Chasing Daydreams

One of the most useful tools you can carry around is a knife. But not too far in running would be pliers. And pliers are exactly the main selling point of the Leatherman Wave. This 100% stainless steel multi-tool has long-nose pliers that you can access by simply opening the handle. The grip edges are rounded for a comfortable grip which fixes a problem with earlier Leatherman models. In addition, it has 4 locking blades that are accessible without having to open the handle: A plain-edge clip-point blade, a serrated sheepsfoot blade, a wood saw, and a metal saw with nail and metal files on each side. These blades have liner locks to prevent inadvertent closing. Inside the handle you get a few more goodies: a Philips screwdriver, a can/bottle opener, scissors, and 4(!) flat screwdrivers of various sizes. My only complaint is that the Wave seems to have overly many flat screwdrivers. Replacing on of those with maybe a smaller Philips screwdriver would have been better. But I guess you can get the separately available tool adapter which gives you a few more screwdrivers. All in all, it’s a neat little package. It may be a bit heavy and big for pocket carry, so you will most probably be using the included belt-mountable sheath.

Rating: 5/5

I was curious about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because Billie likes the original Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory very much. As expected from a kiddie and family movie, it was bright, wondrous, and feel goody. Several [mostly annoying] kids won trips to a tour of The Chocolate Factory. Somewhere in the middle of the movie there was a shade of darkness as they encountered the singing burning dolls (creepy), and meet the mysterious Willy Wonka who seemed to be hiding something (creepier). Then the kids started disappearing one by one, hinting of something sinister going on. If I didn’t know any better I’d have thought that the Oompa Loompa’s are cannibals (Wonka mentioned something about cannibalism before the first kid disappeared) or that the secret ingredients for Wonka’s yummy chocolates were kids (shades of Soylent Green). But then those dark twisted thoughts of mine would have come to naught as this is a kiddie and family movie after all. As expected, in the end the missing kids turned up more or less fine and things got brighter and happier. Great for a family outing.

Rating: 3/5

Selene, my trusty little IBM Thinkpad X22 died last wednesday. At first I thought it was Windows’ fault. It turned out later that it was the hard disk’s. I buy a new 40GB Seagate Momentus hard disk and what do I get? A catastrophic failure after just a few months’ use. Grrr. It’s a good thing I still have the original 20GB IBM Travelstar hard disk.

A hard disk failure is always a traumatic experience to me (and I’ve had quite a few). This is mainly because I don’t backup as diligently as others(?). I think about the gigabytes of data that can’t be recovered. Most of these is probably clutter and will probably be completely forgotten a few weeks later. But when you’re in the middle of the disaster you can’t help but feel this deep sense of loss :P But what has happened has happened and all you can really do is to pick up the pieces best you can and get things together and up again.

So I tried installing Linux Fedora Core 4. Wishing that this more robust operating system could save me from future grief. Although it was not Windows’ fault, I was thinking maybe it contributed >:) Besides, I’ve used Linux before. On my servers and, for one lengthy period, as a desktop OS. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. On my first attempt, a power management and hot-plugging wouldn’t work. I tried again with the same results. What’s a notebook without power management? I decided to give up on Linux (for the time being) and went back to Windows 2000.

After installing Windows 2000, I found out I didn’t have the drivers as the recovery partition was also trashed. Except one: for the Linksys WPC54G Wireless PCMCIA card. So I installed it and logged on to IBM/Lenovo to download the other drivers. I did a search and got a download link for a software installer which I promptly downloaded and ran. Lo and behold, it searched IBM/Lenovo for all the drivers and other software I need (and also those I don’t really need) and asked me which ones I want. I selected them all, started the download, and left it overnight. This morning the files were all waiting for me and with a click of a mouse button, they started installing. Pretty painless and quick. IBM/Lenovo rocks!

And thus my Thinkpad was reborn.

