I couldn’t really think of a good title for this post. I am not sure either whether anything good will come out of it. But my WP dashboard asked me “What’s on your mind?” and this is the answer.

Well, the short answer is: a lot of things. Things that actually keep me awake at night and rob me of my sleep. Things that weigh down on my mind, dampen my spirit, and make me question why I made the choices and paths that have taken me to where I am now. And if those choices and paths were the right ones to take.

Now for the long answer.

Surely life doesn’t have to be complicated, does it? One would think that after all the sacrifices you’ve given, all the obstacles you’ve hurled just to get what you wanted, gritting your teeth through sweat, blood, and tears just to achieve something, everything will go smoothly. Well, news flash! It doesn’t. On contrary, it can get all knotted and gnarly and it just wouldn’t budge any damn bit. You can shout and scream at the top of your lungs and still it wouldn’t change because it has a mind of its own. The rule of entropy. The more you want to control things, the more chaotic they become, because that’s just the way it is. Pretty much like the way I would try to keep the house nice and tidy, but it simply never stays that way. But heck, damned if I didn’t try to anyway!

If there is anything, anything at all that I could say has kept me going through the years, is my innate stubbornness to accept things as they are. I always try to look for the potential for improving something, no matter how shitty, no matter how hopeless, no matter how daunting. Someone has actually told me that they’ve never met anyone more determined than me in engaging in any kind of task, just as long as I believe that it is worth doing and fighting for. I’m one of those persons who would buy small potted plants at the 100-yen shop so I can grow them at home into thriving indoor house plants, living things that grow and grow and grow.

Hey, there’s only one life to live. Damned if I didn’t try my best to live it to the fullest.

I know I am not perfect, nor am I the most brilliant English writer out there, but one of my pet peeves is bad English grammar.

Ok, I admit, I also have my occasional lapses. Who doesn’t? Still, I would like to believe that whereas we could all be guilty of some occasional bad grammatical lapses (even CNN is not impervious to this), there are also some serious offenders out there who really need to brush up on their grammar. Specifically, grammar that should have been learned and mastered in grade school. There’s just no excuse. Both the student and the educational system should be blamed for this.

Don’t get me started on misspellings. Seriously, in this day and age, with all the tools at our disposal, for the life of me I can’t imagine how anyone can type on the computer and still make misspellings. You would think that it should have been rendered obsolete already. When in doubt, do a spell check!

My Facebook wall is littered with them, may it be in the form of badly written status updates, feel-good quotations written by some literary genius, or practically anything picked up on the internet. I’m horrified by the amount of gunk I see there each time I bother to log in. And oh boy…it annoys the hell out of me. What is most annoying is how people would even bother to write something in English anyway. Tagalugin mo na lang, plis.

Can’t you see how badly written it is? Why bother to re-post it? Everyone tries to project a carefully crafted image of themselves on social media by posting every awesome, earth-shattering thing that happens to them and their families and anybody remotely connected or related to them. But dude, if you post that feel-good quotation that 1) simply doesn’t make sense, and 2) written in such bad grammar that will give your English teacher chills on a 40-degree C summer day, no way that post can give your image any positive boost. Count on it.

Unless of course you DO realize how bad it is, but decide to post it anyway, so we could all enjoy a good laugh.

Life’s too short to be annoyed to death by bad grammar, yes?

I spend a lot of time imaging my samples. It is one of the routine characterizations I perform on my samples. It usually doesn’t take that long to get an image using a conventional SEM (scanning electron microsope) measurement, but if I’m looking for a specific surface feature or morphology, then I can spend hours measuring a single sample.

Just imagine, I am looking for a surface feature that’s 100 nm x 100 nm in area, which is significantly smaller compared to the total surface area of the sample, which is about 10,000,000,000 times larger! It would be like looking for a speck the size of 0.1 mm x 0.1 mm in area over a floor area of 100 sq. m. Fortunately, as long as there are dense enough specks scattered all over the floor, there is always a good chance of finding one even if you look into a smaller area. In my samples, there is usually a good distribution of surface features over the sample, which ensures that I get to image one at various locations. But of course, it is always good practice to image several locations on the surface to get a feel of the “typical” representation of the sample.

