dual*ities

I got tagged by Anj and Jowi. Thanks gals! I didn’t feel like writing tonight, so making a list is a welcome alternative.:)

What are the things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play? What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it in your journal, and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it in theirs.

• Tinkering with my computer (arranging files, freeing up space, installing new programs, etc.)
• Surfing the net and downloading useful stuff (site-hopping and blog-hopping are part of this too, of course)
• Planning birthdays surprises or shower parties for friends
• Watching reruns of my favorite TV shows
• Having a movie marathon
• Enjoying a good book
• Reading up on women and gender issues
  
• Jogging around the ADMU campus
• Listening to old tapes (especially my 90’s collection and soundtracks of my fave Broadway musicals)
• Searching for the lyrics of new songs that catch my fancy
• Eating junk food
  
• ‘Window shopping’ at bookstores
• Answering personality/pop-psy tests and questionnaires
• Planning my day (seriously) and calendaring my activities
• Making music videos (my new hobby :)
• Making scrapbooks (though I haven’t done this one in a long, long time)
• Traveling
• Writing my thoughts on my journal
• Playing around with Photoshop and creating manipulated pics out of my friends’ photos :)
  

You’ve been tagged:

• Che, 'coz I haven't heard from her in a long time.
  
• Pia, to de-stress her from all the wedding preps that she's so busy with.
• Tess, to de-stress her. Period.
• Enzo, because I miss his posts.
  
• Jolit (even if doesn’t want to go public with his blog), so that he’d finally have a reason to go public with his blog. Hehe.

Today did not start out so well. I was planning to do some major editing on what I’ve written for my thesis so far. But what do you know? My printer just wouldn’t cooperate! Not even when I’ve reinstalled the driver and all. I’ve tried to troubleshoot it, like I always did before. But alas, this time I wasn’t successful. Oh well. Time to call the computer service guy.

Just when I gave up on my printer and decided to use the internet for a bit, I discovered that my bookmarked pages in my browser were all gone! Every single one of them! I don’t know how that happened. I must have accidentally deleted them late last night. Grrrr. *spanks self*

Losing the addresses of my favorite sites was the least of my worries though. I still have most of them committed to memory anyway. What worried me was that there were a lot of online journal articles there that I used for my related literature (for my thesis), and which I’ll still be needing in the next few weeks. And, with a solitary key stroke, they’re all gone…just like that! Tsk, tsk.

So yah, I had no choice but to reconstruct my database of on-line reference materials (whereas it originally took me a couple of months to find good, relevant articles in the internet!). And by the time I found the more important articles, more than half the day was gone. Well, well, so much for efficiency and productivity this day.

Good thing that Google was there to aid me in my task. Well, Google and Yahoo search, that is.

Which brings me to an entirely different topic—that of search engines. For starters, I should say that I am a Google girl. Everything that I don’t have ready answers for, I believe Google can provide answers, or at least “leads,” to. But last week, as I was searching the internet for a topic I was interested in, I, for some reason, decided to check with Yahoo search too. To my surprise, Yahoo gave me more search results than Google did! And so, I tried to think up of random topics and searched them on both engines. In contrast to what I expected, Yahoo often reported more items found than Google. (I also tried other search engines, but none of them came close to the "performance" of the two aforementioned ones.)

To illustrate, here are the number of matches found on some of the items I have searched:

“Altruism” on Google: 821,000 / on Yahoo: 850,000

“Tulong” on Google: 29,800 / on Yahoo: 96,100

“Yoda” on Google: 2,080,000 / on Yahoo: 3,960,000

“The Little Prince” on Google: 218,000 / on Yahoo: 376,000

Yet:

“Grounded Theory” on Google: 197,000 / on Yahoo: 117,000

“Volunteerism” on Google: 1,960,000 / on Yahoo: 1,580,000

Funny how this interesting albeit totally useless “revelation” fascinates me. Teehee. I guess I just assumed all along that the two search engines would share the same database since they belong to the same conglomerate and all. So much for categorically thinking of Google as the “superior” one! (My hypothesis, however, is that Yahoo’s advantage lies mainly on its more extensive database on entertainment and pop culture. When it comes to general information though, Google is still more reliable.)

Moral of the story? Even if you have already consulted an expert, it would still be a good idea to get a second one opinion. You’ll never know what new things you could learn from the latter. It never hurts to cover all bases. Hehehe.

Oh, and guess who else is concerning himself with a bunch of numbers on hit counters and search engines? Neil Gaiman, on his May 29 journal entry, A Small Sunday Number Ponder. I guess I'm in good company. Harhar.

And while we’re on the subject of Gaiman, here’s the result of one of those tests that I found on the net using one of those search engines:

Which Neil Gaiman Book Are You?

Hmm, interesting result, considering that I found American Gods to be the most "challenging" material among the Neil Gaiman books that I've read thus far. But a significant chunk of the description does sound like me...sort of.:)

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Anyway, going back to my day…it did get redeemed in the end. I got to spend the evening with friends and watch the film A Lot Like Love. It’s not my favored movie fare, but well, at least my friends made it worth watching. So yah, the day turned out to be okay, computer glitches and all.

