Bloggled

Kat had an interesting little exercise on her blog the other day, and it involved the bright glowing sign in front of Big Red Hen, a food concessionaire in one of the local malls. It's a backlighted sign, you see, and it resembles a three-by-three square of nine different colors, each square holding a single letter. Taken all at once, it easily reads:

b i g
r e d
h e n

If you still can't quite imagine what it looks like, follow the link above and have a look at Kat's photograph. It's a nice sign.

The challenge here is simple: Make as many words as possible using only the letters in "big red hen". The letters don't have to be adjacent to each other, but you're looking to get as many words as you can.

It kind of reminds you of Boggle, doesn't it? You know, that weird game that requires you to search for words in a random four-by-four grid of letters? I remember actually saving up to buy a copy of the game more than ten years ago...

One of my observations about the random word grid, if I recall correctly, was a strange little formula that worked an uncanny number of times: If you can find multiple words of (n) letters in the grid, then the chances are good that there's at least one word of (n+1) letters in there.

Let's take a sample grid, for the sake of argument: (Generated via Braggle)

E S E J
A G E U
U A T Y
A P I P

Now, you know that you don't have a good grid when over half the letters are vowels. In fact, there's even a whole column of them running down the left side of the square.

Careful examination, however, shows that we can find a number of five-letter words regardless: geese, pages, gates, patés. The formula implies that there's at least one six-letter word in there, however, and I can see agates.

Maybe I can make my point a little clearer with a second example:

H E S K
P C R B
A A I N
E T G I

This one looks odd... there's an entire row of consonants in the middle of the grid.

With that said, I can spot races, bring, brain, parch, perch, crate, birch, aches, pairs, parks, tapes and tears. Those imply the presence of some six-letter words: pacing, scrape, arches, arcing, riches, rating, paring.

That's still a lot of six-letter words, so some seven-letter words are bound to be in there. While parches and birches might be contested as words, I'm sure potential opponents will accept teaches, tearing, bracing, and scaring.

Then the formula comes in, and tells us that there must be an eight-letter word in there: teachers. (I could make an argument for teachering as well, but that's usually when the potential opponents would probably start beating me up.)

Contrary to popular opinion, an expansive vocabulary doesn't help you all that much with most word games, especially when other players are involved. In fact, an expansive vocabulary will usually get you more arguments as opposed to scoring you more points. I couldn't even begin to describe my experiences with words like rove, sot and fez, for example.

What does work, however, is an approach that emphasizes prefixes and suffixes. Everybody probably knows, for instance, that having an "S" in the letter grid will virtually double the number of available words as you invest in plurals. Similarly, it's easy to hinge on endings like "ing", "ate" and "er".

Verbiage aside, however, one of the stranger things I've found about Boggle is that writing speed might just be a factor. The person who can scribble their words on paper at a faster rate usually ends up covering a few more words than the other players, which invariably translates into more points. I've actually known a couple of people who write their Boggle responses in script, due to this minor observation. :)

Ironically, I'm not actually playing Boggle at the moment. It's been about ten years since my last game, I think, and it'll probably take me a few days to look for it in my landfill of a room. And even if I do find it, I suppose, it'll be hard to shake off the stigma of being "that writer guy who plays a lot of games". I lose a lot of potential opponents that way.

But then, that's why I write stuff like this. I get to see my notes down on paper, you get to see what you can try to do during a game, and maybe someday we can get together and have at it.

And for that matter, the longest word you can probably make out of the letters in "Big Red Hen" is the eight-letter breeding.

There's no sense being boggled about that, I suppose.

...

Faces in the Crowd

What was your face before you were born?

- Zen koan

Every person holds many faces.

We wake up every morning and put on a face. We say hello to our families and friends, and show them a different face. We put on brave and reasonable fronts for our teachers, clients and superiors, and we show them yet another, even more different face. We walk by complete strangers in the middle of the street, and we make sure they see another totally different face. And when we finally go to bed late in the evening with the stars as our only witnesses, we take off the masks we wear all day to reveal a final face underneath the layers of pale skin.

These faces can change by the second. If we become happy, they tend to curl upwards in a sort of sheepish smile. If we become angry, they crease and wrinkle with the kinetic movement of emotion beneath the surface. They wither and soften in the throes of human sadness, and they stretch far and thin with the prospect of naked fear.

But they also change with age: They get heavier, dirtier, more burdened with the weight of years. The eyes and the voices beneath them almost never change, but the faces we own right now are quite different from the faces we wore when we were children. Those faces, for their part, will be long forgotten twenty years from now, when we regard ourselves in the mirror once again.

We place such a strange premium on these faces. Sometimes we're paid to put them on and parade them in front of people, stage or no stage. Sometimes we refuse to emerge from our solitary lives without finding the right face for the occasion. And sometimes we find ourselves slighted or persecuted, merely for wearing faces of our own personal choice.

Underneath, we're all afraid. We're afraid that everyone around us will see us for what we are, all skin and muscle and blood and bone. We know that truth holds little when placed against perception, and that perception will always win. And that is why we have such a collection of faces on our mantelpiece, all waiting for us to put them on.

What pitiful people we all are, to hide behind such facades of white lead and black eyeliner.

We have hidden behind such faces for so long that we no longer know the people underneath. We know nothing of soul or spirit anymore; Such things have been lost to the mysteries simply because they did not register on a human mask. We know only the basest of emotions now, and we're forced to guess at what lies beneath through all the empathic tricks in our arsenal.

If only we could sit at the table one day with a sharp knife in hand and carve all these faces off, one by one. But we cannot, because we are afraid of drawing blood and exposing muscle to the world. We are afraid that others will judge us for who we are, instead of the beautiful faces that we constantly show them.

Every person holds many faces, yes. If we are not careful, then eventually we shall become mere faces ourselves, with no evidence of the person that lies within.

And when that happens, only a solitary existence shall remain for us, punctuated every so often by the rolling, shifting appearances that hide what can no longer be drawn out.

No Connection Whatsoever

Saturday

Internet access starts getting unruly somewhere around the late evening, spontaneously shutting itself off for no good reason at all. We chalk it up to the fact that a lot of users are surfing their favorite hardcore sites, and fire up some Starcraft to compensate.


Sunday

On a cursory check, nothing seems to be wrong with the connection. My brother checks his e-mail, my sister fools around with some file-sharing software, and I check out some por... er, online literary dissertations. Except for a bit of lag every now and then, everything seems fine.


Monday

Internet access suddenly gets cut off in the late morning, while I'm working on this blog. The good news is that I manage to finish one post before it gives way; The bad news is that the article happens to be one of my monthly disclaimers. (While I try to make them relatively interesting, let's just say that none of them is likely to win a Palanca Award anytime soon.)

Repeated attempts to reconnect meet with no results. Finally, I run into an error message that tells me there's something wrong with the connection on our ISP's side, and I leave it at that. It's a hot day, and it gives me an excuse to head to the mall for some badly-needed air-conditioning. I don't complain.


Tuesday

I go back to work after the three-day weekend, and I start putting together a user manual for one of our more demanding clients (among other things). Between the tedium of methodical business writing and the unlimited DSL connection at the office, I remain occupied for the whole day.

Around late afternoon, my sister calls me at work and tells me that the internet access still hasn't kicked in yet. I check our ISP's web site, jot down their Customer Support numbers, and send them over. When she asks me why I don't call them myself, I tell her that I can't walk through our home setup while I'm at the office. She agrees to talk to them herself, but she doesn't get anywhere with her inquiries.


Wednesday

My sister calls the office again, telling me that we still don't have internet access. I tell her to give our ISP's Customer Support another try.

She calls me a couple of hours later, and tells me that the support guy on the other end mentioned a bunch of stuff she couldn't understand. He did advise her, however, that the problem was most likely on our side. I snap at her, pointing out the error messages we earlier encountered and the troublesome yet letter-perfect technical setup we currently use. She tells me that she doesn't understand a thing I'm saying, either, and I promise to have a look at the system when I get home.


Thursday

Past midnight, I confirm that everything looks okay. The setup is running fine (apart from the inability to connect), the various components are perfectly compatible, and the correct cords are plugged into the right places. I'm covered in dust, and I'm not looking forward to the possibility of washing myself in ice-cold water before heading to bed.

As I move the modem back into place, I pull on the cord a little. Surprisingly, it turns off.

Intrigued, I follow the modem's cord all the way up to its power strip. I try the plug, and find that it's a little loose. So I tighten it and switch on the computer again, all the while getting this funny feeling about how technology enriches our lives.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I happen to be writing a blog post tonight.

...

I knew I should have moved out to a solitary life in the wilderness when I had the chance.

