New Moan

First off, if you are a Twilight series fan, I suggest you do not continue reading. Or mabe you should, so you can help me with a few things, as I would explain later.

Long before I began seeing people everywhere holding these Stephenie Meyer volumes the way students carry their textbooks, I’ve been contemplating if I should begin reading them (1) because National Bookstore is littered with these eye-catching black things; (2) it seems to be well on the way to reaching the Harry Potter popularity meter; (3) it does look interesting, to say the least. My main concern then is that I do not want to shell out money because I was quite broke, but now I wonder if I had indeed begun reading them before all the hype took off, would I probably have been a Twi-hard?

It’s almost unfair and pretentious of me to call myself a Twi-hater (which I have actually done so in a few number of occassions now) because I did not spend time really reading the books, even if my sister have copies lying around our house. By the time I realized that people I know are now reading this stuff and are anticipating the movies, I’ve been already disillusioned/enlightened by the negative reviews I’ve read. So I said I didn’t read the books. Here’s what I did: (1) I read all positive and all negative reviews I can find; (2) I read hundreds of passages and quotes from the series at goodreads; (3) I watched the first film.

From watching the first movie, I think I got the appeal. It’s a love story. People love those; I know I do.  It’s not a great film by any means, but one that’s very watchable on a few levels. And although I first found Robert Pattison’s (or Edward Cullen’s) hair ridiculous, watching a few interviews with him convinced me he’s quite a sensible young man. Kristen Stewart seems like a strong character in real life, too, that’s why I wonder why she was cast as Bella Swan. Now here begins the bad part. Turn on your humidifier filters.

My main beef with the entire concept is that I do not agree that this love story is something that young people should wish for themselves, metaphorically speaking and all. Well, there’s the “teen chastity” message that some may see as a good thing, but I tend to side with the people who saw the Bella/Edward relationship as dysfunctional. Here’s why. I’m copying a portion of one reader review, which I think said it  (i.e., the consensus of the bad reviews) most eloquently:

But then we must consider the problem of Bella: whiny, needy, and sullen, blindly devoting herself to a partner that constantly patronizes, criticizes, and subjugates her only for him to leave so she can spend the next 8 months in a state of emotional vacancy so acute that she forgets everything else in her life that a girl can be happy about. Bella is only complete–and she says this herself–when her man is by her side. And apparently, according to Meyer at least, this is ok. It’s ok to create a character so bereft of purpose, self-assurance, and identity that she can’t live without a relationship based on nothing substantial, just beauty, lust, and exoticism.  - Scott

I’m all for escapism and fluffy but fun stuff. This doesn’t look fun to me at all. I like a nice love triangle but not with a girl who pines for anyone who shows her affection. Granted, Edward and Jacob may both be so hard to resist (I read that if you go see New Moon, your money would be worth just seeing Taylor Lautner’s abs and pecs). I prefer a strong heroine, or at least someone who is not so blinded she’d want to be turned into a vampire just because there’s one who is so beautiful and thinks that she smells good. I also wonder, in my current line of thinking, if I’m Bella and I’m in front of this uber pretty albeit undead boy, hearing him say these words to me will probably reduce me to tears. ROTFL tears, that is (and I still dare to call myself a hopeless romantic):

Before you Bella my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason. …. And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliance, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no reason for anything. 

He’s a hundred plus years old, so I’ll forgive his dialogue but this made me appreciate J.K. Rowling infinitely more in writing a series that encouraged people (of all ages) to read.

Now if you got this far, here’s my request. If you loved Twilight, can you tell me if my quoted review is wrong and too harsh? Is there anything in the books that doesn’t deserve the criticism it got? I’ll probably watch New Moon anyway when I can already download a good copy, err I mean when the DVD is out.

Tennis versus Badminton

I must warn you that this post will not be comprehensive. I do not actually intend to compare, with every bit of information I have learned, these two sports that I both love. You can find a few blogs that do exactly that, mostly badminton sites. All I can say is that if you’ll take any of these two seriously, as a hobby or as a competitive sport, you will not need slimming pills to trim down, ever.

