I went to the NSO XI yesterday to process some documents. You might also have to soon, especially since these NSO marked and authenticated documents are now the most preferred in legal, business, and professional transactions. I’ve even heard that some schools actually wanted these NSO copies for enrollment. But for most of the people there, it’s more for legal (rights and benefits) and employment purposes.

The NSO office is now located along J.P. Cabaguio Ave., a sweet relief from where it used to stand at Bangoy St. You can get there northbound by via Route 4, 10, or Sasa-Cabaguio. I don’t know about any southbound routes.

1. Starting Off

There will always be a lot of people outside and inside the NSO, so it is such an easy place to spot. There are two guards on the entrance and it is from them that you will have to get the request forms. There are no ballpens on string in the NSO, so if you forgot one, you have to buy from the vendors outside. The price is usually 10 pesos, but that can be easily 400% more than the price they bought it. Don’t worry though, they won’t give you one that doesn’t work. But should you receive a ballpen that doesn’t write, I’m sure they will be considerate.

Another thing is, there are no tables alloted where you can decently fill up the forms. I filled up my forms on a shelf which was supposedly a depository for bags and stuff. It wasn’t even meant to be a table because it was on the side of the guards, and it looks like more of a divider. Nonetheless, you can always make a way out of things and I did.

There are different forms for different documents. So be sure to ask the guard which particular document you are requesting. The white one is for birth certificates and the pink one for marriage contracts and death certificates.

I entered the NSO at 2:15. I finsihed filling up my forms at around 2:20.

2. Screening

The next step is to let some authorized people check on your forms, just to see if you got everything right, or if you failed to put on some important information. You then have to give the filled-up forms to the Screening section. That is a long table beside the stairs to the left of window 1. The person in charge will do some marks on your paper, large checks, circle here and there, and then he’ll stamp it and tell you to proceed to a window in the Query section.

It only took me a minute there and I didn’t have to talk. 2:21

3. Query

The Query section is located next to the Screening section. There are four windows where you can fall in line to: Windows 1, 2, 3, and 4 (not kidding). Usually, the person on the Screening table will tell you which line to take, but for common sense’s sake, go to the shortest line.

The Query attendant will again sign something on your paper, and then stamp it.

This is perhaps the shortest line you will take, and it takes about around 4 minutes. I was 4th in line, so it was around a minute per turn. 2:25

4. Payment

I wonder why but the payment section has only 3 windows – Windows 5, 6, and 7. There should be 10!

The attendant at the query will tell you which line to take, again for common sense’s sake, take the shortest line. The shortest line, however, may be difficult to spot because the 3 lines extend to the end of the wall. You might have to ask the people where the end of the lines are.

I have to say that it was already 2:25 then so I believe people are swarming to get their documents within the day. I don’t know if the same instance goes for the morning schedule. But don’t be dismayed, the lines could be longer.

The lines may be long alright, but the worse part is, they move slower than a turtle. So if you sensed that one line is moving a wee bit faster than the rest, please help yourself and move to that line. There are no priority numbers here and no seats, so you have to stand in your place always until you get to the counter. I know, it’s such a pain.

It is just common to hear the people next to you complain and warn that they’ll be nagging  at the attendants in the windows soon, but no one does what they’re saying, so don’t be so hopeful. At this point, your concern is to have someone to talk to. Talking will always be the best past time, and here it is not just an option but a need. *sigh*

When you’ve finally reached the counter, there is a paper there outlining the amount to be paid for the documents. The price would be 140 pesos. There is also a sign there that says Please prepare exact amount, so be sure to have smaller bills in your wallet. I don’t know what will happen if your bill is too big. But I think the inconvenience will be on your part.

Also try to ask the attendant if she got the number of copies right. Also check if she keyed in the total amount you expect to have paid (do your math). If it’s less than what the attendant took, it doesn’t mean you are lucky she forgot. That would mean you’ll have a copy or more less than what you have requested.

