Wonder For The World

Personally, I don't know too many people who read the Tintin series when they were little. I wouldn't have read them either if not for my cousin who owns a couple of them (or maybe all 24 of them books). I vaguely remember that as a child, I would read my cousin Anthony's comic books - mostly Archie but some Tintin as well - whenever we visited their house in Cebu. I think that the globetrotting, tomb-raiding, beretta-wielding protagonist has helped spark my interest in Geography and Archaeology early on and this is the reason why I'm such a fan of Steve Berry, Matthew Reilly and the Relic Hunter series (too bad it only lasted 3 seasons). I seriously believe that my exposure as a kid to other cultures by way of literature and film (oh yes, I do remember that my late grandfather had betamax tapes of the Indiana Jones series) turned me into a somebody who could memorize capital cities, currencies and pinpoint most any country on a map. Hell, I can even rattle off the 50 states of the US in alphabetical order even if I'm obviously not an American.

Anyway, last weekend together with my friends Jake and Rico, I went to see The
Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The screenplay is lifted from three books of the Tintin series namely The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's treasure. I must say, only now have I really appreciated the awesomeness of performance capture 3D animation! This technology could really put moviestars (some of them overpaid) out of employment! I think the movie had a "soft-ish" opening, perhaps eclisped by the melanholy-fest that is Breaking Dawn, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the movie theater full. The movie was funny, thrilling and totally captivating. It gave me a pleasant sense of nostalgia seeing the blunders of the Thompson Twins on the wide screen and the way the vocal
prowess of the clueless Milanese nightingale Bianca Castafiore was used to execute a crime was genius as much as it was hilarious! I did some research on resonant frequency for an MBA paper on emerging technology recently, so I kinda know the science behind how an opera singer's voice is able to break glass (this is one of the advantages of going to grad school hehe!)

There's also a great line uttered by Captain Haddock in the movie - in Scottish accent if I may add. "There are plenty of others willing to call you a failure. A fool. A loser. Don’t you ever say it of yourself. You send out the wrong signal, that is what people pick up. Don’t you understand? You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it. There’s something you need to know about failure, Tintin. You can never let it defeat you.” This is comfort food for my oftentimes tired soul (especially lately).

Seeing the movie has once again steeled my resolve to travel even more next year. Since I am set to visit Europe in 2012 (fingers crossed that my schedule will allow it), this is just the kind of inspiration I need in order ignore the dent the trip will make on my wallet.

I find it quite amusing that reading something like Tintin as a kid really opened my mind and gave me a wonder for the world - all the better for me to appreciate God's masterpiece.

Lessening Headaches Is Also Charity...I Think

In this world, there are professions that inherently carry with them the ability to give back to society - say for example doctors, teachers and to a certain extent, lawyers. And then there are those that don't really do anything for other human beings (except maybe give them headaches). Being an accountant is one of them.

Now I'm not really a very charitable person but every now and then, I do get these pangs of guilt that remind me that I'm not actively doing anything to help others in need. This is the reason why every time there is a chance for someone to benefit from my being a CPA, I jump at it! Now the MBA program that I'm currently in does not have basic Financial Accounting in its curriculum. However, it does have more advanced finance subjects so if one does not have a business background in college, it could be a challenge to put one's head around the subject. This is why I volunteered to do a basic accounting session with my teammates to help my group better understand basic accounting principles and apply them to our case assignments (nerdy, I know).

The result: my FinMan groupmates became my closest groupmates ever! My experience during this term further reinforced my love for teaching and my dream of becoming a college professor someday. For now, however, I need to work on finishing my master's degree.

30-Year Old Writes To The Universe

Dear Cosmos,

Now that I'm 30, I know that...

...I'll never achieve the 6-continents-before-30 dream
...I'll never be that skinny bastard that I want to become
...I'll probably never be a lawyer like I always said I would be
...I'll turn 40 before I even know it
...I'll never have the excuse of youth for being stupid
...I'll never be that "hot new thing" ever again (whatever that means)

However, I also know that

...I've been on 4 continents and that's more than most people
...I've been eating anything I want and I'm still not fat
...I've built a comfortable life for myself without having to become a lawyer
...I've grown so much in the last 10 years, I'm excited to see what I'll be in the next 10
...I've never been stupid anyway, so why care?
...I've gained enough credence to mentor the upcoming "hot new things" (whatever that means)

I thought that I'd freak out when I become 30 but looking back, I've realized how much I've seen, learned and experienced. At first thought 10 years may seem like a blur but if I really think about it, 10 years didn't exactly just fly by. In those 10 years, I went from student, to board exam reviewee, to promdi-yuppie, to miserable banker until I finally became a happy Shell man (seriously, one of the best decisions I've made ever!). The friends I've made and the fiends I've met make up the best decade of my life so far. Now that I'm 30, I'm looking forward to finally losing that last bit of insecurity that I still have, to learn to be more generous, to become more positive, to be slower to anger, to be more patient and to become someone better than who I was during my 20s.

