When I first heard of Rhythm Tengoku for the Game Boy Advance, I didn’t know what to think. How could a game revolving around “keeping to the beat” be so popular in Japan? Mind, this was well before I’d even tried a “rhythm” game, so for the most part I chalked it up to the craziness that occasionally arises from Japanese culture because, let’s face it, sometimes the Japanese are simply wired differently.

Then came games like Patapon and Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents, which after I’d tried and enjoyed got me interested in Rhythm Tengoku’s sequel on the Nintendo DS, Rhythm Heaven. By the time I’d gotten a chance to try out the first-stage demo (Built to Scale) at the neighborhood Gamestop during the last trip to the US, I was sold.

My brother jokingly describes it as ADD on steroids, and in a sense that’s true. Overall, Rhythm Heaven is nothing more than a collection of mostly senseless and often punishingly hard minigames. How senseless? Along the lines of dancing frogs/soldier ducks/ninja dog kind of senseless, to name but a few. And just how difficult? Let’s just say that gunning to perfect each and every stage is almost a masochistic exercise, because when the game demands “perfect”, it demands perfect.

Yet how can one not be won over by Rhythm Heaven? While it may fall under what some consider the “casual game” category (if you buy that canard, which I don’t), at its core it’s a title that is deviously creative, precisely because the gameplay mechanic is absurdly simple. There’s a lot of monkey-see-monkey-do/tap into the beat/watch the offbeats going on in Rhythm Heaven, and while there are a couple of forgettable clunkers in this compendium of mini-games there’s much more that’ll have most gamers shaking their heads at how ingeniously everything just comes together. To take do-re-mi and turn it into addictive gameplay? That’s downright clever.

At a time when many games distinguish themselves by their graphics and involved storylines or promise to offer massive multiplayer experiences, it’s refreshing to find a game like Rhythm Heaven. It serves to remind us that simplicity itself can make for a fantastic game, even if only for the few minutes you do decide to pick up and play.

Bing is the new kid on the search block, albeit from an old hand in the tech industry. As I’ve noted previously, it’s got potential, even if it does some things rather oddly.

If you happen to like Bing and are also an iPhone user, though, it doesn’t look like you can set it up as your default search engine (at least, not yet):

And while some might pooh-pooh this with the obvious “It’s an Apple product; of course it won’t play nice with Microsoft!”, I should point out that things between Apple and Google haven’t been entirely coming up roses of late either (and Google has its own iPhone app, besides).

Granted, a lot of this owes to the advantage of the incumbent. The iPhone’s only been around some two-odd years now, while Bing only went live in June 2009. Hence it will take some time for Bing to make its way into the iPhone OS’ search engine options. In the meantime, it’s good to see that Bing is already equipped with a mobile version to suit handheld devices:

But until Bing legitimately makes its way onto the iPhone’s settings, there will always be that disconnect of seeing the Bing search page on screen with a Google (or Yahoo) search box on the toolbar, just because the latter can be set as default while Bing can’t. Assuming this means anyone bothers to use Bing on an iPhone at all.

Meanwhile, on the plus side there are a growing number of Apps for the iPhone dedicated to downloading the ever-changing wallpaper featured on Bing. Novelty aside, I suspect this might be more useful than most folks realize.

Seen at the crypt where my grandparents (mother’s side) happen to be interred. This isn’t their tomb, though.

The crypt itself is in the basement of one of the smaller neighborhood churches. Typically, the place gets busy during All Saints’ and All Souls’, either with visits from families and friends of the departed or ornaments to mark each tomb.

Because the place is below ground with only one point of ingress and egress, it does tend to get stuffy from candles that are left burning throughout the day. Hence, this year the church administration decide to put up signs like that above reminding visitors to refrain from lighting candles altogether. Still, when we visited, there were several tombs marked with lighted candles, the most noticeable one being that in the picture which was situated right beside such a sign.

Regardless of whether this was someone deliberately thumbing their nose at the policy or if it so happened that the sign came up after the candles were lit, I find it amusing. But it’s also an apropos opportunity for introspection. Do we honor the dead by disregarding the wishes of the living? Or, is each opportunity to show respect for those who have gone before us so precious that such acts of remembrance must take precedence? After all, it’s a simple thing to pay homage to our departed loved ones.

You just have to light a candle.

Sure, I hemmed and hawed. Sat on the fence. Vacillated. Made up my mind one way only to change it just as quickly. But now all that is history: I finally took the plunge and got me an iPhone.

In a sense, it’s an early Christmas for me, if not entirely of my own choosing. My previous phone already needed to be changed (so soon!), suddenly resetting on its own and putting me through calls where the person on the other end of the line could not hear me at all. And while I set the wheels in motion accordingly, because of Globe Telecom’s [sarcasm]amazing[/sarcasm] customer service the iPhone arrived nearly three months later and after I’d incurred unprogrammed expenses elsewhere. All in all it wasn’t exactly a matter of indulgence: if I could’ve avoided it, I’d probably still put it off for later.

But enough preamble. I got me an iPhone! And what do I think of it now that I have one?

It has got to be the worst celphone on the market today.

