700 Billion Dollar Bailout Plan Failure

I'm sorry, I just need to get this out of my system as early as possible, before our markets open and I see the consequences of last night's action, and I might be forced to say something worse.

FUCK AMERICAN CONGRESS,

AND FUCK THOSE BACKWATER IDIOTS WHO THINK IT'S STILL ABOUT

CORPORATE AMERICA RAPING LITTLETOWN AMERICA

Today will be a very interesting day, albeit a sad day for humanity.

Soma Bringer DS - Review

A friend of mine once told me that there are two ways to make a really good game: Try something completely new, or get an existing idea and take away everything that's wrong with it. Soma Bringer does the latter, and successfully. If you need a review in one sentence, here goes: I haven't played a game that has rendered me borderline sleepless in years. Concept

Soma Bringer is the lovechild of the Diablo franchise and Japanese RPGs. A lot of the concepts in Diablo were used in this game while the art style, storyline and world elements have strong JRPG influences. In this game, you play as one constant character in a group/party of 3, slugging through different dungeons hack-and-slash style to progress through the storyline. As you play on, you get to allocate points into various stat categories like strength vitality and skill. Various weapons and equipments can also be found throughout the game which you can customize.

While at first the customizability of your character may sound like a pain, Soma Bringer does a lot to simplify the activities associated with customizable RPGs.

Storyline

Soma Bringer is set in a world dominated by Soma, a mysterious energy used for many things ranging from casting world-ending spells, to powering your regular juice blender. One day many years ago, the world was invaded by visitors, a group of malevolent aliens hell bent in destroying mankind (why cant these aliens be like E.T. for once?)

The story begins with the crashing of a meteorite in a forest. Question. A meteorite falls in the forest. Does it make any sound? Yes, apparently. It makes the sound of creepy ghostly choirs. Anyway, a team (your team) from a military dispatch gets sent to inspect the location of the crater and in that crater, they find a mysterious naked loli and did what any normal thinking RPG heroes would do -they took the loli home, but not in the manner you might be thinking of right now. Anyway, things get complicated after that and before you know it, you're running around uncovering one mystery after another.

Progression of the story is kept at a steady pace and you will always be doing something related to the storyline, which is better than what we were given in Diablo.

Graphics

The graphics for the game is a mixture of 2D backgrounds, 2D sprites, and 3D characters. The game is played via overhead view, which can be zoomed in up to 3x than the default, depending on the situation. Characters look partially cell-shaded and are designed in strict anime-ish fashion. The monsters are kept interesting by their looks and it appears ample time was given to make most of them look like they can actually harm you (something Lunar Dragonsong failed at)


The backgrounds are nicely-handpainted looking, similar to the "___ of Mana" series, though setting the view to maximum zoom renders the backgrounds horribly pixelated possibly to save space, but seeing you can't really play decently on maximum zoom level, it's a minor fault.

Gameplay

As I've said earlier, Soma Bringer's gameplay is very similar to Diablo. And as interesting as the story is, easily the best aspect of this game is the gameplay.

At the start, you are asked to pick a character belonging to a team, afterwhich you get asked to pick a specialization ranging from Gunners to Swordies to Soma Specialists. After choosing the specialization, you also get to pick the character's preferred weapon. Finally, you get to allocat the initial stats of your character, at which point you probably have a lot of possible combinations already (I'm not into counting premutations, sorry)

For every increase in level, you get stat points to allocate for your character that you can distribute in various stat areas. For this game, we have Strength, Soma, Vitality, and Skill. Depending on your player class, different stats will be more important. For my case, I used a gunner, and had to pour everything into Skill.

Each player specialization will also have different abilities which you can unlock using ability points you can gain by leveling up. Abilities have different levels as well, which require ability points to level. Abilities are classified into different ranks, and the availability of the higher ranking skills are unlocked as your character level increases.

Leveling is straight forward. You gain exp for every monster you kills and for completing certain quests.

