Rambles and Musings of a Confused Illusionist

Time realignment, a new schedule, and a few more things to come. Welcome to this night’s post of Life 2.0.

What happened between Day 12 and… whatever day it is today?

I have experienced great difficulty this week to post on a nightly basis because of a few work-related events that have seemingly drained me of all my physical and mental capabilities to the point that I just sleep when I arrive home.

This week in the office, I had experienced my first all-nighter in the studio. I had shots that were airing the next day which meant I had to finish them that night. The catch is that, the next morning, I have a client meeting at 9am. Immediately after that, I had to return to the studio to help with the other shots that were supposed to be primed for the airing of that night.

It was all well and good. The studio was able to make it in time for airing. On the plus side, it was a short celebration for us that night because it was the “scheduled” initiation of the new team members and also a late celebration of one of the teammates.

After what seemed to be the longest day I’ve had in the studio, I went home and fell asleep and hoped to wake up early the next morning to get things done. Sad to say, I couldn’t. I took a few more extra hours of sleep just to get back the many hours I’ve lost.

The past few days were completely repetitive and so routine that it was hard to distinguish a day from the other according to memory. That brings us on to the next topic for tonight.

Temporal Disorientation

I’ve recently noticed my inability to track the dates as accurately as I did before. I couldn’t remember which night I had posted Day 12 and which day it is today. As far as I could remember, the 15th of May was supposed to be Day 14 because I was planning to write a Week 2 post. I’ve been too busy and too tired to write anything that would have made sense to any of those who would take their sweet time reading the rambles of this estranged illusionist.

Apparently, I am not the only one experiencing this phenomenon. It had also been occurring to my workmates. Some claim to have lost count of the days that go by and what day of the week it is. Some are a few days late in their memory, thinking it was the day from a few days ago. And a few more couldn’t remember how the last few days had transpired.

This is a very disturbing occurrence for me since I am very dependent on the schedules that I have put in place. If I overshoot them, things would go badly in the long run and I wouldn’t be in a good position to take care of myself and others properly.

Having lost the sense of longer spans of time is something for me to be concerned of. Each week that passes by can and might count as a lost opportunity for me to do something about my current situation. I wouldn’t want to run into delays in my plans because that would mean that I would  have great difficulties trying to make idea and reality meet.

I only have a few decades to live on this earth, I’d like to make the earliest moments count. I’d have to prepare for Life 3.0.

New Post Schedules

I continue to think about many things when my mind is out somewhere during my commute. Some are worth sharing, but most are not. Condensing the really good ones on a slightly lengthier weekly post might make a better blog post than what I normally write.

I’ve already tested out my potential to write in this volume of somewhere between 600 and 1300 words per posting. I think that I have grown comfortable writing at those lengths and that my mind has adjusted somehow to sustain longer and more complex thoughts as I progress with the writing I have been doing. Most of these are straight from my own personal accounts of the events and is hence mostly my rambling. These blog posts are sparingly edited.

Right now, I’ve been posting almost every night for the past sixteen days. While it was all fun trying to write lengthy accounts of the events of each day, I think that it would be more meaningful to wind this blog down to a weekly post about what happened during the week.

As for what I’ll be doing during the nights that I’m not asleep and not writing for Life 2.0, I’ll be focusing on writing a few more blogs or rather, stories. I have a few ideas lined up that I wish to develop through writing. You will see them as the weeks go by. They will also be weekly releases. It is in my hopes that I can get the chapters to acceptable qualitative standards when I develop the stories.

I hope that you watch out for the entries that I will be posting soon!

Hi, I’m Lou, and this is the end of Day 16, or as it will now be called: Week 2.

A New Policy that betrays a loyal subscriber and idiocy running wildly rampant, and we wonder why we don’t have love for our country.

I Thought You CARED?

Oh the irony. Their twitter account says SmartCares. While I wouldn’t say it’s a total lie, it’s just sad to know that the brand I’ve been trusting to provide me a connection with the people and things I love has changed their Fair Usage Policy to incorporate one of the BIGGEST deal breakers ever: a bandwidth cap.

