transposable element

my flickr pro account has expired and i’m still thinking whether i should renew it or shift to smugmug. the latter costs 15 bucks more annually, but the galleries are just, like they said, gorgeous. but then, i’m not really that much of a photo geek. eventually, i just want to have an online repository of pictures as a backup to my external disk and SD cards, without having the entire world wide web see it. geez, i swear sometimes i have the feeling it’s hopeless to cope up with technology in this digital era!

how do YOU store your digital photos and videos?

i’ve been talking about ‘starts‘ in my last entry, but for people on this little red dot, the time for a fresh start is yet to come. the year of the silver tiger starts in a week, and if you are into geomancy and chinese horoscopes, this website does a pretty comprehensive job of summarizing the forecasts for 2010.

apparently, my true ba zi element is “strong wood rat”, and according to the horoscope, i “will do pretty well this year”. hm. not exceptionally well, but at least, it’s not the worst.

not bad. i hope 2010 lives up to the forecast (or should it be the other way around, i.e., the forecast should live up to real life?). perhaps i should look back to the last years’ forecasts and check if they held true…

the following is a paid review.

of late, i’ve been receiving many travel offers by email and ironically, if i were interested in making travel bookings, it would probably take me longer than ever to find the cheapest offers. i wish there was something as comprehensive as travelgrove that caters specifically to asia.

travelgrove is a meta search engine that helps travelers find the best deals on airfares, hotel rentals, car rentals, cruise deals and vacation packages. basically, they look for deals from companies and other travel websites and gather them up, so users can compare prices and choose the better deals. so you get to see all the best deals in just one place.

fancy a 4-night carribean cruise this fall for $199+? or fly to new york for as low as $153! or how about browsing the latest offers for flights to manila? these are just samples of the good travel offers you get to see, without trawling the entire web. cool, eh?

i wish there was something like this with focus on asia. would be handy for those times the travel bug bites and you’re looking for a getaway without breaking the bank!

it’s been a week since i rediscovered facebook, and i still don’t quite know what to make of it. i can see how it’s become the social networking of choice for many, combining friendster, chat, email, blog, photo sharing and other applications all rolled into one. i see a lot even busy with cattle supplies on their virtual farms.

however, i’m not yet so comfortable posting “what’s on my mind” just like that.

you see, one thing i realized is that my facebook connections or “friends” are people i’ve crossed paths with over the last three decades or so. there are those i’ve gotten to know just recently, and there are those who still remember who were my pals in third grade (details even i don’t remember anymore!). i know them at different levels. some are family, close friends, former colleagues, and there are a handful i have remotely worked with and have never even seen personally. and i’m not exactly sure if i could easily share my thoughts (pictures, links, etc) with A, a tech guy i absolutely have nothing in common with except that we used to work for the same blogging network, compared to B, who probably already knows every significant event in my life anyway, facebook or no facebook.

but, and this is the part i am enjoying, i am blown away how i got reconnected with so many friends and classmates from way back. people i haven’t seen in decades, and all it takes a simple “heya, how are you?” to bring back the memories buried deep deep into the recesses of my mind. it’s amazing how a few postings melt the time and geographical gap, making it feel like you never lost contact at all. it’s like a class reunion, sans the awkwardness.

facebook also made me face a character flaw: i am so bad at keeping in touch with friends. j is giving birth soon and i didn’t even know she was pregnant. v is pregnant with her second, and i haven’t heard from her since high school graduation. n is now a lawyer, and i am still confused as i know she had a bachelor’s degree in zoology. and dozens more of such revelations.

i realize that i need to make more effort to keep communication lines not just open but also active if i want to nurture friendships, considering i’ve relocated many times and likely to move residences again in the future. ahhh, maybe i’ll be a facebook fan after all.

if not for my birthday, i still would probably be ignoring facebook. my account dates back to 2006, iif i remember right, as part of the community building chuva in one of the blogging networks i wrote for. i never really paid any attention to it though, and wouldn’t log in for months on end, despite pending friends request. fb, twitter, plurk– i managed to skip the bandwagon.

