LefthandedLayup.com

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  • You gotta love Manong Masahista

    I played a lot of ball most of the afternoon. As a result I’m completely bushed and aching all over, but overall I feel great. I outlasted a lot of guys mostly because, I think, I managed to get a good massage a few days ago. At this point you might think I’m about to recommend some ultra posh Thai or exotic place. Would you believe it was courtesy of your everyday typical manong barbershop around the village corner? And all of a pittance: P250.00 at that, with a haircut included.

    I was having a haircut at said neighborhood barbershop when he started giving me a vigorous neck rub, a sign anyone who regularly goes to such places knows marks the end of the session. It felt great so I asked if he does massages, he said yes mentioned p200 and off we went. Now I’ve tried all sorts of ultra posh massages at so many places and even expensive home service types already, but this one made me feel like I wanted to knock my head for all that wasted money. Manong twisted, gripped and kneaded my back, arms and legs like so much pliant dough. He used his rough fingers (made smoother by some cheap lotion. Mental note: bring my own next time) to find knotted up veins jammed with toxins and proceeded to attack it with the force of a vise grip over and over until it softened and passed through. To the uninitiated it would have felt like complete torture, but I knew what he was doing. The last time I went through anything like that must have been more than a decade ago, when I was still playing for a team that had a guy like manong masahista slathering myself and my teammates with buckets of what seemed like ben gay, but was 10 times worse – and stung to high heavens, and then used the same tortuous procedure that makes you swear and spit in pain as if you were being knifed.

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  • Tropa de Elite and other planned reviews

    I just watched the highly controversial Tropa de Elite, which I was desperate to see after seeing just a few seconds of a report about it from BBC news and consequently Googling it up. The movie runs a narrative using the voice of Capitao Nascimiento (played by the amazing Wagner Moura), a fictional leader of the BOPE or Special Operations Battalion, and elite corp of highly trained soldiers that, if the accounts from the movie are true, operate above the law in what it perceives as an all – out war against drug trafficking in the poor sections of Rio, Brazil.

    The movie is a stunning display of violence and real life in the drug dependent slums of Rio, where large sections called Favelas are controlled by drug lords with small armies armed to the teeth with high powered rifles they carry around with them like jewelry. The streets are dark and dirty, the poor wear tatters and live in sub human conditions, the local police are so crooked and desperately corrupt that they often end up in turf fights of their own, and the rich College kids are lazy, doped out brats whose insulated view of the world makes them just as guilty to the depravity around them. On one hand, they work in NGOs trying to help the poor and mouth slogans and sing songs against the police, but on the other they consume and even distribute drugs that helps fund the cartels. A pretty familiar world for the typical city dwelling low income Pinoy, if you ask me.

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  • How our brains work according to me

    I worked on the car all day and thoroughly enjoyed it. If not for the fact that it didn’t turn out as well as I hoped (I fixed something but in the process, ‘broke’ something else :P), today was a pretty good day.

    I think hobbies are important because it takes you away from what you’re doing long enough to at least give you a fresh perspective on what it is you normally do. In other words, I worked on my car because I didn’t wanna work on my projects or the sites – my solution to the fact that I am so up to my ears in work (and consequently, thinking about it), that if I spend any more time working on it I’m liable to go nuts.

    The left and right turn switch doesn’t work for some odd reason, so my solution was to open and clean it up thoroughly using a rag and contact cleaner spray. I did so, and by golly who’d have known such a thing was so complex inside? It had bearings and tiny little springs that would fall over the place if you weren’t careful opening it up. At any rate, I got it to work in the end, but only after a hell of a time. I realized I was literally bent over in concentration for an hour or two, and when I finally got it together and working I felt like celebrating. Problem is, the switch for the windshield wipers suddenly doesn’t work now (it was working fine before I opened it up, and I never touched it when I did), so that’s egg in my face right there. I’ll get it to work though. I’m sure it’s just something loose somewhere.

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  • About Drupal, The most annoying thing about moving blogs, and another project idea

    The most annoying thing about moving blogs is that I’d have to do all my links, all the stuff in my about page, the categories and all that other stuff all over again.

