The Value of PI

It all started when I came across this graffiti vandaled in a toilet cubicle:

"Beauty times brains equals constant."

However, I mentally debated that the measures of both beauty and brains are highly subjective. Hence, I concluded further that the value of beauty times brains must be an imaginary number.

What a geeky humor, haha.

It got me thinking, in a humorous manner, what else can I think of as 'constant'.

I've hypothesized that I need to prove that the "The Law of Conservation of Mass" applies to my department: The total mass of schedulers and planners equals a constant. A corollary of this, therefore, is that if any in our team is gaining weight for some reason, the other members of the team will lose the corresponding amount of weight.

As a side-theorem, I also concluded that the Total workstress in my workgroup is a constant. If one or more persons are stressed due to their workload, the other members enjoy a less stressful environment.

Other working theories in the pipeline:

1) The stammering rate at which a certain manager blurts out "but-but-but-but-but" is a constant.
2) The number of brains working effectively in the process engineering group at any given time is a constant. (A more prudent statement will be: "The overall efficiency of the process engineering group at any given time is a constant.")
3) The total opportunity to receive formal training in our organization is a constant (and close to zero).

Of course, all of these are debatable. Like the value of Pi has been under debate for the past 900 years.

+ Mark Franco

"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters,
He restores my soul.
He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.
For You are with me.
Your rod and your staff comfort me."

Salamat Mark sa lahat. May your soul, our fallen comrade, rest in peace in the company of our Lord and His angels. For our friend and teammate, a warrior and a gentleman.

We will truly miss you.

- Team Mission Specific

Change of Season

1.

Summer has been announced to be officially over by our national weather bureau PAGASA last May 12th.

It was too short.

And the bad thing about it is the early onset of my change-of-season flu. And apparently, my flu shots last year are no good against the flu bug that bit me a couple of nights ago.

From sweating it out in the sun to having fever-chills in my bedroom last night:
had to trade my sunscreen and board shorts for anti-pyretic meds and bed comforters,
mango-banana shakes got replaced by warm fruit juice,
grilled foodfare gets substituted with chicken broth.
outdoor sports make way for some book reading.

All I'm wishing for now is just one more weekend of sun and sports, and I'll gladly accept afterwards that summer is indeed over. It makes having this flu more "acceptable".

-----------------------

2.
People change just like the seasons.
I've seen a lot of changes in people over summer. Some for the good, some for the worse.

There's Always Something New to Do at BORA

I've been making annual trips to the country's sun-worshipping-place-to-be, also known as Boracay. My parents and some of my friends have been asking me if I don't get bored with visiting the place every year --- Bora doesn't change that much, they think, and thus going there at least once in your lifetime makes them qualified to say "been there, done that" whenever the topic of a Boracay vacation comes up.

Well, they're wrong.

I don't get bored at Bora. And the "been there, done that" routine does not apply to a Boracay vacationeer, specially if you're the creative and/or adventurous type.

Acting on a very compulsive manner, I decided to go to Boracay last week when Duane told me that he'll be there with 6 female colleagues from China, all single and available. Wait, wait, wait. I didn't plan my Boracay trip because of the "single and available" phrase. A Bora trip is definitely much more fun if you're going there with the prior knowledge that you'll be able to meet up with someone you know, and from there start getting to know who they know so that your social circle expands. A bigger social circle gives you more options on what to do at Boracay. Bai, on the other hand, decided to join this Bora trip because of the "single and available" phrase initially, hahaha. (Later on, Bai planned on taking kiteboarding lessons as his ultimate purpose for going on this trip).

Enough with the introductory storytelling.

For this Bora trip, I've planned on bringing my trusty EOS400D DSLR camera along for a pet project which I called the "Hundred Bora Girls Project". The mechanics are simple: take photos (either stolen or with permission granted) of at least 100 babes in the party island of Boracay.

So how did it turn out?

Well, I'll let some of the pictures do the talking.












We were fortunate to find out that on the dates that we were at Boracay, a summer event tagged as "X ON THE BEACH" was ongoing. Open competitions on extreme sports on the beach: wakeboarding, skimboarding, wall-climbing and ultimate frisbee. No registration fee! All we needed to do was just walk-in and register.

I registered for the speed-wall climbing competition while Bai registered for the wakeboarding competition. It's my first time to compete at speed-climbing (I've competed before on technical climbing, and they're totally different) and it was gonna be Bai's first time to compete in a wakeboarding event.

How it did turn out? Well, I didn't win the event (my time was 16.2 secs, while the 1st place finisher did it in 12 seconds flat!) and neither did Bai win in his event. BUT... I got an interview (and a good probability of being shown on a local TV show called "Sports Unlimited"). HAHAHAHAHA!

Ultimate frisbee anyone? It was my first time to watch an ultimate frisbee game done on the beach, and it turned out to be more exciting than the frisbee matches I see done at the San Lorenzo park or at the UP grounds.

Well, how about skimboarding? It really looked like an easy thing to do, but the ease with how the locals are able to do it is very deceiving. Skimboarding is H-A-R-D. First you need to lug a skimboard (and it's a bit heavy) on a running start. Next, you throw the board at the waterline such that it skims the water. Third, you chase after the board. Fourth, you jump on the board. Finally, you try to skim the water with the board. Hahaha... I injured my right big toe when I tried my skill at it, somewhere between steps 3 and 4. I had some minor successes on skimboarding, but there's very big room for improvement.

Of course, strolling the long stretch of Boracay's beaches will let you meet some interesting people. Old guys multi-tasking on the beach (go figure what I mean, haha), a multi-racial jamming session, very friendly locals (kids and manangs and everyone in-between their age brackets) and of course, the tourists!

Boracay's sunsets are great. There are so many ways to take a sunset shot of Boracay, and here's some of the good ones that we got.



Of course, we did the usual stuff: swim at the beach, get henna tattoos, meet girls, go drinking and get really drunk, shop, dine, talk with the locals... but if you're the fun, creative and adventurous type, there is always something new to do at Bora.

...like getting an outrageous hairstyle (which, by the way, rendered my boss speechless when I showed up at work with it).

Cluzzle (klah-zehl)

Last week, expatriate colleague JayW cooked dinner and invited a few friends over to dine with him in celebration of his XX'th birthday.

Dinner was... uhm... interesting...
...
..
.

Hahaha. Okay, okay. Dinner was excellent! Honest!

Anyway, the gang played a round of CLUZZLE as after-dinner entertainment. Newly-wed couple Glenn and Janice emerged as the winner at the end of the game.

Here's how the final clay sculptures turned out. Can you guess what each of the sculptures represent?

Yellow sculpture by GEL, Orange sculpture by JayW, Green sculpture by Kaye, Red sculpture by Stip, Blue sculpture by Glenn&Janice, Purple sculpture by Emer