Global Warming: My Furnace in a Tropical Country

Large drops of sweat surfaces on my forehead, waiting for a public utility jeepney (Philippines’ mode of transportation) for my 9 o’clock class. But the blistering sun penetrated like it was in its 12 o’clock prime.

Yup, another typical college day as I curse up all factories and cars which emits these things that doesn’t alleviate the cause of global warming and that freakin’ greenhouse effect. As I can remember grade school, this is the effect that traps heat on Earth. Hot!

Tropical country as I’m in, my dream of a white Christmas now has just melted its way to obscurity now that temperatures rising so bad. But the good news is, thermal and solar energy now has become a common renewable source. It’s way cheaper than fossil fuels. Economy talks!

Recently, my family and I have been going to SM Supermarket. They had been promoting these green bags made of cloth to pack groceries. Saves up a lot of plastic bags but the catch is, it is not free. You still have to purchase a certain amount worth of selected products. Business talks! Though, Fooda Supermart, not far from where I live, has been deploying their biodegradable plastic bags. Science talks!

Penshoppe, my favorite lifestyle shop, has just started selling low-cost tarp bags. They’ve actually made bags from the billboards they no longer use. It’s cooler than the bag I saw using empty tetra pack juices. Style talks!

Good news. I started reading our encyclopedia and World Book says that “many policy analysts recommend that governments consider a tax on emissions of greenhouse gases.” Isn’t it nice that there’s this way to force power plants and industries to minimize emission, maximize efficiency. They’re doing themselves a favor too! When you know any country that does this, comment up.

I’m an Asian, which means my skin’s melanin production is way too active when grilled by the scorching sun. That may explain how vain I am, especially now my bleaching soap’s running out. Just so you know, I don’t need global warming. It’s like having a furnace when you’re in a tropical country. Watch out for my next enviro entry!

10 Reasons why I love Sims 2

Just imagine a game where you can make a 3D character who looks like you or your fave celeb and being able to control its life? When your life becomes chaotic, this game is a sweet retreat from reality. The lives of your characters are at your mercy to the point you decide who takes a bath and who don’t. Sims 2 is a sequel of the best-selling game of all time, Sims.

Visit their official game site.

	The Original Sims	The Sims 2
Characters: Camera View: Game Music: Special Effects: Storyline:	Blocky and had less detail You can only rotate to four angles around the house All instrumental Two stars! No comment	Great detailed characters 3D camera rotation as high as the sky or as low as the ground Great Songs in Simlish Five stars! Three neighborhood with different themes. Pleasantville is the sequel of the Original Sims. Children of Bob and Betty Newbie is here!

10. Great game music. Have you heard of Don’t Cha of PCD in Simlish Language? Other songs converted to Simlish---you might recognize some of them.

"Come On" - Steadman "The Conversation Is Over" - Acceptance "Beautiful Life" - Charlotte Martin "Outsider" - The Daylights "Sway" - The Perishers "Pretty People" - Dexter Freebish "Very Very Rich Town" - Go Betty Go Depeche Mode with "Suffer Well" Kajagoogoo with "Too Shy" "Smile" - Lily Allen

"Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls "Chemicals React" by Aly & AJ "I Play Chicken with the Train" by Cowboy Troy "Girl Next Door" by Saving Jane "Free Radicals" by The Flaming Lips "Boyhunter" by Skye Sweetnam "The Compromise" by The Format "Turn Out the Light" by The New Amsterdams

"Black Shoes" by The Films "Mr. High And Mighty" - Government Mule "Blue Jeans Pizza" - Moe. "Zoom" - Tata Young "N" - The Breadbox Band "The Next One" - The Chris McCarty Band "Close Your Eyes" - The String Cheese Incident "When It All Falls Apart" - The Veronicas The Epoxies with "Synthesized" Howard Jones with "Things Can Only Get Better"

9. Great Official Game Site and tons of fansites and online communities. Yup, millions of people are playing this game and you ust can’t help but share your passion once you get addicted. I’m a member of four Yahoo Groups under Sims 2 tags and I maintain an EA Account which is exclusive to Original Game owners. When I need some custom content like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, I just search ‘em up in www.ea.thesims2.com’s search engine or better yet, in any fansite. I suggest you watch the following video I made anyway.

