Author: Gabriel

Ateneo: 2. La Salle: 0. My thoughts: 10

Note: For the sake of finally making a post here and to try and trick you into visiting Basketball Exchange by forcing you to click the link below to read the rest of it (I’m obviously very smart and devious), I’m reposting this here. If you wanna just go and read the whole thing uninterrupted then click here. See how I made you do that? See?

It’s the morning after La Salle’s heartbreaking (yes it is always heartbreaking to me. Always.) loss to Ateneo, 87-89 at Araneta last night. Obviously, I’m disappointed, but what the heck. What a game, huh? It was exciting all the way, from start to finish, and I promise you I’ve watched so many games for so many years it’s hard to get me as excited as I was when I watched it last night.

Here are some thoughts:

  1. That boy Salamat (15 pts) is fantastic. He is a true point guard and even acts and runs like it, with quick feet doing most of the motion and his torso up and erect, allowing his head to look steadily at what’s happening at the rest of the court. With good training from the Reyes brothers he can be a very effective player in the future.
  2. The Escueta boy (16 pts) is another revelation. One of those stick thin shooting guard types that’s deadly with the 3. He gives Chris Tiu much needed reprieve from scoring chores and reminds me of a smaller Jason Terry.
  3. Speaking of Chris Tiu (19 pts), this guy blossomed early and is still the epitome of cool confidence. What a stroke. He’s got that down pat, but I still think he’s too short so he’s got to prepare himself for the life of a point guard if he’s gonna turn pro. If that’s the case, he’d be behind pure PGs like Salamat or UST’s Cuan, so he might be in the mold of another Ren-Ren, which is unfortunate because the Philippines needs taller shooters. We’ll see what happens there.
  4. Rico Maierhofer (24 pts) has turned out to be DLSU’s main man, but I always thought it would’ve been Pocholo Villanueva (18 pts), an old school type slasher – or maybe it’ll be his year next year? In any case, Maierhofer is unstoppable, but still a little too raw and undisciplined. He needs to learn a bit more about life in the post and bulk up as well. In other words, try and find other ways to be more effective other than relying on his jumping ability and scrappiness. His athleticism is exciting to watch and results in sensational plays, but like all young athletes, gravity will eventually set in and he’ll need to slow his game down. He’ll need to develop a mid – range ‘money’ shot that doesn’t require so much effort. Think Tim Duncan’s bankshot, Kareem’s hook or Karl Malone’s 20 foot J from the either wing. If he develops a reliable shot he wouldn’t have to get beat up too much and reserve the spectacular stuff for later.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

sep082007_harrypotter_orderofthephoenix.jpgWhatever’s the latest Harry Potter movie, it’s almost always the best one. Some people will argue, but in this case, I’m quite positive that a lot would agree that it is.

Just to get it out of the way, I think the fifth movie was great. I have read the book about three times already, and even after the release of the Half-Blood Prince, it remains my favourite. The effects of the movie were amazing and Daniel Radcliffe has gone a long way with his acting. Maybe appearing on stage naked really did help? I don’t know. Plus, there’s Gary Oldman, and anything with him in it, I would take.

Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) and Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) were perfect for their roles and I am so glad that they managed to squeeze in Fred and George’s departure from Hogwart’s.

However, there are a bunch of things that didn’t work for me and as a true nerd, I will enumerate them because there is no one around me who is as enthusiastic about all this, and it sucks talking to the wall about a boy wizard.

First, the scenes that they cut off:

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Jill Takes The Bar

Jill is finally about to take the bar this Sunday and 3 Sundays after that. So before anything else, and to confirm what I’ve always told her, I will write here exactly what I’ve said and will always say: I am proud of you honey, you have done your best to prepare for this and I have no doubt in my mind that you will ace it, and that is not just boyfriend talk believe me.

