Raffy the Heretic!!!

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GAAAHHH!!! Raffy’s becoming a heretic cultist!!!!! Heh heh, I should’ve noticed the date, darn it. Go on and laugh your April Fool’s ass off, Raffy. :D

Never mind my request for hosting. I just signed up for DigitalRice again, but under a new login. Would you believe the username “pau” was still free? Hopefully I can make the move before this week’s out.

Holy Week is coming up. That’s vacation season. I’m excited; my family’s going for a diving trip to Palau. We’ll spend a week out at sea on a live-aboard cruiser, scuba diving and reef-hopping around the islands. Fun, fun!

Pardon My Zinger?

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It is hot here in Manila. Really, really hot. It is just so darn hot. And this has got to be a joke of some sort. C’mon! Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels as 20-something bloggers who fall in love online? The page looks faked. It’s a prank, right? (Thanks for the link, shiloah.)

NameZero Cancelling

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I got email from Namezero today; they’re ending free service and requiring paid renewal.

I’m a bit disappointed that their original free-for-life domain service didn’t last, but I’m not mad at them. This economic downturn is hurting everyone. I can live without the simplesight.net address, and I don’t plan on buying it.

So, please update your bookmarks.

Caffeine High

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Having just finished sipping a tall iced cinnamon mocha with an extra shot of espresso, I am now floating in a pleasantly caffeinated haze of workaholic activity.

Whew! Another Flash site done, this one for my company web page. Wanna check it out? (I was inspired by the simply unmatchable GUI design of Neostream.)

Are you a web designer? Go to A List Apart and learn the nitty-gritty tricks of the trade. Two words for you: Web Standards.

Hey, if you’re a Manila-dweller, and you want to listen to some good classical music spiced with intriguing bits of esoteric knowledge and trivia, listen to “The Good Measure,” on FM 98.7 dzFE from 9.00 am to 12.00 noon. The show is produced and hosted every morning by my own sweety-luv, *******. She’s a talented musician and broadcaster, and she puts a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into her program every single morning. Make a devoted, hardworking lady really happy and listen in! You’ll even learn a bit about classical music from her.

Filipino Summer

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The Philippine summer is here, which means that from March to June, outside temperatures will be 30 to 40 degrees Celsius, with a hot sun beating down mercilessly from a cloudless sky. An average humidity of one hundred percent doesn’t help much.

It was oppressively muggy in my room this afternoon, but a nice breeze was blowing outside, so I left my apartment to walk around the village complex and get some fresh air. Downstairs, I ran into a cute surprise: Tallis, one of the friendly local cats, with her two kittens, Thomas and Fox, all curled up into a sleeping ball of fur at the foot of the steps. (I named them. You may remember the kitten Thomas from an earlier epsode. But he’s more docile now, though still slightly wary around me.)

The mother and her kittens woke up as I approached, and the two little ones began to frolic a bit with each other. They followed me as I walked over to one of the sunlit grassy isles. (The ground floor of the apartment complex is a sprawling parking lot separated by grassy isles.) How pleasant it was! I just sat there in the grass by the light of the setting sun, while the kittens romped about, pawing at each other’s tails and playing with bits of foliage, as their mother watched from beside me.

The kittens now concede to let me touch them sometimes, but today they made a game of it, and I could only pat their cute furry heads if I could get past lightning-fast teeth and paws. The little rascals sometimes got so excited they forgot to sheathe their claws, but fortunately no blood was drawn.

Later on, I climbed to the roofdeck of the apartment complex, seven stories up. From here in the south suburbs of Metro Manila, the urban districts of Pasay, Makati, and Ortigas could all be seen to the north, groups of buildings sprawling from east to west, with airport hangars and terminals in the foreground between here and there. To the southwest, Mount Makiling rose above the horizon, half-swathed in clouds, backlit today by a golden-red sunset. Below, children ran about the neighboring village, some singing, some playing.

It felt peaceful, harmonious. As my eyes swept across the view and I inhaled the air, I thanked God for giving me this moment of refreshing. He responded, with a cool, gentle breeze, and a verse in my head: “Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you.”

As the sun dipped below the slopes of Mount Makiling, I headed back to my room to feed the kittens and cook myself some dinner.

Thank you again, Lord Jesus, for that moment, for this afternoon. Teach me to always seek you, to always acknowledge that you are here with me, always my God, my Savior.

Clone Jesus?