On a purely subjective point of view, I think tennis is a more complicated sport than badminton. Badminton is a fast game. That’s why it’s a better cardio workout. But I do believe that tennis demands more, both physically and mentally. Case-in-point: heavier ball and racquet, larger court area. I’ve given up learning tennis because you can’t play both at the same time. Badminton relies on wrist action. You can’t use that with tennis, which requires a full arm swing. Trying to do both consistently will most definitely result to injury. On a spectator point of view, I also think that tennis has the edge. Badminton on TV is largely enjoyed only by those who play the sport. Tennis appeals to a more general audience.

Although it seems to be quite obvious that I’m a huge tennis fan, I’m also a badminton enthusiast. I’m a fan of badminton because it’s cheaper, it’s easier to find people to play with, and it can be enjoyed by people of all ages and skill levels.  But even I think that I’m already like a broken record with that statement. So in case you have the time and the inclination, I suggest you try either tennis or badminton. Or if you’re not a fan of racquet sports, there are always other alternatives.

Driving in My Mind

No, I’m not driving yet. I don’t know when I’ll start (of course, that depends on when I can afford to buy my own car), but I’m really hoping that I do have the courage to drive through the streets of Metro Manila someday. It doesn’t have to be a pretty car. No, scratch that. I hope it’ll be pretty. I mean, it doesn’t have to be expensive and new. It’s not as if I am willing to spend tons on dodge accessories. 

While I was talking with a friend who is soon moving to a place that is possibly farther away from work, the subject of the practicality - the advantages and the disadvantages - of commuting and driving came up. Of course, we both want to drive an automatic car, just in case. Easier for women, I heard. There’s still a lot of things to consider before I dream about ford accessories or maybe nissan accessories. I remember when my father tried to teach me to drive when I was much younger. I was fearless. Even with a vehicle filled with nervous and screaming passengers, in a major highway nonetheless. Looking back now, I believe that was careless. I just hope that I can still muster a bit of that courage now that I’m old enough to know better.

Subtitles or Dubbed Movies?

When watching foreign, non-English language films, do you prefer reading subtitles or watching an English-dubbed version?

Personally, I enjoy watching original films with subtitles. I like hearing the real voices of the actors, even if I don’t particularly understand what they’re saying. Sometimes, dubbing takes away the nuances of performance - translations can deplete some subtleties, and not to mention that I find the out-of-synch audio and lip movements annoying. But I guess it all come down to preference. Like choosing between a Kohler faucet and an ordinary faucet.

Some of the non-English movies I recently watched are Pan’s Labyrinth (Spanish), Angel A (French), Let the Right One In (Swedish), Water (Hindi), and So Close (Mandarin). Made me want to learn a new language. Spanish or French are preferred.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Of course, they’re not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They’re doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that’s cool.”
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) 

 

I think finishing this book a few weeks earlier than I had would have been cool. I’ve not enjoyed reading this much in quite a while. Looking back, nothing much happened in way of narrative, but the heavily metaphysical and philosophical nature of Murakami’s work is something all his own. “Surreal” doesn’t begin to describe it. If you’re looking for a read that makes your head spin and pushes you to do a gut check, then this book is for you. But if you’re looking for something fast-paced and exciting, try another author. Or better yet, rent out a bluray disc of an action movie that goes well with popcorn and soda.

Fff-Financial Matters

This subject gives me hiccups. Never fails, at least metaphorically. Imagine my surprise upon learning that there is such a term as financial engineering. I sure would fail that if it was a subject in school I had to take. Neither of those two words would qualify as particularly enticing or endearing for me. Well, of course I’ve always hated math.

