When the songbird sings

Freedom of choice, tolerance, security, and a great sense of belonging or solidarity played the biggest roles in the life satisfaction of people from the happiest countries in the world, according to World Values Survey. A strong correlation between wealth and happiness still exists, though. Majority of the top 10 are from Europe, joined by countries from Latin America, and then Canada. Denmark is still the happiest place on Earth (GDP Per Capita: $37,400), while Zimbabwe is the most depressing (inflation rate at 2,200,000%). Our happy country is 38th in the list, with a GDP next to Switzerland (7th happiest with GDP per capita of $41,100), but with 84 million more mouths to feed and per capita income of $3,400. I guess that our tolerance for corrupt politicos, gossips and traffic, penchant for borderline insane religious beliefs, and having strong family ties make up for what we lack in the money department. We may be 122nd in the purchasing power parity list, but hey, we’re not doing so bad when it comes to finding reasons to be happy…somewhat.

From BusinessWeek:

“…freedom of choice and social acceptance are the most powerful forces behind national moods. ‘Money’s pretty powerful, but it’s not the whole story,’ says Inglehart, though he maintains that a strong correlation still exists between high standards of living and happiness measures.

“Generally, a rising global sense of freedom in the last quarter-century has eclipsed the contribution of pure economic development to happiness, he says. This is especially evident in developed countries with stable economies, where the freedom of choice gained through wealth has made people happier—not necessarily the wealth itself.

“What’s more, ‘there are diminishing returns to economic progress,’ Inglehart says. In poorer countries, happiness can be linked to solidarity among tight-knit communities, religious conviction, and patriotism, which probably explains the happiness of some relatively poor Latin American countries,’ he says.

“Social tolerance is another important factor in how happy a country rates itself…’The less threatened people feel, the more tolerant they are,’ says Inglehart. Tolerance simply has a rippling effect that makes people happier. “

Further readings:

The 10 Happiest Countries
Happiness Viewpoint: It Doesn’t Take Much
What is Happiness?

Citibank ad photo by tantek.

I am an impulsive book buyer, and my weekend is not complete without a foray into Powerbooks, NBS, or the bargain book stores. That explains the number of books that have accumulate on my desk, overflowed to my bed, and added an extra weight to my already heavy bag. This month, I bought more than my share of books as if I didn’t have a long backlog to deal with already. And then there are the bookmarked chapters book24x7.com, thanks to the (step-)mothership, for domain knowledge and tech blogging stuff. (Yes, Allan and Yuliya, I am reading up on loads of stuff.)

I want to read at least 25 books/year or about one book every two weeks. The 25-book goal may not be possible at all for this year, but the one-book-per-week objective may (may!) still be salvaged. I’m in the middle of reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods while a bookmark has been stuck for over a month now in Stephenie Meyer’s The Host. I just lost interest halfway through The Host because it’s too convoluted in so many parts, and there are too many soliloquys that should have been cut off. I think that Breaking Dawn is the last young adult title that I’m reading in a long time.

There are more titles in my “to-read” list that I still have to buy and make the time for. For August, and maybe September, I have the following books to finish, and the backlog does not even include those that I bought in the early part of the year. Thank God for Book Sale because I can get my hands on titles that NBS or Powerbooks had ran out of, or are priced too steeply for my budget. Fully Booked has a decent collection, but every thing is more expensive by P20 to P80. I’m going to give the swanky branch on Bonifacio High Street a visit one of these days, though.

