At the hair salon

I decided to have my hair trimmed today and went to our usual hair salon early this afternoon, work being half day only today in anticipation of tomorrow's holiday (All Saint's Day).

It was about time to get my hair cut as I was starting to find it a bother to constantly put it up everyday now that wearing it in a ponytail didn't look that neat anymore. Plus, the increasing number of white hairs on my head--oh, horror of horrors!--would show all the more when I have my hair in a ponytail.

A typical visit at the hair salon usually begins with me being shown a chair and being asked how I want my hair done. After saying that I simply want it trimmed to just about shoulder-length (it extended to about eight inches below my shoulders today), I am made to walk over to the sink to have my hair shampooed.

Then it's back to the chair in front of the mirror where my hair gets cut. This takes about fifteen minutes followed by another fifteen minutes of drying my hair with a hair dryer.

The latter is what I least like about going to a hair salon here in this country because the people at the salon always insist on using a hot dryer (hello, damaged hair) and pull at my hair in an attempt to get rid of my natural curls.

I'm not really sure what it is about curly hair that people here have against. I suppose it's because straight hair usually looks neat and shiny, judging from the shampoo commercials that are produced here.

But then I wish that people at hair salons would refrain from constantly suggesting that I have my hair straightened. When I used to go to hair salons in the US, I was delighted to find that the ladies there would envy me my curly hair and never suggested that I have it straightened.

Besides, I actually find straight hair too boring and common for my taste.

I love my naturally curly hair so why can't the hair salon people here work with that instead of trying to change it?

Catholic book center revisited

Remember the little Catholic book center I visited about a month ago?

I dropped by again two weeks after that first visit to browse through a few more books and in particular read a little more of Celine Martin's My Sister, Saint Therese.

Soon after that second visit, I checked the Internet again to see if the books for sale on line were still available and was delighted to see that My Sister, Saint Therese and a few other new books had just been put up for sale. It was then that I decided to purchase the book myself so that I could read it at my leisure.

Given my hectic schedule at work in the past few weeks, I only got to drop by today around 4pm to inquire if I could order the book directly rather than online. Naturally, I was happy when the young fellow there informed me that it was possible and handed me an order form to fill up.

Then he mentioned that tomorrow would be the last day that the center would be open and that the center would be operating exclusively online from then on.

I was stunned. I had long feared that that would happen, seeing that hardly anybody visited the place. At the same time, I realized that it was a good thing that I had decided to drop by today to place my order instead of next week.

Anyway, while filling up the order form, I glanced at the bookshelves at the back of the shop and told him that it was pity because there were a lot of books there that I wanted to read. To my surprise, he said that the center might reopen, that it was closing only because there was no one available to keep watch since he couldn't be around because he was returning to the seminary.

I was slightly relieved upon learning this but just the same the thought that the shop would not be there whenever I felt like dropping by to read was depressing.

But at least I have the books I ordered--I also decided to order Saint Therese: Her Last Conversations--to look forward to. I was told that I would be contacted via email once the books were ready for pick-up. Now I simply can't wait for that day to come.

Cleaning, getting organized and taking stock

We're having another unusually long weekend: today was declared a holiday to allow people to go and vote during the barangay elections. Having no lecture notes or slides to prepare or review, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally clear some things from my shelves here in my room and organize whatever is left.

I have a large open bookshelf here in my room that's filled with books, mainly books that I use for my work and books that I read for pleasure like novels, reference books and books on the Catholic faith. Although these were more or less organized, there were many books that I no longer referred to or read and thought should go into archive, i.e., stored in cabinets in the basement. Likewise, there were some books downstairs that I felt like reading again or else thought I would be referring to in the near future for my work. So with several trips up and down the spiral staircase (which I began doing yesterday evening), down went the old and useless books and up came the books I wanted to read. Several other books that I kept in another but smaller shelf in my room got moved up to the big one as well. I also managed to dust the shelves and clean out the accumulated dust with my trusty chamois cloth before putting the books back on the shelf.

There were also a few other articles that I happened to dump on the shelf because it was convenient to do so then. Deciding that I had finally to get rid of those--they were just collecting dust anyway--I dug up an old box and place all the bric-a-brac into the box and stashed the box away in one of the cabinets downstairs.