So what is this shit of a feature? Well, it basically monitors how much data has been received on your end and once it reaches 15GB of data, it automatically slows down your speed to 200kBps; 10% of what it normally is.

BUT 200KBPS IS FAST! Actually, fuck no. It’s 200Kbit/s, meaning I can download at a maximum of approximately 25kbps. That… is…. bullshit.
 On average, an entire webpage heavy on graphics is at 250kb just for the main UI. 10 seconds to load UI, and forever to load all the content.

I just found out that the recent slow down of my internet is due to the fact that I had been throttled. CS told me that I had been throttled because I had reached my bandwidth cap. The fuck? It’s only the first week of the month. How in seven hells did I reach 15GB in two weeks when I only downloaded ONE 3GB GAME?

What makes it worse is the fact that the CS could not get me a straight answer. This is very fucking disappointing. I’ve known Smart’s customer service to be one of the most excellent customer service crews because they really do report in almost immediately after you send in a report ticket. They even follow up on time with you regarding any of your concerns.

Just recently, SmartBro has been rebranded and been put under the management of PLDT, a telephone company I grew up with but one that I never want to use again. They have been notorious for having the worst customer support EVER. They don’t tell you what’s going on with their stuff and it takes FOREVER to get your stuff fixed. A friend told me that their PLDT service was so bad that they go for entire months without proper internet and hey are still billed the exact amount monthly. What… the… fuck, right?

And yes, I am ranting with the profanity filter set to disabled because I feel strongly about this “betrayal”. I’ve been very thankful for the services they provided for the past three years. I enjoyed 2MBit/s at a few tens lesser a month because I renewed my contract last year. Now they impose such a deal breaking policy! If I wanted to enjoy unlimited data I should apply for myDSL, which is one of the shittiest ISPs known to our communities.

I am a very angry customer. I have 12 months left on my contract and THIS is how they want me to spend it? A very low bandwidth cap or a shitty ISP? The options are just bullshit, infuriatingly so.

Traitors.

Elections: Why I Didn’t Vote and Why the Results are also Bullshit

I am not the biggest fan of the new senatoriables right now. Based on the results, we have a lady who’s afraid of debates and has refused to display her prowess in her field. She trumped out the mayor who kept one of the most beautiful cities in the Philippines THAT DAMN BEAUTIFUL and also a man who’s not afraid to step down from his motorcade to aide a sick man whom the convoy chanced upon.

I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think she’s supposed to be there. I mean seriously, how did she win? Did the ignorance of the masses prevail? I thought that shit only worked on the Aquinos? Apparently with her family too?

Sure, the dad got his city prosperous and clean enough to warrant him the respectable position he is in now, but what has she done? She doesn’t even have a track record for it!

This proves my point about the elections and why I am less inclined to go through the hassle of its process. The elections are more of a lottery game show wherein people put in their bets and the results end up in combinations that make everybody a loser. My single vote couldn’t have changed a million people’s minds. This isn’t the movie Swing Vote.

For any of you chaps who decide to flog me for my arrogant display of keyboard rebellion, I would agree with you. I have not done my true part as a citizen. Still, that doesn’t mean that I am not truly detached from my duties. I am a taxpayer now, and as in any traditional business, my tax payments are contributions to the future of the Republic of the Philippines. I am a shareholder of this country and I have the right to express my concern regarding how this country is going to be run in the next few years.

To be fair with the current “management”, we are enjoying a pretty prosperous time in the past few quarters. Not too bad.

This is just sad. Is it really just me who thinks that there are more idiots in the country these days?

Unable to bear the weight of yesterday’s events, I couldn’t write for Day 8. The estranged Thursdays have returned. I would like to apologize ahead for any profanities you might happen upon.

Off The Ledge

If you’re from around the circle of friends of one Jet Tan or if you caught a glimpse of last night’s half post, then you probably know what had just happened.

By a shocking and confusing turn of events, a student, no different to you nor I, had allegedly jumped off of the 11th floor of the School of Design and Arts building of DLS-CSB. I say allegedly, because his motives were not clear. I can’t rule out the possibility of a bucketlist accident.

