Chronicles of Narnia Book: Lost and Now Is Found

Relating to a previous post, I've just received news from one of my cousins that the book is with them. :) Hooooray! *Phew* Just made my day :)

Eager To Learn

Talk about eager to learn.

Today's news on CNN has provided a enlightening news - a hopeful situation to a weary, violence driven world.

President Pierre Nkurunziza, inagurated last Aug 19, 2005 has promised to scrap primary school fees of $4.5 per student ni his coutnry. Now the schools have been overwhelmed by over 200,000 more applicant students this year - almost double that of the previous year. A good sign that people ARE interested in learning, given the right price - in this case, no price at all.

I've been an avid fan of raising education as a means of uplifting poverty in non-industrialized countries: its a chance to teach people how to fish, rather than giving them the fish. It is a long step, and requires a tremendous amount of commitment on the government's part, as well as its people. A similar late presidential candidate in the Philippines, Raul Roco, advocated education. He ran for president, and without hesitation, I voted for him. He was the only one of the presidential runners that had education as an answer for the country.

Unfortunately, he was unable to win, and unfortunately also, recently passed away.

I don't pretend to know all about economics, but I would imagine that education of the people would help in any circumstance. And I honestly believe that in the long run, it would uplift poverty and increase productivity. But then, that is my opinion. Hearing that somewhere else in the world, a country's leader has promised/attempted at least a free primary education for his people gives me a bit of hope; Someone somewhere out there with the power to do something just "did it".

Now the country is trying to cope up with the increased demand for education ...

Dont you wish during times like these, you'd like to help out an idealistic cause?

The primary education initiative is spearheaded by UNICEF, if I'm not mistaken. Why dont you drop by their site and see what you can do?

Gym Progress Week 13

Ok, I'm going to start writing these gym progresses 2 weeks apart starting this week... since I seem to be doing very well ... sort of :)

I had an amazing time today... first time I decided to try out the advanced level class... and found out that its not as hard as I thought it would be. Interestingly enough, I headed off today to an advanced level class only to find out they were going to do a multistep class... ugh. That means instead of the usual 1 step platform when doing the choreography, you're doing the steps with more than 1. And it was 4 steps yesterday, no less. Thank goodness I was able to follow through, although it would've been nice if we had finished the third block choreography. Met some nice people there.. hahaha and some cute ones too. I hope they're not gay. :P

I had my first view of Steve's advanced level class (normally I attend the intermediate level) today, too, at the TST branch. There's not much difference actually, so I think I'd be able to follow through if I tried his advanced level classes. Unfortunately, I wasnt able to attend this time around because I was.. errmm... "just on time". Which means to say there was probably like 40 people ahead of me in the line. And I was left with no space, and no steps to use with, so I just settled for working out on my own, killing time until the next class which was the usual Bodypump class. As far as I can say, it worked out pretty well.

Ahhh.. wow. 3 hours worth of gym in one day. Man, I love holidays :P (Today is the day after the MidAutumn Festival, and its always a holiday the day after this. :) )

Anyways, the quick rundown last week:

Wed (ISM, BP): Suzette, Phyllis
Sat (ISM): Steve
Sun (eh, none!): Suzette sick... ugh, didnt want to wait anymore. Just skipped ALL the usual classes for today.
Mon (SMM, Weightlifting, BP) Louis, Me, Patrick

ATTENTION: Misplaced Chronicles of Narnia Book

I seem to have misplaced my Chronicles of Narnia Book.. its a special gift from my barkada for my birthday a couple of years ago during my college days... I know I lent it to someone, but I can't recall who he/she is... and it seems whoever I've lent it to nicely forgot to return it to me. Its been almost 4 years since that book was borrowed... and darn it, I want it back!

Please, please... pretty please?

Thank for you very much for listening to this important announcement.

Bloggers Out There: Linking with "REL=nofollow"

Something's changed and its a good thing.

To fellow bloggers out there. This is a piece of news that I wasn't really aware of until recently when following an argument/debate on the web. Some of us have known for some time that the number of links pointing to a site increases the page rank within search engines like Google and Yahoo. It means, the more links in the web for a site, the higher the probability that that site will come up at the top of the search result when entered in the search engine.

