Bio clock gone haywire

It's been over two weeks since I got back from abroad and I'm still badly jetlagged (note the time stamp of this post). The fact that the past two weeks have been particularly stressful at work hasn't helped at all.

Yesterday for example--the first day of classes here, by the way--I was constantly running in and out of my office to post announcements, to talk with people, to answer and to make telephone calls. (The different department here normally have one or two phones only and these naturally are located in main office where the administrative staff have their desks). And then there were the students with problems with their schedules and enrollment who kept coming to my office. In the end, I couldn't escape so to speak and only got to have my lunch at 3:00pm. It was a relief that there was kind of a lull after that (hmmm...maybe setting my "whereabouts" thingy at my door to "will be back soon" kept people away) but still it was nearly 6:00pm when I got to leave work. So I got home, brought my things to my bedroom, took a quick shower, changed into my house clothes and lay down on my bed to take a quick nap--or so I thought. I woke up only to find that it was nearly 3:00am. I had missed my dinner--which wasn't so bad since I wasn't that hungry anyway having had a very late lunch--and another episode of Frasier (reruns on Star World).

And so, my sleeping pattern has remained thus: a nap immediately after coming home from work (followed by dinner) or else from 9/10pm (after dinner) to 12mn and then a period of wakefulness in the wee hours of the morning. That's usually followed by another attempt to get some shuteye before I get ready for another day at work. Oh well.

It's really strange though how I quickly overcome my jet lag whenever I go abroad. When I went to visit my sister this summer, I was up and about during the day and sleeping during the night by the third day. The same thing happened when I went to Rome three years ago. Of course it wasn't so bad then since there was just a six-hour difference between Rome and Singapore/Manila whereas there's the twelve-hour difference between here and eastern Canada/US.

Oooh. There's a replay of the Frasier episode shown last night starting right now. Got to go to watch. Now that's one non-stressful thing to do, 'ey?

Federer wallpapers

Speaking of wallpapers, I already had a previous obsession with wallpapers sometime last year when I went through a period of creating my own wallpapers featuring tennis great Roger Federer. This came even earlier than my experiments with transforming photos into watercolor "paintings" from photos using Photoshop.

Being a big Roger Federer fan, I thought I'd search the Internet for Federer wallpapers to use as a desktop background. But I was disappointed. There weren't that many and the few available were not what I had exactly in mind. Having a collection of Federer photos downloaded from the Internet myself, I decided to start creating my own. I began with wallpapers with a black background; those were the easiest to make since it was easier to augment a photo with a plain black background. Besides, I actually prefer black wallpapers. Here's one of the very first ones I made using a photo where the dramatic lighting in the photo was such that you'd swear it was a shot in a studio. (This was Federer's match against Hewitt in the semifinals at the US Open in 2005 played in the late afternoon.)
When there weren't many photos that could be easily blended into a black background, I thought I'd try out the clone tool combined with layers in Photoshop to extend the backdrops of the photos to fill in the rest of the background. I particularly love this one where Federer stands out from the hardcourt where the green and blue colors are already slightly muted in the original photo due to the early afternoon lighting (US Open 2006).
It soon became my goal to create an illusion such that you couldn't tell where the court ended and where the wallpaper started--Escher-like kind of stuff. Here's one of the last few I made early this year before the novelty of making wallpapers wore off.
Eventually making Federer wallpapers became such an preoccupation that there were evenings (when I'd basically have my only free time) when I'd spend time browsing through my collection of Federer photos to search for those that would be a good basis for a wallpaper and start working. Often when I had nothing else to do, I'd churn out three to four wallpapers.

Before I outgrew this wallpaper phase, I managed to make some forty-five 1024x768 Federer wallpapers that are up to my standards (ahem!) and am now using for my photos screensaver. I more recently added two more and have also made two wallpapers featuring the Spanish clay court specialist Rafael Nadal. Yes, he may be Roger's greatest rival nowadays (great player but he's a threat to Federer so ... hehe) but I couldn't resist taking a photo of him in a dynamic pose, his teal and black outfit standing out against the red clay court surface and making it into another wallpaper.
All I'm doing now is waiting for Federer to begin playing again so that I can make more wallpapers. Or perhaps in the meantime I can modify the existing ones to use on a widescreen monitor. Uh-oh.

Widescreen wallpaper craze

My obsession in the past few days has been looking for and downloading widescreen wallpapers from the Internet. What prompted this sudden craze is the purchase of a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop which my sister and I bought primarily for our mom to use. (I already have my own Inspiron 600m--yep, this one I'm using right now--but I often have to bring it with me to work leaving my mom with nothing to use here at home.) As is the case for most new PCs and laptops being sold nowadays, it has been preloaded with Windows Vista (Home Basic) and this particular model has a 14" widescreen monitor which is ideal for 1440x900 desktop wallpapers. Of course, a few wallpapers (widescreen 16:10 and the usual 4:3) are included but as usual I wasn't satisfied with the choices available and looked to the Internet for more. Happily for me, I came across a number of good sources.

