Unbounded

the 24th was a very frustrating day for me. frustrating personally, and frustrating for my sentiments towards the filipino psyche.

i deliberately didnt sleep on the night of the 23rd so that i can change my body clock and be able to go to school at around lunch time but all my efforts were in vain. to my surprise, i found out that classes and work was suspended for the day due to the arising "threat" of a coup attempt aimed at the administration. be as it may, the declaration had its warrants. but what caught my ire on the situation was the accompanying civil rallies especially the demonstrations held on the EDSA shrine. it seemed wrong. all wrong. i sadly think that the ideologies that people have been so zealously rallying about in EDSA during the 24th and the 25th, take note, the 20th anniversary of the 1st EDSA revolution are seriously altered from what the shrine meant years back.

admittedly, these personal sentiments are not completely to be taken with complete merit as i wasnt born at that time. who am i to tell them what is right and what is wrong? what they were bickering about was just and not merely a bastardization of what was considered as the filipino pride twenty scores back? but i understand one thing, EDSA is a symbol.

from what i know, the 1st revolution was a revolution against dictatorship. the 2nd revolution was against a corrupt government. the commonality of these callings ("EDSA 3" isnt considered as such because it was violent and NOT because it was merely instigated by the social sectors who voted for then the incumbent.) is that EDSA is a shining symbol. it symbolizes unity amongst diversity. it symbolizes that common ideal can be achieved through unwaivering unity and a peaceful demonstration of a unified sentiment. that i understood. and about the place itself? merely coincidental. it was conviniently situated in between camp aguinaldo and camp crame.

the congregations during the weekend however wasnt anything near the aforementioned. it simply took the opportunity of the moment. and if only the people took the time to realize and appreciate what the people courageously and selflessly did 20 years ago, i assure you they would be completely ashamed of what they did. yes, they overromanticized and bastardized what was pure then. saddening. it truly is.

if the people want a change from the status quo, doing another EDSA simply isnt the way to do so. if what they are saying is true, that the administration and the incumbent are plunderers (ah, that remains to be proven heheh), if true, the administrations efforts and actions for national equilibrium are recognized. justifiable but immoral.

so, what the people are doing is wrong, but they are doing it for the right reasons; what the admin is doing is right, but they are doing it for the wrong reasons.

in the end, this blogger has complete confidence that the incumbent will finish its remaining presidential years. the admin is just shrewd enough to maintain its hold if dystopia arises.

"If I take off that mask, something will go away forever, be diminished, because whoever you are isn't as big as the idea of you."

-Evey
V for Vendetta
Alan Moore and David Lloyd

(still delirious from my flu, i thought i'd exercise my sarcasm with a little technical writing touch to it)

advertising is basically branding. branding is about strategic marketing. and strategic marketing bases itself on psychology, whether it focuses on personality psychology, or social psychology, it depends on the product and on the image that it wants to convey.

people do not wonder about m&m's, a popular chocolate staple in our inventory of high calorie diet's message because it is plain and simple. with its colorful pieces it is obviously a marketing strategy that aims to induce hunger and variety on its target market, the children, with its end goal of increased consumption (for a related reasearch, take a look at my paper about the effect of the variety on food preference). add the familiar ernie and bert colored peanut and plain flavored m&m for brand retainability purposes, and finally, its catchphrase "melts in your mouth, not in your hand" catchphrase, and you got one effective product branding.

another similar existing product is NIPS. innocently packaged as an alternative to the popular m&m's, one could not help but think about its impact (whether supraliminal or subliminal) on children's cognition, especially that this product has no mascot for visual retainability other than its colorful candies (an obvious rip-off to the mainstream m&m's), and it only has literary advertisments seen in aged commercials to back it up.

this research aims to deconstruct the branding of the said product, to analyze its social implications, specifically to the children, and finally, fill the void of knowledge in the field of developmental psychology, specifically on the effects of the branding of food to the childen's cognitive processes later in life.

due to time, resource, and motivational constraints, this research is limited only to basic literary analysis. a review of related literature, inline citations, are not possible. however, it is fortunate that this author was able to obtain a piece of literary advertisment of the said product, and careful dissection of its meaning is possible.

using jaques derrida's deconstructivism as an analytical tool for our one and only piece of hard data thus enables us to examine the manifest, latent, social (and political), and finally devonstructive levels of meaning of the said "jingle".