I’m sure there’re fanboys ready to take me to task for such heresy, but to me the reasoning is simple: the iPhone lacks basic features other celphones readily offer. Can’t argue against facts. Want to wirelessly sync your iPhone and computer? Sorry, can’t do that. Looking to send and receive files by Bluetooth? Better luck next time. Need to send that business card by SMS? Thanks for playing. Add to this nonexistent battery life (really) and a virtual keyboard that makes composing messages a choice between doing so either slowly or inaccurately (no joke), and it becomes much too easy to empathize with the iPhone’s detractors.

If there is a silver lining, it’s that things can get better with the right tweaks to the firmware. Whenever that will be.

That said, this often frustrating mobile phone does have a couple of aces up its sleeve. For one thing, it is hands-down the most functional handheld Internet device I’ve ever had the opportunity to use. And it gets mad props for access to the App Store, possibly every technophile’s dream come true.

For me, multitouch makes all the difference for the iPhone-as-mobile-Internet-device. I’ve played with many an Internet-enabled gadget in my day, and the iPhone is head and shoulders above the rest. Its interface is simple enough, but more important than that, intuitive. How much so? Let’s just say I still get a kick out of easily zooming in on a webpage by just tapping on the screen, thereafter being able to continue on reading since the text is now perfectly, properly in focus. Frankly, it amazes me no one’s been able to implement anything as functional this successfully, and I have been perfectly happy casually checking my email and surfing the web at home without having to pull my laptop out of its bag.

Yet it’s access to the App Store that’s the real winner. Despite what some might think, it’s not all about the games; I’ve gone down that road before, and am also perfectly happy to keep my gaming on my consoles. It’s about the ability to customize an iPhone to do what you want it to do for a song (pardon the expression), and many times for free. In my case, the first order of business was to find my way to use the iPhone as a presentation clicker, which I was able to do by turning it into a wireless trackpad (showing this off to people never gets old). This was followed by an RSS reader (done!), Google Earth (sweet!), and a host of other apps I thought would be neat to have like Facebook, Tweetdeck, Instapaper, Photoshop, and HP’s wireless printing app, just to name a few.

And yeah, a couple of games, too, because I couldn’t help myself.

One of the funnier things to have come out of this iPhone experience is how it’s brought to light how much I’ve fallen behind as a technophile. Just to be able to use my new toy, I’ve had to update both iTunes and Safari on my faithul Powerbook G4. Then I decided to have a go at switching to full-fledged email by IMAP (which took some doing to figure out), leading me to update Apple Mail, too. In the end, I’ve probably taken my dated laptop as far as it can go — and realize that this below average celphone/amazing mobile Internet device masquerading as an iPod forever will be faster than that computer of mine from here on out.

What can I say? Technology is funny that way.

Ask me to recommend a work of fiction and nine times out of ten my answer will be Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind. I was quite taken by it, expecting at first a tale of fantasy (how could I not, with a “cemetery of forgotten books” and all?) only to be presently surprised by a story more akin to a thriller about an enigmatic author named Julian Carax and one Daniel Sempere’s attempt to unearth that mysterious writer’s past. Because of Ruiz Zafon’s knack for literary smoke and mirrors, not to mention the way he romanticizes postwar Barcelona throughout the novel, Shadow of the Wind remains to this day the only book I’ve ever been compelled to read from cover to cover in one sitting.

Hence, it’s neither difficult to imagine how high my expectations were for Ruiz Zafon’s follow-on offering, The Angel’s Game, nor how disappointed I felt that the book didn’t live up to them.

To be fair, coming into a book — or anything, for that matter — expecting so much is an experience that can’t possibly end well. On that score, I did find The Angel’s Game a page-turner; not because I was so engrossed in the story and couldn’t wait to see what happens next but because I was just waiting to find the same qualities in the novel that so enamored me of Shadow of the Wind. Perhaps I would’ve been better served had I approached the book as an entirely new experience, as if it were uncharted territory just waiting to be discovered.

Except that everything I was looking for — the drama, mystey and suspense woven around a superb period piece — was there, but only in glimpses, drip fed in doses too weak for me to enjoy.

Ironically, what I liked least about The Angel’s Game was how it came across as fantasy masquerading as a thriller. The eponymous “game” that Ruiz Zafon’s protagonist David Martin plays — whereby he ultimately sells his soul to become a prolific writer — was too steeped in the unlikely and impossible for another almost-period piece. No doubt, it’s an appealing premise conceptually, and up until the point where Martin is commissioned by his seemingly ageless “Angel” the book had my attention. Thereafter, however, I found the events that unfolded in Martin’s life and his transformation until the novel’s conclusion a bit of a stretch, especially for what turned out to be a prequel, if only tangentially, for Shadow of the Wind.

That said, I do envy the person who first discovers Ruiz Zafon’s work through The Angel’s Game and thereafter with Shadow of the Wind. To see the broader tableau of the author’s vision unfold in that manner and hit its crescendo as it should is to be treated to quite an experience. For my part, I wax philosophical. Maybe it is unfair to judge an author’s new work against a previous one that is, for all intents and purposes, exceptional. Maybe it isn’t even healthy to expect the newer addition to capture all those qualities in the earlier installment that made such an impression. But hey, a guy can hope.