As for money, gold is dropped by monsters, along with items which can be sold to merchants. Your inventory is limited, like in Diablo, but you have a bigger stash in your base where you can store more stuff. Here's the best part. If your inventory becomes full inside a dungeon, you have the option of directly sending your loots into your stash so you dont have to go back everytime you get greedy. When you go to a shop to sell items, you can also directly access your stash and sell the items there without the need of the going back to and fro bullshit other games will have you doing. Real convenient.

Weapons and equipment have different classifications in terms of rarity, which shows in the icon background. White being the most common and red is the most rare. Some weapons give elemental properties and damage bonuses. Further customization can be done through inserting spheres of various types through NPCs available throughout the game. The abundance of equipment variations in this game will have you changing quips every half hour or so. (power! yes! more power!)

You are by default accompanied by 2 team members at all times, both of which can only be indirectly given tactics (passive, agressive, defensive). Most of the time, they're competent enough that you don't need to do anything. If they die, you can resurrect them using an NPC. If you die, you just go back to base without having to restart any thing. You do lose EXP in the process as a penalty though, like how they do it in most MMORPGs.

Waypoints are scattered all over the towns and dungeons, and you can open a temporary waypoint/gateway similar to a townscroll if you find the need to retreat between waypoints. Monsters do not respawn until you've restarted the game or changed towns and you can save anytime, though after loading, you will always end up at the starting point of the Act (and then you can just waypoint your way back to where you stopped).

Controls are intuitive, but are too complex to discuss here. It's not that hard to figure out though.

Soma Bringer's design really tries hard in making sure you focus on the gameplay and not the maintenance that comes with RPGs like this, which is a good thing.

Sound

Music is made by Yasunori Mitsuda, a legend in the videogame soudntrack world. Music is always apt, and haunting at times. Some tracks might remind seasoned players of other games like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears and Xenosaga, which is a good thing, because that's a sign of good music quality.

Reception

I found the game easy to immerse in, and the story was captivating enough to pay attention to despite the fact that I was just in it for the gameplay and the music. The gameplay is streamlined and sleek, and it's hard to imagine these are the same guys that made the trainwreck that's Xensosaga II. With most of the frustrating stuff one, going through the game is hardly a chore. As of writing I'm already in Act 5 in Normal Mode and the difficulty is well balanced, although getting the best upgrades and the best shop items seems a bit too easy.

One of the best parts of this game I hear, isn't even on this review yet. Soma Bringer features 3-way multiplayer via Wi-Fi, which is a feature i can only test when I convince more people to play this game. (what the hell are you waiting for?)

The game is far from perfect, but for the mean time, it's easliy the best RPG that the DS has in its game roster as of now. Boo yah!

Availability

Like many Japanese-made things, Soma Bringer is a Japanese-only release, but DarthNemesis and other great guys at GBATEMP.NET have done a near complete game translation, which you can use to translate the ROM you can download pretty much anywhere nowadays.

Non-Rice Shortages

Elections

During my last visit in HK, I was lucky enough to see how they carried out elections there, or rather barely saw it. I was so used to seeing society almost grind to a halt every time there's an election to be held in our country, I was surprised to see theirs come and go faster than a congressman during a session.

First of all, there was barely any pre-election fervor. Besides a couple of guys shaking the hands of pedestrians, a billboard or two that you could mistake for tutorial service advertisment, and prerecorded voices being played by roving trucks, there wasn't really anything much that told us campaigning going on. Their walls don't turn into elaborate paper maches like ours, there are no extravagant parties being held in the streets with artistas endorsing, not even a single candidate being victim to a drive by shooting (and we just can't have that)

Come election day, it was just like a normal Sunday. I wasn't able to see any voting precint and got the idea that maybe they just voted through some high-tech method like using the urinal flush on public restrooms or something. Flush once to go liberal, flush twice to go democratic. Urinate to support Social Democrats. Hey, it could happen.

