W Day 0: Cleared

Today was the newbie orientation at company "I" where I arrived uncharacteristically late. This was due to MM: Monday and Makati. I was shocked at how congested and slow things are with respect to those two things.

I arrived at the MRT station in North Avenue to something that looked like a mass of people in rock concert. It took 20 min. to get from the streets to the ticket booth/train, but the travel time from north to ayala is thankfully fast and consistent.

Anyways, the orientation was ok so after a while I was able to leave. I grabbed a quick bite at "MS" and proceeded to one of the most feared pre-recruitement requirement: the medical. It wasn't half bad, it was nearing their lunch break so everyone was in a hurry. Blood, chest x-ray, ears, eyes, throat, *%^&$, #$%. Then samples of *&^ and @#^&. Not bad. Passed by CD-R king to buy blank DVDs then off home.

Home to Ayala: 1.5 to 2 hrs
Ayala to Home: 45 mins ... Huh?

Above is a route map of my options in getting to ayala.

• Orange: tried and tested route. Jeep to Muñoz, Bus to North Ave MRT. MRT to Ayala. Pro: 1 train ride. Cons: 2 traffic routes.
• Red: Freshly tried on my way home. Jeep to Blumentritt, LRT to Edsa/Taft, MRT to Ayala. Pro: Incredibly fast. Cons: human traffic(lines, train capacity)
• Blue: Untried. Jeep to Dapitan, FX to Ayala. Pros: Hassle free, reduced transfers. Cons: costly, untested.

Optimizing travel time/hassle/cost will be a good goal for the next few months.

K

I happened to watch Rated K (a show on channel 2) and I couldn't help but be distracted by the background music. They took them from 2 games that I have played already: Chrono Cross and Ragnarok Online. What were they up to by using game BGMs when their topics had nothing to do with games? We may never know...

Life ain't fair unless it's a fair or an affair

That doesn't make sense, right?

I didn't have something, so I yearned for it. It arrives in droves so I panic. So I'm sort of wishing I didn't have it. What is it? Work

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I went to the UP Fair last Thursday because my friends wanted to go. This was despite the news of a fight there a few days before, but lets face it, crowds and fights normally go together :)).

Funny thing is that upon entering the enclosure in the sunken garden, first thing on the right is a tent for frenzy (a brand of condom). It was complete with the frenzy commercial projected at the back and a guy at the front putting frenzy logo temporary tatoo on willing people. As I love freebies, I submitted myself to their survey. It was full of both stupid and/or personal questions that I answered while trying not to burst out laughing. As the freebie was random via draw lots, I got a neon green bandana, stickers, a carboard fan and 3 condoms. Anyways, I found out via their website that they also make the TRUST brand. Their saying goes "get into it" (eh? into what?).

Enough of that. There were great bands, amazing henna tatoo artists and lotsa food. Here's a pic of sugarfree from that night

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Affair? What's that gotta do with me? Nothing! :D

I am the Half-Blood Prince!!!

Not. Roy told me that Harry Potter Book 6 will be released on July 16, 2005. But I've known this because I've been keeping up with reliable and voracious sites like Leaky Cauldron , Mugglenet and JK Rowling's Official. Some other facts are:

• the Scholastic release will be 672 pages, which is thankfully shorter than OOTP
  
• three chapter titles have been revealed: Chapter Two: Spinners End, Chapter Six: Draco's Detour, Chapter Fourteen: Felix Felicis
• a list of most facts are jotted down here
  
• (movie 4) no kissing scene for harry/cho and hermione/krum (booo!)
  

I do hope National Bookstore entertains my request for book reservation once again (coz fans such as myself will be storming them at wee hours in the morning on that day).

Another One Bites the Dust

LokiTorrent, another popular bittorrent site, has been taken down. MPAA and other organizations are really putting their foot down.

Bridging the Gap

I found time to start watching the anime that sweatdrop traded to me. As with the title of the post, I finished watching a warm and wacky series: Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO). Its about a legendary 22-year old gangster who had the calling to become a teacher. Using his brute strength, contacts, street-smarts and tons of dumb-luck, he proves to everybody that he is as he proclaims to be, a great teacher.

Eikichi Onizuka is an incredibly consistent character. Consistently insane, deranged, perverted, grouchy, stupid... the list can go on and on. Yet he is always looking out for the welfare of his student far beyond his own.

GTO gets a rank in the "Super Ugly Face" category, right beside Hajime no Ippo (aka Knock-out/Fighting Spirit). So much so that during Onizuka's grouchy moods, I can't help but remember the teacher in "Battle Royale" or Zatoichi.

A notable character is Nomura Tomoko aka Toroko(translated sometimes as Big Tits). As corny as her story goes, I found it quite moving.

Some facts:

Eikichi Onizuka's seiyuu also did "Leap-frog" Aoki(Hajime no Ippo)
Toroko's seiyuu also did Aoi Sakuraba(Ai Yori Aoshi), Mahoro (Mahoromatic), Rurippe (Gatekeepers)

Crouching Kitty, Hidden Bear

I ferociously quested and contributed to the betterment of the land to finally reach level 30, where I got my 5th form, Travel Cat. It can travel over open spaces at 140% of normal walk speed, which is a great blessing since most quests require traveling very long distances on foot.

DVD: Today my DVD writer slowed down like hell with 1 hour per DVD at 8x. Why? Coz XP turned the DVDRW drive's DMA off. After a few DVDs I finally got pissed and googled around a bit. I found an article that solved the problem and explained why it happens. In short, when XP gets sick of receiving errors trying to read scratched/erroneous CD/DVDs, it tells the system to fall back to PIO. The solution, though a bit barbaric, is to delete some registry values that were written due to the errors. After rebooting, I was burning DVDs again at less than 10 mins :D

fururut note: imagine the losses incurred by turning off DMA, 10 mins became 1hr. That's not to mention that PIO hogs a lot of resources so everything slowed down to a crawl.

"This and That"

Has been a phrase I've been using quite often. It sort of says that:

There's so many things that I'd like to tell you at this moment, but it seems that neither you or I have time to spare to talk about such things. Therefore when we part, I'm hoping we could sit down and have a nice chat someday.

WoW update2: I've reached level 28 and may have to cut down on playing time because the signs of addiction are really showing :D.

Here's a screenie of me and my guildmates/party/friends:



This is my normal interface. See how many herbs I carry around? I could beat any of the Quiapo "pamparegla" sellers.


DVD stuff: I've burned a few coasters on the premiums, but I loathe the Premium 4x DVD-R, probably half of them were coasterized. But the worst part is they can only be written in 2x! Oh the humanity! It takes forever to burn and is probably screwed. I tried the -Rs because the +Rs were out of stock in Quiapo. Good thing I had to go to makati and had the opportunity to buy more +Rs(they have a full shelf of it :D )

On the other hand, no Ridata coasters and just a negligible amount of premium +R.

Famous: Clair had her share of the spotlight due to the clamor about the digital pinay thing. Read about it in blog or here. Congrats clair! That'll teach them :D

Unexpected Sighting: I saw this couple at sm cybermall/carpark. congrats!

Ah! My Goddess TV: I've just watched episode 4, and I'm liking it more and more. (hey that rhymes)