~

The company placed an ad weeks ago looking for new programmers and graphic designers. This morning, I had to interview an applicant who was both deaf and mute. There's a first time for everything indeed. He passed his exams all right, save for the one I made specifically to detect whether the applicant has solid technical grasp on graphics. Granted, no one has passed that one yet.

During the first few minutes of the interview, we had to write down our conversations and do some quick nods and lip-reading. My knowledge of single-handed and two-handed basic sign language alphabet came in handy when he didn't want to write down names and tech acronyms. He asked where I learned it and I told him it was a necessity in highschool - stealth communications during periodic exams. I eventually got tired of writing and signing so I went to get my PDA and keyboard so we could just type everything which was a lot faster.

He was impressive enough. His resume shows he won two major NCR awards for webpage development. That proves he did a lot of self-studying.

Not that I'd know but perhaps he's also rather cute as proven by the ogling ladies looking at him as he took the hands-on exam.

"Well, at least you can shout 'ang cute mo' at his back and he won't hear a thing", I told one girl.

I don't know if we'll hire him or if he's got a place here though. He’ll sure be handy for those stubborn clients who keep on requesting one of our designers be sent to their office to talk about their user interfaces.

--

~

The problem I have with vampire-themed movies like Underworld and Blade is that it seems like they both want to change what Anne Rice had written and established about vampires for about 2 decades now. Of course there are other authors who wrote about the bloodsuckers but all were consistent with what society had always thought about vampires.

With Blade and Underworld, it seems like the producers want the species to evolve into what the vampires of the future would be. Might be only me but if vampires can suddenly day-walk, and no longer have fangs etc. then they'll loose their "coolness" factor.

Vampires have always been the "coolest" among folklore freak of natures. Among these would be werewolves, trolls, witches, dwarves etc. But everyone wants to be the vampire. This generation may blame it to the movie that casted the beautiful guys Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater and Tom Cruise. Every guy wanted to be like them and every girl wanted them. From that movie on, all vamps were dashing, smooth-talking and dangerously-charming characters.

I did love Underworld Evolution anyway. Any movie that has Kate Beckinsale on the lead cast is worth watching. I've never crushed on a Hollywood star the way I have with Kate Beckinsale. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that she's somewhat type-casted for gothic-esque roles lately but she does fit the characters she plays. She’s a beauty to watch. What male doesn't fantasize about a beautiful lady in leather suits and gothic weapons ready for a bit of S&M? Well, maybe take out the S&M part because I'm definitely not into it.

--

~

I don’t want to be accused of being un-patriotic so yes, I am happy Pacquiao won his rematch against Morales. Everywhere today, people were talking about the boxing match and how Morales got knocked-out (actually, it’s a TKO).

It’s interesting to observe that almost all our political roster was in Las Vegas for the bout. Five or eight congressmen were there. Mayor Lito Atienza was there, our governors were there our celebrity-politicians were there.

“Wow, who’s running the country??” I asked Princess Leah.

Now would be a bright time to plan terrorist attacks because even the President is busy watching the satellite broadcast.

But no, there were no attacks. Actually there were no murders or any form of crime committed at all yesterday. My officemate has deduced that even the snatchers took the day off to watch Pacquiao’s match.

It’s nice to know that even just for a single day, the Filipino people agreed on one thing, prayed for one goal, cheered for one victory.

--

-

Life is what happens when you're too busy planning something else.

It's interesting that I was just writing about being busy with my reports and planning milestones for my department for 2006 and here comes an offer for a career move and I suddenly have to leave my team. Well, so much for setting goals.

I think it's about time I step out of my comfort zone anyway. Also, with me leaving my post, someone from my team can have a chance of being the department manager. It's just sad to think that after I've polished the systems and set up smooth procedures with help, of course, from my very talented staff, I have to relinquish the reins and move on to another department.

Maybe the bosses did find my work on the production department a success they want me to do the same for another department. Ha! Or maybe they just don't know what they're thinking giving me a new team to manage. Truth is, no leader could have done much good without the cooperation of the team. I am just blessed enough to be given a team of very creative people who believed not only in me but also with the visions of the company.

I'm still not that ready to give away my post to someone else but it's also exciting knowing that the person taking over my position is a great friend and also very much talented. I just know for sure we will be great working side by side.

If you remember I made an entry just before 2005 ended that when a door closes, a new door opens. For me, the new open door leads to a rather unchartered territory that's definitely out of my comfort zone but with it comes a promise of very great returns. Good luck to all of us and blessed be.

--

~

If you still don’t believe that Lei’s Auto-graphics and Body-kits can do miracles then here’s another pimped up ride.





This time, it’s a 2-door Charade that’s being sold by someone I know. I had to take apart an Impreza for this project and replaced the body-kits on the Charade.