...

Of Cat-Girls and Dragons

When it comes to literary creation, the roads less traveled hold plenty of advantages over the main highway. You don't get bogged down by the weight of past endeavors, for one. You also run into far less competition than you would in the mainstream, and whatever you produce tends to be more original and far less derivative.

That's not to say that the literary roads-less-traveled are easy, of course. With the sheer number of writers trying to make a name for themselves nowadays, even finding the roads less traveled is a chore in and of itself.

The local writing scene has run into a lot of competitions lately. In less than a year, we've had a speculative fiction anthology, a fiction-writing contest sponsored by a major bookstore, and the annual national writing awards. It feels as though the forces of nature are giving us incentive to write, although their reasons are probably unfathomable at this time.

Three months after his deadline, Vin Simbulan has released the final selections for his Dragon anthology (now titled "A Time for Dragons"). While it's probably interesting enough to leaf through the book's eventual table of contents, I find Mr. Simbulan's selection notes to be far more insightful. For that matter, I find one of his observations to be of particular personal interest: While his anthology received a lot of different, stellar approaches to dragons and draconian aspects, no author wrote about the concept of dragons in a science fiction setting.

What truly gets my attention about Mr. Simbulan's remark is that I've observed something similar during my attempts at writing. I put together six or seven drafts for his anthology, and half of the rejects tried to marry those two aspects. Up until Mr. Simbulan posted his comments on the subject, I was scratching my head on why I hadn't been successful. After all, it turns out that if I were, then I would have had an entry that was unique among all of the submissions.

The sentiment is most definitely not a new one. Months ago, Dean Alfar also released a similar set of notes regarding the creation of his Speculative Fiction Anthology. While Mr. Alfar did not bewail the lack of submissions in a specific field, he did mention something interesting in his attempt at classification:

4. Manga/Anime fantasy. Thinly disguised variations on Japanese manga/anime, with cute girls with cat ears.

That roused my curiosity back then, and it still raises my curiosity now. Is there a specific category of manga/anime that deals exclusively with cat-girls? Is it well-known among enthusiasts? What specific qualities do these works have? And most importantly, is it possible to write a piece of fiction and that can be unmistakably recognized as being of "the cat-girl genre"?

Yes, it's a very narrow and extremely specific point of thought. Not everybody goes around wondering how to write cat-girl literature, after all. But now Mr. Simbulan's posts have raised the question of why nobody handed in a marriage of dragons and science fiction, and it's apparent that the issue is far more open than we originally thought.

Again, it's a question of the road less traveled. These are obviously avenues that few people walk, much less notice past the weeds and the brambles and the disused road signs. We don't know why few people choose to walk them, but we do stand around and wonder where they lead. We wonder if they really go anywhere, and regardless of whether or not they do so, we wonder if the experience is worth the time.

Now, it's not merely a question of getting one's work published just because it stands out from the rest with regards to genre issues. It's a question of writing something that is truly unique simply because it follows a path that nobody else seems to bother with. Readers of Philippine literature will realize that there are a lot of overly popular subjects out there: Social realism. Political commentary. Cultural discussion. Even traditional fantasy starts to feel a little old when you take in the sheer number of people writing it nowadays.

Cat-girl literature and draconic sci-fi are probably more important than we realize in this manner: They're fringe topics -- fields that are so narrow that you wonder if it's really possible to write about them. But then that's probably the best part, I think. If we can actually pull them off and produce a work that can be accepted by the reading public, then we'll have a unique piece that is incomparable to anything in sight. We won't necessarily win any awards or get any royalties from them, but they'll be unique and incomparable regardless.

For my part, I'm going to take a closer look at Mr. Simbulan's remarks and see if I can make something out of them. Dragons and science fiction aren't the most elementary of topics, and I already know that it's difficult to build a logical story out of the combination. It was difficult enough to shut out an entire circle of potential ideas, after all.

But then, that's probably part of its charm in the first place. Better to say that you tried something difficult and untested than to say that you just stuck with something that was familiar and comfortable, I suppose.

Disclaimer: May 2006

It has come to my attention that nobody (as far as I know) has stolen anything from this blog yet.

That means that either these disclaimers have been more effective than I have ever dreamed, or that my writing just isn't worth stealing in the first place. I strongly suspect that it's the latter, although that may have more to do with my sense of self-improvement than anything else.

Whatever the case, I still put up these monthly disclaimers on a regular basis. It gives me something to do, I suppose, and it provides me a way by which I can arrest my feelings of insufficiency and morbid neurosis. Hopefully, these internal conflicts will mutate into a full-blown case of criminal psychosis within the next few years, so that I'll feel a lot less remorse when somebody finally plagiarizes something from this blog, the thieving scoundrel.

For now, however, I'm content to play the mild-mannered man. I make sure that almost everything written in this blog is clean and original (even the derivative, hackneyed posts), for one. In addition to that, I make constant references to various works outside my writing, and I make certain that each mention of these items notes the rightful author and title in some way. In the event that I forget to reference an owner in this regard, or in the event that I mention the wrong source for this purpose, the members of the audience are welcome to correct me. I monitor and make these changes as often as possible.

Of course, others are welcome to reference anything in this blog as long as they fulfill three requests of mine: First, that they directly request permission from me or place a reference to my name somewhere in the quotation; Second, that they do not quote me out of context; and Third, that they attempt to take the authorship of the quoted work away from me. That latter point includes those who place their names in the byline as well as those who argue that they were the direct influence of my work. If I write something based on somebody else's writings, you can be sure that I'll mention exactly who I'm talking about except in the most sensitive and criminal of revelations.

Now, let's see... does that cover everything? I suppose that, if anything's unclear to any of the potential plagiarists out there, the main Disclaimer on the right-hand column of this blog should explain things in far better detail.

That just leaves the threats, then. So I'll say this: If you steal any of my writings from this blog, then I'll track you down, corner you in a dark corner of your apartment, and rip your limbs off.

Okay, maybe not. I'm not strong enough to rip anybody's limbs off, much less win a one-on-one fight. For that matter, if I arrive at your apartment, I'm more likely to introduce myself in a low, whining voice and wait for you to slam the door in my face.

But I suppose that it's easy enough to hire a huge, hulking biker-type dude to do the job for me, in which case I'll just sit back and hold the alcohol. Because you just can't torture a human being without the alcohol. It's just wrong, man.

As always, it's the thought that counts.

Antaria: Late Research

Gharen walked among the shelves, passing rows upon rows of books, scrolls and other scholarly treasures deposited by the Metrian Guild. The main library held many secrets -- many powerful secrets, Gharen was sure -- but there was often a price that came with them. That, or a certain mastery of the Metrian mindset, whichever came first.

On the other hand, it was not as though Gharen himself had no such secrets to hide.

Gharen slid past some of the more ancient sections of the library, his eyes resting on the occasional worn title. Arcane Fundamentals, Theories on the Nature of Lightning, Transdimensional Teleportation... they were all there. But they were not what he sought. They were, in fact, quite far from what he sought.

He found the volume sitting on a low shelf in one of the far corners of the hall. It was in an anonymous section of the library, its companions casually tossed or stacked in the immediate vicinity simply because they could not be classified anywhere else. Apprentices called it "the Heap", if only because that was what the resulting mess was.

Most of the references in the Heap defied categorization: A History of Unorthodox Knitting Techniques. Efficient Thaumaturgical Disposal. Common Allergies of the Modern Metrian. Their titles were stenciled across leather spines and wooden staves. Some of the letters were embossed in silver; Others were scribed in faded, spidery handwriting.

Gharen's volume, however, was unique among the pile of books and discarded works. It had no title at all, or at least none that stared out from its black-green cover.

He gave the book a quick pull, and then waited.

It took almost a full minute before the wall opened up in front of him.

* * *

Cerise pushed her way through the shelves. It was dark, but not too dark; she knew that she was among the more ancient books, and they were quite a distance away from the glare of the closed lanterns.

She wondered why she was here in the first place. Then again, she already knew why she was here to begin with. It was all his fault, really. It was all Gharen's fault, and she wished that she could tell that to his face right then and there.

But she had to find him first, of course. Not that she would actually tell him that when she actually found him... but she had to find him first. It was a question of priorities, or at least that was what she told herself. It was indeed a question of priorities.

Cerise sighed. She was making absolutely no sense at all.

She found it quite strange, however. For all the access he had to the Guild libraries, Gharen had been visiting them farther and farther into the evening. Zerah, the crotchety old librarian everybody knew and loved, even sent him a letter of complaint the other day. And now, well... there was just no excuse for getting up out of bed in the wee hours of the morning just to do whatever research he fancied.

