Endearing

Several months before we got married, my wife and I attended this weekend seminar for engaged couples (and couples seriously considering marriage). The goal was to help the couples prepare for married life. Not many realize this, but some couples become so busy preparing for their wedding that they don’t pay much attention to preparing for their marriage.

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It was an all-around awesome experience, but like any kind of seminar it had to start with the participants introducing themselves to the group.  I’ve always sort of hated this part because I’m not really a people person.  I’m not antisocial, but I’d like to avoid speaking to a crowd of strangers as much I as I could.

But of course we had to do it. And it was no simple introduction — we were to come up the stage and tell the group what our partner’s most endearing quality is.

Since we were seated on one of the middle rows, we had some time to think about what we were going to say. But that also meant that it would be harder to say something original, since the usual endearing qualities of a partner would have already been said by the ones who were called first.

So, I was going to say, “her most endearing quality is she’s my best friend” until the guy in couple right before us said the exact same thing, word for word. It hadn’t occurred to me to prepare a plan B, so I had to think fast or else look like an idiot.

As we stepped up front a crazy idea hit me, and I went with it. Forcing down my fear of public speaking, I said with a smile, “Her most endearing quality is… I’m a dork and she puts up with me.” The crowd laughed, the kind of laughter you hear in a sitcom. We laughed with them. I was thoroughly pleased with myself.

But then she said, still smiling, “Wait, wait! I didn’t hear what you just said!”

There was a pause. I held up my microphone, opened my mouth. Hesitated. Blushed. Hesitated again.

And then I just decided to whisper it in her ear. “I said I’m a dork and you put up with me.” And then she laughed, and the crowd was laughing with her.

And I was still blushing.

Hope

It was around this time of the year, when the evenings were colder than usual and you could already smell Christmas in the air.  A friend and I were taking a walk inside the campus, crunching wilted leaves beneath our feet.  Dusk had begun to fall.  Most of the other students have gone home.

“Don’t you hate it how there’s just so much uncertainty in life?” she said with a sigh. “One minute you’re fine and then something unexpected happens and suddenly you’re all messed up.  You can never be sure of what’s life going to throw at you.”

Silence. She was going through a rough patch in her relationship, and I was trying to help her sort things out.  We continued walking as the world turned a deeper shade of blue and the decorative lights hanging from the trees came to life.

I didn’t know what to say.  But suddenly, I had a realization that seemed to come from nowhere, like a shooting star that catches you by surprise.  Like finding something you never thought you had, or something you’ve always thought you’ve lost.

And so I said, “Yeah, you’re right.  We’re creatures of pattern so we generally despise change and the uncertainty that it brings.

“But you know, because we’re uncertain–because we’re not really sure what’s going to happen, there is hope.”

“…I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing.  Because tomorrow the sun will rise.  Who knows what the tide could bring?” – Castaway (2000)

So, I’m back.

I haven’t written anything until now because this past year has been crazy.  I’ve been in and out of hospitals and emergency rooms so often that I’ve maxed out my health benefits, sick leaves, and sometimes my sanity.  Each trip to the hospital was for a different illness!  And no, I don’t even want to list them down.

In fact if I hadn’t gotten married this last year, it would have been the worst year of my life.  But I did, so instead it’s the BEST YEAR EVER.

And so I’ve decided to go back to writing.  But not just to chronicle events and share them with friends.  I want to write not really so that others could read, but so that I could write.  Because writing has always been my way of making sense of things.  Because writing is part of who I am.

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.” – Don Delillo

Benchmark

Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Apple Safari — the Big Five browsers out there.  But which one is the best?  There’s a lot of reviews on the matter but at the end of the day, it’s a question of which browser meets your requirements as a user — which one is best for your computer.

I’ve come across this neat website that lets you compare the performance of different browsers on your computer. And for this particular machine that I am using right now (a Pentium 4 2.80GHz desktop), the test gave the following results (click for a larger image):

on a Pentium 4 2.80GHz desktop

Safari rocked the tests overall, and topped the Social Networking and Data categories. Chrome was a close second, topping the Rendering and Text Parsing categories. Chrome also topped the Complex Graphics test, but results from this test weren’t considered in the overall results because the technology used wasn’t supported yet by all major browsers (which I guess is why IE scored zero on this).  Internet Explorer scored miserably in all categories. See below for details. (See their FAQ for details on the individual tests)

Firefox’s scores were mediocre compared to the top 2, but what makes it shine is that it’s open-source. So as a result, lots of useful extensions/add-ons have been developed for it.  For instance, it supports a Gmail notifier that can manage multiple accounts.  I’ve stuck to Firefox for so long just because of this one add-on. Only recently did I discover a similar extension for Chrome, which made me switch.  Safari would’ve won me over, but it lacked this feature.

a lost song, found

There’s this song that I loved as a child, but it faded in memory as I grew up until all I had was a melody and the feel of a cozy Saturday morning while watching the Cartoon Network.  I’ve tried many times to forcefully recall the words so I can track the song down, to no avail.

And then this morning, a part of the song played in my head out of nowhere. Roam if you want to. Roam around the world. A few clicks later (thank you so much Google!), I’ve found the song: Roam by The B-52′s.