HE WAS MARCHING WITH US! He was on his victory lap for fuck’s sake. Due for the much anticipated graduation ceremonies in July. As far as his friends know, he has no problems. He’s a happy young fellow.

I do not know this chap but I have too many friends that know him to not get personally affected by the loss. I sympathize with them, having dealt with an acquaintance’s suicide back in high school. I know the feeling too well.

The kid had it going for him. A professor of his describes him in a post as “one of my most promising students” while another had shared a personal message from the student saying how grateful and honored he was being under the professor’s tutelage.

He was so loved for his happy glow, his fondness for asian beauty, and his overall jolly presence; remembered for his blue shirt and his tilde (~) signature.

No one saw it coming.

Nobody would’ve ever thought that a security camera blind spot, an AC unit access area, and a shortcut to the roof next door was all it took to turn it all.

Among The Sea of Tears, Trash.

What makes it all worse for the people that mourn the loss is the public expression of dull-witted insensitive pricks born of silver spoons and broken condoms. The sack of shit dressed in the finest silk that encased the foulest of excrement that could ever be shat from the worst bowels fed with the very same matter.

Idiots have run rampant in school lately. Self-righteous social climbing high-born pricks who think that their voice is the sound of birds chirping in the midsummer dawn but in fact make the sound of fingers scratching a chalkboard a little more bearable.

They have the ego, insensitivity, and idiocy that is enough to accelerate a ball of flesh and bone straight at their posh cheeks.

I speak of no other than the insensitive, class-less, gutless, mindless, swine of a student: the people who picked the wrong time to tweet stupid shit.

What in the seven fucking hells gives you the right to call the friend we lost and idiot, a failure, a heap of trash worth a horror story?

I grow concerned about the mentality that these outright retarded kids that feel that they are cool and above others.

I am sorry, but due to this subject of people being impossibly stupid, I am unable to write more on the topic.

Before I move on to the next topic, I leave this one last statement: sa lahat ng kaputaputang kaputahan ng pagkatanga ng mundo na naipon sa walang laman mong kokote, puta ka lumayas ka sa mundong ito.

Live: My Note to Anyone Else Contemplating on the Hallway’s Last Door

We are the sum total of the people we meet, the things we think about,
and how we feel about them. We are the fruit of the womb, the product of two becoming one.We walk the Earth with the freedom to choose.

In light of recent events, I have been thinking about all those that have started with us and have gone before us.

We are what we think and do. What they thought and did had ultimately consumed them in the end.

That’s the third person who is close to those around me that took their own lives. Many decades ago, my dear uncle Perry whom I never got to meet. Nearly five six years ago, a small fellow by the name of Mark took his wretched father’s own tie and cut his biography short. Yesterday, a student took the short way down.

How did they weigh their options? How did they come to decide that the last door was the right answer? What manner of madness has forced them to take the last way out?

How did they keep it to themselves?

To anyone who is thinking of following them. I believe it to be the coward’s way out. I believe it is the stupidest way out of a person’s problems. I believe it is a shitty way to fix things for you.

Why? I believe it is bullshit that you have run out of options. I believe that the moment you take that last door at the end of the Hall of Life too soon, you would have missed on all the doors and windows of opportunity to change things. You would have wasted an entire lifetime’s worth of possibilities of your dreams being fulfilled, your worries cast into the wind, your trials coming to an end, and mornings you breathe the welcoming air that brings new life to a dull one.

You could’ve turned it around. You could’ve made it better for you. There are many ways to leave things behind, just as many as there are things to be left behind. You could create a new life for yourself. It may not be all milk and honey, but would that leap to oblivion be better?

So what if society has treated you like shit? So what if life has hit you so hard you can barely stand up? So fucking what? All of us have had our fair share of shit hit us in the face. Your troubles may be worse than mine, but rest assured we both smell the same.

What of the people left behind? Are they all so bad? What of the ones that will mourn you? What of the ones that would have to bury you? What of those to be left with the bitter memory of you walking out the door that goes only one way? Even some of the world’s most horrible people have others that would mourn them.

What is the value of your life? If you were to simplify your whole existence into one measly equation, it would probably be this one. Do not assign numbers to it. Just think about it.

