All posts by ishg

gibberish

astounding.

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Most times, I take it for granted, but I just realized that I really am surrounded by AMAZING people.

For example, to my sister Ate Ting — you’re amazing. You have the biggest vault of patience out of everyone I’ve ever known, and you’re not stingy with it. You never asked to look after a little sister like me, and I know for a fact that I can be quite a handful. You know when to just be agreeable, and even more, you know when to give me a good smack in the head. You turned not only me, but also Ikay, into Photoshop nuts (and I haven’t even gone around to teaching you the guitar or HTML yet, after all these years. You’re simply amazing.

To my teammates, Mike & Jan — you’re amazing. As I’ve already told Jan, you two are among — if not the biggest — the factors why I probably am still sticking around. I never really saw myself in something so corporate, but you guys make it seem homey — no, actually, it’s more like a playground. You guys are amazing.

To my partners in goofiness and all other crimes, Rhea & Liz — you’re amazing. There’s never been a time when you guys failed to crack me up. Yet, even when I’m in the lowest of lows, you guys are also the same ones I turn to. I consider myself soooo lucky to find buddies with the same wavelength. You’re amazing.

To Bugsy — need I say it? You’re amazing. We all are so into our own things, yet we never let each other forget that we still have kindred spirits out there, egging us on. We have something time nor distance can’t break. You’re amazing.

To my parents, you’re amazing. Putting up with a know-it-all brat like me is a feat. You accept with without question — even in my ugliest moods, even if I shut you out, even after I lose my phone for the nth time. You’re amazing.

And what’s better is I know there are lots more amazing people not yet mentioned in this post. Hay. I should have posts like these more often.

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surprisingly, sometimes, things do look up

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the past few weeks have drained so much even beyond my usual tolerance of stress, that i’ve finally imposed an albeit escapist non-work thing on myself tonight. both Neil Gaiman fans, rhea and i caught Stardust at the cinema. LOVED IT. i loved it so much that i didn’t mind seeing claire danes almost for the entire movie. i was so ready with my criticisms that i was caught off guard. it was just what i needed, thank God. (thanks also to one of my best destressing buddies, rhea. we have so much to catch up on pa! haha.)

i keep on telling myself that the hullabaloo will all be over once October passes, but i know that it’s a longshot. but now, oh well, on a time when i can hardly catch my breath, i’m taking a breather, lounging out on the lazy boy (a VERY rare luxury), flipping through the channels. sometimes, it defies logic, but you find that it’s just all good.

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theory of relativity, and then some

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one guys chose cryptography for our MS reporting, and he defined gibberish as ‘of unintelligible meaning’. i couldn’t have put it better.

it’s funny how relative everything else. how something ‘unintelligible’ to one holds a whole lot of meaning to another. how something trivial to some is the the whole world to somebody, that he obsesses over immortalizing words and unleashing them for everyone to see, when he had no intention of sharing it anyway.

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avenue q

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i’ve been hearing so much about this play that i just had to to see it. i expected to cry from laughter; i braced myself for the expected adult humor. what i did not expect was to be hit with just the advice i needed.

for now. everything’s for now. it’s okay to not sweat things, to not take yourself so seriously, to not know what you’ll be in the future, or why you exist in the first place. sometimes we just get to wrapped up in ‘what’s next?’ that we actually forget to actually live the now. in the end, after all, the past and present have no say in the now.

nerdstuff

hey ya world (finally)

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http://media.imeem.com/pl/axCpRQFlim/aus=false/

As I’m still reeling from a Chocnut-&-Flat-Tops induced sugar rush, I’m going to take advantage of this sudden urge to type to (finally!) post these imaginary entries that have been piled up in my head for the past few weeks. (whee!)

—–

you can’t help but love youtube. it has done for videos what google has done for, well, everything. want videos of the tv episodes you missed? it’s here. want a break-down of killer dance moves? it’s here. want another run of that SNL skit? guess what? it’s still here. even bored-out-of-my-head videos finally found their place here.

i was scouring for some old 80s & 90s tunes when i came upon this. weird, though, it was the only video for UMD’s Always that i was able to find, perhaps the only video that immortalized what will forever haunt the minds of 90s babies everywhere.

