Gloomy skies and relentless rains in the Timber City today.

A typhoon has befallen Butuan. The mountains encircling the city and our relative distance from the typhoon belt make us safe from nature’s wrath on most days, but for tonight the gods have made an exception. Classes were suspended this afternoon, although it remains to be seen whether the suspension will hold through tomorrow.

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I finished reading “Catcher in the Rye” today. Fantastic novel. It is written quite crassly, even for today’s literary standards (and remember that the book was published in the middle of the last century).

I can see a little of myself in Holden Caulfield (the story’s protagonist)—detached, unwilling to conform to societal standards, determined to follow my own path. Then again, there must be a little bit of Holden in everyone. Only, others choose to keep him hidden and neglected, perhaps afraid of the uncertainty that comes with breaking free from stereotypes and living life spontaneously.

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National Novel Writing Month 2009 will end in less than a week. Unless I stop going to school and lock myself in my room for the next six days and write to reach the 50,000-word mark , I will probably not win in this year’s NaNo. I must say, however, that this year was a lot less of a failure than last year (although big failures and small failures are failures just the same). I think I’m nearing the 2,000-word mark (I can’t be certain—I wrote with paper and pen, old school style, this year), as opposed to last year’s pitiful 500.

I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that I hold little novel-writing potential. A novel must have a riveting plot, engaging characters, vivid action and a fitting setting, and I am entirely incapable of creating any of those. Also, I notice the classics always have little nuances, motifs, symbols and themes ingeniously woven into their stories. I can even hardly make out the ingeniously woven nuances and symbols!

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You know, I really not expect Manny to be win in his fight to Cotto, you know. I mean, ah, his very boastful na, you know. So I mean, ah, I thought he lose.

But I mean, ah, I watch the fight you know. And you know, Pacquiao have difficulty boxing Cotto, butCotto find it, I mean, he think, you know, he think it’s harder to fight Manny. Manny lose in the first round, you know, I mean, ahh, it was hard to, uhm, I mean, measure Cotto, you know. But I mean, in the next, ahm, rounds, you know, it easy for Manny already.

Manny say that Cotto was a hard, I mean, ahhhhh, you know, fighter. His ears become big and he have, you know, wounds on his, ah, face. Yeah. He’s very humble when he got, you know, interviewed. I mean, uhhhhhhh, he don’t boast with Mario Lopez, you know.

So even though I, ahhh, you know, don’t like Pacquiao boastful outside the ring, I mean, uhhh, congratulation to his record-breaking win. His make all Filipino people around the world proud and also to all boxing fans around world.

Oh yeah—Wapakman, don’t mess it!

I recently got voicemail activated for my Sun Cellular line. It took a couple of phone calls to Customer Care, but it’s functional now.

When I decided to give the service a spin by calling my phone from my mom’s phone, however, I discovered that calls made to me when my phone is off or when I can’t pick up the call doesn’t go to voicemail; instead, the call simply drops. Voicemail only works when Call Divert is activated and calls are set to divert to the voicemail number (211).

I expected unanswered calls to go to voicemail automatically, regardless of whether Call Divert is turned on. With the current setup, voicemail is rendered next to useless. When I’m very busy and can’t take calls, I simply turn off my phone, not activate Call Divert. I want those calls to go to voicemail while my phone’s off or when I leave it unattended.

Does Sun Cellular’s voicemail service really only work when Call Divert is turned on? Doesn’t it send unanswered calls to voicemail automatically? Or am I the only one experiencing this?

UPDATE 01/23

I did some googling and found a solution to the voicemail conundrum: global voicemail shortcodes. Basically, they’re codes you dial on your phone that changes the phone’s internal settings and dictates how it should divert calls. The list of global voicemail shortcodes can be found here.