In The Machinist, Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a machinist who hasn’t slept in a year. As a result he is gaunt and emaciated and prone to memory lapses and paranoia. Through the movie, he slowly unravels the mystery of his condition and, although at times a bit confusing, lets you experience his bewilderment and provides a reasonably satisfying realization phase. In the end, you sort of share his sense of final relief. The movie reminded me of Fight Club (chronic insomnia) and Memento (writing down information except Reznik writes his reminders on Post-Its). Aside from that, there is no other comparison with the aforementioned movies as this movie is darker, more morbid, and more gory. Pretty good if you’re into that kind of movie.

Rating: 4/5

Yesterday was a another whimsically declared holiday. For Metro Manila, that is. Is this part of Arroyo’s “holiday economics”? Supposedly, because it’s a long weekend, people would go out of town and therefore stimulate local tourism. Notwithstanding the fact that tourism sucks as a long-term industry, what about the potential production of all these people who are out of town (or more likely just malling since going out of town is becoming a rather expensive proposition)? Where’s the economics sense in that? Maybe, it’s part of a scheme to reduce the number of people in Metro Manila so that they won’t join the demonstrations (like most people still care). Or maybe I’m just too cynical. Maybe the government learned of a destabilization plot and they are just after the safety and well-being of the Metro Manila populace (who were probably out malling). Who knows?

I was just looking for something to help me chill out from a pretty stressful week at work and school and The Island was it. It starts off in a 1984-like utopian world where Lincoln (Ewan McGregor) goes about his daily life, usually working. However, he also has this penchant to lurking around restricted areas. Then, on one of his explorations, he got a jarring reality check when he discovers the truth about “The Island”. He immediately sets out to rescue Jordan (Scarlett Johansson) who is about to go to “The Island”. This is when the action began in spades and shovels. The action is entertaining enough though they can sometimes be too loud and noisy (including a car chase reminiscent of the looon car chase in Bad Boys 2). The story was essentially just a foundation for these action sequences. Which is too bad since it could have been as nice as that of Equilibrium or The Matrix. Still, as an action fix, it delivered (though not as well as the two aforementioned movies).

One last thing. I know movies are commercialized but can’t they tone commercialization down a bit?!? The movies is peppered with 2-second brand exposures and it got kind of annoying. It even includes ones of MSN Search and XBox. M$!!! Maybe that’s why I was annoyed :P

Rating: 3/5

I’m tired. I think I’m still mentally drained from yesterday’s finance exam. At first glance it looked like a giveaway exam. But our professor has devious ways of making things a bit harder. Take for example the subtle wording in one question: Net Income as against EBITDA. It’s so basic and yet it got me. So irritating X-( And then there’s the essay part that had to be answered not in paragraph form but in a bullet point format. Have you ever encountered that? I had to pause and think how to go about doing that one. I ended up with bulleted paragraphs :))

UPDATE: Turned out I did pretty well in the exam. Happy happy joy joy!

I’ve heard about H.G. Wells’ books of the same title though I haven’t actually read it. War of the Worlds is based on the events in the book but focuses on an average man (Tom Cruise?!? How can he be average?) doing his best to keep his family of two kids in one piece (literally and figuratively) amidst the ongoing chaos of war. Too much drama for my taste but it actually kind of works. Dakota Fanning played the horrified innocent girl pretty well and Tom Cruise is not too shabby either. But the setting of this human drama could have been any war, it definitely didn’t have to be H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds which I expected to be this epic battle between Mars and Earth. Sure, the aliens and their retro juggernauts were awesome especially when they kill people one at time time, making it so much more horrific (although the efficiency of the method is a bit questionable) and US Army’s relatively puny firepower did add some pretty nice fireworks but as a whole, the war bit ended up a letdown and definitely not the reason to watch this movie. But if you miss Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire emoting, you just might want to.

Rating: 3/5

It’s been quite some time since I last flew with PAL. So on my recent trip to Bohol to attend my sister’s wedding, I decided to get PAL round-trip tickets mainly for convenience’s sake but also out of curiousity. Initially, this PAL experience seemed okay though my sister did complain she had to wait too long getting the tickets and on the flight the restroom stank.