Note: I posted this yesterday, but I guess Blogger is once again in the habit of eating posts. Oh well.
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Sometime last week, the question of the day in the early morning show that I was watching caught my attention. The hosts of the show asked, ‘How would you like to spend the last days of summer?’ Or something like that. I was thinking, it would be nice to spend it either at the beach or in Sagada. But then, I thought that by then, it was too late…I already had other plans for the last weekend of May.

It turned out, however, that my weekend plans were not so bad after all. And there were a few lovely extras that got thrown in, which made me forget about mountains and beaches. Here are highlights:

Saturday Triple Header

The Promise. For JVPs, all roads led to the Mission Mass at the Church of Gesu last Saturday afternoon. I, on the other hand, found myself heading the opposite direction (to my old alma mater in Manila) to attend Reg’s voice recital. I promised her I would be there, even if it meant making ‘lagare’ from north to south, then back to the north again. After all, I couldn’t pass up the chance of witnessing her shining moment.:)

The theme of the recital was At The Movies, where the largely teeny-bopper cast performed songs from Disney movies, renowned musicals, and from several other movie classics. The show’s highlight for me, of course, was Reg’s rendition of The Promise, which has been a favorite of mine ever since my high school best friend sang it during my debut party. I liked in even more when it became one of JVP 18’s most well-loved songs during our service year. (It’s a shame that it didn’t become our batch song.) Well, I guess Reg has just given me another reason to love the song even more.:)

Humayo’t Ihayag. The recital was barely done when I left the auditorium to make it to JVP Batch 25’s Mission Mass. Fortunately, I arrived just in time to see the current batch being presented to the audience/mass-goers. I absolutely loved their creatively-choreographed Humayo’t Ihayag performance, which also doubled as the closing song for the mass. It was such an enjoyable, high-spirited number! Some of the alumni present in the audience (i.e. us!) couldn’t help but dance with them.:) After that, the batch also sang their originally-composed batch song. (Yup, they already have one!). If the dedication that the batch has shown in preparing for such presentations is anything to go by, then I think this would be one good, productive year for JVP.:)

Joining the Force. After the mission mass and the traditional community salu-salo (that took us forever to get out of), I, together with Maits, May8, Dove and Kuyah Nikki (now also known as the post-JVP function gimmick group), finally got to watch Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. We probably were the last five people on the planet who have not seen this much celebrated movie event, but what the heck! Anyway, I admit that the film was a lot better than Episodes I & II, and it did answer a lot of the more obvious questions. Yet still, I like Episodes IV, V, and VI better, in terms of story and character development. But one thing has remained constant all throughout the years: Awesome, Yoda is! Adore him, I always will.:)

Sunday Specials

Soaring High. I got to see some of the Pathways/Alay Ni Ignacio (ANI) students again, all happy and dressed up during the commencement ceremonies of their ANI summer classes. The incoming seniors, in fact, look like they really are senior high school students already, ready to take on the world…or college, at least.:) “Soar With Us!” That has always been the ANI volunteers’ catchphrase. And judging by the kids’ excited faces that afternoon, I’m pretty sure they are taking those words of encouragement to heart.

Once On This Island. I got to watch another play; this time, it’s Actors’ Actors Inc.’s rendition of Flaherty and Ahrens’ Once On This Island. The musical was largely enjoyable, with its dynamic and vibrant Carribean-inspired score. It was a pleasant experience for me to discover that I could still hum along most of the songs, which Mark (my friend and former boss) used to play non-stop in the office. I was also half-amused while watching the performers because some of them reminded me of stuff not at all related to the show. For example, Jeffrey Hidalgo (who played Daniel) reminded me of Anj. Jett Pangan (who played the god of death) reminded me of May8. And Kuya Bodjie (of the Batibot fame) reminded me of, well, my childhood. Hehe.

Seriously though, the cast was immensely talented, and did an amazing job of giving life to their characters (save for one or two). The most powerful performance, perhaps, was that of Bituin Escalante (who played Asaka or Mother Earth). Her rendition of “Mama Will Provide” just brought the house down.

The real highlight of the show for me, however, was the final scene, where the young girl, originally the person for whom the story of TiMoune was told, now assumes the role of the story-teller, while the chorus sings:

"Our lives become the stories that we weave....
That is why we tell the story, why we tell the story.”

And then, the light dims, until the only thing that remains visible is the silhouette of the young girl animatedly telling the story of TiMoune to the islanders gathered around her. ‘Twas the perfect ending. Or should I say, the perfect beginning?

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My ‘weekend’ got extended a bit to Monday, as I allowed myself to be dragged into attending the Pathways Orientation Seminar for the new JVP-Pathways volunteers. While the day was packed with serious talks on national and state-of-education situationers from the likes of Fr. Jojo Magadia and Mr. Leland dela Cruz no less, it was also one of those events that gave me a chance to catch up with my former officemates and spend time with the JVP-Pathways volunteers (Sabs, Tin, Benjoe and Jay).

Later in the evening, we all went to Harvey’s condo unit for a welcome dinner and barbeque in honor of the JVP-Pathways volunteers and Nikko, the new member of the Pathways staff who also happens to be a returning JVP volunteer (Batch 25). So yah, the JVP family in Pathways is growing! There are now six of us, all in all. And I have a feeling that it won't stop at six.:)

“That is why we tell the story, why we tell the story.”