Of course. Actually, I’ve befriended LOTS of inanimate objects.

And almost all of them bear our family name. TRUE!

There’s my chocolate-brown dear bear Teddy. Her full name is Natalia Lizaño Villafuerte. *laughs sheepishly* If my memory serves me well, her birthday (the day we had her) is February 14, 2000, making her 8 years old as of this writing. She is my constant companion – we sleep together, eat together, and study together. The family considers her family - sometimes, we call out when we are looking for Teddy. When we were younger, (continue reading…)

Lightbulb moment: I have just realized that people nowadays are way too lazy. They just go “lol” instead of letting out a good hearty laugh.

Stop the LOL LMAO ROFL thing.

Laugh people, LAUGH if you need to – if you want to! We need to hear a good hearty chuckle now. We need to get over the depression all these turbulence (tragedies in Myanmar and China) have brought about. I know it’s no laughing matter, but I guess we need all the positive energies that we can get in order to live life anew.

…and there was light!

We have a newly-installed circular light bulb in the living room because the old one suddenly went off. And now, it’s a lot brighter here in the room.

Hellooo sunshine.

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Oh, by the way people, I have a DeviantArt account now. I posted the pictures of the colorful notebooks and the Mothers’ day roses there if you want to see them.

I feel like drinking a cup of coffee today.

For the record, this is the first day in the entire summer that I didn’t complain that “it’s [the day] so HOT.”

Amazingly, it isn’t because of the rain (for the whole day, I think I didn’t see a drop of rain).

I can still recall the feeling of wanting to linger on the bed, relishing the lovely cold air all over my body. It’s that feeling you get when you just want to roll on your bed and hide under your sheets (not in fright, but in utmost delight).

I woke up with a big smile on my face, literally.

What a great morning! I felt like I just woke up in Baguio, getting ready for a sumptuous breakfast in bed.

And now, where’s my cup of coffee? 

Maybe I’ll settle for a glass of chocolate milk that’s yummy and cold.

This morning, Jobie, my brother, spent some time to study the first few lessons in his Math book. I sat beside him, correcting his errors once in a while, and helping him out in his studies. There were some topics that I just have to learn FOR THE FIRST TIME because when I was in the same grade level (sixth grade, that is), we didn’t have such lessons.

Have you ever heard of deficient, perfect, and abundant numbers?

There was a problem set in his book that asked that the numbers be classified as deficient, perfect, and abundant numbers. I haven’t heard of these terms all throughout my learning years, so I quickly browsed through the Math book to learn about such number classification.

Here is what I have learned (I’ll quote some lines from the book so that you’ll understand):

A number is a deficient number if the sum of all its possible factors, including 1 and the number itself, is less than twice the number.

Consider the number 8. The factors of 8 are 1 and 8, and 2 and 4.

Sum of the factors – 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 = 15

Twice the given number – 2 x 8 = 16

Comparing the two numbers, 15 < 16, hence 8 is a deficient number.

Following the same line of thinking, a perfect number is a number which the sum of its factors and twice the given number are equal, and an abundant number is a number which the sum of its factors is greater than twice the given number.

I still can’t understand why they had to create such terms. Why add burden to the [already heavy] load of the grade school students when in fact, they don’t actually need to know about such things?

Quoting from an old blog entry from my former blog (Pardon the Taglish):

MATHEMATICS – GRADE 3 STYLE.
Hay nako. Ang lesson nila Jobie ay tungkol sa mga PRIME AND COMPOSITE NUMBERS. Sad. Ngayon ko lang napagtanto na hindi lahat ng inaral ko sa grade school ay kailangan sa totoong buhay. Tignan mo na lang ulit yung prime and composite numbers na lesson ni Jobie. Ano namang silbi non? Hindi naman tatanungin ng gwardya sa office/school, “O, ano ba yang ID no mo, PRIME O COMPOSITE NUMBER?” Di ba hindi naman tatanungin yon?! [Naiintindihan na kita Jobie.] 

Does this thing have to do with the fact that people consider the number 13 unlucky? Is it because 13 is a deficient number? I guess not. Lucky number 8 is also deficient, if we follow the book’s standards.

Absurd Math lesson. Really.

And then I thought, what would be the Math lessons in the future?

Teaching Math in 1950:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970:

A logger exchanges a set “L” of lumber for a set “M” of money. The cardinality of set “M” is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set “M.” The set “C,” the cost of production contains 20 fewer points than set “M.” Represent the set “C” as subset of set “M” and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set “P” of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990:

By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels “feel” as the logger cut down the trees? There are no wrong answers.

Teaching Math in 2002:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $120. How does Arthur Andersen determine that his profit margin is $60?

