this week, on the Internets

USB Cassette Converter by CD-R King (Php780)

Discovered earlier today that, not only does CD-R King have practically everything -- it has something that'd convert your old cassette mixtapes to MP3 FORMAT. (And while you're at it -- also a safe box disguised as a cereal box. Really.)

Indeed, this has been a rather interesting week for online finds. (More under cut: Longreads, etc etc)

steve jobs (1955-2011)

Steve Jobs: Innovator, visionary, icon. 1955-2011

Woke to news this morning that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had just passed away. Such a heavy feeling. Just how big is this loss? Time Magazine stopped their presses on the issue they had just put to bed that afternoon and called an emergency meeting to devote a new issue to Jobs. If that doesn't make the hairs on your arms stand, I don't know what will.

I'm not what you can call an Apple fan -- my first Apple purchase was the iPod touch I gave Andrea for Christmas a few years ago. I bought myself an iPod classic soon after, then bought Almi's iPod nano as a gift to my brother -- and that about ends my list of Apple products. (10/10 EDIT: Ugh, I forgot about my sister's iPod touch, and our not-so-brief obsession with Tilt to Live! Haha! Still no Android equivalent, boo.)

I have iTunes on my non-Mac netbook -- an old version at that, since I'm too lazy to get an update -- and have since warded off my desires for an iPad or a MacBook: Too pricey, would probably burn a hole in my pocket for a long time, and, as my girlfriend often reminds me: What do you need it for? (For the record: She's right. I get by just fine on Windows, an old Nokia qwerty phone, and my trusty Android tablet.)

But more than his products, to me Steve Jobs is primarily an inspiration -- a man diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, he lived SEVEN YEARS MORE (a whole lot longer than his doctors expected, at every front, A MIRACLE) to introduce the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad -- and to inspire an entire generation.

This generation includes me. Thank you, Steve Jobs.

Here's a link to his famous 2005 commencement address to graduates of Stanford, and my favorite passage from that speech:

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

I'll be sure to remember, sir.

ghost month

So as we all know, August is Ghost Month.

I'm not a stringent believer of superstitions (though I often take the 'wala namang mawawala kung susundin'-route) neither am I an ardent believer of ghosts.

What I do believe in, however, are hauntings.

Aside: I was so certain I had written something about this, sometime around 2006; I was looking for it in the dotcom and couldn't find it there. Apparently, it's in my [now locked-down] LiveJournal. Dated 2nd November 2006, it goes:

alone again on an october night -- nights like this, i could not sleep. i am kept awake by sounds of footsteps treading my worn carpet with a familiar, calculated pace.

i get up to take a look. as expected, there's no one there.

there's a haunting i fear more than i do poltergeists and spirits, and that is the kind that involves a still-living memory. it is a haunting that is defined as hearing voices, and seeing and *feeling* things that are not there.

you are most likely the only haunting i've ever come across. that makes this apartment the most haunted place i have ever been in.

i heave a sigh as i head for the kitchen to heat water for my coffee. out of habit, i take out two cups and not one; i put the other one back in upon catching myself.

there are habits that are hard to let go of -- habits a lot like this, formed through several late night trysts, few and far between. years hence, they are still here, embedded, recurring every now and then. especially on nights as haunted as this.

(a faint but familiar laugh, a swish of a pale blue sundress in the corner of my eye, a knock on the door, the feel of coldwarm hands.)

there are ghosts in this room, and they're all you.

Oh dear young self -- please use proper caps. HAHA. (Though that ending is too true. To a degree, I'm still looking for this girl who used to write like this -- have you seen her? What, she's on indefinite vacation? That. Sucks.)

(More hauntings of same sort under cut)

holocene

seven-twentysix: the post-sona playlist

She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.
Text from Audrey Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmetry"

and for this day, a reminder

This block of text from here: "There are some people who don't wait" -- Robert Krulwich's Commencement Speech at Berkeley May 7, 2011 (via longreads.com)

So for this age, for your time, I want you to just think about this: Think about NOT waiting your turn.

Instead, think about getting together with friends that you admire, or envy. Think about entrepeneuring. Think about NOT waiting for a company to call you up. Think about not giving your heart to a bunch of adults you don’t know. Think about horizontal loyalty. Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.

And when it comes to security, to protection, your friends may take better care of you than CBS took care of Charles Kuralt in the end. In every career, your job is to make and tell stories, of course. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection, with the people you’ve helped who’ve helped you back.

And maybe that’s your way into Troy.

There you are, on the beach, with the other newbies, looking up. Maybe somebody inside will throw you a key and let you in… But more likely, most of you will have to find your own Trojan Horse.