It’s still not a satisfactory solution for me, though. Why? When someone calls me and is directed to voicemail—say for example when I reject the call—it doesn’t play my voicemail greeting directly; instead, the voice prompt that says “The subscriber you are calling is busy at the moment…” is played, a brief pause is heard, and only then does my greeting follow. This is problematic because the caller is likely to hang up before my greeting is played, so nobody leaves me any messages. At most, all I receive is an SMS telling me that someone tried to call me, was directed to voicemail, and didn’t leave a message. What I would like to happen is for the system to skip the voice prompt (e.g. “the subscriber you are calling is busy at the moment”) and go directly to my voicemail greeting. If I remember correctly, this is what Smart Telecom’s voicemail service does. (Last time I used Smart’s voicemail was about four years ago, though, so…)

I hope this information gets through to someone from Sun Cellular. In the meantime, though, the shortcodes are a Sun Cel user’s best bet.

Hello, friends. Just a quick update on my reading: I found a copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway in the school library last Monday. I mentioned in my last post that I recently finished reading the Barrons Book Notes on the book, but not the novella itself. I wanted to read the original work so I could properly appreciate Hemingway’s strong, strikingly simple language. I looked for a copy of the book in Bookmooch and in National Bookstore but found none, and in retrospect, I wonder why I didn’t think to look in a library first.

At any rate, after stumbling upon the book, I decided to get myself a library card just so I could take it out. Never mind that this is the first time I bothered to get a library card and that I’m graduating in four or five months. I finished it today, and, unsurprisingly, I must say I enjoyed it very much.

After I returned the novella (four days before it was due—huzzah!), I went back to reading “Dreams From My Father”, Barack Obama’s poignant memoir. However, upon coming across J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” while going through the small collection of classic novels our library had, I decided to take it out. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it before the weekend is over. “Dreams From My Father” will have to wait.

Actually, it might have to for a long time yet. “The Jane Austen Book Club“, which I was able to watch months ago on HBO, piqued my interest in Jane Austen, and the library has all her works (I think), so after “Catcher in the Rye”, I’m planning on going through as many Austens as I can.

You will notice that I’m just beginning to discover the classics, which is quite odd for a high school senior who labels himself a writer. I’m not sure I’ve talked about it so much yet, but I was introduced to leisure reading very abruptly. While many other bookworms of my generation entered the world of novels through Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew and their ilk, for me it was “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown, about three years ago. Since finishing TDVC, I’ve read four of his five novels (I haven’t gotten around to buying “The Lost Symbol” yet—I’m waiting for the paperback version). After that I moved to Steve Berry (a less recognizable name, but he writes the same genre as Brown), and then to Coelho (deep stuff), and then a little Sidney Sheldon. It was only when Sir Jay gave me his copy of The Old Man and the Sea’s Barron Book Notes to read that I realized, “Why haven’t I gone through the really important works yet?”

Better late than never, I guess. Now, considering the breadth of English literature, it will probably take me a long time to go through the more enduring works, so if you want to suggest certain novels or works for me to read, I’d appreciate it.

Oh, and if you would for some reason or other like to see what books I have/am/am planning to read, visit me on Goodreads.

***

My fearless forecast for Manny Pacquiao’s impending bout with Miguel Cotto: Manny will lose. Whether by knockout or by numbers, I can’t say, but my gut feeling (which I myself have learned to trust with caution) tells me he will come home defeated.

This prediction was made solely by observing how both Manny’s and his mother Dionisia’s heads have swelled up recently. Here’s hoping Cotto knocks some sense into them.

Consider it, then, an earnest, well-meaning wish instead of a forecast: I hope Manny loses, for his sake.

#

Book cover of “The Old Man and the Sea” obtained from Wikipedia. Not used for commercial purposes. No copyright infringement intended.

October was a very blessed month for me. Besides turning a year older last month, I won second place for Feature Writing during the Regional Schools Press Conference, so I will be going to Tagum City to compete in the Nationals. I was also named Caraga’s Outstanding Campus Journalist for the Secondary level during the same event.

