On a Wing and a Prayer
 
I'm here at the Cyber Zone in Megamall, blogging and surfing in one of the pow-wow internet kiosks.  It's actually pretty cool here in the ol' CZ... the internet is fast, there are coffee, tea and snack places nearby, computer, gaming and telecom shops all around... the only thing missing is a comic shop or an actual arcade. Anyway, I'd rather much blog in the privacy of my workstation, or at The Sanctum... you can never tell if someone's eavesdropping or peeking at your stuff. Then again, who's to say I'm completely safe in The Sanctum..?
 
Anyway, we just came off the Siglo Comics Workshop, conducted by Dean, myself, Jamie Bautista and Wilson Tortosa. We started just after lunch. After a brief intro from Dean, Wilson took the fore and spoke about doing comics, with a smattering of tips on art techniques and experiences in his academic life. He brought a long a fair amount of cool art, including his college thesis, which was  a comic with fairy tale characters given a manga-action flair (Can you picture the seven dwarves as a Sentai superteam? Heh...). Afterwards, I jumped in and FINALLY got to use my lecture on 10 Tips to Creating Your Own Manga Story. Even two years after it should have been given, it was still nice so I'm glad it got told.
Dean took over after a while, talking about writing in general. It's pretty cool to see him have the audience laughing and in with him throughout his talk. You can really learn a lot from people's speaking techniques and how to captivate an audience.
 
All this and NONE of us came really prepared... basically we were all freakin' WINGING IT. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
 
Anyway, despite our group unpreparedness the large audience gathered around seemed to have fun. There were predominantly young people around, although there was that one odd old lady who was just totally out of place- did she even know what we were talking about? Well, she stuck out for the whole show and even asked for a copy of Angel Ace- I gave away about 20 copies free to the audience. Of course, anything free puts smiles on peoples' faces, but it felt good to have people get the comic and hopefully appreciate it.
 
The day is still young. We ended the session at about 4, and we have the evening before us. Wasn't able to go to Greenhills, of course, but I think I can save it for next week. Work's looming on Monday, but I am actually raring to start the grind again. I miss the taste of salt. Heheh.

Phone Whore Post AGAIN?!?


Techies start slavering... the upgrade to the P900 is coming.

Sony Ericsson recently revealed their long-awaited and much-anticipated follow-up to their P900 PDA phone. It's called the P910 and it mixes new stuff with old. Overall, the thing is a P900 more or less, but with several changes. For one, the screen will be a dazzlingly bright 262K color TFT screen. The internal memory will be bumped up to 64 MB, and a 32 MB memory stick will be thrown into the deal. The P910 will also reportedly support Sony's Memory Stick Duo format, allowing storage for up to 1 GB of data. DAAAMN! That's a LOT better than the P900's limit of 128 MB, I think. Aside from that, there will be some software and internal upgrades, and of course as you can see from the pic there will be an attached QWERTY thumb board on the flip-side of the removeable keyboard.

The biggest downer for me though is that the camera will still be VGA quality- no megapixel muscle for this PDA combo. Still, the prospect of having a Gigabyte of videos (it will of course be Symbian so Smartmovie will be supported most probably) in your phone is uber-cool. We'll see though... I've never been a fan of the P9 series, but you never know. Heh. Let's all just wait for it when the P910 comes later this year.

Wrong Signal

Yesterday, I ventured out of The Sanctum. I just needed to get out, and I was struck by a craving. It's a pretty funny story, actually.

I was at home, just lolling around the ol' sack when I turned the TV on to a news program named InSight. They were playing a report on obesity and health, featuring clips from the controversial documentary Super Size Me. FYI, SSM is about a guy who starts eating all his meals from McDonald's for 1 month. The result of his McDiet was his ballooning up with about 95 pounds, his cholesterol level shooting up, his life getting all crappy and all his doctors screaming TIME OUT!!!

Anyway, I was watching the footage and then the various shots of people eating burgers and fast food and instead of getting all guilty and scared...

I got hungry.

