Wednesday Snapshot: Mr Stranger

Posted by ai on Feb 8, 2012 in romance yam yam | 2 comments

mall of asia

If you really want to know about the rest of the story, you’ll have to sit with me over a cup of coffee.

As for the face of Mr Stranger, here he is.

road trip, the Comm Arts way

Posted by ai on Feb 6, 2012 in ai's TRAVEL GALORE, Lakwatcha! | 15 comments

Million thanks to the people who took some of their precious time reading, sharing, blogging, re-blogging, tweeting, google plus-ing (whut?), and commenting on my article published in Philippine Daily Inquirer‘s Young Blood last week.

Many personal messages surprised and touched me. Friends told me that it was trending in FB, it’s the top most read article in Inquirer.net last week, and (the boyfriend said) my blogsite reached 2.7 million hits. I appreciate them all. Thank you.

One of my initial reactions was: Wow, many people still read. Cool! Some wanted to meet us in person, and some were inspired to write, to travel, to smile, and to blog. Some even joked about riding buses more often.

But, since I’m a shy person, let me divert your attention to more interesting people than me. My Comm Arts friends.

Communication Arts is usually the butt end of jokes in the university because according to others,

1. we don’t have higher Math/Science subjects

2. we’re “just” doing theater, our curriculum has nothing in it but general education courses

3. and we are “maaarte” (help me with the English term for this… finicky? girly? flirty?).

I just shrug these off and the hundred associations to “Comm Arts” because while others make a fuss about us, we rock and roll.

jay

jay steering the wheel of a simulated ship for seamen training in quezon

Let me introduce you to two awesome Comm Arts graduates whom I’ve worked with since college days: Kei and Jay. The three of us belong to the same batch, 2001, and from neighboring towns in Laguna. Later on, we did Lakwatcha.

Jay is a game designer at Makati based Anino Games. He works with a team who conceptualizes, designs, and tests games for PC, mobile phones, and other devices. Since his is a job that needs a non-stop source of creativity, I am hands down to Jay’s storytelling powers and designs. To top it all, he and his teammates recently won Manila Game Jam 2012!

kei and early morning sunshine at sariaya quezon

kei

Now, Prof Kei.

She graduated magna cum laude. (LOL she doesn’t like being introduced this way). She finished MA Media Studies (Film) in UP Diliman and acclaimed film critic Roland Tolentino is her thesis adviser.

This month, she heads a film festival called “Pelikultura.” Last year’s festival appeared to be successful and I’m sure this year’s will be, too.

road trip

Last December the three of us met in Santa Rosa, Laguna to have our first unplanned Laguna-Quezon-Batangas road trip with Jay driving a van. You can check out the long adventure story at his website (thesalmonellawars.blogspot.com), but if it were a story, the premise could’ve been:

I was published in Young Blood!

Posted by ai on Jan 31, 2012 in romance yam yam, UNADULTERATED narci FILES | 95 comments

Today’s a lovely day. I’m back at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquarters in Los Baños to start another issue of Rice Today. IRRI is just beside the UPLB campus, so walking around the university brings me back to my golden days of 2001 when I was a freshman. I felt like a student again walking with young people most of whom carry nothing but a notebook, and perhaps a ballpen in one pocket. A typical college student. Watching the students walk to their buildings, I was thinking lots of things but I’ll blog about this next time because I need to work now…but this day started lovely as some friends tagged me in an FB post. I was published in Inquirer’s Young Blood! Yehey!

Philippine gov’t explains why there’s no need to increase minimum wage

Posted by ai on Jan 29, 2012 in excuse my SIDE COMMENTS | 6 comments

What an ugly, mortifying news this is:

THE country’s daily minimum wage is one of the highest in the region, based on the amount of rice, the staple food of Filipinos, it can buy.

The National Statistics Coordination Board’s newly released “Sexy Statistics” showed that last year, the daily minimum wages in the Philippines and Thailand could buy the most rice, compared to the daily minimum wages in other Asean member.

….

Virola said that the data could also be used as an argument against increasing minimum wage. He said this is why the NSCB releases these kinds of statistics to contribute to government policy-making and planning.

“Based on these data, there is no need to increase minimum wage in the Philippines. But we all know that setting minimum wage setting is not as simple and we also need to take other factors into consideration,” Virola said.

Excuse me, National Statistics Coordination Board, but, seriously? Let’s not raise the minimum wage because Filipinos can buy more rice than other Southeast Asian countries can? With a minimum daily wage of a little over P200.00, sure we can buy more rice… and that’s it, the 200 pesos can buy rice only, no more no less.

2012 may be a year of success, says the Dragon

Posted by ai on Jan 23, 2012 in astrology | 0 comments

The 28 and 40 year old Rats can look forward to some easy successes and unexpected good news.

Happy Chinese New Year! What I love about this celebration is the astrology. Like many people, I take these predictions as a suggestion or possibility and not the end of the road fate for me. This Year of the Water Dragon, those born in the year of the Rat seem to have a great time of their life. Now you’re talking, stars.

Feng Shui 2012 Forecast for Rat

The lunar years of the Rat are 1912, 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996 and 2008. People born in these years will be blessed with the characteristics of having a strong sense of leadership, ability to overcome obstacles, and be ambitious in whatever you undertake. [You] are creative, imaginative, resourceful and a problem solver. However, these positive traits are often the causes of more negative ones, such as selfishness, ruthless spending of money, short temperament and backstabbing. Despite this, those with the Rat as their Chinese Zodiac are very loyal and affectionate to the people they hold dear to them. The suggested professions for those born in the years of the Rat are writer, publicist, critic and sales manager.