alzheimer-free

perhaps "listen" is such a powerful concept placed inside the box of this six letter word.  perhaps for people who don’t, such a concept doesn’t exist.  maybe there is this non-conformist part of me which makes me listen less and be continually bullish with my own thoughts.  and my record of not loosing (though not necessarily earning much) blindly pushes me to non-conformity.

i get a certain hype when people tell me that its wrong and not doable (a hype to do it more).  kaya i’m having a prob now on interpreting crystal’s view of stopping this used sanitary napkin art (see www.accumosaic.com).  because she knows my non-conformist personality and might just not mean it in toto but rather further motivate me..hehehe or perhaps i’m a person who really don’t listen.. i have observed that the more people believe on things they previously thought not doable the more i get demotivated to do it.  i love people to despise me, to not listen, to hate and to be angrily nerve wracked (hala..im giving some people a clue).  it motivates me more.

and because of that thought-process and some successes with it.  it makes me a non-conformist hard headed bullish non-listener. sometimes i feel that it’s wrong.  for example, i like this hard wood frames coz for my taste it looks great and has an aesthetic value!  im forcing this thought to people and have been continually explaining its diference with popular polystyrene frames.  ofcourse there are some people who actually liked it but i continually didn’t listen to more of people’s opinions.  opinions like:

1.  "it looks great aesthetically but its too big for our home."

2.  "it looks affordable but our budget could not afford it."

3.  "it looks heavy and non-minimalist for modern homes."

4.  "wow, it takes a long to make!"

5.  "we can’t preview the finish product since it’s custom-made"

6.  "its too flaunting for a conservative illongo home"

i did not listen to these because i believed so much on what i think and believed that i could sway people to my thoughts.  in reality, i may have shifted some expectations and provided new options but its non compatible to most people’s homes, ceiling height, purchasing power.  its big, lengthy and a lot of other nega things.  sometimes i hate my idea of being in business "to learn than earn".  i wanted to learn if i could really push what i wanted to the market instead of listening into the market.  and i got what i wanter by earning less.  if i just listened with the polystyrene thing it would have earned me more.  but for the past 5 months, i did not.  just today.

businesswise it costs less, its faster to make (20 minutes or so), it has a lot of variety (since plastic moulds are used), it will provide higher margin ratios, it’s not heavy, it can be transported easily, no need for personnel assistance and most of all it will fit in with the designs of a regular home of the target market.

so foolish of me to push on what i like and not hear what the market wants.  i would like to give some other examples on its effect on my personal life but i’m too tired of seing in my face all my foolishness.

i have made a new blog on www.accumosaic.com.  its actually connected sa www.accumosaic.wordpress.com but since its too long for site recall i just linked it to the recallable domain.

in there, you could see some of my design concepts, challenges, processes and techniques used in the studies of doing some art pieces.  my recent post has this url http://accumosaic.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/blood-stained-sanitary-napkins-as-an-artpiece/

its about using sanitary napkins as an artpiece.  please feel free to comment on the site as it will be very helpful after laborious work on that thing!hehehe  it is also a trial site for my proposed full service website with online payment options to cater most western clients.  possibly 2co or paypal.  it will be very helpful if you could tell me info regarding content expectations of you as a reader or a possible client for that matter.  non techie people are encouraged to comment.

let us first treat the words as separate concepts.

decongestion (errr…not checking the dic again and giving my own..whahaha) is giving a lee-way to a very tight situation.  look at my newly uploaded pic where my nose was decongested with our regular almost 4-inch cotton buds (it was eye poppingly painful!whaaaaaaaaaa).  and imagine that the doctor enticed me that it feels like nothing (what a heck!).  when he prepared the 18-inch flexible laryngoscopy camera i was saying to myself are you sure what your going into rj (this is just a simple cough rj right?)?

slowly the snakelike thing entered the insides of my nose and made a "u" turn to enter my mouth (i was tearing with pain at that moment).  when he further pushed thru my throat to see my larynx (i shouted and coughed..coughing while that "thing" was inside my oral self!whahahaha).

let’s define the other word..unemployment.  it is a very far reaching topic than what most of us in the educated metro thinks.  its not only seeing our college classmates not being employed (yet still subsidized by their parents) and not only usual UP folks jumping in and out a job wishing a deserving job!  in a more graphic manner, it is the unavailability of the local government and local industries to support a living for the regular barrio folk.

and even if decongesting my nose to reach the larynx was such a painful and hard experience, this "unemployment" is in the same way a more painful and hard experience for our society.  for me, it erases the respectability of the "honorable-prefix" of our politicians because we are ineffective as a society if we become great while leaving a lot of people in the countryside on the "unemployment quick sand".

i really feel disheartened hearing that what unemployed people want is only a 300 peso/week job to support their families yet no one can give it to them on a more stable frequency.  it is largely dependent on the seasonal variations of our economy.  they go from people to people just to ask for "jobs" or "food" (and not even money!).  from planting rice, to tilling the soil, to harvesting palay, to being a helper in a construction, to odd jobs here and there, to being a sex-provider of the town-plazas at night (receiving a 20-peso "janitorial fee" from the town gays or fish traders), to being an ingenious theif (most nang popular "illonggo group" are from nearby towns)!

