Friday Night

it's a beautiful friday night. just got back from dinner, we had japanese buffet. now i'm at my room with nothing to do. was supposed to watch the 7th episode of ally mcbeal's 2nd season but the disc is skipping. crappy! now, i'm bored!! i'll probably just read a book while eating chocolate icecream.

Feast of Love

i just finished watching the movie "Feast of Love". this is one of the movies that left a lingering impression on me. i'm a romantic, but not the typical love-story kind of romantic. i like movies, books, music and other media that evokes love, friendship, hope and optimism. but at the same time longing, loss, tragedy, dark twists and drama does it for me. i love movies that doesn't have a happy ending or a movie that leaves you hanging and guessing what might have happened. this movie, however, is different. it doesn't end in tragedy. but instead, after all the losses, it finishes with hope and a brand new start. i can't describe it enough but, as for me, it pinched a familiar feeling. so, here is it's synopsis from imdb:

Bradley (Greg Kinnear) owns a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon called Jitters. He has been married for six years to Kathryn (Selma Blair), a tomboy-type who loves softball. Bradley introduces her, after a game, to his favorite customer, Harry (Morgan Freeman), a professor who is temporarily on leave from his job, due to the death of a child. Harry, a very intuitive and wise man, married to a loving lady (Jane Alexander), sees immediately that Kathryn has eyes for another female softball player. In short order, Kathryn calls it quits with Bradley, leaving him very despondent. However, a beautiful real estate agent named Diana (Radha Mitchell) soon warms his heart again. But, alas, she is having a secret affair with a married man named David (Billy Burke), even though she becomes quite close to Bradley as well. Then, too, Bradley has two young employees, Chloe and Oscar, who soon fall in love and move in together. But, Oscar's abusive father, The Bat (Fred Ward, very scary), makes things difficult for them from time to time. In fact, how strong are the chances for happiness among these fine people of Portland? If you saw the trailers, you might think this was a romantic comedy. Not so, not by far. It is a romantic drama with some comic elements but a great deal of in-your-face depressing reality, too. That is not to say it is not worthwhile, for it is, but no one will be humming a tune when he or she exits the theater. All of the principal players are quite good, bringing depth to a story that could be dismissed, at times, as being overly melodramatic. As for the Portland scenery, it is lovely, as are the costumes and camera work. Benton, the director, has not been at the helm of a film for quite some time but he clearly shows he has not lost his touch. On the other hand, this film is rated R and for good reason, as it definitely has some sexually-charged scenes. In brief, if you are drawn to films that include romantic drama and sharp character studies, this movie might do for you. Also, fans of the cast will want to see it, too. But, be forewarned that some tears might fall and that the experience overall will be bittersweet.

this is a line from the movie that struck me the most: "God doesn't hate us. If He did, He wouldn't have made our hearts so brave." - Greg Kinnear to Morgan Freeman after a close friend died.

come to think of it, it's true. God won't give us something we can't handle. however tough or pressing a problem maybe, it is happening for a reason. and surely, something good will come out of it.

Annual Dinner Part II

here are some more pics from our annual dinner (syempre puro pics ko, blog ko 'to eh! hahaha)

drunkard?!

with alexis and wang lan (her english name is vanilla. paano at bakit? aba, ewan!)

with zhao ying (cherry. hindi ko alam!)

12 All-Time Favorite Foreign Movies

in no particular order:
Across The UniverseBefore Sunset The Dreamers School Ties Under The Tuscan Sun
Underworld Underworld EvolutionY Tu Mama Tambien Interview With The Vampire
AtonementThe Spanish ApartmentSomeone Like You

Annual Dinner Last Jan. 31st

here are some pictures during our company's annual dinner (in lieu of the chinese new year)
with kymn

with edmund britney "hit me more" spears
with edmund and wendy

with sharon, britney, gong jie, jill and andy
with huey and britney

If I Were Slightly Different, My Name Would Be:

If You Were Slightly Different, Your Name Would Be:

Iago

What Would Your Name Be If You Were Slightly Different?