Example in question: The argument/debate I was just referring to above. The argument was in question of the validity of a technical article that could potentially wreck havoc and crash a database, but since the publisher has not retracted the article, and the author who has refused to admit (to a certain extent) the potential danger of the article even after numerous objections by the a number of the similarly experienced personas in the community, quite a number of sites raised objections from their blogs and forums. What ensued is a huge amount of references linking to the original article, and consequently, increasing the actual article's page rank in the Google site. To the uninitiated DBA who might be searching for answers that remotely relates to this article, it is highly likely that he will stumble upon it because of its high search rankings. This could possibly cause disastrous results to the poor DBA, since search engines cannot recognize if a posted link is linked numerous times because the link was attributing to a good, or a bad thing.

In comes the piece of news I just mentioned. Google has proposed an additional attribute to the link anchor to safely ignore such links into its ranking engine. The proposal (and also in effect) suggests to add the additional attribute "REL=nofollow" within the html link to allow the webcrawlers (or whatever you call them... sorry I'm actually not sure) to safely ignore the links, and therefore reduce any unnecessary increase in search ranks. References can be found here (where I originally found about this nice piece of addition) , here and here for 1/18/2005.

This proposal was designed to reduce the number of comment spams that increasingly plague blogs these days. Having experience of getting these kinds of spams, I immediately logged on to Blogger to make sure that I can turn this option "on" for my comments, and to my pleasant surprise, it seems Blogger (being a part of the Google service, most probably) has automatically implemented this for my blog. Referring to one of the ad comments recently, I checked the source code to find out the following:

Your blog is great If you a health issue, I'm sure you'd be interested in

<a href="http://www.crohns--disease.org/" rel="nofollow"> Crohn's Disease Stop Crohn's Disease</a>

A very nice addition I would say. But a last comment to those bloggers for their entries out there.. this probably only applies to comments section. When writing and linking pages where you don't want a site to get creditation, always remember to edit you html to include the "REL=nofollow", just to be safe.

We don't want to give creditation to those who don't deserve it, nudge an innocent, neophyte DBA into the wrong direction and crash an important database (maybe your banks'?) in the process.

Spawning New Blog For Technical Stuff

I've been considering this for quite some time, but I figured now is the right time as any to do it. This thought was prompted by the same considerations being weighted by my friend, Kristoffer, and I thought I might as well do it also.

So what's under consideration? It shouldn't affect the handful of readers here actually: I'm going to set up another blog specifically containing Oracle entries and other database related matters. It'll still be me writing down the articles, so the occasional quirks, side comments and rants will probably be still there. But the articles will be more technical oriented in nature (if my mood and discipline can help it, anyway), but (and I hope) will also be readable for beginners who are interested in databases and Oracle [new] features. Aside from sparing my current handful of readers to the point of boredom with technical articles, this will be a stepping stone for me to reiterate things I've learned at work as well as expand my horizons and list down my discoveries in the Oracle/Database subject, of course, in writing. Besides, I find that writing down things help me focus on specific topics at hand instead of laying it all out in my head (which in due time, when not written down, leads to a mush of left over spaghetti, lasagna, beef stroganoff, peanut butter and Coke).

Besides, the best way to learn something is to publish articles and set it about for peer reviews. Of course, there's this problem with "peers", but I'd probably be grateful if experienced DBAs like Tom Kyte would accidentally stumble upon the site and get into a discussion on the entries. For now, it will probably serve as a repository for what I know now, and what I will gather on in the future. Peer reviews and helping other fellow DBAs will just be an added bonus. Additionally, I have tons of document at the office.. and I just can't keep track of ALL of them. This puts everything in one place, available for me anytime, anywhere, as long as the blog host is up and I have a net connection to connect to :)

This also means that my time will be divided between both blogs. So post frequency will probably abate a bit (Not that this one has a high post frequency anyway) it will mostly depend on what I am working on and what "tickles" me.

