My net life

I'm ecstatic that the bayan dsl at home was fixed last Sunday, Sept 21. We just applied for a dsl service last August 9 after procrastinating for years already. Everything was fine when I noticed that connection was reset on some websites I visited. I've done everything but to no avail, good that Zsa called tech support and lo, we just found out that a proxy server is needed. OK, now I have unlimited Internet at home. The question is, is the investment worth?

Back at my day job, we have this incentive scheme where the most efficient has of course "incentives". Slacking is discouraged, and so there my Net life is well, now managed greatly.
The Internet is like a box of swiss knife, a box of chocolate and Pandora's box all neatly packaged in your browser. I hate to admit it but, as with my colleagues at the job, surfing the Net has become a hobby of no return. I have no choice but to embrace it. If you read my previous posts you can see that I don't really love the Net that much. It's not the cure-all to everything, from the rosily-pictured solutions for the farmer in the fields and even to John McCain. The Net makes or creates friends and contacts. Being online is the in thing to do...really? The Net kills productivity, especially if one works in a liberal nonfirewalled office. The Net is fine with news and entertainment, but fledgling with learning and research, even with Wikipedia around. The Net is a virtual mall, or bazaar if you prefer, littered with all the glitterati the graphic artists can create. It must have this appeal to create waves and make me and you a Net addict. Imagine a net without pictures and flash plugin. It's not that hard to imagine, try it by tweaking some settings in your browser.
One needs self-restraint to control the time spent online. I bet, more than 80% is spent on entertainment/news and checking email more than browsing for "serious stuff". I can say that the purpose of the Net is to entertain me and you, personally. I must cherry-pick what I have to do online. Only then will the investment is worth it. Of course I won't kill my browsing for entertainment, that will be suicidal, unless...me become a boring unresponsive Netizen.

'sin-ter-ing vs. sin-'te-ring

American english vs. carabao English.
That is the gist of the story. Here goes, at the office, we had a teleconference with our British clients. I was the one who was asked by our group to speak to the client over the phone. I speak with an American accent (not Bisaya accent as what our company's boss thinks). Everything was OK, every little giggle was bearable for me. Then one time, I was to tell the word above (sintering) and lo! everyone is laughing, as if I just blurted out or made a joke. My "big mistake" was that I pronouced it like /'sint-ring/ (accent in the first syllable with the central "e" after t almost unpronounced). Then they say, "why did you pronounced it like the word 'centering'?" And I'm like, OK, I think I made a mistake right there because 'centering' is supposed to be pronounced /'sent-ring/. I gave in to my officemates demands, I pronounced it like /'seent-ring/ and /'seen-te-ring/, still, deafening laughs I heard. I'm quite lost by that time, I thought I made an incorrigible beyond the Universe mistake. You know or if you didn't know the "i" in American English is relaxed, unlike in French and Spanish where the 'i' is pronounced like 'ee' in beet. The 'i' is relaxed, like the 'i' in "pits". It's not pronounced /peets/ rather it's 'pits' almost the same as "peats".
With some of my officemates' ignorance, uncosmopolitan, and unprofessional behavior, I was red in the face literally. They told me that it must be sin-te'-ring, accent to the second syllable. Whoa! Here is another "deaf" Tagalog pronunciation of English words. For non-Tagalog readers, Tagalogs are noted for placing accents in the second or third syllable of English words. The norm in standard English is of course, the first syllable. A good example is the word 'temperature', in standard English it's pronounced /'temp-re-chur/ accent in the first syllable, Tagalogs almost always pronounce it like /tem-pe-'re-tsur/, accent in the third syllable, which is well... here's more, "circle" is pronounced /sir-kel/. Obviously Tagalogs are blind and deaf with the English schwa.
I'm really pissed off with these people. I love laughing and I like to be the hot seat for jokes but this time, their incompetent "way of saying things" seems like a Pandora's' box run berserk. The event was an official function people, it's OK with me joked among peers but with the client? I'm sorry I'm serious with those matters, and that time, I was not communicating with boisterous officemates but with the other end of the line in England. Their incompetence and judgmental behavior based on their ignorance and obvious unprofessionalism makes me sick.
Check your dictionary first before you laugh.

Focus

Focus, everyone needs it. Just a reminder here. Most of us are lost in the daily routine that we forget why we do them. Next day comes, and still no changes, and the next day and the next day...
There are certain things that one must outgrow, these acts may seem cute and fabulous when you're younger and more spirited but now, we must let the particles to settle. And chose which among them needs our focus---our time, effort and enjoyment.

Internet meltdown effects

One of the things that keeps me thinking is a scenario where the Internet stops or melts down and no one can fix it. I'll discuss this on a personal level. As for me, this will induce changes in lifestyle. All the great things that happens on the Net will be lost: no more checking email, chatting, no more Web browsing (like checking friends on friendster), no more online file storage and no job. In that way, every man is an island. With this, in order to communicate, I have to use heavily the post office for mails and the landline telephone or cellphone for talking. This is actually the life of mine up to 1997, the year the Internet made headstart into the Philippines. This is a horror of sorts to me of course, yet I love the changes, even if I'll lost my outsourcing job.

hallo-when?

Hello, wazup? Time and time again I keep on asking questions for the state of me. Maybe its time to write on this space as its quite dizzying if I only let it go in circles in my mind. Its October 31 and halloween. And the time is ripe to write up my annual review.

