Aja Lapus

Author: Aja

  • Musing #0005

    Why do minor subject professors (i.e., those teaching English to students taking up an engineering program) think they’re teaching major ones trying to make students give up all their time just to pass their bloody requirements? And, they don’t even teach, they just rail to whoever they want to raise their know-it-all ego, and assume their students look up to them as wise and knowledgeable persons.

  • Ignition Afterparty

    Last Sunday night, the UST Engineering Student Council held an acquaintance party entitled Ignition: A Blast to 100! The party featured dance numbers from the Engineering Dance Troupe, the ESC Executive Board, the organization presidents and the ESC Adviser, Sir Butch Carbonell. Other performers include the Engineering One Voice, a comedian-slash-comedienne, and popular local bands such as Sugarfree and Urbandub, among others.

    ESC Web and Technical Committee Being one of the organizers of the party, I became tired even just midway through the night as I was stationed at the second level of the venue for the control of the technical stuff such as presentation shows, and lights and sounds. My feet almost killed me running up and down the stairs just to make sure everything goes according to plan. I even did some spontaneous non-technical stuff such as carrying food from the parking lot outside to the backstage inside for other staff and for the bands.

    Nonetheless, there were benefits of being an organizer as well. [even though the huge number of people squeezing their way from point A to point B did make steps worse] For one, I have accessed the backstage for some photographs and autographs from Ebe of Sugarfree and Urbandub. Here's my Organizer ID signed by Ebe. And, I was spared of my 200 bucks for a ticket to the party.

    My so-called afterparty was not that good though. The one supposed to drop me off at my house was picked up by his parents, ergo no car to drive on his own. I couldn’t commute alone at midnight for about 2 hours feeling tired and sleepy—I’d wake up naked in the middle of nowhere then. Good thing Kuya Bert let me stay at his and his friends’ apartment for the night. But before that happened, of course we couldn’t leave the head organizer of the party alone in the dark waiting for his ride to pick him and his stuff up, so we waited … and waited … and waited until the ride came at about 2:30 in the morning. And we arrived about 3 o’clock at Kuya Bert’s apartment. ‘Twas the first time I’ve slept at a friend’s house—I didn’t even have clothes to change to for the next morning. But still, sleep was so great and I woke up being able to feel my legs.

    I still haven’t collected all the photos I was in from my friends, so just watch out for updates on my Flickr album. [I didn’t want to be a theif’s eye candy bringing my digital camera with me when I will just be riding public transportation to go to the party more than 20 kilometers away from my home.] So, I just borrowed from whoever brought one. 🙂

    Update (1 September 2006) : View all photos on my Flickr Ignition set.

  • Gmail for My Domain

    Ever since I’ve received my first invite to beta test Gmail, I’ve been using it as my primary email as if it is already a release version of the Webmail client—no major bugs and excellent features. I am glad nothing from it disappoints me.

    I then came across a random blog entry that told me Gmail is offered for domain owners as a Webmail client. I’ve signed up to beta test Gmail for your domain on my domain, and now I’m using it instead of forwarding all email to ajalapus.com to my original Gmail account.

    Gmail for your domain inbox screenshot Here is a screenshot of my Gmail for your domain Inbox.

    Management seems easy, creating users and aliases for those users—I currently have two, one as a main user and the other as the catch-all (i.e., catch everything else) user. I haven’t encountered any bugs as of now. And, comparing Gmail for your domain to Gmail, I could only find two differences listed below:

    1. Gmail for your domain doesn’t have the ability to view and display avatars of Gmail contacts—no biggie.
    2. Gmail for your domain only has 2048 MB of storage compared to Gmail’s 2749 MB and growing—2 GB is still enough.

    Oh, and you could look at my sign in page—it’s so cool! 😛

  • ABS-CBN should timestamp their news

    For those students who want to have a little break off from school: If you’ve read this news, which has been circulating as a reference during this past hours, you’d be happy. Of course, what you will be reading is the declaration of no classes on a Friday, which states no date on any part of the article, and no more. But if you follow the said declaration, you’d be marked absent tomorrow. Here are the reasons why:

    1. There’s no date when the article was posted nor a date when the suspension of classes should take place.
    2. At the end of the article, it stated that The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), meanwhile, gathered an additional 300 soldiers to augment crowd-control units for the 20th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution.—meaning it was posted last February.
    3. And another thing, if you look at the StoryId on the URI and compare it with a more recent news’ StoryID, you’d notice that there should be 13,487 more articles between what’s posted in 7:51 AM (the time the article was posted) and today‘s 4:07 PM.

    I admit I was scammed after a student council officer told me there really will be no classes for tomorrow. But, I was still skeptic about the article because of those things I’ve mentioned above. You be the judge. By the way, if you really want the proper guidance about the classes for tomorrow, read the article from INQ7.net.

    ABS-CBN should really timestamp and datestamp their news.

  • Annoying People

    We know for sure that we couldn’t always get what we want. What’s more irritating about it is that some people are born just to hinder us even from the simple things we crave in life. Yes, we could do something to stop them. But, what if chance made us let the annoying person do what he was born to? Then it becomes more annoying, right? I think you could now guess: yes, one example of it happened to me just this morning. Here’s how it went:

    People always crowd the Times (Manila Times Village) area during rush hours, and I’m almost always one of the dozens of people running towards whichever FX taxi stops even if it is private. 😆 When one empty cab pulled over this morning, I was luckily in front of the door to be the first one to board. But, being the gentleman that I am, *teehee* I let the girl behind me board first before I did. Just after sitting comfortably, I’ve noticed the next guy beside me looked to the girl in such a way that he knows her. *oops* But he never said anything. For the whole trip of about an hour or so, he never did talk to her; he just paid both their fares. Now you know that I was the annoying person. 😛

    Well, it was his problem, wasn’t it? If he had said anything just as I’ve let the girl ride the cab, I would have let him board next. If he told me after boarding the cab that he’s with her, I would’ve said I was sorry. If he held her in the hand or on the shoulder, I wouldn’t have boarded right after her. (Now I guess he’s still courting her—he would’ve held her otherwise, right?)

    Lesson: If you want to keep something dear to you, never let go. If ever you’ve already let go but you realized you want it back so bad, fight for it [or at least talk]. Or else, someone else might just sit between you.