Gameshow greed and crab mentality

The popular US-based tv game show Wheel of Fortune finally made its debut on local television this year.

It replaced another popular gameshow Deal or No Deal that was showing in the evenings at prime time. While I found this gameshow exciting watch, I wasn't really a fan because I became disappointed and disgusted with most contestants' decisions which so obviously showed their greed and total ignorance of probability. Common scenario: Php1M is still on the board along with other amounts smaller than Php1K. The banker offers Php700,000--which is really a huge amount in such a poor country--and yet the contestant decides to ignore that and go for the Php1M even if his chances getting it are just 1 in 6. Invariably contestant ends up not getting the Php1M anyway.

So when this Wheel of Fortune came along, I thought it would be a welcome change and finally showcase the people's better qualities. But nope, was I wrong.

One will probably have observed that a common strategy by Wheel of Fortune contestants in the US is to buy vowels if chances of naming a consonant that is found on the puzzle are small. They know that having a vowel on the board often helps them solve the puzzle even if it cuts down their winnings. But here I have noticed that contestants avoid buying vowels and prefer to continue trying to guess more of the consonants. What an obvious ploy to avoid losing any of their earnings!

And then worse, whenever a contestant spins the wheel, the other contestants clap their hand as others do elsewhere but then--here's the shocking part--jeer at the same time saying, "Lose turn... lose turn!" or "Bankrupt... bankrupt!" Such crab mentality. How sad.

On Federer's recent first round loss

My favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, has just lost to young Briton Andy Murray in three sets in the first round of the Barclay's Dubai Tennis Championships. This is probably the first time he has lost in the first round of a tournament for a fair number of years.

He had previously lost in the semifinals of the Australian Open to world number three Novak Djokovic and had back-to-back losses to long-time nemesis David Nalbandian late last season.
To many this string of recent losses is shocking. But to me, it's just another blip as any other loss is. Of course, it's always sad to hear about the champion getting upset by so-and-so player. But what choice do we have? He's the number one tennis player in the world right now and any loss to any other player--who are all (surprise!) ranked lower than he is--will always be an upset.

At the same time, I am also very much aware that we can't expect him to win every match he plays. The fact that Federer had been virtually winning every tournament he played these past four years or so is already in itself an incredible achievement. The great Pete Sampras himself couldn't do that! My mind however cannot fathom how he can continue playing at such a high level for several years so should be unrealistic for me to expect him to win everything.

In fact a loss here and there is normal for a tennis player or any athlete for that matter. It just so happens that this is Roger Federer who has demonstrated that he is capable of raising the bar impossibly high--call it "creating a monster" if you will. Even his so-called "mediocre" 68-9 win-loss record for 2007 was the best compared to everybody else's in the tour. It's just not as good compared to his own jaw-dropping records in the years previously: 74-6, 81-4 and 92-5. And that in three consecutive years no less!

So I'm not sitting here stunned and staring into space nor losing any sleep tonight. After all, Federer has nowhere else to go from this "slump" except upwards.
Photo by: Julian Finney/Getty Images

A homemade birthday e-card for Tina

Tomorrow is a good friend's birthday and I'm sending her this e-card.

I thought of sending her the usual birthday e-card from the Hallmark website. But then I thought I'd make my own when I realized that my photo of the March ceramic angel would make a good graphic for a birthday card--at least for someone born in the month of March. After all, my mother gave the angel to me as a birthday gift some twenty years ago.

Anyway, I adapted some happy birthday verses I found on the Internet and also had fun experimenting with Adobe Photoshop to blend layers and apply some lighting effects. By the way, I found the rich damask background at the Inspiration Gallery.

I hope Tina likes it. :)

The mystery of the "Happy Birthday" variations

Another "mystery" has been solved for me.

A loooong long time ago when I was still in grade school I begun to listen to the only classical music radio station here in the country. I always had a blank cassette tape ready in our radio-cassette player because whenever I found a music piece currently playing to my liking I would rush to record it onto the cassette tape. One of the intriguing pieces of music I recorded was a series of very clever variations on "Happy Birthday" arranged for the piano and done in the style of some of Beethoven's "greatest hits" : Fur Elise, Minuet in G, and the first movements of his Moonlight Sonata, Pathetique Sonata and Fifth Symphony. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the name of either the composer or the performer. This left me wondering all these years about the identities of both.

Then while in Ames, Iowa for my graduate studies, I came across some CD albums of a pianist named John Bayless and discovered his penchant for improvising on themes of popular classical composers. When I found out that he had recorded an album called "Happy Birthday, Bach", I thought that I had finally solved the mystery of the happy birthday variations. But since I could never find recordings by Bayless that included the Beethoven happy birthday variations I simply believed that they were no longer available.

