i want to write but i'm mental-blocked

hold on, is "mental-blocked" even a proper phrase (or compound word or whatever)?

i got home early today because the office declared a semi-half-day, which pegged quitting time at 3pm. so i've been spending enough time on the internet clicking on the usual suspects, and i was running out of stuff to read. i did come across baddie's post this afternoon, which prompted me to think of my own rainy day pet peeves, which in turn reminded me that i almost had another klutz incident this morning.

...

(stopped current train of thought because it's getting really lame.)

...

then i came across jewel's blog, and i am reminded again of another dilemma of sorts.

ever since i decided to create my latest blog at wordpress.com, i've been (un)seriously contemplating migrating my main blog from blogspot. sentimentality aside, i am reluctant to move from blogspot because it is the only one that provides an email backup of my posts as they are published. and in my experience, the sidebar html widget is much more user-friendly than wordpress html widget. i was seriously pissed that this was the only site i could show off my last.fm artists and recent playlist using the flash widgets - multiply, lj and wordpress failed massively. and my plurk widget only worked here. in fact, blogger wins at widgets, period.

however, wordpress (and i'm using the free hosted one) has a lot going for it as well. it has more themes (blogger is seriously lacking in themes); there are "pages" which are similar to posts except that they aren't constricted by the date; there's a cool spam filter; there are "categories" and "tags"; and it's compatible with gravatar. the clincher, however, is the "read more" (or "summary") option (though i have to admit livejournal is one-up with the lj-cut). installing this option in blogger takes a bit of patience, some css knowhow, and a lot of hits and misses.

there are a few things that aren't found on either platform which i really really like, such as lj's multiple userpic (i haven't used up all 15, and my lj friends have lots and lots more on their paid accounts). lj also has a nifty lj user graphic, such as this one:under_crisis. it also has several fields besides the post title and tags, such as music, location and mood (and moodthemes are customizable!) and all of these can be specified if you emailed your blog post. best of all is the lj-cut, which allows the author to hide several non-continuous portions of the post.

expert bloggers have probably worked around my complaints and devised how their platforms could work for them. but i'm no expert, and i don't have the patience to get into the nitty gritty programming. so i'll just keep on wishing that someday blogger will create their version of the lj-cut, and i'll be the happy camper forever. or until the next hot platform comes along.

time for some recs

last.fm has not given me a headache in the last few weeks. recently, i noticed that some tracks kept appearing in my scrobbles list and they were last played on the ipod over a month ago. so i had to reset the play count on the ipod itself. wonder if it'll work. and the site was recently overhauled, and is sporting a clean, new look. methinks every audiophile should seriously think about going with this application. i love how ne-yo is slowly creeping up into my top 5 artists. lolz.

speaking of favourite artists, no. 6 is (surprise, surprise) smashing pumpkins. i loved this band since today, but i found that i'm not that big a fanatic because i only like about half their songs - at least the half that i'm familiar with. i recently added their greatest hits album into the pod, and with some luck managed to single out this gem. it's called try, try, try.

the top song in my ipod is ne-yo's closer, followed closely by because of you. now that is a big surprise, though the playlist cleanup may be partly to blame, because i usually don't go rnb when i could go alternative. a few spots down is this lovely depressing song by little bit, called forget about me. it asks the question: why don't you love me? which coincidentally is a question i've been asking in my mind a few short years ago toward a certain person. at the risk of being accused of sour graping, i still want to know the answer. dammit.

i think i regret not paying more attention to lifehouse's concert here, based on the few reviews i bothered to look at. but this song from who we are on constant repeat more than made up for my loss.

i finally succumbed and bought the first book in stephenie meyer's twilight series. i lent it to my dad and he promptly returned it - that's how easy it was to read. i haven't tried reading it yet; i think i want to savor it and save it for a rainy night. also, i didn't want to be interrupted while daydreaming about robert pattinson i'm in the middle of an exciting part.

oh, and i bought tracey thorn's (everything but the girl) solo album from last year. it sounds just like ebtg without ben watt. whatever.

