Chasing Daydreams

Since I seem to be on a scuba phase of my preoccupation cycle, I’ll post some scuba related reviews. I’ll start with the Apeks DS4. This 1st stage regulator is a no-nonsense device. It has a dry-sealed (DS) system which means it has a sealing outer diaphragm which transmits pressure over the primary diaphragm. The water doesn’t get in contact with internals and freeze things in cold water. It is also overbalanced. This means the deeper you get, slightly more pressure is delivered to the 2nd stage regulator. It has 4 medium-pressure ports, and 1 high-pressure port. It came with a DIN fitting so I needed a yoke adapter for using it with the tanks that are commonly available locally.

I haven’t really used too many other 1st stages so all I can say is that it works and it works well. The fact that many advanced divers recommend it is testament to its capabilities.

Rating: 5/5

Just came back from Anilao. Went there for my PADI Advanced Open Water (AOW) Certification. I didn’t want to get this certification because I don’t think it has value for the money. The fact that people joke that PADI means Put Another Dollar In shows that my opinion is not baseless. But it is a necessary stepping stone for other certifications. So after almost 3 years and 42 dives, I finally and reluctantly decided to get the certification.

I told Ren about my decision and he hooked me up with a class. Unfortunately, he will be unavailable during the scheduled weekend so he referred me to Norman, another dive instructor from Scuba1. I’ve met Norman before during a dive so it was fine. I met up with him and some of my classmates friday night and we proceeded to Ocellaris (don’t go there!) in Anilao.

Advanced Open Water Certification is basically just supervised “advanced” dives. In my opinion, most (if not all) of these should be required basic skills for every diver. That’s why these days, they’re called experience dives. Some of these dives you probably have done already but you won’t get credit for those. You have to be taking an AOW class to get credit. So during the course of the weekend we dived and dived. The class did the following:

1. Deep Dive
2. Drift Dive
3. Night Dive
4. Underwater Navigation
5. Search and Recovery
6. Peak Performance Bouyancy

For the deep dive, we went to Dari Laut. We descended to 30m and explored the skeletal frame of a fishing boat on the site. I’ve done a deeper dive or two before so it was nothing new. Nevertheless, it was interesting because of the wreck.

For the drift dive, we went to Bahura. The current was not really strong enough to drift along with when. I’ved dived once or twice in stronger currents. Again, nothing new there.

For the night dive, the class went to Ocellaris’ house reef. This was the second most exciting dive as I’ve never dived at night before. The undersea environment looks different. And the bioluminiscent plankton are cool! Wave your hand and glowing lights follow in its wake.

The underwater navigation dive was also done at the house reef. I screwed up the navigation. Reviewing my compass navigation is definitely in order X-(

The search and recovery dive was also done at the house reef. This was the most exciting dive. The teams were allowed to plan and dive without a dive guide. My team defined a search area and did a patterned search of the area to no avail. It turned out that the item we were searching was not even in our search area. But even though we didn’t find the item, it was still a ground-breaking (water-breaking?) experience for me and, I suppose, also for everyone in the class.

For the final dive, the peak performance bouyancy dive, we scooted over to the house reef of nearby Vistamar where there’s another wreck: a fishing boat hull sitting at the edge of a sloping wall. We played around with our bouyancy while exploring both the wreck and the wall.

And that was that for becoming an advanced open water diver B-)

Did quite a lot last sunday: went to the dry cleaner, had a hair cut, had lunch at Piadina, watched the cat show/contest sponsored by the Philippine United Society of Ailurophiles (PUSA), and watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (now that’s a long title).

It’s a pretty cool movie. It has shades of the Wizard of Oz and the Lord of The Rings. It’s not quite Oz but it does evoke that feeling of wonder and awe back when you were still not as jaded or pragmatic. Nor is it quite LOTR as the plot is much more simplistic (e.g. very few would think Aslan clever for his sacrifice trick).

Towards the end, there was a quite violent battle between the forces of good and evil. I guess that would be another influence of Tolkien on Lewis and the LOTR movie on the director. But it is not anywhere near LOTR’s battles. I actually hope the battles of both movies are as gritty as Braveheart but I guess nobody else would want an R rating for this movie.