—–

another great site i found was imeem.com, a network for sharing playlists and music. i find the coolest tracks here, and there’s no need to download them and clog the network for i can play them online. check out this link to listen snow patrol’s cover of Crazy In Love (originally by Beyonce) and an acoustic cover of Hey Ya (I swear, I used to hate this song til now).

review

Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

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Mind-blowing story, but not nearly as mind-blowing as the storytelling. But what do you expect from the writer of Fight Club? Bravo. Not only did it keep me hooked, it was an unexpected source of subtle Ayn Rand-ish insight. Two points etched:

(1) The What Now? Phenomenon
From high school to college to post-graduate studies, we try hard to ingrain as much technique and technical mastery as possible. Come graduation, here we are, erudites in our own respective fields, and we still find ourselves lacking in the one thing schools can’t assure you — inspiration. It’s kind of sad, us adept and driven, but without direction. After beating ourselves to a pulp, we’re still missing our why-isque what (or that what-tic why, if you prefer). Then we curse the unschooled genius who comes along and whips up the excellent from nothing. Dang.

(2) Everything’s our diary. All that we touch, all that we make are telltales of who we are. The colors we choose. The words we pick. The stains on your clothes. What’s in your bag. What’s not in your bag. Everything’s a tattler.

review

Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World

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A long-overdue wake-up call for me. I think this piece of fiction holds more promise than any self-help book out there (not that I’ve ever been a fan of self-help books). I’m barely past halfway, and already its words have already seeped through how I think, process, accept, and reject things. A good guide for the lost, for those putting up with a streak of defeat, or for those settling for just leaning on life’s inertia. I love how its lines overwhelm me, that I just have to stop and let the words just linger for a while.

Of course, like any other insight, it should not be mistaken for wisdom. For knowledge without action remains simply as that — knowledge. Or worse, folly.

asia, philippines, travel

Long weekend at paradise

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A fellow wanderer once said that he loved traveling because he always came back as a changed person. ditto.

Yep, i’m that lousy at writing now, i don’t even have words to describe how gorgeous Bohol and Cebu are, and how the whole world misses out on what we have. All i can say is that Im so glad my family got to do this, and I can’t wait to go back again.

Balik sa bohol, balik…

Check out more pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ishgagno/CebuBohol0807

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scavenging bookworm

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I finally found some time to check out this quaint used books store at the UP Shopping Center, and Lord, I was so happy — I’ve hit the jackpot! It’s dreadful to be cliche, especially about a bookstore, but I felt like a brat set loose in a candy shop.

Left and right, classics and modern takes. Anne Rices. Grishams. Kurderas. Gaimans. Ayn Rands. All for around 50-200 bucks. Whee! It was the first bookstore I’ve been to that has a copy of Erich Segal’s Acts of Faith — it was that heavenly. For my first haul (definitely to be followed by more), I whisked away a George Orwell, an Og Mandino and a Douglas Adams.

I love devouring books — they give me a view of the world I would not get to see otherwise. It’s uncanny, but I get hit by the right dose of wake-up calls I just need during each time, be it new insight or good advice I’ve already forgotten. It’s like travelling — after each book, I come back as a new person. Or an awakened old me. Or even both. 🙂

nerdstuff

new bunch of politically-correct terms

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Abortion – Near-Life Experience
Alcoholic – Anti-Sobriety Activist
Alive – metabolically abled
Bad Cook – microwave-compatible
Bad hair day – rebellious follicle syndrome
Blind – photonically non-receptive
Bum – Involuntarily Domiciled
Cannibalism – Intra-Species Dining
Clumsy – uniquely coordinated
Corpse – Permanently Static Post-Human Mass
Crackpot – certified astrological consultant / past-life regression hypnotist
Crime Rate – street activity index
Deaf – Visually Oriented
Dish Washer – utensil sanitizer
Drunk – verbally dyslexic
Fail – achieve a deficiency
Fat – person of substance
Full of Crap – fecally plenary
Gang – Youth Group
Homeless – residentially flexible
Ignorant – factually unencumbered
Incompetent – Uniquely Proficient
Insult – Emotional Rape
Jerk – suffers from rectal-cranial inversion
Learning Disability – Self-Paced Cognitive Ability
Stoned – Chemically inconvenienced
Undress someone with your eyes – Introspective pornographic moment
Unemployed – Involuntarily leisured
Worst – least best