Clash of The Titans

i'm sure by now you've already heard that microsoft is bidding for yahoo. if you think that this is just a mere business move, then think again. there's more to this. read on...


Google's Already Peeking into Microsoft's Windows
posted on: February 20, 2008 about stocks: GOOG / MSFT / YHOO

The reason Microsoft (MSFT) is willing to do whatever it takes to win Yahoo (YHOO) is that it must. From a Tuesday night Reuters story:
Microsoft Corp will authorize a proxy battle for Yahoo Inc this week to convince the Web company's shareholders to agree on a takeover deal that the Yahoo board so far has rejected...If Microsoft decides to launch a proxy fight, it would nominate a slate of directors to take control of Yahoo's board and support the company's proposal. The nominees would be voted on at Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting in June.Microsoft would also risk alienating Yahoo's rank-and-file by taking a hostile tactic. Unlike manufacturing companies with fixed assets, a key Yahoo asset is its engineering talent, and a hostile approach by Microsoft could lead to an exodus of Yahoo talent to Google Inc (GOOG) or other Web rivals.
A reader who is a cross platform developer pointed out that this is not the first time Microsoft has worried about losing its monopoly position via the internet. He wrote:
The browser wars were not about browsers, but were really about Java. When you installed Internet Explorer you installed the Microsoft version of the Java runtime and that version was meant to be a Java killer.I have used a number of so called "cross platform" libraries, but none of them has really solved more problems than they have created. Java, on the other hand, was the best cross platform tool I have ever used. For the first time I could program considering only the problem to be solved and forget about the platform specific assumptions. Java works by using a virtual machine, or VM. The code for the VM is platform dependent, but the Java code that runs on it is exactly the same on a Mac, PC, Linux, Unix system, etc. Well, almost, that is: this is where Microsoft comes in.The biggest barrier to the development of a new OS is that until the OS has significant market share the developer community will not write significant applications for it. The OS will not attain significant market share until there are significant applications for it; chicken and egg. There was for a while a groundswell of Java based office productivity tools under development. What that meant to me as an OS developer was that if I write a Java VM for my platform, I would be able to offer Java based office suites (significant applications) until native applications that used my unique capabilities were developed. This was the real threat to Microsoft.To combat the Java threat, Microsoft created its own version of the Java VM even though Sun (JAVA) had already produced one for the PC. The basic premise of Java is that the VM always looks the same to the Java code. The Microsoft VM was different from every other runtime and did not follow the Java specifications.Microsoft added its proprietary ActiveX extensions to its VM and used their compiler tools to encourage Java code that heavily used the extensions, thereby rendering it completely dependent on Windows. As I said, when you installed IE, you got the Microsoft Java VM.Microsoft may have lost some part of the browser wars in court, but by the time they lost, Java was dead as an application developers tool. The Java based office suites were all cancelled due to the uncertainty in the Java world. Microsoft was so successful in pursuing its real objective that it killed Java end user applications without it ever becoming an issue. Thus, you think this is the first time in history its OS and office businesses are vulnerable.It's not.
To make this fight even more exciting, remember that Google CEO Eric Schmidt was once the Chief Technology Officer at Sun and became the CEO of Novell (NOVL) in 1997.
In both cases, he was stopped cold in his tracks by Microsoft's shenanigans to keep open solutions from happening. It killed Java's potential as described above, and it killed Novell's NetWare by making many of its features standard parts of the dominant Windows OS. From Wikipedia's Novell entry:
By 1999 Novell had lost its dominant market position, and was continually being out-marketed by Microsoft, which gained access to corporate data centres by bypassing technical staff and selling directly to corporate executives. Microsoft worked to make NetWare look second place with Windows 2000 features such as Group Policy.
Does anybody doubt Mr. Schmidt's desire to see Microsoft's monopolistic grip on computing broken?
Regarding Mr. Schmidt, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an incident a couple of years ago, "I'm going to bury that guy. I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to kill Google. . . . Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards." Note that I paraphrased. To see the decidedly more graphic original, click here.
So, this bid for Yahoo has precious little to do with ads, as I mentioned last Friday. It's not hard to see where the motivations come from.
Microsoft has attained its heights by copying other ideas, then out-marketing the originators of them or making the originators irrelevant by giving away comparable function as features in its OS, which comes standard on all PCs. They did that to Google's CEO twice before in his career. In both cases, he was not in a position to fight back the same way because his company made money by selling the product that Microsoft was giving away.
What he needed was a source of revenue completely separate from Microsoft's bread and butter, that he could use to bankroll the development of a free alternative to Microsoft's bread and butter.
Now, he's got it and can finally fight the giant with the giant's methods. Microsoft could give away a standards-killing version of the Java VM because it didn't need revenue from Java to survive. It could give away some capabilities of NetWare because it didn't need to sell networking to survive.
Guess what? Google can give away an operating system and productivity applications because...it doesn't need to sell them to survive. Moreover, the way it makes money is through advertising, and there are ways to incorporate ads into an operating system or productivity suite that might make the free versions profitable to Google in the future, while still leaving Microsoft unable to sell either Windows or Office.
Lest you think Mr. Schmidt has forgotten that Microsoft killed Java by giving away Internet Explorer, remember that Google loves Mozilla Firefox. True, it's so much better than IE that it's basically the only browser any intelligent company would endorse, but more than that it's not Microsoft, and for Mr. Schmidt that's an essential part of the big picture.
Meanwhile, back in Ballmer Land with the flying chairs and roared expletives, priority number one has become beating Google at any cost. Apparently, that's literally the case as the price for Yahoo is rising by the week. The acquisition will not only be expensive financially, it may be very costly in terms of talent lost at Yahoo and time lost as the cultures attempt to mesh.
No matter, Yahoo must be absorbed into the Microsoft empire and focused wholly on putting Windows dependencies into all of its offerings. Remember that you read it here first when Yahoo Mail is functional only via Internet Explorer. Try using Google Firefox, er, Mozilla Firefox and you'll get an error. Same with Flickr. And so on.
Yet, as good as that sounds for Microsoft's situation, we're still not at the reason it's in a hurry to get better positioned against Google's inevitable OS release. That reason was sent to me by another reader named Jeffrey. Look at this:

