Paki-locate

Alam ko na dati na pwede malaman ang kinaroroonan ng isang mobile phone base sa triangulation sa mga BTS na tumatanggap ng signal mula sa phone. May mas advanced na yata ang teknolohiya pwede gamitin ngayon base sa nakapaskil sa Wiki. May advertisement pa dati na tungkol din sa tracker, yung parang may bata naligaw o naiwan ng school bus tapos nilocate gamit yung isang serbisyo ng isang network.

Noong mga panahon na may oras pa kami magkita-kita ng mga kaklase ko sa kolehiyo, meron sa kanilang nagtatrabaho sa larangan ng Telecoms, nalaman ko naman na malaya nilang  ginagamit yung NOC para maglocate ng tao. Kung may gusto daw kami ipa-locate, pwede sila sabihan, kahit anong network kasi magkakakonekta naman yung mga yun, pwede itawag sa kabilang network. Hahaha. Nakakatawa daw kapag may ganoon tapos sa motel yung location. Lol. 

Nakakatawa to ngayon itong natanggap kong push message galing kay Globe para sa isang serbisyo nila. Targeted niya ay mga babaeng may boyfriend na kung gusto nila malaman ang kinaroroonan ng kanilang boyfriend. Para sa mga tamang hinala, o para sa mga stalker, o sa mga hindi makapagmove-on. Hindi ko alam paano ito, kung libre ba ito. Hindi ko rin alam kung bahagi ba ito ng Globe Tracker na nakita ko lang sa net ng i-Google ko "globe locate boyfriend". Gusto ko lang ipost kasi nakakatawa. Magandang anggulo para mabenta ang serbisyo nila. Mukhang may market naman. Luma nang serbisyo ang tracker pero mukhang mas may gamit na siya ngayon. Dati sa commercial mga magulang lang ang target para sa paglocate ng nawawalang anak. Mas mabisa nga naman kung ang target ay ang naghahanap ng nawawalang boypren. Mas gusto ko itong serbisyo na to pang-locate ng nanakaw na phone na gamit pa yung SIM, o panghanap ng mga scammers sa text. Sana pwede din yun.

My Dog Kobe

It was Christmas time in my college freshman year when my mother brought home a black puppy. The dog has shiny black coat. He was awesome. That was the first time that we will own a dog with some kind of breed. Although we don’t know what exactly his breed is, we know he is part dachshund. He is not pure because he does not resemble Stock, the dachshund own by Aunt’s family in Marikina. It doesn’t really matter. We loved that dog. My mother also bought dog food for him. We never do that before because all our previous dogs are all mongrels.
Kobe learned tricks. That was really cool. He also loves to play fetch. It kinda took about three months before we gave him a name because we waited for my father to come home from Davao. We like him to be the person to name our pets. The dog jumps a lot from the surface to surface and varying heights. It was the playoffs so my father named him Kobe. I don't like the Lakers but the name is okay for a dog's name.  

I walked him all the time. Even in wee hours of the night. He knows that we are going out if a TV show or movie I am watching is over and I stood up from the couch. I actually caught some kids stealing from our neighbour’s sari-sari store once; I saw two neighbors secretly meeting in the dark. I did not catch them kissing or whatever but they were on the dark and it was about midnight.  
We own that dog at the time when our family were not well-off. When he got hit by distemper, we did not have the money to send him to the vet. My oldest sister who was a student assistant at the Dean's Office that time gave some money to my mother to be used for Kobe but I don’t know what happened to the money. The dog survived but he lived with distemper his whole life. His left eye was blinded. 
The illness brought a lot of changes to the dog’s attitude. He bites. He hates it when my sister is going to leave the house. He always had to be on a leash.
Things began to change when I had a job and were out of the house most of the times. One Saturday in October shit went down. Every dog has his day. He got loose and people in the house can’t catch him. I am the only one who can carry him anyway. My mother was worried she will get bitten again. When I got home, I caught him instanstly because that's what dogs do, welcome you as you enter the house but it took a more time until I got to put him in a newly bought collar and chain. At one point my mother even thought of drowning him. That night was really sad. I was crying. I did not care that some neighbours are watching. I just didn’t care. Some time that week, my mother has sent the dog to the city pound. Yes I did cry some more that week. That was 2007.
Before that dramatic episode happened, my friends and I had some discussions on would it be good to work abroad or just stay in the country. That question has lingered in my mind. I was thinking I can’t leave until I have Kobe because nobody else can take care of him. Then that thing happened. We lost him. Three months later I was in Taiwan for my first fourteen days off-site assignment.
I really loved that dog. The first gift I ever gave Chast is a stuff toy. It is black dog of course, in the likeness of Kobe. I call the toy Hower, the other name I call Kobe. Hower the stuff toy has been everywhere: Taiwan, Singapore, USA, Japan, Hongkong and some other places in the Philippines. Healso has his own facebook page.