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By now you’ve probably heard about the Second Coming Project to clone Jesus Christ, right? Well, this just in from those ever-loveable Snopes: The Clone Jesus website is nothing but a HOAX. That’s right. It’s a publicity stunt designed to boost the sales of an underground compilation of neo-futurist literature.

Put that in your test tube and clone it. Just for clarity, the URL to the article is http://www.snopes2.com/religion/clone.htm. Spread the word.

On Biblical Literalism

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One of the complaints commonly levelled against us born-again Christians is that we take the Bible too literally. Reading some Realm of Thought threads, and having perused some Christian literature and some material by Eli Soriano (He’s a local cult leader.), I’ve gotten to thinking a bit …

(I rarely think more than a bit. Gets tiring, you know. :P )

Do we take the bible literally? How so?

As a Bible Christian, I believe it is inerrant and infallible, the very Word of God itself, but that doesn’t mean I take it ABSOLUTELY at its exact word for every single verse that is in it. If Ecclesiastes declares, “Everything is meaningless!” (Ecc 1:2), I do not believe immediately that life is meaningless. If Psalm 137 calls blessing upon “he who seizes your [Bablyon’s] infants and dashes them against the rocks,” that doesn’t mean I should go down to Persia and start killing Iraqi babies.

What of Old Testament laws about food and sacrifice and uncleanness and the Sabbath? What of New Testament counsel by St. Paul for women to submit wholly to men (1 Tim 2:12), for men to pray with their heads uncovered and women to pray with theirs covered? (1 Cor 11:4-7) What of Jesus’ exhortation to gouge out our eyes or cut off our hands if they cause us to sin? (Mat 5:29-30)

I ask this from my perspective as a born-again Evangelical, who believes that these Words from God are inerrant, and that salvation is freely given to those who trust upon our Lord Jesus the Christ:

Christians, where do we draw the line on how literally we take the Bible? What guidelines are we to follow? We talk about context, about discernment, about guidance of the Holy Spirit, but are we being consistent in our communal interpretations of the basic doctrines found in the Holy Word? If I preach the absoluteness of our forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice on cross, but I see no problems with keeping my hair long because I consider 1 Cor 11 to be a contextual verse, am I guilty of an inconsistent interpretation?

I’m still thinking about this. One thought keeps poking into my reflections: Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Law, and as disciples of Christ, we are no longer bound by the Law; we instead live by faith, by the Spirit. I know that has some bearing on this matter.

Care to add some meat to that idea?

By the way, it was Raffy’s birthday yesterday, coincidentally, the same day Mir went down. Drop by his site and wish him well.

Mir Down 2

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I’m watching live Mir coverage on CNN. About twenty minutes ago, their reporter in Fiji saw bright flaming fragments of the station soar overhead, plunging through the atmosphere, followed by a sonic boom several minutes later. At 2.00 pm Philippine time, (0600 GMT) what was left of Mir crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

Mir Down

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The space station Mir is on its way down today, rockets pushing it out of orbit, approaching a fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Farewell, then, to one of humanity’s first baby steps into outer space.

Now I must stop procrastinating and get back to work.

Scuba Diving in Anilao

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I went scuba diving in Anilao with the family last weekend. (FYI, you non-Filipinos, Anilao is a coastal region in Batangas province, south of Manila, well-known worldwide for its diving attractions.) Starting from last weekend, I’ll be logging — and blogging! — my dives, largely in preparation for our planned trip to Palau this summer. (I haven’t logged my dives for years, so I don’t know exactly how many descents I’ve made since I was certified in 1990. I’ll start from fifty. Most likely I’ve had a few dozen more dives than that through the years, but it should be a safe and conservative estimate.)

Saturday morning, We set off from Aquaventure Resort on rented bancas (large motor-driven outrigger canoes) with all our gear and tanks ready, accompanied by Fabi, one of the local divemasters. It was less than an hour’s trip across Maricaban Channel to Sombrero Island. The water was calm, the sun hot and bright. Pretty good day for a dive.

3/17/2001, 12 noon
DIVE 51: Sombrero Island
DEPTH (Avg/Max): 45 / 60 ft
DIVE TIME: 40 mins

Sombrero Island, east side. We descended into cool water in moderately poor visibility. I had a new mask, and it was constantly fogging up, despite the copious amounts of saliva I had spit into it before flipping off the boat. As a result, I missed most of the scenery because I was constantly busy flooding and clearing my mask to clear the condensation.