Take ALL of the shit you’re dealing with now and subtract it from all your feelings about Love, Longing, Passion, a cute puppy, a cute kitten, the sight of a newborn child being handed to his mother, the hopes, the dreams, the chances that may come your way, the time you have left to walk the earth and savour its many treasures, the moments that fill your eyes with tears, the words that bring fire to your heart, the people whose smiles bring warm colour into a dull grey day, and the sunrise tomorrow at the bay that comes for those who have been through the darkest of the night hoping for that bright yellow light to come and show them a new day. If the answer is still negative, I’d like you to do it twice, thrice even, and then I’ll see you on the other side.

-lou

I would like to extend my condolences to the friends and family of a certain individual who had decided to change his life by taking the exit.

Not 15 minutes into checking in on my facebook account and I see posts from friends and a message from another telling me about an individual that had jumped off of the 11th floor (as sources say). Someone took their life today. It’s never a pretty story.

From what I gather, it was completely out of his character. What drove him to his decisions are still unclear from reading facebook posts of my colleagues. I don’t know him or see him around, but we have a lot of common friends as it would seem. He was a good man. I feel their loss of a good friend.

I hope that the people he’s left behind would find comfort soon.

Tonight on Life 2.0: the world we knew ended in 2012, where is Mr. Pallie right now, and what happened to Day 6?

The D6 Episodic Jump Fast Forwarding To a New Dawn

Keeping it short. I actually couldn’t think of anything to say last night, plus I was a little too tired to write anything that would actually make sense or pique the interest of some unwary reader that follows my tumblr blog out of boredom. I slept relatively early because the next day had a lot of errands in its itinerary.

I had an 8am appointment today immediately followed by a 9am one and then had to run to DLSU to clear my old accounts and run back to DLS-CSB to double check if my records were clear there too only to find that the records-in-charge at the registrar wasn’t in today. yeh.

I told our editor yesterday that I won’t be coming in today because I had to fix the paperwork for my graduation (yey!). But alas, today I did not complete all objectives because the guy that was supposed to have the forms I needed wasn’t around and that I’d have to pop by tomorrow. I’m gonna be late for work for sure. Maybe if I did an all-nighter for Thursday-Friday?

Where is Mr. Pallie Tonight?

Remember from day 4 that I’ve caught wind of the story of my dear friend Mr. Pallie? Well, Todd just gave me an update yesterday with regards to which couch is Mr. Pallie sleeping in right now and how is his journey in his own version of Life 2.0.

Mr. Pallie is currently residing in the place where interned in and was graciously offered a place to crash in the office while he was still job hunting and crib scouting.

I think it’s a good place for him to stay in. I mean, come on, he’s got 24-hour security, 24-hour airconditioning, Wi-Fi. Good place to crash, right? The nature of the work they did in that office had required the staff, on occasion, to pull of all-nighter sprees and sleepless nights. This gave them the necessity to have a place to crash for themselves within the office.

I’ve also heard Mr. Pallie has been lining up interviews and the sort. He’s been sending out resumes since before he left his hometown. I do hope he finds a good stable opportunity that could afford him a place to stay in this bustling urbanica.

Give it a little time, and I think Mr. Pallie would have a good start in his own 2.0.

The World We Knew Ended in 2012

It wasn’t by some extinction-class event that would wipe out the entire race off of the face of the earth. It wasn’t by the arrival of aliens in a hostile takeover of the planet. It wasn’t a gamma burst from a nearby dying star. It wasn’t the world reforming itself in a matter of days with John Cusack driving a limo. No, it was much more subtle than advertised.

Our worlds, our lives, have changed someone drastically in a matter of months since the start of the year 2013. A lot of people I know are facing  lives that they didn’t think they’d be having, both good or bad or both depending on your perception of it.

First off, there’s me. For two years, I’ve been struggling with my thesis project and it was the only thing that I’ve known to do and fail for a good 2 years of my relatively short existence on this earth. Now, I’m a few steps short of marching up the stage and getting my diploma. I’m finally working without the shackles of academic life bearing down on me and costing me more than I can give. I’m done with living as an undergraduate student and have now, almost instantaneously, transitioned to the life of a bachelor juggling a day job and a side contract to keep a positive flow of cash. It’s been… strange.