I started at 2:25 and ended 55 minutes later at 3:20. This can be shorter I think, but I happened to have landed on a line that almost didn’t move it was almost a surprise that it moved at all. But the 55 minutes is not an estimate. When you have nothing to talk to, the wall clock becomes the most popular and well-looked at thing in the world, and for a while you will become time’s stalker. Your legs will understandably be sore at this point too, and a chair or anything to sit on will be your next sole concern.

5. Receiving

This is the last step in your document request, and finally you will get what you asked for. There are around 100 seats or less in the Receiving section, so go satisfy your legs. But if you are not that lucky, you will find that the seats are actually all taken and a number of people are standing around. If that is the case, take the time out and go get some drinks (as I did) and return no more than 10 minutes after. You won’t get to receive your documents in a snap, so you might as well take advantage of it. Besides, you are not literally falling in line, just waiting for your name to be called.

The system here is batch-oriented. The people in the NSO process your request and by the time the pile is around 20 papers high, that’s when they start calling names. The first roll call is to call the attention of the people who requested the documents so they can line up. Usually, it’s in Window 10. There are supposed to be 4 windows here: Windows 8, 9, 10, and 11, but only 9 and 10 have people in them.

The second roll call follows, and you are expected to be on the line at window 10. If you missed this one, you might wait again for the next roll call. The person in charge will give you back your request forms, and at the back of it, you have to write your name, signature, and date. Then, you will have to fall in line at Window 9.

It is on window 9 that you will get your documents (finally!). Please check whether you have the right number of documents, and if they’re really your documents, and if no one else’s document got into yours accidentally (this last bit happened to me, but I was quick).

At this point I noticed that only very few people are coming in. The Payment section got only a handful of people left lining. If the the NSO office were a boat, it would have sunk. Almost 90% of the people are in the Receiving section, that is, to the rightmost part of the building.

I started waiting at 3:20, and I finished at around 4:30.

All in all, it took me 130 minutes, or 2 hours and 10 minutes to get what I requested for. This is already satisfactory knowing it used to take weeks. They sure made the processing really quick, but I do hope getting what you ask for wouldn’t be such a hardwork. Standing in line for almost an hour! If there were only more and enough seats, everything would have been way way better.

For over a couple of months now I’ve almost exhausted every site offering portable apps and I still don’t think I’ve had enough.

When I bought a 2G USB last semestral break, I didn’t know that it’ll practically become my beloved toy. It all happened when I was browsing through sites about good handling of usb drives (because I remembered my first usb’s shocking death after only a week after its 6-month warranty) but instead landed on the hometown of the so-called portable applications, portableapps.com.

Portable apps are, in brief terms, applications that run directly on your usb flash drive, pendrive, or whatever you call it. These applications are just like any applications, only that you don’t have to install them and they are literally almost reduced to half their sizes bytewise.

I have with me, after a lot of deleting, adding, and resurrecting, 14 portable apps that I now can’t live without. These are, in order of importance:

1. Mozilla Firefox (best browser so far)
2. AM-NOtebook
3. Pidgin (an all-in one messenger)
4. Wordweb (a mini dictionary on the go)
5. MediaPlayer Classic packaged with K-lite codec pack (plays virtually any media file)
6. Foxit Reader (reads pdf with tabbing feature)
7. FSCapture (screen capture with a few tricks)
8. Converber (1000+ conversions)
9. 7-Zip (small but powerful compression tool)
10. Notepad++ (opens text files notepad can’t)
11. Frostwire (alternative for limewire)
12. Flashget (fastest download manager in the world, so they say)
13. Abiword (a more msword-y alternative than open office)
14. Sudoku (addicting game)

For me the best portable app currently available is Mozilla Firefox portable. My own firefox, for instance, has installed plug-ins and extensions in it which I personally chose and are happily working with to my heart’s content. My bookmarks are saved and my page history as well. That doesn’t sound so special, I know, but the juicy part is, I get to load this firefox over any computer and my settings are not lost, my browsing remains private, and best of all, cookies and saved passwords are safe and need not be cleared. That means easy browsing and absolutely no hassle in signing in to different sites.