As for the counting, I barely noticed it. As early as 3AM the following day, they were already announcing winners. Yes, in a matter of hours - the way a real computerized election system works, the way our computerized election system doesnt (seriously, 3 days?). To be fair, Hong Kong is a small island, but that's not really the point.

The following morning, various parties were already accepting defeat with candidates saying "I lost. I don't know what went wrong, I mean other than people not flushing twice to vote for me. I'll try harder next time though." or something like that.

A system that makes their candidates find out their fate a mere hours after an election sounds too cruel from the Filipino perspective, since in our country our system is different. Our proud electorate system has no losers afterall. There are the winners, and then there are those who say they should have won instead.

Viva le Philippines.

More Reasons Why Nobody Takes Newspapers Seriously Anymore

I think I've had enough entries here in Public Static about how the newspaper Phil. Daily Inquirer and Responsible Journalism tend to go hand in hand like used abortion spoons and Catholicism. Honestly, I used to think PDI was one of those better newspapers that had a more human touch to their reporting as compared to the Manila Bulletin which was the preferred newspaper around the house for so many years. Maybe it was naivety of youth, either that or PDI really just degenerated from a vital information source to yet another one of those panic bullshit journalist bodies called tabloids. It seems like every big event they cover get turned into even bigger events. Here's today's front page:
Yesterday was something like that too. You'd think you'r reading those fictional newspaper headlines from comic books about the apocalypse. Anybody outside the market wouldn't really realize that the plunge is just a 5% average drop in world market indexes and is far from level of collapse.

In the article, the guys over at PDI were so nice to tell the world that our local banks will be devasted because of Lehman Brothers' closure, which kinda tells you to withdraw all your money and keep it in a huge chest to be burried in your back yard. The real deal? Most banks don't even have any exposure. RCBC, BDO and other big banks report less than 1% asset exposure, which, according to the great book of common sense, is anything but "devastating".

The world is changing, but how it's happening is not exactly how it's written down on newspapers. Whatever happened to making sure the readers get as close to the turth as possible? I understand that people have to sell their wares have to survive but panicmongering despite being one of the pillars of communication is just too low a level to sink in.

I'm not saying there is no crisis going on. There is and yes, everybody will be feeling the effects, even you and me, except Ben Tumbling (because he's dead already). I just hope people realize they're just making shit worse by panicking, or worse, capitalizing on the panic and ignorance as an excuse to sell more instead of using the opportunity to actually fill the gap of ignorance with useful and accurate information.

What a disappointment.

Filipinos and Haggling

It's a cultural thing. To the lot of us Filipinos, a price tag isn't a finality. It's a challenge that should be brought down. A Filipino will haggle the price of a car down to a peso if you'd let him.

Red Kinoko Tours Presents: Macau

Macau

Macau is one of those cities where the main attraction is the city itself, like Amsterdam, New Orleans, and Vigan. It's what Hong Kong would've been had it been given the inert laziness of Southwest Europeans instead of the crustiness of the Brits. Think of the place as Hong Kong's weird brother who has an excessive gambling problem, but is fun to hang out with anyway. Languages spoken are English, Chinese, Portuguese (which is like Spanish with lots of weird letters you don't find in the standard alphabet).

People here use both Macau money called a Patacos or something (I can't really remember) or MOP. Hong Kong dollars are also accepted in almost all transactions, but the change given will be in MOP or a mixture if sufficient HKD change is not available. Conversion rate is roughly 100HKD = 103MOP.

To get around, there are taxis, shuttles and buses. Taxis are relatively cheap, with an 11 HKD minimum fare and a 1 dollar increment that is charged by the minute of travel time. Free shuttles get you around most casinos, although some require you to gamble a bit first before being able to board these shuttles. Buses are similar to HK buses in terms of fare costs.

Macau is famous for three things: Casinos, funny looking houses, and Russian hookers. The objective of our trip is to cover those three things and whatever else catches our fancy, and we have to be home on the same day.

