The PC guessing game

Let’s play a guessing game!

I give a politically correct term and you guess what it actually is.
For example:

PC term: visually impaired
Meaning: blind

Try to play with a partner or have PC terms listed on paper and have people fill it out guessing what it means. I’ll seed some terms in, many are taken from George Carlin’s Euphemism sketch.

• Visually impaired
• Hearing impaired
• Operational fatigue
• Healthcare delivery professional (may have multiple answers)
• Previously-owned transportation
• Economically disadvantaged
• Differently-abled
• Informal settlers

Parental advice

Some unsolicited advice for parents-to-be and siblings:
Please don’t simply dismiss your child’s interests, specially when they show the faintest signs.
Please don’t call their ideas stupid or useless. It makes them afraid to explore. It makes them afraid to make mistakes. It pushes them to close away their feelings from you.
Please recognize their passion. Passion is already hard to come by in this world.

I know what you mean about being practical and money and all about that and you don’t feel the same way about I do on certain things and aspirations but can’t you at least be a little less disparaging? I asked a question answerable with a few lines for curiosity’s sake, not asking for a sermon as if I’m going to do it.

Please don’t ask why I don’t share experiences and tell stories to you. Don’t ask what I plan to do after college: I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at and even if I do, I wouldn’t want to tell you.
It feels terrible.

I know first hand.

Ceremony

If we look at it, tomorrow is another day (a holiday for most). All this celebration is ceremonial.
That’s a cynical way of looking at it, and honestly, that’s how I see mine.

At least it’s a good time to have some nice pictures of fireworks as long as I don’t get hit by a stray bullet or something. That would be memorable.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go on my neighbor’s rooftop to take some pictures.

Christmas?

Tell me, what does Christmas feel like?

Everyone seems so enamoured with this “Christmas Spirit”. I know about Christmas and all, living in a country with the most Catholics in Asia, but I have no idea what they’re talking about.

Study habits

I started out college without any study habits at all. I’m on my final year and still haven’t figured it out. Now, I’m paying a heavy price for it: suffering grades. I don’t know why I’ve been able to pass from my previous years but this time, whatever I was doing isn’t working now.

Good news is amidst all this stress and having a crash course in studying, I think I’ve found my rhythm. Bad news is the conditions needed to get me to study well is completely incompatible with society. Studying at night in a 24 hour coffee shop is great but I have a few issues:

• You will easily spend more than Php300 a night just for coffee and pastries
• Parents are worried (and they find your study habits completely bizarre)
• School is in the morning

So unless there’s a way to balance studying late at night and day school, I’m losing out on one or the other.

Such is life for a night owl.

45 minutes to fail

You ask permission with parents to go to a 24 hour coffee shop in front of campus at midnight, on the date of your exam. An argument breaks out.

On taking pictures

(Hi it’s been some time since last post, finals week and weeks leading up to finals week is hell and I’m still not done! Hooray!)

Knowing how to take good pictures is an excellent skill to have around. A drawback for some is that in all of their pictures, none have the photographer in frame for clear reasons. Hence, you ask someone to take a picture for you.

Problem: unless that person is a fellow photographer or at least someone who knows how to take a decent picture or someone who knows how to properly take a picture with a camera in manual mode, you’ll end up with a picture with

1. your feet showing with heads slightly outside the frame
2. blurry pictures because of broken autofocus and person with whom I have asked to take a picture has no idea what the hell a focus ring is (in my case)
3. unsteady hands and does not know what camera shake is.

In any of these cases, extreme dissastisfaction that cannot be outwardly expressed because of politeness and all will be felt. I’m not being an ingrate here, some picture is better than no picture* but it’s just sad.

Does it sound like I’m holding people up to some form of standard in taking pictures? Yeah, I’m not denying that, maybe. But you know, it’s hard to find someone around where we are who can take decent pictures of you, dear photographer.

* but in some cases that picture you have is so terribly blurry, it’s as good as nothing at all.

Arguments

It’s hard to argue with logic, it gives such compelling arguments. Emotions on the other hand, are pretty good into pushing you to do things you wouldn’t want to do either.

Ghost Stories

Never in my life has a song evoked strong, concrete memories of a past time, much less with a whole album.

Until now.

You know who you are.

Little things

While I have a slight aversion to some forms of social media, details of their sites still catch my attention.

Facebook recently added this picture when you have successfully logged out. It’s not much, but it’s delightful, to begrudgingly admit. This is an effort to humanize the social media experience. Social media yes, interacting with people, but our interactions are abstracted behind a machine. No matter how immersive user experience is, the moment that device is put to sleep, the experience is gone until the next notification (and even then said notification could have been programatically generated).

After all that, I find it personally effective.
Maybe I lack some sort of intimacy or some outlet to express intimacy, but that’s for another story.