the brownian motion of a photoplankton

my officemate, ariel asked me this morning to write a short poem for his daughter who, it seems, has to do one for a grade school assignment. i knew i had a hectic day, but if i could do it in 15 minutes, i should be fine, and i had done my friend a little favor. i needed the break anyway.

15 minutes later, this is what i sent him.

i asked why

one bright and sunny day
after school and while at play,
on top of a leaf i found
a green caterpillar, long and round.

what an amazing creature! i said,
as it crawled around its leafy bed.
with short stubbly feet along its tummy
long and hairy around his bright fluffy body.

the next day i came back
but what i saw was just a small sack
the caterpillar is gone! it is gone!
and thinking it has died, i ran home and cried.

a few days later, one bright sunny day
i saw something beautiful while i was at play.
my pretty caterpillar was gone, i once asked why
now here is my old friend, a lovely butterfly.

i sure do miss being a child.

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ack... it's a terribly cluttered week... so many meetings, and no time left to do real work...



good news is, tomorrow's a non-working holiday here in batangas city.

yahoo!

p.s. championship game later at 5 pm. no time for those basketball jones to ruin our season now...

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Nine years ago...

Now...

The sequel to my all-time favorite movie. Showing soon. Yahoo!!!

My thanks to Mommy G for the links. =)

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i never really understood what the fuss is about golf. you hit a ball, you look for it, you hit it again until you reach the place with shorter grass, change clubs, take the ball to the hole. golf. sure, happy gilmore was hilarious, it has always been my favorite adam sandler movie, but i never really fully appreciated how golf can even stimulate one's sense of challenge.

well, that was before yesterday, and that was before i looked something like this at that damn par 5 hole by the river where i lost a ball...



after 6 holes of zigzagging the fairway, i ended up sitting outside my garage contemplating on the meaning of life. how can something so simple be so complicated? why can't i hit the ball with wood? what will happen to that golf ball i drove smack in the middle of the river? will it stay there for another hundred thousand years, only to be excavated and celebrated as proof of civilization?

okay, so i sucked yesterday. but it's not the end of the world. i am better than this sport. i can overcome this... i hate this game.

is it 4 pm yet? i can't wait to hit the driving range again. back to square one.

damned wood.

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yesterday, i was pumped up all day, ready to watch ginebra do battle against arch-nemesis red bull, in a bid to send the barakos home and capture the championship trophy tonight.

all day long, queen's "we are the champions" kept playing over and over agin inside my head.

7:10 PM, it was game time. positioned in my bean bag, not even my hungry stomach was able to take my eyes of the tv.

i kept telling myself... this is the night.



and it was...

the barangay ginebra gin kings, on a 103-86 victory, finally ends its seven-year drought, and captures the pba fiesta conference championship.

now, my favorite number is 7. and i've always believed it to be my lucky number. i was born on the 7th of august, and my name starts with the 7th letter of the alphabet. as a benchwarmer on my basketball teams, i wear jersey number 7.

now this has been the observation of many...

1. ginebra last won the championship sept 07, 1997...
2. ... under coach sonny jaworski with the very popular jersey number 7
3. it's been 7 long years since that last crown
4. ginebra's celebrating it's 107th year
5. this year, ginebra won the championship on the 7th day of the 7th month
6. the final score: ginebra massacred red bull via a 17 point advantage
7. G-I-N-E-B-R-A. seven letters

GI-NE-BRA!!!!

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daming girls dito!!!



Try it at Photo Illustration Maker...

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if last weekend were like any other, i would have stayed home, woke up late and burned my tv and xbox. after watching ginebra lose game 2 to red bull on friday night, i should have wallowed in my misery and slept till my back starts to hurt.

but i had errands to run. i had to withdraw some cash, buy detergent fot my laundry, ask the apartment caretaker to feed fishy over the weekend while i'm away, and, well, go home.

well i did all those things, plus, i finally got to drag my lazy ass to the local auto shop, had my car's rear bumper removed and arranged for it to be lined with fiber glass. it's a nasty case of corrosion our refinery expert duane would have called neglectization corrosion. hey, not my fault. you see terranos with rusty rear bumpers everywhere.

so that was done. drove another 10 kilometers to lipa to get a haricut, meet up with my mom, and my brother's family to watch spiderman 2. (just a side note, i really think the movie didn't live up to the hype. it's your typical sequel, and oh, from an engineering standpoint, it just doesn't make sense...) after the movie, the whole van-load of pamplonas spent the evening in a private pool in pansol, where the kids just went ga-ga over the pool slide and ended up fast asleep a couple of hours later out of sheer exhaustion.

