Amp-Fender’s anti-boredom portal

Olympics “FEVER”

When I turned the TV on, there was already a player on the foul line, I just don’t know who he was, but he was alone there, it was a technical free-throw. When I looked at the time, it was less than a minute and the score was already more than 100. I was so disappointed I just missed the Olympics’ gold medal finals between Spain and USA. Within seconds, team USA already celebrated, the last thing I heard from the commentator was about Wade’s 27 point superb performance. I then turned the computer on and went to ESPN, NBA, and foxsports, they already have the headline, USA winning the gold medal.

I am a basketball fan, a Dwyane Wade fan, and a team USA fan. I followed the Olympics’ basketball like a real crazy. I stayed in the office late night just to watch USA spoiling Greece, Spain, Germany, Australia and Argentina. Ironically, I missed the only thing that mattered, the finals, the only game that had coach K’s face turned red when USA’s lead was cut off to just 2 points, and the only game that had my D-Wade put a superb basketball performance.

My wife understood my frustration, she knows how Read the rest of this entry »

The Bonus didn’t come.

There was a long line in the ATM machine so in order to avoid delay, I did not bother to inquire, I know the pay is already in, and there was already an email from management that the quarterly bonus is included. So I withdraw immediately, and to my surprise when I look at the receipt, there was only P1300 left. “This is impossible” the bonus might not have been given.

There was this saying to not count the chicks when the eggs are not yet hatched. But if you Read the rest of this entry »

Unfortunate events season2 finale

So there we are, reconciled again. So we have been officially “ON” for 2 weeks, cooled off and reconciled for 3 days, broke up and reconciled again… for a day. Yes, only for a day. The following night, ININ put a final stop to our relationship, this time she was not kind, she didn’t even give me a chance to react. As soon as the “period” message left her mouth, she was gone. But I already expected that sooner or later we will really part ways. This time there will be no use of convincing myself, I know I have to go on, and I know that the next thing I should do is to move on with my life. All memories of my past flashed back, my x-girlfriend Mary Jane. I broke up her and I didn’t even care what she felt. Mary Jane cried rivers of tears for me, for a week she didn’t went out, she stayed in her room. At that time it sounded corny to me, but now I am in the same position. I suddenly felt sorry for Mary Jane. Suddenly my pain lightened, I imagined Mary Jane’s tears, her broken heart. Then as if a miracle happened, I remembered a familiar song from REM, “everybody hurts”. I thought of revenge for ININ, I want to see her cry the same tears for me. But I suddenly realized that it’s impossible. Now the situation is much clearer, it’s my turn to cry, maybe ININ already cried rivers of tears before, maybe worst than what I’m going through. Every time I felt the pain, the loss, I then thought to myself, everybody will cry, maybe not now, but in the future they will. ININ will cry, she will feel what I feel, she will broke down, the way I broke down, I took advantage of my new found pride to handle the situation, and I didn’t even realize that it has already been more than one month since we broke up. Days past by and I felt my heart slowly healing. I concentrated on my studies, I kept myself busy. One day my room mate LAKAY told me that ININ already left the apartment. I was shocked, “why?” “Her land lady accused her of being a mistress of her husband, she kicked her and throw her clothes” “So where did they transfer?” I asked LAKAY, “I don’t know”. At last there was peace in my heart. Now I can freely walk around, without seeing her, I know my heart will heal fast. I was so thankful not because of her misfortune, for I know it’s not true, but because she finally left me. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life, thank you ININ”

