Exchange Student
Many days ago, I saw this announcement in the front door of the dorm about being an exchange student in Korea. My mother has always been interested in such thing. However, everytime she insists it, I merely say that it will delay me a year at school. With that, I never took any interest on the announcement.
As I was watching Pokémon today, I heard my dormmates Jo Ann and Hanny John congratulating their classmate Denise. At that instant, I knew what it was all about. Still, I confirmed it from my classmate who was also watching TV. “She’s going to Korea!” After hearing it, I was mysteriously left blank. When Denise left, I had a conversation with her two classmates. I asked random stuff primarily including the free allowance. I learned that one could be an exchange student for just five months, just like what one student from our school did. That is, I leave on summer and come back late for the first semester. When I think about it, it actually is not a bad idea, unlike when you do stay there for a year, which definitely delays your schooling. I was also told that even though Denise will graduate before leaving, she will still need to enroll some units when she gets back. That means, that if one goes there not a Senior student, and stay for only five months, then there will be no apparent reason of extending a year or so at school, and, in time, one will also be able to attend the graduation ceremonies. Now, doesn’t the situation apply to me?
My heart feels very heavy right now. I should have thought of all the possibilities and options and even thought of applying in the first place. Perhaps, it would have been my sole chance of going abroad, and I simply let it slip away.
Two Words: Grow Up
When bad luck hits you, you can never evade it. I went to Prints & Ads today to finally make the two additional Tubao shirt orders. But then, I was told that they already burned the screen. Like, what? I was like, just calling you about two weeks ago and you guys assured me that I can still get the shirts! Blah. What else can I do anyway? Prior to that, I was at Robinson’s Place, getting a haircut at David’s Salon. The barber that handled me was a girl. C’mon, her hands seem to tremble while holding that electric razor and she even has to hold it with both hands (showing that it’s really not her thing, I believe). Plus, she makes bothersome head gestures something like, saying to herself, “Uh-oh, I cut it wrong.” I did not like the outcome. P132.00 put to waste. I should have simply been to Ricky Reyes just like last December. (The girl actually asked me where I got my last haircut.)
To kill the time, I planned to watch Sweeney Todd. However, it turns out that it’s already out of the list. I find the poster of Alien VS Predator 2 fascinating so I watched it instead. And besides, I used to watch its ’separate’ movies before — Predator and Alien Resurrection. Well, that was my fate in the city today. The weekend’s a long one because Monday is a holiday in Iloilo (Emilio Javier Day). And.. I’ll be posting the books I bought this semester. I love all of them, really. 
Lastly, I’ve uploaded the video in UP, Ang Galing Mo!? and thanks to alexking.org for the WP Grins plugin (at last).
Removing iframe Horizontal Scrollbar
Author’s Note (AN): Since I have been getting almost day-to-day hits on this post, I would like to hear from you guys if the simple trick you are about to read works for you. If so, I would highly appreciate it if you leave a comment. Otherwise, you might find the links generated by Google below more helpful than this.
Oh c’mon! A few days ago, I was already about to die trying to remove the freakin’ horizontal scrollbar of the iframe in this fanlisting. The problem is only associated with Internet Explorer. 
The last resort I could do was to compare it line after line with another code that does not show the said scrollbar. So how did it turn out? Well, it turns out, in my case, the only thing that was missing was a line before the DTD (document type declaration). I then remembered that the same thing holds true for the scrollbar colors that are not supported in Firefox. I used to do it before. So anyway, for instance, the first line of the code should not be
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
but instead,
<!–remove freakin’ iframe horizontal scrollbar anything goes here (perhaps even a blank line)–>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
Whew, glad I did it. And oh, please bear with the title of this post. 
Lately…
- I find the new Voice biscuit ad really awesome. It’s concept is mutants (or should I say from the “Heroes” TV show every entity on earth is talking about).
- Last Saturday was the last day of the Salakayan Festival here in Miag-ao. I went to the plaza for dinner together with my dormmates Julius, McDeansem, Michael, and Rodrigo. We walked our way back to the dorm and happily chatted about animés, Koreanovelas, X-Men and Power Rangers every Friday night then, and Mexicanovelas like Rosalinda and Ruby (Ang Bidang Kontrabida).