I realized while talking with a friend who is a lot more close-fisted about money than I am that just like any other thing in the world, how people look money will always be different. We can judge each other endlessly by how we handle our finances (”too much” on both extremes), but it doesn’t take a financial engineering book or consulting a person with a quant job to know that the more we strive to earn and the less we spend, the more we save. But it’s never black and white. As long as you’re dealing with your own, with what is yours, and not stepping on anybody else’s toes, then for me you’re no fair game. Of course some people ruin their lives sometimes because of the inability to handle finances right. That’s another story. A problem is a problem, but individual perception isn’t all the time.

A Question on External Hard Drives

I wonder if anybody can shed light to this particular problem I’m having with my 500 Mb USB external drive. Because I watch tons of TV shows, mostly in marathon mode over weekends, an online backup of files won’t work for me. I need a storage that I can access readily anytime. 

When I bought my external hard disk, the intention was to use it to connect with my DVD player so that i won’t need to burn them into DVD media. With a little research, I discovered that the default file system format of the drive was NTFS, but the DVD player will only read from a FAT-32 drive, so I converted. The question now is this: Whenever I use it to connect with the DVD player, it almost always stop in the middle of my “watching session” so I have to look through the file folders again and search for the part where the video stopped. It’s like having to restart your PC several times just to finish watching a clip of one TV episode. It’s a bit tiring, and although I’m a pretty patient person when it comes to this stuff, I would appreciate it if I can learn that there’s a way to remedy this problem. So is there?

V is for Visitors

As if I do not follow enough TV shows already, here comes another one that I am surely going to check out for a number of reasons.

Reason 1. I love SciFi shows. This is another one that explores alien territory. Literally.

Reason 2. It stars Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost), Joel Gretsch (4400, Taken), and Morena Baccarin and Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Serenity).

Reason 3. Aliens among humans, on medical travel or with other  agenda, and FBI counter-terrorism agents trying to save humanity. I miss Mulder! I miss Scully!

On Blogging & SEO-isms

When I first started to blog, I didn’t imagine that this is something that I will be able to keep on doing for several years, in my case more than three years now. A friend introduced me to the concept of “blogging”, and being a wannabe writer and a fan of new media, I readily jumped on the bandwagon. For a while, I merely wrote down a few lines of random thoughts here and there, posted lyrics and poems, without having any real grasp of what can I do with an online space like that. Back then, I’ve never heard of terms such as Lead Generation or search engine optimization (SEO). I didn’t even want to make it public so people who personally know me can read what I’m posting online.

For the first few months of creating this blog, I was enjoying writing about personal experiences and a lot of random introspections. “Meeting” other bloggers was also a big plus. It won’t be such an exaggeration to say that blogging had a therapeutic effect on me. At a time when I was trying to process a lot of things inside, writing them, though at times vaguely, made a whole lot of difference. But if someone asked me anything about CPA network then, I wouldn’t have a clue. 

Later on, I realized what other benefits blogging can give me. Thanks to some friends who pointed me to the right direction, I learned about the concept of Display Network and Internet marketing. How just by writing stuff I’m interested in and want to share with others, I can drive people to my site and to others’, and in the process be a part of a larger community of people who exchange ideas and information over the World Wide Web. It has been, and continue to be, a learning process and an amazing experience.

Online Degrees

For several years now, I have been planning on taking up a distance education course. My alma mater is actually offering one I’m interested in - a masters degree in Development Communication that doesn’t require a specific bachelor’s degree.  The last time I checked, any four-year course and a year of work experience are enough credentials. Somehow, my work and other life stuff has kept me from pursuing this plan. This time, however, I must admit that it is the lack of initiative that’s been keeping me. I’ve been allowing my circmstances to hinder my goals, and for now I see no practical way of getting around it.

Anyway, not many universities offer online degree. I guess some may think that it diminishes the quality of education offered. I don’t really see it that way. An Online master degree is not really much different from one you acquire in a school setting. Well, of course, you have to consider the institution that provides the teaching and how well-equipped they are to provide the demands of distance/online teaching. For some who just don’t have the time to attend a regular school, studying online is a very god alternative.