Category: personal AnGoL

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rePost::Do What Defines You « Jonathan Zdziarski's Domain

Say it with me. Read the whole thing!!!

Do What Defines You
A friend of mine was going on about really knowing people; “people… are not defined by what they do”, he said. The point he was making was not to judge people by the cover of what they do in life. But the deeper point, that he may not have even realized, was the tragedy in the truth of that statement. How tragic it is that we aren’t what we do. It seems to me that, given the finite amount of time we have to live and become, that we spend more of our lives thinking about what we want to do than actually doing it.
I’m not talking about recreation. There are a lot of things we could do, but most of us have a shorter list of things we love to do. These are the things that give us purpose in life; they drive and define who we are, and we’d gladly choose them over the most expensive recreation. People refer to these higher things as passions or callings. I simply call doing the things that give us purpose, “living”. Using the term “living” seems like a misnomer, however, as people usually spend more of their life doing anything but these things. The average person will spend twenty or thirty years of their “life” doing all of the things they don’t want to do in hopes that one day they’ll earn enough money to buy back what they gave up in the first place: the time to live. But time is exactly what we don’t have a lot of. If anything is worth burning our lives out on, wouldn’t it be the things that define us and give our lives purpose?
via Do What Defines You « Jonathan Zdziarski’s Domain.

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rePost::Foreign investors shunning Philippines: experts | ABS-CBN News Online Beta

If we are hard headed about this the huge remittances of Filipino overseas workers can be thought of as investment. We have a postive balance of payments, we need to marshal these resources and create a focused try at finding our comparative advantage and try to develop industries that we can be world leaders in.

Wallace said the Philippines had enjoyed low inflation and high international reserves and a stable balance of payments under Arroyo.
But he attributed this to the actions of the central bank and the huge remittances of millions of Filipinos working overseas.
He said most Asian countries, except small ones such as Cambodia and East Timor, were getting more foreign investment than the Philippines.
AYC Consultants economist Benvenuto Icamina said that, to attract more investment, the Philippines would need to revise certain “discriminatory taxation” policies that favor local companies over foreign ones.
He also said the country needed to upgrade and modernize its infrastructure while improving its governance and cutting “non-tariff barriers” such as red tape.
via Foreign investors shunning Philippines: experts | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.

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rePost::Congress appears doomed to fail on Jobs Creation Legislation | Angry Bear

This is my beef with a lot of the spending that politicians do with their Pork Barrel /IRA allotments etc. Few politicians seem to grasp that spending money on somethings are a better use of capital because it creates a value unlocking cycle to more investments/more revenues. This is why districts which have very narrow roads that are burdened with heavy traffic should be widened, and when you see a couple of projects to cover the basketball courts along the road whilst the narrowness of the road is not addressed. Well this is simply a failure in allocation. This is a simple example but we can see this in various degrees in most congressional districts/ provinces and cities in the Philippines. We have a fucking budget deficit because of a few things. One being corruption and the other being a failure in allocation. If I can credit GMA with anything is that she seems to understand this. Hence a lot of development in places like bohol,cebu,cagayan de oro, davao and a host of other places.  A flawed analogy would be using your money to get into trainings. If you use your money to train in skills that are marketable or have value you have used you money well, while if you use your money to train for personal enjoyment you gain in happiness but you didn’t increase your value (If your strict about this you increased your value but tangentially).

What should Congress be doing instead? It should be thinking of public infrastructure and human capital projects that provide3 support to important public institutions that will last long beyond the current Recession. Congress should be funding public transit and renewable energy projects that would directly put to work hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans. Another important public infrastructure project that would make a real difference in unemployment? How about providing 1-2 billion apiece to the ten largest inner cities to be used for urban renewal–destruction of ruined buildings, building of public transit and energy projects–with the requiremment that at least 75% of the employees be from the city itself. Detroit's mayor has said that tehre aare 10,000 buildings that need to be pulled down in the city. That would be great work for unskilled laborers and make a marvelous dent in uhemployment. And it should be providing another stimulus packagge for the states to support education from K-16 and beyond–the best investment we can make in keeping our US universities and schools great, keeping educators employed, and offering ordinary Americans the chance to better themselves through educational advancement.
Just imagine. What if Congress would have the courage to discuss these issues publicly? Quit thinking about their corporatist patrons? Start thinking about ordinary Americans? And actually fund public infrastructure and human capital support over the next two years.
via Congress appears doomed to fail on Jobs Creation Legislation | Angry Bear.

