And for my last PE class I took up Futsal, a.k.a, futbol de salon (notfutbol sa loob), or, in plain English, indoor footbal. Incidentally, this is also my only PE which is a team sport or a ball game, my other three being Archery, Fencing, and Taekwondo, taken in that order.
Some trivia: When some people hear the word Football what comes to mind are players like this,
From http://images.wikia.com/plantsvszombies/images/1/1a/FOOTBALL.jpg
save that they are most likely college-age, with a muscular build, and hungers for burgers and not brains. Well people, that is American Football. America, to avoid confusion, calls that sport in which Spain prevailed in last year’s World Cup Soccer. Elsewhere it is Football and…uh…Handegg?
Because I really can’t make a ball out of that egg-shaped pork-skin, I’ll be with the rest of the world in this matter and say Spain won in the Football World Cup.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to play Football. I remember kicking softdrink tin cans with friends way back in elementary, being that we had no Football equipment and that softdrink tin cans were just perfect in weight if not in shape. Even as relatives and teachers thought I’d be playing Basketball due to my growth spurt when I was young, I kept dreaming of green fields and goals.
My elementary school had no varsity teams. So, when I moved to a new school for high school, I really looked forward to playing a sport. But alas, the high school I moved to had varsity teams, alright, but not Football. Our space was pretty cramped, you see, that sometimes even the Basketball team had to practice half-court since the other half was being shared between two other sports (giving them a quarter-court’s share each).
And I thought I’d end up in Basketball finally, and make my teachers and relatives happy for a prediction-turned-right. But then, my high school had Taekwondo. I trained for the whole four years of my high school.
Those four years weren’t exactly the most injury-free but they were definitely character-forming. It’s thanks to Taekwondo that I developed a habit for sports and working out. It also taught me how to push-through with what I want to achieve and to give my 110% in the things I do.
Come college, I knew that I wouldn’t have enough time to practice a sport regularly. I had to stop at 2nd grade brown belt. My need for some physical action was filled in by trying out various sports (as outlined by the PEs I took) and other activities (remember rappel?).
And now, Futsal. It isn’t exactly played on green fields but hey it’s got goals and play is football-like enough.
And for my first “Photograph of the Month” blog I give you roses.
They’re my mom’s. I think she acquired them around mid-month. Of course, my first instinct was to jump in and take pictures. Yay.
I know that roses—like books, butterflies, and hearts—are fragile things but I never knew that they are that delicate that it is quite a task keeping them alive. I don’t know much about gardening but my mom said something along the lines of, “I hope I can make them last”. That just gave me an idea on how fragile they can be.
Why are fragile things often beautiful? Or is it the other way around, that those which are beautiful are fragile? Roses, books, butterflies, hearts—or why I’m so sure the world is beautiful.
For next month, I guess I’ll find something moving, throw in a person or two in the frame maybe. If you head over to my DeviantArt you’ll see lot’s of flower pics in there. I find flowers that beautiful that I can’t stop myself from taking pictures when I see some interesting ones—which scares me a bit. I guess it’s every artist’s fear that he has ran out of new ideas to try, that his recurring themes are no more than reused cliche. Where do you draw the line between recurring themes and loss of fresh ideas?
But hey this post is supposed to be happy. In other news, I’m no longer doing my thesis/special problem alone. I’m with two ladies and we’re working on Porites a genus of corals. More about the problem as we progress. Yee-ha.
(According to Sir Pros, our adviser, thesis is, by definition, something you do alone. But for all intents and purposes, our special problem, usually done in pairs or in threes even in other labs, can be considered a thesis.)
Hello main blog. Despite calling you my “main” blog I am aware that you are probably jealous at how kode.play hogged all my attention this past summer. It was unavoidable, being that I had to blog about my internship and that the posts created were inevitably technical in nature. But it’s over now.
I’m not sure that the posts will be back to my normal one-post-per-month quota though. I’ll be doing my thesis/special problem this year. And have I told you that, through some turn events, I’ll be doing this solo flight? (Anak ng…special problem nga) This early on, I’m taking leave that I may miss more posts.
(But wait! I got a back-up plan. In anticipation of some middle-term plan I’m hatching, I’ll be posting, instead of my usual tirade of words, a photograph of the month, taken by yours truly. That should be pretty easy for me to meet and squeeze in a schedule expected to be full eh?)
I never really planned to do my thesis solo. Maybe I did but that was only at the start of my college career; when I saw how chaotic things can get I started considering doing it with a group, a consideration I held on to until I received the email welcoming me to the research lab I applied to. My name was there, at the top, alone in it’s line, unaccompanied by those whom I contacted as group mates—a solo flight ticket. “Chad,” says Neil, a gifted artist I hang around with, “if you need a crying shoulder anytime this coming year, we’re here.”