Time spent spreading the blame can be spent solving the problem.

Time spent complaining about the work you’ve been given can be spent getting the job done.

Time spent jockeying for credit can be spent getting the next big project undeway.

Time spent haranguing someone for their ineptitude can be spent teaching them how to do things right.

Time spent talking the talk can be spent walking the walk.

Time spent getting mad can be spent getting even.

Time spent needlessly worrying about what might come to pass can be spent preparing accordingly, or setting the wheels in motion to get the outcome you desire.

Time spent reliving the past can be spent living in the present or, better yet, working for the future.

Time spent taking stock of your problems can be spent counting your blessings.

Twitter takes a public relations beating every so often when sudden service outages keep its users from sending out up-to-the-minute micro-updates. It’s happened to me once or twice, too, and each time I just chalk it up to the fact that, well, these things happen.

Then I tried logging on to my account the other day, and couldn’t. I’d key in my username and password, buy rather than the familiar text entry box asking me “What are you doing?” I found this instead:

I suspect most of the service’s die-hard faithful would’ve blown a gasket at this point. Me? I swear that the first thing that came to mind was “Oh! Look! A whale!”

In my own little universe, that’s normal, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, when I came to my senses (and tried unsuccessfully to log on again) the thought struck me: wouldn’t it be interesting to do a piece on the different pages one sees when a site is temporarily having problems? I’m sure there’s a fair amount of clunkers out there (i.e. of the “file not found variety”), but it seems to me that more and more sites are getting creative with their “service temporarily unavailable” messages, and in increasingly amusing ways.

Not that I can recall any off the top of my head though. Which is why I think it’d be fun to begin compiling examples while surfing the web. Granted, it’ll be time consuming and tedious — barring a catastrophic and simultaneous outage of the major sites on the internet, allowing us to see such things easily — but it’d be a pretty neat side project to pursue.

So maybe I’ll get around to it. Maybe some of you can email me you screenshots, too, and we can turn this into a crazy internet meme of sorts.

Until then: Oh! Look! A whale!

“Outrageous” and “violent” certainly come to mind about Battle Royale. Not without reason, of course: any story about a class of high school kids left on island and expected to fight each other to the death is bound to be over the top. I had no issue with that. Learning that it was already a popular manga, anime and series of movies in Japan, however, is what didn’t sit well with me. Wouldn’t that be unnecessaily graphic? Is that even in good taste? Suffice it to say that I wasn’t inclined to check it out in the least.

Then I learned that before it made its way to visual media, Battle Royale was a novel by Koushun Takami. That, to me, seemed interesting. I just had to find out: could a novel with such a premise be so good as to inspire its own comic, animated series, and movies?

The answer is yes. Yes it borders on good taste, albeit barely. Yes it is undeniably graphic, more so because it leaves quite a lot (some might say too much) to the imagination. And yes, it is quite good, controversy be damned.

Granted, it’s rather violent. Despite this, it was the big picture — Takami’s vision of a dystopian Japanese empire — that I found captivating. It takes a sick mind to conjure up a story of kids killing their classmates in the most gruesome ways imaginable. But to do so in a way that makes sense and in the context of subtle yet compelling socio-political commentary? That takes a fair amount of creativity…and guts. Some have likened Battle Royale to Lord of the Flies, I suppose because of the premise. I can’t say for sure if the comparison is warranted (seeing as I haven’t read Sir William Golding’s novel, with my being a philistine and all). Yet I am prepared to say that Takami’s work reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984, because of its atmosphere and psychology. And that’s saying something.

That’s why it’s not all about the violence, which gets tiresome as the story progresses and more students fall victim to the game, and to each other. For all that, however, it does make for an effective hook to catch the reader’s interest. Forty-two students begin the game, at most one can be declared the winner. How will it all end? Will anyone come out of it all right? in that sense, at least, the novel manages to be quite the page turner.

Battle Royale surely isn’t for everyone, but I’d say it’s a far better novel than it might seem at first blush.

Oh, and it is pretty violent, too.

So there you go.

When we come into this world, all we have is potential. There are no sacred cows, no nonstarters, nothing is impossible. We start out with a blank slate — or at least we should — and the world is our oyster.

So we start to make plans. Aspire. Dream. There isn’t anything too small nor too big nor too fanciful nor too whimsical for our imaginings. We want to be any number of things when we grow up — fireman, astronaut, cowboy, doctor, President, RICH — and we have the confidence to believe that, yes, we can be.

Then life happens. We grow older (not necessarily “up”), and along the way come face to face with the realities of this world. We make choices — some would say, compromises — and learn to cope with the consequences of our decisions. Each door we open leaves others closed to us, and for every person that finds himself so far away from his original aspirations as to render these unattainable, there are others whose choices will have opened to them worlds of possibilities even they could not previously imagine.

Thus, to reflect upon our lives is to look at our decisions and understand how we got to where we are. “What might have been” is irrelevant. It won’t even matter if we “sold out” relative to our original ambitions, or if we rank among the lucky few that others look upon with either envy or admiration.

