Industrial design

I happened upon two excellent websites featuring reader-tagged web pictures. Much as Google or Yahoo allows for word searches, these sites allow for searches of visual material. Many of the tagged photos were commercially designed material for greeting cards, graphic books, product labels and the like. The pages are excellent resources for marketers, art students and those of us who are frustrated artists with some semblance of aesthetics. I will be using many of those images throughout my blogs and presentations from now on.

The first site is http://www.vi.sualize.us/ Registered members need only tag pictures as they troll the web and they are saved on the site. Members may also tag favorites on the site. Commercially available images are linked to the creator's site for ease of purchase.





The other site is http://www.ffffound.com (yes, that's four f's in a row). The Japanese site is grittier than the former, with more comics/manga graphics, old posters, and East European images.





This is an example, I think, of the wisdom of crowds, where it is posited that the collective decision of the general populace will be the most optimal. The aggregation of global tastes and aesthetic sensibilities works very well.

On birds

In as much as I have this inclination towards travel and flight most especially, I find my recent run-ins with avians most interesting. I am referring to birds and flying mammals; the use of the word “avian” was just so I can have a post with this word in it – lingual vanity really.

But I digress. It started with the flock of small birds flying around the middle of Zamboanga City at dusk. Not that I haven’t seen birds in flight, mind you, but the sheer number and the audacity by which they zoom around the old buildings in downtown Zambo really brought them to my attention. It was my Hitchcock-ian moment to imagine them swooping down to pluck out eyes or ears or at the very least, lift a head scarf insouciantly. I couldn’t quite identify the small birds but they resembled small swifts with their forked tails. Nobody has given me a reasonable explanation for their behavior for many have not even noticed. A pity.

The next encounter was with an injured kingfisher near my hotel room in Boracay. I noticed the poor bird hopping weakly on the ground floor of the Boracay Courtyard last July. It was hard to miss and even harder to ignore. Here was this medium-sized bird with flashes of iridescent green plumage rarely observed in the country struggling to fly at my hotel door. So I did the most logical me-thing to do: pick it up. The bird was futilely pecking at my hand but I guess the bloody wound just under its right wing was just too painful. I squeezed it into a wine carton to keep it calm and relatively immobile. I debated with my friends on what to do since bringing it back to Manila would have been impractical and possibly illegal. I went from hotel concierge to hotel concierge asking for the nearest DENR office but nobody seemed to know. Finally, I saw a vet’s office that was closed but still had a light on. The good doctor took the bird in and refused my offer for monetary assistance. God bless him.

The last time was a weekend ago when I noticed a small bat clinging to the sidewalk just outside the house. It was safe to assume that the bat was dehydrated given the humidity so I pulled the towel off from my back then wrapped it up. It quickly latched on so I moved it indoors, hoping for it to survive at least the night. I left to attend to other appointments and got back home late. By then, my sister reported, that the bat not only recovered but was flying around. She wasn't too thrilled, of course and neither was my mom, but I was so excited to have rescued my little bat. We pretty much left it to its own devices overnight.

We didn't see it for the better part of the day but as soon as I got back home around midnight, my sister called me upstairs to deal with the bat. It's second night was just as exciting as the first but the little one had now settled in full view. It was on the towel covering the bean bag. I took another face towel and covered it. It was bleating (if i can call it that) then retreated further into the depths of the large towel. I then took it to the balcony where, I hoped, it would fly. I checked on it several times during the night but it was still there. I moved the towel to a less drafty position so the bat wouldn't get the chills then hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the best was not to be had. It was a cold little corpse in the morning.

I am still despondent over the loss but wouldn't have known to care for it anyway. I now plan to build a shelter against the side of the balcony using plans I managed to get from the internet. Then study up on bat care so that my next furry flying friend will find a home in mine.

Ethiopia - a new Middle East

I must confess that I know little about Ethiopia except to say that the country has fairly recently emerged from a devastating famine (remember the drive of artists against famine in the 80s?) and a civil war (which saw the secession of Eritrea, formerly Italian Somaliland) to an economic renaissance of sorts. The reason I mentioned it is because two people my family know have received offers to work in the travel/hospitality industry in the country. One was for a catering company and the other as the country manager for a major airline. The former opted out, largely due to family pressure not to accept, while the latter will be flying out two weeks from now.