There was also the question of just how Cerise knew that he wasn't in bed in the wee hours of the morning, but she preferred not to think about that. It was all Gharen's fault, anyway. It was all Gharen's fault.

She thought she heard something along a row of shelves to her right, and started moving in that direction.

Walking around in the empty libraries late at night, she concluded, was not an experience she would care to repeat. It was an environment where sound persisted regardless of the fact that there should not have been any sound to speak of. What she heard could have been Gharen shuffling around in his nightclothes, but it could just as easily have been wood settling in the shelves, a bunch of books falling over, or some otherworldly thing nesting in the shadows waiting to drag her off into a mouthful of sharp teeth.

"Cerise," a voice said.

She reacted immediately, almost knocking over an entire row of shelves.

* * *

Gharen brushed aside a few cobwebs. Now he was getting somewhere.

The room before him was octagonal in shape. Shelves, cabinets and vaults littered the walls, and empty alcoves indicated that no one had lighted any torches in the room for some time. That, and the inch-thick layer of dust on the floor suggested that no one had even so much as set foot in the place for a while.

Gharen whispered a few arcane words, and watched as the room illuminated slightly. If his references were correct, then the thing he sought was somewhere nearby. He guessed that it was in a locked or trapped container as well, if he knew the Guild well enough.

Gharen ran one finger along the lid of a particularly large wooden case, studying the faded text inscribed on top. War Research 41-90, it said. The one immediately below it read War Research 91-140, and Gharen decided to leave them alone. He had little use for extensive property destruction at this time.

He fumbled around a little more, inspecting long-faded tags on worn volumes and checking labels on rusted strongboxes. Some shelves contained the sensitive works of long-dead scholars; Some cabinets contained collections of moth-eaten scrolls that were long past the level of indecipherability.

Fifteen minutes into his search, Gharen decided that the item was unlikely to have been kept out in the open. He began scrutinizing the walls one brick at a time, looking for anything that seemed out of place.

"The cabinet with Horann's journals holds a false bottom," a familiar voice said. "It shouldn't have been opened in the last few years, but you should still be able to shift it a little bit."

Gharen shook his head. "Thanks," he said, before realizing that he should have been alone in the room.

He turned in time to see the owner of the voice.

After a while, Gharen nodded his greetings.

* * *

Zerah approached cautiously, holding up a covered light. "Cerise?" he asked in his usual raspy voice.

Cerise picked herself up from the jumble of books on the floor, and straightened her robes. "I'm... I'm all right," she said, and sighed in relief.

Zerah squinted at her. "What are you doing here so late at night?" he asked. There was a certain edge in his voice this time, and Cerise felt as though it were best for her to tread carefully.

"I'm... looking for something," she said.

"What are you looking for, then?"

"Ah," she said, her mind settling on the first thing that came to mind, "something on elementary sleep techniques."

Zerah gave her a strange look, and for a moment Cerise thought that she had said something wrong. Then the librarian grunted in dissatisfaction, and nodded slightly.

"You're in the wrong section of the library," he said. "What you need is in the central area, near the apprentices' sections."

Cerise knew where it was, of course, but held absolutely no interest in it at the moment. "I, er... see," she said. "I'll... have a look right now."

Zerah glared at her. "Surely what you need can wait until tomorrow. The books will not move from their rightful places tonight."

"Er... ah... right, right," Cerise said.

"In the meantime, I will bring you back to your room," Zerah said.

The alarms went off in Cerise's head. "That, er... won't be necessary," she answered weakly.

"I insist."

Cerise cursed inwardly. "A...are you sure, Zerah? I might be distracting you from..."

"Shall we go, Cerise?" Zerah asked.

If there was a time to risk everything, then that time was now. "But Gharen's in there somewhere," Cerise said desperately.

"Gharen?" Zerah asked, raising an eyebrow.

Cerise nodded.

"Yes," Zerah said. "I know."

Suddenly, Cerise couldn't think of anything to say.

* * *

Atharus stepped from the shadows, his staff rapping sharply against the old wooden floor. Somehow, Gharen was not surprised. Atharus had a tendency to be everywhere at any given time. It was as though the old man wanted to make sure that everything was in its correct place.

"Well?" Atharus asked.

Gharen looked surprised. "Well what?"

"Aren't you going to have a look?"

Gharen glanced at the cabinet in question, and then gave a little laugh. He wasn't expecting to be in such a situation, and the best he could do at the moment was to give the grandmaster the most innocent face he could think of.

"Stop that, Gharen. You're getting to be as bad as Cerise."

Gharen dutifully recovered from the vapid expression.

Atharus took a few steps around him, as though inspecting every inch of his clothes. "As the Masquers would say," he said, "Curiosity kills. Curiosity kills, Gharen."

"I thought that we Metrians are supposed to be curious," Gharen answered.

Atharus stopped and glared at him with cold eyes. "You're the one who's at a disadvantage here, Gharen. Don't answer back."

"Yes, sir," Gharen said.

"What do you want with the Codex?"

Gharen blinked. "What?"

Atharus gave him an expression of unimaginable patience. "The Codex, Gharen. It's what you came for, isn't it?"

Gharen took a deep breath, and then decided to come clean. "Yes," he said.

"What for?" Atharus asked.

"Call it... morbid curiosity."

Atharus glared at him even more. "It's not some children's book, Gharen. It's the Obsidian Codex. Why would you wish to find out what happened to an Empire that was lost centuries ago?"

"Well," Gharen began, "there's..."

"There's the possibility that the Obsidian Empire knew the principles of True Magic?" Atharus interrupted. "Or perhaps there's the lure of lost knowledge undreamed of by human minds? Or the rumors that the book contains smatterings of future events?"

Gharen considered this for a moment. "Perhaps," he said.

Atharus stalked forward, reaching the point where he and Gharen were easily face-to-face. "Go back to your room, Gharen. I can already tell you that it's not worth it."

Gharen wavered only slightly under his gaze. "I'm certain of that, Atharus. That's why you keep it in a false-bottomed chest, in a secret room at the farthest corners of the Guild library."

Atharus was scowling now. "I don't keep it away from everyone because I'm selfish about the contents, Gharen. I keep it here because I know that whatever is in that book is not worth risking your sanity for."

Gharen smiled. "Sure," he said.

Atharus drew back a little. "You don't believe me," he said flatly.

"No, I don't."

Atharus drew himself up to his full height, changing the grip on his staff so that it seemed more a weapon than anything else.

"If you truly refuse to believe me so far, Gharen Miredrake," he said, "then you're welcome to have a look. You have my blessings to open that damned tome and listen to your mind scream at the sight of the words."

Atharus's robe dragged a thin trail of dust across the floor as he exited through the false shelf.

"Just remember this, Gharen, and remember it well:

"You wouldn't be the first one to do so."

* * *

Cerise spent about ten minutes lying in bed, swearing sulphurously to herself.

It was all Gharen's fault, getting out of bed in the wee hours of the morning just to go hunting in the libraries. It was all Gharen's fault, getting her all worried and curious and, well, just compelling her to go looking for him. It was all Gharen's fault, getting her caught by Zerah at the worst possible time.

She wondered if Zerah was going to tell Atharus about the incident. After a while, she decided that, if Atharus did call her into his presence, then she would just have to blame Gharen. Blaming Gharen would inevitably make it all better.

At least, she hoped that it would make it all better.

She wrapped the blanket a little more tightly around herself.

After a few more minutes, she had to admit that, despite everything that had happened tonight, she was still worried about him.

What did Zerah mean when he said that he knew Gharen was fooling around the shelves? How long had he known that he was there? Why didn't he do anything about it yet?

Maybe Zerah was ticked off. She didn't like the idea of Zerah being ticked off. He was probably planning to do something to Gharen, or anything along the same lines.

Cerise slid off her bed, her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. She decided that a quick look in the corridor probably wouldn't have hurt.

She reached for the door latch, and felt the rough metal in the grip of her fingers. She steeled herself, wondering exactly what she would do if anyone else turned out to be in the hallway. She opened the door in a single smooth motion, and walked... right... into...

...Gharen.

"Ow," he said, taking a step back.

A million thoughts suddenly went through Cerise's mind. What's he doing here? was in there somewhere, and so was, Why does he look as though Atharus just put him through the wringer?

She also couldn't help thinking, Did he just go rolling around a pile of dirt?, and a little voice inside her had to point out, What's he doing outside my room?

Then cold rationality kicked in, and Cerise suddenly realized that she was wearing nothing but her nightclothes and a blanket.

"Sorry about that," Gharen said.

"Er..." Cerise managed despite the million questions burning in her mind.

"Just some late research," Gharen shrugged. "Good thing Zerah didn't catch me, eh?"