Then, there the friends of mine. At the start of the year, a friend of mine and his partner for two years have split up, almost out of the blue but it did build up fairly slowly to that point. He had bouts of depression, signs of longing, and then eventually, reasonably recovered from it all. It was good that he had a hobby and a fair number of clients that kept him busy. Still, that didn’t stop him from nearly shedding a tear at the instance of a John Mayer break-up song. He didn’t really see this coming. Today, he’s living the bachelor life. Content to deal with his clients and his hobbies. Though we occasionally chat on facebook, I barely see him around anymore.

There’s Mr. Pallie. Who, as you have known by now, is living his own new beginnings. Having lost his own partner early this year and then his own company collapses. I’m surprised he’s still standing. Battered, but standing.

Then there’s the family. Mom, who has been struggling for a job that would actually match her qualifications for over 9 years now, has finally gotten a job with the Department of Education.

Then there’s two more of whom my relation with them is to be kept a secret for now for their anonymity. One recently resigned from a position she’s held for nearly 7 years. Now, for the first time in her life, she’s made to apply for jobs, instead of being headhunted by HR. The other, is on her way to a new company and is starting real soon.

So there. The world DID end last year. My aunt said that this year would be the year of new beginnings, of a new life, and of great change. It would seem that her source was right about that. Maybe the doomsday prophets were right about that part that the world will change.

It’s still may. There’s a good half of the year left for more things to happen. I’m curious as to what will happen and where the winds and waves would take us travelers of time.

Hi, I’m Lou and this is the end of Day 7.

Lack of sleep, me being a workaholic(??), nothing much to say. Welcome to my Monday.

It could be from the lack of proper sleep or that I’m a little bit too tired to think properly, or it also be Monday.

It’s not that I hate the day. It’s just that I’ve barely slept enough during the past week. I work the whole 11-hour working day almost non-stop. When I get home, I barely have enough time to complete a blog post and review everything that the glorious wisdom and stupidity the internet has to offer.

I’ve been thinking about this fact for a while now. When I get to work in at around 9:30am, the first thing I want to do is grab shots and start working. The thing is, I don’t really stop unless I just finished a series of shots. I have to be invited twice to get me off of my workstation and go for a break. I am the least person any one of my closest friends would think of as a workaholic person. I am just steamrolling it. When I get up to momentum, I just don’t want to stop. I find the subtle victory lap every time I finish doing a task very inviting.

My body doesn’t seem to agree with me. I’ve been forcing myself to get up really early and end up going home really late at night for 6 days straight every week. Admittedly, it does get tiring. I’ve already snatched a few Zs in work today. I don’t normally fall asleep at work, but I’ve had very little sleep the previous night that I just couldn’t help it.

I was done with my shot anyway, and I’m on downtime. There were no shots for me.

Even if I have the option to come in just a little bit late in the morning, I opt not to take it. I wanted to be done with my shots so I can take on more shots.

Oh and before you call me an alcoholic, no, these are different shots. These are video clips of the TV series that pass through our little company everyday. I am not and do not wish to be a drunkard.

Work is fun; a little too fun maybe that I forget to rest. I always feel tired when I get home but I feel satisfied… very satisfied.

There’s not much to say today. I’ve had no deep thoughts that I’d wish to share to you tonight. It was a fairly dull day today. It is, after all, Monday.

I’m actually very sleepy right now. My apologies to those who had wished that I’d write a little more, though I doubt anyone actually reads through these long passages of seemingly meaningless text. If you do, though, thank you.

Hi, I’m Lou, and this is the end of Day 5.

On the end of the first weekend, I had a proper mojito, gone back to old and gold habits, and my friend, Pallie, bought a one way ticket to a town he can’t navigate.

My Name is Detective Mojito

Roughly four or five years ago, I created this character named “Detective Mojito” who was a Mexican detective trying to uncover the motives behind the abduction of one of the city’s citizens. I did it with a ridiculous stereotypical Mexican accent and a very wonky voice that made everyone else rehearsing their lines for the play enjoy the practice sessions.