All that really matters is simply:

Are we happy with the decisions we’ve made?

Are we better persons because of them?

Have our choices made a positive difference in the lives of others?

May we all be fortunate enough to answer in the affirmative, or at least have opportunities to try.

• Everyone’s meal, for each course, is served at the same time. More, waiters don’t ask or need a cheat sheet to ascertain who gets which dish they’re serving.
• Ladies are always served first.
• Waiters serve you consistently from the same side (usually on your right, depending on the table layout).
• You are told before you order, or as you’re doing so, what is or isn’t available from the menu.
• You aren’t interrupted at inopportune moments with the pithy question “how’s everyone doing?”
• You are asked if the order is complete only as a courtesy: the waiter knows exactly what’s still on the way, and can, in fact tell you as much.
• The one taking your order can describe everything on the menu well and offer some other relevant information besides.
• You can ask any server for something, even if you’re not in their station.
• Even if it isn’t Burger King, and so long as it isn’t outrageous, you can have it your way.
• If you didn’t like something, it’s comped on your bill.

Danny Meyer summarizes most if not all of these as three things: good cuisine, superior knowledge and excellent hospitality. That’s why he’s a successful restaurateur with a bestselling book, and I’m just some guy who likes to eat out from time to time who writes on a blog of limited readership.

A month overdue, Proposal Draft 2 is now live and in the wild. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s now in the hands of a higher power. Well, one of them anyway. That will determine if I get the green light to send it on for my readers’ review. Barring any violent objections — and I worry more about the “violence” than the “objections” — I still cling to the hope that I’ll get the go signal to officially present the proposal this term so I can move on to dissertation writing proper.

Presently, it’s touch and go. Time is not on my side right now, so I can just hope for the best. Much as I’m aware that there’s always next term, I’d much rather get it over and done with sooner rather than later. Besides, with what I’ve worked on so far I can’t think of how else to push the topic forward. So even in those terms I’m already itching to get some direction, usually of the type when you’re on the receiving end of an academic defense.

Since I’m waxing philosophical about this process, let me just say that a large part of the delay I’ve encountered has to do with the fact that I’ve never written anything as long before. Ever. At some point, I thought my difficulties had more to do with switching between “programming” mode and “writing” mode, with analysis taking place somewhere in between. There’s that, too. Yet I think the root of my problem is that I insisted on dissertating the same way I’d do most of my other research: lots of reading followed by a prolonged periods of writing. So what I’ve had to learn along the way is the discipline of writing in brief episodes, piecing together sections not necessarily in the order I intend to use them. By temperament, I tend to be more methodical, deliberate and linear (at least, when I write), so this has been a valuable if painful learning experience.

Thus I once again find myself in the uncomfortable position of waiting, hoping the powers that be look favorably upon my work and give me the thumbs up. Will be keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, it’s time to tie up some loose ends (I’m still writing the annexes to the main proposal) and do what little I can to set the approval processes in motion.

In keeping with the topic of Philippine Political Culture, I thought the theme of “Guns, Goons and Gold” — the typical characterization of politics in the country — would be a fitting way to introduce students to perspectives on Philippine politics.

But before that: am I the only one who sees the only two bullets on the second slide numbered as three and four? I’m guessing it’s a Slideshare glitch, since the original file displays the numbering correctly.

Going back: these slides were really just a glorified excuse to get students to read Amado Doronila’s A New Paradigm for Understanding Philippine Politics. Granted, it’s neither a seminal nor particular groundbreaking essay on the subject, but it is a concise and intelligent reader quite appropriate for college sophomores who, more likely than not, don’t have a clue.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to think of better ways to present the matter. Looking at the slides now, I’m of the mind that a lecture covering the same points would be much more illuminating as a discussion of case studies: one for the top-down traditional perspective of “trapo” politics, and another for the bottom-up civil society-led “new paradigm” of the same. I can even see a ballroom-type presentation/photo slideshow being much more effective at getting students interested in the subject. Alas, I wasn’t nearly as wise then (both on the subject and on making presentations), and considering that students seldom do the required reading before the lecture (speaking from experience), I’d have to say that these slides got the job done well enough.

Slides were prepared on Powerpoint XP. Can’t recall where I came across the template, though.

[About Presentation Thursdays: Every now and then, on a Thursday, I post a presentation from my archives and include some accompanying commentary not just about the content but also my thoughts on designing it. The presentations can also be viewed and downloaded from my Slideshare page]

A sign at the Ang Mo Kio MRT station in Singapore.

“Value life/Act Responsibly”? Given that it’s on the tracks and all, I suppose it’s a subtle way of talking jumpers off the edge. Regardless, not a bad motto to live by, if I do say so myself.

Funny how city signs are full of Zen if one looks hard enough, isn’t it? Hmm…that sounds like an interesting photoblogging project right there…

I’ve got a shirt on my back, and shoes for my feet.

I eat three square meals daily (sometimes more, if need be).

I know how to write, which means I’ve learned how to read.

I’ve got a great family. I love my wife, and she loves me.