In my renewed sense of optimism and belief in reasons reason does not know, I can’t help but feel that doing my thesis alone is a challenge especially meant for me. Back in high school, I always dreamed of the time I get to make a system on my own, large enough to make a decent dent on a CD’s 700MB worth of storage space. I don’t know how large do theses get but I’m pretty sure I’ll be exceeding the line count of the spaghetti behindGradeGrid or the 1087 lines of code behind the programming language I created for my Programming Laguages class. Well, here’s my shot at immortality, I say.
Months back, I said that my internship will probably be the longest three units of my life. Over at {kode.play();}*, I have a record of how many hours did I spend for my internship. I clocked in around 281 hours and 52 minutes in around 7 weeks. I created a timer program that will keep track of how many hours do I spend working on something, inspired by an internal tool from Azeus. I’ll be timing how much time will I spend on my thesis. Anyone wants to bet as to which will be longer, internship or thesis?
Stay beautiful, it’s a new beginning ~ The Chad Estioco
*Yep, I changed the styling of kode.play, to make it more geeeky. Rawr.
P.S. On “awsomazing”: For some time now, I’ve been watching my use of the word “awesome”—everyone is using it it’s become cliche already. I’ve been considering “amazing” as a replacement as it sits well with my alliterations and communicates the same meaning. However, it doesn’t have the same bang as “awesome”. So, I’m stealing from taking a leaf out of Jason Mraz and be using “awesomazing” from now on.
Wonder how long before the internet catches up? Anyone for another bet?
There I told you. It’d happen again. I passed my blog entry for March but, in summary, March was a month of code and that is a probable understatement. Not only did I have to type through lines and lines and lines of code but I also had to read through heaps and heaps of readings and solve past systems and systems of equations. But it was a fun month though don’t ask me if I’d like to have another go at it.
This summer smells of code as well. Ever since I entered college I forsook my right to have summer vacations. My “vacation” will mostly be around a week after I submit the last second sem requirement and then around 2-3 weeks after I submit the last summer term requirement, depending on when next academic year’s first semester will start.
I’ve never taken a CS class on summers mainly because they aren’t always offered. But that is not to say that I haven’t coded on summers. I remember, the summer after my first year, how I tried to run through the problems at Project Euler, brushing up my Schemer skills in the process. And then just last summer, I did a lot of recreational coding.
And this summer, in what will probably be the longest 3 units of my life*, I will be taking up my internship. I’ll be sitting in front of a computer most of the time but then I don’t know how much blogging time will it afford me, that “most of the time” being company time. But nonetheless, as we are required to blog on our progress reports, you can follow my adventures at kodeplay.skytreader.net(link not working yet. I’ll set it up after I’ve posted this.).
(EDIT (4/10/2011): My blog for my internship is now set-up. All over it you’ll find territorial marks fromWordPress. This is the only public-accessible portion of my domain that I didn’t build from the ground-up. Maybe I’ll say more later.)
And—here please pardon my seeming lack of modesty—I can’t be more pleased with myself at the company which accepted me. For the next few weeks, I’ll be seen around Azeus. Everytime someone from CS hears that I got into Azeus they go like, “Wow. Halimaw lang daw natatanggap dun ah“. I’ll be starting this Monday.
(It just rained as I type this. I hear it is going to be a wet summer. And it shouldn’t surprise you that I love the rain, that I walk in the rain even when I lug my laptop on my back (my backpack is waterproof). I just realized that I may not be able to indulge in that kind of pleasure this rainy summer out of courtesy to the workplace and courtesy to my fellow commuters.)
I’m thinking of doing a redesign of my website and also a longer, probably more coherent post. But for now, I’ll indulge in the rest I’ve so wanted ever since work started piling up. It seems that posts after a month of inactivity do tend to be short. It’s a shame I don’t have a poem to share with you, as with last time.
(EDIT (4/10/2011): On hindsight, this post isn’t so short after all…)
See you soon!
*I seem to forget how the senior students** I encountered this year has warned me thoroughly about undergraduate research.
So, Lantern Parade again. It wasn’t as funtastic as expected, I’m afraid, nor does it stand in comparison with my previous two. It rained before the parade started. Maybe there’s something with the water that broke down part of the spirit.
The Parade went as usual for the early part, with people crowding over this lantern and that. But as it wore the lantern lines broke in segments and it wasn’t very exciting anymore. And there was too much ideology involved. Not that you can wash that entirely away from something so UP. But, again, too much compared to my previous two.
But then I over speak. A post about the Lantern Parade is a post of pictures, of course. So here they are.
An early drizzle, which soaked the grounds as well as the AS steps, the effect being that those who opted to watch at the AS steps spent the night standing (or so my sister tells me). Which makes me wonder why…
…are they sitting down, here at the Engineering steps? Sure some of them had monoblocks and other what-have-you’s for dry sitting-down but most of them had none. And they sat down, monoblock or no monoblock.
