On this day...

for Alice...

On this day marks a very important day in our existence... it is not because this is the day I first met you (although that is also important) nor is it the day you finally had enough of my "kakulitans" that you finally said 'yes' (it's very important as well!)... more than those, this day is important to us because this day starts our life together... eleven years ago.

I know that so many things happened between then and now... I had witnessed three miracles as you gave me our three pride and joy - River, Rain and Ash. I had witnessed how you bear the pain of introducing them to this world, and your patience of nurturing them to be the good children that they now are... thank you...

Our journey together is not without problems, and time and again, you showed your trust...and love, through all the hardships that we've been through. You had given me strength, many times when I needed it, and you had always been my guide through the times that I've been lost... much more, you saved me so many times already I cannot keep track anymore.

The good times we have are the most memorable ones I have... my time with you, as well as with the kids, are the sweetest... I may not always express it, but your company is the one I always long for.

On this day, I want you to know that you're the best that had happened to me (but you know that already, of course)... I want to tell you that knowing that you're there with me all the time, I could endure and go through anything and everything... I want you to know that my journey is the sweetest because I'm doing it with you.

On this day, as I always do in my prayers, I renew my vows and commitment with you... until my last breath...

Happy anniversary... I love you!

e-Learning

Working as an administrator for the learning content management system of an organization is both challenging and entertaining. For one, you get to meet lots of people, especially learners, and with it, you get to analyze how different people build thought processes and acquire knowledge. I find this very motivating as it is amusing since I learn to understand many kinds of people and their inherent qualities. On the other hand, working as a content administrator, especially for materials concerning training and education, could be frustrating at times. You have to always check whether modules are updated, whether new concerns are raised by both learners and mentors alike, and whether the whole package - the system - is working effectively and efficiently on both fronts - the technical and the social.

One thing that really annoys me in the current scheme of things is the fact that I need to manually enter all the participants whenever a new course, or module, is opened. Well, as there is not much security present currently in the network, I guess I have to bear with this task for sometime... anyways, each training course usually caters to an average of 20 - 25 participants, and so, it is not really a burden if you would really look at it...

As of now, I am proud of the fact that there are currently more than 15 courses being offered by the system - these are really diverse courses ranging from professional workshops to business-related to engineering-based and IT modules - and most of these courses are either created or put up with my help. There are more than 50 mentors and close to 500 learners already. I am equally proud that I am really progressing fast in this new area, which happens to be one of the hottest IT areas nowadays. Technically, I would say that I still need many things to learn and to develop, which I currently am giving priority in terms of time and effort. But then, when you're in a field that you love and doing something that you're just so passionate about, everything will be as simple as they can be, and everything will just come out naturally.

Of course, even though I am currently venturing into this new skill, I'm not forgetting that I am still, and will always be, a teacher. I guess it will always stay in my blood and in my system... I came from a family of mentors anyway, and I guess it really develops in the genes as an end-result of the never-ending human evolution. And thus, I keep a course or two as a mentor/teacher in the LCM system. It allowed me to hone further another important skill - being a specialist in learning development. But more than that, it enables me to continuously interact with different kinds of learners, be they new ones in the field, or old peers that like me, are not easily quenched in their thirst for learning new things. That's where my further development is anchored, I believe. Much more, it fuels my continuous evolution as a human being.

A (not so) typical weekend...

It was a typical day yesterday... during weekends, Alice and I just go through the routine house-keeping chores: cleaning and mopping the floors, dusting the furniture, washing our office clothes, and ironing them afterwards. It was a typical first day of the weekend... we just went through our usual routine, and since it is not yet time to do some grocery shopping, we did not venture out, as we had already bought some food and everything else we need for the day during the previous night out with friends in the weekly "Wednesday Night Group" get-together at the city center. In between chores, we managed to watch some TV and had also chatted with the kids in the afternoon. I even managed to do some updates in my friendster account in the early evening before we ate dinner.

Today is quite different. For one, Alice had baked a cake for the first time after many years. It's actually just a simple ready-mix chocolate cake, but a cake nonetheless, and it is the first during our stay here. We ate it during lunchtime (which is actually about 1:30PM already), which made us full for the actual lunch we have - a roasted chicken ala Andok's - which we bought the previous night from our favorite grill eatery. Anyways, I started the day by preparing breakfast - french toast with fried eggs - which Alice requested specifically for this day. After eating, I proceeded on working with the report my boss asked to be placed on his table first thing in the morning tomorrow. The task made me occupied in the next two hours which allowed Alice to work on her cake...

After lunch, Alice spent some time surfing the Web and I checked some movies in my portable multimedia player, the kind that comes from China which I bought in Singapore, with a 2.5" hard disk inside. As I become engrossed watching a movie, the TV broke down! Bad timing as the movie will be finished in 5 minutes or so. (Grrrrr!!!!) Anyways, while watching the said movie, I started heating the roasted chicken in the oven to prepare it for the late lunch, and so, after the TV broke down, I proceeded on preparing it and was about to call Alice to eat when the doorbell rang...

