hyprecise

Won't you be my girl sally

The Police Live, Boston

best drums ever. just listen to the kick

Dead Ahead

"Hulloa!" is what I call out to pedestrians and car drivers when I can see that they're not looking. This usually happens after they have looked down a street and see no glare of headlights or taillights and presume that the street is clear. Granted, that here in San Francisco, pedestrian is king, but this is a democracy, and therefore, common sense rules over assumed rights.

I've come down the hills of the Haight towards Van Ness at near-midnight in a cold wind and have had to almost come to a stop for a group of 15 crossing the road, if not for the pleasurable experience of having pedestrians stop for me, giving me right of way. "An optimist," Tim Coppola quips, "is a San Franciscan who looks only one way when crossing a one-way street."

A candidate for the Darwin Awards, my boss would probably say, is a person who crosses Market Street before the walk sign goes green, and still fails to look in the direction of traffic.

As you might have guessed, I did make unwanted contact recently with a pedestrian. It was on the east side of Market at New Montgomery. Here's what happened:

I had just crossed Third and was coasting towards New Montgomery; the light always turns red before I get to the intersection. By some chance, the light held at green for longer than usual, and the bike lane/right turn into NM was clear of cars.



I decide to gun it. I look up at the light and it was still green. My peripheral vision says there are no cars counter-flowing up NM and I make a last check that there moving obstructions coming down Montgomery or Post.


And that's when I saw him. He was on the far end of the North-South pedestrian lane, stepping onto the street before the No Walk had turned to Walk. He was looking straight ahead or at his PDA. Not at me. I'm the yellow cut-out below. He's the blue spot on the street.


I shout out He-llow! which maybe I should not have done and instead, should just have tried to avoid him, but instinct kicked in and told me I should give him a heads-up. Naturally he backed right into my path. It's like Neo visiting the Oracle in her apartment. Did I foresee the act of fate happen or did I cause it by foreseeing it and calling attention to it. Either way, it happened.

The green splash is where I hit him. How do I know this? Because I got knocked off my bike and stumbled into the dark green newspaper dispenser on the right, where I audibly whacked! my bike helmet. (If you don't wear a helmet, don't bike. Especially in traffic.)


I'm still on my feet and so is my khaki-garbed obstacle, probably still in a sugar and saturated fat from the McDonald's blueberry bacon muffin (store on the right). I steel myself and turn to him, "Watch where you're going, man!"

At this point there are 4 or 5 other pedestrians who are looking at the otherwise comedic aftermath. When I say what I said, they all say, "You ran a red light!"

No way, sirs, ma'ams. If I ran a red light—and red lights on this intersection are synchronized with the crossing green lights—then how come I ran into McFatty 20 feet away from the street corner and not into them???

This is approximately where I stood (albeit more to the left). The big circle is Sleepy the Street Crosser, and the small ones are the ones that I dodged by some miracle of translocation and invisibility. Look at how far this point is from the intersection. I clearly had at least a half second through the intersection before the light turned red.

Ah well, it is a moot point now. Everyone is safe and sound, and though I haven't inspected my bike for damage yet, it's run well to 25th in the Mission and back to the TL, where I live, so No Blood, No Foul.

The only point I want to make here is if you wish to live in a safe environment, it doesn't happen by doing less of something like paying attention; it happens with vigilance, awareness, and common sense.

The Light at the End of the Metaphor

Just when I had bought CFL light bulbs, I got hit with the news. In a switch, The INS has turned that 'Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses' into 'Give me your lucky, your 1 of 3.'

You know that flame that rides atop Her Ladyship Liberty's cone? I wanted to replace that flame with a compact florescent. I wanted something long-lasting. It would save money and it was the right thing to do. Mother would approve of the low wattage, and I had found that IKEA ones have a mild glow that almost incandesce.

So there I was, looking to the future; five, maybe ten years that we could watch that baby burn and see whether the music, when it's over, herald the light's adieu.

Instead it was the "I" in the INS's invisible I N K , that would make my legal goodbye legible, and would make the inevitable flip of the script.

Five dollars for each bulb. A social experiment meant to accrue the due, passing the savings on to—me, true. But now what am I to do? Post a personal on craigslist? "Expedited expatriate needs to pass the torch; they passed on me so I'm passing the savings on to you; fully paid; some installment necessary; ask not which Watt! what you can do is ask rather what your country has done for you."

"Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses." With luck, they won't pass the dim bulbs onto you. Just the ones that last and pay you back.

