BRAIN DRAIN

I just received my grades for the two classes I took over the summer, which to me officially marks the end of the summer session. Were it not for my groupmates, with whom I got along quite well, I doubt the summer would have been as enjoyable. Note to self: in the future, avoid taking two classes over a one month summer session!

Now that the classes are over, I’ve officially accomplished half the coursework towards the PhD as well as completed the requirements for the Master’s Degree in Economics (I took the comprehensive exam for that when the summer began - I didn’t count it on the academic progress section of the site). Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that I’ll finish the program any sooner as I still have to wait for a class that will only be offered in the Fall of 2007; but at least I can look forward to being awarded the MA when I come back in August and finally become a carded economist.

So I’m counting the hours for my flight back home. This’ll be a doozy: Newark to Manila, via Seattle and Taiwan. Over 20 hours in transit, and in the process I’ll lose a day of my life (if you know what I mean).

But it’ll be worth it. I’m already beginning to wonder how many people will buy me lunch in the near two months I’ll be home (shameless hint!). Now that would be interesting to write about for a future entry.

The mind can play tricks on a person. But so can the stomach. For the past couple of days, I swear I could smell the distinct aroma of freshly fried daing na bangus right outside my apartment building.

Can’t wait to get home.

After putting together my first formal presentation here at Fordham (it was a group presentation, but I was the one who came up with the slides), I’ve rediscovered my love for Keynote.

Short of using Flash to design a presentation, I think Keynote is the best presentation software out there. Compared to Powerpoint, Keynote is both much easier to use from the standpoint of slide layout and design and much better at how it renders the slides, which look crisp and clean when onscreen or projected. I think it has something to do with the presentation itself being more like a Quicktime movie, or at least possessing its elements. It also helps that Powerpoint: Mac is just insufferably un-user friendly. Plus, you can even see the difference if you compare a Keynote presentation with one on a Windows-based Powerpoint: for lack of a better term, the latter just looks ugly.

But that’s not to say Keynote is not without it’s faults. I think Powerpoint XP is pretty strong for what you get, and it does some things better than Keynote, such as the ability to add motion animation to objects (by which I mean allowing objects to move from one place to another onscreen). This can be useful from a teaching perspective (and my students will attest to the fact that I’ve used it on more than one occasion) and adds a new dimension to what you can do with your slides. Also, what I appreciate the most about Powerpoint is the ability to press “back” and go back one animation as oppposed to how it works in Keynote, where when you attempt to do the same you go back to the beginning of all animations on a slide. In both these areas, I’ve found Keynote wanting (or at least Keynote 2, which is what I’ve got; I’m still waiting to hear if these have been resolved in its latest incarnation before I invest in it).

In all, I suppose Keynote’s strength is that it simply makes a presentation look much better than perhaps it really is, which always help when you do make that one ridiculously awesome presentation.

On an errand to pick up some football gear for my brother, I ended up catching the Italy-Australia World Cup match at the Adidas store near Chinatown. And boy, it did not disappoint.

Apparently, the store actually opens earlier these days to encourage people to watch the games there. Adidas is, after all, the official sponsor of the World Cup this time around. So just for that purpose, they have three or four flatscreen TVs right smack in the middle of the store showing the games in high-definition. Even without seats (I suppose they don’t want people loafing around forever), it’s a great place to congregate for the games, which lots of people did this morning. The ambience is perfect, what with all the soccer paraphernalia lying around (balls, jerseys and the Tunit line of assemble-your-own football shoes on display everywhere). Plus, they have this really neat board with the brackets for the final 16, listing the scores at each stage beside the flags of the countries playing.

I’m glad I was able to catch what I did of the game. I left my apartment 15 minutes into the first half, thinking the game wasn’t too exciting. By the time I was about to leave the Adidas store, the second half had just started and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to hang around for another 45 minutes to see how it would end. Soon enough a sizeable crowd had gathered, mostly Italy supporters. So you can imagine the reaction to that last second penalty win they eked out.

Personally, I was rooting for the Australians; call it an underdog mentality. It was definitely an awesome turn of events. I think the Australians’ inexperience showed and thus they got robbed. I feel for Socceroos everywhere. It just goes to show that, indeed, the ball is round.

I finally gave in to temptation and gave my copy of New Super Mario Brothers a whirl on my DS. And boy did it ever live up to expectations!