but it’s difficult to stay immune when everyone on my friends list (which somehow grew over the last 3 years with little nurturing) seems to be posting on some virtual wall which sends alerts to my inbox. arrrgh. mas makulit pa kay mia!

so here i am, three years after i first signed up, still a novice at navigating fb. so what’s the difference between commenting on something someone wrote on my wall, and writing something on someone’s wall?!? ack, i think this is going to be a steep learning curve.

yowza, this blog has been unupdated for more than a week! obviously, it’s not due to lack of blog fodder. to the contrary, there has been so much happening the last couple of weeks, so many things to blog about, events to document, so many thoughts to be put into words… in an attempt to make sense of the fast swirl of events taking place. unfortunately, and this is the paradox that most bloggers probably experience, is that just when things to blog about mounts, that’s when you can’t find the time to blog.

there’s a parallel universe out there, and when i’m not here, i’m there.

i’m a beach holiday kind of person and i’m lucky because here in southeast asia, it’s beach climate pretty much the whole year round. a holiday in Branson, missouri is not my cup of coffee, and if i were to travel to the states, this is a destination that will miss my radar for sure. would be different if i lived there, perhaps. if a laid back, country holiday is what you’re looking for, perhaps branson is just right for you.

Branson is said to be the live entertainment capital of the world (or maybe the people who coined that moniker just haven’t been to malate, manila) and you can book holiday packages that already include tickets to some of the shows. there is a variety of lodging options to choose from — from luxury hotels such as the welk resort and grand oaks, to picturesque cabins at grand mountain, to private and cosy condo units. kids will also be spoilt for choice on the fun attractions available: the titanic museum, ware rides, go-kart, mini-golf, imax, and other nature-inspired activities. the ultimate offering for the more gutsy ones, though, is the silver dollar city theme park:

Nestled in the forested hills just minutes from Branson, Silver Dollar City has everything you could want for a family vacation. Take a remarkable journey back in time to experience true, old-fashioned Americana and Ozark splendor. Silver Dollar City boasts over 30 rides and attractions and is home to the amazing Marvel Cave, but what makes this theme park truly unique is the dozens of craftsman that practice the same skills used by the residents of the Ozarks who lived here in the 19th century, from baking to metal crafting.

it’s definitely a different league from disneyland, but should be very educational as well as entertaining.

i’m lagging way behind with my marble blogging. there’s the third weekend of the month, which was quite eventful, and the last weekend, which was chinese new year weekend, culminating in hubby’s birthday. my marbles have been well-used and unfortunately there’s no time to write when there’s living to do. and photos to download. and videos to edit. and memories to savor. like a butterfly that’s busily moving pods, i flit eagerly from one weekend to the next.

i’ve been planning on weaning mia onto formula for quite some time now, but hasn’t really succeeded. she turned up her nose on the first formula we tried (as in mukhasim wrinkled face; i’ve got to take that expression on video one of these days!) and all the bottlefeeding paraphernalia have remained unused since. so i’ve been browsing the supermarket shelves for the next formula to try and chanced upon dumex. du..what?! i was like, “isn’t that a brand of rubber?” only to realize much later that the latter is durex, hehe.

no, thank you. everytime i’d fix mia a bottle of milk, i’d prolly be thinking of effing condoms. same way i don’t think naming a food suplement as Leptovox was a good idea. it may be effective, but the brand name kinds puts you off. sounds more like a villain in transformers.

really, you’d think there’s a shortage in possible brand names.

excuse the typos, but i’m fumblijng with mz new keyboard. hubby came home today with a new kezboard for me, and it’s taking me a whilke to get used to it. if you think it’s sweet of him, let me tell you that it’s just because i asked him to finish our newsletter which is saved in mz computer, and he just couldn’t stand the amount of organic matter that has accumulated in the old one. would have sustained a crop to fruition, haha.

this new kezboard is much more compact (so the kezs are closer together, thus the typos) but my biggest problem is that it’s an “english” keyboard, and darn it, i’ve been usign a german keyboard for the last 8 years now! i wonder how long it will take me to remember that the z is where the y is and vice versa! arrgh!

last week, a new flash drive. this week, a new keyboard. if we had the moolah, i’d love to have an entirely new machine, but for now, gotta be happy with new spare parts !