Aja Lapus

Category: Experiences

  • Capturing Moments

    Being one who has interest in photography but never actually learned from another on how to do it, I just take whatever photo my simple digital point-and-shoot camera could take; copying the manner of how other photos were taken, and not taking into account the features my camera possesses. [Raindrop photo taken during the seminar] In fairness to me, some [non-photography inclined] people say that I, most of the time, take good pictures—well, on automatic.

    Having the chance to attend the Basic Digital Photography Seminar of the Engineering Student Council, I then learned a lot about the insides of a camera. Representatives from Canon taught us how aperture, shutter speed, exposure, flash and all other things work together [or separately] to produce a certain quality of photograph.

    Photo exhibiting a macro focus on the flower foreground.

    The seminar was just a short one, as most of the time was spent printing them. [For free!] But the Documentation Committee who managed the seminar took my [four] prints to be placed on a future exhibit. I still have the digital copies of course. Take a look at my Flickr set.

    By the way, my nose bled when they were setting up their equipment. They displayed three Canon Digital SLRs with one having almost the same price as a used car! They also had a two printers with them. One of which prints borderless postcards directly from the camera. *holding onto my nose now*

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 3-day Seminar at Cardona, Rizal

    School has obviously been busy—I haven’t posted anything in a while. Managing time for school, work, friends and family have been really challenging. And, during this past weekend, I didn’t actually have any weekend at all. We went to the Leadership Training Seminar of the Engineering Student Council in Kuhala Bay Resort where most officers of different organizations from the Faculty of Engineering, including us ESC committee heads and assistant heads, have been invited.

    The first day was somehow more talk and less play, and our team, the yellow orange group, wasn’t winning anything significant from the games. Then came the 2nd day where the whole afternoon was spent on the Amazing Race which lasted until dark. After eating dinner that night, all nine groups plus the hosts (ESC Executive Board) performed in the Cultural Night for some entertainment. The Cultural Night was where every team should perform anything entertaining may it be singing, acting or dancing. Our team was picked to be the last one to perform and that was already 1 am. We expected everyone to be bored since the activities prior to that one really made us tired and sleepy. We even thought what we planned was corny but we still pushed through to the performing it. Ate Joyce sang, while three others danced and all others did a skit after Kuya Dennis introduced us. To our surprise, while we were performing, everyone was laughing hard and one judge even commented that they have, saved the best for last. We won 200 points for that, which placed our team in third overall during the third day awarding ceremonies.

    I could really say that the place was great except of course when the rain accumulated in the roof of the building where we stayed and soaked the roof with water then dripped everywhere, which flooded our room. Good thing I placed my bag and things on the bed and not on the floor saving me of my clothing.

    I can’t find my infrared adapter for my desktop [maybe Ate Lei took it] thus I still could not transfer my photos from my phone—I will as soon as I could get it.

    As for the things I’ve learned during the 3-day seminar: I’ve learned that I could be a good comedy actor having a role of someone who is sleepy like the one I’ve portrayed during the Cultural Night. I’ve been commended a lot of times as Bitoy—and I haven’t got any problem about that. 😛