It’s been awhile since I went to Tumblr because it’s been awhile as well since I had something to write about, and when I finally do, I discovered the change they made on the posting system. Now, instead of prompting you to a totally different screen, a small panel where you edit the contents of your desired post drops down, making the entire posting process faster. However, I can’t seem to get used to this new interface, as I got used to the massive word processor for text posts. I swear, just looking at the tiny box for the text just stresses me out, much so that I did this entire post with Word and just copy-pasted it on the text box.

Not all changes are better.  Especially this one. Good thing I found a way to make it work. Tumblr, one more bad move and I’m going to Wordpress. Why are you mimicking Twitter anyway?

It’s been a week and three days since I started working at SPi Global, and I guess it’s pretty good so far. In that one week and three days, I was learning the ropes of my account, and just when I’m getting almost a preview of what my life would be for the next few months, I got assigned to another account, leaving everything that I have learned so far barely helpful and forcing me to learn new things all over again.

I was a fool to jump at what I thought would be a chance for something better and easier. Now thanks to me being such an eager beaver, I’m now eternally stuck in a 5pm-1am shift on an account that needs much more thoroughness than my previous one. Well at least my new boss, Ma’am Gab, is a pretty mestiza with bright brown eyes and shoulder-length auburn hair who’s a fan of Gundam 00 and teaches me 1-on-1 about the account. And then there’s my new team, who are nice and friendly people, and most of them happen to be nurses, so we can all pretty much relate to the plight of having no decent job openings for our chosen profession.

But I’m not only there to meet and mingle with people, I’m there to do my job so that I could earn money, but apparently my job won’t be exactly an easy punch-in-punch-out money mill. See, I’m assigned as an editorial support agent in the cardiology section of British Medical Journal, aptly called “Heart”, and right off the bat I already heard that three people who have been assigned the journal to has already resigned, the latest one was also a James, so when the new team heard my name it’s as if an ominous wind blew. Gosh, it’s as if I’m in a horror mystery generational saga seinen.

Oh well, it’s a new life in a new life. A beautiful boss who gave me Heart, possibly new friends, and the cool night air and city lights whenever I go home - I guess it’s not that bad, sounds pretty cool actually. I still don’t have the slightest idea what’s gonna happen to me or will it be better or worse or actually easier or harder compared to my previous account, not that I ever could know because I never was in production there, but whatever answers I get to these questions, whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there, with open arms and open eyes, yeah…

…and don’t forget about the pay with three-hour night differential.

The only time that I became a fan of musicals was when the First Angel was a member of the Marian Music Guild, our high school’s theater group. It’s a jolly good show full of tacky costumes, dialogues being sang instead of said, and dancing - goodness gracious, an awful lot of dancing. Then thanks to some gay-pretending-to-be-straight student council president in college, all sections had to present a musical. We had Chicago, and since performing arts isn’t in my genes, I was forced to double up between slave labor and being an extra, and I preferred being an extra because I got free Pepsi.

After that, I didn’t have much interest for live musicals even though many of them flocked the country because aside from the fact that they’re many times pricier than a movie ticket, a novel, or at the very least a bootleg anime/movie DVD, I’m not too fond of plot told by singing and dancing. Heck, I can’t even stand a musical show like Glee. But then came the 2012 movie adaptation version (there was a 1998 version with Liam Neeson) of Les Miserables. Since it’s a movie and not a musical play, aside from the fact that it’s my mother who will be spending, I thought why not, I thought I won’t be crying for wasting my time anyway in case the movie would be awful. But apparently, I swallowed my words - I cried, because it’s more than decent.

Need I explain what Les Miserables is all about? It’s older than your grandparents, you know. Go click this link in case I have to.

-Acting/Singing: 9/10 - The movie was based on the musical play which was based on the novel (what?), so singing is part of the criterion and acting alone is not enough. And what can I say, I shouldn’t have expected anything less from Hollywood A-listers. Who’d have thought Wolverine, I mean Hugh Jackman could be a convincing Jean Valjean who is so full of kindness and redemption, and song! Seriously, I thought what I was watching is Wolverine the Musical. Amanda Seyfried as Cosette is okay, but kind of nothing special. Anne Hathaway as Cosette’s mother Fantine on the other hand, was just so heartbreakingly sad, especially when she sang I Dreamed A Dream, it was as if at that song was the summary of Les Miserables - the depths of despair, the bottom of misery…but still I didn’t cry…okay I admit, oh God my tears were streaming on that part!

Then as comic relief, there’s Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen (Bruno, Borat, and Aladeen), Cosette’s neglectful foster parents, who I never really expected that they could sing while making me laugh as though they’re present day court jesters. And oh Samantha Barks as Eponine, sweet sweet yet hopelessly friendzoned Eponine singing that On My Own which made me cry again. Eddie Redmayne as Eponine’s friendzoner, Cosette’s lover, and revolutionary Marius, as well as his friends who were singing the revolutionary pieces were pretty good too, and I admit that his Empty Chairs, Empty Tables was pretty depressing.