Now that I've moved and organized my books, I've just realized how many books I actually own. (Here, that is. I actually have more books that I left with my sister abroad plus I haven't considered the other books around that house that I could include in my collection.) By my estimate, if I stood all my books together in a single row, they would form a line more than twenty feet long. Considering that I also have my huge collection of CDs and a sizeable library of music books and sheet music, I don't think I can live in one of those tiny Tumbleweed houses anymore. Else, if I manage to do so, I'd need a separate shed for my books and CDs alone. So much for my hopes of living small!

A bit of crazy weather

This is the time of the year were we expect to get hit by a couple of powerful typhoons. We had one supertyphoon last year (Milenyo) followed by another pretty strong one (Reming). But as there seems to be some kind of a cycle where we get lots of strong typhoons in one year and hardly any the next, we're having some crazy weather this year as a substitute for those typhoons.

Most of last week was unusually cool and rainy or else gloomy at best. Just the perfect weather that makes you want to stay in bed longer and not get up for work. In fact, I would even find our pet cats--and that stray male cat on the front door mat --sleeping in late whenever I leave for work whereas they used to be up and impatient to go outside to see me off. People at the office took to parking their cars near the building rather than at the far end of the parking lot where there are lots of trees to provide shade.

Then suddenly on Friday, the sun came out. Cars were parked under the trees once again at the office. I had to turn on the electric fan here in my room to keep cool in the evening and was considering turning on my air-conditioning as well.

When Saturday came round, the morning was sunny but the rain came pouring down again in the late afternoon. By evening, the temperatures had dropped sufficiently for me not to use my electric fan again. My poor father started getting the sniffles, a common ailment when the body is unable to cope whenever the weather turns crazy like this. (I usually get the sniffles too but I suppose my immune system is up and running on high gear nowadays given that I'm no longer suffering from as much stress during this term break.)

The cool weather continued through the whole of Sunday but gave way a to another sunny warm spell this morning. Then again that was short lived when it became cloudy this afternoon (lucky for the man we hired to mow our lawn today) and it began to rain again early this evening.

This capricious type of weather is highly unusual here where in the past, it has remained hot, or else rainy but still balmy and humid, or else cool, always for weeks at a time. Instead it's like being abroad in the temperate countries like the US or in Europe where the large variations in temperatures day to day leave you guessing what the weather will be like the next day.

This now makes me wonder what kind of weather tomorrow will bring.

Seaching for sheet music and a shutdown

Late yesterday I decided to stroll back onto the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) website after not dropping by for about a week and a half. I wanted to once again check out the latest uploads to see if there was anything that I might like.

As it usually takes a while for the main page to be fully downloaded and displayed on my browser, I read some other webpage on another browser tab in the meantime. When I returned to the tab where I had the IMSLP page loaded, I was momentarily surprised to find not the usual wiki-looking main page but just some plain text displayed on the screen. At first I thought that I had typed in the wrong URL. But no. There it was on the address bar, http://imslp.org.

Finally after recovering sufficiently from my initial confusion to read what was on the screen, I was shocked to realize that the website was no longer there. It turns out that the website's project leader had received legal threats from a classical music publishing firm regarding some uploaded material that was in public domain in Canada (where the IMSLP server is located) but protected by copyright terms in certain countries. In order to avoid the expenses of dealing with the issue, the project leader decided to simply shut down the site.

I tell you I was downcast after that discovery.

I love playing the piano and always look forward to the challenge of learning something new to add to my so-called repertoire even if it takes a long time since I rarely have the time to practice nowadays. (I reckon that if I got to practice daily, I'd be able to learn a new piece every one or two weeks, depending on the difficulty of the piece. But as I actually get to snatch about three hours of practice every two months--more or less, depending on how hectic things are at work--that rate is down to about one new piano piece a year.)

So it became a habit of mine to stock up on music pieces that I wanted to learn sooner or later. I naturally began looking for music books and sheet music in bookstores here but was only met with disappointment when I found that bookstores here generally don't stock up on classical music books or sheet music. Music stores that had shelves of classical music books were rare as well. I'd come across a store that labels itself a music store only to find musical instruments (mainly guitars and electronic keyboards) and pop sheet music. Classical music here seems be an extinct commodity.