As anyone familiar with SEM knows, focusing on a featureless, flat surface of a thin film sample is a daunting task. So it always helps to zoom in on specks of dust or whatever debris on the sample first. In other words, specks on the sample allows you to focus more easily. Once you focus on the speck, then you can easily focus on the other areas of interest.

So much like in real life!

No matter how hard we try to live seamless, smooth lives, there will always be specks in the form of people, events, and things. As they are specks, they do not necessarily ruin our lives, but we would rather do away with them if we could. Examples of specks? An annoying email. Senseless discussions. Unwanted advice. People eager for praise. Cold, uncaring friends.

But what if they’re there for a reason? What if, just like SEM imaging, those little, annoying bits and pieces in your life are somehow there so that you can focus on what’s truly important? Specks can be annoying if you let them, but at the end of the day, it’s still your life that matters, not them. Specks can think and say and do what they will, but that’s all there is to them: devices allowing you to focus on higher things.

I know I’m making a stretch by comparing life to a mundane, routine work on the lab bench, but thinking of it this way actually made my day.

My sister gave me a copy of Suzanne Collins’ book, The Hunger Games. At first I was repulsed by the idea of teens hacking one another to death in an arena for the purpose of punishment and televised entertainment. But the way the novel was written, I couldn’t help devouring the novel (pun intended). I couldn’t put it down until I got to the very end. I haven’t read such a gripping novel for a long time, and it was a welcome treat. Never mind that it is a book for ‘young adults’,’ hahaha. I loved it! I think I even fell in love with Peeta.

I ended up reading all three books – The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay – but I think that the latter two unfortunately failed to reach the same heights as the first book. For me, the impact made by the first book actually provided the impulse to read the next two books in the trilogy, but in the end it was pretty clear that all the fresh and original ideas went into the first one.

Continue reading Thoughts on The Hunger Games →

Sometimes it seems that people have simply forgotten or otherwise blatantly ignored simple rules of social etiquette. Just because there is now a convenient medium where bits and pieces of our silly and mundane lives can achieve newsworthy status, we think we can do away with the rules we normally follow in real-life settings.

I am talking about the blurring of the line between private and public, leading some people to expose their private lives for the sake of public popularity or whatever reason. To look cool. To prove something. To make themselves appear bigger, by using social networks as some sort of convex mirrors.

Continue reading Privacy →

I am currently watching about three dozen kids doing their warmup exercises just before their tennis classes. Yep, that’s about three dozen kids doing jumping jacks and stretches at 9am on a Saturday morning. I guess that translates to about three dozen parents waking up early on a Saturday to shuffle their kids to the tennis court.

So, when I have decided to sign up Aya to this class, effectively I have said goodbye to those long, lazy Saturday mornings spent in leisure in bed. That, and several thousand yen each month.

Continue reading Sportsy →

When someone brags about accomplishing something before he/she has had the chance to do it, you give them the benefit of the doubt. You smile and nod, then hope that they will eventually make good on their word someday, somehow. Not that it’s any of your damn business, really.

Blame it on my amazing ability to listen intently to what other people say. I especially latch on when people talk about their grandiose plans for their lives and their future, or whatever else they’re involved with. I listen with the rapt attention of an eight-year old who naively believes anything an adult says. And I actually believe them. It seems that my take on these matters is: consider them true unless proven otherwise.

Continue reading Hot Air →

Just before graduating from the university, I volunteered to be part of a group tasked to talk to high school students about the joys (and pains) of taking up Physics as a course. Our aim was to “orient” their young minds towards considering Physics as a possible career choice.

I thought about how to prep my young audience. I knew it was going to be a daunting task, because let’s face it, Physics isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea. Especially in high school.

Anyway, I began my talk with the following question: “Sino sa inyo ang gustong yumaman?” Who among you wants to get rich?

Everybody raised their hands!

Continue reading Learned →