I’m back . . . sort of!

It’s been almost a year since I abandoned this blog. I just lose interest in things too quickly and I lack the focus to stick to the things that I want to and should do. My drive and my passion disappear like a puff of smoke. Even when it comes to the most consistent part of my life in the last six years – fitness – I spend weeks and even months when I just don’t do it. But like the other things that I really want in life, I always somehow go back to it. But I always mix or change it up. It’s always in a different manifestation. For example, I’m less focused these days on cardio and weight training. I’m actually doing this video program called Insanity Workout. It’s crazy, as the name suggests, and I do it 6 times a week. It’s a 60+ day workout but it gives you a banging body at the end of two months!! Only a month ago, when I visited the Philippines for a brief 3+ weeks, I was doing a lot of swimming. I was also eating more healthy, eating fruits that I bought at the local market or that I picked off the trees on our farm.

I guess the one thing that I’ve been consistent at is eating very unhealthy. Yes, I admit it! I LOVE chocolate and other sweets too much. And I love salty foods. I love meat! I love bread. I love cookies. It’s awful! My dentist loves me because I spend a lot of time in her chair, but I’m not getting any younger. I know that all this unhealthy eating will catch up to me one of these days.

I actually have taken almost five days off the program and I will have to restart on Monday. I’ve only done it for a week, so it’s not a big deal having to start over. I suffered from dehydration this past weekend. I actually thought I was getting sick, until I realized that I hadn’t been drinking enough water to keep up with the amount of water I was losing from all the working out I was doing. My body feels a lot better now, but I was amazingly less agile today when I tried to do a program. Granted, it was one of the tougher workouts – the Max Interval Sports Training. I wasn’t able to finish it so I have a lot of conditioning to do this whole weekend to prep my body for the next week (well, more like next two months). But I know that my body will feel a lot better after a week of doing the exercises.

Anyway, going back to the title of this entry, I am back. I will try blogging again. I might actually transfer some of the entries I wrote on the other blogs that I also ended up shutting down. But I will also make private some of the entries that I think I should’ve written in a private journal instead of on a public blog.

I have a lot of updates that I want to talk about but I’ll stick to a couple of topics for this blog just so that it doesn’t seem like I’m all over the place. I want to keep writing about health and fitness just so that I can keep track of my progress when it comes to Insanity and other workout programs that I might do in the future. I might even post some pictures. This might actually serve as a perfect food diary. It’s sickening how much junk I eat everyday. I also want to keep writing fiction. I might publish some stories on here that I might protect with password. Lastly, I will be traveling again in September so I will be post lots of cool pictures. I’m starting a company so I might talk about some things that I will be working on as well. It is going to be an exciting next couple of years for me.

A quick post

This is just a quick post. I’m not even going to bother with the grammar nor will I re-read and make corrections. I moved back to the Philippines. I finally moved to a new place in Manila, so I’m no longer doing the long commute from Bulacan to our office in Makati. It has also been a long month. Just a lot of craziness. I feel like I haven’t really taken the time to sit down and make some mental and emotional accounts of the past couple of months, like I often do. I know that I have a break down looming in the near future, but I have a lot of work ahead of me in the next couple of months. I already feel exhausted tho. It’s just that a lot has happened lately, yet I don’t really even know what’s going on anymore. I’m lost, yet I’m still trying to navigate through the heart of darkness with blindfolds on. I have to take a day to sit down and just let allow myself to think back and look back as I forge ahead with the dreadful future. Help me!

IHT Opinion Piece

I think this article is one of the best editorials I have read in a while that best describes the new generation of millenials.

IHT

Pornland, Oregon: Child Prostitution in Portland

One of the problems is that kids are impressionable. They haven’t yet developed astute decision-making. With widespread use of internet and other mobile devices, kids these days are easy target to predators. Security and privacy settings on social networking sites are not enough . As parents, we can no longer repeat the mantra that “these are fast changing times.” We need to be more vigilant, more aware and more educated when it comes to our kids and their safety. We have to keep up and have to take back control of our family. It’s for their own security.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Change, Not Recovery

What’s great about America is that people really DO have a voice. I lived in the Philippines briefly last year and witnessed a false democracy where the power lies in the wealthy minority. Americans continually seek revolution and solutions when the system is broken. We have our votes that cannot be bought or sold. And often, we do it peacefully and honestly – not in the fake “People Power II” movement that happened in the Philippines. We don’t take up arms and storm the capital like in many parts of the world. People are definitely demanding change, but the change we need is beyond the old and inadequate dichotomy of Democrats vs. Republicans. We need to think beyond our parties and offer real solutions that is best for all. We need to change the systems that no longer serve a genuine purpose.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

First Lady Michelle Obama Questioned by Second-Grader Worried About Her Mom’s Immigration Status

This girl’s comment only reveals why the issues surrounding immigration laws in the US are so complicated. It will be difficult to come up with a resolution that will please everyone on all sides. There is the obvious economic argument. In these precarious times, we’re scrambling to look for people and outlets to blame: immigrants, bankers, the government, debt. In the border states, there are security concerns as Mexico battles with drug crimes and abuses that threaten the safety of the Southwestern states. There is also the issue of process: amnesty laws, legal immigration, labor laws. The language difference alone promotes confusion, even more the legal mumbo jumbo that even regular Americans cannot understand. And then, you cannot separate the emotional aspects of this whole dilemma. To what extent will we get rid of illegal immigrants? At what costs? Are we willing to separate young children from their parents who are illegal immigrants? How do you enforce such a massive immigration amendment nationwide? How can we assure that the law will be fair? If truth be told, we probably all know someone who has come and/or is staying here illegally. Friends. Family. Co-workers. Students. The person serving our food, mowing our lawn, doing our dry cleaning, caring for our kids/elders. Do we want a law that will deport people whom we love and/or serve us and whose only crime is to come to this country and take a piece of that American dream?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