So far, the game is great. Graphics-wise, it’s pure eye candy. Backgrounds are colorful (but not overly so) and all the characters are rendered in superb fashion. Bowser and Bowser Jr. particularly stand out, in my opinion; they’ve never looked better. Game play is well balanced: it’s not too difficult to be enjoyable and not too easy to remain interesting. The format is more a cross between the original Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario World (I really dig jumping to the castle flagpole at the end of the stage - ah the nostalgia!), and the ability to go through every stage as many times as you want makes for perfect casual gaming.

Then there are all the bells and whistles. First, new items: the mega mushroom, the mini mushroom and the blue koopa shell. The first turns our favorite plumber into a ginormous version of himself (that can crush everything in the stage), the second into a puny version of himself (great for reaching those small pipes), and the last is worn so that if you run and press down, you can take out your enemies as, well, a turtle shell. Second, the new gimmicks in the stages: trampoline, the spin blocks that launch Mario high into the air and allow him to helicopter downwards, the red rings and coins (hard to describe, sorry) - the list goes on and on. But what I enjoy the most is the greater variety in what Mario is able to do. Now he can double and triple jump, jump off walls, and jump-stomp onto the ground. This last feature, as stupid as it may sound, is my favorite so far. It adds an entirely new dimension to everything I knew about Mario when you can activate blocks from above.

My only complaint at the moment is that you can only save after boss every castle. But other than that, this game is golden. Or whatever your favorite color mushroom is.

The tourist pedicabs around Time Square usually have advertisements painted onto their bodywork. One of the ones that caught my attention was an ad for one of the local Cabarets (no, it didn’t catch my attention because of that).

Apart from the token, shall we say, suggestive photograph, the ad was promoting the establishment as ideal for celebrating birthday parties, bachelor parties, and - here’s the punch line - divorce parties.

If you ask me, if you’re the type of person who frequents that sort of place to begin with or fantasizes about doing so despite being married, it’s no wonder you’d end up getting a divorce.

I found myself in the company of a couple of my classmates for an impromptu dinner last night. In the process, I met one of their friends who’s in another academic program and presently working as a financial trader (or so I gathered) somewhere North of the city. Seeing as he was in the company of three people studying to be economists, he excitedly told us about his company’s intra-office betting pool for the World Cup. He’d been dying to tell other people because of how neat it was, but didn’t because few really appreciated it.

He was right. It was a pretty awesome way to design a betting pool. Here’re the features:

• A bet (in this case $10) entitles you to a certain number of “shares” (in this case, 10 shares), which must be “invested” in the 32 teams playing in the World Cup.

• Each person in the pool can only invest in up to six teams.

• Each person’s winnings is not just dependent on whether or how many matches the teams win or lose, but on his/her relative “ownership” of the said teams.

• The pool closes before the beginning of the Cup, so all “investments” are locked in until the end.

And therein lies the novelty of the entire thing. The whole betting process becomes more like a game, where each bettor has to anticipate where everyone else will allocate his shares in order to maximize earnings, aside from picking winners. For instance, ploughing all your shares into a favorite like Brazil isn’t likely to pay off as much even if they win matches if everyone in the pool has bet on Brazil (and thus you just have a few shares of the total Brazil shares). On the other hand, if you bet heavily on a dark horse like Serbia and Monenegro that few people are optimistic about, and in the process accumulated a significant “ownership” of the team, then you’re likely to earn a heckuva lot if and when they do win.

This makes for very interesting scenarios that only people in the finance profession could ever have concocted. As it was told to us, you end up with talk about diversifying one’s portfolio, bandwagon effects and positions getting diluted on bullish teams, or of liquidating one’s shares, along with the usual sports chatter.

This is just too cool for words. I bet the lucky soul whose three shares in Ghana give him a 70% ownership stake must be one happy camper.

I’m a technophile. But every now and then something happens to my gizmos and gadgets that simply stumps me:

Yesterday morning, my wireless internet connection went dead.

This has happened to me occasionally. Truth be told, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with my current router, an Apple Airport Express. In the past, right in the middle of surfing or a videochat, it would just go nuts and stop transmitting, though the internet connection itself would remain up and running. So when I booted my laptop and found that the wireless connection was gone, I took it in stride.

Then things got very strange.