Of course, it is an entirely different story abroad where there are many good music stores stocked with good classical music. I would come across one and upon entering, I'd feel like a kid let loose in a candy store with a blank cheque. But then, I can't afford to travel often and I can't stay forever in one country when I'm a resident in another.

This lack of a local reliable source of classical sheet music is the main reason why searching for new music on the web had been an on-and-off obsession in the past few years--especially after locating a few good websites with sheet music still in public domain.

And IMSLP happened to be one of those websites for the past several months.

Sigh. This feels like Sam the Record Man store closing shop all over again.

Editing papers

One of the many things I have to do at the end of each term here is to read and edit my thesis advisees' papers. As we often accept students to be our advisees based on what they will be working on for their thesis, I get students who vary in terms of writing skills as well as their capability to do quality work.

The most disappointing are those who simply have poor English writing skills. Their English grammar is atrocious while sentence structure is poor and at best awkward. I immediately recognize these types when after reading the first few opening paragraphs, I notice that I've made a dozen corrections on subject-verb agreement and verb tense. Often, they write sentences that mean something entirely different from what they mean to say. Or worse, there are sentences in which I can't figure out at all what they're trying to say. These are the students whose papers we teaching staff often call "hopeless", the ones whose papers I feel like rewriting entirely but know that I shouldn't or else it will no longer be the student's own work. In these cases, I make corrections on the first few paragraphs and simply tell the student to check the grammar for the rest of the paper. Or if I'm in a patient enough mood, I make corrections on the entire paper, by which time the paper is filled with slashes, arrows, carets and admonitions to "Rewrite!" written in red gel ink.

The more frustrating types are those who are pretty much capable of writing well in English but who are just lazy or don't care much about turning out quality work. These are the ones who write the shortest of explanations and descriptions, don't pay attention to indention or spacing between paragraphs and make careless mistakes like typographical errors. (Actually, I already notice this poor regard for quality when they present their thesis work to me and I can see that everything has apparently been done and put together haphazardly.) Obviously they simply slapped together ideas into a paper and didn't proofread before submitting the paper to me for my review and comments. Sometimes I end up giving the student a short sermon on how poor work will not likely be tolerated once they get a job and that even so, they should make it a habit to pay attention to quality this early.

Of course, the most satisfactory are the students who can both write acceptably well and do quality work. It is especially pleasing if the student has not received exceptional grades for his/her coursework but has still shown through thesis work that he/she carries out tasks with care and dedication. Every detail in their thesis work and thesis paper indicate that everything was thought out carefully. And although they still make mistakes in writing their thesis papers, these are the types with whom you can discuss making improvements at a higher level and not worry about not seeing the final draft before they make a final copy of their thesis paper.

Naturally, one would always like to work with students of the third type above. They cause the least headache at stressful times like these. But it is nevertheless rewarding to work with the other types and do your best to guide them in the hopes of helping them be better prepared for a career after graduation.

How's that again?

You know how sometimes people say something without thinking. (Reader's Digest is filled with such anecdotes.) Or in the case of most Filipinos, say something in English without realizing what it actually means. Here are just a few instances from my own experience:

• Years ago, my family invited my beloved piano teacher over to lunch at an exclusive restaurant after which we returned to my grandparent's house to chat. Since my elderly grandmother and my piano teacher's mother grew up in the same town, the two were eagerly exchanging stories about friends and relatives. Then my piano teacher asked my grandmother how she was related to so-and-so who also came from the same province. When my grandmother replied that he was a distant cousin, my piano teacher exclaimed, "Really? I thought he was your nephew or something. I didn't know he was that old!" [My piano teacher instantly clapped a hand over his mouth although my grandmother didn't seem to have noticed anything wrong with what he said.]
• I read in a newspaper probably a little more than a year ago this article about a well-known broadcast journalist who had just given birth to her and her husband's first child, a daughter. The brand new mother was being interviewed about her experiences as a first-time mom and the article actually quoted her as saying, "Malunggay is an excellent source of mother's milk." [And all the while I thought she was advocating breastfeeding. Haha.]
  
