God grant me the Serenity
      to accept the things I cannot change..
Courage to change the things I can..
and Wisdom to know the difference..

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
      not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right
      if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.

history: http://open-mind.org/Serenity.htm

if there was a year in your life that you could go back to, what would it be? i would always say, 1997. it was a year of grand opportunities and missed chances. so many things i could have done and yet i chose to do otherwise. if regret was a word in my vocabulary, i could have said, without any hesitation, that i regret how that moment in time has affected the rest of my life. but regret is for losers, and no matter how bruised and bitter i may have become, i can’t just bow my head and accept defeat.

it’s not that i don’t like where i am right now, contentment has never been my best virtue so that’s not the issue, it’s just that that year is one of the biggest crossroad in my life. it’s like the choose your own adventure pocket book where you get to have different endings depending on your decisions: to fight it out with the big bad wolf or to run away and hide in the woods? i chose to hide in the woods, stay in my comfort zone, deny that i could ever be anything outside the little bubble that i invented and enclosed myself in.

now, eight years past i recall that little coin i flipped, what if i fought the wolf instead? yeah, i wouldn’t have met all those interesting creatures but hey, those kind of trees also grow in this part of the hundred acre land. i was just too much of a coward. i’ve always feared the unknown.

it’s really no fun to look back and think of all the has been and what could have been in your life, it get’s you all melodramatic and guilty but the good thing is, you get to contemplate on how you got here in the first place, that is especially helpful if you’re like me who just wakes up with a start every day and wonder: where am i? how did i get here? where am i headed?

the sims is one of my all time favorites, my addiction for sim games started after playing creatures 3, it's about artificially intelligent norns that you can train to speak, do things, build gadgets and genetically engineer. it was great but unfortunately, the developers abandoned it 4 years ago.

with the advent of sims 2, i'm once again a loyal customer of data blitz, and my recent purchase is the night life expansion pack. at last, my sim can now own a sports car and drive around down town. now if only my real life could catch up with that..

visit http://thesims.ea.com/

the comedy isn't that funny and the romance is very predictable but what makes this movie bearable to watch aside from drew is the inside look on what goes on in a sports fanatic's mind. i didn't know box seats could cost that much.


where: Greenbelt 1, Cinema 1
when: Friday, 23 September 2005. 02:45 p.m.

"the information age is over" this is what sun microsystems ceo scott mcnealy declared before announcing that he will be giving away their software technology for free. wow! this is the solaris operating system we're talking about here. back when i was on bt in tamagawa, that's a whole eon of light years ago, our workstation has dozens of sun blade servers which cost around US $2000. open sourcing solaris could lead to a lot things like the evolution of patches to make it work on intel x86 machines like the soon to be released version of mac os. this could lower production costs for software people who are depending on solaris systems, but on the other hand one can't help but ask: what happens to the people behind solaris? will they lose their jobs? what about microsoft, do they have plans of at least slashing their current software prices to half so as to prevent piracy? speaking of microsoft, i heard from a twit podcast that they are having brain drain problems. the top people have opted to resign and join other companies, i should start updating my resume. haha! yeah right

friday, saturday and sunday were advertised as m-ph expo weekend at greenbelt 1. there were lots of booths displaying the latest gadgets of apple, archos, creative, sony and many others. i went for a peak and attended the apple ipod seminar at around 6pm saturday, too bad i didn't ask a question, i could have won an ipod sock! there were also lots of freebies and raffle prizes, i brought home several back issues of m-ph.

i remember when m-ph was first launched 2 years ago, it was bundled free with the reviewer magazine, and while the rest of my friends were reading cosmo, i was lost in tech land. i don't know, there's just something in those shiny things that never fail to catch my attention.

if only i have a bottomless wallet =)

podcastalley is my favorite web destination these days eventhough i currently don't own an ipod, sold it off months ago because i got tired of the 20 gig worth of memory with nothing to put on it and the grayscale display just made me miss my sony clie t650c even more. maybe i just got used to the miniscule ram on those prehistoric palm os pda's that's why i can't fill up this huge space, the 512mb memstick duo on my w800i isn't even half full yet, or perhaps i just don't have enough songs to put on it.