8. It’s God-like game. I don’t know with you but I’m fascinated at the game’s objective: whatever the user wants to happen. You can let your characters be close with their family, have a bestfriend, play with their pet, go fishing in a neighborhood pond, or just ruin their lives until they grow into an Elder. You’ll definitely love this forever!

7. Has expansion (introduces new gameplay) and stuff packs (only includes new furniture, clothes, and other objects). As of writing, I have the following expansions:

Expansion Pack	What’s Nice About this
Seasons	Isn’t great that your Sims’s house could actually now be covered in snow? They can now build snowman or throw snowballs at each other!
University	A new stage of life has been added, young adult. This is where your teenage Sims go to college, rent a dorm room, enter a fraternity or any secret society, or maybe find a part-time job, perform pranks, influence others, four graduate careers, or become a Zombie.
Nightlife	Your Sims could now own a car and flirt, invite their Sims on a date, call on a gypsy matchmaker, or the best thing is, you could turn your Sims into vampires!
Pets	Your character could now enjoy the comfort of having a dog scratching your furniture or a cat you can play with! Cool new items like space-themed! You can also have birds, womrats, pet store lots, or turn yourself into a Werewolf.
Open for Business	Planning on opening up a home business like a lemonade stand? Or buying a community lot to have a bakery, toy shop, electronic shop, salon or your grocery? This EP teaches you the basics of marketing and gaining loyalty from your customers!
Family Fun Stuff Pack	Nothing much about this except some themed objects like underwater and medieval wallpaper, lights, decoration, furniture and floor tiles.

6. It’s 3D!

5. Fun Game Events and Realistic Gameplay. After death, a Sim is no longer controllable and will be removed from the control interface. Death is carried out in The Sims 2 by the Reaper, equipped with the uniform scythe and black robe. Sims can sometimes be saved from death if a friend begs the Grim Reaper for mercy. Prank other people like ventrilo-fart or joy buzzer, sounds fun? You can also play instruments in a band, and have Pillow fights. Young adults can also streak on the University area, that is, running naked!

4. Multi-awarded.

“The Sims 2 had a successful E³ showing in 2004. In all, it garnered four awards based on that exhibit alone, and two more upon further review. The Game Critics awarded the game Best Simulation Game at E³ 2004. GameSpot, GameSpy, and IGN also awarded The Sims 2 their Best of Show at E³ 2004 designation. The game also received the Editor's Choice Award from IGN and GameSpy upon final review of the finished product. From 71 online reviews, the average score was 90 out of 100. Seven of those sources awarded the game a 100 out of 100 score.

In addition to its awards, the Sims 2 creator, Will Wright was recognized by being nominated at the Billboard Digital Entertainment Awards for Visionary and Game Developer. The game was also nominated for two international awards, Best PC Game, 2005 from BAFTA, and the International Press Academy Satellite Award for Best Puzzle/Strategy Game, 2005.” –Wikipedia.com-

3. Great Storyline. Sims inhabit neighborhoods, which are self-reliant; In The Sims 2, there are three default neighborhoods: Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville.

• Pleasantview is a neighborhood with many of the characters from The Sims as well as some new additions;
• Strangetown is a neighborhood similar to the area around Area 51, a desert neighborhood with aliens and people living together;
• and Veronaville is a neighborhood heavily influenced by the works of Shakespeare, particularly A Midsummer Nights Dream (with a family's surname being Summerdream) and Romeo and Juliet (featuring the title characters) as well as Puck, Titian and Oberon from A Midsummer Nights Dream.

