more than a year ago, i installed ubuntu in our aging desktop/download machine. it was ok at first until i had to install the drivers of the gadgets perpetually attached to it like printers, scanners, speakers…hardware manufacturers are harsh to linux people, you know.

i gave up.

plus the terminal and the sudo ek-ek command lines were killing me. so i switched back to windows.

xandros on eee pc was crap since i could not find any driver for my nokia that i use as a modem. no more linux.

but then eeebuntu is tempting me back.

but still no support for nokia. i don’t want to go back to the sudo ek-ek nightmare and manually configure ubuntu for my nokia/modem.

tamad kasi ako.

i should be am having news fatigue right now, especially that i eat, breathe and dream news everyday. that’s why as much as possible i refrain from posting anything related to what i do.
 
but i have to blog about this global meltdown. here at home we’re already losing thousands of jobs as the crisis hits the parents of the companies that have invested here. two days ago, intel announced it is closing down its cavite plant while epixtar reportedly closed shop too. philips, deutschebank, caterpillar and home depot have just announced job cuts. we have yet to see whether they’re gonna axe workers here.

private construction is slowing down as home purchases have taken a hit since early last year. we will have a lot of ex-construction workers now roaming around or drinking their sorrows away at some neighborhood sari-sari store…

i don’t have to enumerate the economic repercussions (locally, that is) of the contagion that started by those greedy wall street guys who were just featured by Fortune in their latest issue (“Sending Wall Street to Jail”). the bottomline is, the country should not be looking at a soft landing. it has to be realistic and acknolwedge that our growth may stall.

so those lawmakers should pass that effing 2009 budget so we can already start those pump priming projects!

rants aside, i do hope those who will be laid off or were already sacked can find new ways of earning money.

come to think of it, i should be thankful i still have a job. advertising is the first thing that companies let go of in a crisis.

i was not able to post any review of the latest gadgets i bought/won/received as gifts this christmas since work got in the way of my blogging.

this past christmas, my gift to myself was modest compared with what i bought in the past (asus eee pc, etc.). i’ve been looking for cheap but not tunog-lata speakers for my ipod so i don’t have to turn on my laptop or desktop pc if i want to play my mp3s out loud. earphones can be so irritating at times.

i was looking for fax machines in SM department store (in their stationery department, of all places), when i spotted this:

this TDK Xa-40 is an ipod/mp3 player speaker unit but it’s not as portable as i hoped it would be. still dependent on a very unattractive AC adapter (a.k.a. wall wart). i was attracted to it because it was white and has a minimalist feel to it — in short, it is a really cute cube. the speakers are on both sides of the unit while the subwoofer is underneath. even if i crank up the volume to maximum, there is minimal or no distortion at all and the bass is really good for something that only costs P1,600. yes, it does not have an ipod dock. who cares? speakers/ipod docks cost an arm and a leg and this TDK serves its purpose well for a fraction of the cost of ihome, latec lansing or bose ipod speakers. if you really insist on having a dock, you can buy it seperately (for P1,500 in some vendors) and just plug the speakers into it.

the TDK Xa-40 has only one control and that is that power/volume knob in front and when the unit is on, it has a bluish glow. i already scratched the knob, hence, the lightning-like thing there. Other Half and i already used this to boost my toshiba laptop’s audio when we were streaming downloaded Chuck episodes from our 6-year old desktop/download machine into our bedroom.

in one christamas party i attended, the only source of music was a colleague’s ipod touch plugged into this speaker unit (the color of the cloth mesh was orange instead of lime green like mine). one PR person commented that the TDK speakers were really good and was surprised when i told him how much the thing costs. he said he would be hunting for it in SM the next day.