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I finished reading two classic books this week: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

The Little Prince is a very odd book. I’m sure the author meant to bring a point across, and I guess he succeeded, at least in a way—Asteroid B612′s little prince’s frivolity is a wake-up call to people whose lives are too preoccupied by things too worldly to warrant so much attention. The finicky rose on his home planet and how he painstakingly took care of it could perhaps be interpreted to symbolize love and all that. However, I find it extremely difficult to understand why Saint-Exupéry chose the little prince and his psychedelic adventures to be the vessel of his message. Perhaps I’ve grown too old to appreciate the color and wonder of his work.

That scares me. I don’t want to ever grow old in that sense.

The second book, The Old Man and the Sea, is a fantastic (and much more digestible, at least to me) read. I cheated, though—instead of the book itself, I read Barron’s Book Notes for it. In fairness to myself, I feel I wouldn’t have appreciated the novella as much if I’d read the original work. Hemingway did such a masterful job with the symbolism in the book, regardless of whether you think it was autobiographical. I think that without the Book Notes, I wouldn’t have caught the little nuances that make the book so enduring, such as when Hemingway paints Santiago as a man whose life was the sea—a fact reflected by his eyes which were colored like the ocean—and who appeared dead with his eyes shut.

If you still haven’t read The Old Man and the Sea, though, I recommend you purchase a copy of the work itself together with the Book Notes. I think that is the best way to enjoy the work. Hemingway’s simple but strong language is superbly effective in unfetteredly delivering what he wants delivered but can sometimes belie to the plebeian reader the tenacity and emotion of his work, so the Book Notes can be thought of as a guide to deconstruct the complexity of the masterpiece.

Thank you, by the way, to Sir Jay for loaning me the Book Notes.

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Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, hasn’t had much luck with critics, or so I’ve heard. I hate to even entertain the thought, but could Robert Langdon’s glory days be over? Maybe the world has simply grown tired of an eternally single, claustrophobic Harvard symbologist’s history-rich capers. Maybe Dan Brown has milked every last creative drop out of Langdon. Maybe there is no more story to be milked.

I haven’t read the book yet, though, so I’ll reserve personal judgment for later. I would have bought a copy the last time I was within comfortable distance of a National Bookstore branch, but the Php900++ price tag on the hardcover version is out of my reach. Considering what the book reviews have been saying, I can wait for it to come out in paperback form.

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Currently, I’m reading Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama. I’ve barely reached page 30 of the book but so far it’s been a captivating and insightful read, made enjoyable by Obama’s simple style.

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National Novel Writing Month 2009 has begun!

I spent a considerable amount of time last night formulating the very general plot of my novel. I think today I’ll hurry up character development and finally give my protagonist and the object of his affection their names. I have a November 30 deadline to meet, and a NaNo participant who wants to complete his novel must write at least 1,667 words a day to meet the 50,000-word requirement. Those who can only work on weekends must be able to come up with 12,500 words every weekend to make the quota! Obviously there is a lot of work to be done, and with school and other highly important things also on my to-do list, this year’s NaNo is promising to be very daunting.

***

I very recently upgraded my machine to Linux Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, the latest version of the popular Linux distribution. It is no exaggeration to say that this OS is gorgeous, inside and out. The pedestrian user may not be able to readily recognize the more drastic changes that have been made—mostly in security and in the Linux kernel itself—but they will definitely improve overall user experience.

I’ve made it a point to do a clean install every time a new version comes out (instead of clicking “Upgrade” in Update Manager). This time around, I found a little difficulty in installing Karmic as my DVD drive had gone bonkers so I couldn’t burn a CD. I decided to download the Karmic ISO then use the USB Startup Disk Creator utility that came with 8.10 Jaunty Jackalope to make Karmic bootable from my flash drive. After fiddling with the BIOS a little, booting from the USB key and setting up Ubuntu, I was good to go. It took me a grand total of less than two hours and $0 to get set up. This is why I love FOSS.