And maybe, for your generation, the Trojan Horse is what you’ve got, your talent, backed by a legion of friends. Not friends in high places. This is the era of Friends in Low Places. The ones you meet now, who will notice you, challenge you, work with you, and watch your back. Maybe they will be your strength.

If you choose to go this way, you won’t have Charles Kuralt’s instant success. It will take time. It will probably be very lonely. A living room is not a news room. It doesn’t feel like one. You know you’re alone. And on the way, you might get scarily close to not being able to afford a living room.

But what I’ve noticed is that people who fall in love with journalism, who stay at it, who stay stubborn, very often win. I don’t know why, but I’ve seen it happen over and over.

So, here, for what it’s worth, ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2011, is my graduation advice. Some of you will say, “This is a fantasy. Pay this man no attention,” but hey, you invited me, so here’s what I’ve got:

If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don’t let it go. Whatever kept you here, don’t let that go. Believe in your friends. Believe that what you and your friends have to say… that the way you’re saying it – is something new in the world.

And don’t stop. Just hold on… and keep loving what you love… and you’ll see. In the end, they’ll let you stay.

Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)

Finally finished this one (much thanks to Eliza, who let her copy stay with me for a ridiculously long time.)

What an adventure. Glad to have managed to savor this tale (several of them actually in this massive story) as slowly as I could let myself.

(4/11 EDIT: cut for weird dreams, spoilers and quotes)

now reading

"It was an effort for me now to recall the details of my grief -- the exact forms it had taken - although at will I could summon up an echo of it, like a small whining dog locked in the cellar. What had I done on the day Mother died? I could hardly remember that, or what she'd really looked like: now she looked only like her photographs. I did remember the wrongness of her bed when she was suddenly no longer in it: how empty it had seemed. The way the afternoon light came slantwise in through the window and fell so silently across the hardwood floor, the dust motes floating in it like mist. The smell of beeswax furniture polish, and of wilted chrysanthemums, and the lingering aroma of bedpan and disinfectant. I could remember her absence, now, much better than her presence."
--Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Dear Ms Atwood: How are you so good? Oh my God.

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nanowrimo 2010

37,090 / 50,000 words. 74% done!

On other news: Just reached 37k in my Nano attempt, and for the first time in 22 days I felt I'd actually be sad if I lost this file to Word runtime errors. (Backups)

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On other, other news: MONTH 38 TODAYYYYY. ♥

a brief letter to my nineteen-year-old self

Wow, old closed down blogs are FUN.

Here's a good one from January 2004 (Cannot link to this anymore, it's from that closed blog - it's fascinating how much I wrote back then, and Christ, I did close that down for A LOT of good reasons, hahaha. hmm.)

i remember cleng sharing a fantasy once - the barkada seated around a table in a Makati hang-out, perhaps some posh coffee shop, talking over coffee and cigarettes and cinnamon rolls *yum* about our latest businesses, investments, houses, families, stories, assignments, sex partners *cough* and you know.. erm, that kind of stuff.

LOL SEX PARTNERS. \o/ This strikes me as very funny because this is EXACTLY what we do these days. It's funny, a bit creepy, but YES more funny than anything else. ILU GUYS.

(Cut for old things)

over and over

We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water; we don't drink a glass once and never have to drink one again. We don't finish one poem or novel and never have to write one again. Over and over, we begin. This is good. This is kindness.

- Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind.

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(I promise to slow down on Sundays. I promise to slow down on Sundays...)

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Unexpected kindness is unexpected. Thank you; lately, I've been too prone to complaints and disenchantment. It must be the heat and all this hate that edges of regimes bring people. Horrible, horrible times, but again, as always, we overcome. Don't we? Thanks for the reminder. ♥

reborn into our numbers

"We hurt you because we love you," says a Lady Master in Lakambini Sitoy's The Sisterhood, one of the short stories off Jungle Planet and Other Stories, which tells of a law student's journey into a nameless sorority in a nameless university.

The thing grips me as it's painfully real - girls together are sometimes the meanest lot, this is the truth. But they're such interesting creatures, aren't they? Like they become this one thing whenever they congregate, and it's impossible to resist the charm of their company, the temptation of their acceptance.

And boys think it's hard being with girls? Try being one.

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Also, I will not deny being guilty of some form of psychological torture similar to this one - it's not as thorough as depicted in the book, but it's similar, and torture just the same, and the applicants are never right and are always in the middle horrible choices. Looking back, it's all a bit... indulgent. (To quote Simon Cowell) And lazy. Like it couldn't have been done some other way? Like it had to be propagated because this was how the Ones Before Us had done it all along? I understand tradition. To some point, I also enjoyed... I don't know, power? Respect. But these days when I bump into these people I had once subjected to these things - children then, full-grown media workers now - there's a sort of shame. We're all the same now. What was the point of that thing before?