Of course we needed some carbon fiber for the hood and the scoop and we got StreetGlow to sponsor our lights and underglow. Too bad it isn’t night time.


Thanks also to Club Old-School Manila for our body paint and tints. The graphics – that’s all me baby!

--

~

It’s been a tough 2 weeks since the new year started. We’ve been crunching numbers, working overtime doing year-end reports and planning our 2006 milestones. It’s been a good year apparently and we’ve been expanding quite fast. We will now be opening up a China branch since our Cebu branch is already stable. But who’s interested in work stuff, anyway?

I am sorry if http://www.thestorycircle.net/ needed to be put down temporarily because we’re doing an overhaul on our magic store. I’ve been going around collating new instructional videos and planning it with my new website maintenance partner. I obviously can no longer maintain the site alone.

My Wiccan friends will own the Story Circle forums from now on. The Insomniac will, however, be sharing some insights and information regarding the wonderful and whimsical world of Wicca on this blog.

There have been so much I’ve been thinking of writing about but since they’re just too many, I can’t decide which to start with. I’ll let the first month storm of workload settle for now and hopefully I can gather my thoughts better. For the meantime, I’ll post in some previously written entries…

(To be continued)

--

~

I forgot to mention that the previous post was to simply promote my www.thestorycircle.net. That's my magic repository and shop site which is 3 years old now. Anyway, we teach magic and sell magic instructional videos on the site. Feel free to visit the magic store and download some preview magic.
--

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, was supposed to open up in theaters here last December but due to the rather scandalous Metro Manila Film Festival, all foreign films were delayed for about 1 to 2 weeks.

While epic battle scenes on local movies are just improving, directors ought to pay more attention to Narnia. I don't get it why our local directors just love shooting battle scenes two storeys from the ground. If they are aiming to get some perspective and an illusion of grandeur and the mass of armies fighting, that certainly is not the way to go. The scenes should be shot on a somewhat "worm's-eye-view" perspective as did Peter Jackson with Lord of The Rings.

Anyway, Narnia is simply magical. It is interesting though that The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the second book in the Narnia series. Made us think about what the first book was about or whether Narnia will spawn sequels because there are seven books in the series. It was a long movie for kids knowing they only have an attention span of 5 seconds. I guess it had to be as long as it is so it's consistent with the book. Princess Leah also told me that the book to movie adaptation of the scripts were almost seamless.

There are some holes in this movie that I don't mind letting past. For one, Peter is an awfully skilled swordsman for a kid who just came into Narnia. He couldn't even strike a wolf willingly to save his life when he first began to hold the weapon. Ok, maybe the sword is magical. It pro'ly comes with a "skillset" package for anyone who wields it. Like the bearer will automatically sort-of level-up. The final battle scene could've been rendered with darker hues so as to imply hopelessness like the battle at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers but this is a children's movie after all. It was just too sunny for me. I never even thought that the good guys can loose the battle. Also the average medieval amour ads about 60 to 80 lbs of additional weight to the body. I'm surprised that the kids are still able to even raise their weapons. Perhaps they were able to harness titanium alloy already. You know, like the badminton racquets?

Nevertheless, I just loved this movie. This was the sort of fantasy you'd like to involve your kids with as I mentioned in my last post. Not that I'd like to encourage kids to falsely believe in fantasies but it's about getting their creative juices to start flowing. One of the things I'm certain of in life is that the more creative a person is, regardless of career industry, that person is bound to do well.

You know what they say - "Libre lang ang mangarap".

--

~

The latest season of Charmed is now showing on Star World. Taking a page from the highly successful Desperate Housewives, the second episode’s storyline was narrated in the background by Phoebe. Kinda like a cross between Desperate Housewives and Carrie Bradshaw. The charmed sister their deaths in the last season so I didn’t really expect they’d still come up with a new season.

Ok, Charmed isn’t the best series around. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer is far superior in terms of believability and plots. So why do we even bother watching Charmed? It may be just because of tradition (because it was a novel series when it first aired) and my affinity to magic.

When I was I think in grade 5, my father took me to watch David Copperfield at the CCP. Needless to say, I was amazed and I was inspired to believe magic is real. When I started getting regular allowance when I reached grade 6, I went on to collecting simple magic tricks that you may have seen being sold in the malls. I was doing the classic cups and balls routines, the gimmicked cards etc. and it was real fun.