Until I find a better way of reorganizing both blogs so that both still be in chronological order as I publish them (I would not like to needlessly cross check entries between 2 blogs), I'll probably still use this blog as the main site and link new entries from the Oracle blog. So if any of you see entries with "exciting" entries containing text like "New Entry entered in Oracle blog: The effects of using Undocumented Parameters for Super Sizing the PGA", bear with me for a while. :)

For those who want to be challenged and stretched thin with boredom, you can head to the new Oracle blog to get a piece of the "action".

Thanks and good day to y'all!

Gym Progress Week 11 & 12

It has been sometime since I logged on to talk about my gym sessions, hasn't it?

Not that a lot of people care though.. but it also helps me to keep track of what I've been doing lately. Take this as a rant, online journal and blog page. I don't pretend it is a blog geared towards a specific issue or topic... its not like a work blog, or a literture blog, or any list of interests available to the imagination... well, except that its a blog about me.

No, I refuse to admit that I am self centered and egotistic.

(... You did not just call me that, did you?)

Neither matters. On with my entry then. :)

Lets see... been 12 weeks since I started regularly going to the gym. Had a couple of sessions this and last week:

Gym Progress Week 12
Tue (ISM): Lorenzo (no BP)
Thu (ISM): Frankie (no BP or weights)
Sat (ISM): Steve
Sun (ISM, BP): Suzette, Elizabeth


Gym Progress Week 11
Tue (ISM): some cardio, no weights, Steve
Thu (ISM, Free weights): Maggie, self
Sat (ISM): Steve
Sun (egad..): didnt go! Was supposed to go to the Whampoa branch... but didn't get there on time :P

Its amazing after not going to bodypump class for 2 weeks, right after you take one (which is yeterday btw) ehhhhh... your whole body hurts as if it was the first day you were back in training after 6 months. Egad. I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to survive the day today at work....

And on a side note, Happy 3 Month Gym Anniversary! Definitely something to celebrate about. Talk about long commitment. (And incidentally, the longest commitment that I've is with my current boyfriend. 4 years and almost 7 months. That's nothing fancy though, you get to ignore THAT sort of commitment when you're particularly lazy and doggone tired to talk or meet up. Too many excuses to mention.) :P

In A Weird Sense...

emeeehhhh.. I'm so excited at the moment, I just can't think or do anything.

You'd think that its normal, but its actually funny. I've been cooped recently at work writing up a server status document: writing out this and that, how this can be improved, how that can be improved... but because I needed to finish writing it up, all the improvements I've mentioned.. well, I haven't had the chance to implement or test them out. I just know they're going to work, but how much and how efficiently is another thing... So its just all writing for the past few weeks.

And now, I've just finished the document, and I'm excited at the thought of doing actual improvements... but I'm so excited about it, I can't think straight and start working on it. I'm just a mush and a plethora of ecstasy at the moment.

Life is such a strange experience.

Either that or there's something psychologically wrong with me.

...

...

...

I'd like to think it is the first reason, though.

And Another Ad Comment Strikes Again!

There must be something wrong with things.... I dont think people hang around to look at my blog THAT often, and you dont hit it with google as much anymore (there was a time when I was at the top of the list... but, oh well) And there it is again... an Ad comment.

I'll be turning on the Blogger's word verification, see if it helps any....

Gym Lifetime Memberships and [Stupid] Sales Pitches

I managed to make a huge mess out of a deal I just recently got into last week.

To elaborate a little further, I've been thinking about advantages of getting a lifetime membership in my current gym. Which lead me to a deal that I thought was pretty reasonable, and turned out that I might've gotten screwed by the salesperson in the process.

Lets start with the idea of a lifetime membership. You're given the privileges of facility availability and usage for all the branches within the country by paying a specific lump sum, and that's that. Some would probably employ a small yearly fee, but generally, its the lump sum that matters. There would be additional perks, but generally if you think you're going to regularly go to the gym, and for a long time, usually lifetime memberships are a good deal to begin with - these companies repackage it in such a way that getting a lifetime would be cheaper than paying monthly, and right after signing the contract, would probably hope that you dont use it as often. Because, as I'm sure most of us know, commitments are hard to keep and extending it for more than 10 years... well, 10 years is a long time, and a lot of change can come up along the way to change your lifestyle in the first place.