By any reasonable standard, I’m already very lucky.

The Liberal Party unveiled their Presidential and Vice-Presidential Ticket earlier today at Club Filipino. Here are some photos from the occasion:

The announcement was set for 10:00am, but the Kalayaan room at Club Filipino was already packed at least an hour before. By the time things got underway, all the seats were taken and the aisles were standing room only, all the way to the rear of the ballroom beyond the operable door, which was opened to accommodate more supporters.

Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III addresses the crowd. After saying a few words he gets down to business and begins to introduce his longtime friend Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II as his running mate for the 2010 elections.

The crowd listens expectantly as Mar takes the podium. He speaks about the thirst for good governance in the country. With Noynoy looking on, Mar confirms that he has accepted the responsibility of running as Noynoy’s Vice President.

“The fog of cynicism has been lifted from our hearts,” Mar says with reference to the hope that Noynoy’s candidacy represents. Easily, this is the most memorable line of the day.

The crowd erupts in support of the Liberal Party ticket. As befits the Aquino legacy, the LABAN symbol figures prominently as Bayan Ko is sung to bring the occasion to a close.

Finally, for posterity:

This was my vantage point throughout the morning. So yeah, it was dreadfully hard getting decent photos!

The fact of the matter is that the world is full of sheep. It’s a mediocre world we live in, one where it doesn’t take much to stand out or take the lead precisely because it’s far too easy to do “just enough” to get by and let things simply gravitate towards the mean.

Those who’ve caught on and strive to be different generally fall into two categories. First, there are those who stand out for the simple reason that they aspire to be Good. In whatever they do, these people make an impression because of their consistency and competence. They may never be at the head of the pack, but they do have share of mind because they are dependable. Besides, they’re Good.

On the other extreme are the leaders of the pack. These are the people far ahead of the curve, the alpha males and females in your school, community or workplace. Sure, maybe it’s their innate talent that sets them apart. But what they all have in common is their drive to simply be the Best.

So people can be exceptional by being Good or aspiring to be the Best. But there is another alternative: being Better.

The Japanese philosophy of kaizen — continuous improvement — captures this perfectly. Simply put, it’s the mindset of improving one’s previous best. In business, for instance, where kaizen is commonly invoked, it might imply working to be at least 50 percent more efficient operationally each and every year. Clearly, it’s a concept relevant beyond the realm of business and one that can be a powerful mantra in our personal lives.

Better isn’t mutually exclusive with either Good or Best, but it is a mindset all its own. Without working to be Better, one can’t expect to be the Best for long. Nor even Good.

More people should aspire to be exceptional, to stand out, to be more than just sheep. Indeed, it’s not all that hard to do so.

Good? Best?

Try Better.

Conversation I had with the wife while on the MRT in Singapore:

Brian: Hey, do you see that sign above the seat?

Wife: Yes.

Brian: You know what’s funny about it?

Wife: …?

Brian: It’s all about the same guy!

Wife: …

(For the record, dammit, I still think it’s funny!)

A little a something for the post-grads out there:

1. People admitted to the academic program after you came in are beginning to graduate.
2. Your classmates consistently thank you for the huge grade curve.
3. You start rationalizing that you deserve the degree purely on the basis that some of your classmates are idiots. (Of course they’re not. Well, except maybe that one guy…)
4. It dawns on you that a lot of people have either achieved or earned more knowing far, far less.
5. You wake up one morning and realize that you don’t know much more than you did yesterday.
6. You actually want to get a real job.
7. All your friends already think you’ve graduated (and it’s getting embarrassing to tell them otherwise).
8. You begin to feel that the thesis/dissertation is the least exciting thing you’ve done since getting into grad school.
9. When reading through cutting-edge research in academic journals, it takes all your might not to cry out, “Who cares?!”
10. You begin writing about signs you might not be long for grad school.

And before anyone asks: yes, this is the sort of thing I come up with whilst dissertating.

Continuing with slides on Philippine Politics and Governance, these are the slides I prepared for the lecture on Philippine Political Culture.

The source material for the lecture borrows heavily from David Wurfel’s book Philippine Politics: Development and Decay. Granted, the book itself is a bit dated, but it remains one of the seminal works on the subject. Other references were used peripherally.

As far as the slides are concerned, I’m amused that I even bothered with the slides on “further reading” at the end. This must have been during my “idealistic” phase as an instructor. It’s a good idea in principle, but in practice I can think of much better ways to implement it. For lecture purposes, however, unless absolutely necessary I think it’s acceptable (and sometimes better) to forego this, since the same information is more effectively imparted through the syllabus or on handouts.

Oh, and for my non-Filipino-speaking readers: the Filipino term that appears on the tenth slide translates as “debt of gratitude”.