    It’s taken me a long time to decide which free blogging place to use and although wordpress.com has its limitations, it’s certainly less limited than blogspot and LJ. Or at least, as far as I know since the last time I checked, which has been awhile. Suffice it to say I’m not completely sold on staying here, and I do wanna check out the others, although it’s time consuming and besides, it’s just for a personal blog right?

    Nah. You know what? Why don’t I just go flat out and just say I’m lazy. Yeah that hit the nail on the head right there.

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  • Talking Myself To The Gym

    No sooner had I finished two sessions at a nearby neighborhood gym than poof, off they go to a new location, nearer the new SM Tanay. Obviously Ye Gods are against me improving my health. There’s proof right there!

    At any rate am trying at this very moment, as I write this, to get into my sweats and go over there to do some reps. I’ve not seen the new location yet but what the heck I got a rough sketch and idea where it is so I should really hie off to it.

    It turns out I had been suffering from fatigue after Jill told me that that was usually the case when you wake up feeling completely exhausted and aching all over even after a full night’s sleep. Further investigation proves the same, and although I know I’m self – medicating here, it makes pretty much good sense. The past two workouts, a full two weeks ago by now, proved absolutely energizing and I felt completely refreshed and back to my old self – that being the bouncing off the walls – full of energy – ready to take on the world type. A week after that, I overworked myself when I went to a client and the day after woke up after a full 8 hours completely dazed, with a pounding headache and aching all over, with the light still turned on and holding the phone at that – indicating I fell asleep almost instantaneously after speaking on the phone, and stayed still throughout the night.

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  • Hosting Thoughts

    Migs, the high priest of Linux and server administration, whom I always look to for advice on such things, told me to write about my latest hosting issues and so I shall. I suppose this is a good way to talk and archive the recent problems I’d been having with the sites and what I do to fix it, and how I’m starting to realize that whatever ‘fix’ I do seems temporary since the site’s traffic increase again anyway that as soon as I enhance / improve performance, traffic increases again. I am therefore plagued, within days, by either mysql inefficiencies or run out of RAM. Anyway here’s a rundown:

    Here’s a screenshot of Aug. 30’s mysql issues. WordPress serves that up when it can’t connect to the db. I emailed Rimuhosting about it and they figured out I was having issues with one of my favorite WordPress plugins called Counterize, which allowed me to produce those interesting stats at the footer of KikayEx which says ‘x number of visitors visited today, xx number the past 7 days. xxx number total since forever, and so on…‘. We activated an option on mysql to produce a ‘mysql-slow.log‘ which lists down all the mysql queries that take more than 2 seconds to complete. The results were stunning, as Counterize apparently had queries that take as long as 20 seconds, and at a given morning (not even a whole day), there were 40 queries already. Here’s how it looked:

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  • Random Thoughts on KE and MomEx

    I’m flummoxed by a bit of news I just now received over IM from a friend, and just when I was about to start writing this. It’s hit me like a ton of bricks but at this very moment I think the best thing to do is to act normal and hope for the best. Not that there’s a best thing to do in this case anyway. You just go ahead and do it.

    I suppose this is a kind of obligatory blog update, considering its been weeks since I greeted Freddie Mercury a happy birthday. I will obligatorily mention how so many things have happened since, and how I’m obligated to say I don’t know where to start. But for the most part I think my attention has been focused on the Kikay Shop. I’ve added new face and body care products from Leyende, and the rest of the products are due for an overhaul as well, with their suppliers coming out with new stuff.

    I’ve pretty much laid out how things are gonna go for Kikay Exchange I think. As a matter of fact it was the same way as I planned it out years ago, but I admit I lost my way a bit partly due to getting too involved in the nitty gritty details and partly because I may have lost confidence in my original plans. But, as a testament to the value of planning, the foundations of a good idea are really what carries it onwards. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner), the site’s strengths come out, and you find yourself carrying out the plan whether you’re still intent on it or not. It’s sort of like planning and working your ass of to make something work and then, years later saying ‘Wow! It Worked! Who knew?!‘

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  • Belated Happy Birthday Freddie Mercury

    Rather belatedly as well I think, Queen getting voted the ‘Best British Band Of All Time‘.

    As if we needed to be told that.

    Anyway, here’s a personal collection of select performances. The great Freddie Mercury will always bring chills down my spine.

    Radio Ga Ga

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  • 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.

    Read the rest by clicking here!

  • 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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