But to the determined, it should be a swell deal.

I have one back at home for Slimmers International, but unfortunately, despite the promises of having "affiliate gyms worldwide", it turns out this promise is a sham of sorts. I've never personally had experience trying to get into a gym outside the Philippines that's "affiliated" with Slimmers, but my brother has, and he's quite pissed off to find out that upon arriving to the "affiliate" gym in Hong Kong, they've never even heard of Slimmers International. Oh well, so much for that. At least you're promised all out usage of the facilities when you're in the Philippines.

So, I've toyed around the idea for sometime, the lifetime membership, particularly in my current gym, California Fitness. I'm not bothered by being "sent" away when I head off to another country's California Fitness (these countries would be Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, plus affiliate gyms in the States called 24-Hour-Fitness, which California Fitness is a wholly owned subsidiary of) because this gym is bigger, and more widespread. I've asked around with sales and other members, to see if there are any limits of usage in other gym branches worldwide, and I'm told not. No limit, just the initial lifetime contract, and the promise of worldwide usage. In case you move to another country, the lifetime membership is transferred to the existing country (as long as there is a California Fitness gym anyway) for free.

Sounds like a good deal.

I'd like you to suspend your incredulity for a moment, after reading this. I am sure a lot of people would object to lifetime memberships.. well, for the fact that they cost a lot and are ridiculously expensive. But there are a lot of advantages of going to the gym, and I can speak honestly to the advantages, since I've made a lot of research for a long time. Obviously, when you're young, gym is a great way to workout the body. Young people have got all the energy. And further on, despite the fact that you're 40+ or 50+ years of age, lifting weights is still an option because it improves bone density, and that's an important key to avoiding brittle, low density bones brought about by age. Plus, some of the gyms have yoga, dance and the usual step classes, and they usually keep up with the times so they tend to add on more "trendy" classes. Admittedly, the more specialized classes would be mainstream... if you're planning to seriously learn jazz, hip hop or hot yoga, you might as well enroll in a more specialized club. But for general purposes, these would be good enough. So the whole deal sounds swell, in a sense. Relocation would be no problem. So, now that I've gotten over the explanations, I hope you can suspend your disbelief for a moment and hear me out.

The screw up in question is related to a lifetime membership payment upkeep that I signed in contract for HK$588 per year. But to my surprise, right after I was lucky (or unlucky , depending on your point of view) enough to have found out from another member that she's paying only HK$88 for hers.

This obviously irked me. If the upkeep can get THAT low, how come I have to pay HK$588 for mine? The person obviously overcharged me. After much inquiry, I found out that to get a HK$88 deal, you will have to own a Visa Platinum. I don't have one, but my mom does. Unfortunately, during my "sales session" with the sales person, it seems that he "conveniently" forgot to tell me this little fact. He did inquire what credit cards I have, but right after mentioning one that seems to have a promotion, he didn't inquire any more about what other cards are accessible to me, or inform me of any other promotions. It may have been my fault that I didnt inquire further... but there's such a thing as a customer is always right, isnt it? And there's also such a thing as giving out all the options to the customer. At least that's the belief here, and particularly for known big names like California Fitness.

I havent returned to the gym yet to complain, but I do intend to make a ruckus. Its only been a week since I signed the contract, and owing to the feisty nature of Hong Kong people, when encountered with a situation like this, they're bound to complain a whole lot more than I'd be willing to do, and its about time I learned to be a local and follow up on this little oversight.

Darn stupid inconsiderate money-grubbing urban predators. Its time to show my claws.

Cheeky Cannibal

I have got to stop chewing my gum so hard... Its been 3 weeks since I suddenly "accidentally" bit my inner cheek mistaking it for gum, and it swelled so much. Its happened 6-7 times since then, and right after its almost recovered yesterday, I bit myself again... Big time.

I think sooner or later I might transforming into a cannibal ... ugh. Eating myself. Disgusting.