Wanna see what happens in a bag of nips
What goes on before it touch my lips
They make a rainbow, chocolate nips
A choco rainbow, chocolate nips
And then they color all the flowers
And became a tree....

presented before you is the advertisement jingle of NIPS. its manifest content speaks for itself.

when it comes to its latent content however, different interpretations arise. examining its first line, one cannot help but think on the meaning of bag of nips. what is nips really? what other interpretations can we have for it being in a bag?

recall what when we were in our prepubescent years, this was the time when our pituitary glands begin to send signals to our gonads to produce hormones to initiate the growth of our primary and secondary sexual characteristics. among those are the growth of beards, the advent of menarche, and particularly, the growth of the breasts. before the full growth of the female breasts, (for a related research on breasts, see my paper about the effect of breast size on male and female teenager interaction) it beggins with a budding or puffing of the female nipple. this "puff" is fondly teased girl cohorts (take note, GIRL cohorts only. why are male not included you say, pre-teen boys are simply not interested in budding nipples, barely poking out through girl's trainer sandos. again, read my research about the breast size and social interactions) as "grapes". one can only assume that it is because of its resemblance. the author has no way of determining the factuality of the said monicker. another popular monicker that girl cohorts dub for this budding protuberance is "nips", a shortened name for nipple, because it connotes the meaning "little nipple".

a bag on the other hand is simply a receptacle. but putting it in its literary context, it is possible that the bag is used as a receptacle for the nips, in its latent meaning, an object that holds the young woman's budding nipple. what else could it be other than a trainer bra or a sando bra? this solves the latent meaning of the first line of this jingle unfit to be heard and comprehended by the children's innocent psyche.

could it be possible that this rainbow chocolate alternative brands itself as a young woman's budding nipple? it could just might possibly be. latent content analysis of the succeeding lines allows us to put more rationalization.

[end of part 1]

it's been a very fruitful two years for me to serve in sms (samahan ng mga mag-aaral sa sikolohiya), the psychology org in my college.

ive never really seen myself doing extracurricular activities again in college (basically i hung around with bad apples in my first two years in college and wasted my potential), because i was kinda active in highschool.

as i reminisce about my higschool life while sitting on my swivel chair in my room, i cannot help but remember my good times and bad in my teen years (especially after i've had a friends marathon. imagine, three days of nothing but friends, and still i havent finished the third season.)

looking back, i now admit that i was really a temperamental kid back then. moodswings really defined who i am. there are days when i was this comical person, and there are days when i have depressive episodes - especially on my third year.

i miss writing and debating. i was the development comminications editor of my higschool organ in my third and fourth year, and was also the literary and layout editor in my fourth year. journalism kinda really ran through my vein heh. and to think that when college came all i did was to write technical papers for research. i blame my laziness for my writing retardation. !@#$

for a time during my third year, i was the captain of the now defunct JCA debating team. we werent really good, but i still consider being in the team and being the captain bragging rights heheh =b. we joined in the CMLI and got to the quarterfinals only to be beaten by poveda. its not bad considering this was our first (and last i think) to make a debating team for our highschool.

on my senior year, i was still active in my hs organ (balancing my 3 duties. i really wondered why i wasnt transfered to the opinions section. that's where the real fun is.), and did more layouting. we joined the philippine and international cyberfair competitions for that year and won gold for both of them (yey!). i also did the layout of your hs yearbook.

back then, it really didnt matter to me if what i did was crap or great, if its tiring or clerical. what mattered to me was that it was fun. back then all that mattered to me if it was intrinsically motivating for me or not. only now do i really wish that ive really thought about that when i went to college.

the only thing that i did in college was be in our college assembly and did some lousy layouting and designing work. there was no growth (what else is there to expect in the college assembly? for me, its serves nothing but as a stepping stone for student council aspirants), and what's worse, my grade really suffered. i left and did some rethinking because i really felt i was suckered to serve in that mediocre rathole of a college assembly (at least what i felt for my immediate superiors. the assembly president was great).

when i was in my late sophomore year the upcoming president personally asked me (i dont know if its for desperation or not. either way, never did i once looked up for his capabilities. yeah you heard me right) if i was interested in applying for officership. i politely declined. "not yet" i said to myself. finally, i applied in my incoming senior year and became the executive vice president.

if were to redo everything in highschool and in college, i wouldnt change a thing in higschool. as for college, i would have applied again for the college organ or literary organ, and for the yearbook organ.

but no regrets. except for being in the college assembly.

jeco, jim and i went to casino filipino last night to play some poker. it was my first time to go to a casino and to play a real big stakes money game. not the usual small buy-ins. this one's real big.

it was a 20/40 no limit table, no antes, with a 1000-5000 peso limit buy-in. jeco and i had a 3000 peso buy-in, while jim had 4000. man. just the thought of that, playing with that much of your own money would choke you. and admittedly, it scared the heck out of me at first.

we waited a little for the other people to sit-in and to play with us. not that i want to make them look sleazy or anything because theyre really not and they actually nice people, but the people playing there are real stereotype gamblers. old chinese geezers, old foreingers that look like dirty old men, mistresses, GI's, and drivers of rich dignitaries. we waited till the table was about 6-7 people sitting in, enough to make a short-handed game and we started.

jeco and jim advised me to play tightly when you go against these kind of people in these kind of situations. money was nothing to them. in some hands, they'd easily bet about 1-3k of their stack. yaiks.