So, after having an obligatory couple of minutes peddling away on the exercise bike, I dressed up and went off into the outside world. I went to Greenhills and got the 4 latest episodes of Inu Yasha (which is STILL my favorite anime and only keeps getting better and better), and after which I made a beeline for Brothers Burger.
Now, on the way I took a cab and the traffic made me supremely hungry... so without really thinking I ordered something called "The Brothers Pounder" with bacon. It was only after I sat down and twiddled my phone for a few minutes that I saw what the actual Pounder looked like. It was a MONSTER- a two-pattie burger that would make the Big Mac look like a Burger McDo. Oh-oh... I made a booboo...
When the thing finally arrived, it was so huge I could barely contain it in my hands (and I have big hands, mind you). The thing was literally sweating oil and grease from the wrappings, and I was SCARED. Anyway, it was too late so I started eating, all the while the facts and stuff I heard from the InSight report were whispering in my ear. Sigh. Anyway, after a few wide-open mouth bites, I felt filled up. I left about a quarter of the thing unfinished and a lot of onion rings left, but I couldn't touch it anymore. As I left the resto, I had the inner urge to jog to Megamall. Oh well.

Of course, this is really not all fun and light; I know I'm putting on a lot of weight, so I should try to trim down my fat eventually. Someday. I will. Really. Postitively.

Sigh.

Mysterious Ways

I'm really not one for hyping up or blogging about the latest news item, but the recent hostage incident in Iraq with Filipino Angelo de la Cruz is really something you can't not notice. I just find it kinda amusing to think though that when he hopefully, finally gets home, at the very least Mr. de la Cruz will be coming out of this crisis with something other than emotional trauma. He's already a hero to his people, particularly in his hometown (where he will be greeted with a full-blown fiesta, according to news). He and his family will be receiving a house and lot from a subdivision, and it's pretty much sure that he'll be raking in the dough from movie companies seeking to make a movie out of his harrowing experience.

Sometimes, even the most terrible circumstances can hold rewards... not often, but sometimes.

Samurai

For the entirety of my professional life, I've always been an employee, working with a contract, doing a job nine-to-five, five days a week (then again, there was that one job that pretty much had me doing 7 days a week). So I've never really been able to think of even getting into freelancing. I can't even begin to think of the prospect of not having that paycheck come in at the end of a couple of weeks... indefinitely. I enjoy the security and the regularity of regular employment. Perhaps when I am a lot older, a lot more famous and secure with a lot tucked away... maybe I can try it. For now though, I will remain a denizen of the Salt Mines.

So it's pretty cool, in a weird way, to have a friend who has been doing freelance for a long time, return to the world of regular employment. I just wanna wish her luck, but then she really doesn't need that much since she's damn good.

Ah. Talking and blogging about work during my break? What am I thinking... back to rest.

You can't keep a good ninja down!

Kunoichi Boy may be down, but not out!

The adventures of the first male kunoichi may still see the light of day! Apparently, there have been some restructuring and changes at the mag where KB is supposed to come out in. These changes have caused the mags to be delayed, but things should be back on track when the mags are re-released in the last quarter of this year. Despite the changes, I've been assured that Kunoichi Boy is still part of the lineup, so... YAY! I'll work on pages for the adventures of Jin Dragu after I finish Siglo and K.I.A. Still a lot of stuff to do! Damn! WOOHOO!!!

Remastering Remakes


Buffy's no match for ghosts in The Grudge.

I'm watching the US version of The Ring on HBO. I actually like it a lot, and yes, even more so than the original Ringu. It's creepier and the added Hollywood production values, slicker special effects and sounds make it altogether scarier film. There are big differences between the two films that make each version a unique watch- the Japanese film is more spiritual and... well, Japanese, with issues of the supernatural tying in with the secret of the cursed videotape. In the US version, it's a bit more clean cut when it comes to the nature of the curse. Plus, there's a decidedly more occidental bent to how the characters respond and act towards the curse- a need to rationalize things and chuck in scenes in the requisite psycho wards and hospitals. Just goes to show the difference in cultures.

Moviegoers will be seeing another Japanese-to-US horror remake with The Grudge, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. The movie is about a haunted house, filled with vengeful spirits, and how these spirits reach out to swallow up those unfortunate enough to cross paths with them. I am curious though on how they will be able to pull this one off- the original Grudge vid was a series of little vignettes, instead of one single story. Will they follow the original film or just have one big integrated story? It'll be interesting to see.
You can catch the trailer of The Grudge and see more into at the official site.

And the Cupboard was bare...