I used to prefer chrome before firefox but the portable version is slow in downloading and saved passwords are not handled that securely. Firefox has a lot of add-ons to choose from to making this browser highly customizable and personalized.

My other favorite is the AM-notebook. This app works like Microsoft One-note, with less of everything except functionality. This app comes in handy whenever I collate information and pictures on the net and saving them in one file without the hassles of unnecessary formatting. The notes are not saved separately but can only be accessed through the application itself. It works prefectly for what it is made for – a handy-dandy notebook.

If you want to have your own set of portable apps in your usb drive, the first stop for portable apps is at portableapps.com.  But they have a limited collection of portable apps, so you might want to check these other sources: portablefreeware.com, pendriveapps.com, and softpedia.com .

At portableapps, you can get the portableapps menu launcher where you can place all your apps in a way that programs appear in the start menu. This eliminates the need to browse through your usb using windows explorer just to get to your portableapps. The default PAM launcher looks like this:

But it’s quite boring, so I switched to this:

This cool iPOD theme as well as a lot more can be downloaded from ptc.kain-planet.de. They also have a modification of the portableapps launcher which addresses some of the PAM’s limitations.

I just visited the new7wonders.com live ranking, and still, the Philippines is still on top of the list with the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River. The Tubbataha Reef and the Chocolate Hills stand close at the 4th and 5th spots respectively. Lingering not that far away is the Mayon Volcano at the 11th.

Four wonders, and this should be happy news. But I’m afraid it might not be for long. Although at present we have 4 amazing candidates for the 7 natural wonders, the sad thing is, by Dec 31 when the top 21 will be chosen, only one of these four can go into the next stage of the competition. Sadly, this is part of the rules. It is stated that a country shall have only one final natural wonder nominee.

How come this was not emphasized before? Sayang naman yung effort ng ibang bets. Mas masaya sana kung atin yung 3 out of the 7. *sigh*

The Philippines still on the number 1 spot

Ever since they started roving around the city blocks, talks about these new davao eye candies are circulating fast, first in enthused whispers, and now in open interest and curiosity.

it's davao's new sensation

By 2010 Dubai will have its oil reserves tapped out. That’s according to the Economist. And by that time, it will become the center of the world. That’s according to me. 

Hydropolis. The world’s first ever underwater resort and hotel.

In one of my previous entries, I mentioned that SM might be putting up a new mall in the city. But that came as a surprise since SM City in Ecoland has a sprawling land behind it covering more than thrice the mall’s current floor space. Why not utilize it?

I don’t know what’s up in a businessman’s mind, but it might as well be true that a petty rivarly between Ayala and SM is on tack. This is just a rumor, but it sounds funny so I’m putting it here. I’ve read somewhere that Henry Sy was not particularly happy when Trinoma opened because it “snatched” most – not some – of SM North’s customers. There is some truth in that though, as some of you who have been to the place may attest.

And so they say, that with the Abreeza coming up (yep! that’s the name of the Ayala Mall), SM just doesn’t want to be left behind. All I knew then was that it will be in Lanang, but specifically where, I just didn’t know yet.

But now I do! The Lanang Golf and Country Club is now being bulldozed off supposedly for the new SM Mall, which for now is called – drum roll pls. – the Davao SM North. At first I can’t believe that they’re actually destroying the golf course for a mall, but I’ve seen it and the old country club is gone. Oh well…

So for the record, 3 new malls are currently being constructed in Davao – Abreeza, Robinsons Cybergate, and “SM North”. These three are all located along the JP. Laurel Avenue and are slated to open two to three years from now.

More…
Sensing perhaps the upcoming competition, Gaisano Mall is actually doing a mall-wide renovation and a massive expansion. In that lot in the middle of Davao Central School and the GMall carpark, the new 7-storey Gaisano mall annex is currently being put up.

On top of that, the main building has finally come into terms with the word aesthetics. Right. The air conditioning tubes traversing the mall corridors and alleys are now out of sight and yellow lights are replacing most of the fluorescent lamps. A small job actually, but looking at how the malls looks now is really laudable.

