The 14 shades of gray

Good thing about being fond of people who are smarter than you: you get trivia feeds when you're with them. Proof that you can go gaga over him/her and not lose I.Q points.

Consider a typical conversation where you reach the word "gray".

Trivia injected: There are 14 shades of gray.

(At this time you have to thank God that you're not being asked how much you know about Khmer Rouge.)

Template Reaction: Oh really.?? If you come to think of it, a color can have infinite number of shades.

(With a trace amount of sarcasm, probably due to thinking, "How come I don't know that?")

Retort: No, I mean shades with a name. Like for red there's crimson, etc.

Feigning Intellectual Remark: Yeah, and there's vermilion for orange.

Attempt at Overthrow: Vermilion is a shade of red. Duh.

Impulse of Pride: No. It's a shade of orange. (To self: I know it, I know it.)

Challenge: It's a shade of red, even if you check it through internet right now.

Resolution: Vermilion, sometimes spelled vermillion, when found naturally occurring, is an opaque orangish red pigment, used since antiquity, originally derived from the powdered mineral cinnabar.

Whopee-doo. It's both a shade of orange and red. Safe. Win-win.

But I digress.

I looked for that 14 shades of gray. And what I found is a music anthology totally undiscovered by my ears: the music of Staind. This one here is So far Away from their album, 14 shades of gray. 

Unfortunately I found 26 shades of gray, excluding black and white.

Shades of gray
Gray	Arsenic	Ash gray	Battleship gray	Bistre	Black	Cadet gray	Charcoal	Cinereous	Cool gray
Davy's gray	Feldgrau	Glaucous	Isabelline	Liver	Payne's gray	Platinum	Seal brown	Silver	Slate gray
Taupe	Purple taupe	Medium taupe	Taupe gray	Pale taupe	Rose quartz	White	Xanadu
The samples shown above are only indicative.

But I enjoyed the 14 shades more.

Finally, a real film from Regine

With her award-winning portrayal of Abby, a retarded woman seeking acceptance and love in one of Maalaala Mo Kaya's episode entitled "LOBO" (she won the Best Performance by an Actress during 2002 Star Awards for Television, beating Sharon Cuneta, Vilma Santos, Jacklyn Jose and Glydel Mercado, how's that?), Regine never actually rose beyond romantic films involving common love team plots. Well, there's Paano Kita Iibigin with Piolo Pascual, which movie sprang because of the MMK team-up and saw Regine with a heavier acting role although still attached to the usual lovebirds theme. But as an avid fan dying to see his object of fanaticism try something new, it was disappointing. Until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, after lending her voice to Princess Urduja, let us welcome, a deglamorized Regine as Mrs. Recto, from Panoramanila, directed by Dante Nico Garcia, who also made and directed Ploning which starred Judy Ann Santos. Hah! Oscars.

An impassioned call to arms

After a handful of hapless individuals who gave MSU-IIT the reputation of making students end their otherwise promising lives and dispelling out-of-wedlock pregnancy as the domineering fad, everyone's heightened attention was once again aflame when a freshman nursing student was reportedly stabbed to death after being mugged in one of the peaceful mugger-infested-but-neglected baranggays of Iligan.

Being a victim of mugging myself, aka holdup, for twice in a row, I was passionate enough to announce that muggers aka holduppers should be burned at the stake while impaled. Hah! And not just that, first their nails must be smashed with boulders from a cement quarry and take note, one by one, nail by nail. Attention future muggers: Please find a new holdup prospect. I'm not rich. Ala kayong mapapala sa kin. The next time you pounce at me, I might ask you if we had known each other.

Before I sound like Jigsaw I must say many share my sentiments. Luckily for me, the items that were taken were not laptops.

They got my archaic, vintage copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, enough to make me hesitate to give my bag away, causing the mugger with a sick mind to hit me on the shoulder with his GUN.

Plus, the textbook of Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics which unfortunately costs more or less a thousand and more unfortunate for me because, in bold letters, IT'S NOT MINE!

Plus, my cellphone with a loyalty and service award ( I regretted that they got it because my mom recorded a song there for me. It was not usual for her to do that. She must have done it accidentally, while exploring my phone's features.) 

And of course, photocopies of the notes that would be opened in the exam the following morning.

Reverberations: I was mugged at 4 am, my exam starts at 7:30 am. All that I have studied, if there are any, evaporated. Incidentally, the exam was all about EVAPORATION. 

Ripple effects: Medical check-up and X-Ray for the possibility of shoulder blades dislocation or my clavicle giving away at any moment.And how can I forget becoming instant celebrities, with everyone you meet asking you about what happened. I feel for my companions during that time (we were three), I wish I could wrestle the muggers and put shit siling labuyo into their mouths.

But I realized i was still lucky that I'm still alive. (hey, that was a GUN. A freaking GUN.) That's why I thoroughly support the cause of concerned IITians who marched around MSU-IIT and paraded towards the consciousness of local authorities, not just in Brgy. San Miguel, but in every baranggay in Iligan City to remind them that part of their responsibilities to the people is ensuring that they are all SECURE. 

The slogan reads, "Pagmata na, Captain".( Wake up, Captain). If you will not, what will happen to our ship.?

Are they even familiar of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

Do not let night catch you walking along Brgy. San Miguel. You'll get mugged and worse, you'll get killed.

I must say not just in that baranggay. Tibanga is also infested with fiends and whopee-doo , they're practically everywhere.

Oh captain, my captain. What were we doing all along?