Unfortunate events season2 part4

I couldn’t think straight at that moment, she was I think 100 meters away from me, walking with her friends. It was the 3rd of January, I arrived early in the morning in the apartment, and the whole day I couldn’t help myself but asked around if “IN-IN” has already arrived from Tubod. One of her roommates told me she would be arriving later that afternoon. So I just stayed outside that whole afternoon playing the guitar. There was so much excitement in my heart. We will be seeing each other again after almost 3 weeks. It was almost dark when they arrived. I have been waiting for like 4 hours already, but I lost all courage to face her, instead I run upstairs to my room and watched them passed by. I turned off all the lights for them not to suspect somebody in the room. I can see them clearly outside when they passed, and I noticed she took the time to look up my window. I felt a little relieved when they disappeared from the sight of my room. I entertained the thought that she might be looking for me and felt a little happy. But I already made up my mind, as much as possible I don’t want her to see me. I want to feel that I’m wanted and that she would take the time to ask and look for me. I lay down on my bed, sighing, thinking and waiting. Nobody knocked at the door, nobody is shouting my name on the window, 30 minutes, and hour, another 30 minutes, 2 hours. I felt defeated, I finally accepted the fact that my thought is just too good to be true. So I went down and started to show myself to her roommates, I know she’s just around, I can hear her laughs opposite our apartment. It’s just a thin wood wall that separates the kitchenette from our apartment. Finally her roommate BEBE noticed my presence, “Hey Roy, ININ is already here, she was looking for you” “Yeah?” “Yeah, why were you not here during the Christmas party, you missed a lot, we have such fun, and ININ was looking for you”
“There was a little emergency at home, so I was not able to inform you” “Hey, Roy, I missed you sooo much, what happened to you, you didn’t even inform me that you went home, all the while we think you were just here” Everyone teased us and I blushed instantly. I felt 0 degrees Kelvin and my legs starts shaking. I can’t believe what I’m hearing; she then asked if we can talk, so I said “of course”. The two of us sat on the dark corner of our apartment, far from her roommates so no one can hear us. “I was really looking for you during the Christmas party” “I’m sorry I didn’t have enough time to inform you, to be honest, I was devastated when you broke up with me. I still felt the pain” “I’m really sorry if I hurt your feelings, I have been honest with you lately, I’m also missing you, but I can’t and will not promise you that this is love, I just missed your presence that’s all” “I don’t want to think that I’m special to you but to demand for my presence is just too much, If you care for me, you have to let me go, do not talk to me, for every time you let me feel I’m wanted, it pains my heart. I thought I already reach the bottom, but I’m still and continuously falling in love with you” “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t we just be friends? Teach your heart to forget me, but don’t go away from me, do not avoid my presence” “Your impossible, have you not been in love? Juven and Jonathan hurt you, and your doing the same thing they’ve done to you to me” “Please Roy listen, if you really care for me, you have to understand me, you are the only person that I can trust and I can lean on, everyone else turned their backs on me” “This conversation is going nowhere, If you want me to stay, then let’s reconcile, give me another chance”. I didn’t even realize that I uttered those words, suddenly there was silence, and ININ didn’t say single word. She then kissed me and left, the warmth of her lips electrified my whole body, it left me dumbfounded, I didn’t even had a chance to kiss her back. The moment I went back to reality, she was already gone. I stayed a little longer hoping she would come back, and luckily she did. “I considered your suggestion, I’m giving you a last chance…”

Unfortunate events season2 part3

I was a little elated by Mervin’s comment on my blog, so I decided to continue the “unfortunate events” story.

I quit my commitment with our class Christmas caroling group, and decided that moment to go home instead. My classmates asked me why, I thought to myself; if only these guys knew the hell I’ve been through. I borrowed two hundred bucks from my friend, packed a few clothes, and went straight to the bus terminal. That night as I was riding the ferry, I felt that I was lifeless; my body numb of feelings, and my pride was nowhere to be found. Everyone else in the ferry is asleep, yet I’m fully awake, the tiresome 4 hrs bus ride brought only pain to my flesh, but it didn’t stop the neurons of my brains to flashback memories of IN-IN. I felt betrayed by my own senses, I felt angry for myself, and I want to crush the portion of my heart that loves her. I wanna burn to ashes the brain cells that contain her memories. I went down to the rear of the ferry where I can see the water, I reached for my pocket, and grabbed her picture, and like a rebellious child, torn the picture to pieces hoping that the act will help my senses recover. I went back to my bed and luckily I was able to sleep. When I woke up, there were only few passengers left in the ferry, others already left for their destination. I fixed myself, my things and took a tricycle ride home. “Kuya Roy, how are you? How’s Iligan?” I was greeted warmly by my cousins, I smiled back to them and went straight to my house in the compound. My father already left for work, and my mother cooked a delicious meal for my breakfast. We chatted that morning; I shared with her the pain I went through. My mother has always been my best friend. She would always know my problem before I share it to her. That day, I started to feel the stress of the trip. I rested and slept for the most part of the day. Just as I thought that I would be okay, everything comes back again, that night when everybody else were already asleep, I went outside, in the shadow of the little tree, I cried my heart out. There was no sob, no voice, only tears, freely flowing down from my eyes. I did not even try to hold them back, I just let them fall. Here in this little shadow, no one will notice that I’m crying, they will not notice that I was broken-hearted. I suddenly remembered her words before we broke up; “By the way, don’t miss our Christmas party, I prepared something for you, I know you will like it”. The next evening, I approached my father and mother, “mom, I need to go back to Iligan to attend our Christmas party”, “What? You should not have come home in the first place” my dad replied angrily. My mom was a little silent; I guess she understood my plea. “Stay here instead, we don’t have money for your fare, why not just spend Christmas and New Year here with us” my mom calmly suggested. My dad is always firm with his decision, and when he says it, it is final. I did not hesitate to ask them again, I know I would only be reprimanded. The 2 week long Christmas break was like eternity for me. Day and night I go to the same routine, sleeping the whole day and crying at night. If I have gathered all the tears, it would have filled a glass. Then a little excitement filled my rebel heart during the New Year. I would admit that although my suffering is hell deep, I am still excited to see her again. And this is what I don’t understand. I guess love is really blind sometimes, we choose to close our eyes to reality, shut our senses to the truth, and choose to believe a lie. That “LIE” that I choose to believe was not spoken by “IN-IN” but made by myself. Like Luke Skywalker believing that there is still good he can find in his father’s heart. My heart is hoping that there is still a little place for my love in her heart.