2. Welcomes downloadable custom content. The modding community for The Sims 2 is self-supporting, with more advanced modders writing tools and tutorials to help in creating custom content and modifying the game environment. Two elements that propagate customization are the official Sims 2 Exchange and the extensive network of fansites that distribute content. More than 250,000 Sims and lots have been uploaded to the Sims 2 Exchange on the Official Site. Some fansites require either a one-time fee or a subscription to access some or all of the content on the site. Most of the sites do not charge for usage; some however, do allow voluntary donations to offset the cost of website maintenance.

1. Allows you to make your own movie through in-game video capture. No more to say but view my YouTube vids at the side bar please.

My Bored College Life

Happy New Year. It means another year to waste. When I graduated high school, I was prepared about the hassles of college life. All those guys bringing in big bunch of books who sits with you in a public transit with those tired expressions from the night's studying battles. I was prepared for that or at least, my alma mater did a good job preparing me so. But my parents were so reluctant of me going to the college of my choice--- University of San Carlos to take up a computer course, Information Technology. Well, my fourth year computer teacher exposed us to HTML, Java programming so dynamically that it enticed me to this in-demand course most geeks are taking. After heated discussions with my dad that universities are a good environment for learning and that training they give is way too cool to the computer school he has been planning to throw my ass in. But my other motive is because most of my friends are gonna have a heck of fun in there. My mom was on my side. Days passed on my eerie summer days when my parents finally decide to enroll me. But to no surprise, my mom took me to AMA Computer College somewhere in Jones, Cebu. A small time franchise of a big university in Manila. When I started last June 2007, no one (I repeat) no one there was familiar to me. Not even childhood classmates or acquaintances of some sort. I spent the whole week, eating lunch alone, finding some good place to stay for long hour breaks. I was in total emotional distress and cursed my father every minute of it. Well, the school is absolutely small but enough to house some 200 enrollees. A three-floor old building they've been renting with a 3 computer labs (2 of which encase old computers) and a healthy group of young faculty which is contrast to the old cranky professors I've dreamt to be with. But they're intelligent just the same though, except for the broken English. It is actually my pet peeve in listening to people mispronounce or misuse words. What's nice about the school is the flexibility of the schedule (yeah, right). At enrollment, we plot our schedules we seem reasonable but in the end the teachers move them, and move them and move them. To note, in my first semester, I didn't have classes on Thursday. Speaking of flexibility, believe or not, we are so in dire hunger of classes since our teachers doesn't go in so often for all reasons even as simple as their headache! At first, we felt happiness at having no classes most of the time, but too much happiness almost got us close to transferring. One of the reasons that made us stay is the initiative of our School Director to open financial assistance scholarships to newbies. For economy's sake, almost all of us applied for one and havev our parents save some Php 10, 000.00 ($244.00 as of this post). But I didn't have any share of that because my dad, as always doesn't care to recognize his son's effort. Did I mention he forgot my birthday last year? I'm gonna post how I celebrated my birthday. But as they say, when you're immersed to something for so long you'll learn to love it. And I did love the school, I have a group of friends who I spend my time with, go malling, or just plain fooling around. We call ourselves---AMA Angels. I'm gonna post why it's called like that. But anyways, the school's got this online-learning subjects were we get to watch AMA channel in school which airs our teachers on live TV broadcast for synchronization in all parts of the country. It also has another option of logging into your student account to access notes and answer online quizzes anywhere. And our school have this Wi-Fi internet connection for students who bring laptops with them. I need one! But in the meantime I could suffice my hunger using our internet labs, it's free. For more info, visit our school's official website. Totally, I call this bored college life of mine, in its happy ending so far.

Why “Lost”?

The top five ''Lost'' theories

Since the advent of X-Files on the TV, the fan base inspired around 15 million viewers worldwide to become conspiracy hunting and code-cracking sleuths in search of the Big Answer. I spent my whole Christmas vacation watching the 3 seasons. Though interrupted by the writer’s strike the Season 3 had only ended until the 8^th episode though the DVD I saw contained only up to the 6^th one.