• American Gods, Neil Gaiman (currently reading) - Ex-prisoner Shadow meets an old man during a flight to his wife’s funeral. The old man, Wednesday, hires Shadow to be his bodyguard and since then, nothing has been normal in former prisoner’s life. The story works on the premise that gods also joined the thousands of people who migrated to the America, and these gods still live among the populace to this day.
• Geek Love, Katherine Dunne - Not necessarily about geeks as the cool kids in the hyperconnected world, but about freaks who were genetically designed be born with physical defects in order to star in the circus.
• The Other Side of the Story, Marian Keyes - Mostly about another circle of friends who have reached a fork in the road. Keyes’ books are difficult find here, which is too bad because she comes up with pretty decent chick lit, i.e., not the typical girl-meets-dashing-boy story. The other Keyes book I read, Last Chance Saloon, is a choc-ful of laughs about a group of friends in their 30s who are confronted with their respective last chances at love and happiness. The best part of the story is that the gay couple is the happiest of them all.
• In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant - From the New Yorker: “The novel, narrated by Fiammetta’s servant, a dwarf, chronicles the pair’s horrific scrapes and their dizzying triumphs, which include Fiammetta’s becoming Titian’s model for his “Venus of Urbino.” Along the way, Dunant presents a lively and detailed acccount of the glimmering palaces and murky alleys of Renaissance Venice, and examines the way the city’s clerics and prostitutes alike are bound by its peculiar dynamic of opulence and restraint.” Courtesan is Dunant’s follow-up to her outstanding debut set in Renaissance Florence, The Birth of Venus. This is the Renaissance in its artistic splendor, grimy alleys, religious conflicts, and power struggles.
• The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl - As a group of young men from Boston, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, translate an Italian poem, they find themselves on the trail of a serial killer who tortures his victims in ways that are similar to passages from Dante’s Inferno.
• The Thirteenth Tale, Dianne Setterfield - From Publishers Weekly: “Margaret Lea…is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman’s tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle’s twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children’s caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield’s sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she’s a real reader and makes a terrific narrator.”
• The Biographer’s Tale, AS Byatt - There is no other way to describe the gist of this book other than that it’s a multi-layered swipe at “poststructural literary criticism, to introduce arch observations about the current fad of psychoanalytic biography (Publishers Weekly).” Read: an intellectual masturbation on how a biographer profiles his subjects.
• The Physician’s Tale, Ann Benson - A bioterror attack nearly decimates the population of the U.S. and leaves Doctor Janie Crowe and her husband, together with a small band of survivors, to struggle with their lives. Seven centuries earlier in Europe, a physician, Alejandro Canches, deals with a similar situation at the height of the black death and must make an ethical–but possibly dangerous–choice in order to survive, as well as save the king’s illegitimate daughter.
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt - There is murder and its subsequent high-profile trial; there is the circus of Savannah, Georgia’s interesting characters, which include a voodoo lady, a transsexual, and the town’s aristocracy. Berendt’s travelogue and eventual murder mystery investigation was turned into the 1997 film, starring John Cusack and Kevin Spacey. And let’s face it–the book has one of the most intriguing titles in many years.
• Crooked Little Heart, Anne Lamott - This is as much about tennis as it is about an unspoken competition between Rosie, who has to confront her awkward adolescent years, angst, and fear of being stuck in second place, and Simone, Rosie’s attractive, popular and skilled former doubles partner. This looks like a young adult read, but at least it’s about tennis and not mythical creatures.

The environment took center stage in last year’s Blog Action Day. This year, bloggers are invited to write, podcast, or vlog about poverty.

Original:

Unoriginal:

Note to whoever made the my|Phone ads: Please don’t insult our intelligence by passing your ads off as originals, assuming that consumers will not know the similarity to Mac ads anyway. I haven’t switched to Mac and I think that Globe’s iPhone 3G deal is insanely overpriced, but I don’t see myself getting a my|phone anytime soon especially because of this dumb attempt at advertising. *coughplagiarismcough*

“The ‘Peter Principle’ states that ‘in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; the cream rises until it sours.’ People who show competence are promoted whether or not they are qualified to perform competently at the next level. Eventually they go beyond their limits, become incompetent, and stop getting promoted. Macbeth, a success as a military commander, rose to become an incompetent king. Which is to say, ‘nothing fails like success.’

“Final Placement Syndrome is what the ordinary sociologist calls ’success’ …frustration occurs as a result of promotion, because most people who are promoted genuinely wish to be productive.”

Tea Berryonce made an observation along these lines: What if you are good at something but you don’t want to be promoted because then you will be distracted with managing people instead of actually being productive? There are people who are very smart and very skilled, but they don’t enjoy being “stage moms”. And then there are those who only bullshit their way through. The problem is, the PTBs only see the value of the bullshitter and not the talented, productive one. And so you accept the promotion because that’s the only way that you can get more perks.

My Zen master says: Practice still makes perfect. Patience is a virtue. Make frequent trips to the coffee dispenser.

From Time’s Nerd World blog:

“…Marriage? Bang, they’re married by page 50. Sex? Page 85. Nothing coy about that. Where do you go from there? The answer, of course, is a half-vampire baby — which could have been lame, but I thought she gave it a real high-stakes horror feel, with its impenetrable uterine sac and its breakneck, almost tumorous growth, devouring Bella from within, bruising her belly and cracking her ribs and her pelvis. And Bella gulping blood to keep it alive! This is a kind of mature, shocking writing I don’t think I’ve seen Meyer do before, even in Host. You can see she’s been through childbirth, and she’s seen the ugly side of it.

“[But I must pause at this point to say: Renesmee. Worst…name…ever. And some sick Twilight fan somewhere is going to name their child that, I just know it.]”