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i'm too old to be this confused

moodswings are weird. only yesterday morning i was lighthearted, but it seems the events that transpired since then have given me much food for thought. today, i struggle with the confusion that has stuck with me over the last few weeks.

i thought finishing graduate school will help me at least get an idea where i'm going. months after everything has been settled, i find that i have no fricking idea where to go from here. i still feel underqualified for anything. more to the point, i have no inkling at all what kind of work i'm suited for.

i don't know why i won't give up my actuarial career track. my knowledge isn't even current. but just like the scraps of paper i still keep in memento boxes, i can't seem to let it go even if i know i won't make it to fellowship.

on the other hand, career change is scary. i've long wanted to work in UN, but again, i don't know what exactly i'm suited for. it's times like these that i envy my former officemate, who decided to shift to another career four years ago. i could have done it then, too - we were in the same boat - but i was too scared to make the first move.

i've always been the wait-and-see sort of person. almost everything i do has been thought out and debated on at least a hundred times. but there have been instances that i could have acted with haste and gotten better results (hindsight is always 20-20). i'm betting this is one of those times.

dirty sexy money

money's a bitch. especially when you don't have much of it.

over the past several weeks (months?), i've been putting off logging my bank transactions into my financial worksheet. the file was last updated beginning of march, before strama took over my whole world. with my shaky financial standing and my spendthrift ways, i knew i had to reconcile my allowable expense with my actual spending soon, or else chaos will ensue. the lesson i learned a few years ago was a costly one, and i only just finished paying for the consequence.

today i finally progressed a major step, which was track my "petty cash" account. taking down five months's worth of transactions seemed overwhelming, especially when i get home at night and i just wanted to surf the net. but i knew putting it off will only cause me more headaches, so i finally took the whole bunch of slips to work, sorted them by month, and worked on them after lunch. voila! i'm one step closer to reconciling my accounts.

but the really tricky part is still ahead of me, which is distributing the cash into the several sub-accounts i devised. even now i know that the allowance will turn out negative, because of all the spending i did during strama. i'm disappointed, because i really wanted to have extra money to finally invest in mutual funds. but that's life. hopefully i'll manage to plan the next four months to pay back all my debts to myself.

randomize

another meme from ladybracknell, who i think has posted several in the last few days. hehehe.

Shuffle your player and select the first 20 songs that come up. Post the first line of the lyrics and have your f-list guess the songs.

1. now tell me whatcha gonna do when there ain't nowhere to run, when judgment comes for you, when judgment comes for you
2. all i can say is that my life is pretty plain, i like watching the puddles gather rain
3. now and then, do you wash your hands of me again
4. ninety miles outside chicago, can't stop driving i don't know why
5. all is quiet on new year's day, a world in white gets underway
6. breathe it in and breathe it out and pass it on, it's almost out
7. i do not understand what it is i've done wrong
8. words like violence break the silence, come crashing in into my little world
9. may mga kumakalat na balita, na ang misis ni kuwan ay madaling makuha
10. i'm afraid to fly, and i don't know why
11. i see us in the park, strolling the summer days of imaginings in my head
12. somebody told me you were leaving, i didn't know; somebody told me you're unhappy, but it doesn't show
13. and here's to you, mrs. robinson, jesus loves you more than you will know
14. waiting, watching the clock, it's four o'clock, it's got to stop
15. in my eyes, indisposed, in disguise as no one knows
16. take me as you are, push me off the road; the silence, i need this time to be with you
17. i was blown away, what could i say, it all seemed to make sense
18. do as i say not as i do because the shit so deep you can't run away
19. the first, the last, my everything, and the answer to all my dreams
20. every breath you take, every move you make

i only listed those songs that i actually knew. i have 5000+ songs on my pod, and i have a lot of albums i haven't even listened to in full. or at all.

yes, i know, nos. 5, 13, 19 and 20 should be dead giveaways. what can i do.

some of these were actually covers when they appeared on the shuffle; i need the original artist. track no. 4 was a cover by paolo santos; no. 9 was done by brownman revival; no. 15 was a live concert performance by alanis morissette; no. 20 was a performance by brooke white on american idol.

yeah, i think i've read more than six

this is a meme I've seen do the rounds at lj a few weeks ago, but never found the time to do myself. then a high school friend posted it, so i thought i might as well.