I totally forgot all about those happy birthday variations for at least another ten years ... until last night when I thought that I'd search the Internet one more time for even a bit of information. That's when my search on "happy birthday beethoven variations" using Google on brought up a website that mentioned a set of happy birthday variations called "Happy Birthday, dear Ludwig" arranged by Leonid Hambro on a number of works by Beethoven. When I saw the list of Beethoven works I began to sense that this might be the answer to my long search. The website included links to midi files prepared by the website's author/owner and I clicked on those to listen to the recordings. To my great delight, except for some differences in interpretation they tallied with what I heard over the radio all those years ago! At the moment, I realized that at last, at last, I had solved the mystery of the happy birthday variations.

Although I don't know who had performed the "Happy Birthday, dear Ludwig" that I heard over the radio (I strongly suspect that it was Leonid Hambro himself) at least I know that I can move onto the other "musical mysteries" from my childhood: another piano piece my father had recorded from one of my grandmother's long-playing records and some baroque-sounding music used for a KLM commercial ...

The "new" face of Bach

A news article by Reuters reports that, "Experts have digitally rebuilt the face of 18th century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach ... ." The article is accompanied by a graphic showing the digital reconstruction of the face of the great composer and claims that "the results [of the reconstruction] may surprise his fans."

But to me this "new" face doesn't look that much different from that on the well-known portrait of Bach painted by Elias G. Haussman in 1746. Except for the wig, of course. So nothing new there--only perhaps that the reconstruction is simply proof of the skill of Haussman as a portraitist.

It would be wonderful though if someone discovered Mozart's long-lost grave. Now that's one face I'd like to see scientists and artists reconstruct!
Photo credit: REUTERS/Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification, University Dundee/Bachhaus Eisenach/Handout

How odd ... #1

This morning I was working at my PC editing the questionnaire of one the exams I'm giving tomorrow, there was a voltage fluctuation. To my surprise, the monitor of my PC just went blank. Then I noticed that the LED light on the casing of my PC had stopped flickering. My PC had shut down!

This was highly unexpected because my PC is plugged into a uninterrupted power supply unit. Normally, if there was a power outage, the UPS battery would kick in and provide backup power for at least 15 minutes. This is sufficient time for me to close all applications and shut down my PC properly. But that didn't happen at all this time around. It must be that the battery needs changing or something. How odd.

I'll have to consult our technician within the next week or so. I can't risk losing documents after working on them for a long time. Thankfully most word processing software have this feature that recovers unsaved documents.

Getting cheated while watching the Oscars

Today the country is celebrating the anniversary of the EDSA revolution of 1986 and so Malacanang declared that today is a non-working holiday at the last minute (just last week). And luckily so--for me at least. That's because I got to stay home and watch the Academy Awards ceremony.

Unfortunately, this latest of holidays didn't start out too well. There was supposed to be telecast "live" of the Oscar awards this morning at 9:30am according to ABS-CBN. But I was disappointed this morning when I turned on the tv to tune in just past 9:35am and found a cartoon show on instead. I frantically surfed through other channels to see if the awards were being shown elsewhere but to no avail. At last around 9:45am, the telecast started. Ah, I thought, how typical.

Who else observes "Filipino time" better than ABS-CBN? They apparently don't have a programming schedule at all--or at least aren't disciplined enough to follow one--and simply advertise that so-and-so tv show will be shown after this other tv show and not starting at a specific time. This practice makes it virtually impossible for people to program their VCRs or DVD recorders in order to record a certain show. I should know. I spent two months the other year recording local telenovelas for my mom who was then abroad. It was such a nightmare having to wait for a show to start instead of simply turning on the tv and the VCR at the appointed time. But I digress...

I was complaining about the late start of the so-called "live" telecast of the Oscars. Now, isn't this late start basis for false advertisement as well? The ceremonies were supposed to be shown live and yet while chatting with my sister in Canada, I found that the ceremonies had started right on time at 9:30am and that three awards had already been given out by that time. Thus this was no live telecast at all but a delayed telecast. In fact, I was not surprised when there were unusually long commercial breaks (I know commercial breaks in the US are comparatively short) and there was some obvious editing done. For example, just after one award was given the telecast would cut, without showing the exit of the previous winner, to the next presenter in the middle of delivering his lines. Sure enough after going through the list of winners on the Internet I realized that the awarding of best documentary short film, best animated short film and best make-up--and who knows what other features or program numbers--were omitted from the telecast.

Ah well. At least Ratatouille won this year's best animated feature film.