anyways, after i discovered these podcasts, i now have a lot of content to load onto my memstick, and if i get crazy again, i just might get me a black ipod nano before the week ends =)

this film is guaranteed to keep you at the edge of your seats, definitely another cleverly written plot from the director of scream. it almost starts out like serendipity but doesn't stay that way for long.


where: Greenbelt 1, Cinema 1
when: Saturday, 10 September 2005. 05:50 p.m.

we had breakfast at this newly opened pancake and steak house at g4 last saturday. good thing we were there early so we found our seats in no time. i ordered their dear bacon, love eggs meal, funny name but it was actually good. a warning though, don't ever order that blue colored, weird tasting bubblegum soda. ewwww!!! i think i had a stomach ache because of that one.

after breakfast/brunch, i finally got a silicon case for my w800i, Php750 at digital walker in park square 1. i also bought a pair of shades as babs birthday gift, he turned 16 yesterday. how swift time flies, my baby brother isn't a baby anymore, boo hooo, he's even taller than me! but his taste in movies haven't changed, we watched this kid's movie "sky high", it's about teen-agers with superpowers studying at this academy that same name. it's a fun film.

for the 2nd straight week now, we've been spending our sunday mornings at planet badminton in pasong tamo, it's only a 5 minute jeepney ride away. we usually play from 8 to 10 a.m. i remember the last time i played against babs at ymca cebu, he literally broke the badminton racket in 2. yeah! he's a sore loser hehe j/k actually i think he grips the racket too fiercely or something, anyway this time his racket didn't break but it flew right across the court, whew!! i think he should stick to soccer.

this movie is surprisingly good and witty for a disney kid movie. i almost wished that this was like a harry potter film with 6 sequels.

just discovered today that they have a nice interactive website. go ahead, it's not too early for second childhood =)


where: Glorietta 1, Cinema 2
when: Saturday, 3 September 2005. 09:30 p.m.

t.g.i.f =) that's probably what most of my working friends tell themselves when they wake up and find out that the week snuck past them again and it's friday at last, yey!

woke up at half past ten today, the construction at the nearby shang condo is so irritating! i would have slept for an hour more if not for the noise. bum's life i know =). the good thing about not working at some high profile pretentious firm is not having to spend much time looking for a business casual attire, so there i was rummaging through my closet looking for my favorite pair of torn pants and half sleeved giordano sports shirt. rags! i'm sure that's what my mom would say.

after a quick shower and a bite of leftover food from last night, i decided to get some cash from the atm, it's a friday after all, time to empty the cash registers and spend foolishly harhar. good thing i live just across the mall, i didn't have a hard time finding a cash dispenser, especially after i found out that the nearest atm was off-line.

i practiced aimless wandering at greenbelt, trying to look for a decent pivot case for my new toy. unfortunately, i didn't find any so i decided to just go visit some friends working at ayala av and join them for a fri lunch out. it's expensive being lazy, instead of a 15 minute walk, i opted to take a cab and spent the next 30 minutes stuck in traffic. it set me back 70 bucks!!! aarrggghhhhhh.

for lunch, georgia, ri and i invaded seattle's best at paseo center, we just lazed around while pretending to read some magazines. i miss the out of town trips! i wish we could go somewhere else next weekend, vigan? bicol? sorsogon? pagodpod? ok even hongkong and singapore would do i guess.

hohum its past 2 in the afternoon. and i have nothing to do, idle hands are the devil's workshop, i might as well review for the sun certification, maybe another piece of paper will add meaning to my life hehe. i'm looking forward to dinner at heaven and eggs tonight with the gang and maybe a movie afterwards. i hope babsy arrives soon to bring home my lanzones =) yum!

and that's a day in the life of a bum. =)