"Y... yes," Cerise said.

"I'll, er... go back to my room now. It's been a long night."

"Yes," Cerise repeated.

Gharen gave her a strange look, and began padding down the hallway towards his room at the end. Cerise suddenly thought of something at the last second.

"Gharen?" she called after him.

Gharen turned around slowly. There was a strangely sheepish look on his face.

"Yes?" he asked.

Cerise steeled herself again, and weighed her options. There were so many things that she could say to him at the moment, but there was one particular thing that warranted mention. She had to say it. She had to tell him.

"It's all your fault, Gharen Miredrake," she declared, and then marched back into her room and shut the door.

* * *

Gharen never did figure out exactly what she was talking about.



...

Scratch Paper

Ah, yes... one more thing about the second iBlog conference.

The above artwork was generously given to me by a young volunteer named Jasmin, after I expressed an interest in her work. She was manning a table at the conference, you see, and while the attendees were off at various talks, she passed the time by making a bunch of nice drawings on some scratch paper.

The scan up there doesn't show it too well, but the artwork I claimed from her was done entirely using a run-of-the-mill black ballpen. It's not fully polished, but then again, it wasn't meant to be fully polished. If the detail around the character's face is any indication, though, then a full-blown pin-up would probably knock peoples' socks off.

So why would I feature her work here? Well, I spend quite a bit of spare time looking at artwork, especially at the office (where I need all the breaks I can get). I hold a lot of links to comic and graphic design blogs in my Favorites list, and I've got a few DeviantArt addresses memorized besides those.

All of that culminates in my predicament, really. I asked Jasmin for her DeviantArt address, which she was quite happy to provide. Unfortunately, I lost the resulting scrap of paper sometime during the conference, and that left me with this single piece of art and nothing more to show for it. (I actually left this piece behind as well, but Jonas Diego was nice enough to retrieve and scan it for me.)

So there it is, ladies and gentlemen. Does anyone know this artist, and can anyone give me a link to her DeviantArt gallery? It'll make a good addition to my list of links. (And hey, more exposure for her is always good.) :)

Postcards from the iBlog

Sean's note: I gathered all this from the recently-concluded 2nd Philippine Blogging Summit, although I've placed everything in Zen-like proverbs because I just happen to feel infinitely tired tonight. Some people out there may recognize stuff that they've quoted or implied during that fateful Tuesday; you'll have to excuse me if I leave your names out of this one. :)

...

When given the choice between asking for directions and using a map, take the map. You can always ask for directions later.

Authority is relative. One man's king is another man's blind hobo.

Take down what information you need, but don't leave the paper behind.

When faced with a choice between two things, go for the unfamiliar and unheralded. Its success inevitably feels all the more sweeter.

Laughter is the great equalizer.

Don't laugh at the person. Laugh at the situation.

There are two ways to get an audience's immediate attention: laughter, and crude sexual references. One of them is more preferable than the other.

When given a choice between food and oratory, most people will take the food.

Men are all too good at destroying themselves. If you wish to destroy a man, you can usually afford to wait.

An intermittent connection is just as bad as having no connection at all.

You will find some measure of good in every man, although some souls will take a lot more digging than others. Some searchers, on the other hand, will grow impatient with a lot less digging.

How strange it is, that we put on so many faces that are not our own.

You cannot expect to teach birds to swim, or fish to fly. But you will always encounter birds who wonder what it is like to float beneath the waves, and fish who wonder what it is like to soar through the air.

No matter how much we hate to admit it, we all crave attention.

It is all too easy to let time slip through your fingers. Gripping it too tightly, however, will burn your hands.

A man is defined by how he deals with his circumstances, whether he escapes to more favorable realms, or stands fast in the face of the storm.

Questions are not merely asked to satisfy your own curiosity. Questions can just as easily raise the most salient of arguments.

An audience will see you either as an expert or as a peer. You must realize the difference every time you look into their eyes.

Being a good writer does not automatically make you a good speaker. Being a good speaker does not automatically make you a good writer. Being both does not automatically make you a good person.

Give any man a time limit and he will eventually find a way to break it.

What sense does it make to arrive too early for the party and then leave long before the celebration starts? What sense does it make to arrive late to the party and then leave long after everyone is gone?

One can never have too many pandas.

I Blog, You Blog, We All Blog

I've just arrived home from the 2nd Philippine Blogging Summit. Sadly, I wasn't able to stay long enough to catch all the talks -- I missed Charo's session, in particular -- because I had to bring the car home for my sister's use.

Still, most of the sessions went well. Anton performed admirably, Jonas pointed out quite a few things, and Dean was his usual charming self. With the example of last year's iBlog conference and a higher number of speakers this year (as well as a slightly larger blogging community), it was easier to find an interesting topic, a nice presentation, or a good laugh.

Granted, I think they've still got a few folds to iron out. I'm not the only person who wondered why the conference was taking place on a Tuesday, and a few more sponsors wouldn't have been amiss. There's also a problem inherent in holding multiple talks at once, and that's the fact that you can't listen to more than one speaker at the same time. But these should be resolved after we have a few more conferences, I think.

On a more personal note, it was a good experience, and the whole thing gave me quite a few more insights on human nature. If there's anything that's slowly bringing together a strung-out network of internet writers, then iBlog is probably it.

Now, to collect my thoughts. Hopefully I'll be able to write something up on whatever lessons I've gained from the conference, and hopefully I'll be able to do it soon.

Not Tonight, Honey

It's Easter Sunday, and I have a headache.

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I really shouldn't be writing right now. I have a headache.

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I said, I have a headache!

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...

Ah, well. Guess I'll have to grin and bear it.

My headaches have been coming around every now and then, perhaps once every three or four weeks. I haven't yet been able to identify the event or events that trigger them, but I suspect that they involve occasions where I give matters a comprehensive deal of thought. Not just a passing or a detailed analysis, mind you, but a comprehensive one. The big picture. The entire kit and kaboodle. The whole shebang.

Heh. That would probably explain why I seem to get them during budget forecasts, at least.

Someone once mentioned the possibility that I was suffering from migraines. It's not far-fetched, really... migraines are a relatively common malady, and they're certainly not unknown in the medical community. But I've heard that migraines usually come with blurry vision and the occasional hallucination, and I know that I don't get that whenever my cerebral cortex starts acting up.

I'll probably regret saying this, but I have to admit that I'd like to find out how it feels to suffer from migraines. It's the only way by which I can describe the feeling, after all. Right now my headache feels as though someone's pounding on the inside of my temples with a twelve-inch hammer, but I can't help figuring that having a migraine would somehow feel... different. It's as though it would involve having a headache without actually having a headache (even if we all know otherwise).

That, and I'd like to experience the hallucinations. Hallucinations are always cool, and it's difficult enough to encounter them without delving into illegal substances.

I've read somewhere that Lewis Carroll suffered from migraines, and it sounds as though he had them pretty bad. His condition was so far advanced that he would literally start conjuring up hallucinations from nothing at all... although he would later gather some of the most notable ones in his writings and build a reputation entirely on these imaginings. Every mention of his Alice in Wonderland reminds me of headaches as a result.

You could think of it as turning a sow's ear into a silk purse, I suppose. Or you could think of it as simply writing what you know. L. Frank Baum turned his experience with carnival attractions and freakshows into the marvelously twisted Wizard of Oz universe. Mozart occasionally composed music while playing billiards. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a few of his works while drunk.

And in the meantime I've got a hammer pounding away at the insides of my head, eroding what's left of my skull in thin, plaster-like beatings.

The headaches usually only last for an evening or so. For that matter, I find myself playing host to them for exactly one night more often than not. I usually end up with something that feels like a bad hangover the next morning, as though all the thoughts decided to leak out of my ears sometime during my fitful sleep.

It's funny, really. I know that I get these headaches every now and then. I know that the throbbing usually subsides once I lie down for a few minutes. I know that thinking about a bunch of complicated stuff will get the monstrous migraine roaring again. I know that squeezing my skull between two pillows will force the voice in my head to calm down for a bit, and I know that any sensation of pleasure or inspiration will start it back up.

The trouble is, I don't know why. Is there a doctor in the house?

It's as though the brain is some huge machine that we don't completely understand. (Not that there are actually any machines in this world that we fully understand in the first place.) Someone should really make a bumper sticker with the same sentiment: The mind is a wonderful piece of equipment, but sometimes it will blow a fuse. When that happens, all that we poor, unknowing mortals can do is the equivalent of hitting the TV to improve the reception.

We think, analyze, cogitate, process, opine, estimate, guess, research, remember, reach, recall, comprehend, analogize, meditate, will, compel, assume, coordinate, counter and learn anything and everything these days, but we don't know how the brain does it.