Transit

We arrived at Central HongKong's Macau Ferry Terminal at around 10:30 and promptly left around 10:40. Immigration will check your passport and immigration slip so it's best if you have those at hand. An economy (read: masa) ferry ticket cost us around 147HKD and the travel time is 1 hour across rather smooth seas. And yes, there is a comfort room located within the ferry.

Macau Proper

After disembarking at around 11:40, we got stuck for almost another hour in the immigration hall because of the sheer number of people coming in on a perfectly fine Saturday morning. I got a bit disappointed since I was seeing far fewer Portuguese than I expected (and none of them were wearing the traditional armor I envisioned them to wear for casuals).

After exiting the terminal, we went to the visitor's information booth and basically took every type of brochure and map in the place. At this point, it's already 1pm and we were hungry. There's no real place in the terminal where you can eat. I already started thinking that maybe people in Macau consume petrol. We decided to go to The Venetian Macao first and start finding food there instead. Fortunately, there are free shuttle buses going to the Venetian which is quite far from the terminal (i.e. across the goddamn country).

Venetian Macau

The Venetian Macau is a hotel/casino and is one of the best attractions of Macau. We arrived after 20 minutes of bus travel and proceeded to the food court. The food court is the only real option you have around this place if you're on a relatively limited budget like me. A meal anywhere else fetches at least 200HKD, while the food court sells good food at around 70HK (I bought seafood rice from the Singaporean kiosk). Cheapskates should be happy to find other food there that costs 30HKD + (drinking) fountain water. The trick is to know which fountains are for drinking and which are for coin throwing/wishing. The food court is decent and not like the ones we have in SM, so don't worry too much about hygiene.

Features we visited that you may want to visit in the Venetian are as follows:

- St. Mark's square, a replica of the plaza of the same name in Venice Italy, only this version doesn't have the turbid water, flooding, and bird poop of the original place. The painted skies are really realistic.

- Gondolas. We didn't really ride these boats manned by Filipino bangkeros singing in Italian since we can get as much service riding a pedicab on a flooded road back in Manila for much less, but hey, they're in costume so a few photo-ops aint so bad.

- Chalk drawings. Pretty amazing stuff. 3D drawings on a 2D floor, the same things you see on the internet. Just wander around near St Mark's and you'll eventually stumble on it.

- Human statue performers. Actors posing as statues are littered across the various well designed alleys of the shopping arcade. You almost think they're real performing gypsies from Rome (minus the European Eu du Putok scent).

- Last place you can go inside here that's not the casinos is the Grand hall, which is a big circular hall that connects all four wings of the casino/arcade area, featuring hand painted frescoes and exquisitely detailed posts and ceiling vaults that you can marvel at from the center area.

- If you think you can walk, the facade outside the venetian is a replica of Venetian buildings. There are designated Photo-op areas on the left side of the main entrance of the hotel. We skipped this, and took pictures of the place instead while on the bus departing from the Venetian. (yeah, yeah, we missed it. make sure you don't)

After a bit of tripping, we boarded a free shuttle bus going to Sands Casino which is located back near the Ferry Terminal. So far, so good.

Sands Casino

Sands isn't as big as The Venetian, and admittedly the only reason we went here is so we can jack a free ride. If you go to the second floor, you can catch Russian hookers/exotic dancers onstage, presumable to stand as a reminder to the girls who are frequenting the tables of what they might end up as if they put a bit too much into the losing bet. It would be interesting to mention now that in most places of a casino, you are NOT allowed to use your phone or your camera or your camera phone.

We spent roughly 20 minutes in this place and then took our leave through the main exit and went across the street to Fisherman's Wharf.

Fisherman's Wharf

The Wharf is basically an amusement park that looks like what Enchanted Kingdom's fancy facades should look like. We went to the arcades beneath the volcano-ish structure called The Underground just to see what stuff they had there and then went on to Aladdin's Fort to the THRONE OF THE PRETENDER (end: obscure Nickelodeon gameshow reference). Littered all over the place are replicas of famous locations around the world, ranging from Trafalgar Square to the Coliseum, to New Orleans to Somalia (complete with downed Black Hawk). This place also offers a nice view of the bay and a strangely shaped bridge across the distance. If you see Abu the security guard (dressed as a Persian dude) say Hi for me.