They're currently playing the summertime Internet game The Lost Experience, which producers say reveals even more secrets about the Hanso Foundation.

If you’re a great Lost fan, you might be wondrin’ what the hell are they all doing in the island for months, discovering secrets among themselves and the island with several scientific hatches and guarded by a mutilating black smoke and a weird colony of people living before they crashed. Not only could you view the theories posted by viewers in abc.com’s Lost website, I have searched for five of the best theories for the show, how it will end and how it all began in the first place. Written by Jeff Jensen, an Entertainment Weekly senior writer.

THE ISLAND IS PURGATORY

SYNOPSIS Oceanic flight 815 crashed. Everyone died. Some went to heaven, others to hell. The rest wound up in a dangerous purgatory, where they must work toward paradise — or risk tumbling into the inferno.

EVIDENCE FOR Everyone seems to have something for which they need to atone. So why would purgatory look like a Tahitian resort? Well, in the famous afterlife cosmology sketched by Dante, purgatory's highest point is the Garden of Eden.

EVIDENCE AGAINST Lost doesn't conform cleanly to any conventional explanation of purgatory. As for a more generalized application of the concept...well, that would be lame.

WHAT THEY SAY Debunked! Says Lindelof: ''We have said that this is not purgatory, but people don't want to believe it.... These human beings have hearts, and when those hearts stop beating, they are dead.''

IT'S ALL A HALLUCINATION

SYNOPSIS Reality on the island isn't exactly ''real.'' To boot: All characters are aspects of one person (usually attributed to Jack or potentially supernatural characters like Hurley and Walt); or everyone is still on the plane trying to survive massive turbulence by escaping into a mass delusion.

EVIDENCE FOR Hallucinations would neatly explain many things, like Walt's comic book polar bear and appearances by Jack's dad and Kate's horse. Also, conspicuous lit references like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge suggest that not everything is what it seems...

EVIDENCE AGAINST ...or they could be red herrings, or serve another curious purpose. Also, Hurley's imaginary-friend episode, ''Dave,'' seemed to actually disprove hallucination theories. Besides, ''It's all a dream'' would have to be done brilliantly not to be a total cliché. And is Lost really going to rip off Dallas?

WHAT THEY SAY Debunked! (Sorta.) Carlton Cuse says that any hallucination theory that denies life-and-death stakes on the island isn't valid: ''You can't invest in the show if you think it's bullshit.''

IT'S A MUTANT HOTHOUSE

SYNOPSIS The most famous Internet theory argues that psychics are influencing the castaways for mysterious and possibly good reasons. British fan Andrew Smith's hypothesis is that the Dharma Initiative, as part of a sci-fi scheme to engineer war-free utopia, cultivated a group of superhuman beings (which may include some of the castaways) capable of wielding the island's electromagnetic energy.

EVIDENCE FOR Check it out for yourself at 4815162342.com. There are even cool illustrations.

EVIDENCE AGAINST Smith's theory — while inspired and well-researched — leans heavily on details from the orientation film. And as the May 10 episode suggested, Lost-ologists should reconsider the truthfulness of said film. Heck: Is Alvar Hanso even a real dude?

WHAT THEY SAY ''Incredibly imaginative, and obviously written by someone who watches very carefully,'' says Lindelof. ''But like all great closing arguments, it doesn't incorporate any moments from the show that wildly contradict it.''

HUMANITY IS ALMOST EXTINCT

SYNOPSIS A worldwide calamity (pandemic? nuclear war? meteor?) has wiped out the rest of humanity. By either happenstance or design, the Oceanic castaways survived the apocalypse.

EVIDENCE FOR Various pieces of Lost arcana could be interpreted as clues planted by the producers. In science, the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs is called the ''K-T event.'' Does ''K-T'' = Kate? One K-T scenario posits that a star dubbed ''Nemesis,'' which orbits our sun, created some celestial bad weather that ultimately caused the death of T. rex and friends. In ''The Long Con,'' the words nemesis and sun are linked in dialogue between Sawyer and Charlie.