So I want to say thank you to my parents for putting a good head on my shoulders, to my younger sis and bro who never followed my orders (gave me an early sense that I cannot always have my way in the world), to my teachers (for making me realize what I want to become when I grow old) to my friends (high school friends for letting me learn early on how to have fun and not just not hit the books, college friends for letting me find in you my kindred spirits, and Shell friends for never making me feel like an outsider despite my being one in so many ways).

And thank you God for everything - for giving me just enough smarts, just enough looks and just enough talent. And I pray that one day, I will get to use these enough to make a positive dent in this world.

Truly yours,

Paul Angelo

Northern Exposure

This year, I made a personal vow to visit the three places in the Philippines that I've always wanted to visit but have never managed to: Palawan, Boracay (unimaginable, right?) and Batanes. Of the three, Batanes seemed to be the hardest to go to because it is the remotest (and there are no promo fares on SEAIR!). However, thanks to an HR policy change that spurred my office colleagues and myself to use up our leave credits, I suddenly had a plane ticket to Basco.

I felt like I wasn't stoked enough for my trip to Batanes and this is mainly because it came three days after I arrived from my trip to Australia. The holiday down under had long been planned and cannot be pushed back so in the end, I only worked 10 or 11 days in the month of May.

I have not ridden a 32-seater since childhood (oh those PAL Sunrisers that flew from Dumaguete to Cebu!) so I was a bit nervous when I boarded the plane. Good thing I was armed with a 1,000-page book and got myself lost in 12th century England through most of the trip. I caught more than a glimpse of the Batanes landscape as we were about to land and I realized that we were in for a treat.







With narrow streets and limited lamp posts, poblacion Basco can be dealt with in an hour or so. I am quite used to the rural life having lived on an island for the better part of 20 years so this spontaneous hieing off to the northernmost tip of the country was somehow nostalgic for me - the smells of early morning smoke coming from wood-fed stoves made of earthen clay, the aroma of damp soil ridded with a mixture of chicken and cattle dung, and the unmistakable whiff of frugal fish deep-frying in oil stirred up many memories from my childhood.





We spent the next three days going around the islands of Batan and Sabtang. The tour organizer ingenuously engineered the tour to build up to a breathtaking climax, showing the sights in order of awesomeness, the next sigt even more amazing than the one before! Batanes offers such picturesque backdrops that both photoholics and camwhores will be be swooning with sensory overload.







Batanes isn't the cheapest local tourist destination in the Philippines. In fact, it may be one of the most expensive, and this explains why he have not run into the usual lot of fellow holiday-takers during the whole time we were there. However, the +20k or so that I spent was very much worth it - seeing the famed stone houses of Sabtang Island for the first time and feeling the coarse, unfinished walls made of coral and limestone, taking in the vista of 'mountains tumbling into the sea' as many a song romanticize, realizing that the Philippines is such a beautiful country, a sudden burst of national pride stirring inside you not matter how undeserved you may think it is, and of course, being gently wakened by the sound of waves quietly making their way to the shore in the early light of morning.

Shell's Big Php20.00 Blow Out

I recently had the opportunity to become a Shell Brand Ambassador...signalling my foray into the Retail business hahah! Kidding aside, part of my duties as an ambassador was to spread awareness throughout my CoB (Manufacturing) regarding Shell's Get Php20 Blowout Ka Namin promo. During the CoB briefing sessions, I emphasized that Manufacturing has a huge stake at the success of Shell's retail business in the Philippines because one of the reasons why the Refinery continues to exist is because of it a being part of an integrated supply chain that gives access to a big inland market - a market that Shell could lose if it is not careful to sustain brand loyalty.

Together with other volunteers from different departments, I headed out to my assigned Shell Station in the morning of February 15.

Being in the forecourt was an eye-opening experience and with it came newfound respect for my Sales colleagues. Overall, it was a fun experience - engaging in coversations with motorists while they gas up, informing them of Shell's new promo and thanking them for their continued patronage of the brand.