I’m sure some “sick” Twilight fan somewhere will eventually name her child Renesmee, but as it’s already the age of Google, I hope the poor sap gets the spelling right. (I was lining up at a Meralco counter a few weeks ago and saw the worst possible misspelling of a name from 60s pop culture: Edelvise. Correct: Edelweiss.)

So there is sex in Breaking Dawn. Lots of it. Bella is so frisky, she can hardly keep her claws from Edward. It’s too convenient that they have the stamina to satisfy each other, thanks to their super vampire strength. Funny how Edward was nearly reduced to just a sex object in many parts of the book, it’s almost unromantic. While Twilight (and the entire saga, except for a few chapters) is told from Bella’s point of view, Edward is the selling point of the first book for being unnaturally good-looking, smart, rich, and overall perfect; this installment has put the boy vampire on the sidelines because it’s already established that he’s unnaturally good-looking, smart, rich, and overall perfect. And so we shift our attention to his rival, Jacob.

As much as he’s annoying to Team Edward members, Jacob effectively moves the story forward. It’s him one feels for, his pain and anguish that Meyer explores more effectively. That’s his prize for having his flaws, for being different in an otherworldly dis-likable manner.

Bella becomes too perfect herself. Flawed characters make for more interesting fiction and her being an all-too-controlled newborn, not to mention that she now looks like a supermodel, is also a cop-out. That’s probably the problem with perfect characters–they get too old too soon.

There is a bit of fang action during a hunting trip, and that is all that can be expected. A fang-fest between Irina and Bella would have been better.

Jacob “imprinting” on Renesmee is just too funny. It settles the love triangle issue in the most convenient way, and I would have hated all the convenience it afforded the story if it weren’t funny and weird, it has “cradle snatcher” written all over it.

That order has to be established in the vampire world is a dead giveaway that the Volturi will walk away from Forks unscathed. That baby Cullen is too cute to be killed is a dead giveaway that the Italian vampires will leave her in one piece, unburned.

And while female vampires cannot conceive, the same cannot be said for the male members of the species, which is unfair. Why does Meyer have to spring up, though indirectly, the biological clock thing?

(How did I get suckered into this book?)

Meyer mentions the Danag, a Filipino vampire sub-species, in both Twilight and Breaking Dawn.

Roger Federer finally wins his first Olympic gold, but not in the singles event. He and tennis doubles partner Stanislas Wawrinka beat Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson of Sweden 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 6-3.

From the LA Times Olympics blog (Emphasis is mine.):

“Fittingly, the gold-medal match was on Federer’s racket. He served at 5-3 of the fourth set, 2 hours 59 minutes into the final. He got it to 40-15, hit a wide serve to Johansson and watched the return float wide. Then he jumped in the air three times like a 10-year-old.

“At the medals ceremony, when they played the Swiss national anthem and Federer and Wawrinka stood on the highest platform, both were clearly on the edge of tears.

“In three tries, Federer, for years the top singles player in the world and the winner of 12 major titles, has failed to win a medal in Olympic singles. Turns out, he was just playing in the wrong event.”

I had been waiting for any of The Fed’s matches to be shown on C/S since the station had an exclusive deal to air the Olympics and was affiliated with/owned by Solar Sports. We needed to upgrade our cable subscription if we wanted to be able to tune in to Solar, and that was an option that I did not even want to consider; it was highway robbery. It turns out that C/S was more interested in airing the useless basketball and boxing matches. Please, C/S, stick with the X-Files and Buffy reruns.

As Irony would have it, when I finally caught a tennis match airing last night (or was that at 3AM this morning?), it was the semis between Nadal and Djokovic. Wedgie boy won. I’m still wondering how the heck Djoker blew that point, (Hello! Drop shot, anyone? Long Pants was miles away at the back of the baseline.) though it was heartbreaking to see him sob on his way out of the stadium. For now, he’d have to be content with a bronze win.

As for the classy player, I hope that this win helps him defend the US Open title, which some analysts say, still won’t help him retain the no. 1 ranking. But hey, a slam is a slam.

This is too cute to not share.

SIDE NOTE:

So, China’s hopes of sweeping all five golds in badminton crumbled when Indonesia won in men’s doubles. I don’t know who’s bringing home the gold in singles, though. Will it still be Lin Dan? ::Yawn:: While I know he outclasses everyone in the field, I’d be happy to see anyone but him (or his mates) bring home the gold. Come on, diversity is exciting. It just might help the sport get more media attention.