• Just earlier, I saw on television a local talk show hosted by another prominent broadcast jouranalist. As the current show focused on the recent explosion in Makati, a couple of victims of the blast were invited over for an interview. One was a lady who appeared to be in her early 30s and had suffered a few cuts on her left hand and arm. She was recalling (in English) that she was in Glorietta 3 with a friend when the explosion occurred. When asked in which direction she heard the noise, the lady replied, "I heard the blast come from my behind." Now, that's proof that the tragedy was not due to a bomb but rather by a "gas explosion"! [My guess is that she literally translated "galing sa likod ko."]
  

Final grade reactions

Like I mentioned previously, I'm just about done with the current school term. The past week has been spent giving final exams, grading final exams and computing final standings. And so it was with great relief that I finally posted the final grades of my students in the various courses I teach.

Since I post the grades on the corkboard nailed to my office door, I can overhear my students' reactions to their grades as well as to their classmates' grades. Often what they say add to the little entertainment I get each day at work--one of the few things I enjoy about these end-of-term periods. You get those who go absolutely hysterical when they learn that they had just about passed the course. I can hear exclamations of disappointment from those whose standing went down due to a poor final exam showing. Some obviously scan the entire list to see what the others got because I can hear a few wonder aloud who it was who got that unbelievably high score in the finals. Or else some are aghast to see that many failed the course. (I believe these are not my students but rather those who are planning to take the course in the future and want to get an idea of how easy or difficult the course is.)

What I dread though are students who received a failing and come into my office to beg me (which is against the University code, by the way) to give them a passing grade, often asking me to give them some extra project to do to make up for the deficit. I get a multitude of reactions as well when I, of course, refuse to change their grades. I've had one, like many others in the past, look totally downcast and eventually break down in tears as she left my office. On the other extreme, a few bounce in with smiles on their faces and bounce out almost just as cheerfully. I suppose these students make going through college as some kind of a game: take a course and see what happens. Most though, after listening to why I can't change their grades (an unnecessary explanation if you think about it) or else seeing what contributed to their failing grade (often extremely low scores in the exams or quizzes), appear to accept their fate more calmly and with a heavy sigh leave the office. A few take a more optimistic outlook and look forward to re-enrolling the course hoping to do better.

When you're feeling blue, just watch the cockatoo

This video made my day. I first came across a link to a shorter version in a recent blog post at the Mental Floss website before looking it up at YouTube. The description of the video there reads:

Snowball is an Elanora Cockatoo that dances to the Back Street Boys. He came to the Bird Lovers Only Rescue a couple of months ago and is a joy. Visit us at www.birdloversonly.org

Music is truly a universal language. Even animals "get it".

P.S.
Oooh...it turns out that this is my 100th post here.

Monday treats

The school term is winding down and I'm nearly done with giving lectures to my different classes. More and more of my time at the office is now spent grading quizzes, recording scores, double checking my class records and making exams and less on preparing lecture notes and presentation slides. In other words, things are not as hectic as they usually are--at least for the time being before there are once again exams to grade and grades to compute.

Anyway, since I normally have a class at 1pm, I would go out to buy lunch as early at 11:30am to beat the lunch crowd, But today having given my last 1pm lecture last week, I remained at my desk longer than usual before leaving to buy lunch at nearly 12:30pm. I got myself a chicken fillet sandwich with coleslaw and dalandan juice from KFC and two Mister Donuts chocolate doughnuts. One of the doughnuts turned out to be a surprise: it was sprinkled with cinnamon. Yum yum. I had not tasted cinnamon for ages. (The other was rolled in crushed peanuts.)

Then later in the afternoon, I heard the excited voices of some our younger staff outside in the hallway. After popping my head outside my door to see what was going on, I learned that ice cream was being served at the office kitchen. A couple of our instructors were celebrating their birthdays and were treating the rest of us to ice cream. There was palitaw as well and I got some to bring home for desert after dinner.

The cat on the mat

For a long time now our house has been used by a few cats in the neighborhood for hanging out. We have two cats of our own but they appear not to mind sharing their territory with strangers. Lately, there's this cat who apparently enjoys lying down our front doormat. I've noticed that he stays there nearly all day during weekends (I'm at work during weekdays so I don't know if this is true on weekdays as well) and only disappears around sunset, perhaps to go hunting or have dinner at his real owner's place. I've seen him around before, particularly sleeping on top of a pile of newspapers in our garage but I suppose he feels freer to roam around our backyard now that we no longer have a dog.