Our friend from upstairs is having a problem with her computer, she actually had already brought it with her, and so I checked it first... it turned out there are so many downloaded utilities that make her computer boots ever so slowly, and I reconfigured the start-up options of the rig, and proceeded on installing an anti-virus software (at her request), and finally testing and reconfiguring the voice/audio utility of her laptop so that she can use the voice function in YM properly. After about a little less than two hours, Alice and I were able to eat our lunch (the roasted chicken).

As I repair our neighbor's laptop, Alice chatted with the kids... good news as they told her the grades for the first period were given already and all of them have very good grades. Alice, actually, was nervous with our youngest's grades as his marks in the exams were low, and he had incurred some missed classes while getting sick during the last two weeks... it turned out, fortunately, that his grades are not bad afterall (actually, good also). We had promised them we'll give them memberships to Club Penguin when they get good grades in this period, and so, our eldest reminded her of that again. (He's so sure of good grades as early as the last two weeks that he's continuously bugging us of their membership for days already.)

After eating lunch - which is around 4 o'clock already - we had the chance to check the Web for a while, and we happened to browse Manny Poohcquiao's antics in youtube. We had a fun time watching Poohcquiao's clips, me especially, as it was the first time I saw his style of comedy. Alice rested for a while after that, while I decided to write this post, having nothing more to do. This evening, we'll probably just eat some fruits, Alice might prepare some things for work tomorrow, then, having no TV, we'll say our prayers probably a little early, and then go to sleep...

I guess with that, another weekend will be over.

Summer Read...

Books I read last summer (personal reviews)...

Book No. 4 – The Innocent Man (John Grisham)

This is the last of the books I read last summer. I always liked the stories of John Grisham, so much that I read and collected all of them. His narration of the fiction stories he authored are really very interesting, that at times I stayed most of the night trying to finish them. And when he ventured into writing a true story, I can't really wait reading it. Thus, as soon as I got the chance to buy the book, I grabbed one and finished it in one sitting...

The Innocent Man is the true story of Ron Williamson, a popular athlete in his hometown during his younger days, a one-time minor league player, and a man accused of mudering a waitress in his hometown of Ada. Grisham had written a vivid picture of the life of Ron, starting from his younger years when he was still the star athelete of his high school, to his journey in the minor league baseball and his dream of becoming a major league player someday, to his demise as an athlete, and his slow and painful addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Ron's life turned for the worse when he was accused of murdering Debbie Carter, a waitress in his town. When the police decided that he's the murderer even when evidences pointed to another man, his life descended towards its darkest moments. Life had been hell for Ron afterwards.With the help of kind lawyers, Ron was able to reopen his case and was finally acquitted after more than ten years on death row. However, the psychological and mental torture - aside from the physical one - that he suffered during his time in jail was really overwhelming, and he never recovered from it. A short time after he was made a free man again, he finally succumbed from all his sufferings.

Grisham's novel is an enlightening story. It showed that justice is not really always given to everyone. However, the story also says that how long it may take and how difficult it may be, truth will eventually come out and liberate an innocent man. God, truly, has a way of doing things...

Book No. 3 – Digital Fortress (Dan Brown)

While wasting time and relaxing during the last summer, I got the time catching up with my 'ebaying' (is there such a word?). I bought Dan Brown's Digital Fortress for about a dollar fifty and had it given to me by the buyer by meeting at the Ang Mo Kio station... it was the third read I had in the summer, and I'd say a particularly good one at that...

Digital Fortress is about high technology, computers, and encryption... Dan Brown had conceptualized a thrilling plot with the use of the US's NSA, which is really a spy agency whose function is about protecting the US homeland through 'sniffing' terrorist activities and communications that pass through the newest network infrastructure, primarily the Internet. The story tells of a 'super computer' comprised of millions of processors with the sole function of decrypting suspicious codes that it catches over the web, which in turn are further analyzed by the NSA's top scientists. The plot thickens when said supercomputer encounters a code that it cannot break, which turned out to be an elaborate hoax made by one of its top programmers.

I would say that the story is at best average... although you will appreciate the author's research on the new technology at that time once in a while. Brown had added the dimension of romance between the two principal characters, which for me provided some light moods to balance the emotions of the story. For what I learned, this is Dan Brown's first (or is it second?) book, and there are obvious stretches of passages that tend to lecture the reader on new and high technologies. Although this will be interesting to some (particularly geeks and techies), I also believe that it tends to bore the other types of readers.Anyways, overall, I would say that reading Brown's Digital Fortress, I get to learn some more things about information and communication technologies. And although the story is not immensely powerful, I still found some things enjoyable in it.

Book No. 2 – Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

This is another good book that I read this summer. I actually planned on reading it way back then, but never got the chance. Fortunately, while staying as a transient in Edu's flat in Singapore, I happen to get my eyes on it and didn't lose the opportunity to do it...

