

These reactions are a subtle way of preventing these IS graduates from informing the current IS students about how hard it is to find a job as a graduate of this course. This is like 'damage control' in its subtlest. If these graduates came back to tell horror stories of their job hunting, I doubt if there will still be many students that will stay with, or take up the International Studies course.

Poor students, they will never be even warned of the danger down ahead after they graduate. They are so naive. It is like a fool walking blindly towards the end of a cliff. (Hence the image above).

I remember myself being like this so vividly. I almost always never paid attention to the career I will be getting after graduation because we were always immersed in total academics and the topic of jobs seldom came up for discussion in class. It is like our attention was being diverted from these things so that we would not even notice the trouble that lies ahead of us. Imagine, how you would feel that after working your ass to study hard and spending lots of time and money, you will only find out that there isn't a bright future ahead of you after the journey.

I do not remember any in depth discussion of job hunting and career opportunities being discussed by my teachers. Come to think of it, during the job fair for our department, all we had was a lonely speaker that talked about how she went to a career that was totally different from her course. Other departments, like the Business Administration and Accounting Departments, had job fairs where the students were able to submit their resumes to the companies who visited our school.

Speaking of resume, I do not remember us being taught how to create a resume!!! Imagine that. I was job hunting without even knowing how to create a proper resume!!!

So, to anyone who will be reading this blog: you have been forewarned! Tread carefully now. It is up to you to change the way things are before they are too late.

Friday with Friends

Last Friday night, February 20, 2009, me and my friends in my former company, Accenture, went to Glorietta's Food Choices to have dinner. This is to celebrate them being regularized and, well, me for having found a new job. :) We were also supposed to watch a movie that night but it did not push through because some of us are leaving for out of town and some of us like me, were already tired and sleepy.

There is a such a thing as bullshit parents.

I just want to say that there is as much bullshit parents out there as there are bullshit children. In my case, my mother is a total bullshit. She is a sadistic bitch that deserves to go to hell. More on the details about this as I blog along in the future.

Beware of LoadXtreme

Hayz,

I once bought a Dealer's Kit from this bullshit business (during that time it was under Portal Innovations Corporation). I really had reservations about investing in these kinds of business, but a "friend" somehow convinced me to. (Either I was so stupid, or he was just great at sales talk). Arrgh.

All I can say is BEWARE and spend your time and money for something more worthwhile than this instead.

Here is the LoadXtreme website now. http://www.loadxtreme.com.ph/newmain.html

Try to Google this up and read for yourself on various internet forums all about the bullshit things about this "business".

Courtney Love barges in on Madonna's Interview

Oh gosh, I just love Madonna. You can see here in a 1995 MTV interview with Kurt Loder how elegant and civilized she conducts herself in a particularly embarassing situation.

(Grabe, tama bang magtapon ng compact mirrors si Courtney Love kay Madonna sa gitna ng interview nito.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEsQHenUdo8

Way to go Madz...

SNL and "Tranny Fierceness"

I am a huge fan of Project Runway. This skit by SNL is really old, but I still find it funny.

http://defamer.com/366165/trannies-hot-messes-and-ferocity-snl-does-runway

The best line:

"You are a tikety-tacky Tranny, hot mess, outta control, supah tranny, from Transylvania, who is not apologizing for it!"

Wahehehe

International Studies... was it a total waste of time.

I just realized that I have never earned even a single dime from taking up my first course in College (IS). It has never given me any job whatsoever and probably never will. So, was it a total waste of my time?

Most of my other classmates ended up being call center agents. It would have been better for them to have taken up courses like Marketing, Sales or English Literature, as those courses would have helped them more in becoming better agents. Some ended up in totally different fields of profession that are not even remotely connected to Political Science or the social sciences.

Granted, there were a few, who ended up in the IS related jobs, like researchers, congress staffs etc. A few ended up taking up law. But, how many are they? What percentage of the total IS graduates do they represent? Out of 90+ IS graduates in 2002, how many ended up in those kinds of jobs? 6, 7? 10? Really?! If this is the case, then in my opinion, the IS department (or any political science department for that matter) should not be taking in more than 30 new students per year.

If I would be able to turn back time, I would have taken up an IT course from the very beginning instead.

I just passed the SCJP Exam

I just passed the SCJP 1.5 today.
I am so happy.

Gusto ko pa mag-kuwento, but it is already late in the night and I am already too sleppy.
Maybe some other time.

I just passed the SCJP Exam

I just passed the SCJP 1.5 today.
I am so happy.

Gusto ko pa mag-kuwento, but it is already late in the night and I am already too sleppy.
Maybe some other time.

Interview via Webcam

I had an interview with an IT company earlier this afternoon. Their interview was via a webcam and their pre-employment test was done online. Kudos to them. If only IT companies were like this, they will not waste somebody's time and money asking them to go to some remote venue, only to inform them that they failed the pre-employment tests.

First Entry

Hmmm... blogs have been known for like forever. I wonder why I waited until now to do this... sigh