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Why do antidepressants work only for the deeply depressed? A neuroskeptical look : Neuron Culture

I think it’s representative of the mindset prevalent today that a pill can cure what ails us. It’s the fast food mentality to everything. Want to get rich just join this. Want to get fit just do this. Want to get girls just follow these steps.
For the record I am convinced with the evidence for clinical depression. Heck DFW died because his meds no longer affected his brain the way it used to. It’s just that when we should be dealing with our insecurities, our fears etc we take the easy way out and go for the meds.
I remember a Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon’s sister visits him and she likes rajesh but the anti anxiety drug that rajesh took to combat his problems conversing with women come to mind.
NOTE(DFW David Foster Wallace wikipedia link here but I’m too lazy)

Why do antidepressants work only for the deeply depressed? A neuroskeptical look

Posted on: January 26, 2010 8:11 PM, by David Dobbs

Neuroskeptic ponders the growing evidence that antidepressants significantly best placebo only in the more (or most) depressed patients. His take is that:
antidepressants treat classical clinical depression, of the kind that psychiatrists in 1960 would have recognized. This is the kind of depression that they were originally used for, after all, because the first antidepressants arrived in 1953, and modern antidepressants like Prozac target the same neurotransmitter systems.
via Why do antidepressants work only for the deeply depressed? A neuroskeptical look : Neuron Culture.

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rePost::Coming to terms with the final chapter – Books – Entertainment – smh.com.au

Remember that smash film Got To Believe In Magic with Rico Yan and Claudine Barreto?, Rico Yan’s character initially had trouble thinking he’d get old. I ‘m somewhat similar because I can’t imagine being old.
In some ways there is that thought of dying til you can no longer enjoy life. I don’t know. I salute Terry Pratchett’s courage in admitting to this arrangement.

Coming to terms with the final chapter

February 12, 2010
Fantasy author Terry Pratchett mulls over life and how to leave it, writes Sacha Molitorisz.
Terry Pratchett … ‘‘I’ll write in the coffin, too.
As in a well-plotted fantasy novel, life is full of surprises. Until recently, Sir Terry Pratchett was one of Britain’s best-selling authors, a comic fantasist best known for his Discworld series.
Two years ago, he announced he has early onset Alzheimer’s. Now, at 61, Pratchett has courted controversy by admitting he wants to choose when he dies.
”I have no desire to pop my clogs in the next few years,” he says from his home.
”But I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time in bed being fed through a tube. That’s what my father said, too. He didn’t want to die that way but then he had to.”
Pratchett presented his argument for assisted suicide last week, while delivering a lecture for the BBC, saying: ”I would like to die peacefully before the disease takes me over.
”If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.”
They were dignified, considered words. Even so, Pratchett expected all hell to break loose. To his surprise, it didn’t. ”Some archbishops have said nasty things but I look on that as a plus,” he says, lucidly and softly.
”Apart from that, not a single person has thumbed their nose at me. People are saying, ‘How can we join in?
”The baby boomers see how their grandmothers and grandfathers died, and they’re looking after their mums and dads, and they think, ‘Bugger this, who said it has to be like this?”’
via Coming to terms with the final chapter – Books – Entertainment – smh.com.au.

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rePost :: Phoning it in ::Seth's Blog

You see most people don’t see why this is so important, to live a life of passion.
The thing is : I’m sorry to say this but in a 24 hour day with around 12 hours spent on the grinds of day to day existence spending 8 hours on your job means in most ways your job is your life.  This is why you can’t just phone in your job.
See A Life of Beauty, A Life of Happiness,  and A Life of Passion; I believe for most people, cannot be separated.  You seldom see people with a life of no or limited passion living a beautiful life. These things are aspects and results of each other.
PS: I understand that we cannot be too passionate about something because like a fire we would just run out of fuel. Life is in someways more of a marathon than a 100 meter dash. What I’m really against is how we seem to believe we can turn our passions on and off. I believe sometimes we need a break but we must understand that it is a break.  I had about more than a month of Sick Leaves plus Vacation Leaves last year. half of those were for vacations and the other half was because I couldn’t just go to work and phone it in. I go to work because I was inspired to work. If I wasn’t inspired and I wasn’t being required by my boss then I just didn’t go.

Phoning it in

This was sort of shocking, at least to me:
I was talking to a religious leader, someone who runs a congregation. She made it clear to me that on many days, it’s just a job. A job like any other, you show up, you go through the motions, you get paid.
I guess we find this disturbing because spiritual work should be real, not faked.
But isn’t your work spiritual?
I know doctors, lawyers, waiters and insurance brokers who are honestly and truly passionate about what they do. They view it as an art form, a calling, and an important (no, an essential) thing worth doing.
In fact, I don’t think there’s a relationship between what you do and how important you think the work is. I think there’s a relationship between who you are and how important you think the work is.
Life’s too short to phone it in.

via Seth’s Blog: Phoning it in.

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Better Electorate Please!!!!::Kung Fu Monkey: Farm Fetish

One of the more fun rants that I’ve read this month! read the whole thing.
Let’s see a few things that are tangential but I believe relevant.
-The social safety net of the USA and probably the world was started by FDR an US elite who traces his ancestry to early US Presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never knew hunger and or poverty as a state yet he has done more than but a handful of people to establish most of what US citizens know as the social safety net.
-The Civil Rights Act although was a bill that was to be sponsored by John F Kennedy but was made into law during LBJ Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency. LBJ and JFK have never been black/african american.  Yet the Civil Rights Act has been one of the landmark bills to have helped african americans.
-In the same vein Abe Lincoln has never been an african american yet…(tinatamad na akong ipagpatuloy)
If the only reason you are going to vote Manny Villar over Perlas, Gordon, Gibo , Aquino is that he used to be poor , fuck democracy. I’m beginning to be convinced that a democracy not anchored by an educated middle class is untenable.  I know it’s hard to believe but look at it this way. Your doctor has probably never had a brain tumor yet you believe your doctor when he/she advises your treatment. Same with your lawyer (Sorry lawyer friends I had to take a dig, well nobody actually trust their lawyers some lawyers are just less bad as others).
I know this might bite me in the ass in May but we were given a brain to override the emotions that would make us do irrational things or short circuit decision making that is really not that good for us. Think responsibly. My god just think please!  (I think there is a possibility that I will vote for Villar)