Anyway, I decided to take a picture of this visitor of ours earlier today and here it is. He's got a funny expression on his face because he was apparently annoyed when I woke him up as I approached to take the picture.

A week with a back ache

It's been more than a week since I hurt my back and I'm glad that I'm nearly back to normal. I thought that I would be okay after just a few days because last time I hurt my back (which was I think a couple of years ago) the pain and stiffness were gone after a day. But that was probably because my mom contacted our doctor and he prescribed me an anti-inflammatory drug which did the trick. This time around, I opted to skip consulting a doctor (I'd have to spend a long time sitting down anyway waiting to see one) and taking any medicine and so ended up being uncomfortable for a week.

Like I said last time, I would be rarely free of pain. I thought for a while that I needed to keep moving to get rid of the pain but that only made it worse and I eventually decided it best to take things a step at a time and take the slow but sure road to recovery. In fact I thought I was already all right come Monday morning that I opened the garage door myself (everyone else was still asleep and not around to help anyway) so that I could bring out the car. That turned out to be a bad idea because my back ached all day after that.

I would be especially stiff after sitting down for a long periods of time whether at my desk, computer or in the car driving to and from work. I read somewhere though that not sitting up straight puts less strain on one's back. So I'd try "slouching" with my back at the prescribed 135-degree angle instead of sitting up straight and strangely enough, it works. (That's how I spent most of yesterday afternoon as I graded papers.) For a while, I also thought that by standing up instead of sitting down, I would be less likely to feel pain. But I found that I was wrong particularly when my back would feel so tired after giving an hour-long lecture. (I wonder if my students ever noticed that I wasn't walking as briskly as I used to or that I seemed to move around like an old woman.) And then I'd had to sit down to "rest" my back, which I already knew didn't really rest my back. After also finding out that I was stiffer than ever after sleeping flat on my back, I also ended up sleeping in bed at night with my pillows piled up so that I was half sitting (again with my back slightly at a 135-degree angle). But at least after a few nights of a good night's sleep, I was starting to feel much better and less stiff. I also slowly started doing a few stretching exercises to get rid of the stiffness.

And so now, I don't feel pain too often and I can bend at my waist and not feel too stiff. My back still feels tired after sitting down but at least it isn't as bad as it used to be. I even got to spend three hours practicing piano late yesterday and today. I suppose I'd get so carried away playing that I forget all about the pain. Of course, my back is a little painful now but it's the first time it's been painful all day which is sort of a good thing, right? So I'm truly relieved and thankful that I'm getting over this back pain business and do so look forward to a week with lesser back pain.

Monday morning surprise

I woke up this morning as usual to get ready for work: took a shower, got dressed then had breakfast. As it was a Monday morning, I was the only one up at that time and my parents were still fast asleep. After brushing my teeth, I had to go back to the kitchen to get something. As I was about to pass through our dining room, I happened to look out our glass sliding doors that opened out into our screened rear terrace with its view of our backyard.

There I noticed were several birds either perched on the branches of some our plants or on the clotheslines my father had put up the week before. There were also several just standing around on the pebble-washout surface of our terrace.

I don't know what species of birds these were but when there was a rectangular tub filled with water placed just outside our rear terrace to catch the water leaking from a hole in one of our roof gutters, several birds used to come in the morning to the tub for a bath. It was amusing to watch them test the waters (the tub being much deeper than a traditional bird bath) before diving in for a quick bath. Each bird had its own "technique" of diving in. From their perch on the rim of the tub, some would jump in and flutter their way out back to part of the rim from where they came. Others opted to jump into the water and instead make a right-angled turn to the adjacent rim.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. Now the tub is gone because the hole in the roof gutter has been mended and I was sorry to no longer see the birds come visit especially because of our cats which we now let out into our garden. That's why the sighting this morning was so unexpected and particularly welcome. I counted at least ten birds there and they stayed around for a little over ten minutes before flying off one by one to the chico trees.

It was a nice way to start another busy week.