EVIDENCE AGAINST Those ''clues''? Crazy talk.

WHAT THEY SAY Even Sawyer has doubts. ''If the rest of the world is extinct,'' says Josh Holloway, ''then where did those Dharma supplies that dropped from the sky come from? Then again, this could be a big government experiment, and you know as well as I do [that] if we blow this world up, they're going to be in their little bunkers down there sipping cocktails. So maybe Dharma is part of that, and they're using the island to rebuild society — but better.''

MAD SCIENTISTS ARE TO BLAME

SYNOPSIS Passengers were brought to the island as guinea pigs in a wide range of experiments, like studying the effects of electromagnetic energy on humans. The monster (a.k.a. ''Cerberus'') is a watchdog whose primary job is to keep test subjects from straying outside the EM section of the island. The Others could also be test subjects...the scientists themselves...or a faction of ex-scientists who now oppose the experiments.

EVIDENCE FOR Electromagnetic energy may have healed Locke's legs, Rose's cancer, and Jin's infertility. The map in the hatch suggests a Dharma-explains-everything solution (that's where we got the Cerberus thing). And even if the map is bogus, the hatches and the Dharma supply drop suggest that an ''initiative'' is (or was) at work on the island.

EVIDENCE AGAINST ''The Other 48 Days'' episode clearly showed the plane crashing. Doesn't that seem like a really risky way to recruit lab rats?

WHAT THEY SAY This is the view most commonly held by the actors. Daniel Dae Kim thinks the castaways are part of ''a human ant farm'' run by the Dharma Initiative. Harold Perrineau's take is more ironic: He thinks scientists are using the island to test a new one-world religion. And Holloway has a darker view. ''The island is like a working machine. It's mobile, like the Death Star. That one thing — the button — keeps it from becoming the ultimate weapon.'' Then, flashing that dimpled Sawyer grin, he adds: ''Or whatever.''

Kenya church razed, 50 people reported killed

January 3’s World Section in our local paper raised that headline. I don’t read the full story not unless it’s about the awakening of a six-month woman in coma. Joke. But actually, the news article was about a church burned in Africa, home to the earliest known fossils. The question wasn’t how, but rather why on Earth would they burn down a place of worship. Could people get any worse? Shattered by an angry mob after an election went wrong, the church reported actually housed people who sought refuge from the post elections violence. The election happened on a Sunday, December 30. The burning took place on Tuesday, January 1. While we were flooded with grace from New Year feastings, many have died and a country drowned in fear. This would be Kenya’s darkest times and awareness is the best thing I could do right now. They were there Witnesses of the fire had seen at least fifty ethnic people burned to death by anti-government group. They didn’t like the newly-elected president that they actually didn’t shoot into their minds that the church included children. God rest their souls. The article even carried a photo from the helicopter video feed provided by Red Cross showing the church in a Kenyan town of Eldoret being succumbed down to fiery pits. Sidebar: This genocide followed the one in Rwanda, 1994 where half a million people died. I didn’t researched more on this as this would make me more depressed. In these times of desperation, we do nothing but turn to someone who’d stand for us, our leaders. Their re-elected president, Mwai Kibaki, called for a meeting with his political opponents to mend whatever disputes they have. But for that, he was criticized for he rarely speaks to press and he “vowed to crack down on rioters,” the paper said. Turning of a new leaf, you could say. But did you know that his opponent actually refused to open up as he accuses Kibaki’s administration of genocide. Raila Odinga had an offer to attend the meeting if Kibaki would announce that he was not elected. Yes, politics is a dirty game. It gets filthier when it’s tainted with blood splatters of innocent people getting killed. It makes things ironic like a passive leader wanting kiss and make up. And despite all these bad things happening, did you know that Kenya used to be Africa’s most stable democracy? But now, it’s dreaded by its own people as a dark shadow if civil war approaching. Yes, politics makes things ironic that even the holiest place might be the last one you’ll run into.

