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The past few days have passed me by in such a strange way. For some reason, with this cloak of civilisation we wear, we forget we're at natures mercy so easily. Maybe I should stop using we and say I.

A storm has blown through Metro Manila. A particularly savage one, wind and rain entwined. I think its sad that I did not even think to become engaged in this display of fury and beauty, did not even think to appreciate it. I used to love these things.

It was delibidating. Electricity, modern civilisation's lifeblood, was cut off. Safety reasons they say. I heard tell of motorcycles taking flight. It almost sounds fanciful, like a childs dream. Or nightmare tales of billboards run amok, nth foot giant people becoming a whirling devrish.

Without the comforting glow of electric lights, the nights become primal. We eat by candlelight, and for entertainment I forsake the ether of the internet for books. I read till there is no more light.

A stroll outside reveals the world to be in chaos yet..? Trees are torn, broken at their roots and made to bow before natures majesty terrifying and wondrous. Splinters litter the ground and the wonderful smell of the aftermath hangs in the air. A different atmosphere perhaps less inviting and offering less comfort than air-conditioned air but it has an allure, a mystery. Excitement.

I'll keep my window open, for now

Oh, and semiotheque is back. When did that happen? SQUEE!

I feel rather envious of my contemporaries. Its the writing thing again you see, Its that itch I want to scratch yet feel so inadequate to do so. Reading entries on other peoples blogs make me wish so much I can write like that. I've written nothing of consequence lately. All I've written are mindless, souless drivel. Complaints about life in general. I feel like an old man.

Below is a sample of such writing

Well.. I survived this term. Not unscathed, not without sacrifices, but at least I survived. Considered, my statements may sound overdramatic but I stand by them.

Been reading American Gods again, and it put into my mind the idea that education can be a God. I've sacrificed nights of sleep, probably my health (I should be taking better care of myself) willingly. Unto the altar of... what, excellence? I've done rather well. Not my best term ever but at least I've gotten myself 4's in the major subjects that matter to me.

I am such a nerd for focusing on that.

I haven't been able to talk to old friends much lately. No net connection at home. I really ought to try this new fangled thing called "e-mail" sometimes. Err. If anyone of you guys are reading this, hi.

Stream of consciousness: It's 12:28. I've managed to break my bad habit of writing at 4 am in the morning. Hurrah for me!

Made a decision on the fly. I really should consider these things more. Heck, I should be considering my whole life a lot more closely nowadays. Still have no concrete plan for my life. Taking whatever comes day by day. Not that good of an idea at such a crucial juncture of ones life when you think about it. It will soon be time to make a transition from studying to becoming a working adult.

Oh, that decision. I'm taking Game Authoring for my Media Production major next term. All the friends I'm close to are taking 3D and they pretty much have a dream team assembled over there. I'm not regretting my decision just yet. After all this is what I enrolled in ABMA for, to get into the games industry but ABMA has aroused a passion for animation in me. Bleh. Decisions messing with my head.

Sometimes I miss the whiny old Jeiel, the one who would pine for loves that never was (I'm a breakin' grammer to sound romantic). At least his blog isn't this dry, whining about school stuff.

So here I am, posting at 3:51 am. Again. Even though I promised myself that my next post will be done at a sane hour.

I quite worryingly seem to have a head for this "marketing" subject. More accurately, its called marketing communication but whatever. To me the core of marketing seems to be just a way to view the world and people is such a cold, diffident manner. In terms of "markets", "psychographics", "segregation" and what have you. It just worries me that I seem to be able to grasp the concepts so easily. Is my mind so attuned to bullshit generation?

I don't really have anything against marketers, it's just the trade they plie is just so downright creepy. Advertising is basically widescale behaviour modification, and the thing is nobody is bloody immune to it.

I think Singapore got it right when they banned billboards. Going out here in the Philippines is just downright depressing. Everywhere you go, you get bombarded with ads, none of them particularly interesting. I just wish the billboards here were as accessible as the ones in America, then you might see ad hacking like what the Billboard Liberation Front does. Going up on a billboard structure here seems rather suicidal.

In other fronts, I have a faint dislike for Pixar now.

I'm (unfairly) blaming them for an academic choice that I have to make. Next trimester I get to choose between focusing on Game Authoring or 3d Animation for Multimedia Production 1 (MAPROD1). If I were me maybe a year ago, the choice would be really simple. I'd jump all over Game Authoring like man deprived of basic needs pertaining to the crotch regions but now the choice is a bit more difficult to make. Having been exposed to all the great and not so great (Hoodwinked, I'm looking at you) animation in the past year has made me consider a career in animation too.

Animation as a medium of expression is just so fun and collaborative. And it seems to me that the animation industry is more prone to experimentation with the medium than the game industry seems to be. Or at least there is a bigger market for being experimentative in animation than there is in the game industry.

Then again, I may not have to make this decision just yet. I'm still unsure as to whether I can take MAPROD. Damn all my back subjects.

Boing Boing linked a flickr set (meta)today about a man who teaches electrical engineering for free. For some reason, it's just so captivating to go through this set. First there is the imposition of the contrasts between worlds going on. Here's this young guy, packing a Treo and walking about lost when this old man walks up to him and drags him to his world, in a basement three stories below.

And in this lair, the old man shows the young one how he teaches people to do electrical engineering. And it's just so.... different from the young man's world. And the photo set shows it so clearly.

And for some reason this inspires me to write a short sci-fi story of some sort. I mean, its so easy to imagine that the world will advance enough that the high tech engineering of today would only be taught in schools like those. Technology would become so transparent to everyday people that the only way people can coexist with the technology is to simply not see it. And the only people who really know how the world works would be people like Mr. Anthony Abela.

