№ 757. The Bygones

 

№ 171. Happy Birthday Gmail, Quo Vadis?

Here's food for digital thought: What are the options and risks of Gmail usage. Costs and benefits? Where are we headed? 1984-esque?

Gmail is a superb service, which doesn't cost me a centavo. Yet, as the CNN article said, it's not free. Nothing in life is, as the cliche goes.

I started out with Yahoo but then moved to Gmail not for anything quantum really but simply because the service and the search features were killer. It's all about the delightful user experience. I don't mind sharing my information. As long as I control the bits and pieces I disclose and get to be apprised of the data they're going to mine, dig in big brother Google.

So here goes another turn for singularity. Happy Anniversary Gmail. Maybe I'll regret this much later, but for now, I can't say I'm on the losing end of the deal.

№ 146. Senses of the Analog Self

I was reading BBC's article about the tensions of our human contexts with our digital toys.

The roar of diced onions as they hit the greased pan. The smell of the skillet crowded with bacon crisps. The turning of the color from opaque to amber caramelization. The warmth of an omelet breakfast on lazy Sunday. The memories of many other rainy days wrapped with comfort food. Yeah, I wouldn't trade these tactile information for any digital replica.

I'm still partial to analog. For now.

But, I must grudgingly admit, augmentation with virtual footnotes is already the next logical step and is beginning to creep upon us. The digital tags are already imprinted on paper and ink newspapers, which show additional photographs and links. Still, still some realities are not meant to disappear with the inevitable progress of science.

Analog cobwebs still have a space to inhabit in this world. Humans, in fact, create sandboxes for all these cobwebs.

I still have our cassette tapes with personally recorded playlists--- side A for the uptempo and side B for the slower songs. Our LPs of Children's Folk Songs All Over the World is now about four decades old and counting. That's how we learned that Bahia is a real town in Brazil and not just that 70s place. Of course, our vinyl record for the Sound of Music, although scratchy with time, is still in its original album sleeve. As I write this, below my desk lay carcasses of old Betamax players, fax machines, telephones, VCD players and, yikes, an AT(?) clone.

Many of these things are just sepia colored niches and curiosities of a passing era. They sit like off-key vintage pieces of the thrift shops in Cubao X.

Here's another classic that should linger for those who, while rooted in the past, are not afraid to brave the critters and comforts of our digital future.

Happy New Year kid, so what's the best up ahead?

№ 104. Sky Fall of Bataan

Dear M,

Mission accomplished! Briefing and pictures below.

7:30 am Saturday. Cubao is really a backpacker's beginning and end point. Most trips start here and mercifully wind down at the same civilization by the EDSA artery, after a long trip.

8:00 am. We boarded the Five Star bus to Bataan. Forty kids via Route 63 promised of green road trip.

5:30 pm. Notwithstanding the bus downgrade, uhmm, transfer in Pampanga, flat tire, uphill malfunction at Mt. Samat, muggy hike to the Cross monument, sardine-can dorms turned quarter-star upgrade, the pawikan (sea turtle) groupies finally settled in at the Pawikan Conservation Center in Morong, Bataan.

7:30 pm. Dinner was served, after the orientation by Mang Manolo and the happy birthday ditties. Hormones, adobo lunch and international goodwill form a noisy cocktail, said an old crank.

For the most part the group was subdued. All that multi-lingual camaraderie can be a drain, Frank. Besides, no one could source a bucket of subzero beer for the thirsty teens.

We were ready to accept our tepid fates. But thanks to Mang Manolo and his ATVs, we had a round of iced Red Horse to fortify our resolve for the late night patrol.

11:00 pm. Volunteers of the center walk night patrols to scout for nesting female sea turtles by the beach. November is the best time. An important part of the conservation effort is their intervention to prevent poachers from harvesting the hundred or so eggs laid in each nest. Volunteers observe the sea turtles as they dig the nest. After that, the turtles are identified, measured, tagged and then allowed to swim back to the sea.

The next process in the intervention is egg management. Volunteers collect the eggs after they are laid, then relocate and transplant them in a safer area --- usually within the enclosed hatchery of the center.