That's the gOS, the internet based OS I've been writing about for weeks now (but didn't know already existed) and predicting would be the way of the future. I had the time frame wrong, it seems. This operating system is available right now for free.
Look at the icons along the bottom. Every one of them is an internet application. You can use every one of them without ever touching a Microsoft product. Oh, and by the way, notice which browser is prominently featured on the left.
No wonder it's not safe to be in the same room as Mr. Ballmer these days. With Google Docs knocking at his door and gOS peeking in his windows (so to speak), he's bound to be irritable.

"The Reminder"

i'm loving this album of feist. i like the catchy song "1234" but it is "The Limit To Your Love"* that i like the most.

*was listening to this while writing "Won't You"

Cheesecake Anyone?

in lieu of valentines day, i wrote a poem that is apt for everybody's guilty pleasure....a cheesecake (cheesy) moment.

Won't You?

Love me, won't you?
As I've loved you for a long time
Hold me, would you?
As I kiss you in my mind

I long for you to want me
For you to never leave
Because now I'm ready
To wear my heart out on my sleeve

Love me, won't you?
All these I plead
Hold me, would you?
There's so much love I have to give

Together let's share these moments
That life brings our way
I'm done with the empty torments
Instead welcome the new day
-----

What's In A Name?

What Ian Means

You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing.You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long.You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people.You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts.You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.

What's" Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

Manila-bound

i'm filing my leave na for march 26 to april 6! if no scheduling conflicts arise before next week, then it's all set. woohoo!