New Year's Day 2009

Mt. Tapyas

 

We are not Facebook friends yet. I don't own the account

From time to time, I dream of Kobe and in my dreams I still cry. It is bittersweet to see the dog again and I know it is just a dream. Last night I had a dream of that the he stinks, and I am giving him a bath. I still cried in my dream. I woke up not in tears like some dreams before, but felt like it. Kobe is in my psyche I think. The person who can cry.
I told my sister about the dream. She did some interpretation:

Kobe maybe is the part of me singing my comfort song from D'Sound and Portishead when I need it.

420 Run

The Nike+ Running App has improved a lot. I haven’t used it in years and was just testing it on Android. There is a trail nearby and I miss running. We registered on some 5K runs for the next months and I need some practice. I would also like to see what’s in the vicinity of our apartment while not inside a moving vehicle.

I was lucky to still see these blue bonnets. They will be gone soon.

And this eagle.

I entered the Campion Trail and I was in a familiar place. I used to run in S J Stovall Park back in Arlington and the trail although smaller also has similar stations where a jogger, or a cyclist can stop and do some exercise on assorted equipments along the way. This trail is quite long though. 

I passed two parks jogging and walking. I wish I have bicycle. There was also a basketball hoop along the way but there were no players. I could have played a bit.

I continued running for like a mile then I was seeing LBJ Fwy. I decided to go back.

I crossed this bridge then turn around

The app gives me this result of my run. The above view is when looking at nikeplus on a web browser for a larger view. More or less, I run 6 Miles. There is also a map showing the path of my run. The app is dependent on GPS, so when the GPS signal is weak or when the phone sucks like mine, the results is not accurate. 

I picked some flowers, I had to.

Dotonbori

This is a fun place. We stayed in Hotel La Aroma Dotonbori. Our room is small and warm. We cannot figure out how to work that thermostat. We get breakfast too. The hotel staff will bring the food trays on the time we prefer. The breakfast consist of coffee, sausages, some salad and eggs. The TV does not have foreign channels but we get 24-hr porn. Too bad Japanese porn has the stupid blur. There’s supposed to be wi-fi in the hotel but we cannot get in.

The Asian blur

I've seen a small version of this in one of the channels

We love the location of our hotel, three blocks is the Nipponbashi station, around two is a 7Eleven. Two bridges (or bashi) is the Don Quixote. We are very near to the shopping district (Shinsaibashi-suji), and/or the Red Light District.

We went to this river cruise. The lady doing the tour knows a little English but the whole tour is in Japanese. The tour is supposed to be about the bridges on Dotonbori. It was fun still. 

 

 

 

I love the ramen and the gyoza we tried on separate shops in Namba. We came back for the gyoza before we leave for Kyoto.

Yummy for 600 Yen

Shinsaibashi is the shopping street. I bought two shoes there, one for me and one for my father, but the store does not have his size so I bought the shoes for myself. I was supposed to buy a pair for my mother but my father told me she did not ask for shoes. We do not have 4G network enabled and the wi-fi in the hotel sucks. We took our time enjoying free internet when we were in Shinsaibashi.

Chast told me that the Glico running man is a famous landmark in Shinsaibashi. Yes he is, no wonder there were a lot of tourists taking pictures with that big neon sign.

When I had the chance to have a picture next to the Glico man in Tsutenkaku, I took my chance.

Letterman is Retiring

Dave announced he’s retiring. End of an era? Yes.

For the longest time, The Late Show is the only late night show I enjoy watching. It is the only one I know, when all I had was CTV 31, a UHF Channel. His show is funny compared to Leno. I know their history and i kinda have sympathy to the guy, and to Conan too.

I remember funny stuff from the show like when Survivor losers come over and Dave and Paul does not know shit about the show. Just ask any generic questions. Rupert Jee’s question was "Are there any hanky panky going on on the island?" The Oprah log. When the Spiderman movie came out, they had some stupid stints with guys dressed as spiderman, like how many spidermen can you fit in a place or can spiderman hail a cab. It is funny when Paul aked Julia Roberts "You getting laid these days?"
 
So last year, Leno announced his retirement. This February, Fallon took over and The Tonight Show is fun again. Jimmy’s band is like no other. I always thought it was awesome that The Roots is on TV every night. I love the band when I first saw them perform on Jay Z’s Unplugged. So good. Jimmy is a good replacement for Leno. The Tonight show is funny again.

