The Facade of Christmas

The air is cold and the people around buzzed like bees. Groceries are filled with shoppers sometimes one will wonder as to where were these people from as you dont see them on the ordinary days. It is the time of the year when the mood is said to be joyous and forgiving. It is also the most expensive period of the year.

As for me, christmas is no more than a day of having the chance to once again see the people you do not want to see. The time of the year when groups of friends gather on a so-called special occasion supposedly to rekindle the bonds of friendship that has for years since they last played together in the school playground. While for some as I have observed, this is also the time to show-off to their group as what they have had and the like. Many coming from foreign and distant lands brag about their new gadgets, claiming to be sophisticatedly refined. Yet, it will all boil down to the expectation that is self-serving. These people must have something in their mind going like - I hope they see this stuff; Oh...they will surely admire me...; Yes surely they will all be amazed.

Christmas is nothing more than a paganist tradition for the world's sake that has been over-rated by many especially the those who believed in the christ. Many accepted this time as the birth of their saviour who someday will come back to take them to heaven. While in fact it is merely a modern day term for a ritual once known in the Old English as Cristes Maesse. The majority are inclined to believe about santa with his reindeers while in fact it was as well derived from a dead man's practice of giving gifts to children in the name of Nicholas in the Fourth century in the place called Myra.

Inasmuch as believers will want to attribute this day to the holy baby they claimed, they can never deny that these beliefs they have were mere derivatives of pure myth. The attempt to present this season as a holy one is grand, and yet by true essence, it is nothing more than another version of paganism in a state of denial.

Filipinos are slaves, indebted since birth

A few minutes ago, I was laughing out loud watching an old Filipino movie - a comedy about two families who were once good friends and relationships turned sour after the other family won the lottery. Story goes that the head of family A gave the lottery ticket to the head of family B as payment for his debt, which family B's head reluctantly accepted - being uncertain if the ticket will win.

The keyword then hit me. Debt. Almost everyone is indebted to someone. I went on a search about my countrymen, Philippine National Debt as of 2009 had a figure of Php 1.851 Trillion! One of the source is this site. According to the National Statistics Office, the country has an estimated 91 million people. With the assumption that the government did not cheat on it's own statistics (as what the politicians normally and almost always do in elections), I found that every Filipino citizen owes Php 20,340.65 (this is not easy money locally.)

An ordinary Filipino earns by a rate as low as Php 80.00/day. Majority of the people are barely making it on the minimum wage of Php 250.00/day. In a month, average pay is between Php 1,920.00 to Php 6,000.00. A white collar job will be within the Php 12,000.00 to 40,000.00/month. White collar jobs are a minority.

Basically, the hurdle to pay up what we owe is so steep, every Filipino will die trying to pay off debts we didn't even avail of ourselves.

Yet, we hear many politicians and public figures over-reacting to a Singaporean columnist name Chip Tsao when called the Philippines a nation of servants. It is a tough reality but, he has a point there.

I think Chip Tsao is better than Gloria Macapagal Arroyo because he was able to see the reality that the country is in to - Gloria did not. Now i don't have to elaborate to how I can say such - the Le Cirque dinner is more than enough to speak for it.

She could have just went to the Philippine Embassy and tell the cook with fat salaries to prepare dinner for her entourage.

Goodbye Dubai

I was watching National Geographic's Episode about the grandiose Palm Island of Dubai, it was indeed fascinating. No wonder my expat friends have always recommended it as good watch. Then as I was watching, I began to see the possible flaws of the project. Among which is the water systems, the rest are overshadow by extravagance. Things too luxurious are not good, in my opinion.

It was likewise just lately when news breakout about Dubai's somewhat inevitable economic downturn. A member of our group had most of his investments in on of the banks most exposed to Dubai, and now he lives with anxiety as to how he will possibly recover from his blunder.

Dubai as we remember is a small "village" as my friends call it a few decades ago, and to a village it will have to go back.

It was not a bad thing for a village to have a Singapore-like growth, but, Dubai went beyond the line have undergone projects too ambitious. With too big operating costs at hand, even oil can not make it's economy sustain for long.

As many have projected, Dubai's ecnomy will - hopefully not - fall within 2010, definitely. I hope my friends out there will have enough time to secure their investments.

Connecting the Dots

Life, if we take a good look at it, is like a series of dots. A group, actually. From these dots one can determine the type of path we take by the manner of connecting them.

Just a while back, I made a call to a friend - PJ. She's a classmate from 14 years ago. Yes, it's been a while. Surprisingly, she works somewhere near where my grandparents's home is. Anyway, it was a conversation, she's getting married soon, and I owe her a few gifts for that ;).

I remember her as a good friend, nice, and accomodating when you need her attention. She left our herd on fiftth grade (yes, she might have thought we don't deserve to be her friends, hehe - kidding). As brilliant as I remembered her, I can still presume that she is - even now. With the contrary - I haven't seen her for 14 years, a LOT have changed. I can only presume. I can only likewise hope, that she is still a very good friend.

In a matter of admission, why not, I liked her that much - back then. Lucky for me, I was able to go over THAT a few years back.

At this very same day, I was able to communicate back to my friends from Europe - most especially Carina.

It's been three years since I last had a communication with her. It was nice to know that her daughter, Jasmine, grew to be healthy and brilliant. She's much like an angel in reality.

On the dark side, a college classmate and a relative at this same day, insisted of enforcing his mistake over our transaction. Without even even giving me the apology that I have been asking them for, now they have forced me for the second time on a challenge. They have made me cross the Rubicon, in which from here, I can no longer retract from the challenge they have exposed me to.

A Look at Corsair H50 - CPU Liquid Cooling solution

It has been two years since I had my hands on a liquid cooling system. Lucky enough for me, a friend of mine decided to take one for me as bonus last week and so I decided to put it on my rig.

What comes in the box, it's nicely packed by the way, is the pre-filled closed loop system with a copper colling plate and a 120mm fan. A detailed list can be found here corsair h50 product specification. The price was around Php 3,500.00 based on the receipt, including shipping.

I can't bother to dismantle the current desktop I am running, so I decided to check my inventory if I have some things to spare and good enough that I came up with these:

a. Gigabyte G31M-ES2C
b. Pentium D 930 Processor, LGA 775, 2 cores 3.0Ghz
c. 2 x 2gb Geil
d. HEC Raptor
e. 80gb Seagate SATA

The installation for windows smoothly went through 45 minutes, including all the utilities needed for an upcoming benchmark. Upon reaching the desktop, we ran speedfan and got this:

As for the validation for the cpu, here is cpuz validation.

Normally, we boot up at around 41 degrees celsius on a factory heat sink fan from Intel.

Not a bad cooling solution, is it?

---

*the entire printscreen of the desktop can be found here