Laptop Injuries and Sickness

My laptop is my office.   My laptop is my best friend, or maybe not; that may be too shallow a connection.   My laptop is an extension of my body and a mirror of my soul.   I practically sleep with my laptop.  Just a few hours away from it already makes me suffer from withdrawal symptoms.  It goes without saying that my laptop should be partnered with a wifi connection.    I will not get past one day without internet access.  You might as well just kill me.   

Now, who would have thought that laptop-ping could be such a dangerous sport?  Seriously, it is bad for one's health.  Here now are some of the ways this laptop addiction has afflicted me:

Finger Numbness.  Too much typing from all that e-book writing (note that I'm putting the blame on the writing, not the chatting) sometimes causes my fingers to become numb and have a bloated feeling about them.  There are days when it is so hard to ball them up in a fist.   Of course, the heat emanating from the laptop also exacerbates my sweaty palms problem.  But the real culprit for sweaty palms is too much texting (SMS), and that's another story.

Wrist Pains.  Fortunately, I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome yet.  But I am probably at risk.  Oh, I blame those darn facebook games!  I take my games seriously.  Caring for my pet in one of my games requires advanced hand maneuvers and sophisticated wrist actions in an almost sleight of hand fashion.  Yes, it can be magic, but it can be bad for the wrist.  

Forearm marks and discoloration.   During the day, I use my laptop and place it atop a regular desk.  Because my forearms are resting on top of the desk, the edges of the table leave marks and lines on my forearms (the skin on the under side which touches the surface of the desk).  Maybe I am applying too much pressure while tinkering with my laptop, or I simply have heavy forearms. Whatever the case, I get the unsightly marks that even become discolored.  

Lower back pains.  I don't have a good posture, and this becomes aggravated by sitting in a slouched position in the chair or in the bed.  Hours on end in that manner equals lower back pains.  No, it's not the age! It's the laptop!

Bottom heaviness.  A cousin of the lower back pains is the relentless expansion occurring in the glutes, hip and thigh area. Because I am reduced to sitting down, I get heavier in that area by the day.  If I could use my laptop while walking in the treadmill, I would.  But I'll get too nauseous; I wouldn't want to vomit on my precious laptop. It makes complete sense anyway; there won't be a lap if I were standing up; hence, no laptop-ping while standing. It has to be done sitting down.  But I am such a genius sometimes.  I transform the laptop to a tummy-top when sitting down becomes too tiring.  I slide into my back and lie down in bed, pulling the laptop up to settle on the tummy, while my head rests on top of many pillows.  Laptop or tummytop, either way, it does not bode well for the figure.  

So there, my list of laptop related injuries is long.   To cure them would not to wean me away from the laptop.   That could be fatal for me.  To be honest, I just need a lap desk.  All these bullshit only for a lap desk. Hahaha. I hope there are lap desks like these available locally.   

The Hunt for Gollum

My friend Oliver posted a note in Facebook about his movie review of The Hunt for Gollum.  Being a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, this naturally piqued my curiosity, so I immediately watched the said movie on this site. (click here). 

The Hunt is just under 40 minutes long.  The plot is inspired by the events occurring right before convening the Fellowship of the Ring in Rivendell, i.e., Aragon's quest to capture Gollum to learn whatever information he has about the ring and how much Sauron already knows.    

As a background, this movie is created by die-hard Lord of the Rings fans in Britain.   Yes, it is fan fiction or fan flick, however you may want to call it.    This movie was made on a shoestring budget of 3,000 pounds.  This non-profit, independent film is not available for commercial release and can only be viewed through video streaming from the official website.  None of the people who worked on this movie got paid.   Given all this in mind, I was half expecting to get an amateur-ish feel to the movie, but I didn't get that all.

Aragon's quest for Gollum was never shown in the movie adaptation by Peter Jackson, so the Hunt for Gollum is a good accompaniment to Peter Jackson's trilogy.  As a matter of fact, the Hunt does feel like it was created by Jackson.   I am no film critic, so in my layman eyes and ears,  the cinematography, the soundtrack, the acting, the costumes were reminiscent of the movie trilogy I so dearly love.  In fact, the cast were dead ringers for the actors in the trilogy, with the exception of Arwen (Rita Ramnani); I thought she was a poor choice.   But I swear I could see Viggo Mortenssen in Aragorn's character in the Hunt (Adrian Webster), especially when his eyes were closed while sleeping.   