You know, I just realized how many errant Google hits that title is going to bring. Creepy.
This will just break Neil’s heart, as he does see me as a champion of fighting regionalism, but this CNN piece (from over at Atrios) is the sort of thing that, Jesus H*. Christ on a crutch, gives me a headache. They send a reporter to literally Middle America, and surprise, discover that they don’t much care for them Hollywood movies. Suuuurrr-prise!
But one chunk of this report, to me, is symptomatic of a larger issue that grinds my molars.
ANDERSON: We stopped by the Lebanon [Kansas — ed.] hotspot, Ladow’s Market, where one local told us Hollywood just can’t relate to a farming way of life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They’ve never been back in here to know what it’s like to actually have to make a living doing this.
You know what, Unidentified Male? You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to have to make a living farming. NOBODY DOES.
For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures). Hell, only ten percent of the average farm family’s income even comes from farming anymore (did you know that? I didn’t. Funky). The median age of the United States is 37. I am more than willing to point out that the agriculture industry is a crucial, nay vital part of the American economic infrastructure generating a sizable amount of the GDP. But why in the name of John Deere’s Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what “real Americans” think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else’s?
This is only half-rant. The honest question is, what in the American character keeps us returning to this completely false self-image? Seriously, how did we get to a point where this report may as well have started: “Hi there, Carol, we’re about to talk to people twenty years older than the average American living a lifestyle less than one in five average Americans live … to find out what the average American thinks” and somehow nobody blinks an eye?
There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these “What does America think about culture” pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30’s software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of “The IT Crowd”? Fuck and no.
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
via Kung Fu Monkey: Farm Fetish.

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Musings 2010 02 14

I’ve been having migraines lately and it has been somewhat of a hindrance to me. I’d like to have myself looked at but there is just this anxiety that its more serious than what I was expecting. I know I have a high tolerance for discomfort and between that and my anxieties I tend to have to be in excruciating pain to force myself to deal with the problem. I know this isn’t normal but we all have our issues. I hope I learn how to deal with it.

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rePost::The Recession is Dead, Long Live the Recession: Life Without Jobs : Casaubon's Book

I got terminated as a tester on my first job out of college. I was out of work for 3 months. Although 3 months was a relatively short time compared to other people’s experience it was too long for me. Nobody can really get you out of that funk your in, the feeling of uselessness , incompetence. After a month I was beginning to have serious thoughts of questioning how good I really was at anything. I don’t know but I believe if it stretched to 6 months I may have accepted jobs I wouldn’t have considered a couple of weeks before. This is why the reluctance of Barack Obama to help the unemployed of his country in the scale that FDR did is really heartless and gutless of him.  I could go on and on but this would just be an angst , sorrowful filled post. Suffice to say whenever I can’t get myself to work harder I just remember my last evaluation and a fire lights within me. To end in a lighter note after that job I was able to get a job as a programmer again and I can say that I did well. In  a lot of ways I shined. So have faith that God has better plans for you.

Strong evidence suggests that people who don’t find solid roots in the job market within a year or two have a particularly hard time righting themselves. In part, that’s because many of them become different–and damaged–people. Krysia Mossakowski, a sociologist at the University of Miami, has found that in young adults, long bouts of unemployment provoke long-lasting changes in behavior and mental health. “Some people say, ‘Oh, well, they’re young, they’re in and out of the workforce, so unemployment shouldn’t matter much psychologically,'” Mossakowski told me. “But that isn’t true.”
via The Recession is Dead, Long Live the Recession: Life Without Jobs : Casaubon’s Book.

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rePost::» Blog Archive » Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving What You Do » Study Hacks

Working Right
Research reveals that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are the key to loving what you do. So how do you get them? There are different answers to this question, but the strategy that I keep emphasizing on Study Hacks has two clear steps:
1. Master a skill that is rare and valuable.
2. Cash in the career capital this generates for the right rewards.
The world doesn’t owe you happiness. Your boss has no reason to let you choose your own projects, or spend one week out of every four writing a novel at your beach house. These rewards are valuable. To earn them, you must accumulate your own career capital by mastering a skill that’s equally rare and valuable.
It’s important, however, that you cash in this capital, once accumulated, for the right rewards. The word “right,” in this context, is defined by the traits of SDT. In other words, once you have something valuable to offer, use it to gain as much autonomy, competence, and relatedness as you can possibly cram into your life.
via Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving What You Do.