I Got Me an iPhone

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.

The Angel's Game

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 Management

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 underway.

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.

Oh! Look! A Whale!

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!

Battle Royale

"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's 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.

Options

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 involves examining our decisions to 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.

What I Expect from a Restaurant

• 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.

Dissertating 15

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.

Guns, Goons and Gold [Presentation Thursdays]

View more presentations from brianbelen.

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]