Thursday, August 31, 2006

Leave Me Alone


"...umuwi ka na baby
di na ako sanay ng wala ka
mahirap ang mag-isa
at sa gabi’y hinahanap hanap kita..."



I often wonder if you’re not that too far from me, because you keep on visiting me in my dreams. Does these nocturnal wanderings represent your truest intentions, or does it show only my heart’s deepest desires?

I don’t want to keep on looking in your eyes and see my own resolve crumble. I don’t want to see you struggle all the time to understand that the best thing for us is to, and to always, be apart from each other.

All I ever wanted is to be with you, but I can’t help myself. I have to run away.


Our love story works better if we are not together.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic [or ways to pollute more innocent minds]

A friend sent me a picture of mine with the following caption [okay, so I did not post the pic here but you can see it on my other blog]:


"The face of the treasury officer with the killer blogspot..."


Of course, she neglected to mention that, a> a picture like that posted in my blog is guaranteed to kill anyone; and b> I have a killer blog to begin with.


For me, a killer blog has to have quality and quantity, that is: quality - the author have something relevant, intelligent and read-worthy to say in his blogs; and quantity - the blog is being read and appreciated by a lot of people. Guess which of these attributes apply to me?


Now, if you are aspiring to have a killer blog, then you've got to have either one, right? Unfortunately, what passes as relevant, intelligent and read-worthy post to you may come out as unabashedly craptastic to everyone else. Which leaves you with the only option of increasing your blog readership [because trust me, you can have a big readership even if you have nothing to say].


How should you do that? Here are some ideas:

  1. Post sexy/nude pictures and/or videos. Not your own, silly! [well, unless you're hot.] You should post photos of beautiful stars, models and whoever is the current object of the viewing public's lust. You could also post links to videos of the latest sex scandals [or better yet, embed the video itself on your site. ah, the wonders of youtube.] with titillating titles such as "Too Hot to Handle!!!", "Barely Legal!", "Kalentong Scandal", etc. [the hell?! how did I ever come up with these titles?!]
  2. Pepper your blog entries with the most popular/top keyword search. For reference, go to yahoo or google.
  3. In lieu of number 2, use keywords that are unique and had not been used frequently by other sites/blogs [example: napagtagni-tagning kaganapan]. Be creative. This will ensure that your blog will come up first [or probably the only one] on the hits provided by search engines. Of course, that assumes that the people who search for these kinds of words [assuming further that there is someone who will do so] are the kind of people you want to have as readers of your blog.
  4. Register in/join various mailing lists/forums/message boards. Flood the list/boards with messages like: "please check out my uber cool blog at http://www.in_desperate_need_of_blog_readers.blog-orama.com/ !!!". You may use different permutations of the titillating titles suggested in number 1 as your message subject. Do this until the moderators ban you.
  5. Register in/ join again the mailing lists using a different username/ email account. Continue flooding until you get banned again. Repeat step until you realize you freakin' need a life.
  6. For best results, use one suggestion in combination with any or all other suggestions.

I'm not saying that these are foolproof ideas because I haven't tried these for myself. I'm quite satisfied with my blogs' relatively obscure existence, thank you very much.

But if you did try my suggestions, please feel free to post a link of my blog in your site with some simple words about me, like: "jela is the coolest girl in the world! please check her out on her fabulous blog!!! the best!". Yep, I'm pretty fine with that.

"Ang Hirap Mong i-Please!", Part 2

One of my closest friends keep on telling me that mahirap akong i-please [I am hard to please]. Of course, I didn't believe her, but now I realize that it is true, and this blog [and all the other blogs I had created] is the living proof.


I would stop updating any of my blog if it doesn't satisfy any of my requirements: the perfect formatting, sidebar is hard to personalize, HTML codes don't work properly, etc.


Yeah right, like the blog would suddenly right its perceived wrongs just because I'm giving it the silent treatment.


So now I resolve to myself [for the nth time] that I would try to update this blog regularly despite its many shortcomings.