Overall, I think the movie is primarily for children or children at heart. But then, most of us are to a certain degree, aren’t we? ;)

Rating: 4/5

It’s a new year and Selene, my Thinkpad X22, has a new battery!

The battery that came with Selene is already 3 years old and it is showing: It only holds about an hour’s worth of charge. They say Li-Ion batteries only have 3 years life so I guess it will be downhill from 3 years on. I therefore decided to get a new battery.

After quite some time searching through Froggle, PriceGrabber, etc, I finally ordered it online from KeyBattery.com. They don’t ship international so I had it shipped to my friend Billie who was in the US and she eventually got it to me through various means. Thanks Bill! ;)

The battery is your normal IBM spec Li-Ion battery with 10.8V and 4000mAH charge for an effective usage time of roughly 3 hours. There are batteries that have 4400mAH (notably from BatteryRefill.com) but unfortunately the online shops that carry those do not accept my credit card. Too bad since you could do quite a lot with an extra 10% charge. But then again, 3 hrs vs the old battery’s 1 hr is already quite a lot too so I shouldn’t be complaining.

Rating: 4/5

I spent most of the evening alternating between web surfing, channel surfing, and cooking pasta while waiting for my sister to stop playing Dungeon Siege II so I can take over. I was eventually able to play when she stopped long enough to make fruit salad, wash some dishes, and roast the baby back ribs.

Later, we (brother, sister, and I) climbed up the roof deck and watched the fireworks. I recorded some of the display with my K700i. After that, we went back down and had noche buena of spaghetti bolognese, roasted baby back ribs, fruit salad, and red wine. Yummy.

Happy new year everyone! :)

Racquel, Rein, and I went to SpeedZone earlier this evening for another [rather unexpected] go at karting. I was planning to go back but not THIS soon. But since there’s nothing else to do I decided to go.

When we got there, we did the usual registration, gearing up, and waiting our turn. Then Racquel proceeded to soundly trounce both Rein and I. Her best time of 1:12.868 was almost 2 seconds and 5 seconds quicker than my and Rein’s best times respectively. Those are huge margins! It’s the genes I tell you :P

Afterwards, we went to Blue Wave to meet up with Eeya and watch the World Pyro Olympics 2005. Unfortunately, due to the severe traffic congestion, we missed the first show and just glimpsed the second show from afar. We had to content ourselves with just dinner at this forgettable place where the food is not worth it.

The whole IT Department went to Fort Bonifacio for karting at SpeedZone followed by our Christmas dinner.

We left the office early but got delayed because I missed a turn and decided to take a route through Makati. Big mistake. We lost 30 minutes stuck in traffic. We eventually got out of the mess and finally got to our destination.

We quickly registered at the counter, got our racing gear, and geared up. The suits were a bit moist, from the sweat of the previous user no doubt. The balaclavas were freshly laundered. You can still smell the fabric softener on them. That was great relief since the helmet paddings were also a little bit moist.

Once everyone was geared up, we went over to the pit where the carts stood waiting. After a short briefing by the track master, we climbed into the tight padded seats of our assigned karts. When we were all seated, the marshals started our motors and waved us one by one into the track. One by one, we stomped on the gas pedal and zoomed off into the track.

I didn’t expect it to be so much fun! At first we were a bit clumsy with the foot pedals and the steering wheel but as soon as we got the hang of it, we started zooming through the straights and twisting around the corners. I even accidentally went into a short drift or two :D You can see the background blur as you focus on the track and the other karts, hear the whine of the tiny engines, feel the wind even from under the helmet and suit… It was exhilerating!

Unfortunately, it was all over much too soon. A marshal flagged us down one by one and directed us back to the starting point where they shut down our engines. We clambered off the karts, heads buzzing from the adrenaline rush, and headed to the changing room to gear down.

Then it was dinner to talk about “the race” over food and a drink or two.

Will I be back? You bet!

Final exams were just done and I was looking for something to spend my time on. Enter King Kong. I decided to watch it because apparently people feel it is good: tons of cinemas were showing it (in Eastwood it was showing in ALL cinemas). Much more than any movie in recent memory. I went into the cinema with pretty high expectations.