[About Presentation Thursdays: Every now and then, on a Thursday, I post a presentation from my archives and include some accompanying commentary not just about the content but also my thoughts on designing it. The presentations can also be viewed and downloaded from my Slideshare page]

It was the piece that sparked the nation’s outrage: the article by journalists Ellen Tordesillas, Avigail Olarte, Yvonne Chua, and Luz Rimban that appeared on VERA Files unearthing the US Home acquired by Pampanga Representative (and the President’s Eldest Son) Mikey Arroyo. As the story goes, the house was purchased soon after winning his seat in Congress, does not appear in his Statement of Assets and Liabilities, and was acquired for an amount way in excess of what a Philippine public official can possibly afford based on his salary. To date, the Congressman has been thoroughly unable to offer a reasonable explanation (no surprise there), despite the ongoing scrutiny into the matter by the Philippine media and concerned Filipinos, both overseas and abroad.

By highlighting the relevant issues, posing the right questions and gathering substantial documentary evidence in support of its claims (which are available on their website, together with a picture of the house!), the article is a powerful example of how the Fourth Estate helps rein in the excesses of elected officials. Of course, this was made possible largely because of the abundance of information now readily available through the internet and other channels. This got me thinking: exactly how much information could the average person get about that house, anyway?

Not nearly anything as substantial as those journalists, if my cursory attempts are anything to go by. For instance, I couldn’t find information regarding its ownership or anything of the sort. But given what’s already become public knowledge, I think there’s a surfeit of information readily available for those curious to know more.

For instance, you can find the house on Google Earth by keying in the following coordinates: 37°34′7.21″N, 122°15′18.15″W. Do that, and this is what you’ll find (click to enlarge):

Further, the house can also be seen via Google Street view (click to enlarge):

Now if you wanted to find out about the size of the property, the number of rooms in the house, or its approximate market value, it’s easy enough to look these up on Zillow, a handy website for those in the market for property in the USA. I searched for the address and got the following result (click to enlarge):

According to the site, the five bedroom and three bath house that sits on a 6,336 square foot piece of land was last purchased for about US$1.32 Million, has an estimated monthly amortization of US$5,602 and costs its owners property taxes of approximately US$14,239 annually. Its market value at the time I checked was between US$1.11 Million and US$1.46 Million.

Amazing how much information is available publicly, isn’t it? If anything, this should serve as fair warning to the public (and elected officials in particular): nothing is sacred or secret anymore. The truth must come out eventually, and only the immensely stupid assume that there will never be a reckoning.

Speaking of lacking in intelligence, let me end with the following footage of Rep. Arroyo’s “Media Suicide” (as it has been termed on YouTube; a link to the second half of the interview is embedded somewhere in the video):

It makes me wonder what the hell he was thinking agreeing to a live interview, obviously without a game plan. It’s pure pwnage, especially from about 2:15 onwards where he is completely unable to rebuff the notion that he’s been hiding ownership of the property. In any other mature political system whose leaders still cling to some notion of propriety this alone would be cause for resignation. Yet I doubt we can expect as much in this instance — from him or his ilk.

I’ve been having a hard time shaking off the news of Alexis “Eggy” Tioseco’s untimely passing. Mostly, it’s because of the tragedy of it all. To some degree, it’s also because I last saw him on tv and at his best with Butch Dalisay, trying to engage Carlo J. Caparas in intelligent conversation over the recent National Artist row. But at the end of the day, perhaps it’s really just because he was someone I knew with a lifetime ahead of him abruptly put to an end.

This is not to say that I knew Eggy well. Sure, I considered him a friend — by which I mean an acquaintance I wouldn’t hesitate to greet and who would, in turn, greet me back — but he was my junior. In fact, the only reason we were ever introduced back in the day was because I was his brother’s classmate. So whenever I think of Eggy, I think of meeting that gangly, quiet kid, always with a kind word and sort of good-natured twinkle in his eye.

Our University wasn’t a big place, thus even if we didn’t run in the same social circles it wasn’t at all unusual for our paths to cross. As stereotypes go, he would be with the artsy and popular crowd; I on the other hand would associate with…well, let’s just say mine wasn’t nearly as interesting. In the end, though, what we had in common was that ours were the most vocal groups in the University community, so if anything was ever up you could be sure we’d be there. Hence, we’d bump into each other every so often — to support the student theater groups or discuss some finer points of University politics — which is how I’d developed a healthy respect for what Eggy was all about.

Objectively speaking, one would have to admit that Eggy had all the wrong characteristics for a serious Filipino film critic. At first blush he came across as more Canadian than Filipino, overly soft-spoken, and too, well, nice to pass the sort of judgment one would expect from a critic. More, it seemed incomprehensible that someone with these traits could possibly be enamored with anything as ersatz or esoteric (take your pick) as Philippine cinema. Yet for all that was wrong with the idea of this Fil-Canadian establishing himself as a Filipino film critic, there were all those other things that were just so, so right. Talent. Passion. And above all else, unique perspectives on what was so beautiful about Philippine film, and innumerable ideas about its possibilities.

In this, his body of work speaks for itself.

I didn’t have a chance to bump into Eggy as much after graduation, but in a sense he kept on bumping into me. I can’t quite count the times I’d turn on the tv and be pleasantly surprised to find him on the air, a guest on some show or other effortlessly explaining some finer point about film. By then his star was already on the rise — a Dragon in Flight, to borrow a phrase — himself an example of what the best of us from our University can aspire to be. And part of his charm? He was the same good-natured, soft-spoken, talented and passionate guy that he’d always been.

