Netcabins Gets Annoying

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Netcabins is beginning to annoy me. The server problems are fully excusable, since these are just the growing pains as they optimize their system, but their poor customer service is getting to me. The lack of advanced warning to users concerning major service changes and upgrades — like these new popup ads — is a glaring lapse, and these FTP login problems are getting worse and worse.

I’m watching these guys for improvement, because they still look very promising, but if these problems worsen, or if they don’t provide an inline banner to get rid of the popups soon, I may have to move again. Digital Rice is starting to look appetizing.

Tuna Melt with Rice

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I have cooked up a plate of butter-garlic-cheese fried tuna with rice, and am now wolfing it down with much gusto.

Broken Chair

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I have just come home from church to find — in a rather startling manner — that my chair is broken. It gave way under me. I will go to the bangketa outside the grocery later and buy myself a little plastic stool, so I can continue to comfortably sit at my computer desk.

My top-floor apartment window, 6 stories up, faces north towards the airport and the city, and today is a beautiful, clear day. The sun is out, but not searing, and there’s a delightfully invigorating wind blowing and dispersing the Manila smog, so I can see all the way to Ortigas, and even up to the mountains north of the city. What a pretty view for a relaxing Sunday afternoon! I’ll post a photo of it here sometime.

Just to cap off the experience, I have popped La Dolce Vita — music from Renaissance Naples, performed by the King’s Singers and Tragicomedia — into my CD player. Aaahhh, I simply adore ancient music from the Renaissance and early Baroque. Last Friday, I purchased a CD of Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium, and it was absolutely beautiful.

Index 4

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Index 4 is up. Silvergirl, you may find the concept slightly familiar, but still sufficiently changed, neh?

More Senatorial Consternation

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Here’s an opinion column by Inquirer columnist Isagani Cruz about where our senators’ loyalties lie.

Interestingly, those favoring the President have certain interests to pursue, like government assistance to rescue them from financial straits, security of tenure for their relatives, appointments to diplomatic posts or recommendation for an international tribunal, or plain devotion to a common background or former occupation …. The prejudgments of the senators are quite evident during the daily proceedings. The law is only secondary, the evidence of the parties immaterial and irrelevant to the final decision. The basic consideration is personal regard for President Estrada, or lack of it, regardless of the merits of the case.

The Coming Storm

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You know something really depressing? Despite all the damning evidence and credible witnesses testifying against President Estrada, and despite the obvious clarity of the crimes he committed which led to his impeachment trial, the verdict of guilt still rests with the Philippine Senate. A two-thirds vote (of 22 senators) is required to convict Erap and dismiss him from office. And that’s most likely not going to happen, simply because more than a third of the senators have vested political interests in keeping Erap as President. (Are rumors true that he is funding their political campaigns? I don’t know, but I do know that many re-electionist senators are blatantly supporting him.)

In short, Erap is going to be acquitted on Feb. 12, despite the avalanche of credible testimony proving his guilt on several charges of corruption and bribery.

And if he is acquitted, there are not enough people opposing his administration to form the critical mass needed for a new revolution. The leading local cultic religions, Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai, which constitute a fair percentage of the poor, uneducated Filipino population, have ordered their followers to support Erap 100%, effectively splitting the cultists off from the largely Catholic masses. Even without the religious discrepancy, Filipino public opinion is unstably divided between support for and outrage over Erap’s administration, so that there is no clear majority. This still will not stop Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Sin from trying to start another “People Power” movement, just in time for the 15th anniversary of the 1986 People Power revolution (when a united Philippines ousted thieving dictator Ferdinand Marcos from his throne).

I see a major socio-political disaster coming. Pray to God for the Philippines, people. It’s going to be a rough, potentially bloody ride.

Index 3

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By the way, I uploaded index3 this morning. My layout vision is coming to life. Now, whenever you load the site, the index redirect page will randomly select one of three index pages and go to that one; but all of them will have the same content, thanks to the magic of server-side includes. (I just hope the SSI isn’t slowing down the load time unnecessarily.) Whaddayathink?

Internet Diet

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I’m planning to go on an Internet “diet” this year, cutting down on unnecessary and time-consuming online activities and unsubscribing from useless, extraneous, or redundant free services. I just want to reduce my online presence to the bare essentials. (It may please you to know that Blogger and my home page are NOT among the accounts I plan to delete.) I will, however, unregister myself from ICQ, Hotmail, Mailcity, Unimobile, and a slew of other online services. Those of you who ICQ me a lot (which doesn’t happen much, anyway), I’ll be making myself accessible through email instead.

Manila pollution

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The pollution in Manila is awful, especially when there’s no wind. There’s a perpetual brown haze hanging over the city, so thick you can not only smell it in the air, but feel it, clinging to the skin. When you enter Makati, central business district, the sunlight turns sickly amber, and when I go out in the streets to travel, the itch in my throat and lungs leaves me with a painful cough.

And it’s getting worse.