human batteries

"Scientists are working on a new type of nanogenerator that could draw the necessary energy from flowing blood in the human body, by using the beating heart and pulsating blood vessels. Once completed, this new cellular engine could find various applications, even beyond medicine."
- full article at Softpedia

the matrix is here.

reputation vs character

“be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

~john wooden

another source of unhappiness: we are always too concerned with what the rest of the world thinks of us when it doesn't really matter in the end. ralph waldo emerson writes more on this subject on his work, self-reliance: "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

excess

goosebumps.

i got them last night when i attended an introductory seminar on what others would call, a self-discovery workshop. my bestfriend attended it last weekend and she invited me to the graduation-slash-promotional event. being a sucker for such things as improving one's life (okay, self-help if you may), i acquiesced to come.

among the things the resource spoke of, what hit me the most was this (i hope i remembered her statement verbatim)

"we fill our future with our past. for example, when it comes to romance, we tend to bring our past relationships into every new person we meet..."

that hit me badly. it explained a lot of things, especially why so many of my past blooming romances failed. it was because, all along, i was setting up myself for them with all my internal chatter ("ah, this one's just like the other one..."; "probably just messing with my feelings"; "this one's going to make me fall and then leave me just like the others").

now this doesn't mean we simply forget about the past, that's just plain stupid. experience teaches us something, but we don't need to fit our future in the 'template' that is our past. we attract what we focus on and if we are held hostage by our past, then that's what we'll keep getting.

it's definitely time to lose this baggage.

a starbucks challenge

i came across this site today which features comedian mark malkoff's attempt (a successful one at that) to visit all of manhattan's starbucks outlets! yup, all 171 of them.

mark spent $396.14 in the course of the challenge, which is roughly Php 18,600. being a coffee addict myself, i think that translates to getting around 171 tall lattes here in the philippines.


now the question is, has he gotten a wink of sleep yet ever since? :-)

morning thought

It's not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.

- Leo Buscaglia

reason to bonk me on the head.

you've heard it already: things happen for a reason, shit happens, and so on. and probably this is one lesson i have yet to learn and have to get through my thick coconut head.

things that happened in the past are there to teach us something. will i ever learn?

yes, i made the terrible mistake of checking on my almost-ex (a-ex).

me: musta? hope you're well! :) (read: i'm pining. i'm hoping.)
a-ex: oy chas! i'm ok. u? (read: i'm doing great without you!)
me: ah good good. musta na dates? hehehe. (read: don't tell me you have started dating again?!)
a-ex: madami-dami na hehehe. (read: i'm doing great without you!)
me: ah ok, mukhang happy ah! take care then (read: i can't believe you could act like nothing happened!)

grrr. i hate myself for being so stupid sometimes.