Shocks, sana totoo na 'to. =p

"Ang Hirap Mong i-Please!", Part 1

Conversation wtih myself:
[because what the world needs is more proof that I'm losing my mind.]



Sensible me: bakit ba ayaw mong kainin yung ube?
Real me: eh kasi lasang kamote.
Sensible me: ano naman kung lasang kamote? bakit, hindi ka ba kumakain ng kamote?
Real me: kumakain. kaso ube ang binili ko, kaya ine-expect ko lasang ube. kung gusto ko ng kamote, bibili ako ng kamote.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

GO USTE! ! !

Yey! The UST Growling Tigers won their game against the Ateneo Blue Eagles in overtime! Not only did they get to avenge their first round defeat [which is such a humiliating blow out], but they had prevented the Blue Eagles from advancing outright to the Finals. What’s more, they are now unbeaten in three games and at solo third in team standings.


I haven’t been this excited for the longest time about UST’s chances in the UAAP. I had doubts about Pido Jarencio’s appointment as head coach and the depth of the UST bench, but hey, they’re slowly making a believer out of me.


I love collegiate hoops because it is about school pride more than anything else. Gosh, I miss cheering for this team! I miss the school yells and chants, even if the chants are kind of complicated even for a fast speaker like me! T-I-G-E-R-S rah! T-I-G-E-R-S rah! Tigers Tigers fight fight fight!


Go fight and win for U-S-T!!!

Monday, August 7, 2006

Something's Wrong With My World Today

  • There’s something inherently wrong with starting your workweek by attending a meeting, more so if the meeting dragged for so long than it was originally scheduled and you have other stuff you need to finish.

  • There’s something inherently wrong with suddenly finding your company CFO cute. Okay, I know he’s cute, I know my officemates also find him cute and some even find themselves crushing after him (that is, before they discovered how much of a slave driver he is) (and, well, some, in spite him being a slave driver!). I was able to resist his charms… until now, during the meeting, when he keeps making funny remarks and laughing his big laugh. Can someone please tell me that this is just a temporary madness?!

  • There’s something inherently wrong with my mind when I still can’t get the stupid “So It’s You” song out of my head. Must. Stop. Singing. The. Song. In. My. Head.

Sukob Mga Kapatid!

Went to SM Mall of Asia last Saturday with high school friends Ketz, Mark and Carlo to watch Sukob. Truth to tell, the movie succeeded in scaring me out of my wits! I never liked Feng Shui and I was snickering for the most part of that film so I was expecting the same from this film. Well, okay, I did snickered and giggled like mad while watching Sukob, but it was more of a nervous giggle to cover the fact that I was shit scared! Damn, my heart was still beating like crazy after the movie ended!

(Oops. spoilers! skip this part if you don’t want to know the movie’s plot.)




Sukob (overlapping) is one of our old Filipino pamahiin (superstitions). There are actually two kinds of sukob – one is sukob sa kasal (siblings marrying within the same year) and the other is sukob sa patay (a person marrying within the same year of a death in the family). Malas (bad luck) supposedly will haunt those who didn’t observe this pamahiin.

I like the twists in the movie’s plot. Sandy (Kris Aquino) wrongly blamed her initial misfortunes to a deceased friend, Helen (whose marriage was also cursed because it was “sukob sa patay”), because her husband’s cousin (or was it niece?) Joya (Maja Salvador – and I honestly don’t know who she was!) had a premonition of another woman having the same misfortunes. It turns out that the woman in the premonition was Sandy's half sister, Diana (Claudine Barretto), who got married a day before. What’s significant in this twist is that the sisters had bad luck because of their father’s (Ronaldo Valdez) indiscretion. Ronaldo (sorry I forgot his name in the movie) abandoned Diana and her mom to save his marriage to Boots Anson Roa, Sandy’s mother. The sisters went through with their weddings not knowing that the other had another sister who was also about to get married. It was like another Filipino cultural belief that daughters are pambayad utang ng mga tatay (especially if the father is a philandering one). At least in this movie, the daughters truly pay for the sins of their fathers.