And so we get headaches. Like the one that's bothering me at this very moment.

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I mean, really bothering me at this very moment.

I get irritable during headaches. I only snap at select instances, though, like people or situations who force me to think at a time when thinking just tightens the mental vise. It really has to be understandable there -- after all, I can choose not to think too deeply about a particular issue, but I can't choose when I'm going to have a headache. It happens.

Of course, this begs the question: Does the fact that I'm writing this in the middle of a headache mean that I'm not actually putting much thought into these words? That would be worthy of further analysis, I think.

Not now, though. If I go into it any further, then my head's probably going to explode.

And that's why I'm only touching on more than a few aspects of a personal headache that few people out there should really care about, much less read about in this blog. If you somehow get a headache while reading this on a Monday morning, you'll know that it's a special present from me, and you'll probably treasure it for the rest of your life.

Okay, maybe not that last part. Headaches are a pack of horrible little gremlins inside your head, and sooner or later they're going to find a way around that bit of aspirin that you gulp down to alleviate the pain.

Having a headache at others is obviously not a very nice thing to do. But hey, I'm doing it anyway. Right now. Right here. Right at you.

If you suddenly get this pounding sound coming from within your head, then you at least know who to blame...

Maybe it's nothing and I'm under the weather
Maybe it's just one of those bugs going round
Maybe I'm under a spell and it's magic
Maybe there's a witch doctor with an office in town

- Meatloaf, "It Just Won't Quit"

Help Wanted (Part 2)

Whoa. It's been exactly one month since the first part of this article.

A number of developments have occurred in the intervening weeks. My company's set another search for qualified applicants (particularly in the field of web programming), I've discovered a massive demand for people in the Information Technology sector, and one of my mailing lists started bewailing the "rampant discrimination" in certain want ads.

If you're concerned about the last of those points, I can give you a brief explanation of the issue. A company representative, you see, posted a job ad in one of my mailing lists. The job ad specified, among other things, that applicants had to be at least 25 years of age. An irate subscriber implied that the company was discriminating against younger people by posting such a requirement, and that touched off a succession of debates that lasted for three days.

In the end, I don't think anyone resolved the issue properly or successfully. So I leave you a good question in that regard: At what point do job qualification requirements become less person-specific and more discriminatory?

I'm not sure if anyone has tackled such a topic yet, but it would make for a good discussion as long as we could stay away from the name-calling. A lot of companies put up certain specifications, from the simple "Must be Female" to "Must Have Graduated From a Reputable University" to "Must Have Curly Black Hair, a Willingness to Experiment, and a Fetish for South American Spider Monkeys". These companies could probably make an argument for how important each and every one of these requirements are, but the radical job-hunters can easily argue that anybody can do any job if we all get right down to it.

You might as well put up a national writing contest, for example. You'll have winning writers who obviously fit what you want to see in a fine piece of original literature, but you'll also have millions of others who argue that their stuff is just as good under the right circumstances. This is probably one of those situations where none of us can ever win.

One of the specific issues has always been the question of age. Suppose that you have two applicants for an important position in your company: You could hire a 22-year-old young man with little experience but with much capacity for the long-term haul, or you could hire a 56-year-old veteran who's looking at retirement yet knows everything that there is to know about the business. Which would you prefer?

I suspect that such answers would be more personal in nature -- they'd depend on orientation, priorities, and/or immediate need. Or they'd be more businesslike in nature, for the exact same reasons. It's another debate all over again, in that case.

Fortunately, for the purposes of this article, we only have to point out those hints for the general jobseekers. What's interesting to note is that I can split up my last remaining guidelines among applicants of both categories.

If you're no stranger to the job market, for example, then you might want to consider the following:

1. Do NOT include outdated credentials in your resumé.
This should be obvious, I think, but a lot of people will put anything on a resumé if it means a greater chance of landing the job. I've met with the winner of a 1971 spelling contest and the most well-behaved student in a 1986 student assembly, for example, and I can already tell you that both situations will test your skill at keeping a straight face.

Outdated credentials are a terrible experience. They're extremely difficult to ignore, yet really beg the question as to why they made it to the resumé in the first place. Such achievements no longer have an inch of relevance, and should really be left out of consideration. Otherwise the interviewer will simply be tempted to make fun of you, and no one ever takes that lightly.

2. Watch those gaps in your resumé.
Sure, you were employed by a massive conglomerate that really appreciated what you were doing. Sure, your former boss wept openly on the day you submitted your resignation letter. Sure, you spent a loyal six years with your previous employer, regardless of how turbulent their work was.

But what I want to know is, what were you doing in the significant span of time since you left them?

Don't get me wrong here; Despite my earlier point about knowing what to leave out of a resumé, there are some things that really shouldn't be left out of one. If you have a gap in your employment history, then you have to expect that somebody will call you on it. And then you'll have to explain exactly what you did for the full year or two that you found so convenient not to mention. Watch those gaps.

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Not all of us are experienced with the job market, though. This is especially true, considering that the products of the local universities should now be checking the want ads and packing the waiting rooms this time of year.

Having been a new graduate once, I offer former students a very valuable piece of advice: Don't bother. It's probably better for you to stay home and leech off your parents till you're forty. The world out there has some razor-sharp teeth, and only the most suicidal of oiks would possibly walk into such a deathtrap.

The problem, of course, is that most graduates are too constructive to listen to me. So, having disposed of my first piece of advice for them, I have to offer them the following fringe cases:

1. We don't really look at your grades.
Surprised? It's true, at least in my case. If you have the skills to do the job, then you can do the job regardless of whether or not you got that D in Socio-Anthropology class. It stands to reason, really -- you can be the worst Physics student in the history of mankind, but we'll still hire you if you happen to be an excellent graphic designer.

That's not to say that grades aren't important, of course. In fact, grades are a pretty good indicator of how much study and dedication you give to a certain field. That's how we're able to trust in the integrities of college valedictorians, for example. But if you constantly worry about how your grades are good on one end and bad on the other, don't sweat it too much.

2. What you do in your off time is important.
Do you have any outside activities? Were you a member of any school organizations or civic groups? What obligations are you likely to have outside the company?

The answers to these questions are just as good as grades: They imply attention and dedication, even if they are for endeavors outside the traditional academic requirements. If you tell us that you're a member of at least one organization, then we figure that you're at least a normal human being. If you tell us that you're an officer in at that one organization, then we can see that you're willing to put in time and effort in a certain general direction.

A word to the wise, though: Don't give us a long shopping list of organizations you've supposedly "joined", and then claim to be active in all of them. In that case, we're more likely to think that you either have a really short attention span, or that you're just plain making fun of our sensibilities.

3. Know what you're applying for.
We all have certain expectations of applicants. It's not a surprise, particularly when you consider that a lot of businesses aim for specific audiences or provide distinct services. Shipping companies, for example, tend to expect that you know how to swim. Statistical offices expect that you know how to count. Web development companies expect that you know how to type, how to use a computer, and how to send e-mail.

Occasionally, however, some random applicant doesn't get the point and ends up going for a job that he absolutely does not understand. This is worse than applying for something that you have no business applying for -- this involves trying to get into something that is way out of your league. If you don't know how to start a car, then that auto repair shop is more likely to fire you than teach you. Despite what some people may think, there are never any situations where a corporate entity will be so desperate.

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And now this is the part where I post my disclaimers.

I'm not an HR person. I haven't been trained as an HR person. All that I happen to have is five-and-a-half years of experience dealing with the web development industry and its people, as well as the occasional command from my boss to Get Out There and Deal With Those Yahoos.

The job-hunters out there, of course, have license to ignore or criticize the items I've posted here. But I've gleaned these points from years of speaking with applicants, and this is probably as close as I can get at this point without being an applicant myself.

Besides, it wouldn't be much fun if we didn't kick up a bit of discussion on this. The above items are what I've got, ladies and gentlemen. You can take 'em, leave 'em, or wait a couple of years while I run into more unorthodox situations.

After all, there's no end to the weirdness you can encounter when it comes to dealing with people, I suppose. :)

Disclaimer: April 2006

One: I lied. Nothing in this blog is original. I steal it from the most unsuspecting of sources, and they're all so obscure that you never have a chance of tracking them down.

Two: I lied. I don't make any mention of references at all. The names and titles you see at the bottom of each blockquoted item are nothing more than a fabrication, meant to hide the fact that I'm screwing over the actual sources.

Three: I lied. There is no such thing as international copyright law, and this 'plagiarism' thing is actually pretty good. I won't run after you and perform unspeakable acts on your corpse if you take anything from this blog and put it under your name. Hey, it's a free country, right?

