WOMEN

Women! Bah! Who needs 'em? Well, actually I do. I love em! But damn, I'm still having trouble drawing them! Bah! Working on Ochlocrat has made me realize this even more. I just bought the magazine DRAW! where there is a really nice feature on drawing sexy women by Brett Blevins. I need to work on this thing really bad, if I'm ever going to continue drawing much more....

The sun has finally decided to come out this afternoon! The rains the past couple of days were due to the tail end of a cold front hovering right over the Southern Tagalog province, meaning right on top of me! Now that the rain has gone, and the cold front remains, it's pretty damn cold now! Which is cool! Add to that the smell of fresh paint, well, it's Christmas! Strangely enough, I associate the smell of paint with Christmas because many times in the past we have had painters come in the house for some painting work which all have coincidentally occurred during Christmas. So the smell of paint always brings back the memory and the feel of Christmas to me.

Hello to my architect friends who visit the site! Hello Bimbo, Darwin and Cesar!

It's amazing. Just yesterday the sun was out, it was hot, and nary a cloud in the sky. Today I woke up and I thought I woke up early because it was still dark out. Actually I woke up the same time I always do, it was just dark, and it wasn't supposed to be. It was raining, and it rained all day without stopping. It's so dark and wet it makes you think it had been dark and wet for weeks and you don't remember what the sun looks like and how heat from it feels like.

Aw man, I haven't been here in a while. I've recovered from my illness and now I'm desperately trying to finish the deadlines that were further delayed by my 2 weeks of not being able to work. I haven't been able to visit the message board much and I haven't been able to post here much. I feel so bad about those people I've inconvenienced. I hope I can make it up to them.

I'm sick of being sick.

I'll be in Cebu for the next few days. Architect stuff. I've brought work with me anyhow. See you guys...

I saw a woman get hit by a car today. It was one of the most blood curdling things I've seen. It's one thing to see it in movies (and in that case I've seen a LOT), but to see it for yourself right there with your own very eyes is truly quite shocking. The woman on the side of the road lying still, a younger woman trying to help her get up. It was horrible. I was in a bus and I saw it in a split second, but it's enough for the sight to sear right into my mind. I don't know really how long I'm gonna carry this. Probably a very long time. Probably all my life. The woman didn't seem to be seriously hurt as I looked again as our bus passed by. She was moving, and it was a good thing a police jeep was immediately behind the car that hit the woman. I'd like to think they were able to bring her to the hospital.

I'm currently trying to design a new page for WASTED for this site. One of the sections I've thought up is a "Letters" section where I would reproduce letters I have received through the years in response to the book. Since Wasted was first published before the Internet became big, most of the letters I got came through the post office. Yes, I've still got them all in a box here in my room. I've been rummaging through that box, which also contains many other personal letters from friends and other acquaintances. And looking at all these letters I suddenly became sad. I realized that writing letters and sending them through the post was a huge part of my life back then. When I got into the Internet, I literally forsake letter writing for this faster and more immediate mode of communication. I hadn't even missed it. But upon seeing all these letters, I realize I miss it more than I expected. It's always a terrific feeling peering into your mailbox and seeing an envelope with your name written on it. And inside are pages of paper with words written by the sender's own hand. This is a physical part of this person that is now in your hands.

This has made me think and reflect really hard. It's a part of my life I want back. I feel like I want to start writing and posting mail again....

More Email Blues

Sometimes I get attachments in the mail, which is OK, as long as they're not too big. By big I mean anything that exceeds 500K. The only files that I accept that are larger than that are those that directly relates to my work. Someone I know sent me a THREE MEGABYTE file and man, that's just NUTS. I'll be online for an hour just downloading that stuff. And I can't afford to hold my online time hostage to something like that. So I made a safeguard, and programmed my mailer to automatically reject files that is larger than a certain size (and I'm not telling). I may get your email, but your attachment will remain at the server where I've asked them to delete such attachments automatically. But those sending me files with regards to work, you need not worry. Just let me know you'll be sending me something...

Where's My Email, Laguna?

I haven't been receiving email for the past 24 hours or so, save for 1 or 2 spam messages. To receive 1 or 2 spam messages is unusual in itself because I usually get more than 20 in a 24 hour time span. I haven't received any messages from Yahoogroups at all, and I suspect, I haven't received much personal mail as well.

So if you've written me and haven't gotten a reply, well, there's why.

So Long MSC! It's been fun.

I've finally let go of my other server, MSC.net.ph. So if you send me an email to my old address "sangabriel@msc.net.ph", I will no longer get it. I've long told my friends and other correspondents not to write there anymore because I'll be letting it go really soon. When they called today to say my 100 prepaid hours are up, I decided it was also time to finally give them up.

My account there seemed to be a hacker favorite because my account runs out even though I'm not using it. Viruses are sent and are made to appear to come from my IP Address. I just decided to close it just to give those hackers someone else to kick around. Besides surfing had been painfully slow the past few months. Instead of just infuriating myself, well, I thought I'd just let it go.