Teaching Math in 2010:

El hachero vende un camion cargado de lena por $100. Su gasto de produccion es…*

Haha! Pardon the nerdy joke.

–

* Translation: “The Hachero sells a truckload of lena for $ 100. Its production is spending…”

This post is quite, quite random, so I’m going to place titles/headers for two purposes:

1) to give you a hint that there will be another topic; and,
2) so that you will know which parts to read (and which parts not to).

Game?

UNO – New pictures. I’ve got another set of freshly-shot photos (freshly-shot quite literally and literally) because my subjects are ROSES! I like taking pictures of flowers since they are easier to shoot (because they don’t move unnecessarily) and I get to experiment at angles and light. What do you know, I’ve got about three or four albums [in Multiply] on flowers!

My favorite shot in today’s set.
[ H A P P Y  M O T H E R S '  D A Y ] 

The roses on the photos are from the church. They gave roses and bookmarks to the mothers because it’s  Mothers’ Day. To see the rest of the photos, click here (for my contacts only).

DOS – It’s the PRIDYIDIR love! After we attended the 8 AM mass at the parish, we went home, only to find out that our refrigerator broke down. It was quite a surprise that suddenly, it wouldn’t function at all, since yesterday, it was working pretty well. The worse part is that there are still lots of food inside the fridge (lots of meat!) and we certainly couldn’t allow them to decay/rot. The solution: buy a new fridge. Besides, it would be the first time in eighteen years that the family would buy a refrigerator!

At 5 PM, the neeeeew pridyidir was delivered to our home. Hellooo Kelvinator! It’s a two-door beauty that’s really slim and sleek. It’s really bigger than our old fridge so until now, I am quite, quite amazed. Actually, everyone’s amazed and fascinated about the new ref. Does psychology say something about this, like a theory on superiority complex or something (object-human being relationship)? Haha, I want to know more about that if there is such thing.

TRES – Get ready for OrSem ‘08. Lately, I’ve been a bit active at TeenTalk again (CandyMag.com’s forum site) and I’ve been helping out some of the Ateneo fresh[wo]men, answering their questions regarding Ateneo as a whole and the Orientation Seminar (OrSem). It’s amazing how my first year flew by so quickly that at this time, I’m already able to answer such queries.

Ang sarap ng feeling ng may “nakababatang kapatid.”  [Read: Yippee, we're not the youngest batch in the Lo-yow-la Schools anymore!] Why, we are all brothers and sisters in the community, right? Go Ateneo!

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On a lighter note, I’ll be waking up early tomorrow to make some goodies, my expertise: PANCAAAAAKES! I wasn’t able to cook those lovely pancakes this morning because I woke up a little late (7-8 AM is just enough time to prepare for the mass). When we came home, we were hungry so we decided to eat what’s easy to eat (I prepare my pancakes lovingly so usually, it takes a lengthy bit of time to cook). I was planning to cook for Mommy (since it’s Mothers’ day today), but oh well. Tomorrow’s not too late for pancakes, I guess.

Happy Mothers’ Day Mommy!

We love you very much!

** Here is a little something I did for Mommy. [Click on the 'Happy Mothers' Day']

I did it with the help of Adobe PhotoShop 7.0 and Adobe ImageReady – all things were *magically* done by ImageReady, including the HTML, yes.

I had to learn how to do rollovers to create the whole thing. Pretty tricky, and too bad, the Help section wouldn’t help a bit.

There you go!

What joy! )

SUPPORT ME and MY BLOG! :D

Thank you in advance

The “Invisible to Everyone” check box on Yahoo! Messenger is NOT. REALLY. RELIABLE.

No thanks to the Yahoo! Online Checker (read: Invisible Scanner).

Oh no, Xeeber saw Teddy! :O

Scared? Read this, an excerpt from the Invisible Scanner blog:

Invisible-scanner.com is a tool that YOU can use to check up on your friends. Invisible-scanner.com helps you scan Yahoo Messanger (YM) users for their status. It shows you if the user is online / offline / invisible, it’s avatar and ALSO if it’s the main id.

Want to try it out? You can opt to go to Invisible-Scanner, Xeeber, [another] Invisible Scanner, or Buddy Spy. Radical, isn’t it? NOT! HAHA.

☺☺☺

In other ‘news’, I’ve got a new bunch of freshly-shot photos. Of notebooks, colorful notebooks at that.

Here’s a sample photo.

If you would like to see the rest of the pictures, head over here (you have to be my friend, though, and unfortunately, I do not accept anonymous requests).

And here’s a newly-edited photo:

BP and AE (Before Photoshop & After Editing).

The original photo (in its original size) is OK, but the edited photo has the depth and vibrance of colors that the original lacks. Great, huh? Check out EzPhotoshop for more tutorials.