My agency's commitment to social responsibility

One of the main pillars of Wikreate as "360° communications meets social networking" is the establishment of our commitment to our community. Our concept of social networking goes beyond having business relationships with professionals in advertising.

Our goal is also to strengthen corporate social responsibility and give back—or in the case of our newest pro bono project, help NGOs like the Ayala Foundation, USA (AFUSA) give back.

AFUSA and GILAS

Ayala Foundation's shining star right now is GILAS (Gearing Up Internet Literacy Access for Students) which is designed to provide internet to the Phillippines' 6300 public schools. As of May 8, 2008, GILAS has connected 1,750 public schools, giving hundreds of thousands of students a chance to go beyond the dusty trails that lead away from their home towns.

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands at low tide. But topography is not the only barrier to solving the lack the web connection. A shortage of funds, and an abundance of mismanagement and bureaucracy in national and local government makes it difficult to deliver the most basic services to 90 million Filipinos. Computers and pipes and tubes is forced low on the list of priorities.

Ayala Corp and Ayala Foundation, Inc., are strong advocates of civic duty, ethical business practice, and grassroots development to improve the lives of the people. It is because of these high standards and care for others that we are proud to make their mission our own.

The importance of internet activity to Wikreate

The experience and success of Wikreate relies heavily on the internet. It allows us to conduct business with suppliers abroad, deliver creative solutions instantaneously, and keep in touch with friends and news sources. The wiki platform is a new, powerful tool that allows more, open, and fresh work between collaborators that is as rich as the bench of players is deep. Such is the Web2.0 mentality that, face it or not, will rule the offline world as well as the online.

For this GILAS project, the media is the message and the message is:

* Connecting the best and the brightest volunteers
* Shining light on the undiscovered
* Teaching the underprivileged, and,
* Giving hope to the near-forgotten islands of poverty.

Wikreate's call to action

There are 3.5 million Filipinos in the US. Presently, half of these are living in California. The challenge is to reach these using little more than AFUSA's database of 7,000 emails, a smattering of volunteer groups on Yahoo! groups, and the tools that will open up the hearts and minds of the new generation of Americans who have ties, or once had ties, to the Philippines.

Seven thousand contacts. Seven thousand, one hundred seven islands. At low tide.

A connection with the past

I didn't know whether I've said this in a previous blog, but whether I have or not, it doesn't matter because what I'm about to say is true.

I've missed the intentional and oft invasive manner of the Egyptians. People that you meet on the street will take your hand and be your best friend for at least as long as it takes to make a sale. Like I told my friend, the cosmopolitan universe of Egypt has lasted long before there were steamships to take white people over there. Ever since the Romans were expanding their frontiers and coming home and made a detour before they arrived to their mothers and wives, they passed by the oldest city in the world to experience something older than they.

Because of this environment—this constant motion of strangers through their land—their behavior has been influenced to accept and accommodate the influx of tourists and people from far away entranced by the history. The resilience of those who live in its shadow, and the transient nature of its survival, is an energy in and of itself, generating the fascination from within.

They speak many languages in Egypt (although getting into a taxicab whose driver doesn't speak a word of English or Filipino except for 'Coca Cola' isn't rare at all, so check and double check your transportation's multiliguisticality applications) and hawkers and touts on the street will not stop at rattling off some Romance or Baltic tongue to wow you into buying something.

This is not ever to say that all Egyptians you meet are marrying you off to their sister, brother, goat, or date palm). I guess that depending on their social status and the nature of their business, some will befriend you because networking is as (or more) important to them than the fast buck that they may or may not make depending on how fast they are or gullible you are. For example, I befriended this bunch of gentlemen, Aly Baba and his son, Hussien, and nephew, who ran a restaurant in Luxor. A great and educated bunch, they welcomed me with the class and suave of international men of mystery. They are certainly into being your friends for the long haul. People like these, whom you can make a mental, emotional, and/or philosophical promise to hold dear and are likewise throwing themselves into your path, as a fellow tourist of Life itself, are the ones you should keep.

People who have 6,000 years of heritage have no misgiving about eternal life and the issuing religions that market this wondrously incongruous concept. More than anything, the transience that they see in the everyday is but a 24-hour cycle of their God, Ra. So fleeting, so predictable, so essential, but so insignificant. The mere occurrence of the sunrise and sunset can never live up to the presence of the life-giving spirit.

