Wednesday, September 21, 2005

dear concerned person

Please get your check-up already so that your health insurance can be properly processed. I've been receiving international phone calls requesting that I look into this problem. It would not be of such urgency if you were the type of person who was not prone to getting sick. Unfortunately, it does not take much to make a case, given your predisposition to allergic reactions, obscure conditions, and overall lack of proper nutrition and exercise. Looking at this in a purely financial point of view, the cost of medical care is rising and will continue to rise. Mitigate this risk by making fixing up your insurance a top priority. Thanks

a semi-public service announcement by the owner of this blog

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

so i blew another soy mocha in starbucks this morning, dang that stuff is good. it's probably fattening. you know what they say. anyway, i just want to get into a little ramble here, and i don't know why im apologizing to the cyberspace air, but anyway. . .

so i was deciding what to teach my econ kids today. wow. i've practically finished the entire syllabus! i guess i will teach them that chapter on basic tools of finance after all! i decided to give them a little lecture on the costs of inflation and then move on to basic finance. never got to basic finance. costs of inflation ended up taking the whole time. and it wasn't because of their questions, it was because they couldn't keep up. oh well, i guess i bore myself to death when i teach slowly so i sped up a little. poor kids. they're not gonna find my lecture in the book. i have to figure out how to reward people who actually listen. i think i'm gonna put an essay portion in my final exam. i'm gonna give them a little curve ball, just to be fair to those who actually pay attention.

jojo l (leviste! not lastimosa) fresh from Syd was actually sitting in my class. we were gonna hang out in the afternoon. apologized for giving a class that i think bored a few them to death (despite my contrary opinion that actually things were getting really meaty. oh well. we'll see what they put in my evaluation). we had a semi-baboy lunch at Libis, this italian place and browsed around a different bookstore. we went to metro walk (yuck) to buy his boss some DVDs and ended up in the best part of the afternoon. i just hung out in his condo watching the new concert dvds, eating cookies and reading whatever books looked interesting in his room. jojo was organizing his social life during his one week and a few stay here. which reminds me that harvey is in town nga pala.

got home and started doing some work and because im afraid that watching TV is gonna derail me from further progress, i started typing somethings here. where has mahar been? he's been coming home late a lot.

Monday, September 19, 2005

You are a

Social Liberal
(63% permissive)

and an...

Economic Conservative
(60% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Centrist




Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Friday, September 16, 2005

Phone got waterlogged

I had a real good run last night with some LM mountaineers. Finished strong which is a nice feeling. Running in the rain rules. Downside though is that my phone is now messed up. It can receive ur texts and calls, but the buttons are useless. Must be some moisture somewhere and the 0 button gets stuck. If u guys need to get in touch w/ me just e-mail ( I check it A LOT ) or send me a (offline) message on YM (fabian_b_mangahas).

tonight i'm gonna see a high school friend I hadn't seen in ages. I want to give him the guilt trip. Ha ha. It's his fault really. Then I'm gonna go back to work. This weekend promises to be just as BUSY as last. Oh well, the semester is winding down anyway. I've picked up another book that's been lying around. I gave Theroux's Hotel Honolulu another chance. It's better this time around. When the sem is over, I'm gonna buy myself some some more paper and ink.

'spoke to Harvey last night, after ages. Still has the same droll sense of humor. Debate ppl, did you know he's flying in for a few weeks? maybe we should organize something. he doesn't have much time though. his weekends are already booked

Monday, September 12, 2005

end of a project

today was the culmination of the globe gizmo debate 'tournament' and i thought it turned out pretty well. the kids did the best they ever did, and the principal, the parents and the kids themselves seemed happy about it. i'm glad that all the work and the training seemed to have paid off. they seem that much more confident about themselves. i also got paid. bwahahaha. which is ALWAYS nice.

len, kellda were the ADS people who showed up to judge, glad for that. thanks again guys. made all the difference. after the event, drove len to makati and dropped her in the KAF office but not before having a little coffee time with her. mid-day in Salcedo Village is actually not such a bad thing. i'd even call it pleasant.

back in QC traffic was hell. it took me forever to get to UP, just to read in the bulletin board that offices were closed at 1pm onwards because of the transport strike. sheesh. killed time (na lang) in Starbucks before picking Gica up at six. To kill time I read Gaiman-Pratchett work Good Omens. I fell asleep listening to my mini in Starbucks. I was on one of the arm-chairs.

Pops brought home today his special economist subscription card. yehey. i get premium content online again. ;) i got home and acted lazy. just wanted to document the day though, where I was in black trousers, black shose and a dress shirt. it's actually nice to be in office attire sometimes.

thanks ebtg for inquring about the proceedings. there were some funny moments which i'll tell you about next time we meet.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

today

the grade school kids had their 2 exhibition debates this morning, and i thought that it turned out pretty well. it's nice to see other kids who were once quite shy and quite monotonous sounding to come out of their shell. the teachers and parents thought that they did pretty well today. well, wait for monday i boldly said. they're gonna kick ass.

I attended the LM post-climb afterwards, which I've noticed is a drawn out fairly inefficient affair. Oh well. I don't like complaining coz then I'll be Mr. Know-it-all. Roy has a big mouth though. Now, I have to write this proposal for an environmental project (that I sorta drafted a simple version of) or everybody gets a sanction. Today at least, Jason announced that we were all at the "Backlog" point, meaning that in case we were removed from LM now, we'd be able to start at this point of the application process (post 2 climbs and post 5 and 10 K trials).

Afterwards, had a good conversation in Starbucks with Dondi while waiting for my high school classmates. We were gonna meet up to head to John Paul's Dad's wake. That was a little sad, a little odd, a little ok what now. John Paul, well, condolences to him and his family. His dad was 55 and he was shot in the back last Sunday.

Back in Ateneo, we killed a little time at the Gonzaga parking lot. Some reminiscing, and a quick remark I gave to Cesar: The number of adventures kinda decrease when you get older, right? Yeah, people don't take risks as much, and you can't blame anyone.

Gonna check out this group that beat out Coldplay in the Brit Mercury Awards: Antony and the Johnsons

Monday, September 05, 2005

kids don't miss a beat

i was training some grade school kids in debate, and was increasingly spacing out and losing focus, mostly cause the parents of the kids were there to observe that day. what didn't help was that i was using a microphone hooked up to a karaoke. so they could catch most every word. i told the kids, "let me not use the mic, 'coz I find myself getting pretty conscious." kid pipes up, "is it because the grownups are able to listen to you?" or something to that effect.

sometimes i get a little frustrated with my UP students. They're an OK lot, but sometimes it takes so much to extract anything from them. It makes me wonder if they have the sense that asking for help is a bad thing. Younger kids, if they don't get something, will get it off their chests and say so. College kids have already built their outer shell. If they don't get something, they just clam up. In a sense, that makes it more difficult for them to handle. One thing that you can't rely the younger kids to do though is to take initiative. It's just an observation on my part, not so much a generalization.

i think i don't remember the pace at which students learn. they cram everything at the last minute (still). so, why expect discussion classes to be optimal? they're more supplemental. heard a few stories today though, that some discussion leaders dismiss them after 10 minutes of lecture. but hey, these people keep on coming back right? at the very least to submit problem sets. there have to be getting some value from it.