It was all well and good up until the point where my group mates can’t actually remember my real name. When I told them my real name, they kept on forgetting it or remembering someone else. I’ve used up all of my usual aliases but they have all been used in their own circle of friends, hence, they can’t refer to me as any of them. So they called me Mojito for a good 4 years. Some have already known my real name but have preferred to call me by that alias simply because it fit and it got stuck in their heads.

You would think that I actually knew what a Mojito is, but no, I didn’t. It was only about a year later after they started calling me Mojito that I started to wonder what the hell it was.

So, I googled it. Apparently, it was not Mexican at all. It wasn’t even a person’s name. It was a Cuban clear cocktail.

I got curious. I could tell from the ingredients (mint, lemons, and some clear alcohol that I can’t currently remember, gin maybe?) that it would be a good drink. A friend brought a bottle of mojito that he had bought from a 7Eleven branch en route to a friend’s birthday. I had a sip of it, and it wasn’t that good.

Just this evening, when we went out for a few drinks, I asked for the menu while I told my friends that I’m not drinking beer. Right at the bottom of the list, I saw it. A bartender concocted Mojito. So I went and ordered one for myself. It was soooo good. It had all the ingredients any bartender should know a mojito has. Quite the enjoyable drink.

If any of you find a bottle of Mojito that’s ready made… don’t. Look up the recipe for it and make the real cocktail. I swear, it trumps the hell out of that bottled fake.

Reconnecting to a Past Self

Onto a semi-spiritual discussion, I’ve recently gone back to the habit of attending regular Sunday masses with my aunt. It’s The Feast by the Light of Jesus Ministry. They have a mass first, and then a praise, worship and talk session immediately after the mass.

Prior to that, I had difficulties attending Sunday mass for a whole slew of reasons which ranged from simply being too tired on sunday to being impossibly busy. As a Catholic, I have my religious duties to tend to.

I enjoyed the sessions that immediately followed the mass. They give me a really good perspective and introduce a whole new way of thinking about life’s problems and that sort.

I’ve been attending quite a few sessions on and off now. We’ve recently moved to the 3:30pm schedule because, for one, I was just so hard to wake in the morning, and second, we personally found the afternoon speaker more entertaining and more relatable to.

These sessions have been a good way of realigning myself with my chosen spirituality.

Apart from that, well, there’s my work. I am a compositor at a local post production facility across the street of a major broadcasting company. I do good work there and I try to finish my shots as quickly as possible. The turnarounds are crazy, sure, but we manage.

Before I was locking myself up to do my constantly failing thesis, I had been a great fan of anything CG. I had learned the techniques required to put a CG object and make it look so damn invisible you’d think it was really there in the shot. When thesis came and took a lot of my time and occupied my mind to its very edges, I couldn’t continue my personal learning time on the subject.

Now that I’m done, however, I have the luxury of doing both things that only my past self has had the privilege to keep up with, my religious duties and my CG technical mastery. I’m slowly trying to rebuild myself up from that depressing, constantly failing, state of mind I had.

It’s looking to be a happy time.

One Way Ticket for Mr. Pallie

So, here’s a story that is only partly fictional due to the fact that some details had to be redacted to protect the identity of Mr. Pallie.

Mr. Pallie is a friend of mine who had just recently bought and used a one-way ticket off his home town in search for new beginnings in a land of promises, hopes, dreams, and depression and self-immolation. He had gone to that place to escape his current predicaments that are tying him down and keeping him on a very badly shortened leash from his life’s progression.

Issues are haunting this poor man and today, he show’s up in a concrete jungle with only two small bags and no place to sleep for the night. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this story has the early signs of a lovely tale chasing a dream but eventually spiraling downward into being homeless and depressed. Sure looks like it from Mr. Pallie’s current status.

Todd (not his real name) had met up with Mr. Pallie just to play catch up. He soon learns of the predicament of Mr. Pallie and the very pressing issue of finding a job and a place to stay. He finds out that Mr. Pallie had been sleeping on a different couch of a different host every night since his arrival.

Todd made a few quick calls to associates of his to see if he could leverage any of his connections to find a place and work for Mr. Pallie, but alas even his best cards couldn’t play against the odds and the troubles that stacked up on Mr. Pallie.