Seth Meyers has also taken over Fallon’s old show. Yesterday, CBS has announced Dave’s replacement: Stephen Colbert. So yeah, Late night talk shows are changing. The time will come when my parents will ask where's the old guy with white hair hosting the late night talk show I watch on week nights.

The Simpsons had this send off couch gag for him.

How I Met Your Peter Pan Syndrome

The sitcom Friends appeared in 1994. It was aired in ABC 5 and I know it was the first American TV show I enjoyed watching. I watched it on my teenage years till its end in 2004. Before Charlie Harper and Barney Stinson, there’s Joseph Francis Tribbiani, the sitcom’s womanizer. How you doin’?

I was young then when I heard they branded the show for the Peter Pan Syndrome context around it. Peter pan situation is a good situation for situational comedy. The show lasted 10 seasons, when the characters did grow up and moved on. Each of the cast earned $1 million per episode. That was the deal they made and they got it. Today’s best sitcom on TV is The Big Bang Theory and the cast’s salary is $350,000 per episode. The cast of How I Met your Mother at around $225 000. With inflation, i think that would be the same number as Friend’s Salary from ten years ago. If Charlie Sheen did not get crazy and shit, Two and a Half Men would have been the greatest sitcom on TV and his salary would have been the highest.

So what the hell is the Peter Pan Syndrome? From Peter Pan - the kid who does not want to grow up.  I love the Friends episode where they all turn thirty, "The One Where They All Turn Thirty". Hahaha.

These sitcoms are centered on friends who are dealing with growing up in their 20’s till their early 30’s if a season will last 10 seasons as Friends (Friends is and will always the baseline).  The shows starts with the cast getting together, start careers and get laid occasionally (with each other or some guest characters haha). The perfect situation and continuity. Eventually the characters need to grow and evolve so little changes to the situation but these changes only happen at the end of the season, as a preparation for the next season. Friends mastered that.

This year How I Met your mother ended. End of an era? It was my generation’s "Friends". The show did the suck the last few seasons. It just ended because it has to tell the audience who the mother is. Come on! The entire final season took place days before the wedding.  I haven't watched it regularly for the past years. I only watched it when I don't have anything else to watch. This past month, I have to make a marathon on watching the whole season just to catch up on for the series finale.

The characters had to be my age. Wiki said that the mother’s birthday is September 19, 1984. Although the main characters are older. Robin is a teenage singing sensation in the early 90’s Haha. The show started almost the same time as I was starting to finishing college, starting a job. 9 seasons later, the characters had evolved, and so are the people around me. Some have kids now, some are moving abroad.  Ending a sitcom which defines our generation prompts a reality check of some sort.  Am I on the same page as the characters of the show? The Peter pan characters of the show moved on, so should the viewers. It is funny that the internet blew up because they don’t like the ending.  These people need to get a life, or at most grow.

CBS has a new show called "Friends With Better Lives". I'll see what the show is about. I saw the Pilot and it has Dawson on the cast and the girl from the Whitney sitcom.

* * * * *

It was my college friend’s 30th birthday two weeks ago. I greeted her and she seems gloomy. I know because when I celebrate my birthdays don’t like it either. It means getting a year older. She said she hasn’t accomplished anything, and she is thirty years old. I don’t know if it is a quarter life crisis or somewhat related that her ex-boyfriend of 7 years was engaged a couple of days before.

image source

Pokemon Maps

This year’s Google April Fool's prank was awesome. They partnered with Nintendo to give the users of Maps app the chance to search pokemons. I am not really a fan of pokemon although I did watch some episodes back in ’99, when GMA7 was kinda in to serving anime every Friday. I also found the Gameboy or the PC emulated game boring. Still, I find the pokemon Charmander cute. Hahaha. The pokemon's only dialogues are "Charmander" and "Char, char!"
I updated the app and it once started to search for pokemon, it will lead the map to the Google campus in California. There were a lot of pokemon in the area. 

After sweeping the area, you have to explore the world. Hahaha

Some Facebook friends posted that a pokemon is somewhere near CCP Complex in Pasay. I went there and found it. There's another near Paco, Manila. The next places I searched are other Google places around the world and I also found more nearby. 

A Pokedex got to have a Pikachu

Next is to go to famous landmarks (Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, Easter Island, Taj Mahal etc.), then Nintendo in Japan, then capital cities. 

I forgot about Australia. When I got there, Charmander is just near the Opera House.

 

Char!

Char!

I got another one in Hiroshima. There are 150 pokemon to put on the pokedex. I did not reach 100. I got Charmander so I think that's enough. 

Good job Google. Until next year.