Jill is one of those highly intelligent people that still do not completely understand what she’s capable of. For example she is obviously a closet geek, outwardly shunning ‘techie things’ when in fact she’s hooked on Karen my laptop, has realized the value of an iPod when she started living by herself at the dorm, and is completely hooked on GPRS. Aside from that, she knows how to handle HTML without an editor. I mean, beat that right? I taught her most of the html basics for the posts on Kikay but for the most part, she relies on using the WordPress GUI to produce her posts and then Photoshops her own images. That takes skill honey, so embrace your inner geekness and admit it so I can teach you CSS and you can fix some of Kikay’s flaws :)

At any rate I thought I was going to make like the good boyfriend and hang out in front of DLSU all day in support, but after two consecutive Bar Ops I think I’ve fully grasped the uselessness of such an endeavour. It’s obvious to me for example, that the most important thing is for the Barristers to get as much peace, quiet and rest as possible. If there’s anything they don’t know yet at that time, it’s clearly too late to learn anyway. Also, the last thing I wanna do is impose on her by making her worry about having to meet me before or after the whole shebang, and even if we do meet afterwards, she’s gonna be too knocked out anyway. I understand, being a College thing, how easy it is for things like these to become slumber parties, but it’s plainly obvious to keep these things as simple as possible. These people have enough on their minds as it is and the best thing to do is also the easiest: don’t get in their way.

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A Note About My Health

It’s probably the death knell of a blog to discuss stuff such as one’s health, but hell that’s what’s on my mind these days so that’s what I’m gonna talk about.

Suffice to say I had not been taking very good care of myself for the past few months, the highlight and reason of which is my addiction to caffeine. Well about a week ago today, I decided to do something about that, and quit this evil substance entirely after an approximate 3 to 4 cup a day habit.

First I’d like to put a good word in about quitting cold turkey. I figure this really is the best method if not the only effective method there is, to my mind. Over the years I’d been addicted to smoking and – of all things – working out, and I call it addiction because it had reached unhealthy levels, as all such activity done in excess turns out. Quitting, or rather, just absolutely quitting cold turkey, is really the best because you really can’t negotiate against addiction. And that is essentially what ‘quitting in moderation’ or merely ‘slowing down’ means. It’s like trying to negotiate against an enemy who knows you better than you do. It (addiction. And I’m speaking metaphorically here of course), will say yeah yeah sure sure we’ll slow down the next time, and then turn around and snigger at your naivete. It just won’t go away until you make an absolute decision to just give it up, and you can give it up only by just giving it up right there and then.

At any rate, now I’ll put in a bad word about caffeine, which from wikipedia is described as ‘the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive substance, but unlike most other psychoactive substances, it is legal and unregulated in nearly all jurisdictions.‘, which to my mind, is like saying Starbucks is a drug pusher, but it’s ok.

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I’m Going To Interview Kobe

Our good friends at Nike Phils. have for some odd reason found it fit for my lowly self to be in the presence of The Great One.

aug242007_kobe.jpg

I’ve waited for approx 2 weeks to finally make this announcement, preferring to remain on the safe side by making sure first. However a few days ago I received notice that I should ‘spread the word’ (and even then I demurred), but I think it’s sure now, so here’s the lowdown. Kobe Bryant, no. 24 guard for the Los Angeles Lakers and probably the U.S. Basketball Team (they’d be nuts to cut him), and the current most famous basketball player in the world and consequently, the ‘face of the NBA’ is coming to Manila on September 5 to hold a few clinics and of course, promote his new Fall 2007 Kobe II shoes. If I might add, in recent years, I’ve come to regard him as the best basketball player in the NBA as well, and it’s pretty hard to discount that.

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Thoughts on The Green Cross Saga, the Past, and Applying it to the Future.

Last month I finished up reading Gonzalo Co It’s The Green Cross Saga. Its funny how I thought it’d probably be somewhat controversial to write about the book, and it turns out it was, well, to a few circles at least, but certainly not specifically to me.

The reason being, Mr. Co It is a fairly well – known business personality hereabouts primarily because of his success, and this being the Philippines, whose populace I sometimes liken to being in a big town in terms of news and gossip getting around, anyone saying anything about him is bound to get written about and judged themselves.

