Lifing (ecopark and Pyro)

There is living and there is lifing (pronounced as Life-ing).. i like inventing words of my own, perhaps just for the joy of creating something new.. or maybe because a part of me wants to defy the laws of grammar and syntax.

I had two full weeks of work, and more importantly, play.

Last January 6, 2007 I went with friends (Rhea and Ces) to the La Mesa Ecopark.

The purple bike I rode cost P70 an hour, it was tall and it had a basket so it was okay. The only thing I wasn't too happy about was the small biking area... it was fun weaving through trees and bumping up and down the rocky paths, but after 10 minutes or so I have gone through the whole biking area already. Bitin. :-(


Ces (aka tarebear) really has a good eye and steady hand. She took this shot (above and below) from the ecopark.


White duck
Sitting on the green lilies
Webbed feet paddling underneath
(photo by Ces)

This picnic table (I took this shot!) was made from fragments of the old La Mesa Dam. Go visit the La Mesa ecopark if you think you had enough of the urban landscape. http://www.bantaykalikasan.com

January 13, 2006
After having free food and accommodation from Mabuhay Manor (thanks to my friend Jude who is doing a profile of the hotel), finally I was able to watch the Pyro Olympics at mall of Asia.

The traffic was HORRENDOUS! The streets became instant parking lots especially around the mall of asia. The crowds sat on the sidewalks, cemented parking lots, waiting for the show to start. I was there as early as 3pm (the show is at 8pm) and already the streets are half full. Karen and Nerissa joined later on, and we played "Pass the Message" and "Clairvoyance (a game we made up) to pass the time.

Here are some photos that I took:

Mall of Asia. The sky glimpsed in circles.

I like the design of the mall because it lets a lot of natural sunlight in, and they used the sky as natural backdrops to soothe the weary maller.

Some of the fireworks are unpredictable.
After you see a ball of fire launched into the black sky
It can burst into a huge sphere (like a detonated bomb)
Or it can slowly unravel like petals stretching from sleep.

I liked the element of surprise.
Sometimes the spherical fireworks would expand suddenly it looked alarmingly near,
you'd think that a planet made of sparks was about to crash to the earth.

And there are specks of light that seemed to linger longer than the others...

Thin strands of light that streak downward...

The crowds collective cheers...

Red gold white green and blue filling almost the whole sky, as far as the eye can see...


Here is Denzil's video from YouTube, it looks better than the video i took perhaps because he used a video camera and a tripod.

Below is the short video I took using a kodak easy share digicam. This is my first video I ever uploaded in YouTube. Yay! Now I know how!


Glee Glee Glee. =)

Core

The universe is designed in such a way that layers will either hide, or reflect, the core.

When I was in elementary school, I liked drawing the layers of the earth and would pay special attention to the core. It reminded me of an avocado seed peeking out from the fleshy layers of the sliced fruit. Ofcourse later on I learned that the inner core was made of the densest most solid iron and the outer core was made of molten iron.. its movements affect the mantle, the crust, the ocean, the volcanoes, and us.




But I have often wondered if no one has actually seen the core, how did they guess what it is made of?

Galileo (bless him) was able to tell that the earth was round by the curved path the stars and planets take across the sky. Without ever seeing earth from outside, he knew the shape of our planet by observing the other elements relative to the earth.

And the scientists are guessing what the core is made of based from the things that come out from the surface... magma for instance.. seismic waves..the movements beneath the ocean.

So the only way to find out what the inner is made of is to observe the outer?

Is it the same way with people? Do you get the gist, the core of the person by observing how other people treat them?

Recently I took this IQ test from tickle to find out my "core" gifts.. after answering about 25 questions here is what I got:



Your IQ score is 122

Your Intellectual Type is Insightful Linguist. This means you are highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist. You can take complex concepts and articulate them to just about anyone. You have a gift with words and insight into processes and the way people think. You're particularly well equipped to come out on top since you can read people well.

Greatest Talents: Can clarify complex issues. Can bring new insight to ideas through their fresh perspective. Are good at leading teams.

Jobs: publicist, graphic designer, teacher, braodcaster, public speaker, attorney.

I scored low on logic and medium on math (big surprise), but I did well in visual-spatial (100% percentile rank)



and linguistic (100% percentile rank) ...




So is this IQ test result the answer to my question of what is my core gift? Perhaps. I already have an idea that i think in pictures and words. I also know I am illogical at times and decide on things based of gut-feel. I have peddled my writing talents.. used words to get donors or participants for a workshop... this is what I am earning from. But it would also be cool to be a street scientist, the way David Blane became the street magician, I can see myself explaining the concept of blackholes to an MMDA officer using a flashlight and a blanket.

I think people's core's are trickier to reveal. Sometimes the external does not reflect the internal. I have met many writers who think they are not writers at all .. they need someone else, preferably someone with a Phd, to tell them that they are writers. And I guess that is their own process of discovering who they are.

The book Conversations with God says life is not about discovering who you are, but it is the process of creating who you are.

I like that better. My IQ score says my math and logic is patchy.. but I can create otherwise. My reflex of not looking at anything that has radical signs, derivatives, logarithms, and polynomials... I can curb and try to understand it in pictures and words.