Not much has been added on my magic collection back in High School and College until David Blaine came about. Virtually unknown in the magic industry, Blaine pushed the limits of “close-up” magic when he took his conjuring to the streets. Thus, born another genre of magic – Street Magic. To date, there are a few popular genres in the industry of magic: Stage magic or illusions (usually the big ones performed by the Pen Dragons, Houdini, Jeff McBride and Copperfield), close-up magic (magic using a table for presentation as popularized by Ed Marlo, Daryl, Dai Vernon), bizaarist magic (the freaky kind, sometimes includes hypnotism, séances etc. as popularized by Criss Angel) and street magic (having that close-up and impromptu effect as popularized by Erik Mana, Brad Christian and of course Blaine).

As with any hobby, magic is an expensive one. That’s why I couldn’t get past the kid-stuff tricks when I was in school but when I started earning my own dough, my resources to learning magic was virtually limitless. Thanks to Blaine, there were now real-world applications to the sleights I learned when I was young – the hindu shuffle, the overhand shuffle, the double lifts, the triple cuts, the breaks, the biddle grips, the colour changes and transpositions.

I could now make cards appear stuck on windows – and on the other side even, I could warp cards, I could make anybody separate the red and black cards while the cards are faced down, I could change cards while they are held onto by any spectator and I could cheat my way through card games. Oh, we learned to levitate too!

Founder of the Ellusionist shop and magic community Brad Christian had his epiphany when he performed a simple trick for a kid at a supermarket. The little girl was amazed and Brad realized that every father in the world should be able to amaze their kids the way he did. He called up friend and colleague, David Blaine and asked for rights to publish his effects to people. Thus born Ellusionist – wherein membership is one of the most sought after in the street magic industry.

Magic, for me, is real. Whether it’s an illusion or close-up conjuring or even Wiccan, the effect it brings to people is real. It symbolizes belief in the impossible, encourages dreams and gives inspiration. Wouldn’t you want your children to believe in magic, in faeries, in Peter Pan and maybe even Middle Earth? I’m pretty sure we all did when we were growing up.

--

~

Count your garden by the flowers,
Never by the leaves that fall.
Count your days by golden hours,
Don't remember clouds at all . . .
Count your nights by stars, not shadows,
Count your life with smiles, not tears.
And all throughout your lifetime,
Count your age by friends, not years.

Anon.

--

Yet another poem that's fit for the new year. Isn't it a beauty?
This poem, which most of you must've read somewhere - like a wall decor or poster card, is a much requested prose on one of the literature forums I membered in (I try to play good samaritan and research for the lines of the requests there).


This one is much better than to simply say "Count your blessings instead of sheep."

--

~

If movies were to be compared with roller coaster rides, Ako Legal Wife would have to be a Caterpillar – an enjoyable up and down ride with no big loops and vomit-inducing drops. That seems to be the template of a good Philippine comedy-movie lately with films like American Adobo and Jologs, the Movie. Granted, Legal Wife and the movies I mentioned were hilarious as hell, but there’s just no plot to string the story together. No conflicts, no climaxes, nothing much to hit heart. They’re not even what you can call a “feel good movie”.

What’s wrong with our writers today? Tito, Vic and Joey were able to pull of more dramatic comedies during their time. I mean, writers of Legal Wife and American Adobo are already there with a genuinely fun idea and an interesting concept but why can’t they push themselves just a little further to come up with an ending that hits hard? They’ve already come up with ridiculous scenarios and impossible situations for their movies but regrettably, without that climax and ending, the whole thing is forgettable.

By the way, as all of you have known by now, Zsa Zsa Padilla won Best Actress and Marvin Agustin won Best Actor in the recently concluded Metro Manila Film Festival. I could take Zsa Zsa’s winning but Marvin Agustin? Remember I just did a review for Kutob? Marvin was the killer – the predictable, over-acting psychopath. Come on, in Hollywood, the actors that get psycho roles are those that have what they call “screen presence”. Think Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Bacon, Ralph Fienes and Robin Willams. They induce fear even if they’re asleep.

In Kutob, the character Marvin Agustin plays kills Bing Loyzaga. That’s when we realize that the movie is fiction. We know that in real-life Bing Loyzaga’s villainous on-screen presence can eat up any actor’s aura just by batting an eye-lash.

--

~

The last post was written in real-time as random thoughts came pouring into the Insomniac’s mind hence, the incoherent sentences and redundancy. But I hope it sent the message.


The topic of how a parent can affect a child’s decision-making in life led me to realize that parenthood is an unfair gig.


The way I see it, we can be any of the three types of parents: the strict, the lax and the balanced. Let’s see the pros and cons.There are the strict parents who seem to have figured it all out for their children – the school, the course, the company to work for. They also implement strict house rules and will push their children to their limits to maintain that honor list status. However, as popularized on TV, this breeds rebelliousness on the children’s part. Young ladies are known to get themselves pregnant out of spite for their parents. Men get simply abusive and / or psychotic.