The fighting scenes with the Orcs and Nazgul added the layer of suspense, and I remembered the jumpy feeling I had watching the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers.  Well, to be honest, the fight scenes were not that superb, but they were good enough to take me back to the best scenes in Jackson's trilogy.   Seeing Nazguls almost had me looking for our Lord of the Rings DVDs to do a marathon right away.   And given that this movie was created by non-hollywood professionals with no intention to sell and profit from it already predisposes one to have a soft spot for it.  

I am a big fan of both the book and the movie.  I wonder what the purists have to say about the liberties or the adaptations taken for this movie.   But to me, there weren't many departures (or maybe my memory is that bad, I vaguely remember how Aragorn captured Gollum as described in Tolkien's novel). But like I said, this movie is a fitting complement to Jackson's Trilogy.  

I guess what I am saying is this: The Hunt for Gollum is worthy of being called "My Precious".  Go watch it.  

Augustana

I am glad I am back to blogging again after being saddled by a writing gig.   I am proud to report that I just finished my first e-book.   Even if I got paid only peanuts for it,  I am so ecstatic over the feeling of having accomplished something, however small that is.  It takes only a little to make me happy these days.  I hope my bubble doesn't burst.

Moving on to the topic of this blog... I am so loving Augustana!  I must confess I only took a liking for the band recently, even if they have been around since 2003.   Their track Boston has gained huge mainstream success especially after being featured as a soundtrack to One Tree Hill. I like that track; the lyrics are beautifully melancholic.  It is a great song to listen to when you feel like escaping or running away.   But the band didn't appeal to me then.  Maybe because I don't watch One Tree Hill, nor do I have intentions to watch it.   I just know the song, but I didn't know the band.

Then I saw the Counting Crows performing Cecilia on Good Morning America and I noticed that they were jamming with another band.   Click here to watch the video.  (BTW, Counting Crows is probably my favorite band of all time.  I love Adam Duritz!!!)   After a quick google search, I learned they were performing with who else, Augustana.   So I instantly Last.Fm'd Augustana and downloaded some of their tracks. And the rest, as they say, is history.   I am now a huge fan of Augustana.

I think Augustana is like the Counting Crows and the Googoo Dolls combined.   I love that some lyrics are painfully sad, a testament to the heavy Counting Crows influence, but they are a little edgier ala the Googoo Dolls or maybe Lifehouse.  Last.fm describes the band this way: Characterized by piano lines and the breathy vocals of Dan Layus (the lead singer), Augustana’s sound is at once contemplative and slow, but also captivating.   It is no wonder I like Augustana.

From the songs I've downloaded, I have been so taken by the track "Found My Place". It is one of their more obscure songs, and generally unheard of unlike their hits Sweet and Low and Boston.   It is definitely my favorite Augustana song.  I love the acoustic guitar background, and this track sounds very similar to Time of Your Life/Good Riddance by Greenday.    The lyrics are very simple; there are only a few lines but you get the message.  It is a song about redemption, about being lost and being found.  I hope I can find my place too.  

Listen to the track below:

Real Deal or Real Ill Will?

Philippine Airlines (PAL) recently offered The Real Deal Promo where international fares were at rock bottom prices. 

I don’t recall seeing PAL airfares this low.  Imagine going to many destinations and back for less than half the regular fare , it doesn’t get any better than that.  You are almost tempted to ask, is this too good to be true?

The answer is YES!

I am not referring to the prices. While the promo was true to its claim regarding ticket prices (e.g. roundtrip to the US incl. travel tax is just about P25,000 or $520, roundtrip to HK is just P5400 or $110), the PROBLEM WAS HOW YOU ARE EVER GOING TO BOOK AND BUY YOUR TICKETS.

