Pathwalk

Paths are made by walking not by waiting. 

First thing in the morning, and that phrase from a routinely-sent group text message struck me. It was from a friend struggling in his thesis writing. Now I could look back and wallow in regrets for dropping out early on my thesis endeavor (and miss the chance of graduating on time), or I could look forward, fall silent, and saturate myself from the point made by that phrase in a text message. 

Silent Wanderer

I am still finding ways to amuse myself. I have lots of free time. Productivity is clearly stamped in my mind. And yet I still find myself stuck, bewildered, and completely engrossed on the things I still find to amuse myself. I’m running around in circles. *sigh* Wandering silently. Floating freely. Still why do I feel like an entity that is imprisoned by my liberty. So here's my pathetic attempt to jot down the things I could do to kill boredom.

• Continue in reading list. 
• Revise old entries in my blog. 
• Visit Catholic blogs in my blogroll. 
• Buy a new book about Philippine Architecture I just saw earlier. 
• Buy installer of Adobe Illustrator CS5 (one that really works!). 
• Get copy of V-ray plug-in and practice rendering. 
• Buy mouse so I can brush up on my SketchUp. 
• Play around with Adobe Photoshop. 
• And lastly, find more ways to amuse myself... 

Site Review: Why I'm Catholic

Here's a clean and uncluttered site chock with inspiring Catholic conversion/reversion stories :) Why I'm Catholic is a site that effectively utilizes the web 2.0 in the hopes of inspiring and encouraging those who seek God in the modern world. Their mission is to affirm the reality of God and His Catholic Church by spreading subjective conversion testimonies that witness to the Truth, relying on the providence of God and the participation of readers to help spread the Gospel through what they call as “opportunities for grace”.

"Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house." - (Matthew 5:14,15)

The graces that God bestows are meant to be shared and we at Why I'm Catholic have a deep felt conviction that the graces given during a conversion/reversion are no different. The beauty of a conversion story is that although it is always deeply personal, many of the struggles and triumphs resonate universally. The simple "Fiat" associated with sharing one's witness takes one's own humble experiences and turns them into a tool for God to work in someone else's life.

Check their site by clicking here.

The End of the Flood

He promises that He will remember your goodness 

and even if you sin He still loves you 

and is always open for your repentance.

Jen Amante

Creative Juice #031: The City

NYC - Mindrelic Timelapse from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

Awe-inspiring clip filmed at the Big Apple. This one's a reposted entry too. Grabbed it the first second I realized it was a similar video of The Mountain I also reposted a while back.

*******

I've been down in the dumps for a couple of weeks now but my timely date-slash-fellowship with two girl friends yesterday refreshed my diminishing servings of hope. We crashed another friends home and had a talk-a-thon, ate lunch with some carinderia food, walk-a-thoned at Luneta, window shopped at Robinson's Place Manila, dinner merienda at Shakey's and finally topping off the day with some classic comedy favorite - Kimidora :) I am so looking forward and hyped at our Thursday's indie film marathon XD Yipee!

Importance of Dating

• The Inevitable: Relationships and Dating - cool article on dating and romantic relationships with emphasis on growth, maturity and being realistic :) This is something in contrast with a bitter post about online dating I did back then.

Creative Juice #29: Acoustical Tonsil Productions, Inc.

Primarily conceived for the visual consummation of the respective celebrity-wannabes featured, here are the latest products of my brain juice: three new albums from a fictionated musical records group, Acoustical Tonsil Productions, Inc., featuring rising stars in the world of Pinoy Pop and OPM – Banine, Papi Bee, and Robiewill. 

A brush from my rusting layout skills and a sprinkle of wit and wordplay from the daily antics of my closest friends in the university gave birth to these promotional posters slash CD cover designs of three hot-new record launching labels. So much for designing for a chief cause of advertisement, I could have sworn most of the titles in the albums are sure-fire parental red flags making no mama in this country a teensy-bit proud. Haha. (The finished images below are all just a product of the author's imagination. The use of any existing legal labels/components/logos in the said works were not intended for promotional purposes).

Banine: Pinay Prosimian Princess

Dinuguang Bopis: A Musical Anthology of Papi B

Robiewill: The Melody of Neneng Serbesa

Musings. Dreams. Insomnia.

• Just when you thought you quite already knew someone, you’ll be almost surprised to find out an always another side of him/her. Yesterday, I am pleased to have taken a look at another side of a friend –  a side that is hurt, damaged, and deeply personal that was almost intently kept hidden. For once I admire his courage in trusting to be vulnerable in front of me; for sharing something so fragile and intricate yet something so beautiful all at the same time. It was during these times that you really push the boundaries of your understanding. 
• I think I had 6-8 cycles of REM sleeps last night. Almost all of them ending up in the middle of a different dream with me trying to jump and catch my breath the second I wake up. Either I slept way too early in defiance to my body clock or I have insomnia. *sighs*
• It’s always refreshing to wake up at around 5am just in time to witness dawn and the slow turning of the atmosphere both in light and warmth. Always the perfect time to meditate and pray to God of all the things we hoped for and of all the blessings we want to give thanks.