The problem is, I had no such intention of involving myself in any form of controversy when I bought the book and writing about it as I am now especially given the light I wasn’t aware it was controversial to begin with, only finding out later after I wrote about buying it. Believe it or not, I only had genuine interest in learning about his story, maybe a little bit about himself (particularly him and why his generation migrated out of China in the 50s), and of course, how he made his millions. I had already read a few other Chinese family patriarch’s stories, and that, aside from the fact it seemed like light reading (I’m a lazy reader) made me decide to buy it.

Suffice it to say most of those questions I had were fairly answered. My interest started after picking up a book called China Hands, which was a recount of experiences by the first American Diplomat to China, who happened to grow up there in his early years and even at one time served as the first CIA operative, trying to find out what was going on behind China’s thick walls. Apparently when they refer to China being cut off from the rest of the world, they weren’t kidding. In the pre – satellite decades of the 60s and 70s, absolutely no one in the West knew what was happening inside China, and first hand recollections from people coming from there were either diluted or planted, and even then could not be relied on to reflect what was happening in such a vast country.

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VMWare Shows The Way

I love it that VMWare stock is doing well in the U.S. stock market right now. I’ve often wished I could play in that market if I had the chance, particularly during Apple new product situations and occasionally, a few web services in the past that I thought would do well (although I’m not gonna say I pick em all great because most did ok but some didn’t).

I’ve never wished I could buy stock at no better time than now, with VMWare going public. Not necessarily because its done as well as it had – I was sure it’d do well but certainly not this well – but also because of the clear message this sends to bad ol’ Microsoft.

VMWare simply put is software that gives the ability to run services on a computer regardless of operating system by allowing several operating systems to run alongside one another in one machine. In effect it brings sanity in a world where choices aren’t necessarily made in favor of the best.

I don’t really wanna get in the intricacies of what virtualization is about right here. I was about to start a paragraph explaining it a bit, but I realized I was quickly getting much too techie and was losing focus on what I was trying to say.

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Not An Email Person

There’s a feature on Kikay Exchange about this girl’s products which are gaining its fair share of attention. Consequently, people have started leaving comments and asking questions that naturally, only the girl can answer properly, given the fact she makes them. Unfortunately, she doesn’t reply to emails promptly, if at all, making the whole exercise pretty much a shot in the dark. Jill told me her website has also mysteriously gone down, making info about her and her products even harder to get – what more those inquiring to buy.

Today, there’s a request for me to assist someone to set up his email account. Which is perfectly reasonable if not for the fact that this same person has pretty much been using the same computer, the same operating system, the same email client, and the same email account, username and password and all, for the past five years. In fact, to add perspective to this, in the same period my nephew has grown up from grade school to high school, and now knows how to set up an email account with the ease of, well, a grade schooler. During which time, person requiring assistance has apparently learned nothing.

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Ratatouille

ratatouilleWriting this, I realized that there are many ways you can approach Ratatouille, which is probably it’s main weakness. First and foremost, you can write about the lead character Remy, which is a rat, and approach how inappropriate this is for a movie about food.

Second, you can talk about the food, and the fact that this is probably the best food movie I’ve ever watched in a long long time, and how the scene where the lead bad person Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) is brought back to his youth after he eats some of Remy’s Ratatouille (which apparently is a peasant dish. I wouldn’t know since I wouldn’t even know where to find some), is somewhat similar to how I feel whenever I have some Sinigang sa Miso – a simple sour fish broth which is probably equally humble yet I’d elect to have as my very last dish on Earth if I were to be a prisoner on death row.

Third is, as I’ve mentioned above, Disney – Pixar’s absolutely superb movie making magic, and the fact that they have in the last few years produced some of the most fantastic movies in the likes of Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story and A Bug’s Life – all understated, fully animated features that to me, represent hope for great movie making in the classic style. Here is a movie company that understands the use of full animation as a tool rather than an end in itself, a Hollywood movie company apparently staffed by artists who know that just making something colorful and loud and hiring big stars to voice them does not necessarily a great movie make – no matter how much money it ends up making anyway.

And those are just some of the things I think about when thinking about Ratatouille. All interesting for sure, but unfortunately, a sign that I do not really know what to make of it.

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