No junk food jingles and stuff on British TV

“We need urgent action to help people, especially children, avoid the less healthy, less happy and ultimately, shorter life that obesity leads to.” Thus says Prime Minister Gordon Brown. To note, their country has this junk food advertisement ban which takes effect before 10 pm. And by junk food I mean, the sumptuous chips that’s coated with high amounts of salt and preservatives or that oh-so-refreshing sodas with skyrocketing sugar content. Yup, that stuff that we consider bad when we think of it, but is really good when were already eating it. Here in the Philippines, such a ban would be so hard to implement as food ranks as one of the most aired commercials next to hair products. But look at Britons, “in 25 years of current trends are not halted,” half of them are going to be obese, Sun.Star Cebu claims. It makes me wonder what enormous health would bring. I mean London is a luxurious country and people seem to have hard time getting unemployed. That means they have all the resources to gain access to lots of food products and restaurants. Yup, their purchasing power could indeed satisfy their gastronomic desires. In this country, it’s different. Our diet is made up of high carbohydrates as rice is our staple, coupled with protein-rich fish and meat for the average-earning families. Vegetable is most common to those who don’t earn much. Here, it’s even hard to apply as a sales clerk as they would be requiring at least a year in college. As you read now, many people are suffering from hunger but take it no seriously, I mean, the economy’s growing, (Peso has dramatically gained against dollar), government has this regular feeding and livelihood programs concentrated in public schools and rural areas. Once that fancy 30-second McDonald’s commercial flashes your screen, just remember “Eat Moderately” and “Gluttony is dangerous for your health.”

Excavating High School Life

Who would’ve thought that a mundane boy’s school would turn out to be one of Cebu’s finest co-ed institutions boasting of its 35 years of experience and countless graduates who’ve owed their success to the school? The first time I had set foot here was like getting lost into a battlefield when you’re just in search of a park. I didn’t know what kinds of people lurk in it and I don’t even have an idea who St. Louis was. Nevertheless, it didn’t took me long to adapt into the viable ecosystem that the school provides, where there is the survival of the fittest. Yet among all the schools I’ve attended to, this school actually practices proper establishment of relationship inside the room and out because I’ve never realized how close you could become with your mentors when there is so much room of expression around. With cutting-edge instruction and, ahem, competitive faculty members, you wouldn’t wonder why there’s so much banners to be put up, postings around, and up-close interviews screaming the successes of alumni. With Louisian sophistication running in our circulatory system, it’s not too far from the same happening unto us. St. Louis School has been a catalyst in creating many changes in us, thanks to the Evaluation Notebook and the English Drive. We have lived a life of historical value and armed with skills that an aggressive world demands. Thus, we batch 2006-2007 seem to be the filthy and unusable artifacts excavated by our teachers so that other people may find value in us through the contributions we give the society one day. Our batch is like an ancient site where one has to dig deeper to surface prized items in each of us: the joker, the artist, the nerd, the flirt, the athletic, the drama queen or the lover in each of us, to be shown through the enigmatic poses contained herein. St. Louis will witness this benchmark in a yearbook. No need for National Geographic to realize we are archeologists in our own right. Because of our inquisitiveness to learn new things and a great deal of thirst for knowledge lead us to explore in the same way when you got your first kiss when your parents were so eager to keep you home. We are archeologists when we sort artifacts in the hope of rebuilding some of them to their original objects just as we would when we heal wounds brought about by break-ups, campus scandals, family disputes, feud between friends and when we begin to question our faith. Our batch was just rich of those. “What is essential is invisible to the eye,” as the fox says from our well-loved literature in English IV. After all the hard work, diploma doesn’t really matters, it’s actually the lessons we learned and the company of others along the way is the greatest triumph we can brag of anytime.