so following their advice, i played ultra tight, playing mostly with premium hands, mixing up with a few marginal hands so that they would think that im a passive tight type of player.

i had my first real hand early on, cowboys to be exact and raised 300. everybody else folded except for one guy who called. in the turn, he pushed me with huge bet that'll take a huge chunk of my stack if i called and losed and i folded because i was worrying about him making a full house as there was a pair in the board. first bad move of the night.

there were also a number of bad moves that i made that made me lose all my stack and had to re-buy another 2000 to get back in the game. at one time jeco and i (stupidly enough) went heads up. i dunno if it was stupidity or a show of sexual tension or sumthin but we went heads up, instead of checking the board all of the way till the river. anywho my pocket snowmen got beaten by a sneakier full that made itself in the river. after that i was short stacked.

made my final stand late in the evening and i decided to go all in with a big hand. at small blinds i caught another pair of cowboys and decided to go all in. two other people called. at the flop, an ace came and the other guy made a huge bet that forced the third player to fold so it was heads up between us. turns out that my guess was right, no way would he call my all in if he had an ace. i was dreading that. got badly beaten by an AK. at least it bought me some time to reassess myself (i choked terribly) and get a snack at the carrels.

after my much needed break i got back into the game and rebuyed with a 2000 stack to stay in the game. 2000 isnt much, you'll easilly get pushed around. a good stack to play with is about 4000-5000. played tight again until i pushed all in to double up. we left at around 1:30 in the morning after i played my last hand, hooks, that took another 400 or so from the guy to my right.

in the end i ended up with 4k+ (thats actually quite good if you consider me being a terrible poker player), while jim was down with about a thousand and jeco, up by more than three thousand, just enough to repay the money both of them lent to me, and learned a few lessons:

1. bring a good amount of money when you wanna play poker in the casino.
2. have a bankroll just for playing. dont use your own money.
3. never, and i mean NEVER think that it's real money that you're playing. it'll make you choke instantly and i guarantee that you'll lose.
4. play tight in these situations. i initially played tight, waiting for premium hands and tried position playing and realized it would goddamn matter to them. they're jackals and they wouldnt matter to them if you had rags or rockets to raise with. they would've called the same just to see the flop. outplaying them? its pretty much useless. it's better to fish for a card and limping in.
5. just check the cards till the end like what you do in online tables if you're going heads-up with a friend. hear that jeco? heheh.
6. its kinda fun and i want to try it again some time if i get to have a bankroll that can back me up. commissioned works anyone?

i'm thinking about practising some more (actually a lot more. haven't fully regained my poker esteem since my long absence from playing at online tables) and try tournament style next time. the playing there is entirely different and hopefully filipinos here wont act like smart alecs and blurt out poker stuff that theyd only heard about in the WPT. feeling. goddamnit that really fucking annoys me.

there was a time that i loathed watching the show friends. in my delusional world, i had convinced myself that friends wasnt funny, had low-brow corny humor, and was not different from the other endless sitcoms that existed.

what's even weirder was that ive done the same for the show x-files.

the weirdest thing is that i convinced all of those to myself just to piss the hell out of mariane during my sixth grade elementary (still remember wil? heheh. oh yeah, sorry jim).

not only do i regret that now, realizing that i have deprived myself of enjoying the feel good show and the full appreciation of the concept of friends, but i just wanna say that i love you guys. this is what a friends marathon can do to you heheh.

this still however doesnt change the fact that i'd still wanna piss the heck out of mariane, just for the heck of it. heheh (still remember wil? heheh. oh yeam sorry again jim).

Hush, now.

The lights are going down. They are starting to play the overture. And, one by one, the stars are beginning to rise."

-Neil Gaiman
(excerpt from his introduction to J. Michael Strazynski's Rising Stars).

my chronic migraine is killing me. been having this since my late elementary or in my early highschool years. well at least it's not as bad as my migraine attacks in highschool. im planning to have this checked on my doctor soon. argh.

blogging.

after staring at the computer screen for twenty minutes (and three years, 11 months after this devart account's existence), i finally took the courage to write up my own blog. my own personal blog. not the group ones that i have where you post random stuff. a real blog that's personal to you, that you share your most intimate thoughts with, that in a way, reflects man's exhibitionism. a real blog that you'll constantly write on. not one that will eventually die out and be forgotten.

blogging.

only after four years of this devart's existence will it see written expressions of thoughts, feelings, angst, hope, and frustration.

blogging.

not that i would care if anyone would actually read this. i just want to blurt out my reveries. i actually convinced myself that i should start to write (or type) my blog entries (and not scribble drafts on a piece of paper. old habits from highschool journalism work die hard damnit) so that i'll finally improve my writing and communication skills. yeegh.

blogging.

now, what do i write about? on everything and on nothing. let's start. =)