Welcome home

It’s true, there’s no place like home. Even if you found your good fortune from miles away and you’re enjoying it, there is still no better way to spend it than with family and friends.

Last August 9th 2008, my classmate, best friend and brother, Louie, arrived from UAE for a month vacation. He worked there for 2 years and a couple of months. Yeah, he gained a little weight and maybe a hundred thousand richer than he’s former classmates, but he’s attitude never really changed. He still speaks straight to the point, which my wife dubs him “suplado”, still laughs at the same jokes and etc. We planned to go to our good friend and former ESET classmate and now a Philippine Air Force Lieutenant Neil Dela Cruz. The funny thing is that we didn’t have his mobile phone number, but we hope that he is still assigned in Benito Ebuen Base in Mactan. So we went there and asked for him, but we found out that he’s on a vacation in Davao. So we did plan B. Luckily we met John Paul along the way, so we went to look for our former ECE classmates who were working in the MEPZ area. Mervin Cabili was home doing the laundry, so we invited John Paul and Mervin for a little chat and lunch paid for by our friend from UAE. We exchanged “kumustas” and talked about our jobs, classmates and etc. I was very elated when Mervin asked if the love story I posted in my blog site was true, so I asked him if he read all of it, and he said yes. I was even more encouraged to know that he liked it. After Mervin and John Paul finished their lunch, we bade goodbye to them to see our other classmates. So we went back to Janet’s place, where Louie temporarily stays, we saw Byp2, yeah she really loosed weight. A very big difference from the days where we took our review together, she really stuns me. Everything is really possible if you just put an effort to it, and byp2 proves it, how she was able to lose weight is really stunning and commendable. Later that afternoon we went to SM to buy a few things, there we saw Mae, not a very close friend of mine. He asked me a few questions and about my lovelife. So I told her that I was already married, and I already a little boy. That day ended up with my ankles really aching, when I arrived home, I told my wife everything we did for that day, and then she asks “where’s the chocolates” so I said sorry, we didn’t talked about that.

Seeing my former classmates very successful on their fields is heart warming. Sometimes I envy them because they got the jobs they want. But they never looked down on me being a call center agent. Though sometimes they tend to ask why I didn’t apply for my field. The most ironic thing is that my friend Louie wants to start his career here in the Philippines, while our classmates would like to start theirs abroad. My friend Louie resigned from his job because he was bored; John Paul resigned from Global because there’s just too much to do. So what really keeps us satisfied, I guess none?

IIT under MILF

During the Estrada Administration, the government waged war against the MILF. They bombarded camp abubakar, and within weeks, they captured it. STAND IIT, the prominent student party at that time staged a rally (as they always do), their reason, the government is spending so much money for the operations. Now, it’s as if the total war against the MILF was not really won by the government. If not for the TRO issued by the Supreme Court, MILF would have had a great victory; they would have political control of almost half of Mindanao. So did they just relocate to another camp when they were bombarded by planes and cannons? Or was that all-out-war just a stage play with elaborate props spent by the AFP?

Now, the MILF is poised to gain political control of 8 barangays in Iligan City. How many years do we have to wait for them to gain control of the whole city as well? And IIT? Here are some possible scenarios if MILF gets the government to sign the MOA-AD

Scenario #1 “People will move out”

The idea of economic instability, abuse, lawlessness will scare people especially those belonging to the different faith. Residents of the city came from different parts of Visayas and Mindanao. It’s a hybrid population, if MILF will interfere in matters of business, faith, and lifestyle, people will really move out.

Scenario #2 “Students will not enroll”

The student population of IIT is also hybrid, coming out from all points of Mindanao, Visayas, and even Luzon. With peace uncertain, parents would never let their sons/daughters enroll to IIT.

Scenario #3 “Teachers will move out”

2 of the best teachers I had in IIT never taught back after finishing their masters’ degree in Japan, the reason, greener pasture. How much more if the safety of their lives is in question, or the freedom of religion?

If MILF gets the deal, they would really have to prove that they are worthy of our trust before our doubts vanish.

They were glad princess of the stars sunk.

