alliterations again – The Skytreader

The waves rock our boat, turning our reef-hopping trip to an amusement-park feel joyride of sorts. Water splashes on the deck as we do a jump and a fine spray of sea water reaches my lips, blessing my tongue with its salty tang. An island, sun-soaked for everyone to see its lush, appears on the horizon. I take aim with my lens but, as I make sure that I have set the proper shutter speed to negate the wildness of waves, I acknowledge that, for the first time, my camera has proved insufficient for this adventure.

Don’t get me wrong. My camera performed as admirably as ever, taking shots as sharp as usual, limited only by the hands and eyes wielding it. But, as all cameras do, it could not record the feelings that made the trip impressible in memory. True, it recorded the beauty I saw of Palawan but it cannot capture the smell of adventure as we battled the waves, the flavor of sea-side air, nor that sun soaked smell served as my perfume for almost the whole time we stayed there.

I got into Palawan courtesy of the undergraduate research I am doing. Our project, Porites recognition, is part of a larger project in UPD. The researchers involved in the project went to Palawan to gather data. My role isn’t really field-related but I got included anyway.

Despite it being a research trip, it was adventure all throughout, from the waves to the food to the exploration of the city’s night spirit. The first day we rocked the waves, we ran short of fuel. We waited on a sandbar for further instructions. It’s beautiful, dreamy in quality, if not for the fact that it is a graveyard of corals damaged by dynamites. It is a peaceful spot in the middle of the sea nonetheless, as the resting place of innocent creatures should be.

I tried to travel as light as possible being that (1) it is generally a good idea to travel light, (2) pretty men travel light and (3) I did not want too much of my personal stuff to get in the way of the research equipment we brought along. As such I took a leap of faith and didn’t bring any medium to back up my photographs and I was too lazy and too much of a cheapskate to invest in a memory card more or two, to distribute my photographs across. It would’ve been fine until they took a fancy to my camera and I became an official photodocumanitarian of sorts.

I got all my pictures back to Manila safe and sound but I learned a valuable lesson nonetheless: the pictures I take belong to the people who made the shot, whether they are distinguishable/included or not in the final output, as much as it belongs to me. I should’ve been more responsible for our shared property. In my lapse of judgment I didn’t act like a photographer, even for a hobbyist, not even like the computer scientist I am trained as.

I am grateful for the trip. I am grateful for the adventure; heck, the last one I had was almost two years ago. But I am most grateful for the lesson on not cheapskating on the memories I hitch on my camera.

Another awesome way to start the year don’t you think? ~The Chad Estioco

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?

Tag: alliterations again

Palawan Photography

Another Awsomazing Adventure Awaits