“Fedrinka” photos and video from RF.com members. Pic with a collapsing dude from the Olympics site

Birthday cupcake by emma.c

I celebrated my birthday yesterday in almost the way I had lived each of the days in recent years: went to work, got in touch with friends, finished the day’s business in a not so fabulous fashion. I had a 12-hour workday, which began with a status meeting in the morning and ended with another meeting, paper work and an overseas call in the evening. In between were ten million emails, follow-ups, and cursing the ATMs at Cash and Carry for running out of cash and then debiting the amount that I was not able to withdraw from my account in the first place. And then there was the stupid mishap during merienda that proved for all time that I could not be a domestic diva.

I came up with two birthday wishes that popped right off the top of my head, like in a Freudian kind of wishing, except that the wishes were neither sexual nor violent (remarkably, not romantic). First wish was dashed even before the day ended. Bummer. Second one is still up in the clouds, but I won’t be holding my breath for it. It will happen when it happens, and I am at least thankful that the person who matters in making this come true is on my side.

Thanks to everyone who remembered. Catherine was beaten by Joy, and then Fulton, in the annual competition for who’s first to greet me happy birthday. Joy greeted me at 11PM on August 13. Fancy that, sister! Tina, you still owe me a kitteh. Morguers, thanks for the cake. Top prize goes to my mom for the drama.

UPDATE:

Nice…nice…nice greeting on Friendster from Club.net badminton club. They kinda know the stuff that interest me–books, badminton, food. Not sure about Jose Cuervo, as I had a bad episode with tequila last summer.

This one is quite frustrating because there is no way right now for me to get the Sephora birthday gift. Merci, just the same. I registered last year for the store’s freebies, and every now and then, I get vouchers by e-mail. I just love this store. I had loads of fun trying their fantastic potions and colors last year with Mary and Keng. Je veux à nouveau rendre Sephora.

UPDATE AGAIN:

First wish wasn’t dashed completely. It was granted in a slightly different form, but it still happened.

From a mail forward that’s too funny, it’s got to be shared:

1. Contemplate - kulang ang mga pinggan (Not enough plates)
2. Punctuation - pera para maka-enrol (Money for tuition)
3. Ice Buko - nagtatanong kung ayos na ang buhok (Does my hair look ok?)
4. Tenacious - sapatos na pang tennis (Tennis shoes)
5. Calculator - tawagan kita mamaya (Call you later)
6. Devastation - sakayan ng bus (the bus station)
7. Protestant - Tindahan ng prutas (fruit stand)
8. Statue - Ikaw ba yan? (Is that you?)
9. Tissue - Ikaw nga! (’Tis you!)
10. Predicate - Pakawalan mo ang pusa (Let the cat go)
11. Dedicate - Pinatay ang pusa (The cat was killed)
12. Aspect - Pantusok o pandurog ng yelo (Ice pick)
13. Deduct - Ang pato (The duck)
14. Defeat - Ang paa [ng pato?] (The feet)
15. Detail - Ang buntot (The tail)
16. City - Bago mag-utso (The number before 8 )
17. Cattle - Doon nakatila ang Hali at Leyna (Where the king and the queen live, in baby speak)
18. Persuading - Unang Kasal (First wedding)
19. Depress - Ang nagkasal sa PERSUADING (The one who conducted the first wedding)
20. Defense - Ginamit na mga pangsulat sa kontrata sa PERSUADING (Used to sign the first wedding contract)
21. It Depends - Kainin mo ang bakod (Eat the fence)
22. Shampoo - Bago mag-labing-isha (11) (Before eleven)
23. Delusion - Maluwang: “Kapag maluwang ang damit, eh DELUSION” (If the the dress doesn’t fit, then it’s loose.”)
24. Delivery - Walang bayad: “Kapag working lunch, eh DELIVERY na ang tanghalian.” (If you are having a working lunch, then lunch should be free.”)
25. Profit - Patunayan mo (Prove it)
26. Balance Sheet - What comes out after eating a balanced meal
27. Backlog - bacon at itlog (bacon and egg)
28. Beehive - magpakatino ka (be nice, as in…”Be quiet, ok?“)
29. CD-ROM - tingnan mo ang kwarto (see the room)
30. Debug - ang ipis (the bug)
31. Defrag - ang palaka (the frog)
32. Defense - ang bakod (the fence)
33. Defer - ang balahibo (the fur)
34. Deflate - ang plato (the plate)
35. Detest - ang eksamin (the test)
36. Devalue - ‘yon ang susunod sa letrang V (W)
37. Devote - ang boto (the vote)
38. Dilemma - brownout!, a! (it’s dark!)
39. Effort - ‘dun nagla-land ang efflane (where the “efflane” lands)
40. Forums - apat na kwarto (four rooms)
41. July - nagsinungaling ka ba? (did you lie?)
42. Liturgy - what comes after litur F
43. Thesis - ito ay… (this is…)