Mr. Pallie had contacts of his own and had already arranged to sleep on another person’s couch for tonight. He was to make his way through the concrete jungle with very few things to navigate it with.

Luckily, Mr. Pallie had friends who were from a local chapter of a group he had been in. They, along with Todd had accompanied Mr. Pallie to his temporary settlement.

They walked for an hour and a half, getting lost twice and passing the same street three times due to poorly set directions. After a very long and tiring walk, Mr. Pallie, his friends, and Todd had reached the high-rise condo and meet the host where tonight’s couch awaits for Mr. Pallie.

He bids his farewell to his colleagues as the group slowly separated and went on to their separate ways home.

Todd has only just gotten home.

Mr. Pallie, a man haunted by his demons even after his exile from his home town, living night after night from couch to couch. Tonight he can rest up, but as for tomorrow, who’s couch is it?

-lou

On tonight’s post of Life 2.0, I get called an emo because of my last post, I could have been rich, and I’m running out of things to wear

“Emo”?

So in my last post which introduced the whole concept of the Life 2.0 Posts, my friend told me he hated it and it was me going all emo. Wait… what? The first thing I hear in the morning is someone’s inconsiderate and ignorant response to my post. Sure, I can’t please everyone, but do you have to be so crude about it? I swear, some people are just too bored with their lives.

Before I go off on a typing spree of my own unintelligible arguments, I’d like to say that these posts are meant for practice writing. I’ve already expressed my intent to do so in the last post and in status messages before that. So if you find these posts uninteresting, you have every right to just ignore theses posts. I’d like to say that I am not writing for your amusement exclusively.

Them Clothes, They Be Hidin’

So I just found out that the usual laundry service I take is currently not accepting any wash loads because their only washing machine broke down. Add to that that their rep here in the dorm hasn’t been here for 10 days before the other day. I have gone through all my proper “going out” clothes. I just used my last shirt today. I might do my own laundry tomorrow morning so that I’d have something to wear to church and work on Monday. I’ve already washed some socks so that I would manage not to stink my feet.

If Only It Was Real Money

There are less than a handful of people who know me that actually know that I’ve been expressing great interest in things dealing with business and investments. Last year, I picked up a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad right of the shelves of Powerbooks (or was it Fully Booked?). Since then, I’ve been reading up on the cashflow quadrants, stock investments, and real estate. I’ve also been playing an online version of Cashflow 101 and eventually graduated on to Cashflow 202. I’ve never gone bankrupt in any game ever.

Thinking that I had the makings of a hotshot, I decided to try my hand at playing with real stock using Investopedia’s Stock Simulator. It lets me “buy and sell” real world stock at real market prices so that I could get a feel for what the real stock market is like. It was surely different from the Cashflow 202, let alone the Cashflow 101, stock markets. So, I jumped in.

We were issued $10,000 as starting balance to use for buying the stocks. We send in our orders, and then we get the stock approximately 15 minutes later. I really had no idea of what I was doing. It was so alien to me that I bought stocks for a high price without call or put options on it. After a spree of “hoping” the pricey stock would go up, I soon had a balance that was spiraling down with the stock in my portfolio. So I decided to quit.

A year later, I reopened my account to find that I lost around $300 from that series of bad calls. This time, it was different. I’ve read up on stock trading, stock picking, trend following, and technical and fundamental analysis of the stock. I did so well that the $300+ losses I incurred over the year were regained all in two trading days, plus extra!

So yeah, in two days, I made $450 in gains. My current portfolio is now somewhere around $10,021. I don’t have crystal ball, but I have hints that the stocks I bought would rise up to the higher ends of their trading prices in the coming months. The other half of my portfolio, is made up of value stock; stocks that I could make a quick buck off of from trading them.

Sadly, all of this is with fictional wealth. It was only a simulator, but I have high hopes that when I do step into the real arena of traders, I would fair pretty well. If only it were real money that I made in 2 days, eh? Let’s see how far I could go with the initial balance I just regained.

Hi, I’m Lou, and this is Day 3.