Anyway, this was CSSP’s lantern/float before it rained. I don’t know what’s up with CSSP this year but they seem to be in a particularly celebratory mood; they even had sportsfests and pageants (a la Miss Eng’g, in my opinion) this year. Whatever the celebration may be, cheers to them.
See those crayons? They melted thanks to the rain, so unlike real crayons which melts with fire, not water.
Aside: This zebra is so cute. There were other balloons of this kind there, from SpongeBob to Dora, but I only managed to take the picture of this zebra. I’m not very fine with the lighting for this one but according to my sister, this shot is the cutest. Here are some more shots (whose lighting I like but are not very favored with my sister in terms of the cuteness factor).
An early show stealer is our very own Pep Squad. I can’t do their awesomeness justice just by telling you what. And no picture, even one worth a million words, can tell you what poetry their motion wrote. So here’s a video instead.
Another early show stealer is Architecture, with blocky costumes of architectural masterpieces.
This girl needs an award for the mere effort of standing through the whole length of the parade, keeping balance (with some help, I’ve been told) in face of road bumps.
It’s all white but with detail as fine as that, this, too, deserves mention.
None of the next handful of lanterns struck me in particular. I think some of them was more driven by ideology than by art.
Engineering—my college—was a big let down, I’m afraid. It started with a particularly crowd-whoa-drawing contraption which looked like a horse’s skeleton with a rider too small for it at the top. Then the rider pedals the bike and the contraption moves and the crowd is amazed. It was followed by electronic (read: Earth-friendly) jeepneys. And then a long march of Engineering organizations which didn’t display anything much aside from orange shirts courtesy of Meralco and org banners.
Upon entering UP, our Dean then told us the story behind our College’s Lantern Parade performance. There was a time when no one gave much damn on our lantern. Then she gave the ultimatum that, if our Lantern Parade performance remains lackluster, Eng’g Week* won’t be held next year. And the rest is, as they say, history. I don’t know how true this story is, me being unaffliated, but I think it is time to amend that order to something that will require the orgs to show something worth watching. Just my two cents.
Anyway, we jump to the show stealers of always, the ever-awesome College of Fine Arts.
I can’t help but feel that their parade is shorter than usual this year. I didn’t see any of the people I know in Fine Arts. But still, they’re awesome.
It’s not much of a shot on my part but this style of lantern is something I find so nice.
King Blastoise you’re so awesome and you’re waving at me!
I’ll tell you a secret and please make sure that King Blastoise here won’t know ’cause he’s so freaking awesome I wouldn’t want to anger him. Back in those days when I spent the day beeping on my high-tech Tamagochi that is Pokemon in the GameBoy Color, I’m not really a very huge Blastoise (or, for that matter, water-type) fan. I’m more the fire type kind of trainer. When Oak/Elm asks me to choose, I always chose Charmander/Cyndaquil which eventually evolves to Charizard/Typhloshion. And then my rival will choose the water-type, Squirtle/Totodile, which grows to Blastoise/Feraligatr. And you know what? I always beat my rival despite the type advantage. I always hard-boiled Squirtle/Wartortle/Blastoise in his shell. Even if he beats me, I’d turn the GameBoy off without saving so that my loss is technically non-existent. Then I’d turn it back on and train some more before having another go at cooking some hard-boiled pokemon. Now you know why I wouldn’t like King Blastoise to know.
You didn’t tell King Blastoise? Great! Hey who’s that Pokemon? What did you say? YOU TOLD GYARADOS?! That explains why he’s rushing towards me!
Close…
…Open
So far I’ve shown you my shots in more or less sequential order. However, I just had to save this one for last, as this is probably the loveliest sight this Lantern Parade. They actually appeared somewhere between King Blastoise and Little Mermaid in a Shell. Kudos to AV Com (which, I’ll take to be Audio Visual Communication?) for this fantastic piece.
King and Queen of the Sea lords over this year’s parade (and I like my shot too).
They’re such a lovely pair don’t you think?
And of course, fireworks…
We started the day with water rain and end with fire rain? Hmmmmm…
I actualy have some footage of this year’s fireworks display. The thing is, I haven’t much time to upload them as internet speeds here in the Philippines isn’t very fast. That’s also another reason why I’m two days late posting this, instead of the usual one (The Parade happened December 17). We’ll see.
Be like Fine Arts. Know how to stay awesome even if it rains.
~Your Skymeister 😉
*Eng’g Week, and here I lift from the Engineering Survival Guide, ay ang “pinakamasayang at pinakanakakapagod na parte ng taon!” I’m aware of the error in the construction of that phrase but it isn’t mine. I’m just quoting my trusty Guide.