Not that there was much to see. Despite a moderate current, the water was green and cloudy, the corals lackluster. My normally wel-practiced neutral bouyancy was a bit off, and my brother Javi, still something of a beginner, was constantly bumping into me with his fins. He ran out of air early, and had to ascend with the divemaster while we tarried a bit under the boat, looking at corals.

3/17/2001, 2pm
DIVE 52: Sepok Point, Maricaban Island
DEPTH (Avg/Max): 80 / 90 ft
DIVE TIME: 45 mins

After lunch on the beach and a short siesta (Actually, the others slept while I walked around the beach and got myself badly sunburnt), we got back on the boat to move the gear to fresh tanks while the banca headed for Sepok Wall.

Sepok is a popular spot: a short wall on the edge of an expanse of sand, tapering to a lush coral reef in the shallows. All sorts of fish and coral live on the wall and along the top of the ledge, braced against a strong current, which makes the dive challenging but keeps the water wonderfully clear.

As expected, there was a strong surface current, but it weakened along the bottom. My equipment gave me no trouble this time, but it was a bit of a trial to swim against the current, and my muscles ached with the strain.

We spotted a small baby lobster clambering across corals along the slope at the top of the wall, eyestalks curiously staring at us. My brother Francis also managed to catch a small puffer fish in his hands. The puffer angrily inflated itself into a spiky ball. Funny little fish.

After we surfaced, I had planned to spend a little time snorkeling around, but the water was so cold, and the surface current so strong, that my aching muscles decided against it.

3/18/2001, 8.30am
DIVE 53: Cathedral, Anilao
DEPTH (Avg/Max): 50 / 65 ft
DIVE TIME: 50 mins

The next day, we woke up early to squeeze in a couple more dives before we headed home after lunch.

Cathedral is one of the most popular scuba attractions in the Philippines. Very near the major dive resorts, the “Cathedral” is two pillars of coral, about a hundred meters from shore, stretching up from the sloped bottom at 50 feet, to about 20 feet at the top. Between the pillars, a group of divers from decades ago has placed a stone cross, about five feet high and two feet across. Near the cross is a small castle made of stone, big enough for a diver to fit in the open “courtyard.” Cathedral is teeming with fish of all shapes and sizes, all around both coral pillars.

A strong current made for tiring diving as we made our way from the buoy (where the boats were tied) to the cross. The flow was a bit weaker there, as it was blocked by the pillars of rock. On arrival, we took out bags of leftover bread to feed the fish — schools of which happily swarmed around us in a huge cloud, pecking at floating bits of liquefied bread.

We also saw a giant puffer fish, probably three feet long, hovering near the south pillar. It was almost stationary, finning against the current, but as I approached it stealthily, it was quick to move away. Later on, when I thought it had left, I spotted it again, hovering in the same place. I’d love to try and get a hold of him. He could quite possibly puff up bigger than two basketballs.

3/18/2001, 10am
DIVE 54: Koala, Anilao
DEPTH (Avg/Max): 40 / 65 ft
DIVE TIME: 50 mins

Our last dive for the morning was at a relatively new spot nearby, called Koala. I found the site largely nondescript. Lots of fish, and lots of coral along a gentle gradient, but nothing you can’t see elsewhere in Anilao.

The current was strong enough to warrant a drift dive, so we just floated along while the bankeros up on the surface followed our bubbles. That way, we wouldn’t have to fight against the current to get back.

We saw a baby shark resting underneath a large table coral. That was about it for the highlights of this dive. Afterwards, we spent the last ten minutes or so of our dive in a shallow, calm part of the reef, about 15 feet, for a safety decompression stop, before climbing up the anchor rope of our banca and heading home.

Just one more travel note: There’s a new expressway in the South. After you exit from the South Superhighway towards Batangas, you’ll see an exit, a few kilometers down the road. Take that, and you’ll find yourself on the “Star Tollway,” which will take you straight through the province across gently rolling hills right up to the doorstep of Batangas City. It cut our travel time by more than an hour.

Well, that’s the last you’ll hear from me for a few days. I’m rather busy, working on a Flash interface for the New Media website. (That’s my company.) So my blog and homepage will have to be relegated to sub-secondary priority for the time being while I juggle the Flash site with other suddenly-active aspects of my professional and personal life.