A couple of years later our paths would cross at least one last time, when I found myself a faculty member at our alma mater. He was either in his final year of studies or was also a faculty member himself (I forget). Once more we’d occasionally run into each other on our way to class. Sure, this happened only a couple of times over a yearlong period or so, but I distinctly remember how, clad in a shirt with rolled up sleeves and a sharp looking tie, he’d make it a point to jokingly greet me with a half-bow and say, “Mr. Belen”.

That last time I caught him on tv, giving as well as he got, I thought to myself that I should drop him a line to tell him what a good job he’d done on the panel. Now he’s gone, and I regret not having been able to say as much.

I wrote the last post that appeared on this blog days before the tragedy that befell Eggy, and it’s only because of the magic of the interweb that it self-published as scheduled when it did. Really, those bullet reviews of stuff I watch while traveling got started as a gag that I decided to run with, and by now I’ve written quite a bunch of such fluff. In a strange way, seeing it come out when it did reminded me of all that we’ve lost with Eggy’s passing. We’ve lost an intelligent voice for film in general and Philippine cinema in particular — far too soon — and without him, much of what will be written about the medium may just seem like so much fluff, at least for some time to come.

A lot’s been written about Eggy in the past few days; the ones below are the most poignant as I’ve come across. Call this my own subtle tribute, one that I humbly offer with my own half-bow, “Mr. Tioseco”.

A Time To Love: Alexis Tioseco, Nika Bohinc, And The Global Film Community [Jason Sanders via FilmMaker]

Alexis Tioseco (1981-2009) [Francis Cruz via Lessons From the School of Inattention: Ogg's Movie Thoughts]

Alexis A. Tioseco (1981-2009) [Noel Vera via Critic After Dark]

Between the short flight and the lack of anything I particularly wanted to watch that I hadn’t seen yet, I decided to settle on purely kid-friendly flicks this time around:

Coraline. Visually stunning, no doubt. I particularly liked the facial expressions the animators were able give the eponymous title character, voiced superbly by Dakota Fanning. That aside, however, the movie’s one glorious snooze-fest. Yes, I’m a fan of Neil Gaiman. Yes, I read the book. But I’m glad I didn’t waste time to watch it in theaters. The surreal pace that underlies the story just didn’t jive well with me onscreen, and overall I came away feeling that this was a perfect example of where the written word undeniably trumps what visual media have to offer.

Monsters vs. Aliens. An enjoyable riff on the disaster movie genre. What it has going for it is that it’s straightforward, you know what to expect coming into it, and in the end the film delivers. This is what Mars Attacks! could’ve been but never really was. Besides, it’s monsters! Fighting aliens! Which is awesome! Oh, and why is it that Seth Rogen manages to land the best roles in these kinds of films?

The twelfth installment of Random Travel Notes (to Singapore and Back edition)!

Finally: Progress. Was surprised to discover that the Philippine Bureau of Immigration introduced a new departure card since the last trip overseas. Was even more surprised to learn that this new card is at least on its second iteration already: we were asked to fill out different ones since those we’d already accomplished from the travel agent were apparently outdated. In some small way, it’s nice to know that there is some process improvement going on at the airport, however superficial.

How the Other Half Lives. Curious: do airlines decide to have passengers disembark by moving past the pricier cabins (First and Business Class) just so you get to see what you’re missing? I wonder.

Equal Opportunity Cabbie. Upon arriving in Singapore, we managed to flag down a cab whose driver was female, Muslim, and who formerly had a desk job at some unnamed office. Personally, something about one person having this collection of attributes is simply noteworthy.

Wife in the City. Although business was the order of the day for this trip, the wife came along as well since opportunity was just too good to pass up. This posed a challenge since it was her first time to visit Singapore and I couldn’t show her around for most of our stay. But she acquitted herself magnificently, managing to find her way around town on her own. She even discovered a free shuttle within the environs of our hotel that we didn’t know about despite having stayed there a number of times already. Good job!

Passing on the Pohpiah. The parents (and now the wife, too) have taken a liking to pohpiah. Unfortunately, the allure is still lost on me.

Are you sure? Try this for confusing: the corporate headquarters of United Overseas Bank (UOB) is at UOB Plaza. UOB plaza just so happens to be across the OUB Centre, the flagship property of the former Overseas Union Bank, which UOB acquired in 2001. So just telling a cabbie that you have to go to one or another building tends to bring about a double take. More, if you get off at OUB Centre, one of the first things you see as you walk through the entrance is (get this) a UOB ATM. It’s simple enough to just walk on over to the other complex if one happens to be dropped off at the wrong entrance, but even I have to wonder whether this is a sign that Singaporeans do indeed have quirky sense of humor.

Secondhand Designer Bags. While navigating the above OUB/UOB confusion, came across a branch of Madam Milan, a store that allows people to trade (or purchase) “preowned designer handbags.” Personally, it seems like a strange proposition, but then in the age of vanity and luxury brands, it somehow doesn’t surprise me.