All I have in The Sanctum are a couple of cans of Coke. No chips, no snacks or tsitsirya. But that should be easily remedied by a trip to the nearest MiniStop. We'll see if I can muster the will to make it out. I have few illusions that I'll make it though- the seductive pull of the bed and the TV, or the chair and the laptop is as strong as iron.
Of course, I am not intending to let my whole break pass by so unproductively. I've started working on Siglo Passion, and hopefully it shouldn't take my whole vacation to finish it. I want to enjoy as much as produce though, so I am planning to take the time and opportunity to catch up on anime and DVD viewing as well. We'll see how much I can squeeze in. Last Exile, Full Metal Alchemist and Scrapped Princess are demanding to be seen... and I think I should give them priority over any Animax re-run.

Getting into the break in earnest now. Nice...

Text Generation

According to a local news program, the Pinoy youth of today, particularly high school students, are becoming dangerously addicted to texting and the use of cellphones. With mobile phones being as inexpensive as they are today, and with cellphone credit and load available in cheap portions, even students can get into texting. This reliance on mobiles, and the compulsion to text and textback, is having some radical effects on youth behavior. A couple of students being interviewed said that they actually scrimped on buying rice so they can allocate the lunch money to text money. They use the credit to keep in touch with friends and relatives. Taken to an extreme though, what other lengths would kids go just for text credit?
The news program goes on to recommend that parents train their kids properly on the use of cellphones.

Pretty wild. In my opinion, more often than not though, it's the kids who teach their parents about phones... heheh...

Abdication

It was fun being emperor and leading my own nation in Nation States. I had kept the state alive as a 'Father Knows Best' state, and later as a 'Corrupt Dictatorship'. Interestingly enough though, I poured billions into education and law enforcement, and eventually crime ceased to exist and my subjects were learned and content. Sure, problems like overpopulation of our national animal, the Madrapoor Viper, happened on occasion, but overall life was good.
Well, life was good and ultimately pointless and monotonous, as we had exhausted all the issues available. And any new ones were just too inane to take seriously.

So, Madrapoor was left to vanish into the mists of oblivion. I'd like to think that the 500+ million population of Madrapoorians will continue to live on in some way, somewhere.

Father has seen you grow and mature. Now, you can live your own lives and make your own decisions. To whatever end you find yourself, I will always be proud of you. Farewell.

Darn. I really, really wish Nationstates had a war or invasion option... oh well.

Final Fantasized

Got this from Evil Dex's Blog. Turns out I'm a pretty cool Final Fantasy character, heheh...

What kind of Final Fantasy Character would I be? by TheBlueParadox
Your Name/Handle
Your Hair Style	Gravity Defying Spikey Grey
Your Clothing Style	Loose Fitting Red Robe
Your Weapon of Choice	Kitana
Your Mission	To Save the Love of my Life!
Your Role in the Fantasy	Villian Turned Hero.
Created with the ORIGINAL MemeGen!

Two-fisted Gameshow



I stayed home today, feeling a bit under the weather... Okay, I got a bit lazy. I stayed in instead of going out to forage in Greenhills or go out with the gang for the Saturday nightout. I almost never see Saturday TV, and this opportunity got me to glimpse the British reality-TV show, Fight School.
Sorta like a cross between Fear Factor and Mortal Kombat, Fight School brings together a group of physically fit competitors to see who's the strongest fighter. Most of the show chronicles the competitors' trials while living in the show's oriental-type dojo, all of which seem straight out of some kung-fu film. They eat noodles, balance bowls and cups, climb poles and more. The climax of the show are actual fights, where the competitors pair off and start tussling with fists and feet flying.
Part of the show's pretty campy with the Grandmaster uttering lines like "I will make a decision with my wisdom..." and coming in with two female attendants/bodyguards. But the competitors' trials are pretty interesting to watch- similar to the WWE show Tough Enough. The actual fights aren't as flashy as any Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter duel, of course- it's all about technique, not force. The fights are mainly for points and seeing who has the will to get on top. So I'm kinda disappointed no one gets knocked out or has their spine pulled out, but it's not half-bad.

Of course, I won't be able to watch it again with any certainty, seeing as I'll most probably be out with the gang next week. Oh well. I'll just play a round or two of DOA to make up for it. Heh.