Four: I lied. You don't have to ask permission from me in order to use any of my writings. Who cares about them, anyway? I can always come up with more of them at short notice.

Five: I lied. Talking politics is one of the healthiest activities I've ever come across. In fact, I'll probably make it a recurring feature starting next week.

Six: I lied. The moon landings were a hoax. There are albino crocodiles that roam the sewers. The government really is putting flouride in the water supply so that they can track our every move.

Seven: I lied. I'm not actually Sean; I'm an alien from the Proxima Centuari system, sent to inspect your world for possible colonization purposes. Now that I've seen that you Terrans are a bunch of lying, backstabbing, unsuspecting idiots, I can send for the preliminary invasion force.

Eight: I lied. I'm actually pretty darn good at this writing thing. I'm just holding back so that you can all believe that your worthless words can stand up to the power of my prose. In truth, ladies and gentlemen: My kung fu is better than yours.

Nine: I lied. I'm not busy at work in the first place. I just want to see you all squirm at the fact that you're not getting your regular fix from this blog. Involuntary rehab sucks, don't it?

Ten: I lied. It's not April Fools' Day at all. Everything in this article is abso-frickin-lutely not a lie. Nuh-uh. No how. No way.

Wet Words

Yesterday I took apart my office keyboard for some much-needed cleaning.

I own a very old keyboard. It was the same one assigned to me when I first started working in my company over five years ago. Although I've changed PCs twice in those last five years, the keyboard has always come with me (as has the mouse and the CD-ROM drive, but this story wouldn't be as interesting with them). For all I know, it could even have been a used keyboard, which would imply that it could have had a succession of owners even before my arrival.

Why clean the keyboard? I just noticed that it was starting to look old and ratty at first glance. That, and I've been under a great deal of stress at work lately. An easy, non-thought-oriented menial task was quite welcome under the current circumstances.

I started off by borrowing a philips screwdriver from the Technical Maintenance department, which was pretty much all the hardware I needed for the task. ("What do you need the screwdriver for, Sean?" "Oh, nothing... I just wanted to see if it could fit up my nose, that's all.") From there, it took me only a few minutes to shut down my PC, disconnect the keyboard, and remove the twelve screws holding its casing together.

If you haven't seen the insides of a keyboard, I can tell you that it's a pretty mundane sight. Your basic keys are attached to the top half of the casing, and are set so that every keypress will exert pressure on one specific area of a thin rubber mat. Beneath this rubber mat is a sensor plate that detects where you punched your key, and transmits that information to the PC for digital translation. (What this means is that, if you're using a Qwerty-type keyboard, you can rearrange the keys however you want and still type according to the Qwerty configuration. But you probably knew that already, didn't you?)

While the mat and the sensor plate both looked fine, I was overly concerned with the top part of the casing where the keys were located. Years of putting up with my work habits had trapped any number of foreign materials between the keys and the case; By the time I finished removing all the buttons with a blunt plastic instrument, I could see the accumulation of dust, dirt, grime, hair, dandruff and bread-bits staring right back at me. For that matter, I suspected that a few more years would have molded the combination into a new form of earthly life.

It took me the better part of an hour -- and half a roll of tissue paper -- to get the casing clean. Even then, it had a burnt and smudged look where the grime simply refused to come off with a single dry wipe, and in some places the hair and dirt had already matted into solitary protozoan cells. I had to run the entire thing under a bathroom faucet and give it another wipedown just to give it the mere illusion of cleanliness.

The keys were another matter altogether. After I pried all of them loose, I dropped the entire mass of disembodied words into a Tupperware container for temporary storage. Remembering what happened with the main casing, however, I ended up filling the container with water a few times for a quick rinse, then taking out and wiping the soggy letters one by one. It felt strange , spending the better part of an hour cleaning one key at a time.

Of course, I knew better than to stack a bunch of wet materials onto a bunch of electronic components, so I stationed all of the above items in front of an industrial-sized electric fan and waited for them to dry.

After that, it was all a matter of putting everything back together again. I mulled over the possibility of giving myself a Dvorak configuration instead of the previous Qwerty-type setup, but I eventually decided that the size of my current workload discouraged it.

So now I have a clean keyboard. How does it feel, you ask?

Well, strangely enough, it feels a little sticky. It works just fine, but the keys seem a little, er, "slower" than normal. I don't know if it's because I did something wrong when I screwed the case back together again, or if it's simply because I'm not used to a clean keyboard. If you're the type of person who enjoys seeing it that way, I could be writing this entry merely because I want to reassure myself with these relatively pristine keys.

It's probably all good in the end, though. Even if I don't get used to this, I suppose that I can always just ask for a new keyboard. :)


* Sean in no way condones the wanton dissection of keyboards, even if they've committed heinous crimes beyond human ken. If you're planning to pry apart your keyboard to clean its insides, fix a problem with the sensor plate, or look for buried treasure, then be my guest. Just don't forget that I won't take any responsibility for when it ups and dies on you like a good electronic component does.

Sedition

Why talk politics, then?

Astute observers will have noticed that I hardly post any talk of politics, activism or current events on this blog. It's not remarkable, mind you -- there are plenty of blogs that don't engage in analytical discussion like that. What should make us wonder, I think, are the reasons behind such direction.

We can't help talking about current events. Human opinion is almost a reflex action in this regard -- we involuntarily generate opinion on any distinct (historical) events once the initial shock rubs off. Give us news of an event, and we will inevitably consider the who, what, where, when and why it happened.

From there, it becomes a question of the outlets we use. Some of us sit back at the table, a bottle of beer in hand, and proceed to tell our partners exactly what we think of current events. Some of us take to the streets in the perception that we're screaming our displeasure for the sake of the majority. And some of us -- those with blogs, I mean -- write our stuff down for perusal by an online audience.

So why talk politics, then?

I would say that recent events in the Philippines have inspired plenty of reaction, if only for the fact that that would be an obvious understatement. We've had a stampede that somehow became representative of the poverty situation in the country, a martial-law-esque proclamation that further eroded confidence in the President, a failed coup attempt that would have resulted in a glorified military junta, and a persecution of libelous elements that looks supiciously like media-muzzling.

In short, there's been plenty to opine about in the last few months. Any blogger worth his or her salt would have had their statements up in a heartbeat, I think. For that matter, there have been more than a few authors who have made points salient enough to beat what the newspaper columnists are putting together. Blogging gives us a voice, and it's good to see that people are using it as an outlet for their beliefs.

The involvement of blog-based opinion may also be important when we consider the last of the above four issues. I'm not sure how the Philippine government words or numbers its proclamations, mind you, but any moves on their part to rein in the media certainly do not bode well for the public at large. In a worst-case scenario -- that of a complete state suppression -- blogging may very well end up as one of our few outlets for free speech.

That still doesn't answer the question, though. Why talk politics?

There are already plenty of people out there who post political, social and cultural opinions online. Some of them break off from any combination of recurring topics to write these statements; Others devote entire sites to them. Whatever the case, there are plenty of these writers out there.

The issue I have, therefore, is that there may altogether be too many of them. Everyone has an opinion; For that matter, anyone can come up with an opinion at the mere drop of a hat. We may very well be prepared to read the reactions of one man on yesterday's news headlines, but show us seventy-three other blogs that do exactly the same thing and we'll probably get bored trying to read them all.

In a sense, once you think about it, a monotony of public opinion may be every bit as dangerous as a suppression of the primary outlets of media.

And, of course, that would still beg the question: Why talk politics?

This blog is perfectly capable of expressing the political opinions of its author. It's perfectly capable of expressing anyone's political opinions, for that matter. It's one of the many outlets available to us, although it's unique in that it's one of the few outlets that gives us access to an online crowd of readers.

As an outlet that is less guarded and regulated than the more popular media bases out there, this blog has an interesting place in the current situation. It can easily continue the practices of free speech without the immediate reprisal or wanton bias that threatens or dominates the newspapers and television networks. Its author can say what he wants, and there will most certainly be no shortage of things to talk about.

As one blog among thousands and thousands of others, however, it must be acknowledged that the words here are but one voice in a massive multitude. And although the multitude accomplishes great things, it also tends to compromise the uniqueness of personality. We can express our opinion all we want, but such expression can all too easily be lost in the great depths of chatter out there. It would be just as bad as remaining silent.

So why talk politics?

Why do people find a voice in their online writing? Why do some of them perform their political analyses there? Why don't I publish anything significant about similar matters?

Your guess, I think, is as good as mine.

Killer Graphics

"I'll put you in [room] number one... ... ...because ONE stands for MURDER! Hwahahahah!"