Hamburger speaker

i received this little thing as a christmas gift but it was already january when i was able to get my hands on it. i thought the box contained one of those really helpful usb flash drives (and i received fewer flash drives this year). but lo and behold, it’s the hamburger speaker! it costs about P750 online, or so i read in one of the tech forums i visit. i first encountered this (or was it the x-mini?) at the consumer electronics live @ SMX in october. they were selling it for P1,000 at that time.

it’s really tiny, ergo, very portable. you can shove it inside your bag and off you go. it has a rechargeable battery somewhere inside and it you have to use the extendable mini usb cable to charge it. you use the same cable to plug it into your mp3 player. that little critter is loud for its size and you twist it so you can extend it to boost its bass.

yup, there is bass but the sound is a little bit tinny for my taste. but still it’s useful when you have those impromptu parties/drinking sprees. or if your car stereo is so ancient that it does not have any aux in where you can plug in your ipod/mp3 player, then you can use this instead and pump out some music while driving. Other Half and i also used this on my toshiba laptop when we were streaming 30 Rock into our bedroom. apparently my 15.2″ laptop’s speakers are not enough for my husband who already lost some hearing on his left (or right?) ear.

if you need speakers that do not really have to be that portable, i recommend TDK. but if you need something small and you’re not really particular about boom boom bass, then the burger mini speaker is alright.

i was chatting with a colleague from another company and told her i suddenly realized i have become a “monster” myself, like the two other people she has constantly been complaining about in her office. i told her i discovered that it comes with the job we are stuck with i.e. the go-between the upper bosses and the field workers and the constant pressure being applied to us by management to get ahead of the competition. this also excludes the constant headaches i get at night after closing shop.

i know my colleagues are hating me right now.

what can i do?

this is the only presidential inauguration i cared to watch. ever. and i heaved a sigh of relief that he was not assassinated nor any untoward incident happening to this man. i hope those white supremacists stay back.

back home, i doubt if anything like this would happen, like electing somebody that could inspire hope and change.

if pooh-kyaw or rex navarrete would run for president, then i think i would get interested in the presidential race.

had a nice chat with some colleagues last week over smallish halu-halo and some wine (bad combination).

heard that a businessman who has been on a buying spree since last year (who had a very public spat with a kabaro some months ago) will be increasing his stake in the philippine star. however, the ultimate tsismoso (with a wide readership, i daresay) amongst us told us that the belmontes (tama ba pagkakarinig ko?) were at odds with each other because of that, ergo, the sale could still take place. if it pushes through, then manay would be owning significant stakes in two newspapers. does it make business sense? i guess it’s a SMART move…

so it makes sense that (i heard from our top management) the philippine star is the only paper that has yet to trim its manpower during this downturn. yes, even inquirer daw and bulletin laid off workers.

—

had one of our collegues sniff the top execs at one function we attended to see if his gaydar will suddenly go off and scream “ennnggkk ennngggk ennnggggk!”. oh yes, he did smell something and told us _______ is positively gay.

nothing wrong with being gay. it’s just that we had to know so we won’t make goo goo eyes at some good looking exec who happens to be a closeted queen. that would be tad too embarassing for the queen.

—

some newspapers will hold the musical chairs game again. i do not understand it. just because one paper did it, all the papers should follow?

—

my thesis adviser messaged me over facebook and asked if i were still alive. i still could not compose a proper reply as i’m still raking over my brain for it. what could i possibly say? that my life is turned upside down now?

—

still a slave. nothing new. i need a car since hailing jeeps and fx in quiapo at night is NOT safe.

go ahead and laugh. or cry. you’ll just shake your head…

and i thought the jerry seinfeld-bill gates ad was bad enough…

i was watching Maalaala Mo Kaya earlier tonight and it was strange because i cried towards the end of the episode. i don’t know what made me cry. maybe because the drunkard, abusive father asked for forgiveness from his son he banished more than 15 years ago or because of the plight of the letter sender’s family.

he was a sakada from negros.

