Another year has passed....

whew! I was reading my blog today when i suddenly saw the archives part.. August 2004... Strucked as i was... it's almost a year! Then i quickly clicked on it and saw my very first post... August 21, 2004.. was going to the INNERVATION BioSoc acquaintance party.. wow.. and from today.. 21 days to go until I reach the date.. August 21.. then 3 dAys after that.. My birthday...


wow... hehe


I got my Harry potter book six from my aunt last night. They arrived last night hehe from the UK. :D

i'll rave about those things on my next post hehe

having a headache... again...

Visitacion de los dioses... / Visitation of the gods

Aug 2 to 4, 2005... the PAASCU representatives will be coming to the UST College of Science for Reacreditation.

I saw many changes in our college which started last summer. Renovations renovations renovations.. repaint repaint repaint...

I have no qualms about it. I thought of it as a good thing that ever happened to our college.

But the only thing that i really didnt like was the "scripted" instructions... They gave out leaflets that contained the Vission Mission of the College.. This was... very wrong... in my opinion.. The first time I entered the College, every classroom had a Vission Mission poster. But when i reached second year, these posters were gone.. And now they gave it to us so that we would be INFORMED... I mean.. they should have given these to first years every year! Not only when some people would check our College... Now some profs were asking us to KNOW and BRING the course outlines. At least there were some who told us to act as if it was just another ordinary classroom session.

Awhile ago, I saw some new boxes which contained first aid kits in every laboratory... I was surprised... why ONLY now?

Really.. I have nothing against these things but WHY ONLY NOW? These should have been done before.. And now they are now being very strict with the rules and regulations of the College? It's really disheartening.. OUr college had attained the highest Level of accreditation (Level III). This year was only a RE-accreditation.. I was wondering when the College reached that level was it only a "show" too? Was it only at those days that the college was TRULY a LEVEL III College? Sigh... I wished that some students would now REALLY follow...

The title.. last year, we had a story in Lit 102 which was also titled "Visitation of the gods." It also depicted the same theme as what was happening now in our College. The school in the story also changed some things. They put up posters about the lessons in every classroom.. The teachers became "plastic." BUt there was one teacher who thought of it as a show but in the end she also ended up being one of the "plastic" teachers...

I hope that this won't happen to us.. I hope that after the 3-day inspection, everything would go on... The "script" becoming the "routine"....

My ****NEW***** desk!!! :D

woohoo.. finally had my desk makeover.. too bad i forgot to get a picture of my previous desk hehe now.. it's finally clean and organized! looks like the Fab 5 (queer eye for the st8 guy) or the Knock First team came over to my room and made my desk hehe

anyway, believe it or not! I was the one who arranged everything. loved the desk when i first saw it :D hehe anyway here are some snapshots :D with FRAMED pics!!! finally i can make one! :D

Random HeartBeats...

#1...

2 weeks of exams... felt like hell... i feel very bad for the outcomes of the exams were not as what i expected it to be.. Embryo Lab practical.. i got a teenager score over 40.. *sigh* then monday came... Cell and Molecular Bio Lec Long quiz... it WAS literally a LONG quiz... felt like i was taking the Prelim exam.. almost 120 items... 9 items essay which was all "i dont know where he got that" questions... and each was a 5 point question and some items were divided into 3 items which was also 5 points each... it really s**ked.. i felt so stupid while answering every question... then came Embryo Lec quiz.. another quiz from hell... but at least it was not as hard as the CaMBio quiz.. all went well.. i hope i got what i think i should get hehe... then lastly.. Genetics Lec!!! Darn...... it was a pretty easy quiz in disguise.. shouldve studied the names wholeheartedly because there was a 22-item part which were all names and their achievments.. darn... although i got more than half of it but still i did not pass the quiz...

what i think... STUDY HARDER!!! know ur priorities!

#2
BioQuartz was published..... AT LAST... after weeks and weeks of revising.. finally.. although there were some flaws in it.. like the dates of activities.. some minor errors in the news... and yes it is now in a newsprint paper.. not the whitish paper we used before.. We are just going with the flow of economy.. hehe

keener eye for errors.. ultimate follow ups when it comes to dates..

#3
July... one month more.. and we will be doing our second sampling for our thesis.. we barely finished half of 76 bottles... but now.. only 5 bottles left.. im so grateful.. shouldve prioritized it before.. earlier.. i was scared for i thought that we wont finish it this month.. because of the rains of quizzes that strucked us..

know your priorities...

#4
bought some new clothes hehe sort of a breather for everything that happened in the past few months.. can't believe that Large-sized shirt fits me !!! bought 3 shirts from Blue Soda.. i was shocked when the saleslady told me that the largest size was Large.. i was disheartened coz i wear an XL shirt.. and i liked their shirts.. but the saleslady insisted that i try the shirts.. so off i go.. as i put the clothes on.. it didnt fit.. i was disheartened again... then when i looked at the size it was a Medium.. hehe so i told the saleslady that she gave me a Medium... then i tried the L and it fits!!! i felt like crying (but didnt cry, just to make this post as creative as possible hehe ;) ) happy as i was.. i immediately chose another one and a polo.. i even asked if the sizes were the same.. but unfortunately they werent.. but still she insisted me to try it.. hehe and VOILA! they all fit! I felt like bursting into tears (hehe)

LOSE MORE WEIGHT! hehe

#5
priorities... priorities...priorities...

it's not that im driving myself away from org responsibilities but sometimes you should know ur priorities.. 4th yr is not an easy matter, thesis.. graduation..,.. and i know that what i joined into isnt a small matter too... still.. i have to set my priorities.. it's the last year that i'll be spending time with my college friends... and i just dont want this year to become blunt and maybe even loose the connections with my friends just because of some other things.. friends are forever... studies too are forever...

and some things are just way out of hand..

Sweet...

Definitely my style! hehe well.. if it happened to me, would do the same thing ;)

was walking along dapitan gate, in front of the main library when this car caught my attention, and my friend took a picture of it! :D very sweet!



"I LOVE YOU CELINE, I'M SORRY. CAN I HAVE YOU BACK?"

well, on the other side, u see a chair.. well, this Celine girl broke one of the parking rules of UST hehe kaya un... may note siya on the other side from the security guard.. " IKAW AY LUMABAG SA BATAS TRAPIKO NG UST.." hehe which cant be seen in this pic

Enough...

my head is aching sooo much...

enough is enough.. pls.. i need time for myself...

'Nuff said..

真相。。。

過了幾個月，為什麼還在折磨？ 很早已經知道真相。

沒說也沒關係．

我自己知道也好。

Almost Perfect by Ingram Hill

Maybe her eyes are just a little bit red
Almost all the time
Maybe her hair, it smells like cigarettes
When I climb into bed with her at night

She don't want to try
But this just feels so right

She's almost perfect
She's so close to being everything
She's almost perfect
But she's not, she's not

Maybe she knows she drives me crazy
Just bats her eyes like she's my baby
Maybe she's quick to let her tongue fly at me
She's not the most proper lady

She don't want to try
But this just feels so right

She's almost perfect
She's so close to being everything
She's almost perfect
But she's not, she's not

I'm the one to blame
I know I caused this crash
So now I wander in this mess
Into this lake of sour mashed
Through my head the notion that

Maybe she's not quite honest with me
Almost all the time
Maybe I know there's someone else in her life
When I climb into bed with her at night

She's almost perfect
She's so close to being everything
She's almost perfect
But she's not
She's not
She's not

She's almost perfect
She's so close to being everything
She's almost perfect
But she's not
She's not mine
(mine, mine)

"You've got to find what you love" by Steve Jobs a very insprational speech

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.