Update 8.15.11: Bed-side Books

My free time have awarded me with a chance to catch up with some of my reading backlogs. There are at least six bed-side books that I've been reading alternately lately, most of them are catholic reads. By far, I've been enjoying quite a lot the book 'In Pursuit of Love: Catholic Morality and Human Sexuality' by a Jesuit priest, Vincent Genovesi that discusses a handful of hot-topic issues - premarital sex, contraception and marital sexuality, homogenital expressions of love, masturbation and abortion - from a philosophical and theological stand. Challenging, sometimes I'm even forced to read a paragraph twice or thrice to digest and understand. Then even sometimes followed by a momentous stop of pondering. Truly is the joy of reading a book on Christian Ethics for the first time :) 

Sinong nakaka-relate sa mga binabasa kong book? Raise your hand!

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

'The Four Loves' (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960)

As quoted from ‘In Pursuit of Love: Catholic Morality and Human Sexuality, 2^nd edition’ by Vincent J. Genovesi, SJ

Courage and Fluctuations

Image borrowed here 

Saturated by the season two episodes of Glee and their epic 12th place standing at the Nationals in the season finale, I am compelled for a momentary and ponderous stop as to my plans since I've made up my mind. I still haven’t told my adviser yet. But I do have the balls to stand up for that decision no matter how hard it shakes me to the core. Because I know for once that it’s something I chose upon to bring to myself unlike my untimely service to the people that still give the best crap out of me. I guess I am just preserving all that energy. Especially when that apex comes for me to the drop the bomb and see the looks at everyone’s faces to see the enthusiastic leader of the Thesis class they so looked upon for inspiration blown to smithereens. *sighs* I just know that I still have a shot at this next year. So yeah, the best wishes on that.

'Courage doesn't always roar. 

Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 

"I will try again tomorrow.'

Mary Anne Radmacher

Going back to the final episode of Glee, Kuya J’s words of wisdom came upon me as I looked past Rachel Berry’s dialogue on hopes and dreams. It was last Sunday when we had a small chat over an order of street kikiam. My siblings and I were planning to leave a group of church choir for another. We had a lot of issues with some of the members whom we feel like don’t even give a crap. It’s been going for a long time now so we are about almost a hundred-percent-ly sure to make that big leap. Then came Kuya J saying that it’s always good to pray and ask for some guidance in all the decisions we are about to make, because in that way we aren’t sailing the stormy seas of our cranium alone in settling on something. 

His words pierced through when I realized how my prayer life has been going so far. I’ve been making a lot of plans lately without considering the Big Guy up there. You know, leaving a choir, dropping out on my thesis, entering the religious life. I already had all these in mind without stopping and asking if all that were okay or even in resonance unto His Will. 

My fluctuations have been going on and on. And I believe I am experiencing one of the all-time lows in my life. Sooner or later I hope and I pray to see what truly is going on around and within me. I bet there’s no other way but to go up when you reach that rock-hard bottom from everything that's been happening.

Dear Architect B

Architect B 

Architectural Design 9 Thesis Adviser 

A Blessed Day! 

I, Nowitzki Tramonto, a 5th year BS Architecture student of the University X of the Philippines - College of Architecture and Fine Arts taking up Architectural Design 9 courageously and humbly declare to step down from my current thesis endeavor regarding a bioclimatic edifice initially entitled, ‘BIO-BERDEX: A Tropical Bionic Headquarters Complex for the Philippine Green Building Council. 

It has been my practice during the course of thesis writing to stop for a moment and assess my current standing. As the thesis proponent, there are certain aspects of the study that has come to my attention during the course of investigation. The following proved to be indications of the project’s apparent unfeasibility which fundamentally arouse from a proponent-oriented proposal: 

• As promising as it may with the organization’s vision and mission for the real estate industry of the country, PHILGBC having been only established in the early 2006 is practically in its infancy.
• Recognition of a sustainably-rated structure by the recently established BERDE building rating system is of the moment not possible. PHILGBC’s implementation programs are still in its pilot stage.
• Identification of the users and its analysis was also a constraint. The number of officials and workers in its current office does not hold up for a potential thesis study. Mere reliance to the company’s projected organizational growth (which is unavailable) would only make the study a prediction and not as timely as it should be. 
• And lastly, there have been NO previous initiative, board resolution, or call for open proposals regarding the planned endeavor making the justification of the study blurry and the current status of the study as a viable candidate for a thesis proposal questionable.

Thesis writing has been a truly wonderful experience for me as an undergraduate student of BS Architecture. While it has been a great pleasure in the last couple of months to work on the proposal, I believe that the time has finally come for me to acknowledge the aforementioned road blocks that have been my concern since the beginning. I am looking forward for a better endeavor next year. 

You have been a very gracious adviser, Sir. Thank you very much for your generosity and support in this academic venture.

Respectfully yours, 

Nowitzki Tramonto

5th year BS Architecture Student 

University X of the Philippines

Exile

I need time. I need an exile to be exact. I need to find myself again. Away from it all. Away from all.

Hurricane

Image borrowed here

Warning: Foul-mouthed piece in uber obnoxious language ahead. I suggest you not continue.