Lights Out, Carry On. During a breakfast meeting, an electrical failure in the building we were in caused most of the lights in the restaurant to go out. I dare say that all the other diners more than took the unfortunate incident in stride: after a brief pause to take in the situation, everyone simply went on with whatever business they were doing before the interruption, without so much fanfare. It’s a marked difference from how I would think Filipinos would respond if the same were to happen in the Philippines, where blackouts are nothing out of the ordinary yet are typically greeted with audible exclamations of surprise.

Jacketing. While in Bangkok for the honeymoon, the wife and I bought some books at a branch of Kinokuniya and availed of the plastic covers that they wrap on your purchases as a complimentary service. Buying some books from their branch in Singapore, we hoped to enjoy the same benefit, only to learn that “jacketing” costs an additional SG$1 per book. If this is an example of adapting business practices to local conditions, I guess this speaks volumes about the Singapore market’s purchasing power. Yet whether this is a sign that the store is using the charge to discourage the consumption of plastic or instead make additional profit given customers’ purchasing power, I haven’t really decided.

Gaming on the Go. Offhand, I’d say I spied more people playing with PSPs than with Nintendo DSes around town, by a ratio of at least six to one. This more or less conforms with similar observations I’ve had in New York, although I’ve observed more people in the Big Apple use the PSP as a media device (whereas in Singapore, folks were actually playing games). Just saying is all.

Nobody Loves Me Anymore? At first, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to meet with any friends in Singapore. But soon enough, meetings were arranged and in the end the wife and I managed to meet with all but two friends we’d hoped to see while we were in town. Funny how things work out. Good times.

Rain, Rain, Go Away. Having lived in the city previously, I was well aware of how quickly rain could set in around this time of year. True enough, during our stay we had our fair share of overcast skies and brief showers; thankfully, the weather didn’t get in the way of our plans. More, the only time it really poured was on our way to the airport to catch the flight home. So all in all, good fortune does a good trip make.

Ten things you learn by reading comic books:

1.) With great power comes great responsibility.

2.) Eyeglasses can be a surprisingly effective disguise.

3.) Criminals are a cowardly and suspicious lot.

4.) Your arch-nemesis is likely to be a long-lost sibling, childhood friend, former sidekick or spurned lover.

5.) Spandex never goes out of style. Corollary: Wearing your underwear over your pants is more than just a fashion statement.

6.) No one ever really dies. Corollary 1: Everyone comes back to life, eventually. Corollary 2: Unless you see the body, you can’t be sure they’re actually dead (and sometimes not even then).

7.) History and canon are subject to change without prior notice.

8.) Female characters are more likely to end up in refrigerators than not.

9.) The best time for the wicked cool “aha!” speech is right before your moment of triumph (which for bad guys, often precedes their moment of defeat).

10.) All secret headquarters are larger on the inside than on the outside.

It’s easy to mistake False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World for a book cast in the same mold as many titles these days about the present economic malaise. At first glance, Alan Beattie’s latest does have all the trappings: Deals with a political-economic topic potentially related to the global downturn ? Check. Has a title that communicates something ominous? Check. Offers the possibility of casting one’s prior understanding of world events in a completely different light? Game, set, match. Yet this offering from the Financial Times’ world trade editor is anything but a book of the sort, nor does it aspire to be.

In truth, overshadowed by the sensationalism that words such as “false” or “surprising” tend to stir, False Economy attempts to be no more or less than a reader on economic history. In this regard it manages to stand out, to some extent because it offers the economic history of nothing in particular — opting to discuss how certain economic quandaries can be explained by reviewing its political-economic antecedents — but more because it argues against the notion that economic outcomes are inevitable. In Beattie’s words, “[t]he aim of this book is to explain how and why countries and societies and economies got to where they are today [...]. But it will reject the idea that the present state of those economies, countries and continents was predetermined. Countries have choices, and those choices have substantially determined whether they succeeded or failed.”

How does the book measure up against this yardstick? Quite well, for the most part. Beattie tackles topics using economic history as his lens (such as the development of cities, patterns of trade, or the purported link between development and religion to name but a few) in an undoubtedly erudite fashion. Indeed, the book as a whole makes for some maddeningly holistic reading, what with the author’s knack for citing seemingly disparate episodes across time and across countries to get his point across. Granted, the result is hardly stellar each and every time, but when it strikes a chord it surely resonates.

Unfortunately, on the “predetermination” score False Economy comes up a little short, but not for lack of trying. Certainly, the book makes a coherent case that economic outcomes are merely the end result of past choices that could have gone many different ways. Yet an equally compelling argument can be made that any single choice limits the efficacy of each succeeding one, sometimes to the point that the decision tree of a country/society/economy becomes so narrow as to render some outcomes more likely than not. Inevitability? Not necessarily. But while Beattie rails against the idea, it does seem much like path dependence at work. To be fair, this really comes with the territory as such is the unending dilemma of history and the business of making sense of the past.

Overall there’s much to commend in False Economy. It is a decent romp through economic history — not a saga, by any means, but merely episodes of different stories — that at the very least should have readers thinking about economic issues a little bit differently.