that was saturday. sunday came, and things got even better. it was game day. and something about the way i woke up told me it was gonna be barangay ginebra's day.

so, 3 days ago, almer and i agreed to watch the game live at araneta coliseum. emerson and stip, two of the "kaladkarin" (read: hindi mahirap ayain...) refinery geeks agreed to join us, and so we met up at makati, and commuted to araneta. in an MRT nonetheless.

now most of you yuppies out there regard the mrt in the same way as they would their daily dose of coffee, but not me. first of, i'm not a yuppie. i'm a ruppie. rural... young... err.. whatever. you get the point. anyway, riding an mrt to me was what sex is for all of us. the first time is memorable (although not always in a good way) and you find yourself fumbling you way through, ridiculously pretending to be good at it, and once it's done, you can't help but wear a silly grin on your face.

my first time. wow...




2 hours later, we were at the game, and pumping our fists into the air with every helterbrand jumpshot, menk semi-hook, and adducul lay-up. ginebra won the game. nothing beats the euphoria of being one with the crowd, chanting "GI-NE-BRA! GI-NE-BRA!".



this isn't just ginebra's weekend. something tells me its' gonna be a ginebra year.

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wokr-life balance is a must, and because it is a must, these are the things that i MUST do after office hours:

1. Play basketball: Mondays and Wednesdays.
2. Play badminton: Mondays and Tuesdays.
3. Hand paint masks: Mondays
4. Need for Speed Underground (THIS GAME ROCKS!) Every single day...
5. Watch the Ginebra-Red Bull champioship/melee.
6. Watch Alias



Need for Speed Underground is the current blockbuster in my Xbox console. My roomie, Volt, actually bought the game for himself, but during one boring weekend, I popped it into my console, and wham, i got hooked just like that. Now I've never really been good at racing games (I actually sucked at the Gran Turismo series...) but this game just seriously brings to life my fantasy of owning a car worthy of the nitrous oxide burning cars of the Fast and the Furious fame. I started with a stock Mazda Miata MX-5, the only roadster available in the game, and i've upgraded the engine, exhaust system, turbo package, transmission (it's now 6-speed), brake systems, wight reduction, and nitrous oxide package. The nitrous oxide thingie really rocks. And boy, the game is really, really challenging. Love the soundtrack as well. Plus, you get to dress up your car with pulse neon lights, gorgeous vinyls, bumpers, roof scoops, carbon fiber hoods and side skirts. Game modes vary from drag, to drift, to lap knockouts, to sprint. Well, this is the one thing that makes me feel like Paul Walker every single weeknight.



last night, i almost had a heart attack. right from the game's first basket, care of ginebra import torraye braggs' three point play, ginebra's unloading of points to take a 22-point lead with the help of mark caguioa's flawless three point shooting, jimwell torion and enrico villanueva demolishing that lead down to 6 at halftime, and up to vitor thomas' missed three point attempt to beat the buzzer, my heart was at the brink of arrest, as ginebra won game 1 94-92 of the best of five series.

after 7 years of drought, barangay ginebra is seeking another pba championship crown, this time, against bitter rival red bull barako.

i can still remember that last championship run so clearly. i was having dinner with almer, a ginebra fanatic himself, at project 6. we were both close to tears as the graphics showing a photograph of jaworski and the words "Finally..." were flashed on the screen.

last night, as the ginebra gin kings battled furiously for the w, i was led back to the time when bal david sent asi taulava crying a couple of years ago, by beating top-seeded mobiline in the semifinals a several of years ago.

save for bal david, this one's a completely different lineup from that championship team of gordon's gin back in '97. with david on the sidelines because of an injury, the team is led by a rag-tag pair of bandana-brandishing guards, called the fast and the furious: jayjay helterbrand and mark caguioa. watch them run the break and you'll know why jayjay is the fast, and mark is the furious. fearless and fast as lightning, they are the face of what ginebra stands for. along with eric menk, rommel adducul, andy seigle, rodney santos, sunday salvacion, this team could just prove to break seven years of waiting for the barangay's horde of fans.

and oh how sweet it is if it happens this year, because in that case, they'll be beating the red bull team i really really love to hate.

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