I had my birthday on the first week of October and lots of my friends wished me a happy birthday, most with the famous line, "o san tayo mamaya, pa-icecream ka naman!" and God knows what else and that's normal among friends. And believe me those lines didn't easily die off with time, the "greetings" linger up to this day (they say its due to my "strength" in not giving a birthday bash or shall I say, in not bowing to their demands, hehe). In my workplace alone, octoberians are in droves. It's a relief that October comes to an end, now.

With birthdays some long-lost and long-distance friends and families greets me with the famous Filipino komusta na, usually in smsscript musta or how u. After dozens of musta wishes I started to think "hmm, how's my life na nga ba? And here comes the thoughts of what now?, so what?, sigh, I'm getting old! or the positively charged yes! same, same young me.

A lot of things happened in the span of time since my birthday last year, of course. Notable of them are: (hmm, I can't enumerate these significant events, let me think...)

• I wasn't lucky on the offfice Christmas party raffle. I was the back-to-back defending grand prize champion, winning the least-value entry that night of December 2006
• Waki's last name was changed to mine atlast on March 2007 after a tiring battery of back-and-forth government office tours in Quezon City and Manila
• My personal income plummeted to horrific levels in the months of June, July and August this year, and this is my first encounter of pandora's box (hope the box won't be opened again) forcing me to review my economics 101 and entrepreneurship 0
• my to-be-wed best friends split up around the week of my birthday
• and lastly, Zsazsa and I celebrated our anniversary this October 22, a day late

That's it, I squeezed my mind-juice and only those five events are that notable and significant to me that I recall those and nothing else. It's quite diluting to the list to include things like my brothers went off to New Caledonia and Korea, Zsazsa's only sister stays with us, the home transfer to Montalban didn't materialize, and even things like why I'm still working at the company (ode to Earl, Charles, Charlotte, and Miezel) and two of my office friends got married before I am, and a teammate got pregnant.

As for me, whenever October ends, it's time for a cool change. but the question is --- hallo:when?

E-pinoys 10 favorite Web brands

E-pinoys are those of us who make web surfing a pastime, a hobby. These websites are free to use (of course if it has a fee, then it wont be popular). I ranked them according to popularity:

1. Yahoo! -- who haven't used this? It's like this, if your Pinoy, then you've got to use it or forever be anonymous in the Net, lonely and antisocial. Its yahoo mail has unlimited storage now, this is getting more popular. Second is yahoo messenger, this is the IM to go if you want Pinoys to IM you or forever be lonely. Third is yahoo groups, that is, again if you're Pinoy and want to be into likeminded folks then this is it.

2. Friendster -- the social networking to be, if you want Pinoys to be your friends. Myspace, facebook and others just pale in comparison.

3. Google --used only for searching, that's it.

4. Chikka --one-of-a-kind SMS sending, it can send up to 3 sms per contact per day. It has java-based no-download version.

5. Inquirer --the online version of Phil. Daily Inquirer is the most favorite (i.e. the most visited) local website so far, through the years.

6. Wikipedia --well, well, popular both among serious researchers and those who are just browsing to learn a thing or two.

7. Blogger --the most popular blogging site, for bloggers only, usually.

8. Youtube --this videosharing is popular among those who have DSL access only.

I have a hard time thinking of these last two entries:

9. Jobstreet --I bet this is popular, as most of those who access the Net are mostly yuppies, fresh grads and college students looking for careers.

And the last entry to my ranking is:

10. Yehey--it claims to be the only Philippine search engine (before) and the country's only general portal. I think it has some followers to place in the top 10.

I really have doubts on the ninth and tenth, as a lot others, say MSN is the default homepage in Internet Explorer, I think MSN may rank higher. NBA, the basketball site is popular and so is Flickr, the photosharing and photo storage site, deserves mention.

Bored and lonely at home

I don't know what's with me, its almost 3am election night, the last night of the three-day weekend---I'm not depressed, just plain bored. Aside from my office mates and my family (which include ofcourse my talkative and hyperactive son; zsazsa my beloved as you know she works on a different shift so not talking personally is not uncommon; and the brod inlaw and his family) I have no one to talk to and connect personally. Virtually however, it's just a recent thing. Before I used to chat via YM, ICQ and MSN and really made some connections. But these stopped nowadays. Friendster, it seems more like a poster screaming with photos and really a nasty payabangan over there, groups (both yahoo and msn, boring folks/topics out there). So right now, I thank this blogger. This little virtual space reserved just for me. Atleast whatever it is blogger seems to be a virtual friend, a pet.

I'm not the kind of man who gets lonely so easily. I can laugh at simple jokes, enjoy the simplest sound and movements in nature and mankind-derived ones, and daydream sometimes, turn on the TV, or just plain surfing the net. But now it's different. It seems something is amiss---friendshipwise, neighborwise, provincialwise, and before I forget, textwise-I'm on smart (the celphone network), but smart people I think are smart moneywise, nagtitipid, just like me.

Hobbies? Interests? Anything to combat boredom? I really am not into hobbies such as that elementary-school exalted art of philately. I'm interested of course in a lot of things, duh! Here's one: I'm quite busy contributing to wikipedia-the cebuano version. That's what I do to combat routine work. It's almost an addiction actually. Atleast that's my contribution to the whole wide world. But when I'm home, three days burnt me, notwithstanding going to SM North. Maybe I have to ride in a spaceship, do some extrasolar contact or just the plain rounding up the folks.

Well, they say love makes the world go round, with money as its fuel. I may have love, but I'm afraid I lack the fuel.