For one thing, not only was my connection dead, but apparently my computer couldn’t pick up any of the five or so other wireless networks in the building. I know they’re there: some of them are encrypted, others aren’t, but at some point or another I’ve been prompted by my computer to decide whether or not to join these networks. And all of a sudden, poof. Gone. Each and every one of them.

Thus I began to troubleshoot, which led to the next discovery: I couldn’t connect to my router. My laptop could briefly detect it, but couldn’t access it in order to change the settings. And again, later on, poof. I couldn’t even detect the transmission from the router at all.

So I went back to basics, connected the ethernet cable directly into the laptop (which worked, thankfully) and began surfing to find a solution. Was it the router? Perhaps: it was possible that the sheer amount of wireless signals floating around my area constituted too much interference. Was it my wireless card (an airport)? Maybe. You never know what parts get damaged or dislodged with a laptop.

But a soft and hard reset of the router later, and numerous attempts to discern whether my airport was working properly, I was still no closer to solving the problem.

Was it the user? Let’s not go there.

I abandoned all efforts to fix the problem when the last possible option involved a screwdriver, removing the bottom casing of my laptop and fiddling with the wireless antenna directly. Deciding that it was better to just take it into the shop and have some real tech support take a look at it, I threw in the towel and went to bed.

Yet when I woke up this morning, poof. But in a good way. The problem was gone. I could detect all the wireless signals in the building. I could connect to my router. And, most importantly, I could once again go online from bed.

I still have no idea what went haywire over that 24 hour period. It was as if the wireless connection just up and decided to take a day off. I’m sure that somewhere the omnipotent technology gods had a good laugh at my little riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Football – that sport Yanks insist on calling soccer - isn’t as popular in America as it is in many other places in the world. Notwithstanding that, I think there is a sizeable silent minority that follow the sport with a passion. With the World Cup ongoing, it’s difficult not to notice the number of bars that invite customers in to watch the game over a pint or two, as welll as the people who duck out of work for very extended lunch breaks to do just that. And there are the other amusing things that people do just to catch a game or two.

For instance, I happened to be in the economics faculty room in the afternoon of the first Saturday that the Cup was playing. True enough, it was only a matter of time for a professor and a student or two to trickle into the conference room to watch one of the games on the plasma tv that I never thought anyone put to use (or maybe put to use just to catch some news).

Or, there was the time I went into the computer center of the library to type up some coursework, where in plain sight (but turned down to mute) the plasma tv behind the circulation desk was airing a match, with the students hanging around more to watch it than to do any work. Too bad for me, there were only two minutes left to the game.

By then, I figured I could catch the games at school, but when I went to the computer center the next day in time for the game, the tv was off, much to my disappointment. So I shifted gears and logged onto one of the public-use computers to work. No sooner had I begun, I was disturbed by the sudden whooping noise of “oohs” and “aahs” and “goal!” of a bunch of students and staff congregated in one of the audiovisual rooms watcing (suprise, surprise) the World Cup game.

Go figure.

For my part, I’ve generally caught it over the weekends, where they air free on network tv. You see, I didn’t sign up for ESPN with my cable provider. But there is hope. I learned just now that all the World Cup games are aired on one of the Spanish channels. That’s quite an experience in itself. American commentators during the games I’ve seen are rather terrible, and even if I don’t understand the language, there’s nothing like the sheer thrill of hearing the announcer scream “Gol!”

Adidas has put together a great football commercial (Jose+10) that you can download off their website if you know where to look for it. I’m sure a lot of you have seen it: it’s the one with the Brazilian kids that decide to play a pick-up game and imagine they’re playing with their favorite players (hence the “+10″ for each side). The part where they call out Beckenbauer and Platini always gets me, and I wasn’t very familiar with either of them myself.

There’s just something about the commercial, and how it captures what’s fun about the sport. Plus the music is good, too.

I think this is the best soccer commercial to come out in years since the Nike Secret Tournament commercial a while back. Speaking of which, it’s interesting to see how players not only transfer from team to team, but from one sports company to another. For instance, you can spot Patrick Vieira in the commercial. And more recently, Thierry Henry’s thrown his lot in with Rbk. Both of them used to be in the Nike Secret Tournament spot.

But I digress. Going back to the Adidas commercial, you have to feel a little bad for “Pedro”. Theoretically, he’s 50% of the commercial, but it’s named after “Jose”. That is, assuming Pedro exists. If you look at the second spot, he seems to disappear together with the other players when the game ends after Jose is called in by his mom…