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1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your own multiply/lj so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;)

The 100 list:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - my favorite of all of Austen's, hands down.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – tried reading it when I was a kid but gave up after one page.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – I love love love this world. And the fandom.
   
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
   
6. The Bible – I don’t think I’ve read half of the whole book
   
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
   
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
   
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
   
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
    
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – this is one of the first three books that my granny sent me while she was in TO, and led me to appreciate children’s classics. Jo&Laurie = OTP
    
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
    
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare – is it possible to find them in prose? I love the themes of the stories; unfortunately, I’m just distracted by iambic pentameter. Which is why I love watching movies based on Shakespeare – I understand them better.
    
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
    
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
    
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
    
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
    
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
    
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
    
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
    
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
    
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
    
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
    
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
    
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
    
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
    
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
    
34. Emma - Jane Austen – not as good as P&P, but I loved the idea of her falling in love with a man she knew very well, almost all her life.
    
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
    
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
    
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
    
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
    
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
    
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – I’ve read The Te of Piglet (which is a sequel to the Tao of Pooh), but not the original.
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
    
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – issues about Christians aside, the story is brilliant.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
    
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
    
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery – I am such a romantic. But I read the Emily books before this, and I found Anne a more engaging heroine.
    
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
    
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
    
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding – Good story, but really scary.
    
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
    
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
    
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
    
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
    
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen – I liked the movie too (yay Alan Rickman!)
    
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
    
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
    
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
    
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
    
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
    
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
    
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
    
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
    
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
    
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
    
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding – the first movie was a v. good adaptation. The second one, not so much.
    
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
    
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
    
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
    
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett – another one from that first set of books. Unfortunately I lost that copy, so I bought another one.
    
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
    
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
    
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
    
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
    
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
    
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
    
80. Possession - AS Byatt – I read this in parts after seeing the movie. Have yet to read it in full. Maybe soon.
    
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
    
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
    
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
    
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
    
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
    
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
    
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
    
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom – yeah ‘tis good. Bought it for my parents’ wedding anniversary gift. Hehehe.
    
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – I have the complete works borrowed from my highschool friend, but I have yet to start.
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
    
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
    
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery – I think I loved the snake most of all. And the boa constrictor.
    
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
    
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
    
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
    
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
    
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
    
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare – Lorybeth says this was required for high school, I seem to remember only Merchant of Venice.
    
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
    
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

finally

yesterday was my graduation day. after six years of bluffing my way through, with three of those years devoted to the struggle that is my strategic management paper, i finally got my degree. and if i wanted to, i have the right to add those three letters to the end of my name.

i didn't have major problems during the graduation ceremony itself, except for my academic gown almost choking me and my cap weighing about as heavy as an anvil. no missteps or major boo-boos. but it was the other stuff surrounding my graduation that gave me major headaches. after i finally submitted my paper, which was late, there was the clearance (an issue i'd rather not discuss). then not knowing if i made the cut, because according to the rules, i should have submitted my paper earlier (though i had the defense before the deadline). then finding the right dress, where normal dress-shopping is already a traumatic experience. then, after the ceremony, it was as if our trusty '94 civic was on strike. just as we were ready to leave, dad discovered the battery was discharged, so we had to have a replacement delivered. then, on our way home, we landed on a massive pothole on the slex and got a running flat. imagine all of that accompanied by heavy rainfall.

i hope to write about all the different details soon. the subject matter from the speeches during the ceremony were inspiring, though not enough to spur me to write extensively. i'll try to get back on my feet in a couple of days.