And then there’s Russell Crowe. He’s a good actor, but this is a musical, and acting isn’t enough. I don’t even want to comment on his singing.

-Cinematography: 9/10 - At first I had my qualms with how they’re gonna translate a musical play into a movie because it might seem awkward, but those qualms were drowned when the opening scene came along. But there are times when it doesn’t translate too well, like when Eponine was shot (Spoiler? LOL, as if you’d watch the movie for the plot), it just seemed too unnaturally slow and awkward, which wouldn’t be so in a musical play. But despite that, I just love how the movie captured the essence of the life and times of people during the French Revolution, it’s just so…French.

-Pacing: 8/10 - While it’s oh so very hard to cram a five-act play into a movie of watchable length, it’s possible in a way that would be able to sustain a moviewatcher’s attention span, although it comes with two prices - the story moving way too fast and the audience losing interest after the barricade part. Of course, these are unavoidable drawbacks brought about by trying to fit a square into a circle, but drawbacks nonetheless. It’s not the movie’s fault, but because of the rather conflicting nature of the cinema, the theater, and both its patrons.

-Overall: 8.6/10 - Encore, encore! To make a person who isn’t fond of musicals fond of a movie based from a musical truly is a feat, and this Les Miserables has managed that. It’s an imperfectly cut gem, but nonetheless a beautiful and sweet-sounding gem. Definitely a classic that is timelessly relevant, this is infinitely better than Glee and High School Musical combined and multiplied.

Once again, I’m not really one to advertise things, but I would like to help my friends out ‘cause they’re running this travel agency. It’s called Crossing Borders.

http://www.facebook.com/crossingbordersph

Click on the link to find out more.

Thank you very much everybody.

What if you got stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with nobody with you but a few animals and among them is a vicious Bengal tiger? Sounds impossible? Well, not when you’re an Indian boy with three religions.

Life of Pi is about Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi for short, hence the title), an Indian boy who has Christianity, Islam, and Hindu as his religions. His family owns a zoo in Pondicherry, but when talk of trouble becomes abound, they decided to move to Canada and sell the animals, but the ship they are in sink because of a massive storm, killing almost everybody, leaving Pi all alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a Bengal tiger that could eat him anytime.

Life Of Pi:

-Story: 9/10 - I’m not usually one who oversimplifies plots, but I’ll give you guys a heads-up if you haven’t read the novel - this is like Castaway meets 127 Hours sprinkled with a lot of Animal Planet and poured with gallons of religious, spiritual, philosophical, and metaphysical introspections.

-Acting: 10/10 - This movie isn’t really about acting, there isn’t much of it anyway. Of course, Suraj Sharma as the Pi Patel who’s stuck on the lifeboat, is so talented that he was able to directly convert the words from the novel into actions as well as make me feel that he’s sleeping with a real tiger, but the acting of anyone aside from him is barely significant because the other characters are mere satellite characters, although I do suppose they did do suffice.

-Cinematography: 10/10 - I really want to give this movie an 11 in this department, because…where do I even begin? The opening credits of course - even that was a delight to watch, with the lively and vividly colorful animals on the opening credits, and then we see India as a vibrant land and full of culture, the crashing waves and lightning forking as their sinks, and even the times when Pi was stuck on a lifeboat is still stunning. I rarely say this, but the film is BETTER than the novel. Heck, I even thought making a movie out of the novel is impossible because of its rather slow-paced and non-plot-driven nature, but apparently Ang Lee proved me wrong. Damn, it’s almost as if the imagery resonates with the novel’s entire essence minus the drag.

-Pacing: 9/10 - For something that I was expecting to have a snail’s pace, it did go faster, either because the rather repetitive parts were shaved off, the movie does a good job of making us emotionally invest on Pi and his visual thoughts enough that we’re distracted from how slow things were going. Well, either way, slow or otherwise, it was able to develop good character development in such a pace that didn’t bore the audience. Or me at the very least.

-Overall - 9.5/10 - I don’t like the message of both the novel or the movie because of the religion thing. However, that doesn’t make Life of Pi any less of a spectacle full of amazing wonders. I know I’ve said this a thousand times before so it sounds awfully cliche, but it’s still the truth nonetheless so I’ll say it - Life of Pi transcends from being just a cinematic masterpiece to an experience that is not only visual but also philosophical and metaphysical. It’s not for everybody, but the people who’d like this movie would say that they liking the movie is an understatement, much so that they’d keep saying that it’s so good so many times on the ride home.

Okay, maybe it’s due time I told you guys…I have a new job. And why wouldn’t I? I’m not some lazy inconsiderate jerk who lays in bed all day. Say, where did I get this…job? Oh they’re everywhere thanks to outsourcing, especially if you’re 22, a nursing graduate, and is a NEET who’s been doing nothing but for almost a month.