- I knew that Spring Waltz in ABS-CBN is the fourth and last installment of the Endless Love series after three years. The first three was shown in GMA namely Autumn In My Heart, Winter Sonata, and Summer Scent.
- Watched Bicentennial Man in ABS last Sunday and cried.
- First long exam in Operating Systems tomorrow. I must do good!
- Today is Ash Wednesday, but I’m not going to the church.
I’m becoming the devil.
Matrix and Determinants
My neck and arm hurts. We had our exam in Linear Algebra today and I am glad that I was able to answer all the items. I always like it when I do so, even if my answers are not all correct, as long as there are no items left blank. Another thing that really made me happy this time is the fact that I was able to answer the proving item. 
After the exam, everyone was asking each other what their answer in this item was and all those kind of stuff. I kind of cannot relate so I merely walked away.
As I passed Landbank (it happens to be situated at school), I noticed that it was already online and many were queuing. I saw Ariel, my roommate in first year, who was already three (or so) persons away from the ATM. I then requested my classmate Lairy, who’s also close friend of Ariel, to go near him and pretend to whisper something but actually pass my ATM card and PIN. Mission Accomplished. 
Edit [020108]: Our topic in Statistics today was Analysis of Variance. We were given an exercise to be submitted by the end of the subject. It turned out fine and fun, really. We were tasked to check whether there really are differences in the means of the different samples given. However, we realized that some of the SPSS outputs differ from computer to computer. 
In CMSC127 (Database Systems), the exam blew my head away. Like the usual, it was “open-notes”. But because of it, it was really time-consuming answering the essay Q’s. A classmate wasn’t even able to answer the construction of an Entity-Relationship Diagram for an Art Museum because of it. Our teacher already told us in advance that he will not allow any extensions. I myself wasn’t able to successfully finish everything. Nevertheless, I feel very satisfied. No class in Software Engineering because two other groups still need to conduct their interview and in Programming Languages, because all of us were already done with our Prolog exercises. Played Tennis with Bernard, Jan, and Redd. I was pretty dam tired in the end. Another weekend ahead!
UP, Ang Galing Mo!?
Projects in Statistics106 were returned today. Our scores were 24.5/25 and 19/20. I was surprised by the second one. It was on Linear Regression and our model turned out not appropriate, so why is it that it only had a single mistake? Turns out that the item was 30.
***
Last Saturday I attended the Opening Ceremonies of the UP Centennial Celebration in UP Visayas. It was together with the Panay’s annual festival, the Dinagyang. A parade that lasted for about an hour and a half started the event. We walked the streets of Iloilo City under the sun with gigantic speakers on both sides of the road banging different music. For our academic group, I was one of the people who took part in holding the bamboo sticks that in turn hold the cloth tailored with the Centennial colors that, as two groups, read “UP” in aerial view. The parade concluded at the city campus. A program followed. There were UP President Emerlinda Roman and Senator Francis Pangilinan. I was jokingly yelling, “Sharon-ian here!”
At night, I went to SM to watch the first Dinagyang Pyrolymics. I was actually just surfing the Internet when I fatefully realized that there was little signal in my spot and received my classmate’s message about the start of the contest. After maneuvering from a sea of people, I was just in time for the first contender to color the nightsky. The second from the last of the first batch of contenders was the one that really made the most “Wow!” and applause from the audience. Maybe I’ll post a video of it next time. After it, we learned that the next batch will start at 10:00, so we left the carpark to have dinner. We ended up in Jollibee after walking some miles. On our way, I had this conversation with a man:
Man: Does your cellphone fail?
Me: What?
Man: Does your cellphone fail?
Me: (getting the point of “Message sending failed”) No. Are you SMART?
Man: Yeah.
…
Man: Do you have extra load?
Me: No. (lie)
My classmate called at my back and motioned who the man was. Then, another from our group who was walking ahead of me came to me and told me that I shouldn’t have talked to the man. I told them about the conversation. My friend said that it’s their modus operandi and that when you give your cellphone to them, it’s sorry for you. True enough, I didn’t think about that possibility. Good thing I was fast in lying. 
If I think about it, I wonder what would have happened if I gave the man my cellphone and he actually ran.
Edit [2008-01-29 14:16]: Holy freak I feel supah light! 
