this article written by inday espina varona On being an editor in interesting times: A ‘witch’ Bothered and Bewildered is so true… have experienced it (with owners and their scared cows and enemies) many times and masakit sa sikmura.

may pagkakataon pa nga na kinakabahan ako na minsan ayoko nang lumbasa yung sinulat ko kasi natatakot ako kung paano titimplahin ng newsdesk yung sinulat ko, lalo na pag patungkol sa kabangga ng may-ari. o inutos ng may-ari.

it’s hard working for somebody with a powerful sacred cow. lalo na pag salungat ng paniniwala ko.

yeah sure, sasabihin nila may editorial independence daw pero…

oh well. that’s philippine media for you.

i am a shutterbug but maybe not a good one.

maybe the reason why i am fond of taking photos of everything (but not much of myself since i am careful na baka maging tulad ako ni sisa) is because we didn’t have enough pictures when we were children. kinda making up for the lost memories ba or something to that effect.

i only had 3 photos of my christening — at nasa bahay pa, wala yung actual na nasa simbahan. i guess these were the only baby photos that i have. hindi pa ata namin camera yun kasi malinaw ang kuha. yung camera kasi namin nun yung gumagamit ng 110 film format and parang laging out of focus.

sample of a 110mm film from frugalphotographer.com

when we were growing up, budget was tight and to have rolls and rolls of film processed and developed was out of the question. that’s why we only have photos of important occasions like birthdays, graduations, field trips… no “ordinary day” photos. that’s why i started making scrap books when i was in gradeschool; it’s a great way to fill up the pages because i didn’t have that much to put in my album.

i can’t remember when was that — probably when i was in grade school (probably Grade 6) — we somehow got a minolta point-and-shoot camera that used the 135 film format. that damn camera’s zoom lens usually gets stuck and the shutter refuses to close completely. today it’s already junk.

kaya pangarap ko talaga nun magkaroon ng sariling point-and-shoot camera.

when finally i was given a weekly allowance in highschool (in gradeschool we were given lunch money daily), i was able to save enough to buy films and then i would save some more to have these developed. because i was good at recording things, most of our yearbook “candid” photos were from me. sadly, since i was the photographer, i didn’t see much of myself in that yearbook.

at that time i was using the canon “autoboy” point-and-shoot baby my mother bought in japan during one of her study trips. the manual was, of course, in japanese so i didn’t know how to get the camera off the “panoramic mode”. i had a whole batch of highschool photos in panorama but still i tried to have them printed in 4R size. go figure.

by the way, we still have this camera and in still working perfectly.

in college, i documented events like drinking sprees and tambay days. there were film rolls that i neglected to bring to the processing center maybe because (1) i didn’t have money, (2) i forgot all about these since i stashed these inside my sock drawer so these wouldn’t get exposed to direct sunlight and (3) i didn’t have money.

and another study/convetion trip brought my mother again to japan and she was able to buy us a canon rebelII SLR camera with AF lenses (one 35-80mm and one 80-200mm). perfect for my photography class (all journalism students had to take the photography course). perfect pocket-buster camera since i spent a ton of money buying negrapan 21 films and photopaper for b&w photos.

i spent a lot of time in the darkroom developing my b&w films. i am proud to say wala pa akong “nasusunog” na film (or “negative” as what others call it) at nahirapan lang ako sa enlargement kasi yung apparatus na ginagamit for enlargement may topak, ayaw mag-adjust nung arm. what can you expect from a state university?

so anyway, i always make sure that i have my camera with me to whatever event or place i will visit because i’m fond of capturing moments in photos. i didn’t have much of these kasi while i was growing up.

good thing din kasi i was able to take some photos of my father before he died. every christmas and new year i would set up my tripod and have the family picture taken. now that my father’s gone, at least kahit papano may pictures kami magkakasama.

so photos are not a waste of money for me.

i wish i had taken photos of our old house. i wish had photos of our old neighborhood, of my playmates, of the place where we played shato and tumbang preso…kasi they don’t exist anymore. i don’t even know how our old house looks like today.

that’s why i am going through the tedious process of scanning all of our old photos before they disintegrate. i started this project two weeks ago when i went home to lb. and i could only smile at the results.

just finished harry potter book 7 last weeked. not really thrilled with the ending. should’ve ended it by killing both harry and voldemort. the last chapter was too cheesy for my taste.

just finished gun x sword this weekend. that was a good mecha anime. not cheesy and funny as well.

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i don’t know why i feel tired. not physically tired but i am getting tired of my job lately. maybe because stress level is high and the special reports don’t help at all. i am months behind my feature article about my trip abroad. i’m supposed to contact my potential thesis adviser and i am stranded with the initial research i’ve done. i haven’t had a weekend that thoughts of what i should do the coming week don’t enter my head.

i don’t know. maybe it’s just PMS hitting me and affecting my sanity again. Or maybe the 1.5-year itch is bugging me again.

hay ewan.

need a vacation. maybe i’m pushing myself too much.

that, folks, is the nokia 5110, one of the toughest mobile phones i ever laid eyes on. it’s almost 10 years old and it’s still working, as shown by this woman inside the FX i was riding one morning.

if you haven’t chucked out your old 5110, i bet it may still be working. i remember one acquaintance in college who dropped her yellow 5110 from the second floor of the PhySci building that sent the battery flying several feet away from the main unit when it landed on earth. when she was able to fuse the thing, surprisingly it was still working AND was able to serve its master for quite a while.

i remember everyone coveted one even when it cost P12,000 to P15,000. Funny thing, i wasn’t one of those people. probably because i knew could not afford a cellphone at that time (i was in 4th year college) and i didn’t see any need for it since my family lived inside the campus. that was the time majority of us survived by landline phones and bulletin boards. pagers then were for doctors and rich geeks.

before the advent of kolorum nokia housing, some people made a business out of customizing 5110s then by airbrushing or handpainting the phone with anything from the philippine flag to voltes v. kinda like today’s G mask.

i wonder how the people who forked out thousands of pesos to dress up their phones felt when their 5110s have become obsolete after 4 years…

another astig phone was the ericsson A1018? that one was built like a tank. my brother had one after the cloning of analog cellphones became rampant in the late 90s. that was the first “text-able” cellphone my borther acquired and that was the time when SMS was still free under Globe and Smart.

konti lang pwede mong katext nun.

after my brother upgraded to a nokia 3210, the ericsson went to my younger sister who was still in her last year in college.

if you want to crash test a gadget, i suggest you lend the thing to my sister and i assure you she is capable of destroying it within 30 days. the strength and reliability of ericsson was put to test when my sister dropped her phone from the jeep’s window and was almost run over by an approaching vehicle on the opposite lane. the phone almost disintegrated but she managed to put it back together.

and the damn thing still worked! the only problem with that phone was that the key pad was not as responsive as before (due to heavy texting and abuse) and at one point it refused to cooperate altogether. if it weren’t for the keypad and weakened battery life, that phone may still work today.

we have more cellphone models and designs we can choose from nowadays but i bet the maximum lifetime of these pathetic things would only be 3 years tops. that’s the price we have to pay for asking too much tech WITH supermodel looks…

before i forget, do you remember the mobile phones that YOUR parents used to carry around which were as big as a wireless extension landline phone? parang pangkaskas ng yelo.