The promo was exclusively offered for just 2 days and you have to purchase the tickets online.    So come midnight of Apr 27, I opened the PAL website ready to make my online purchase.    And I couldn’t believe how slow the site was.  I had to try a hundred times within 4 hours during the wee hours of the morning before I was even prompted for payment.  And after keying in my credit card details, the screen went blank on me and soon gave me an error message.   I got anxious over it, worrying whether I should re-book at the risk of double-charging or not.

The following morning, I got confirmation from my bank that no payment from PAL was effected.   I then tried to book online again but the same thing happened.   Seeing how hopeless it will be to try to book online, I called the PAL customer service hotline.   After about 2 hours of trying to connect my call, I finally got my booking reference number and was told that I could just go to my preferred ticketing office to pay. I said to myself, this is okay.  I will still get the online fare rate and I can manage to sneak to the ticketing office the following day with my sister in law after dropping off my nephew to school, and be back in time to pick him up.

I could never be more wrong.  When we finally got to the ticketing office at around 11am, we were astounded to see the sheer volume of people waiting inside.   If my estimate is right, there were over 3000 people who wanted to transact on that day.  People were everywhere trying to ask what to do next and were given conflicting instructions.  Some were told to just get the customer queue stubs;  Some were told to just write their names in a piece of paper. 

After lodging our names in the paper, I thought that maybe this will take me about 2 hours considering there were 25 counters open, so I can manage a 2-hour wait.   Again, I could never be more wrong.   The 2 hours stretched to 9 maddening hours!!!  Throughout that time, I saw people ultra-pissed at the lack of system in the way PAL is managing the surge in customers.   People were lost.   They didn’t know where to go, where to list their names, where to get their tickets, where to sit down to wait, who to approach, etc.  The people who came after lunch were advised that for as long as they are there before 5pm (closing time), they shall be served.  PAL will do overtime or overnight just to accommodate everybody who came before the cut off date.

But at around 5pm, PAL announced that they cannot serve everybody and that those whose names were listed in pages 4 onwards would have to come back the following day. That's insane!  Imagine, after waiting for hours and hours, you will be asked to just come back the following day and go through the same ordeal all over again?   Thank God our names were listed in page 2!

I cannot believe how unprepared PAL was for this promo.  First, they under-forecasted the public response.   This is a big no-no.  If you are going to offer something good, you better be sure that you have the sufficient capacity to actually fulfill that promise.   It is always better to over-prepare than to under-serve.  Their website was ill-prepared for the surge in hits and traffic.  Why make the promo online if the system can’t handle it?   There may be cases of double booking and those poor people will have to wait 2 weeks or more before charges can be reversed.   

Second, PAL should have had a back up plan.  Obviously, there wasn’t one.  The phone hotlines were forever busy, the ticketing offices were undermanned, the customer care people were not there to help manage the complaints.   At the very least, they could have offered free coffee or water to people waiting.  They should have provided for extra chairs inside the ticketing office.  They ought to have opened up a few telephone hotlines to answer queries.   There should should have been regular updates in the PA system on what was currently happening. There ought to have been at least a flow chart at the entrance of each ticketing office explaining the step by step process for the real deal promo ticketing.   These things are fairly easy to do; I don’t know why they haven’t thought of them. 

I pity the ground staff who had to bear the brunt of the customer complaints. This can already be classified as a crisis – a customer bad will crisis, one of the more terrifying things that can happen to a your customer relations strategy.  Apparently, there was no crisis management and no customer care management neither. The real deal turned out to be a real ill-will.

Fortunately, I am more relaxed and less uptight lately, so I waited patiently and passively compared to other customers.   Had I been caught in a bad mood, I would have left immediately after being given conflicting directions.  Patience indeed is rewarding.   I got our tickets.   I saved quite a lot, especially since we booked 6 tickets in all.   Unfortunately, I am not that grateful.  I didn’t ask for this promo anyway as a special favor.  PAL offered it, they are duty bound to honor it.  That is precisely why I have decided to rant about my real hassle from the real deal promo in this post. 

 

 

 

A Fork in the Road

As we journey journey through life, we will come across a fork in the road.   These forks can be life altering as our lives will ultimately be a function of those road choices that we make. Sometimes the choice is obvious, but often times, we won't be as lucky.  There will be days when we'll just have to flip the coin and leave the decision unto chance.

