Dear DOTA

Dear DOTA,

I miss you. A certain part of me yearns for your presence in every minute of everyday (what a cliche). I wish I could see you soon. But reality dictates that I cannot. Seeing you sooner than planned would certainly destroy one of my New Year’s resolutions – something I would obviate. I guess there’s no known alternative other than to learn to live without you in the meantime. And I’m still in the process of learning.

See you one time next month. Or see you infinitely in December. Au revoir.

P.S. It’s nice meeting you again a little while ago. Kindly keep our “secret meeting” to ourselves.

Your loyal friend slash ardent devotee,
Rob Jeremiah

Not So Clean and Clear

Random girls have been bugging me on Facebook chat since last week. With only a few weeks to go before the beginning of classes, I cannot quite comprehend why they send links that have something to do with Facebook Apps. By virtue of the way they interrupt the smooth flow of my web browsing, I have a valid reason to neglect their requests.

But, hell. OK. Curiosity got the better part of me. Finally, I decided to see under the mantelpiece, and undercover their motives accounting to their modus operandi. Not surprisingly, I found out that these girls joined an online contest. If I’m not mistaken, this contest has something to do with popularity and (you guessed it) vanity. FB users are given the option to vote for their favorites every 24 hours. And that’s it. Being an internet sensation is just a click away.

Though I have nothing against it, self advertisement is not a good idea. If you really have what it takes to win, people will flock to the Clean and Clear App and resurrect you to the top spot. Identifying “friendship” as the lone reason why you receive votes is like the sound of scraping finger nails down a blackboard: it’s bad. After all, isn’t it more overwhelming to see strangers vote for you than to know your friends support you?

You won. Now what?

NOYNOY got the sympathy votes, ERAP got the popularity votes, and GIBO/GORDON got the intelligent votes. Unfortunately, there are only few intelligent voters nowadays.

My greatest fear transpired yesterday. Noynoy snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to secure another Aquino slot in the list of Philippine presidents. Not that I’m an advocate of  ”Anti-Noynoy Campaign.” In fact, in the spirit of democratic centralism, I respect the decision of the majority of the Filipinos who voted for him.

I guess “skeptical” is the right term. I’m one of the Filipinos whose trusts have not yet won by Noynoy. It’s hard to hand things over to someone who hasn’t done anything yet. I quote, “Walang OJT sa Malacañang.” True enough, experience elicits trust and destroys qualms.

Sen. Aquino, this is not a discouragement; take this as a challenge. You have six years (or less) to prove us wrong. Good luck.

If I Were to Vote

As much as I want to participate in the upcoming election, I cannot vote because of my age. I’m still a minor, all right. But that doesn’t mean that I cannot voice my opinions out. Though my one vote, supposedly, cannot be counted, I can still ride another vehicle to exercise my right to be heard. So, if I were 18, I would go for the following persons:

President: Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro

Vice President: Jejomar “Jojo” Binay

Senators:

• Adel Tamano
• Pia Cayetano
• Risa Hontiveros

I won’t justify the reasons why I’d go for them because  the reasons are very obvious, anyway.

Happy Pi Day!

Pi

3/14 [March 14] is Happy Pi Day! Pi is a mathematical constant closely related to circles. It is non-terminating and non-repeating, and has an approximate value of 3.14.

An Unordered List

1. I wish this vacation would never end. I cannot entertain the thought of returning to school two weeks from now. Lots of school works are to be submitted on the 4th day of January. And I am not in the mood to start any of them right now.
2. I’ve successfully transferred all of the posts from my previous blogs to here. I’m currently finding a way to include comments.
3. Guess what? I’ve found a way to re-order my meta data. But I’m still thinking if it would work. I don’t want to initiate an action that could produce horrible and irreversible results.
4. You can now ask me anything and everything but nothing (what?) here.

OK! This is a random entry.

Number Blunder

Numbers have a good way of manipulating and controlling my life’s direction.

I was writing an entry last week at 5:00 PM when a stark realization came into my mind: I still have something to do. I ended my keyboard monologue instantly and went to my room to meet up with my Calculus book. I was embarrassed to know that he (Calculus) missed me. To make up for the absences of each other, we talked about our own journey together. Memories of limits, differentiations, integrations, maxima and minima were automatically brought up. He even mentioned something about his twin brother, Analytical Geometry. He kept on talking and before I knew it, he had begun a long, sermon-like orientation about our newest goal together: transcendental functions. Then, my time came. It’s now my turn to answer his questions accurately. That’s my assignment, by the way. And then I closed him.

Halfway down the stairs, a sudden thought occurred to me: Analytical Chemistry. Like Calculus, she (Analytical Chemistry) is fond of seeing me. Although she‘s a new-found friend, both of us make subtle efforts to keep our tacit promise to meet regularly. Her life is dominated by numbers as well. We talked about gravimetry and precipitations. I also answered some of her problems, with the help of my calculator. In times of crises, friends must always help each other. I had managed to solve some before I quit. Not so long after, I bid good bye despite her reluctance.

I stared at the wall clock (without seeing the time), and saw something not-worth-seeing-but-worth-remembering: batteries. As far as I could remember, regular batteries carry 1.5 V. Ah…V. Wait… V! Voltage! You guessed it right. I spent another reunion. This time, my guest was Physics. It (Physics) made an abstract introduction about the electric fields of point charges. It was even grateful enough to tell me about Coulomb’s and Gauss’s Laws. With the help of my calculator, I caught a brief glimpse of what it‘s trying to say.

For the third time, I exited the confines of my room to go back to the computer and escape this incongruous, makeshift reality. But as soon as I sat, a disturbing phenomenon happened.

“Matulog ka na. May pasok ka na bukas. Kailangan mong bumangon ng alas-kwatro.” (Sleep now. You still have classes tomorrow. You need to wake up at 4:00 AM).

To cut the long story short, I didn’t finish my supposed-to-be blog entry. But I was still happy in knowing that I had, at least, survived my journey with numbers. I would not be able to see them again, at least for the night. I opened the door and was met by the voice of my brother:

“Kuya, pa’no nga ba ‘yung pagsosolve ng logarithm at natural exponent?” (How do you solve for logarithms and natural exponents?).

Ah, numbers!

P.S. Sorry, I don’t have the time to return comments nor exchange links. But keep all of those coming and I’ll try to give justice to them (return comments and links) as soon as possible. Thanks!