Buti Na Lang Hindi Bumubula....

i finally ended my legendary "katamaran" and went out to have coffee and do my groceries yesterday. my malaysian friend huey and i went to auchan (a hypermarket), about 15 minutes away from our apartment. she needed to buy some veggies and i needed to buy a lotion, this friggin winter is drier than a diaper!

i bought my m&m refill and saw thiswhich is basically like a matamis na mani (those you buy in Batangas, Antipolo and Tagaytay) fortified with a hint of cranberry. wicked right?! hahaha and of course, i bought this

this morning, after taking a shower, i slathered some. parang iba yung feeling, parang hindi sya lotion! but i can't do anything about it kasi i'm running late na. i felt a little uneasy the entire day, pano kung hindi sya lotion? pano kung shower cream sya? namputcha, ayoko pagpawisan at bumula! luckily it's winter, hindi ako pinagpawisan. so when i got home this afternoon, tinignan ko mabuti yung bottle, the only english words are: olay, body, nature, science and the chinese characters eh hindi kapareho nung sa old nivea lotion bottle. walang manalo! last resort, i took a small amount in my hand and tinapat ko sa running water. buti na lang hindi bumula, lotion nga....unless conditioner 'to?! hahaha

Missin' Manila

i've just been so lazy this past few days. i haven't gone out of the apartment since last tuesday afternoon! i could just imagine that if i were in manila, and given a 3-weekday vacay + saturday and sunday, i would so be having a blast! i’ll probably be out-of-town with my friends, roaming around the metro to eat, have coffee or catch a movie. haay..these are the things that i miss most about manila. that’s why i’m planning to go back next month. i wanted sana mga mid-march because i’m thinking of attending Jim Paredes’ “Tapping The Creative Universe” seminar (march 10-17). like in my game plan, i want to do something beneficial for myself this year. and what better way to do it than to unleash my creativity! (insert a lion's roar)

kaya lang i don't have enough budget pa eh. i still need to get my march salary (end of the month pa). bummer diba?! sobrang gusto ko na magbakasyon, been having dreams about the philippines these past few days. hahaha. but seriously, i miss how i can go out in shorts and tsinelas lang, eat all kinds of food whenever i want and just CHILL dude pare!! hahaha.

tsk, tsk, tsk...i'll try and figure out how...by hook or by crook!

M&M's

woke up at 1pm today, and i'm soooo lazy to move. have to go top-up my mobile phone credit and refill my m&m stash..malapit na maubos. bukas na lang siguro. hahaha

just finished watching the first 10 episodes of grey's anatomy's 4th season. ganda. dunno how many episodes na they have for this current season and hindi ako mkapag download kasi wala ng space hard drive ko. tsk, tsk..really need to get myself an external hard disk.

anyhow, i'll probably start reading my book na. you, what's up with you?

Xin Nian Kuai Le!!

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!!

i haven't experienced a hard-core chinese new year celeb yet..but the new year here is no different than how we celebrate it in the philippines. the chinese are also very festive. like us, they also go around visiting relatives and friends. kaya nga 1 week bakasyon nila, for us is only 3 days!! hahaha

but seriously, i'm getting used to living here. the locals are no different than us (noypis), some of them are even more family-oriented than us. haaayy. my only dislike here, in zhangjiagang, is that it is boring. not many places to go to or even restos to eat in. i have to go to shanghai pa or other bigger cities to unwind and have my raspberry mocha!!
anyways, i have 4 days of "tunganga" time. i'll just watch dvds, maybe start reading my new book (Love In The Time Of Cholera) or just make plain "tunganga".

the pasabog pics are not mine. the fireworks pics that i took suck kasi medyo foggy kaya malabo.

Intersection

as you've probably heard, it has been snowing heavily in major parts of china. it's no different in our area.

a view of the compound from our unit (the car was unable to back up because of the snow)

the children's playground in front of our building

our factory's gate

we had to walk in this snow to get to our building (far left)

the "frozen fountain" in our building's entrance

you think snow is fun?! the first few days, yes. but now, hindi na. ang hirap kaya maligo!

then the other day, as we were on our way home (i was in the car with an american manager), we were supposed to turn left in an intersection when we almost got hit by a truck! walang manalo kasi sa driver namin, masyadong go, go!! then the american said:

"i hate this intersection, it's awful!!"

he said it with slangest american twang that you'll ever hear!! (mas wala palang manalo sa kanya!!)