Towards the other end of the place is a large Chinese/Korean castle, a Zen Garden and a Coy pond. I presume by now you're dead tired from all the walking. There are benches there for you to take a breather. One nice thing about this place is that there are hardly any people even during Saturdays.

After this, we flagged down a taxi (coloured black and white, kinda like police cars) and asked the driver via picture instruction to take us to the Ruins of St. Paul.

Ruins of St. Paul

The fare ride costs us 25HKD, which is about as much as what you'd pay from Manila to Ortigas. The Ruins of St. Paul is the icon of Macau (as mentioned earlier), presumably because placing a casino as your national symbol puts you somewhere near the "Fucked up" zone in the Sodom and Gomorrah scale of lechery. Russian Hookers as a national icon was taken already by Amsterdam so Macau settled for a destroyed church.

To be honest, the only reason you'd go to this place is for the sake of having gone to the place. At the back of the church, there's a crypt filled with real bones and a museum of sacred relics filled with statues of saints with admittedly stubby arms. (maybe that's just how the Portuguese wanted their saints, iunno)

Near the church is the Museo de Macau. There's a 15 HKD entrance fee but I guess you might as well drop by. Lots of Filipino guards inside you can chat with if you get bored with the lightup dioramas. I learned from the Museum that Macau is a place filled with lots of Chinese doing lots of Chinese things.

At the exit of the museum, you'll end up at the top of the hill facing the ruins of St. Paul. There's a snackbar near the exit of the fort. The canons are the real deal here and are good for photo ops. There's also a nice view of Macau's neighborhoods, which kinda looks like a typical Manila neighborhood, minus the street kids, but we'll go back to that bit in a sec.

From the fort, the best way to go is back down the escalator from which you came from. For our case, we used the stairs to go up to the fort instead of taking the escalators and ended up getting tired unnecessarily (I don't mind exercising, just not accidental exercise).

Path to Senado Square

After returning to the ruins of St. Paul, we went down the steps and into what looks like La Huerta, Parañaque. (I swear I can almost see Ka Saleng, the old lady who sells every toy imaginable near our school) The souvenir shops downstairs offer magnets, shirts and keychains at reasonable prices. There are signs everywhere that point to Senado Square, another popular landmark of the City. Just follow those, and if you feel you're lost, ask any Filipino there. Along the way, you may find a food shop that sells Portuguese egg tarts for 5$ a piece. Said to be a specialty, I did try one and it tasted like what it's supposed to be - an egg tart. If you see a church that looks like Quiapo Church complete with its own Plaza Miranda, you're near Senado Square.

Senado Square

The place is supposed to be a perfect venue for looking at the traditional Macau architecture which is a combination of Chinese, Portuguese, and neoclassical architecture (translation: the houses have bright colours, lots of posts, and there are Chinese people are playing Mahjong inside) As an added bonus, there are lots of Filipinos around this place even on Saturdays. During our trip, live feeds of the Paralympics were being shown on a huge-ass LCD, and there were midautumn festival lanterns sprawled around. Again, in my opinion the only reason I went there is because everybody who goes to Macau goes there.

Grand Lisboa

By the time you reach Senado Square, you'd have seen a very quaint golden building that looks like a strange simulacrum of male orgasm (i.e. shaped like golden semen shooting out into the sky). That's the Grand Lisboa and you're heading towards it. From Senado Square, head to the main road adjacent to it and then turn left. Keep walking until you start seeing Vegas-style lights. It's a bit far but I'm sure you can tolerate it.

The Grand Lisboa is one of the few casinos that aren't run by corporations coming in from Las Vegas and other parts of the world. Three things you may want to see here are:

- Star of Lisboa, a huge-ass diamond that's larger than your left nut (or right, if you're left-handed). It's located at the 2nd floor, which in Casino layout terms means 4th floor. I know. Fuck floor designers.

