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Funny how it’s been the third week we had been discussing the Architecture of Participation and it’s only now that I’m able to relate current incidences in my life to it.

101 – Creativity and Arts
For one thing, it must have something to do with the fact that my mouth is swollen from beer allergy (yes, San Mig Light is bad for me) and all that karaoke singing from 10PM-4.30AM. And (yes, it’s positively evil to start a sentence with the word “and” so sue me) I find it really hilarious that Sir Bingoe would mention that Filipinos are karaoke addicts on the day that I’d be nursing a 2-day-old hangover. In light of this, I began to wonder if we’d ever have the chance to have one format for karaoke songs and then we can download them to our USBs so we can have our pick of songs when we go out. Sort of like Magic Sing, except with a wider range of selections. Wanted to sing “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” but I guess The Providence Tower (there’s a karaoke bar at the first floor of my condo) ran out of cheesy songs for me. You may be asking yourself what karaoke has to do with creativity and arts. Haven’t you still figured out that I’m a nut case?

15 – Enroll Under the Best Teachers
I am such a dodo for not having thought of it earlier. Dr. Biyo (MIT named a minor planet after her) is my client and when I was reading her story, I came across a statement that she made regarding the fact that she declined an offer to become a director. She said something along the lines of being more effective if she were directly interacting with the students that if she were to be a director. Thing is, she could multiply herself.

The world needs more educators like Dr. Biyo. Especially in high school. High school is the worst time of a student’s academic life. I kid you not. It’s a time where common sense gets thrown away, critical thinking gets punished and teachers hammer useless knowledge into your head. Diagramming sentences, anyone? I got thrown into summer remedial school for not being able to draft an architectural dome of sentences. I was deeply insulted when I saw that my summer classmates couldn’t even string together a coherent English sentence. What use is sentence diagramming when you can’t even fix subject-verb disagreements? Ah, I remember when the nuns would admonish me for being honest with my CLE answers and for always having lunch with my guy friend. (They feared we’d have pre-marital sex. If they had observed the guy friend as closely as they did me, they’d realize that he was a closet queen and any thought of us having pre-marital sex would be met with side-splitting laughter.) I digress. My point is, we need more people like Dr. Biyo. With the network society coming into the fore, this shouldn’t be a problem. The reason I’m calling myself a dodo right now is because I’ve been a blogger since 2001, long before Blogspot, Multiply and Friendster became household names. Heck, my first order on the first day of my teaching stint was for my students to sign up for our class blog. So how come I didn’t suggest that Dr. Biyo’s site be Web 2.0 friendly? She could multiply herself right there and then. Must call up contact and discuss further.

58 – America is a nation of FREE AGENTS!

71 – We’re stuck in the old world paradigm of an 8-5 job in between rush-hour traffic.

84 – It’s all about Re-Invention. Life 2.0

103 – Reflect about the Multi-Skill, Multi-Marlet, Multi-Income Filipino
Ya know, this is the first time that I’m actually proud to call myself a free agent. Only in MIPOLAW. Before this, I was always very defensive about my career path. My mom would cringe that I did not put up a business (I did once and it ended in disaster) or have a 9-6 job. “You need a stable job,” she’d say. “You need to work abroad,” she’d say. I’d always wonder why she’s complaining when I am completely independent and can even pay for my little luxuries. And people wonder why I was eager to live on my own since I was 9 years old. It’s hard to deal with an overachieving mom, who was earning 10K/day back when the PHP was still 20 against the USD.

In the 9 years that I have been working, I had re-invented myself 5 times. I was extremely unhappy with the last 4 Bea incarnations. I was stressed. I was angry. I hated waking up in the mornings when I’m actually a morning person! Now I’m working 20 hours a week, which gives me enough room for projects, school, and that legal battle that I hope would be over by next year. I have enough time to go wall-climbing so Mom can stop complaining about me fermenting in my computer chair (now she whines that I picked up a dangerous sport). I have all the things I basically need and can make room for the stuff I want. It was not an easy decision to make. My former boss once asked me why I wanted to quit my job and why I wanted to take up my master’s (this was after she asked me if I’d stay if she gave me higher pay). I didn’t know what to reply back then. I only knew this: nothing in the world would’ve made me stay. Sure, I loved Level Up! The newfound knowledge opened a lot of doors for me, but I was not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. While part of my reason was the fact that I was getting 1/3rd of what I used to earn as a Systems Analyst for Loyola, another part of me needed to go on my own personal journey (read Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist if you want to find yours, too). Leaving Level Up! was a huge risk. I lived on my savings and what I earned as a writer/eCommerce agent until I was well enough to find projects again (I was hospitalized during my last week in LU). The network society saved me.

Friedman said that the world is flat. Thing is, the flat world also conspires to help you when you’re determined to make it on your own. Incidentally, I am working overtime on a project that would further lessen my work time to 15 hours a week. Thank you, Web 2.0.

82 – Skate to where the PUCK is going!
Gretsky, you’re a genius. But do you have any idea how hard it is to skate to where the PUCK is going when we’re swimming in Lechon Manok Syndrome?

105 – 5-Layer Model of Communication and Business
Another trip down memory lane. One where I had an argument with my boss because he wanted me to use the OSI model in my blueprint for our ecommerce site. I told him that we weren’t dealing with the OSI layer anymore because it’s been built (gad, it had to be the exact same sentence that Sir Bingoe just said today). Former boss didn’t accept my alternative proposal, claiming that we should be equals when it comes to IT because we were classmates in BSIM. Yes, we were classmates, but I already had 4 years experience in IT by the time I took up the second degree, whereas he was still quoting Kendall and Kendall right off the book. This is the same dude who took one look at my team’s database calculations and told us that, “Ah, you’re looking at multiplexers.” Say, what?? BTW, this happened in 2002. Haha.

Oh yeah, as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I call Sir Bingoe’s 5-Layer model “The 5Cs.”

This is all for now…I should be sleeping…

drewbocz wrote on Nov 21, ’06 What are all those numbers at the start of the headings? It’s driving me nuts thinking about what they mean…

skysenshi wrote on Nov 21, ’06 oh, that would be the item number of the discussion proper.