i can not simply blame them..in fact, if i’m in that predicament with my wife crying seeing our son squeeze sa "gutom", i might do any of the things above.  people can not simply say, magtrabaho ka!  kasi they are!  i can not really imagine how 300 pesos per week is budgeted by the lucky ones who get a 2-month milling job in the rice mills (and it just crushes me thinking of the unlucky ones who don’t).  parang hindi na ako pwede kumain nang steak sa pancake house when i want to kasi i just imagine that it’s a week of substinence to a family of 4 and isang kain ko lang!

kaya when someone from the metro goes to a town and start asking questions relating to minimum wage provided by the local employers and how is it different with their "city standards", people emphatize the local employers.  puro naman "dada" yung intellectuals na yan at wala naman maitulong sa local unemployment scene as they say.  and the minimum wage earners of the city can never have a larger "disposable income" than the underpayed countryside employees (considering travel expense and/or billeting expense).

i feel really blessed, feeling the true concern of my people when i get a little sick (a simple cough for this matter).  parang i feel the sincerity and the concern (pinapagalitan na nila ako dahil hindi matigas yung ulo na hindi magpagamot!).  maybe because in my own little way i decongested "life" to them (offering at times twice, thrice or even four times the regular town rate with regularity).  with these, i will still continue employing the rejects of corporate philippines and help them dream of things not thought by most "highly graded morons".  parang even if i don’t earn much, the fulfillment that this gives makes me see life in a brand new light!

continually use me dear lord to show your love to people in the countryside.  i challenge people, stop talking and start helping people in the countryside with employment (and not just 1 time give-aways) for a better philippines!

i need to release all of my hurting and traumatic experiences earlier in life to be more of a person that has life!  a life of positiveness and thanksgiving to our lord.

i’ve drawn out the "heart thorn" part mid last year.  now i’ll draw out the "mind thorn".  this thorn hits my emotions and persona with pacquiao-like piercing blows when i was younger.

previously, i can’t accept the fact that i have a 99 percentile UPCAT result in math and feels and thinks like a dumb sa UP undergrad math courses.  i feel like an IDIOT!  i feel like a huge DUMB!  and i’m crying in isolation eating up my pride that i’m doing everything and spending every possible time to study math but still fail.  am i just lucky to get that exam rating and i’m for the long time the plainest dumb?

and i never knew the answer to that question until today.

i was amazed and even happy listening how my grad school classmates presented answers for our quantitative analysis course even if wala ang professor.  i was happy that i understood it and thought that was easy.  i was also specially appreciative of how our classmate from westbridge (forgot his name..sorry) explained conceptually the normal curve.  it were things i should have already learned from highschool (if only i was in class and not in chess training).  how did it happened that i still don’t know this things conceptually even in college ?

it’s because of a lot of fortuitous events.  events that haunted me from my young life.  this resulted to my taking up of a master’s degree for the main purpose of EMOTIONAL RELEASE and nothing else.

1.  i was an immature 16 to 18 year old at that time.

2.  entering UP with just a 3rd year HS schooling on my brain (because of chess!). 

3.  i did not have enough money at that time.  our family can not afford to get a boarding house and separate budgeting of meals so as to burden me with the 1 hour atleast travel to and from barotac nuevo each stressing day.  i produce my own money from petty businesses like wood framing and t-shirt printing on days before enrollment.

4.  i do not have any book.  borrowing from the library then would make me wait until the 5pm release when my class ends at 230pm.  on exam days, i’m always late to reserve book in the library since im still from barotac nuevo and always left without a book, a classmate to assist or a teacher to really guide (but ofcourse this is how things are run in UP).

5.  i always choose to leave early to tend the small business that i started (a PC at that time to do desktop publishing designs).  and i’m just happy processing the orders and giving all of the proceeds (and not hold even a dime) to my mother.

6.  i also often skip lunch to save.

7.  i can’t simply act the "pakapal poor boy" way.  since i have a military colonel father and no one would believe in such a funny situation to be receive any help from friends (but not much since i have poor boy friends also).

8.  i don’t ask any extra money since i have proper common sense in not asking from something that is in itself lacking.  it delimits my informal activities spent in school to get informal tutoring from my classmates.  in short, i have no support group for the school pressures.  by the way, i have never attended any evening activity in UP (and you guessed right.  i can not afford the more costly transportation to our town if i leave late)

i guess this explains why no matter how i want to study well.  i can not understand.  Thanks to this grad school, it dawned to me so brightly that it was nearly impossible to ask so much help from the lord at that time with these predicament in place.

if i were the "rj" today, i know i could have done way better since things now are not quite like these.  but in retrospect if i haven’t learned life lessons from streets and hardships at that time, would i be the "rj" today.  i migt just be a scholarly highly-graded moron who knows a lot of things but can not make a lot of things happen from nothing?  things like making a difference to atleast 20 families because of employment.

to be able to be free from this emotional problems,  i guess i should perform well in grad school.  since most of the barriers are already broken down and i have my 20 or so staff to do the business things for me.  i only work now by choice and not because i need to, i hope i will be released from this thorn.

whatever may have happened, i know that god has chosen the best path for me with his "invisible hand" of guidance.  i’m sorry lord for doubting your magnifiscence in letting me fall ealier in life in able to mold me strongly today.

thank you lord jesus.