Typhoon Frank devastated crops, ruined houses, flooded the streets, and wreaked havoc in the Philippines. The worst calamity Frank did was capsizing Sulpicio Lines’ Princess of the stars. There were less than a hundred survivors out of more than 700 passengers and crew members. Only a handful of bodies from the capsized ship were recovered. Hundreds more are still missing, unaccounted. Authorities have begun pointing fingers, Coast Guard, Marina, Sulpicio, PAG-ASA. There was an investigation, at the end, the public is still confused on who is really responsible. The additional danger is that the ship sunk with it tons of Oil, and an equally devastating chemical called Endosulfan.

Everyone in the country lamented, while the authorities is busy finding out who’s to blame, others helped. On the weeks that followed, people tried to get back with their lives, but the people in the island of Romblon is still helpless. They can’t get back into the sea to fish. Oil and Endosulfan may leak anytime from the sunken ship. Others are afraid that the fish they might catch may have eaten decayed bodies from the ship.

The fishes from the surrounding seas of Romblon might have been the only creatures who celebrated the sinking. There were talks that dynamite fishing was rampant in the area. Dynamite fishing and all other destructive fishing methods do not only kill the fishes, it kills the corals, a very important part of the marine ecosystem. And when they kill the home of the fishes, they also kill the the hopes and livelihood of the future generation.

The fishes, if they have a mind of their own, might have been shocked of the sudden peacefulness of the sea. No explosions, no nets, no spears, for a moment, they were free to swim around without the fear of being caught. And we could say that they might have been really glad the princess of the stars sunk.

This is what we get when we abuse our natural resources. Millions of people get their livelihood from the sea. But they were not kind enough to return the favor to the sea, instead, they go on destroying the place that allows them to stay alive. We are mass-harvesting our resources from the oceans, but what did we do to heal its wounds? Did we ever pause for a moment and consider planting a single mangrove tree? Or pick up a single floating plastic container?

If we don’t change our attitude towards Mother Nature, we will have the worst calamity and she will have the last laugh on it.

Protect your passwords! (but how?)

During my early college days, the only password I kept was my Novel Netware login. We use pmail (Pegasus mail) at that time. It’s a DOS-based messaging software, so we didn’t have the rich graphics, shockwave flash, links and colored fonts. We only have pure black and white text similar to what you see in wordstar. Back then we didn’t bother changing our passwords, in fact my netware password is the first word I can type in the computer keyboard without looking at the keys. With the new browser technologies fast replacing the old systems, we also adopt. Students started signing up for email accounts and social networking websites, slowly turning our backs to the old pmail. At the start, I kept the same password for my mail and social networking sites; it’s not a big deal anyway. When I work at Convergys for my first account Sprint, I heard about Identity Theft. Identity Theft in a very simple sense is stealing identifiable information like social security numbers, physical address, personal information and etc. The hacker can use this information to engage into almost any kind of valid transactions. The effect on the innocent person is devastating. So how do we protect ourselves and the personal information we have over the internet?

TIP #1 “Change your password regularly”

The IT system of the company I worked for always expires a password after definite period of time, like say 60 days. Sometimes the employees become upset and complain because of the hassle. But as we receive calls from our customers stating that their email accounts has been stolen and being controlled by a hacker, it become clear just how important it is to periodically change the password.

Tradeoff: “chances of forgetting”

This tip does have a lot of tradeoffs; well the most obvious of all is if you easily forget passwords. So if you are among them, the best thing to do now is to minimize storing personal information online.

TIP #2 “The familiar/important event”

I usually choose words associated with important event in my life, like when my sister came home from the US, I changed all my passwords to something related to the event. And when my baby boy was born, I changed them all to a different password. This will not give me a hard time remembering the passwords because the events are very significant for me.

TIP #3 “The special characters”

A complicated password is not necessary, true if you don’t have important information stored on your online accounts. You might have noticed the trend when a website auto generates a password for the users; they contain special characters, numbers, capital letters and etc. Simple sense will tell you that the more combination you put into your password, the less likely a hacker can decipher it. So for the casual computer keyboard users, I think it’s now time for you to familiarize the shift keys and the special characters available on your keyboard.

TIP #4 “Avoid Phishing Sites”

Phishing, pronounced as “fishing”, is a term used by the net community to describe an act of fooling users to enter important information into their websites. The obvious way of fooling a customer is to create a counterfeit website. But since we really don’t know so much on how to determine if a site is a phishing site or not, the safest way to avoid this is not sign up or give information online if it’s not very important. If there’s really a need to create a user account, choose a different password for that account.

TIP #5 “Take the experts word”

My expertise is not on the internet security, but I know there are people reading this blog who know better than I do, please post your comments and add helpful tips on how to better secure our online information.

The internet is now a necessity. Always be safe. Surf safe.

Roy

The salary cake (the art and headache of budgeting)

How much are you paid for?

This picture speaks of itself.

Roy