2:30 am Sunday. A long walk in the sand under the moon, is exactly like that, a long walk. Two kilometers.

Moonlight and good weather brought in a lone, but injured, sea turtle to the black shores of sleepy Nagbalayong, Morong.  A swim across nautical miles to the beach, no less than four attempts at nest building, big crack on the shell and an injury at the left hindflipper could not stop the call of nature. Before our hushed, sleepy senses, we saw how life struggles against nature and man-made barriers, in real time. A pin drop, or in this case, the calm sea could be heard as we saw the quiet birth of a hundred eggs!

3:00 am. We were barely awake when we reached the center. But before we retired, we saw a volunteer very carefully transplant the eggs in the hatchery. It's the last step before the long wait of incubation. Fifty days or so.

5:00 am. The alarm went off. Nobody heard. Ergo, it did not exist.

6:00 am. No eggs hatched. Snore. Nobody knew.

8:00 am. If the clock couldn't do it, the smell of food could. Everyone rose and shone to the scent of boiled rice, fresh tomatoes, salted eggs, longganizas (sweet and spiced sausages) and fresh watermelons.

9:00 am - 12:00 nn. The cool, sunny, black beach invited. Everyone obliged---even that guy clad in pink malong. Resistance was futile.

1:30 pm. Bus was stuck in the sand. Oh well, more siesta.

Somewhere off the coast of Bataan.... in Scarborough Shoal, Orcs and Gremlins from the Middle Kingdom were downloading invaluable intelligence from the injured pawikan.....

Senior Orc 1: Sir, there's a UN gathering in Bataan, a province northwest of Manila.
Senior Gremlin 1: Hmmm, an international caucus on regional balance of power?
Senior Orc 1: Sir, UNCLOS and strategic architecture. 
Senior Gremlin 1: Do we have representation?
Senior Orc 1: Formosa, our renegade province.
Senior Gremlin 1: Send encrypted dispatch. Carrot and stick diplomacy must be revisited.

4:30 pm. The tow truck, they call it wrecker, arrived. Finally.

We all lined up for the bus, ready for the tired ride to the city.

Behind us glowed a cyanide sunset.... a mute witness to a rigged pawikan clone detonating a neutron bomb.... somewhere in Scarborough Shoal.

Signing off.

James

Bento Box:

1. No sea turtles were harmed during the trip.

2. No sea turtles and humans were harmed during the conception of the story. Purely literary license and nonsense. Seriously.

3. Some resources:

Pawikan Conservation Center, Morong, Bataan
Route +63
News Info Inquirer

№ 103. Analog Vacations

Staycation is dead. The tea pack says it all in the marketing-savvy write-up:

"No Signal / Herbal

Cell phones, crackberries, laptops --- we thought digital technology was going to free us but instead we find ourselves shackled by wireless handcuffs.

Here's a thought: Turn off the cell phone. Shut down the computer, Get off the grid, Our soothing blend of rooibos, lemongrass and orange peel will help you disconnect from the world and reconnect with yourself. This tea is 100% analog."--- LA Mill Coffee

Ivan About Town

№ 33. The Day the Music Died

I remember those lazy Sundays--- no cable TV, no iPhones, no internet and DVDs. Kids, you can say that the world then wasn't wifi-ed and interconnected.

And it was, no doubt, analog!

Our noises, rants and angsts were heard in rich sepia tones. Stereophonics, of course, came with the ambient hisses and pops. 


But no matter. The songs that lulled the afternoon hours away were classics. I think that's how my music ed germinated and took flight. My ears's early steps began with neither Chopin Etudes nor Beethoven sonatas. Nah. I started with the oldies, the pop songs of the 50s, 60s and the 70s. 


RJ Radio filled our tiny apartment with music from the post war, G.I. Joe era; the British Invasion; the flower power and Woodstock. The Platters, Nat King Cole, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, Timi Yuro, Peter, Paul and Mary, Mamas and Papas, Connie Francis, Doris Day crooned the rounds of our radio playlists.

Here's one of them. 


I didn't realize this was Buddy Holly's version. I thought this was sung by Cliff Richard, also a favorite, when I heard it in the movie, "Have You Heard About the Morgans".