Victoria? Ha. Nothing for now.

When the news came up that Robinson’s and Ayala will be putting up their malls in the city, I told myself not to get too excited. But as a metro-minded Davaoeno, I can’t help myself but be engrossly hopeful. Now, after months of expectation, it’s finally official! The sites are ready and the plans are all laid down. The construction’s to start soon and there’s certainly no turning back!

the kinnari …
a half-woman, half-bird hindu goddess…
but what makes this specific figurine special is that…

it is 3D (a one of its kind among the other kinnaris)…
it is made of gold…
it is made by Filipinos..
over a thousand years ago…

It is quite embedded in our consciousness, though some of us may deny feeling so, that the Philippines did not exist in importance before the Spaniards trampled our shores. The stretch of our history from then on made us seem more Hispanic-American than Asian as are our neighbors. We may have ethnic and tribal origins but even these do not collectively identify us as reminiscent of a civilization. it appears that we did not have one a long time ago. What is left for us as a consolation is that we are doing our best to build a contemporary identity however extraordinarily varied cultures might be at every island in our archepelago.

But we may be wrong. We may actually have had a civilization before the Spaniards came.

And realize that

if china is to jade
as india is to ivory
europe is to silver
what the philippines is to gold

click on:

going for the gold by jessica zafra
gold of ancestors: precolonial treasures in the philippines, ayala museum
gintong pamana, abs-cbn documentary

On a personal note, last night when I watched abs-cbn’s gintong pamana I was having goosebumps all the time. The magnitude of this archaeological discovery and its impact on our identity as Filipinos is so overwhelming my heart was pounding on my chest i was near to tears.

The first thing that came to my mind then was, “God, I want to go to the Ayala Museum!” I do hope that as this sure will invite scholars to pore once again into the precolonial history of Southeast Asia, may we be able to finally piece together and discover for ourselves that we do have a civilization, though not as brilliant as those of China and India, but certainly no less important in its contribution to the world.

The night after I heard that an online poll for the new seven wonders of nature is on the move, I was already voting. And just a couple of months have passed, and indeed the wonders are moving!

Way back in March, the strongest bet the Philippines got was Tubbataha reef, which was only at 8th spot then, one notch short of the coveted top seven.

By May, Chocolate Hills went into the picture, and was skyrocketing from nowhere into the 9th spot. Following not that far at rank 21 was the underground river in Bohol. Dear Tubbataha unfortunately did not move.

Much as I want the Philippines to at least get these trio on the seven, I emailed all my contacts inviting them to – well, you guessed it – vote.

Since then I wasn’t able to check on the site regularly. And just this moment I did, and lo, I nearly jumped. the trio did get into the top seven! look:

Tubbataha is now in the 2nd spot, the Chocolate Hills in the 4th, and the underground river at 6th.

As an added surprise, another Philippine wonder joined the race. Mount Mayon is climbing up at rank 10.

The media coverage this voting is getting once in a while must have fueled the uprise.

I am not sure when but somewhere in the middle of the year, the daily top 77 will be trimmed down to 21. From 21, voting will again commence to finally choose the top 7, which will be announced next year.

Wouldn’t it be a blast to have the world know that half of nature’s most wondrous creations are in darling Pilipinas?

So for those who have voted, keep voting. For those who have not, just visit this site: http://www.new7wonders.com/nature/en/liveranking/

i had a unisilver watch as an anniversary gift from my girlfriend last feb 6th. it’s digital and blue and has a stopwatch and alarm features. some think it’s kiddie stuff. but i like it. the time is easy to read, and it fits just right in my wrist.

this day, my watch seem to be playing games on me. twice, i read 5 same digits in a row accidentally. one was at 3:33:33 pm and another at 5:55:55. the thing is, i didn’t wait to see the numbers flash that way in my watch. i just happened to look at the time and they’re there.

i don’t know what this coincidence means, but i do like the way it put a smile on my face. it doesn’t happen all the time, does it?