It was on the return flight that I regretted my decision to fly PAL. The weather was bad so when we checked in, they said the flight will be delayed. But PAL didn’t announce on the PA, as Cebu Pacific did, that the flight was cancelled. We decided that the best course of action is to go to Cebu and catch a Cebu Pacific flight.

We went to the Cebu Pacific ticket office. But by then it was too late to catch the 3PM flight and we had to make do with the 5PM flight. Because we had little money left, there were no ATMs nearby, and they didn’t accept credit cards, we had to refund our PAL tickets to pay for the Cebu Pacific tickets. But the PAL office was full of irate customers they couldn’t appease. We definitely were not going to get the refund in time. Thankfully, the very nice staff at the Cebu Pacific ticket office agreed to just allow us to pay for the tickets once we get to Cebu where they do accept credit cards.

We grabbed a quick lunch and scooted off to Cebu via a fastcraft where we got the tickets at the Cebu Pacific ticket office and refunded from the, thankfully, empty PAL ticket office. On the way to the departure lounge, we saw an announcement: The PAL 5PM flight was delayed by an hour. At the end of the day, it wasn’t so bad as we eventually got back home albeit a bit late. But I’ll have to say my airline of choice is most definitely Cebu Pacific.

My brother, his girlfriend, my sister, and I flew to Tagbilaran in Bohol over the weekend to attend my other sister’s wedding. We chose to cut it close and flew in the morning before the afternoon wedding. We made it with enough time to nap and freshen up. The wedding was held at the Bohol Tropics hotel which is also where most of the guests stayed. The ceremony itself is a cozy little affair attended by the immediate family, some relatives, and close friends. Both the ceremony and the reception were in a function room overlooking the bay so there was no need for the guests to move from one place to another. Now that is one practical yet charming wedding! :)

The second day, we went on quick Bohol tour. First we went to the famous Chocolate Hills. I haven’t ever seen it and I was expecting a bunch of 20 or so small hills. Boy was I so wrong! There actually are so many hills of various sizes and they stretch out as far as the eye can see. It was the rainy season so the hills were more green than chocolatey but still it was a great sight!

Next we went to Loboc to see the floating restaurants. We just looked at them as we didn’t have time to ride one and eat lunch downriver where there’s supposed to be a waterfall. Besides, the water was murky because of the runoff due to the rains. Or maybe I’m just sourgraping :P

While in Loboc, we also went to this shop to see tarsiers. They were not tied up or caged and they can actually roam around the place jumping from branch to branch. They can probably walk (jump?) out the door if they felt like it. However, I felt sorry for them being harassed by tourists who poke them and take pictures with blazing camera flashes. I can just imagine how blazing means to the tarsiers who have large light-gathering eyes :(

We next went to the Baclayon church, supposedly the oldest stone church in the Philippines. Unfortunately, it was closed when we got there and so we just had to content ourselves with looking at and taking pictures of the exterior architecture.

Finally, we went to Panglao. The first beach we went to, Bohol Beach Club Public, wasn’t so nice. The shore was full of debris, although they all look organic, and the water was so shallow you can’t actually swim. It probably was because of some abnormally low tide or something. The next resort we went to, Dimaluan Beach, was much better. The beach was cleaner and has slightly deeper water. I didn’t swim because I was planning to go diving but when I checked with the dive resorts, there were no scheduled dives and it was too late to schedule one. I guess it’s something I’ll have to do the next time I go.

The third day was uneventful as we just went around the city proper checking out the sights, sampling the local cuisine, and even watching a movie. I did gain an appreciation of this laid back town. The people are deeply religious. Tricycles are required to have a quote from the bible and they do afternoon prayers. They seem to be generally hospitable, nice, and honest. But I wonder how long this culture will last with the influx of outsiders and tourists. Tourism especially has this tendency to come in, corrupt a place, and leave when it’s finally all rotten and worthless. I hope this doesn’t happen to Tagbilaran, Bohol, or the rest of the country for that matter.