i remember joel abong. he was a sakada child whose emaciated body was plastered all over the newspaper’s front page (and for the life of me i cannot remember what newspaper was that because i’m not sure if it was right before or after EDSA I). joel abong became a symbol of poverty and helplessness. he was dying of hunger — and so were hundreds of other sakadas.

little did i know that this child — skin and bones and all — would haunt me for eternity.

my mother always showed me the picture of joel abong whenever i threw tantrums and didn’t want to eat. i was really a picky eater then. she often reminded me that i was fortunate that i had something to fill me up whereas joel abong did not. my nanny, yaya, caretaker what-have-you (i don’t know what to call her) then told me i would become like joel abong if i didn’t eat whatever that was on the table.

because of that i could not forget that image. nor his name.

and his memory was again resurrected in my head when i watched MKK tonight. two of the letter sender’s siblings died of hunger and neglect. they died because of their parent’s ignorance and their situation was further aggravated by their father’s abusive nature and irresponsibility.

but then i think the hacienderos are more to blame. i am now being political here.

anyway, when MKK showed the ashen corpse of the letter sender’s youngest sibling, the image of joel abong suddenly flashed through my mind. no, they didn’t look alike but their lasting impression on me was the same: it was that of horror.

i’m horrified that somebody could just die like that. i’m angry that a child could die like that.

our housekeeper asked me (she was watching MKK with me earlier when we were having dinner) if it’s true that such things happen. yes, i said to her. it happens everyday.

–

i remember my friend of so many years (we’ve been classmates since gradeschool until college) had a nervous breakdown about 6 years ago. she was working for a USAID project and part of her job was going around the country, going to the most depressed places you could think of, and see the areas that needed “development”.

she met a family from basilan who cut and gathered firewood for a living. all of the children had to work alongside their parents day in and day out so that they could earn a maximum of P250 a day. collectively. for a day’s work each of them only earned P50.

in contrast, her bosses — the project consultants — were earning at least P350,000 a month. she complained that some of them weren’t even reporting to the office and weren’t doing any work at all since most of the “work” just piled up on her. she said these people were just milking the project of those much-needed dollars. she knew they weren’t doing anything much to help solve the problem and all of what they were producing were papers, recommendations — those sort of stuff that wouldn’t put food in those wood gatherer’s stomachs.

she could not reconcile these facts of life. she was questioning whether there were any sense at all in these projects. she asked me, why can’t the US government or some multilateral or bilateral donor just use the P350,000 a month paid to those “consultants” to help the wood gatherers and their kind she encountered instead?

she was so distraught and disillusioned, which i think contributed to her breakdown. she suddenly resigned from her high-paying job (at that time) and wandered around for a while until she found herself again.

i couldn’t blame her. i, too, would get depressed with that kind of work.

i once worked as a research assistant in one “development” consulting firm that bids for ADB and WB projects. early on i already got the feeling that none of those consultants were really sincere in helping people get out of poverty. one glance at their compensation packages (yes, i’ve seen some project proposals with figures in them) was enough to convince me that it was all a farce.

and once again — i have to admit it — my father was right all along.

—

i cannot find much about joel abong, let alone the haunting photo, here in the Internet. except probably for the info about this guy who was, unfortunately, also named joel abong from cavite that google found in friendster, nothing was said about this sakada child.

or about the sakadas of the 80s for that matter. they are now forgotten.

but i will never forget that photo. that image will still haunt me. probably until i die.

whenever i read pam pastor’s blog, i feel like there’s nothing exciting happening to me as a journalist, like going to hollywood and interviewing all those celebs? and i don’t get to stay in nice hotels on a regular basis.

and why is that i don’t get to shop like her? injustices in this world…

–

UPDATE: now i know. i have a different set of priorities.

but still, it would be neat for my paper to send me to hollywood to interview hollywood celebs.

i think my days as a field reporter are numbered. i don’t know what i feel, how i should feel. all i know is i still want my byline and churn out good stories.

and i know i will miss it a great deal.