And if This Leader Should Happen to Fall…

Miguel Syjuco eloquently summarizes what I have been thinking about in the past 10 months now, especially in light of the recent 2010 elections in the Philippines. Here is his Opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune:

Poem

I wrote this four years ago. Sheesh! I meant for it be longer but when I read it again, I realized that I started writing about something else in the next paragraph/stanza.

A lot of times I feel ignored

Bored

Jeez brotha, look at me

Don’t close your eyes and see

That I exist

Flesh and bones

Bloody Jones

Mindspring

Here is another poetry I just wrote. I don’t really edit my poems. It’s the most difficult writing form for me, but it’s also the most satisfying. I just freestyle and let it grow organically. As a result, I have a lot of unfinished poems. This one is called Mindspring.

Mindspring

He’s a night s-crawler

Writing scribbles on the wall

Nonsensical scripts

Doodle works

Colorful epigraphs

Diagrams

Hieroglyphs

Poetry and

Even short stories

His composition

Is not his craft

They’re drawn out of boredom

Sometimes

But nightly, he toils

As sleep deserts him

Lines, then letters begin to sputter

They form

Out of his frustration

To control the burden

Of the world

A life so torn

Divided

By emotions

And passions

He belongs to a world

That’s neither black

Nor white

Not even shades of grey

The spectral kaleidoscope

Is confusing

Delightful

Overwhelming

Alluring

Frightening

An explosion

Of explanation

Brings Enlightenment

Erudition

But alas, the walls

Can no longer contain

His art

As space runs out

A dot

A line

A shape

A letter

A word

(I just want to note that I don’t really like how it appears on my blog. I need to figure out a way to edit my paragraphs so line breaks won’t show except where I meant to break it up.)

Social Media Paranoia

Call me paranoid, but I’m becoming increasingly skeptical of the security systems placed on the Internet to protect my privacy while I surf the net, send emails, connect with people, and especially perform highly confidential transactions online.

I recently deleted both my Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is actually the second time I have deleted my profiles, and I hope that this will be the last. I don’t plan to renew my accounts nor do I plan to start new ones. At least, I don’t plan to start personal profiles, but I will consider creating a professional account in the future.

Facebook is not new to privacy issues as many users in the past and present continue to quit from and discontinue their use of the social networking site due to users’ concerns about copyright issues and security. Who actually has intellectual property over the things users post on their profile? How is Facebook using that information?

Facebook has done minimal work to quell people’s fears as its popularity continues to grow. It has become a juggernaut in the social media game, much like Microsoft in its hey day monopolizing the personal computer software system, Google search engine, and Apple with its array of cool products like the iPod, iPhone, MacBook and now the iPad. But the recent security breaches that inadvertently revealed users’ personal information on Facebook demands more scrutiny and attention, especially from consumers. The media and even the government have used handled these situations with deft hands.

Google recently admitted on their blog that they “have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protectd) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in Google products.” Now, I’m beginning to doubt if my decision to switch to Google Chrome was a wise decision, as I already use their search engine primarily to do my online searches. In addition, I also use Google mail for personal and business emails and I once used Google chat to virtually connect with my friends in real time. It was probably a good choice that I didn’t use Google Buzz to supplant or replace my Twitter use.

It seems that our lives these days are increasingly become monopolized and centralized, despite the exponential growth in the services available to us. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of mobile media players out there, but we are sold to Apple as we consume more iPods and iPhones and iPads. Now, we go to Google for our searches, chats, e-mails and more recently our online browsing. And even there, on our favorite browser whether it’s Mozilla or Safari or the new Chrome, we are asked to save our passwords, consolidate our social networks, save our cookies and history.

Perhaps, it is a natural progression as a result of the glut of information we have to retain and the proliferation of information we can consume. Even experts advise us to have a singular presence on the web. Connect our LinkedIn profiles with our Twitter accounts, etc. But maybe there is more power in decentralizing the information we put out on the worldwide web. What are we really saying when we click that we “like” a page on Facebook? Why do we Digg articles? Why do we Twitter every facet of our lives?

Of course, there are many reasons for the increase in social media participation. We blame it on the Paris Hilton phenomenon. Everyone wants to be a celebrity, and the Internet has given many people an easy path to popularity. Just look at Justin Bieber and Charice. But the Internet has also given voice to many people who would not have had it otherwise. The ease in transmitting information has helped in promoting social causes. Case in point: Haiti. Without Twitter and other new media forms, we probably would not have seen the devastation caused by the earthquake in the same swift fashion.

Are these good enough reasons to sacrifice our privacy? Personally, I choose to only observe for now what transpires in the next few months or in the next year in the advances of computer technology. I have all the blogs and the news to tell me what goes on in that world without feeling left behind by modernity. But then again, companies might already be collecting information about me as I surf the net through my browser.