Arthur Golden's book, which incidentally was also made into a hit movie, narrates the story of Chiyo, a peasant girl living in an obscure Japanese town, and her transformation to Sayuri, who became one of the famous Geishas in Gion (Kyoto). The backdrop was Japan before world war 2, and the characters involved a mix of geishas and their patrons, which included politicians, army generals, prominent businessmen, and royalties. It was a vivid retelling of how geishas become geishas. And how they do their everyday lives. The story started from Chiyo's life in a small seaside town, then her coming to Gion through one Mr. Tanaka. It thennarrated how Chiyo was acquired by an okiya, to being schooled in the geisha art, to being an apprentice geisha, and to finally becoming a geisha. The author provided color by introducing two prominent geisha protagonists around Chiyo - Hatsumomo and Mameha, Hatsumomo being the villain who always wanted Chiyo (Sayuri) to fail. One of the highlights of the story was Sayuri's quest to find the man who provided the inspiration early in her life at Gion - the Chairman. As can be expected, the book showed how these two characters' lives became intertwined romantically towards the end of the book.

Memoirs of a Geisha is a good read not only for the colorful background that shows how it was in Kyoto during those times, but more importantly for the vivid characters it portrayed which can be easily related to by readers. The magic of the book is the vivid description of the normal lives of each character, which ironically happens in each and everyone of us, one time or another. I've visited Kyoto once, and after reading the book, I would say it made me want to go back there again.

Book No. 1 – Colours of the Mountain (Da Chen)

When I visited Singapore last summer with my family, we happened to stay at my wife's brother's flat, which he had been renting for several weeks only at that time. It was an oportune time for me because I found tons of books which the flat owner apparently left there. There are actually two very large bookshelves full of books, ranging from school texts, to how-to, to pocketbooks. I found several interesting titles there which I eventually spent sometime reading. This is the first...

Colours of the Mountain is actually a memoirs, or a biography, you might say. Actually, the difference between the two is lost on me for the moment, hence I'm having a hard time classifying it :) For all its worth, the book was a great depiction of the mid 20th century rural china... and an equally very interesting narration of a boy growing up in that part of the world during that time. Da Chen depicted an interesting picture of how a boy (or a child) can be an outcast in China by being related to a landlord family, and how hard it is to live and grow there, especially in the rural areas immediately after Mao Zedong's cultural revolution. The vivid and detailed narrative of how an everyday life of an outcast child allowed the reader to experience what it is like to be in Yellowstone at that important point of chinese history - from the start of the revolution to the death of Chairman Mao, and the few years after that.

The book shows the triumph of the human spirit against all odds. By telling others his boyhood memories - how he suffered, fall, persevered, and win it all, Da Chen is giving his readers a very important lesson in life: That is, everything can be taken from a man (or a boy) except his soul. Whatever happens to him, however pain or dishonor he suffers, eventually, through his inert elasticity and his natural instinct to suceed,his spirit will take him to his goal and to his destiny.

Busy!

Today happened to be a very busy day... actually, I should've moved office before taking the summer break because the building where I've been holding office for the past several months is due to be remodeled. However, one way or another, I was not able to, and hence I went into the break with all the piles of my work still there. When I reported for work this morning, my colleague who's occupying the same room with me told me that we have to move our things fast because the demolition is under way... thus, I didn't have a choice but to pack all things in haste, put everything inside those cardboard boxes and let the cleaners carry all my things to the other office...

Well, you know this thing about moving... once you start taking your things out for packing, you unconsciously begin to sort them also... and thus, I was able to do that during the next few hours. Anyways, after putting the rubbish in the bin and the ones I still need in their proper boxes, I was ready to go. I called all the maintenance guys and they started moving all my things - the cleaned office table, the computer and printer, all those cables, the piles and piles of papers, everything - to my new place. After a half day moving from the old office to the new one, I was able to shift all my things to the new office. And the real work begins...

What I really hate about moving is that after you have boxed all your things and moved them, you have to start unpacking them again and start reassembling your place. It really sucks! But then, nobody will do it except me, of course... and so, after half a day doing all the packing, I spent the other half unpacking all the same things and putting each of them in the proper order again. Well, perseverance really pays off everytime, and so, I finished all the work with several minutes to spare before my bus arrives. I forgot to mention that through the chaos of the day, I still was able to spend some precious minutes eating at the canteen with Alice :-). I would have to say that I love the canteen now that very few people go there because the real work hasn't started yet. I must say that I love the serenity of the place, even if it happens only very rarely...

Anyways, all's well that ends well, they say, and I finished the move to the new office before the work day ends. I would have to say the new office is a little crowded - most of us are holding office there now - because of the construction that will about to start, but then, good workers and good professionals that we are, as the saying goes, "the show must go on"... and so is our work... I just need to get a duplicate of the key to the front door tomorrow. :-)