Last night through The Probe Team, I met Juana Change. She embodies an advocacy calling for social renewal and political reform. We will be electing a new president in May 2010, and Juana Change (May Paner in real life) and her friends seek to educate the Filipino electorate such that they may vote wisely for the next leaders of this great nation.
On a more personal level though, she is also undergoing changes. She seeks some reform in her own life. She’ll be undergoing a politicized weightloss program in the next 360 or so days. After all, she says, how can she call for change when she herself cannot let go of her excesses in life?
I would love to say that I want to join her in her journey to wellness. But I don’t want to commit to something again when I am unprepared. I will take little steps in this journey. Next week, I will register to vote. Then maybe, I’ll also be able to plan out my own path to a lower BMI.
Anyway, here’s one of Juana’s YouTube videos, visit their blog to learn more about their campaign, and see her other videos:
Did you watch Meteor Garden when it was all the hype back then? I did. Xi Men (Ken Zhu in real life) was my favorite of the F4. Now, ABS-CBN is airing the Korea version of the serye, Boys Over Flowers.
When I first saw the ads on TV about this version coming out, I had my doubts. I mean, Meteor Garden is what started the invasion of Asianovelas (TV series coming from Taiwan, Korea, and Japan) in Philippine television. They really got us hooked. I watched the series, and its sequel. Friends talk about it. Was I working when this was shown? I remember talking about it at work too. Haha.
But I got to see the pilot episode on Monday, and I love it! So I watched it again on Tuesday, and again last night. I like Jan Di’s character, you can see how strong she is from the start. And I now have a huge crush on the Hua Zi Lei character – Ji Hoo. He is so cute, specially when he tries not to smile. That’s something to look forward to every night (and another reason to be late for work, ugh).
Friday night at work: I was having a very productive evening, and I felt light and positive all day. I realized it was two things that had me at such high spirits: my agents were not around, and I was looking forward to my basic digital photography class the next afternoon.
By morning though, things took a turn for the worse. From very productive, I plunged to zero productivity. I had only three agents around but all of a sudden I had to attend to them. So though my shift was really just supposed to be until 8am, but I gave myself until 1pm to finish everything and that was the time I was supposed to leave for my class – I ended up finishing what needed to be done at 2pm. To make matters worse – it was raining. Really hard.
Raining on Saturday afternoon meant that we probably won’t be able to shoot photos. Still, the idea that I’d be learning about my camera excited me. Sir Nicolay moved our start time from 2 to 230 because of the rain. That worked for me so I wasn’t late! Yay! Plus, I hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous evening, so waiting for the instructor gave me time to grab a bite (the baked potato was delish!).
Oh, and you know what else made this class exciting? My best friend was in it too:
my pretty bff
My photography doesn’t do justice to her beauty, hehe. Wait till I hone my skills even more 😉
The first part of the class was the lecture part on what makes a beautiful photo, and how to take them. I love Sir Nicolay’s presentation. It really looked as if he invested time and a lot of effort in preparing the course. It’s really a beginner’s class – if you don’t know shit about photography, you’ll leave the class with a wealth of information.
At the beginning of the lecture though, there was one thought running through my mind – why define beauty? I realized in the end that it is important to talk about universal concepts of beautiful photography because it has mass appeal. When you follow those concepts – many will come to like your work. Then you can break all the rules, break them all you want and find your own beauty. Haha. 🙂
The trickiest part about photography, to me, is finding that perfect mix of ISO, aperture and shutter speed. It’s just so easy to use Auto, but if I always use auto mode then I probably should have just stuck it out with my Kodak point and shoot. After the discussion, and before we actually went out to shoot (the rain stopped the sun came out while we were discussing!), Sir Nicolay gave us a subject and we were supposed to think of the right settings to capture it without looking through the cameras yet. My answer ended up to be underexposed – but that’s how I actually like it because here’s the result:
I love it because the imperfections are hidden. Compare it with this one, which was taken with just the right settings:
Aside from Jo and myself, there was one other girl with us, Mitch who works at ABS-CBN (where my office is located!); there was Carlo too, and uhm, sorry but I forgot where he’s from. We were a fun bunch, or maybe I was just immediately comfortable because I knew someone in the group already? Three of us had D60s (Jo bought hers the week after I got Maxine), while Mitch was the odd one out with her Canon 450d and all of its 9 AF points. For the photoshoot part, we were joined by another girl who was at that morning’s session.
So the sun decided to come out and let us have our fun. It’s not easy to take beautiful photos after all, though I think it was the pressure of knowing that the instructor and everyone else would critique my shots by the end of the day. I ended up deleting a third (or more) of the shots I took.