I’m a new hire in SPi Global as an editorial support agent for BioMedCentral. It’s a non-voice account, so HOPEFULLY it would be less stressful than my previous one as a customer service representative for AT&T prepaid in Teleperformance. Ugh, I don’t even want to think about my previous work, but I admit - minus the stress I get from the irate and nearly insatiable customers and the rather crappy account, I miss my life there. But I can’t live in the past, nor can I earn a living from it, although I do admit that it’s probably why I got accepted because I heard they turned down many fresh graduates (man, I feel more experienced now, as well as much older). And because of that, even though I still have my aversions with the BPO industry, I went back to it, although my return is somewhat on a lighter scale.

It’s supposed to be a fresh new start, but somehow my past from Teleperformance is haunting me, making me feel that this is just going to be the same damn ball game all over again, that whatever happened to me before will happen again - me underperforming and getting fired without warning for it. But no, I believe and claim that this time is going to be different, even if the setup, from the production floors to the cafeteria, looks or even smells the same. However, believing and claiming, or even praying is never enough, and that’s why I need to do my part, which is to do my best.

Once an agent, always an agent. And I’m back, hopefully without a vengeance. New company, new job, new faces - finally, it’s season 2 of my seinen arc.

Finally, a vivid dream I could recall…

It was an orange-painted afternoon at my high school, IHMC (Immaculate Heart of Mary College). I was on the second floor, talking to a bulky and fair-skinned classmate of mine about nothing in particular…while classes are going on.

But then I got bored, so I went down the stairs, and there was the glass meeting room under it, and looking back it does seem strange because that’s something from UST and not from IHMC, not that it matters anyway because I was dreaming and it’s not a lucid, and if it was I would’ve woken up because I would’ve noticed something off. Anyway, my friend Allison was also hanging around in the meeting room, and since I was bored I talked to her.

She was pretending to scold me about how I did nothing but cut classes, so I just went along and jumped from one topic to another which apparently I couldn’t recall, then she tackled one of my favorite topics - DoTA, so once again she proceeded to pretending to scold me about how I did nothing but play DoTA. And suddenly, midway of what she was saying, Fernan, Ivan, and Nhel, noticeably wearing long-sleeved polos instead of school uniforms, walked up to the room, telling me that it’s time to play DoTA. That’s when I woke up.

I wonder what could it mean. Is it just some beautiful muddle of memories or a message into the future? Maybe it’s a warning that is telling me to change my ways? Oh well, whatever, I’ll probably still play DoTA anyway…

Writing is no longer just my hobby, it has become my passion. It is both my virtue and my vice, or should I say she, for writing is my mistress as well. However, I haven’t been consummating my love to her recently even though I have come up with so many ways to satisfy her inside my head.

However, something inside of me kept holding me back from doing so, telling me that it’s either not worth writing, nobody’s interested in it, or I have already written something similar before. But greater is my longing for my mistress, so I return…

Aside from writing being so many things I have mentioned, to me its is a form of release as well. The life I live and its many components - happenings I experience, the novels and manga I read, the anime and movies I watch, the people I share this life with, my faith in God, the thoughts and emotions that emerge from all of these things as well as the ones that come out of nowhere - they all build up within me and turn into inspiration, as though they are ordinary rocks that turn to crystals under the earth, and it is never enough that I keep such beautiful crystals hidden and buried deep inside of me, for it is such a waste if they just remain as such. These crystals - these inspirations, are further polished and are given form to become gems - my writings, my posts here in my blog, gems that will be hopefully kept and remembered by the reader deep in their hearts and minds, gems that would remind me of them long after my grave has been dug, gems that would shine and inspire them to shine as well whenever it is sought or accidentally found whenever they decide to search their jewelry box of memories or is reopened by a wind of fate.

However, not everything I write speaks of something beautiful, for we are human beings, and our lives is not constituted by beauty alone. We experience sadness, loneliness, failure, disappointment, heartache, heartbreak, loss, defeat, illness - such is the human condition brought about by our imperfection, and to keep it all in is not healthy at all, I know, I’m a nurse. To keep my mental integrity in check, I write about such negativities here as a form of release. Of course, I know how to keep it in moderation and try not to longer on it because it’s not exactly good for me and my blog as well because sometimes I linger in it as I write about it, but after I do so I usually try not to write about the same thing immediately again and move on to a sunnier topic.

Well, sorry about that rather cheesy topic and over-analytical introspection, it’s just that I usually write about writing to get the flow back. But whatever, I got it back now, so I don’t care what you guys think because I know this is my blog and I don’t have to apologize whatever I post. Just kidding. But seriously, I’m gonna write what I want to, I just hope you guys would like it even though I don’t even hope you would.