Village Idiot Savant: August 2010

Friday, August 27, 2010

"Firefly" Revisited

When I had to reset my students' passwords for our lab management system, I chose "RiverTam" to give out to the class. An unsecure practice, I know, but it was a temporary throwaway password in a limited environment -- but I digress. I wanted something catchy to show them how cool I was. I mean, come on! It's a scifi show! From Joss Whedon! At the very least I wanted some chuckles and winks.

Lyndon's

Beware of Lyndon's, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant along Roxas Boulevard: the establishment plays liberally with advertising that is patently false. It claims to have the "World's Worst Ribs and Awful Chicken." Absolutely not true at all! In fact, their ribs and chicken are just about the best I've tasted. And for a very good price, too.

Spider

Hypocritical Vultures

I have to hand it to broadcast media: the networks really know how to milk a situation for what it's worth. After their extensive live coverage of the Quirino Grandstand hostage crisis which may have possibly -- quite so very possibly -- brought it to its bloody end, they're now spending airtime to ask out loud if they might have done wrong.

Would that this public hand-wringing were truly sincere! But from past history, whatever lessons may be learned from this tragedy will go conveniently out the window when the next scoop comes a-knockin'.

Jose Rizal

Rizal Monument in Davao City.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Tsinelas

Slippers are the favorite footwear in this country.

View from Finster

Night shot from the 6th floor of Finster Building, taken with my Canon Powershot A540 at 8:30 in the evening. I set the camera for a 15-second exposure.

Kadayawan 2010 Floats

Kadayawan 2010 Set 3

Faces of Kadayawan 2010 Set 3

Faces of Kadayawan 2010 Set 2

Faces of Kadayawan 2010 Set 1

Kadayawan 2010 Set 2

I'm very happy with the pictures I took this year. I'm still using the same camera, my old Canon PowerShot A540, but I took a chance and played around with the various settings until I found the right combinations. That, and I wanted to compete with the DSLR set. Yeah, I know, I don't stand a chance, but I ain't goin' down without a fight. Besides, the best camera is the one that you have.

Kadayawan 2010 Set 1

This year's is the best Kadayawan yet. I liked the simpler and shorter route the dancers took -- through CM Recto then back to Ponciano -- because it was less brutal on the kids who were participating. It also gave me plenty of opportunities to take pictures up close.

On a related note, the DSLR set is getting more and more annoying: I don't get why they have to get up close to the dancers to take photos. Isn't that what they have their verdammt zoom lenses for? As if it wasn't enough to get the longest lens possible, I found many now carrying two or three cameras. Well, the heck with it, I thought: my camera may not be as fancy or as expensive but I have just as much right to take photos. And so I got into the game as well, and I did my darnedest to get into their frames. So there.

Plain Folks at Kadayawan 2010

Some plain folks I met at Kadayawan 2010. The mendicants accosted me for money but as I wasn't carrying any, I took their picture instead. Vendors of all sorts did brisk business today, hat sellers among them.

Luigi and Mario

Some folks I met at Kadayawan 2010. No, I don't know their names. What caught my eye was their matching t-shirts.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Biking Samal

I found this in the dark recesses of my hard drive while spring cleaning my files. I think I wrote this for a magazine but it never really saw the light of day. Here it is in full.

As I imagine it would be with most other writers, I am sometimes afflicted by bouts of procrastination. Such was the case in writing this article. I originally proposed the topic in early May, after which it got accepted. The editors gave me a deadline of May 15, a Friday. Since I was saddled with teaching a Masteral class for Ateneo de Davao on that day, I put the deadline off. "I'll send it in on Monday," I said to myself. In the meantime, I would refresh my memory and expand my scope by biking Samal again with a group of friends.

Little did I know the scope would take me in a direction I didn't intend: I crashed my bike, took the return trip in an ambulance, and stayed a night in the hospital just to be certain.

A little weirdness...

...is good for the soul.

Just when I get discouraged at how conventional Ateneo de Davao students are -- Facebook, dancing, modelling -- along comes guys like Chu to tell me that there is hope for local geekdom.