My major pet peeve with the movie was the way Wendell Ramos’s death was handled. It was a scene straight from The Ring (though I have to admit that it is still scary). I wish they had devised another scene instead of a Sadako ripoff (also, since those who died before Wendell did die through horrific accidents and their bodies mysteriously disappear, Wendell’s death scene would have been better if he died in the same manner rather than just disappearing).

And, I might be alone with this opinion, but I really don’t like Kris’s acting in this movie. I was actually giggling because Kris looked like she was about to shout “Game ka na ba?” in her earlier scenes. And her “My God! I’m so scared!!!” acting is limited to shaking her head and crunching her eyes. Her scenes with Wendell are too contrived and they don’t have chemistry on-screen. The same can be said between her and Claudine. Despite Claudine being the better actress between the two, I didn’t feel that they were sisters who share a sinister bond in their scenes together.

For me, Ronaldo Valdez dished out the best acting in the film. I don’t know how to explain it, but in the scene after Boots Anson-Roa died and her body disappeared, Ronaldo was just damn great. He was in denial that his wife had just died and his dialogues were really funny, but you can still feel his grief, that he was trying too hard to mask his loss by refusing to accept the truth. Hay, you really have to see it to know what I’m talking about!

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. And it’s the sort of film that you have to see in theaters because the fun is actually in the collective screaming and nervous giggling of the moviegoers!

(and why do I keep on typing sukod instead of sukob?!)


********************


After watching the movie, we watched the fireworks display at the mall. I am such a sucker for fireworks display that even if the display was not in the same caliber as the ones I witness in the Pyro Olympics, I was still enthralled. There’s nothing like loud bangs and colorful bursts in the sky to lighten up your night!

We had our dinner at Dencio’s in CCP and then went to Starbucks to continue our chat session. Weird, because the main topic of the day seem to be our past heartbreaks and yet it was still all fun, fun, fun! Probably because we were able to talk and laugh about our experiences without feeling uncomfortable or embarrassed. My high school classmates had changed a bit from how I remembered them before, but somehow, things still seems familiar and comfortable.


And the best part? I learned three new words! These were, uh, life-enriching additions to my vocabulary hahaha! I think I need to go out more to catch up with my friends’ vocabulary! =p

Thursday, August 3, 2006

Random Spurts of Whatevah

Vanity Alert
(trust me you don’t have to read this! you may skip to the next part!)

Remember when I said that this is the longest period I had worn my hair long (#33 to be exact)?Well, the streak is now over.

My new hair, though, is not that short compared to how I use to wear it. I contemplated getting highlights or having my hair colored just to try something new but I chickened out at the last minute because I really don’t know what I want. Trying something new for your hair is something that should not be done spontaneously (trust me, I know what I’m talking about).



Potterverse Update

Just saw the news that Helena Bonham Carter was cast as Bellatrix Lestrange for the upcoming film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’m not exactly excited about this (unlike when I first heard that Gary Oldman and Ralph Fiennes will be the movie counterparts of Sirius Black and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, respectively) because I can’t remember if she has heavily lidded eyes and I also think she’s fair skinned. Anyway, she’s kind of a wacko in Fight Club so I think she can ably handle the role.



“Coz it’s a bittesweet symphony, this life…”

I had started training for a prospective new position offered by my boss. It’s a welcome distraction as my work now is getting kind of boring (stressful and boring – and not a good combination). Frankly, I’m not that excited about the new position either. But I’m quite curious as to how the merger would turn out and I think that the merger would give me good opportunities professionally. Hay, whatever. Sometimes I feel this quiet desperation that maybe I had not chosen the correct path professionally. But if it’s any consolation, I’m just thankful that I had not been ‘boxed’ by my profession and that I still have room to move around. Of course, there will be trade-offs, but you’ve got to risk something sometimes. Anyway, it’s not as if this is a race that I need to win!