- Zorak, The Brak Show

If there was anything I sensed about the Murder by Design conference last Saturday, it was the fact that the venue needed a bit of air-conditioning. The stamp that they placed on my right arm to certify my entrance easily started to melt from the moment I entered. I find it strange, for that matter, that they would hold the conference in an unbusinesslike establishment, but I'll chalk that up to a designer "thing".

Murder by Design was actually a workday for me -- the company was paying for my time there, and I whiled away the hours with a couple of staff members who had similar duties. All three of us expected to gain some insight into the nature of the graphic design business, and I don't think we were disappointed by the proceedings.

With all that said, however, I eventually came to a startling conclusion after watching three or four speakers come up on stage and do their little verbal dances. It was a conclusion borne from various other seminars and conferences, and it was a conclusion borne from even the iBlog summit held last year. That conclusion was a simple one: You can be as skilled as you please, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to speak well in front of an audience.

It's true, ladies and gentlemen. Oratory is quite a different animal, as compared to literary writing, graphic design, and all those other endeavors we've come to know and love. I find it funny, in a way, that the schools and universities have probably known this for decades now, and yet most of us don't seem to have realized the fact.

But then again, I'm not complaining. After all, Oratory is hardly a pursuable art nowadays. It's difficult to practice, especially considering that the average person doesn't see many invitations to speak in front of a live audience. For that matter, it's usually only field-based professionals who are invited to speak in this fashion, and even then we probably shouldn't expect a good show. I imagine that being good at graphic design, software development or blogging doesn't leave one with much time to practice speeches in front of a mirror.

Despite all these assumptions, however, one has to wonder about Dean Alfar.

I've seen Dean Alfar speak twice so far. The first was at the iBlog summit, where he easily blew away an audience that was prepared to hear about creativity in blogging (and consequently got it in spades). The second was at last Saturday's conference, where he was able to grab the attention of a tough crowd and somehow managed to toss them a few tips on starting and running a design business. He seems to consistently do very well at this speakership thing, and I wonder how he does it.

I know that he's gotten up and spoken to audiences before, but I'm not sure if it's to a level where he's become adept at it. I know that he's a consistent writer, but there's always the question of whether or not writing has anything to do with oratory in the first place.

Maybe it has something to do with the way his mind works. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he seems confident enough to do what he does. Maybe he's just been lucky so far, and that he'll crash and burn somewhere in his next outing. (Or maybe not.)

Whatever the case, he bears watching. As with any person who seems to do something well, it's probably worth observing him to see just how he does it.

I spent most of the conference in a state of bewilderment, to be honest. A good chunk of the lectures seemed to involve a bunch of professional designers going up on stage and explaining their portfolios. They would hook up their laptops to the projector and open up a bunch of demo files, for example, essentially explaining how and why they came up with certain designs for certain clients. While these were enlightening, they brought to mind the question of what most of the designers in the audience were supposed to learn from them.

But then again, good design isn't something that you can learn from a single conference. Good design, like writing and oratory and many other things, is something that you learn from experience. That may have been the point of the entire conference, I think. Heck, if anything, that may be the point of any conference:

"We're giving you a bunch of speakers who probably aren't all that good at speaking. But they're professionals in their chosen fields, and they've been around. You have to realize that they've gone through a lot to get where they are right now, and they're going to share some of these lessons and experiences with you, so that you'll know what to expect."

It's priceless in every sense of the word, now that I think about it. Talks, round-table discussion groups, and even TV dialogues probably work under the same realization.

I unfortunately had to leave the conference early because I needed to return the family car, so I missed out on the latter proceedings as well as the ever-present raffle. It was fine, though... they were generous enough to give their attendees a fair share of giveaways in any case.

By this time, however, the stamp was nothing more than a half-congealed mess that needed a good amount of rubbing alcohol to remove. I figured, however, that if it left any vague marks on my right arm, I could always claim that it was the hallmark of a rare disease that was turning my skin blue.

Yes, no one would probably believe me. But then again, I do have a propensity for telling tall tales, and both the confidence and experience to back them up. At least I have that much to go on...

Help Wanted (Part 1)

It's been almost a month since my reflections on HR interviews, and I've gone through a few more since then. My company's in the process of padding out a few more staff issues, and it looks like we'll be all set come April. That might be bad news to more than a few of the new graduates, seeing that a lot of them usually only start applying for jobs after the graduation ceremonies.

Going through my archives the other day, I found that I had previously drafted a blog article concerning tips for job-seekers. These, of course, weren't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill job application guidelines. Instead, these were lessons gleaned from years of watching applicants stumble, misspeak, misspell, turn off, break down or otherwise screw up their chances of corporate hiring. While that might sound overly negative of me, I can assure you what I don't make fun of these mistakes as often as I bewail the frustration that comes about when I first encounter them.

I'm not a Human Resources person, mind you, and I have little experience in HR matters that involve more than personally interviewing job applicants. While that might seem like a disadvantage at first glance, I've come to see it as more of a qualification in this case. To me, the mistakes seem more obvious, the subtleties seem greatly magnified, and the lessons seem all too easily forgotten once you sit down for your first interview. For some reason, most people seem to be able to either write a good resumé or conduct a good one-on-one chat, but not both.

There's still plenty about the Human Resources aspect that escapes me, but I like to think that I have enough hands-on experience in the matter to be able to identify particular trouble spots for people. At worst, then, I'd just be another source of possible advice.

Onward, then, to some of the less obvious aspects of job application:

1. Do NOT mention proficiency in a language unless you know how to use it.
You may think that this is obvious, but I still run into a problem case every now and then. Either an applicant professes an expert command of the language in an error-riddled resumé, or they submit a well-edited personal profile and proceed to fail miserably at the interview. The worst case I ever encountered involved a cover letter with the most atrocious grammar I had ever read, submitted by a young man who gave himself a "10 out of 10" in English skills.

The truly abominable part about experiences like these lies in the fact that I'm a writer. While my English is probably still leagues away from the practices of the true linguistic scholars, I still hold deep resentment for anyone who mangles the language and claims that they're using it right. Geez Louise.

2. Every HR person in the world probably knows that if an applicant mentions that he or she has "basic" knowledge in something, then he or she knows next to nothing about it.
This is true, yes. "Basic" knowledge in a skill, as far as we know, might as well be the same as having no experience with it at all. To be quite frank, most people only list down their "basic" skills in their resumés in order to pad things out.

Don't get me wrong, though. While there's nothing unethical about padding out one's resumé, there's a good chance that any skill level you list as "basic" will be quickly shunted off to the side and ignored. If you have relatively significant knowledge or experience with a certain item, then make sure that you don't simply write yourself as having a "basic level of skill" with it. In fact, it's probably best that you cite your previous experiences or learning programs there -- anything that would make it substantial enough for interviewers to take notice.

3. No religion, please, unless it's relevant to the position or the company.
Yes, you're a religious person. Yes, you have "God-fearing" clearly spelled out on your resumé. Yes, you're an active member of your church organization. But if none of that has anything to do with the job you're applying for, then why bother putting that down on paper? I mean, it's not as though people will hire you for your religious beliefs.

Some people will probably argue that a mention of their faith would act as a testament to their devoutness or dedication, when in reality it doesn't do much. Words on paper are sometimes just words on paper. Dedication is measured by practice and noted by observation, for the most part. You don't claim steadfastness, you demonstrate it.

What irks me the most in this regard is that some applicants tend to sing praises to the divine regarding their considerable skills and technical advantages. The business world, however, is an extremely realist setting. A company won't care if your talents are God-given or if you just happened to make a deal with the devil. If you can do the job, then you can do the job. End of story.

4. Do NOT apply for a position that you have absolutely no business applying for.
Every company has some darn good reasons for listing the qualifications for an open position. Sometimes they want an applicant to hit the ground running, so to speak -- they want the new employee to start immediately on some overdue project or service. Sometimes the job in question has certain requirements for the sake of safety or quality (you don't hire an auto mechanic to perform gastrointestinal surgery, for example, and vice-versa). Sometimes the job will have certain prerequisites that are only found in applicants of a specific background.

Whatever the case, the job requirements are there for a reason. Do not apply to be a programmer if you don't know how to program. Do not expect a small company to pay your relocation costs if you're applying to them from another country. Do not send your resumé to a "women-only" ad if you happen to be male with no plans of a sex-change operation. Doing so would simply be a waste of paper for you.

5. The phrase "willing to be trained" has little or no meaning whatsoever.
I see this phrase a lot, and I never understand why people put it in their personal profiles. Isn't this supposed to be a given, after all? I mean, as long as you're applying for a job, aren't you silently agreeing to the fact that you will learn new skills and gain new experiences during your period of employment?