I wasn’t disappointed.

The movie started off a bit slow: The background is set and the characters and their relationships built up. Then they stumble upon a mysterious island and it was non-stop action from there all the way to the ending in New York. You have to see the action scenes: from the dinosaur stampede, to the monster rumble, to the insect attack, to the city rampage, and finally to the battle up at the top of the Empire State Building.

It would seem like the movie got a lot of ideas from other movies. But remember that the original King Kong was where lot of other movies got ideas from in the first place.

And the acting is not bad either. Naomi Watts was gorgeous in a breathless 30s actress kind of way. Adrien Brody did well as the unexpected hero. He’s supposed to be Watts’ love interest but there seem to be more chemistry between her and the ape. Andy Serkis as the big ape himself almost outdid his Gollum. The only one who seem out of place is that comedy guy from Shallow Hal, but that’s because I saw that movie (as well as a few others). Otherwise he probably would have seemed great to me.

A classic in the making? Looks like that to me ;)

Rating: 4/5

The other day, my former colleagues and I had our traditional Christmas get together. We decided to do it at Dencio’s in Metrowalk instead of at Congo Grill at El Pueblo where we usually go. We should have known better.

As usual in big gatherings, people took their time and trickled in gradually. While waiting for them, one of the staff approached me and asked how many we are in the group. I told her the number. She asked what time they are coming. I told her soon. She said they don’t reserve on fridays. I told her we’ve already ordered their food. I don’t know what the problem was. Whether it’s one person or twenty, if I order food for twenty people, I deserve space for twenty people. Good thing she didn’t push the issue and the bulk of the group arrived soon after.

Then while we were eating, some of the waiters were removing plates without asking. And this is when we still had pending orders which are taking too long. Maybe they didn’t know there are still pending orders. But that’s not even an excuse. At the least, they should ask if it is okay to remove the plates. What it seemed to me is that they were running out of plates because when we asked for replacement plates and utensils, they would take their time bringing the plates and sometimes bring only a spoon or a fork with it.

Throughout the ordeal, I didn’t feel welcome nor attended to. Granted it’s dinner time on a friday and it’s the Christmas season to boot. But they should have anticipated that. So it’s no excuse. Besides, this is not the first time I’ve experienced poor service in this specific branch. So maybe they really suck at the service department. I don’t know why I still went back. But I definitely won’t again.

Rating: 1/5

My car’s oil pressure warning light came up while I was driving along South Superhighway (SSH) last week. That’s a pretty distressing event so I had it checked right away. The diagnosis was leaking spark plug oil seals. I took a look at the oil seals myself and saw one that was obviously cracked and wrongly installed. It looked like something I could do since I’ve already seen mechanics opening the valve cover and doing stuff. In fact, one of them probably mis-installed and cracked the leaking spark plug oil seal in the first place. So I decided to take the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) route.

I did the rounds of the stores and grabbed a bunch of supplies and equipment: spark plug tool, screwdrivers, spark plug oil seals, liquid gasket, carb cleaner, and electronics cleaner. The plan is to remove the spark plugs, spray carb cleaner into the spark plug wells to clean the engine oil that leaked into the spark plug wells, spray electronics cleaner into the spark plug connectors, remove the valve cover, replace spark plug oil seals, reseal the valve cover, and finally put in new spark plugs.

First thing in the morning, I grabbed my supplies and equipment and got to work. I tried removing the spark plugs using my spanking new spark plug tool. They won’t budge!!! I was finally able to extract one after much straining and sweating. But the tool’s handle broke when I tried extracting another one. So it was down to just removing the valve cover, replacing the spark plug oil seals, and resealing the valve cover. These I did with no further incident.

Later, I went to a nearby gas station and asked the friendly neighborhood resident mechanic to extract the spark plugs, clean them with gasoline, clean the spark plug wells and connector with compressed air (instead of carb cleaner and electronics cleaner), and reinstall the spark plugs. All done in a few minutes. Experience definitely helps. A lot.

In the end, although I wasn’t exactly able to accomplish the plan myself, I was able to do half of it. And it was fun! :)