- Pianist Filipino. I dunno, any dude who can play the piano and sing is tour worthy in my book. He's at the upper 1st floor (3rd floor).

- More Russian hookers poledancing at the main hall. We can't have enough of those in this tour.

Open Options, Trip Home

At this point, you'd have seen everything that needs to be seen from my point of view. You're probably dead tired like me too. We went around the place a few more times, details of which I won't enumerate anymore. All I can say is this: The Macau Beer is a goddamn lie. There is no Macau Beer in Macau. If ever there is, don't look for it. Let it find you.

Anyway, along the road that you travelled on the way to the Grand Lisboa, there's a bus line that goes the Marina Ferry Terminal which is Bus line 3. Fare is 2.50HKD and the trip should take less than 20 minutes. (Make sure it's going to the Marina, and not on the other direction, heading for the airport).

From the ferry terminal, the departures is on the 2nd floor. Ticket price is 178HKD, a bit more expensive than going to Macau, which is a pretty literal way of making you feel that it's harder to leave Macau than to come to Macau. Travel time is about an hour. For our case, we left Macau at around 9 in the evening and got back to Hong Kong island an hour later.

Note that we did miss one vital location in this trip, the Macau Tower. I'm not sure why we did but we did. If I were really up to it, I'd visit it after the Grand Lisboa so I can get a nice night view of the Macau Skyline and have my dinner there. But I didn't because I was too tired and I think I've had my share of views from tall places here in Hong Kong. It's up to you if you still want to drop by, but I wouldn't really know if it's worth it or not.

Macau is one of those places where the best way to get around with your plan is to not have a plan at all. We winged pretty much everything from our arrival and the trip turned out rather well. So if you're planning to go to Macau, just keep a light goofy attitude and you'll feel right at home.

Well, unless your only there for the hookers.

One-day Macau Trip Foreword

I'd like to note a few things about the guide that I'll be posting after this that you may need to consider if you want to replicate our itenerary as exactly as possible.

1. I grew up in a family where touring another country means less of a vacation and more of a military operation. This is usually because we very rarely stay with relatives and friends and hotels are f'ing expensive so we try to cram as much activities as possible with the smallest of timeframes. The same applies for this Macau trip. We only stayed long enough and nothing longer. No coffee breaks, no 20 minute photoshoot sessions - nothing.

2. None of our itinerary was planned. The only resources we used are the visitor information counter at the terminal and a bunch of unsorted random trivia swimming in my head at that time (e.g. Macau has this unfinished church that keeps appearing whenever the country is mentioned. We just needed to fucking see that.)

4. We don't have people who need to urinate every 10 minutes in our group.

3. Guided tours are for fags.

North Korean Health Supplements

Pyongyang, September 1 (KCNA) -- The DPRK is concentrating its efforts on developing health foods.
Public health and biological science research institutions have developed various kinds of specially efficacious health foods.
They are made with natural medicines including Panax schinseng and Ganoderma growing in the northern highland of the country. Among them are anti-radiation honey and eye strain relieving honey. Their everyday administration helps people swiftly relieve from mental and physical fatigue and prevent heart diseases and thrombosis.
Yanggeron manufactured by a folk method with a long history is a sort of tonic which gives youthful vitality to the user.
The nutritive pine flower pills contain materials needed for the human body such as various vitamins, microelements, essential amino acid and polysaccharide which are good for health promotion.
Besides, active nutrient pills, functional health food, and nutritive powder and nutrient jelly, health food complexes, are also popular among the people.
Kumsamsu, Chongjiryong, Chongsinjong, Chonghyolsodangjong, Poganjong, Unicolon and others which are potent for health protection find their way to foreign markets.