If you're unsure about people, and their intentions, maybe you should go to Egypt, and get the depth and breadth of sincerity, warmth, and love that has existed fall this time.


I traveled on the Nile for 2 days like this, just drifting with the ancient tide.


Thanks to GNU/Wikipedia for this image

The Biking 351st

I have always envied cyclists, in-line skaters, skateboarders, and to a lesser extent, skiers, snowboarders, and surfers.

Independence has always been HUGE for me. Be it that I was over protected, the youngest of five children, or raised with a sense of pride that grows without the benefit of sunlight, I have always—will always—want to do some things entirely on my own. Biking is the perfect example of this innate desire; as of this month, now known as "The Biking 351st" and heretofore known as "April," I am an independent traveler.

I went to Egypt all by myself last September and the mix of fear and excitement still fills me whenever I look down at the mid-cuts that I wore from Cairo to Dahab. I wore those shoes out good. And along with the fear and excitement swells a sadness. A sadness that all my walking in this nascent West Coast City will destroy these shoes and render them more decrepit than the 4,000 year-old rock, stone, and sand formations that it climbed. And where I am now—it is the farthest that one can go from that first step of civilization without crossing a dateline and being sent back to it. I will preserve these shoes as I pedal myself on to much newer, but ironically, more familiar things.

I first took a journey completely alone when I was a child of but 11. We lived in a suburb called San Juan in Metro Manila, about 10 miles from the financial and medical heart of the city, Makati. The reason I mention the word medical is that my mom went into surgery to remove her cataracts in a procedure that nowadays would be considered obsolete, even archaic. She was bedridden and blind for days, gauze pads over her eyelids. On the first day of her surgery, a summer in 1990, I went out of my house. Walked about 300 meters to the busy traffic in Pinaglabanan, and boarded my first jeepney solo. At EDSA, I had to find a bus that advertised my destination: Ayala.

Different modes of travel force you to think vastly differently. Driving or riding a ca, we think of one way roads, intersections, and signal lights. On buses, we think of landmarks, bus stops, and transfers for our way back. Walking, we think of shortcuts, diagonal lines, holes in cyclone wire fences.

I picked up a Japanese proverb in Egypt, "He who travels alone travels fastest." Riding my bike around the city has given me a whole new perspective of the streets and the people and the traffic. For now I have to look out for both pedestrian and automotive traffic. I also have to look at landmarks, intersections, but I also have to look out for potholes, inclines, Muni streetcar tracks, opening doors from parked cars. I also have to learn not to look when a car zips right by me with six inches to my left. But as with all my modes of transport, I have learned to love the independence, the mobility, and now, the pleasure of wind in my face, the levitation from the hard, dirty pavement, the autonomy expressed in speed, my contribution to being a responsible member of my planet, these are things that are unequaled by walking, driving, or riding a bus. I am a singing, smiling, sustainable development on two wheels, healing scabs and all.

HFR (How Random)

The timbre of a bell in a fire alarm is equal to or more than the sound of the firefighters' arrival. I learned this this morning, at 2:49. I had some friends over and we were just winding down when a persistent ring rang through the apartment like a banshee in your head. I walked out, confused, wondering whether it were a prank. But the smell of something burning told me it was something creeping up. My neighbor he told me to call 911 and I got on the phone and called and beat on doors and walked down the building trying to get people awake and some did and told them to get out of the building and stay low and told the lady the address and told her there was a fire between the second and third floors and while I was knockin on doors almost walked into this apartment on the floor I will not identify. It was a couple who had burned some food real bad.

And I was like, It smells like smoke in here. Is it coming from here? I said. And they were like, yeah we burned some food, and I said, you burned some food? I said. And they said, yeah, we burned, like, food, like it was nothing. in the meantime, I walk downstairs to get out and the firemen storm in and usher in the first sense of sense in the night, telling them, it was burned food, and telled them where.

I lingered long enough to watch them disable the fire alarm and fiddle with the hallway emergency switch before I thanked them and went up and rejoined my party, who had by then, as you would imagine, were thoroughly spooked out by this strict confluence of events.

When the firemen arrive, I tell you, and you are still alive so that you can see them walking in all calm and shit, you are saved. That is the time to give praise. The whole event was so surreal though. Like, as I would use to like to call it, a Reader's Digest Drama in Real Life story.

Big fan of Reader's Digest, by the way. If you have kids, let them read that. It's got comedy, articles, pictures, and Drama in Real Life. Great bathroom reading.