You might ask, what was I doing in Tibanga Hi-way at 4 am.? No I was not picking-up costumers, I was merely going home to a friend's boarding house after studying from another friends boarding house (B-HOUSE HOPPING) 30 meters away. I know, I know. I shouldn't have done that. And this brings me to my point. Securing security is a mutual effort. It's not enough that we leave everything to the baranggay officials. We ourselves should exercise prudence and vigilance since the world will always be full of people who have sick minds, to describe them lightly.

However, you who were elected to perform your duties of a peaceful society should not use this point to rationalize your negligence. After all, it is in the knowledge that your constituents are secured in whatever time of the day, that you can be rest assured that you yourself and your own family are safe.

I still won't rest my case.

Photos Courtesy of Manny Cabido. Last two photos courtesy of Mary Bernadine Dumaog.

Another reason why they won't let me design a nuclear power plant..

...apart from their notion that it digresses somewhat to the idea of a chemical plant designed by chemical engineers, and apart from the social issue invoked by my group mates about the relevance of such plant, and of course apart from the terrible and tedious job of actually designing one, another would be because it is now more costly and less clean than solar photovoltaic systems. (Not that I am planning to design now a solar photovoltaic plant. I am not a photovoltaic engineer. I "know" someone who is. He studies at the University of New South Wales.)

Before it was solar energy that is too expensive to tap, making calculators with a small strip of a solar panel more expensive and stylish, now, according to The New York Time's Nuclear Energy Loses Cost Advantage, solar photovoltaics have joined the ranks of lower-cost alternatives to new nuclear plants."

PARIS — Solar photovoltaic systems have long been painted as a clean way to generate electricity, but expensive compared with other alternatives to oil, like nuclear power. No longer. In a “historic crossover,” the costs of solar photovoltaic systems have declined to the point where they are lower than the rising projected costs of new nuclear plants, according to a paper published this month.

“Solar photovoltaics have joined the ranks of lower-cost alternatives to new nuclear plants,” John O. Blackburn, a professor of economics at Duke University, in North Carolina, and Sam Cunningham, a graduate student, wrote in the paper, “Solar and Nuclear Costs — The Historic Crossover.”

This crossover occurred at 16 cents per kilowatt hour, they said. 

While solar power costs have been declining, the costs of nuclear power have been rising inexorably over the past eight years, said Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and Environment. 

Read full article here.

The Philosophy of Dr. House

One advantage of having too many members in one group is that some of the members apparently will have nothing to do, especially if the work is too simplistic. Perhaps being one of the very useful ones, I distanced myself away from my busy classmates and rested in the thought that "too many cooks will spoil the broth."

Then I got into a conversation with a classmate who apparently shares the same sentiment. We got to the point where I had to tell him what my dream job is.

"My dream job is to travel and write about my experiences, and then getting paid for it. Much like columnists in the Leisure, Travel and Living Sections in broadsheets."

"So nganong ga-Chem Eng man ka?"( so why then did you take up Chemical Engineering?), he asked, with an expression that reads despair over my choice of course. ("akala affected")

I did not know what to say. I just stared at him and shrugged my shoulders. I know I have already answered that question when I submitted an essay about the reason why I ventured into Chemineering to our ChE Ethics teacher ( see Why did you take up Chemical Engineering, huh, JanMell?) but something in his reaction made me stutter and grope for words, indicative of how much I feel like I've done it all wrong.

Then the topic went to being successful in life, and once again I announced that I'm beginning to feel that I wouldn't get rich as an engineer. Most probably I'd get rich by some other way, like writing or show business until I realized I was already delusional.

He said, (I heard it for the nth time) "for one to be successful one has to realize that three things govern this world: money, power and sex."

"I know what you'll say next, that if sex wasn't so damn good the human race would have died eons ago."

"No. I'm not that predictable. Duh."

Silence.

Not to be mistaken as a newly discharged patient. The mask is the best defense against the raging dust that comes with going to Taal volcano crater.

 

Attached to the String: The Dipolog Community Rondalla

The Final Countdown played by the Dipolog City Community Rondalla. Several of the members are high school classmates and ka-batch from Zamboanga del Norte National High School. Even then they had lambasted other groups when they ranked third during the 2006 National Music Competition for Young Artists held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The conductor, Mr. Jay Sarita led the group even to the 2007 International Rondalla Festival held at Dumaguete City. It has evolved lately from a school-based rondalla to the community rondalla that it is now.

Conductor, Arranger, Trainor: Mr. Jay Sarita

Thanks to Michael Kerk Bonafe for the permission to blog this video.

They sent this video to qualify for another international rondalla festival in Davao City this year. Cripes, when you're this good, you don't have to worry about getting in.  Recommended reading after watching this video: String theory. Or you can search for more videos of the group.

The excerpt that is in the first page of my reserved notebook

"Writing is a craft, like any other: playing the violin, skating, batting at cricket, billiards, wood-carving--anything you like; and mastership in any craft is attainment of the end to which the craft is devoted. A craftsman is excellent in his craft according to his degree of attainment towards its end, and his use of the means towards that end. Now the end of writing is the production in the reader's mind of a certain image and a certain emotion. And the means towards that end are the use of the words in any particular language; and the complete use of that medium is the choosing of the right words and the putting of them into the right order."

This was written by Hillaire Belloc on his introduction to the work of P.G Wodehouse to which a Wikipedia entry of him says:

".. writing style is notable for its unique blend of contemporary London clubroom slang with elegant, classically-informed drawing-room English. As in: "I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast."

and to which H. Belloc says:

"..almost always reaches perfection."

Weekend Wodehouse is a compilation of his works ranging from excerpts, letters, condensed novels, and anecdotes that presents the laughable or the humorous. Perfect buddy for long waits.