Let me start by saying any government that tries to develop food supplements for the benefit of its own people is doing something noble. I do however, believe, that the reason why they call these things "food supplements" is because you need to have food to supplement first. In a nation like North Korea where being poor and starving has been the general fashion statement for a good half century, I'm pretty sure honey that "reduces eye strain" is the last thing they'd really need. But hey, those anti-radiation honey just might get in handy when the people start thinking they'd eat what Korea has lots of - weaponized uranium.

I'm just saying.

My Work

[This article is best served with a nice hot cup of GLOAT. What was that? Screw you, I just need some selfreassurance at the moment. Bite me.]

I've always been straightforward about how I deal with my work. I don't like working, but I'm happy with my work. Granted the ability to not have to work a single minute more and still be made for life, I'd drop what I'm doing faster than you can say "driftwood".

But then again, life's not exactly the type to give things out as freebies. To get what you want, you gotta earn money, and just like any human being out there, I do have my sets of wants, although I'm not so sure there are other humans who'd want most of what I want, like invade Sabah using native soliders strapped on the backs of tortoises.(fuck yeah.)

So I work, and I'm happy I only have to do what I do to get the money I want. I work in the IT industry and while it's not exactly the best line of work out there (e.g. Peter North's) I admit that it's a lot better than most other jobs out there, but who cares? A few of the indirect perks you can get for doing my line of work:

1. Work is hardly monotonous, very much unlike working the cash register, or manning a ferry, or blowing dicks for chump change. Pretty much like being inside a car, being in constant changing motion eliminates most notions of boredom. Of course most accidents require motion to occur, but what the hell, right?

2. I don't have to walk around, much. I like sitting. God gave me a well-formed ass so I can sit on it and I'm happy to not disappoint in using such a gift. I know it forces me into a sedentary lifestyle, but I guess I've grown to love just that. Like you know, just sitting and still earning shit. Walking around causes all sorts of injury, like tripping, and getting hit by a runaway bus. Nobody likes those things, not when you have safer options like sitting. .

3. I don't have to talk to people, much. I like talking to people actually, as long as I don't have to talk to them about work. As anybody who's been in a team before , I know that the biggest problems working people ever face are the problems that actually have faces - other people. By being forced to face a computer, you minimize that gut-busting aspect most work forces on you. Sure, you get your daily dose of human attrition too, but not as much. Also there's always nice ways to avoid intense conflicts using technology - like email, the answering machine, and heaven forbid, the tazer.

4. Internet. So how many jobs will give you the perk to type out something like this during workhours? In some cases typing out even something like this on a keyboard could mean instant death - like if you're a trapeze acrobat.

5. I get to travel and shit. Sure, it's only one country but still. I'm happy I can travel. Going into another country gives you a chance to just leave a lot of things behind and give you a perspective on many aspects of life(for my case, a very chinese perspective). For my case, I get an extra bonus because I only stay for short periods and I stay where there's Jollibee, and we all know being able to eat chickenjoy at any moment's notice is always a good plus when nostalgia starts kicking in.

6. Programming is the exercise for the mind. The mind is a muscle that just dies out when you stop using it. Ask any congressman. By doing programming, you constantly get presented with puzzles, and puzzles you're paid to solve. You get your mental exercise and you're being handed wads of cash for your effort. It's a win-win scenario. My only peeve about this is that people rarely see well-sculpted brains without having to crack your skull open. I bet if I can show off my brain around, I'd be getting chicks left and right. (p.s. Anna, darling, if you're reading this, I'm just saying this for humor's sake. I love you baby. Now put down that knife.)


There's a hundred different labels for my profession, not including raunchier ones like codebitch, so it's always hard to know what it is that I really do, and it's always hard as hell to explain what I do to people who don't understand what SDLC, coding, and Java means. But here's a little secret that I've always thought about my work:

It's awesome.

Practice What You Preach

I remember before, my teacher once mentioned to me when you lift a pail of water and stay in position you're not doing any work at all, because work is distance times effort. Being the asshole kid that I am, I said "Then you're not working, ma'am, because you're just sitting on that desk all day." I promptly got disciplined for saying that. Practice what you preach is all I'm saying.