It's not that good of a deconstruction of an inspiration for what might become a story but hopefully this post reminds me to write the story.

In an interesting yet stupid sidenote, I am living proof that writing late at night makes you do stupid things with words. Wonder who will be the poor chap who gets the e-mail...

A rather scary thought just hit me that I really need to write, despite having an 8 am class tomorrow and it being 2 am of the same day. Hmm.. that made no sense. Maybe I ought to change the title of this blog to midnight musings. It won't make me write more but at least it would have a pretty name. Then again, that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, back to the original point. I've got no past I can run back to. Maybe it's just melodrama but there is a realization now that I am rather stuck, chronologically. The past that I would say has a meaning to me, there is just no substantial way I can go back. Back to lan parties, midnight walks, frank conversations in our own private tongues.

All I can get now might be fleeting days of fellowship or words transmitted on the electron stream.

Somehow it doesn't seem fair.

And I'm being all stupid about it.

Faced with this gulf between myself and my past life, past friends, what I really should be doing is embracing the now. You know, figure out who I am, explore this world I'm thrust upon instead of turning away from it, choosing only to see what I earnestly wish. I have a rather annoying habit of attempting to transpose the past to my present. It's a private guilt but it is so cloyingly addictive you know, to look back to the past. But you're really just looking back at a time when you were none the wiser, stupider if I want to be blunt.

I just put Greg's Last Day on winamp.

It's not really the feeling of loneliness that prompted me to write this post. I don't think I'm lonely anymore, its just a jarring sense of disconnect, of emptiness maybe. Where the hell can I run to when the now is too painful? It only hit me after an excess of two years.

Well... it's been four months since I've touched my blog. I've missed writing about some pretty significant events in my life. Even my 21st birthday has gone by unrecorded. There is something vaguely comforting about that thought, strange as it might sound. In the digital age where the connected has somehow evolved into an information obsessed offshoot of the human race, hungrily gathering and generating masses of data (to what end I may never be able to fathom), I retain my basic humanity by the time tested method of being a lazy whelp.

It cheers me somewhat, really. I need something to keep my mind off the fact that I'm bloody 21 already.

Besides getting older, I've recently gone back to Singapore after two years of being subjected to the Philippines. There was a feeling of homecoming but... not quite. Going back there, it rather felt like I never left. The roads, the air, the trains. It was all familiar to me. Maybe too familiar.

A weird rambling thought conjured at 4 in the morning. Yeah, I'm doing it again.

It was a blast though, seeing all the guys again. It's striking how much change two years can bring and yet underneath all of that, I can still see the friends that I left behind. For one thing, there is more army talk amongst them. Consequentially, the average lengths of their hair has declined. But beneath all that there is still Boon's unflagging cheerfulness, Thomas and his never ending supply of wise cracks and Delon being that friend I could always blab with.

This does bring up the nature of friendships though. The last semester has been a great one for me at APC. Being put in the 3D animation team (that one I mentioned in my last post) has been a blessing for me. The friends I've made because of that... well I've always been partial to being a loner but thats mostly because I'm rather picky with friends. These guys struck a chord with me though. Maybe it's a bit like the phenomena of Trench Buddies. Theres the common passion for what we're doing and we slog through overnights at school together. Irunno.

What gets me thinking is that somehow I feel like I'm being a better friend to the group I have now than my buds back in Singapore. It's mildly unsettling, although come to think of it, I may just be maturing. And maybe I've learned to treasure friendships more nowadays. There is something of a bond, a familial kind of link I feel for my friends here and the course I'm in. It's one of the few good things that I feel I've been blessed with in the move here to the Philippines.

Anyway, enough with the ranty rant.

I'm at school. I've been up since yesterday. I am wired on coffee and red bull.

1 3D animation competition. 30 seconds of footage. 1 week to do it. 4-5 overnights in school.

Totally freaking sweet.

I am still wired on red bull.

It's 6 am. If I was a sane person I would be mumbling curses at the alarm clock as it wakes me from the stupor of sleep. If I was a sane person I would not be up writing this post. Quite clearly, I am not sane. Instead of the much needed siesta which I should have been taking, I was toiling through the night trying to complete tagalog homework. I am pumping myself full of caffiene later on. Also, I am most dissapointed that I could not find the translation for "vagina" in the english-tagalog dictionaries that I used. *shrugs*

This post will now veer so off tangent that your head will spin. Ready?

Gong Xi Fa Cai Kung Hei Fat Choi. According to the lunar calendar, it is now the year of the dog. Hurrah. No ang baos or bak kwa for me. Not so hurrah. The lunar new year somewhat highlights a significant difference between Here and There. Multi-culturism actually works doesn't it? The Chinese in Singapore celebrate the Chinese New Year with friends of other races. Over here, the Chinese of the previous generations have developed a "us vs. them" attitude which keep celebrations rather exclusive.

Except when CNY is being financially exploited. Of course.

Hang on to your hats I'm gonna drift this post into the post title <initial-d-esque tire squeal>

I was riding shotgun in a car with a couple of classmates. They get to talking about the condition of her father, recent heart attack survivor. I keep my mouth shut. I don't like the subject of death. That and I never really seem close to my dad anyway.

Yeah.

Later that same evening and I'm with my family having dinner at my aunt's place. Jokes are shared, food enjoyed. You know, family stuff. The context is something depressing. We're there because my grandfather has cancer.

Yeah.

I'll continue this post later, I need to prepare for school now.