Life 2.0, so what is it and what are the days in it?

This, ladies and gentlemen of the internet community, is my journey through phase 2 of life: Done With School.That part of life when you are, for the first time, not required to attend school. It’s that part of life when you leave the comfort and safety of an educational institution and step out onto the real world with nothing holding you back and nothing keeping you in your place.

Though I haven’t graduated yet officially, I have already started the life of a bachelor’s degree holder. That means I went out and found employment. I’ll also be tapering off the allowance in a few months time until eventually I am fully independent of external financials.

So, Day 2. Why is it already Day 2? Where’s Day 1?

Well, I’ve already posted Day 1 yesterday. Approximately 23 hours ago. It was only after my posting it as “Day 1” that I thought to call the next few posts as Life 2.0, the current phase I am on.

What happened on day 2? Almost an entire day of Rotoscoping.

For those of you who cannot relate to what this something something scoping word, here’s the briefest explanation I could shoot out of my head at the moment: Rotoscoping is the act of masking out parts of the footage to hide certain unwanted items or to substitute them with something else.

So there. That’s what I’ve been doing the entire day. I’ve been taking out the wires on live action footage while working on it without a readily given background plate (something you put behind the rotoscoped images to hide the fact that certain parts have been omitted). I had to create my own from different time frames in the footage. For added difficulty, I had a shot wherein the cable, white as hell, crosses over the actor’s dark brown pants. There was no way to Roto that one out. I had to export the frames and painted them away. After that, I was asked to help out in one of the shots that needed to be rotoscoped for easier color correction.

I was irked that I was outputting fairly substandard rotoscoping; that means that I wasn’t easily outputting cleanly separated elements from the footage. It had to recheck it three times to get it right. I didn’t like the fact that I keep overlooking small details that should have been included in the mask, but there they are. I learned to stay with my patience and cleanly mask out the shot elements so that, in the long run, I wouldn’t have to be receiving revision orders on bad rotoscopes and the like.

It was fun though. I’m stretched in a direction I am comfortable with. I really wanted to learn visual effects in college but I went off course by the many distractions of my degree program in school. Still, I managed fairly well, though not in the calibre I wished I was at. Time will have its course and I will learn and hone my skills. I apparently lacked mileage, so here I am, doing my paces on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, I bid my farewells and left for the train station. Going home, I had to take two trains. When I got to the second train, it was already closed for the night. I took a jeepney, it was not much of a fuss. It was actually cheaper too. I got back to the dorm and fired up my good old Flagship, and here I am narrating to you the summary of events of my day today.

So what’s next on this blog?
I honestly can’t say. Plus, with the jinx on me, I don’t think telling everyone about everything I do is a good idea at this point in time. I’ll spill whenever I think it would help.

Getting Back to Writing

I’m happy that today’s post is almost twice as long as the last one. I hope that this keeps up. I need to get back in touch with my childhood as a writer. It has been left in the closet for too long.

Hi, I’m Lou and this… was Day 2.

I have noticed that I have the ability to jinx myself by telling people my plans about something. I find it hard NOT to share them with others, but somehow, after telling people about them I would soon run out of enthusiasm. I do not know exactly how this occurs, but I find it hard to stick to a goal I’ve told everyone about. Maybe if I would just hint at the plans and keep it to myself? Maybe keep it on a need to know basis so that it doesn’t get spoiled too much.

In other irrelevant news, I’ve just started work today. Well… not TODAY today, but May 2nd. I started as a compositor for the company. I did a few shots for a show that, I think, was to be aired that very night. Since the crew  had done the majority of the workload before I started out, there wasn’t much action left for me in the first day. Still, it was a good day. I’ve actually missed doing something productive. Adding to that, I am in a field I am most comfortable working around with. It’s a nice place to be in. Sure there’s no internet in the office, but then again it helped me not slack off between shots on my first day. I’m coming in earlier tomorrow as per boss’s request because there’s a boatload of things to do for the next batch.

I hope I finish early ahead. I have my Saturdays and Wednesdays on a very regular schedule. I need to finish my shots real quick so that I can tend to other business matters.

Hi I’m Lou, and this is the end of Day 1.