With many in the creative industries are looking to work in Indochina and those in telco in Latin America, is the Horn of Africa the IT destination for those in the hotel/resto and airline fields?

It makes me now think...?!

On maturing

I realized recently, and at a considerable shock, that I have emotionally matured - at least as far as the office is concerned. Suffice it to say that a recent blow-out which would have seen me at my raging best five (short) years ago has me more thoughtful, straining as it were to seek understanding. I have even, shudder, sought to see the situation from the other party's perspective.

The experience has been both exhilarating and disquieting: exhilarating given the novelty of the feeling but disquieting in it's newness. Or have I just reached a point of professional inertia?

A dry April

I knew that having a blog meant an obligation to write regularly. But I have written so many in my head these past months but hesitated to encode them in the hopes of coming up with THE post. I am finally drawn to write today just because I would hate to end the month on a dry note.

So here's my one of my thought threads: I watched a news segment last February on Chinese New Year where Manila's mayor staged a dragon dance and parade through Chinatown in the hopes of, as he said, firming up the alliance between Filipinos and Chinese. Made me think: since when have we been operating as a dual state? Isn't the mayor a prime example of a racial assimilation? Hasn't centuries of trade, communication and inter-marriage mixed the races enough to render distinctions moot? And should an elected official publicly support racial distinctions at all?

Of course, there are many among us sporting foreign passports - either because we have opted for foreign citizenship or because our grandparents or parents have settled among relations and given birth here - but fully identify as a Filipino. In this case, then yes I agree, they are foreigners and should be subject to the laws of the country as it applies to aliens. So was the good mayor referring to these visitors? Then, why should aliens enjoy special rights over and beyond what the law stipulates?

Just my ten renminbi

Family excursion

As I had predicted, we started the day quite late. I mean packing alone took an hour. We must've packed enough stuff for a two-day outing including four pillows!

And then there was the rain. We have had such a relatively dry December that the rains were actually welcome but not at the intensity and volume of that day. It poured unceasisingly throughout the trip.

Funny but one of the best parts of the trip was the sleep. It's good that we have all been trained to sleep whenever we get into a comfortable position wherever we are. I dozed off on southbound C-5, between Bicutan and Calamba exits, the length of the STAR tollway, along the old highway to Tanauan, and from Tagaytay through Sta. Rosa till the C-5 exit on SLEX. I must've slept a third of the day-trip. I had recovered much of the sleep lost over the Christmas season.

Then there was food. We were all looking forward to lunch in Tagaytay: I mean it can't get any better than a hot lunch after a long road trip at a resto overlooking the famous lake within a volcano within a lake within a volcano with the whole family. Too bad that the rains stirred up pea soup thick fog that obscured the view though. But the food at Antonio's Grill made up for it in a big way. We were so hungry that we over-ordered: bowls of batchoy big enough for two, chicken inasal plates again for two, the famous tawilis then a humongous grilled bangus. We then cleared the palate with their awesome turon filled with tikoy and sweetened banana, ube and langka. We intended to walk down to Starbucks but the rains made a mess of everything. We moved coffee to the Starbucks in the Shell station near the San Pedro exit.

We haven't had a family excursion for some time so the trip was extra-special. Using a rental service with driver ensured that everyone remained in good spirits and was rested over the entire trip. It was money well spent

On makeover shows

I find myself drawn to watching shows like Queer Eye and How Do I Look lately because I think I like to cheer on personal transformations and triumphs. Everyone loves winners but even more if we get to see the transformation unfold slowly. It taps the voyeur in all of us, thus the success of reality shows. But is my interest more an attempt to somehow assimilate someone else's victory vicariously, visually? Is this the same reasoning that drives people to hide the self-improvement books and audio material from friends and family for fear of being seen as lacking self esteem?

Either I should work on more personal victories, see my life with rosier lenses, continue watching the shows or all of the above.