I am at one fork in the road today.  And I have to make a choice between becoming:

An Underpaid Writer

or  

An Overpaid Gofer

This is a very obvious choice for me.  I'd choose to do the job that underpays. 

Not that it was an easy choice to make; I badly need money too, but then I thought, now is the perfect time to do something completely different from what I have been doing in the last 12 years of my life.  While the years that I have slaved away in the corporate sector have been a soul-enriching experience for me, that sense of fulfillment has eluded me.  And so, I must look for contentment in other places.  This career shift is going to be one of my many leaps of faith.

An underpaid writer is in the league of starving artists and social workers, people who pursue their passions and their dreams.  Mostly, these are happy, contented people compared to the financially stable androids who drudge away in the corporate sector.   If I could be half as fulfilled as these people, I would know I have made the right choice.  

Sure, I'd be paid a pittance, but I don't mind; it will stay pay off some of my recurring bills.   Besides, I am new to this career.   My friend Ben said that maybe after a few writing projects, I can work my pay scale up.  Yes, it is like throwing away the 11 years I have devoted to my old career.  I am going back to square one.   I am starting over.

 

I guess I am becoming old.  I never saw this coming (me not taking the practical route).   Even I surprise myself lately.   I am turning over a new leaf.   

Callousness of Authorities to Those Who Grieve

Let me move away from silly things for a while to write about something more current and sensitive.

I was completely shocked to see the news tonight about how the QC police has arrested relatives (sisters and brother) of Ted Failon's wife for obstruction of justice.   Whether Ted Failon's wife committed suicide or not, the fact still remains that she was in her death bed during the arrest.   It was known that the wife has already received extreme unction and that her BP was already very low, 50/95.   Everyone knew it was a very critical case, and she could expire any minute.   

Everyone except the QC police.  Couldn't they have given the relatives courtesy to be beside their sister as she moves on to the next life?  And the manner by which they arrested the "suspects" was contemptible.   Did they have to use brute force?  I am glad the Commission on Human Rights saw something wrong in the way the QC police is handling this case.  

Click on this link to see the arrest of the relatives and view the video below for the CHR's reaction to the arrest.

But don't get me wrong.  I am not taking the side of Ted Failon's camp here.   There are fishy details surrounding this incident and there might be foul play involved after all.   But there is due process.   You don't presume someone is guilty, and from the looks of how the relatives were forcibly taken, they were already treated like criminals.   

Just how callous can you get?  Can being face to face with deaths on a regular basis desensitize you?

I remember a time when I accompanied someone whose mom has passed away the night before to the City Hall to file for a death certificate.   We wanted to know what the procedures were for filing and we approached a certain lady in the concerned department.  Then the lady said, where is the body?  My friend said that the body was taken to a province in Rizal, her birth town and where she will be eventually buried.   Then the lady chastised him because they shouldn't have moved the body without the proper papers.   She was asking him all sorts of questions which my friend couldn't answer for obvious reasons: he was still in shock and in grief for just losing his mother.  

That lady in the City Hall showed no sympathy at all.  She seemed pissed even that he couldn't provide the details she was asking.   She even raised her voice at him. I couldn't believe how she treated my friend.   I was angry at that lady for being utterly insensitive and callous to someone who just suffered a great loss,  and yet, all my friend and I managed to do was hold back our tears and walk away.   

Just how can you lose empathy?  How can you remain unmoved by pleads of compassion or moments of helplessness?  How can you lose your heart?  I don't understand.  I really don't.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

I read this beautiful piece of inspirational writing a decade or so ago and I chanced upon it while going through my old stuff today.   This is the story of Portia Nelson's Life in 5 short chapters.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost...I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

Bit it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in....it's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter 4

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter 5

I walk down another street.
I just thought I'd post and share this while we do our own reflection this Holy Week.   Wherever chapter you may find yourself in right now, just know that there is always a Supreme Being out there who will show you the way out of your hole and guide you as you walk down another street.  Have a meaningful holy week everyone!