Anyway, here are the mechanics to the promo. Be sure to fill up at your favorite Shell station and take advantage of Shell's Thank You to you!


1. For every Php 1,000 purchase of Shell Fuels (V-Power, V-Power Diesel, Super Premium, Super Unleaded, Regular) you get a Php 20 discount on all Select/Shell Shop items. Discount is also applicable to Shell Lubricants.

2. Redemption can be done in all participating Shell Stations. Inter-station redemption IS allowed (not limited to where the fuel purchase was made).

3. Php 1,000 can either be a single-purchase or accumulated purchases.

4. The receipt/accumulated receipts shall be presented to the Select/Shell Shop cashier for validation.

5. Promo runs from Feb 15 - Mar 31, 2011. Thus, all ORs issued within those dates are valid for redemption.

6. Last redemption date is 60 days after promo end-date (May 30, 2011).

Bye-Bye Econ Freaks!

After three terms of MBA, I must say that I only caught the "study" bug again this term. Because of new developments at work (I'm moving to a new job, yeah!), I decided to enroll part-time and take just one subject - ECOMAN. Needless to say, I'm tempted to do it part-time all the way! Having a full load and the weekly drive from Batangas to Rockwell and back (usually every Wednesday) stressed me out.

Anyway, I love Economics and though I must admit that I need to infuse more Econ-related literature into my reading list, the subject always fascinates me. I wrote 3 papers on the following subjects: Perfect Competition, Privatization and Comparative Advantage & International Trade. Economics is a pleasing subject to research because there is no scarcity of resources - no pun intended. In fact, text and web-based data are simply overflowing that I had to make an outline each time I started to write just organize my thoughts - something which I almost never do.


My final paper - The Economics of Oil, is very timely. With my move to Shell's Supply business, writing about oil econs reinforced my knowledge. It was actually funny that during handover, I recognized terms such as "netback pricing" and actually knew what they were about and what their margin impacts to the company were. I put in a lot of effort to my final paper (mainly because I crammed) and spent a whole weekend plus three long weekday nights to finish everything. However, I am happy with all the information I got from the research - I feel like I'm ending this term a smarter guy. No matter what my final grade will be (I'm hoping for a 4.0!), this was definitely one of the best terms ever!

My Family's First Engagement

My sister got engaged! Yeah, like I never saw it coming haha! Anyway, I wasn't there when her boyfriend (now fiance) officially asked for her hand but my sister told me that my dad acted cool about it (operative word: acted) and my mom was the one who had a semi-anxiety attack. Totally uncharacteristic for both of them, I tell you.

Anyway, my sister and her boyfriend are both good-looking people, I can't wait to have good-looking pamangkins! Heheh. Di bale nang makulit, basta cute kaya kong tiisin.





The wedding is next year - and my sister got first dibs on that same chapel where I wanted to get married in (shame, oh, shame on you). This week, however, she texted me that there were major changes to her plans - that she's getting married in the Cathedral (the Catholic Church won't allow weddings in small chapels anymore). Also, her venue changed from Casa Grande in Bais to the Convention Center in Dumaguete (resultant of the change in the church).

Okay, so in 5 years or so when I decide to get married, maybe the rules will change and I can get married in Mojon Chapel. Hahah! I know it's mean for me to be excited about this, but can you blame me? It's like this little chapel was beamed from an English countryside onto the sugar plains of Negros. A little grass cutting wouldn't hurt, though...hehe.

photos grabbed from: http://multiply.com/mu/silakangnegros

My New Old Wallpaper

Going home after the Gin Blossoms concert in Araneta, my friend began lamenting about how he lost all his cassette tapes from high school. The conversation brought back memories from those days when I had to save a portion of my weekly allowance to come up with an extra Php 120 so I can buy a record. LOL!

Unlike my friend, I know exactly where my old tapes are. They're safely stashed in the topmost closet in my room back in Sugarland - in their pristine condition (I hope!). Anyway, when I went home last Christmas, I had this inspired idea for a new wallpaper for my laptop. Using my dad's new S95, i took a couple of shots and behold! My very own wallpaper. :)



Note: I have lots more, but these are the ones that are the least embarrassing to show haha!

I now realize two things: 1) I transitioned from tapes to MP3s (did not really have a CD phase) and 2) I do have weird taste - no, more like incoherent. Oh well.