You can say that you're "willing to be trained" all you want, I figure, but the fact of the matter is that every single applicant is willing to be trained. Ironically, mentioning the phrase doesn't let you stand out from the rest of the pack -- instead, it makes you blend in even more. And if by some chance you don't want to be trained at all... then why are you applying for the job in the first place?

6. Do NOT create a resumé that deviates from the accepted norm.
One of the funny things about most designers is that they're very creative. Really creative, I mean. In fact, sometimes they're so creative that you just have to wonder what they're thinking.

I've seen cover letters enclosed in pink folders and decorated with pastel-and-pencil artwork. I've seen job applications laminated and sealed inside confidential envelopes. I've seen resumés printed on construction paper, collated in hemp binding, and sprinkled in scads of clip art. I've seen all three, yes, and frankly, I'm all too tired of seeing them crop up.

The problems with such "expressions of creativity" are twofold: First, they're difficult to place on file. For that matter, if we can't file them properly, then we simply won't... if you know what I mean. Creative execution be damned.

Second, such artistic works may indicate an attitude that does more harm than good. If a company is looking for a graphic designer, they're most likely looking for someone who can fire off good design work within a reasonable project deadline. In that case, a souped-up resumé that implies a certain level of obsessive-compulsiveness may not be the best thing to hand in...

...

These items are by no means the only guidelines I have to discuss. In fact, these considerations barely even scratch the surface. There are plenty of things that one can do wrong when it comes to looking for a job. I've seen too many of them done, and in some cases, I've even done them myself.

If you're looking for a further breakdown of things to avoid when you're applying for a job, I'll be posting a second part to this article. Human Resources, as with many other endeavors, isn't an exact science... but we can always map things out as we come to them.

Come to think of it, I actually have at least two more applicants to test and interview over the next two days. Hopefully they won't come up with any new problems. My instincts, after all, have had enough trouble detailing the ones you read here now.

Kiss Me, I'm Catholic

For the Catholics, Lent started last Wednesday. That means that, apart from the strange ashen crosses that showed up on everyone's foreheads last week, I'm looking at a stunted diet for the next month-and-a-half.

If you're not familiar with the tradition, Lent represents the forty days that Jesus Christ spent wandering the desert after his baptism. During that time, he was subject to three temptations by the devil himself -- all of which he passed -- and consequently returned to the world of man in order to begin his ministry. Catholics commemorate this occasion (as they do with all significant events in the Bible) by abstaining from meat every Friday for forty days. Eventually everything comes to a grand end during the last week of Lent, during which Christ's death and resurrection are marked on the days of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, respectively.

If the above paragraph makes little or no sense to you, then feel free to blame me for the description. Darn it, Jim; I'm a writer, not a theologian.

What this means, as far as I'm concerned, is that I won't be seeing any chicken, pork, beef, or any sort of mystery meat every Friday till mid-April. Complicating matters is the fact that I don't happen to like seafood, and so therefore I'll be restricted to veganism once a week.

(Whatever happened to the word "vegetarian", anyway? Did it go out of use due to some imaginary negative connotation? That would be a funny thing, really, seeing that there's no obvious discernible difference between "veganism" and "vegetarianism". If you like vegetables, then you like vegetables. If you like vegetables enough to eat only vegetables, then you like vegetables enough to eat only vegetables.Nothing wrong there.)

Muddying the waters further is the fact that the Buddhists happen to be one of my favorite guilty pleasures in this regard. Devout monks of the Buddhist religion, you see, are similarly disallowed from eating meat. For that matter, they're not even allowed to consume fish. In a strange response to these restrictions, however, Buddhist kitchens are remarkably skilled at mashing bean and tofu paste into replicas of various meat dishes. These people, therefore, literally serve the equivalent of Spam without any meat at all. (There's still the question of whether or not there's any meat in Spam to begin with, but that's a topic for another time...)

So I'll be going meatless every Friday till Easter because of my Catholic followings, and I'll be going for the occasional serving of Buddhist meat-cum-vegetable creation instead. I can't help feeling that there's something wrong with that arrangement, somewhere.

What's probably even stranger is that I consider myself a non-practicing Catholic. I may be a Roman Catholic, yes, but you probably wouldn't guess it from my daily habits. I complain, I swear, and I philosophize. I wax poetic about both evolutionary theory and the notion of God as a human construct. I keep my prayer to a minimum because I invariably think of doing things myself. And in the most obvious aspect, I don't keep a regular Sunday habit that most Catholics do.

The way I see it, there are devout Catholics (mostly in the church gatherings, arguing about scandal and morals), activist Catholics (mostly in the street rallies and the mailing lists), and non-practicing Catholics; and the last category probably has my picture attached to it. So if there's anything strange about my current situation, it's the fact that I'm willingly skipping meat every Friday for the whole of Lent.

Why do I do this, anyway? I mean, it's not as though I'm going to redeem myself as a Catholic by refusing to eat meat for six weeks.

I suspect that it has something to do with my habit of self-mortification. I'm probably masochistic that way -- I constantly test myself with the strangest endeavors in order to determine if I'm... if I'm... ...well, I don't know, I guess. I obviously haven't made an ounce of sense here, so why start now?

Catholicism is strange by itself, really. We worship entities whose existence we have no way of physically proving, we engage in rituals whose meanings have all been lost in the time since they were first established, and we take our orders word-by-word from a book that has seen more printings and translations than we can count.

And we listen to those words, follow those practices, and search for those entities -- all in one vague attempt to claw our way back into meaning. We know that it all leads somewhere. The problem is that we don't know where it goes just yet.

As well-governed and established as tends to be, I won't be the first to think that general religion is just as screwed up as the rest of us, Catholicism notwithstanding. Which is why, in a sense, it fits us to a T.

So now I'm a meatless man. And I'm a Catholic, too. In fact, I'm not just any Catholic, but a non-practicing Catholic who just happens to practice one inconvenient religious tradition out of the many convenient ones. I'm a bundle of contradictions here.

But hey, no one ever said that religion was easy to understand. :)

Disclaimer: March 2006

You didn't think I was going to forget to write this, now did you?

We're coming off an interesting number of recent experiences, and stepping into what looks to be an equally interesting period of time. The deadlines for both the Draconic Anthology and the Fully Booked contest are now behind us, and the local writers find that it's the Palanca Awards we now have to worry about.

From a more workaday point of view, it's now March. That means that the start-of-year rush is dying down, the upcoming graduates are starting to check the want ads, and the local fast-food joints are starting to put up their Lenten offerings. We step from one field of experiences into another.

In short, there are still a lot of possible opportunities for the plagiarists to operate. The prospect of handing in a copied work to the Palancas or a forged resumé to a potential employer isn't too far off, after all. (You'll have to take my word here; it's not as though I haven't seen a forged resumé in six years of managerial efforts.)

I've given some thought to the idea that I may just be paranoid about this whole thing. I suppose that I must concede the truth of that statement -- the last thing I want to happen, after all, is for some undeserving writer to receive recognition for some piece of mimeographed work. But I still think that it's a legitimate cause for concern -- especially on the Internet -- and I'm afraid of the possibility that it might happen right at the moment when my guard is relaxed.

So I still write these monthly disclaimers (mostly for the lawyer-types who don't have the energy to read everything on this blog). It's a personal choice, really.

Everything written on this blog is the property of Sean, and is certified as truly original by the author himself. Everything here, in a sense, comes off the top of my head somehow, and I'll duly admit to having written every single entry regardless of whether it's good or bad. The only exceptions here are those items or references that are taken from other sources. These entries are clearly marked, and I try to place a reference to the actual source whenever possible.

I suppose that under some strange and twisted circumstances, somebody out there might decide to quote or reference one of my articles here. I have no quarrel with such people as long as they have enough decency to ask permission first. Who knows, for that matter? I might even be able to point out some better resources for them in such a case.

Otherwise, however, a direct attribution and link to the source in this blog will also do. I'd rather have the permission, though, because I don't like the possibility of being quoted out of context.

Violators, as far as I've determined, will be dealt with harshly. There is such a thing as Philippine Copyright Law, and even in cases where it doesn't seem as though it's clear enough to deal with certain situations, I can always fall back on International Copyright. Steal from me, and I will pursue you with litigation. The cost won't matter, really; I'll even go as far to say that it'll give me a bit more purpose in life.

Oh, and there's also the matter of physical threats. If you plagiarize anything on this blog, then you agree to give me the right to come after you with the sincere efforts of blunt force trauma without the possibility of your retribution. Granted, it'll only be a temporary right, but it'll at least make me feel better.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Have a nice day, everyone.