My primary source for high-resolution wallpapers I have downloaded so far is the cleverly named website called InterfaceLIFT where people upload not only wallpapers but icons and desktop themes as well. Wallpapers available there cover a wide variety of subjects and are of extremely high quality and come in different resolutions. I got to download my first batch of widescreen wallpapers (probably a dozen) from this wonderful resource to use on the Inspiron 640m. There's so much breathtaking scenery that I have a hard time deciding which one to eventually use.
For the rest of the wallpapers I got, I found the Wallpaper Review most useful. The websites listed there with wallpaper selections comparable to those found in InterfaceLIFT are Caedes and Social Wallpapering. Even Wikipedia has a small collection of nice ones. I don't recall finding much in the rest of the websites since I prefer actual photographs (minimal tweaking using PhotoShop is acceptable) to digital art.

Three "glad" things

There were three things that made me smile today:

• Cat napping: I had to go to my car to get the small 250w AVR which I always use with my laptop or for charging my cellphone whenever I'm at work. (I usually plug my more precious electronic stuff--like camera, my Yamaha P-80, my LCD tv, laptop, printer and cellphone--into an AVR. The electric current around here fluctuates so much that I'm afraid it will spoil my appliances, as it did my nice Sony component a few years ago.) When I got to my car I found the white and yellow tabby, who usually hangs around the area, stretched out and sleeping under front of the car on the passenger side. He was sleeping so peacefully in the shade--the sun was out and it was most probably a scorching 35C outside--that I didn't have the heart to scare him off. So instead of opening the front door on the passenger side to get the AVR which I had placed on the floor on that side, I got in through the driver's side and reached across the front seats to the get AVR. The cat was still fast asleep as I walked away.
• Help wanted and a prayer answered: For a few days now, I had been agonizing over the teaching load of the unit I work for due to the depleted teaching staff we currently have. I had to no choice but to give most of our junior staff a bit of an overload contrary to instructions from the administration to give no more than 9 units of teaching load credits to instructors with study load. Worse, there were still a couple of courses to which I had been unable to assign an instructor. My thoughts then were if only we had just one more lecturer to handle the surplus everything would be just fine. And then late this afternoon, our director came with the surprising news that a former instructor will be flying back home after resigning from a lucrative job abroad and rejoining the staff as a lecturer this semester. That's what I'd call an answered prayer! Hallelujah!
  
• Diamond in the rough: I came across this popular video of a talented contestant on "Britain's Got Talent" while reading a classical music blog at the Minnesota Public Radio. While I'm not completely impressed, there is something about the guy that makes me also think it's genuinely affecting to see his expression at the end of his performance.
  

It's back!

Sometime last week (my memory's so bad these days that I've forgotten exactly when) I went to buy lunch to go as usual at KFC. It was past 1pm but I wasn't that hungry so I decided to order a go-go sandwich. After I gave my order to the girl behind the counter, she asked "Caesar, taco or dragon?" I did a double take: did she say taco? I thought she made a mistake or else that I had heard wrong since I was told a few months back that they would stop serving the taco variety. As soon as she confirmed that they were indeed serving taco go-go sandwiches I chose taco naturally.

Yipee! Now I can once again look forward to eating something with that distinctive Mexican flavour. If only they can bring back their tempura chicken; their crispy strips--which were introduced in place of tempura chicken--aren't that great at all while the new garlic chicken steak is just plain awful.

Iconic music store to close

Another record store has fallen victim to the new trend of purchasing and downloading music from the Internet: Sam the Record Man, once Canada's top music chain, will be closing its landmark Toronto store for the last time at the end of this month. Boo-hoo! Although I've been there only a couple of times during my recent one-month vacation I have to mourn with other music lovers who been regular customers and have fond memories of shopping at the store at Yonge St. The store's interior may not be as hip as that of HMV or Tower Records (which closed recently as well) but their collection of CDs (I spent a few hours browsing their classical music section) is unique and more varied than those normally found in the other record/CD stores. This is truly the end of an era.

While I was away

I haven't posted for quite a while. I went on a one-month vacation abroad to visit my sister, do some sight-seeing and meet with old friends.

Now that I'm back, I'm trying to get adjusted to the time and weather here. Since I had been spoiled by the relatively pleasant spring weather (lower 20's C or lower 70's F) in Canada/USA, I'm now feeling rather uncomfortable in this country's hot and humid weather even if it's unusually hot these days. I have to have my airconditioning system full blast here in my room as well as in my office when I'm at work. I'm also still struggling to get over my jet lag. As you can see, I'm very much wide awake in these wee hours of the morning. I tend to doze off only as sunrise approaches but only get a few hours sleep as I have to report to work already. That's the main reason I practically drop into bed as soon as I get back from work at the end of the day, only to awaken a few hours after.

I've also noticed a few changes here and there which still surprise me considering I've been away for only a month.

First, the rest of the unpaved road leading up to our house from the main street is finally getting paved. The concrete was poured nearly two weeks ago and should be cured by the end of this week. As a result, it's quite a challenge maneuvering the car into the narrow strip portion of unpaved road whenever I drive home from work. One has to make an extremely sharp turn toward the electric post at the corner and back up into the main road again to align the rear wheels with the road. One has to do it properly else I might run over a corner of the concrete portion that still curing.

And then I discovered yesterday that there is no longer a Mister Donut at the arcade. Their lease must have ended last month and probably not renewed due to poor sales. (Sob! There goes my Php10 sugar-raised donuts!). Then today, I was dismayed to find that McDonald's has stopped serving "pink" lemonade (actually pomelo juice) and Milo. Sigh. From now on I guess I'll have to put up with their pop/softdrinks as I hate their orange juice, the totally artificially flavored Eight O'clock orange drink. Blech!

Oh well. It's a great welcome home for me.