This was one of the first shots I took, I didn’t have to think about it so much and I liked the turnout. This is the wall of the shed (was it a generator shed?) at the back of the UP Theater:
For this next one, I just know I could have done better, but I can’t pinpoint in what manner. Do you have any suggestions on how this could have been captured even more beautifully? Perhaps if I didn’t have two bags on my shoulder and I wasn’t sleepy already, I’d have kneeled lower and taken this from a better angle…
I cropped this image already, because the original had too much of the road itself, I should have waited until the jeepney was near enough.
I took two shots of the same thing, the second one was brighter, but this was the one I liked better:
I like shooting at angles like this one. I love green!
These next ones were taken with different settings. I wanted it to be bright, but I loved the ones where the clouds’ natural colors could be seen:
This last one, is my favorite photo for the day. I’ll probably use it as my wallpaper:
I am so excited to get into photography even more! I will scrimp for awhile though, even as I already feel the need for another lens, I’ll wait. Maybe I’d go for an extra battery first (versus a battery grip), or an additional compact flash memory or SD card. We’ll see. I kind of promised I’d work on my skills first before I buy accessories. 🙂
After the Pacquiao fight, there’s been a lot of talk about a new advocacy that was launched on the same day (right?) – Ako Mismo. The TVC had appeal, there were some known personalities along with unknowns, but more important than the endorsers – the message was timely and very relevant.
I checked out the website right away but was disappointed (as were many others, I later learned) to see that you had to register before you can read about the campaign. Why not allow people to see who was behind the campaign, and what they aim to achieve? I closed the page and went about with my usual Net activities.
A few days later, I saw Chorva’s post about the same campaign and she posted an excerpt from the site. Looks legit, not bad at all. I decided to check it out again and sign up too. I was disappointed yet again because the wall of committments had spam already! Anyway, there’s still buzz about the campaign and I’ve seen a couple of blogs about it, it’s been on the papers too I think. I sincerely hope this isn’t some movement that is actually supporting a specific candidate.
This country needs advocacies like this one. It needs campaigns that actually get people to move their big butts and do what they can to get the society they want for themselves, and their children. Next year, we’re set to elect a new president. We need voter education campaigns, I don’t know if Ako Mismo will have that too. So guess what I pledged when I registered on the site? Ako Mismo magrerehistro para makaboto (I myself will register to vote). Okay, I forgot the exact verbiage but that’s what it was.
Yes, now I’m admitting a shameful fact in my blog: I am 27 years old but I’ve never cast a vote because I’ve never registered to vote. And this isn’t out of protest, it’s not even a political statement. When I turned eighteen, I didn’t know the deadline for registration that year. Then I just didn’t make any effort. But this year, I will register. It’s in my list of things to do in my upcoming vacation (that I am so looking forward to).
This is crazy! Last night, I had to delay leaving for work because it rained non-stop and the creek overflowed leaving the street out front flooded. I wasn’t happy about having to trod through two-inch thick (and yucky smelling) mud at two in the morning when the water subsided just so I could go to work. We cancelled what would have been our impromptu team building activity (supposedly at a private pool) because we thought it’d still be raining today. But guess what? The sun was up, and it’s been super HOT all day! Crazy!
Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that the storm has left Philippine territory because it has done too much damage and took one life too many. But the weather’s been too unpredictable you don’t know whether to accept that summer’s gone by and we have had no vacation to speak of, or if there’s still enough summer left to make quick plans. Ugh.
Oh and one more. Because it was hot and the sun was up this morning, the mud from last night has dried and is even more foul smelling than when it was wet. Waaah! Where are the local officials when you really need them? Hello, clean up brigade please?
While I was at work today, I was surprised to see the mother from the reality show Jon and Kate Plus Eight on the headlines at the MSN homepage. Apparently, a tabloid released a story about Jon cheating on Kate. Jon denies it, and the girl that he was rumored to have been playing hooky with also denies the allegations made by her brother. It’s sad that they’re in the middle of such a controversy. I enjoy watching the show because I love kids – but I can never imagine myself having that many kids, all at the same time!
I shared lunch with Ingrid today at The Loop (hi Ingrid! :)) It was the busiest I’d seen The Loop so far – we had to settle for the bar-like areas because there were no more tables left. I also noticed for the first time that what used to be Figaro was already boarded up. I hadn’t been buying from Country Style for awhile, but I used to buy salad for lunch there a lot when I was still in the midshift (just this time last year – a loooooong time ago). I finally was able to have their Traditional Chicken Sandwich!
Tomorrow I’m attending a basic digital photography class, and Jo will be joining that too! Yay! We get to explore our D60s together! (I’m excited, can you tell? 🙂 )