There are also the lax parents. Parents who don’t set curfew hours and let their children make their own decisions and mistakes. They know that the more mistakes, the more they learn. This however opens up the growing child to bad company, trying out alternative recreation such as weed, too much booze and such vices. If the channel of communication between children and parent isn’t that open, there’s a possibility the parents will be clueless about their kids’ R and R.


The “balanced” parent is somewhat an urban legend in society. They are the “ulirang” ama at ina. But what exactly are they like? Most of the time, we only label parents as “uliran” or ideal if their children grow up being responsible and honest individuals because if the kid is pretty fucked up, there must be something wrong with the parenting.


Not necessarily. Nasa tao yan (can anybody directly translate that into English?). Because in reality, there are individuals who turn out to be good persons irregardless of what parents they have. I think it’s mostly influenced by company - The Good and Bad influences that eventually define a person.


That’s how it’s unfair. It seems like no matter what type of parent you try to be, your child can end up in prison or in congress (which in this country, is worse than theft or murder even). We can only pray that our children-to-be will not come across bad company as they grow up.


Here’s something to think about: When we become parents, will we bring up our kid the way our parents did? Or will we go on a completely different direction?

--

~

Finally, I got a copy of Sophie Kinsella’s Can you Keep a Secret? and thank God for e-books, I can bring it anywhere, anytime on my pda or my phone. I’ve just started it and already I can say it’s as hilarious as the Shopaholic Series. Anyway, it’s about this lady who hasn’t quite found her career path yet. Here’s a quick plot from Amazon:

• Things are suddenly starting to look up for the hapless but optimistic Emma Corrigan. She has kept her job at Panther Cola for nearly a year, has the perfect boyfriend and hopes for a promotion to marketing executive should her first opportunity to strut her stuff and land a business deal be successful. Unfortunately, things don't go quite as planned, and on her unusually turbulent return flight from a disappointing client meeting, in a terrified state, she confesses her innermost secrets to the good-looking stranger sitting beside her. When she shows up at work the next morning, she is horrified to discover that her mystery man is none other than the revered and brilliant Jack Harper, American CEO of Panther Cola, on a weeklong visit to the company's U.K. branch. Thus begins a series of chaotic, emotionally exhausting and funny episodes that thrust Emma, with her workaholic best friend, Lissy, and their awful flat mate Jemima, into a world of fairy tales, secrets and deceit.

It’s ironic that Kinsella’s books are always best-sellers even if her main heroine is usually the annoying, unempowered, doesn’t-know-what-she-wants-in-life-yet woman. But it makes sense, I guess, because the truth is a lot of women (and men) are still like that in real life. When I read the reviews from the Shopaholic series, a lot of people were really annoyed and even hated Becky Bloomwood, the main character. But even so, at the end of their reviews, they still loved the book. Simply, because it’s sooo relatable.

--

It made me think of the reasons why some people, even at the age of 25 above still don’t know where to go in life. One prominent factor I can point at is how they were brought up by their parents. More specifically how the parents dictate what they think is good for their children. You know the kid is going to get screwed up in college if it’s the parents who chose which course the kid will take.

I think, in real life, it’s not about the degree that will take you to your dreams anyway. Is there an actual college course for website designing? Jewelry making? Car graphics and body kit enhancements? Not all successful photographers were Fine Arts students in college to begin with. A friend of Princess Leah’s who’s also a Physical Therapy graduate isn’t doing anything related to her course but her job allows her to travel all around Asia! Let’s not bring Bill Gates in.

Diskarte yan sa buhay. How do you say that in English? But anyway, I believe it’s really about knowing what you want from the start even though if square one won’t pay any money. A photographer’s assistant, for example, isn’t paid anything. But that’s where our famous photographer clients started out from.

(To be continued)
--

By the way, Hollywood is making a movie adaptation for Can You Keep A Secret starring Kate Hudson. Production is still ongoing.

--

~
It was a very busy day and all I’ve managed to write was an update for the e-book list.

We have new e-books on the library! Just let me know if you need any – thestorycircle@yahoo.com

Update as of: 01-04-06

Sophie Kinsella
Confessions of A Shopaholic
Can You Keep A Secret?
The Undomestic Goddess

Arthur Golden
Memoirs of A Geisha

JK Rowling
Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (text version)

--

~

Happy New Year and happy new rides!

Well, at least on digital. This one's from last month - a ninety something Nissan Sentra that the owner wanted made over when he saw what I did to my Sophie.

First, I had to get him new rims. Something that usually came with BMW roadsters would suit this one. Then I had to replace those give-away bumpers with something from a Citroen coupe.

After a good paint job, I got him new sponsors for his vinyls and decals. Oh and this time, we got carbon fiber!

(click the image to enlarge)

If only in real life we got this much dough...

Cheers!

--