… Drove home in the thickest Antipolo night fog I can remember since we moved here in 1994 …

… Came from the wake of a co-parent of the Dana girls team who died suddenly, a mere two weeks after we had a wonderful Baguio football training camp where I kidded her about her pink outfit …

… Cheng was 37, and I’m drinking beer, wondering just how incredibly stupid was it of me to have said to her husband, “Kaya mo ‘yan” …

… Riana says it was so cold in school earlier today that you could see your breath condense in the air as you exhaled …

… (watch me breathe) …

… (no, please, let me watch you breathe) …

Posted in: Reflectcelfer | Comments(0) | November 2007

Below is a recent post I made in the Year IV students’ blog for Internet Education Class in which I asked the seniors to write an essay on the possible practical applications of the internet for a particular career or profession they envision for themselves in a decade or so from now:

To a significant extent, the internet breaks down the barriers of real time and space. It expands our ability to roam and wander beyond our borders without budging from the privacy and security of our homes, schools or offices. (Hence, browser names such as Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Safari connote the sense of adventure surfing brings.) We can visit existing places without actually being there. While radio, TV, movies and other traditional mass media all offered this vicarious opportunity (and still do), the internet revolutionized it as we could now get to choose where to go and when we felt like it. We now had some control of what we want to experience through our very own personal pixellated window.

Computers and the internet also brought us new interactive worlds, realistic or fantastical. We can create avatars and “exist,” “live” or “die” in a digital universe, even one of our own making. (Students of Teacher Ygy’s Y2 class for Values Ed have immersed themselves in The Sims for their current project.)

(Users can become so engrossed in a digitally-simulated environment that they lose themselves in it. The line between the real and the virtual disappears. Not surprisingly, some game designers devote their lives to perfecting their creations, and for them, their real and virtual worlds merge.)

Internet and computer applications operate through a predominantly visual and audial medium, limiting our experience mostly to what our eyes and ears can perceive. Their technological pathways restrict feedback to our other senses (taste, touch, and smell). In contrast, print media like books and magazines have made efforts to engage our senses of touch and smell with perfumed strips and textured materials (for children’s books, we have Lift the Flap options and embedded swatches of cloth and other items). Of course, some interactive games, especially in video arcades (Dance Revo, first-person shootfests, race-car driving and sports sims) and now Nintendo’s Wii with its pointing and motion-sensing abilities, try to mimic a more physically faithful encounter, using mechanical (motor-driven) aids and more advanced gadgets like pressure-sensitive touchpads and remote controllers. However, simulation has (inherent) sensorial and physical limitations, including the following:

• It works only for controlled environments.
• 3D visual re-creation is more difficult to achieve than audio.
• Other sensory feedback either doesn’t exist or cannot attain a level of realism or acceptability for temporarily suspending one’s disbelief.

To state the obvious, some real-life (and not-so-real) experiences cannot be replicated.

Nonetheless, if we see the internet as a means not of supplanting our real-world life, but of complementing or enhancing it, then the challenge should be to find those opportunities for doing so.

Imagine yourself in the year 2020, choose one of the following, and write an essay on what possible uses the internet could further offer.

1. If I were a neuroscientist…
2. If I were a professional football player…
3. If I were an atheist…
4. If I had a band…
5. If I were an online game designer…
6. If I were a magazine editor…
7. If I were a nature conservationist…

Let’s make some common assumptions and describe them specifically (e.g., universal ultra-high speed internet access; projected or holographic avatars in sim-enabled areas; etc.).

Post your essay on the Y4 blog.

Deadline is Wednesday, 17 October 2007.

P.S. The seniors were given the option to choose other professions/careers. Submitted assignments thus far include Ana’s musings as a movie director and Steph on being a pilot.

Posted in: Exit Stage Write, Reflectcelfer | Comments(0) | October 2007

Having Mr. Pagsi over for his talk to the HEdCen faculty and staff about Teaching As A Vocation last Friday (14 September 2007) brought back a flood of memories for me. He was my first year high school teacher in both English and Filipino, and my mentor in the Dulaang Sibol, the Ateneo High School drama group/brotherhood.

Learning to love the English language was among the gifts we received from Mr. Pagsi in our lit course. He introduced us to the works of the Bard, and the first Shakespearean play we took up (if I remember correctly; this was over three decades ago!) was Julius Caesar.

For one major English assignment, he asked us to pick any soliloquy from the tragedy to memorize and recite in class. Most of my classmates went for the classic “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” speech of Marc Antony from Act III, Scene 2. I chose a less familiar soliloquy, still by Marc Antony, taken from Act III, Scene 1, where Antony stands alone, grieving over the corpse of Julius Caesar, despairing and seething with rage, swearing to avenge his lord’s murder:

ANTONY

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,–
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue–
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

This brief but emotionally stunning piece bears the power that only words of righteous grief can possess. For sheer imagery alone, the scene combines nearly unparalleled gore and intimacy and pain. Despite never having watched it staged, I saw in my mind’s eye how Antony, kneeling and cradling the lifeless bloodied Caesar in his arms, blinded by tears and wracked with helpless guilt for not having been around to protect his king, made his wretched and grisly oath.

Ahh, how vividly I remember the passion that Mr. Pagsi inspired from his students…

Posted in: Exit Stage Write, Reflectcelfer | Comments(0) | September 2007