Viva la Vida lyrics

This is more than a song. This is an art.

Viva la Vida
by Colplay
album: Viva la Vida Or Death And All His Friends
composed by: Berryman, Guy Rupert; Buckland, Jonathan Mark; Champion, Will; Martin, Christopher A J

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
“Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can’t explain
Once you go there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn’t believe what I’d become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can’t explain
I know Saint Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can’t explain
I know Saint Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Frosted!

Cha wanted to have her hair dyed. To show my moral support, and since I have nothing else fruitful in mind, plus the fact that I was suffering in an acute stress-induced suicidal illusion, and that I needed a time out, to do something I haven’t done before, sort of a dare, but more of  just a break really, I decided to join her in her out of the blue, spur of the moment, right out of the air, wish. I had my hair frosted. And here’s the aftermath:

messed up

I honestly didn’t know it’ll look this way. When the frosting cap was taken off, I was surprised that I already got colors in my hair. It was really a surprise because I was not asked what color I wanted, and by the time I thought they were going to start dyeing, they were actually done. I guess they only have one color of the dye in the store, so it would be a shame to ask, so they just did what they have to do. Haha.

Cha’s hair is now a reddish-brown tint (she chose it, she was asked, which makes things a little bit unfair), but the color’s still young, and it only works under the sunlight. Mine, on the contrary, works everywhere, and I’m not entirely happy about being the more noticed one in the pair.

In a way I now look like Son Goku, just as one classmate loudly pronounced upon my entry in my Theology exam. But I don’t think it looks bad at all. Maybe not the usual, but not bad.

Viva la Vida and the new Coldplay

Coldplay's newest album

They say this new album from Coldplay is a bit experimental and a few degrees off from what they are more well known for. But I don’t care. I love this album for all its worth.

It’s single, Viva la Vida, is a dreamy song,  concocting medieval allusions and some vague political connotations in a creatively composed lyrics, making it sound interestingly philosophical without the burden of impressed urging. You don’t have to understand it, because you won’t, I didn’t, so perhaps the best thing to do is just listen to it. The chorus is catchy as ever, the music generally upbeat, and the entire experience remarkably literary.

Viva La Vida – Coldplay

snatchers in Ateneo

I left my bag at the Ateneo foodcourt last Friday and it was stolen. I have literally all the important papers and documents there – registration forms, official receipts, supervisor evaluations for my OJT, my yearbook clearance, my DOST requirements, and my ATM card. I was hopeful it would be surrendered to the Office of the Student Affairs, but I have been checking there twice everyday since Monday and my bag, even just the contents, was still nowhere to be found.

Cases of stolen belongings within the AdDU campus are not new. The university had released two memos before but the stealing continued. Many of these cases were not reported, particularly because there is no office to report them to, or that reporting does nothing at all. Worse, stealing has become almost a second nature to the students; they don’t like it, but they tolerate it almost to the point of patronizing it.

Whenever a person loses something, the immediate reaction from a typical somebody is Ba’t mo kasi iniwan. What this common and reflexive reaction implies though is captured in a follow-up expression Alam mo namang may mga magnanakaw dito. And the worst is, this ends in Wala na yun or Di na yun mababalik.

These statements show 2 important points, which I think are recognized by most, though not necessarily expressed, to be the general case in reality. One, that stealing is rampant and unavoidable. Second, that you can’t do anything about it, so just blame it on bad luck.

This is, to say it bluntly, a sick way of thinking, especially in an educational institution. Because if we take on the point of view of the one who steals, his mind may be thinking along these lines, “since nobody cares and since nobody is doing anything about it, it must not be that serious. So, if something was left, that would be solely the fault of the one who left it, and so it is perfectly OK for me to steal it. I’m sure they won’t run after me. They never do.”

I do pray that the university would deal with this stealing incidents more seriously. Memos and warnings do not solve anything. Ateneo students are still human beings and they are bound to forget sometimes. But this does not excuse anyone from treating stealing as something reasonably valid in any case. Stealing, for christ’s sake, is in the commandments, and the Ateneo must do something about it!

On another note, I also do not understand why the bag should not be returned. Any sane person would somehow realize how important the things are in there, maybe not for him, but for me, personally. He has absolutely no use for them, whether he is a student, a janitor, or a passboy. Perhaps the only thing valuable there is the bag itself, a Penshoppe sling bag, but it costs only 600 pesos.  The person must either be a kleptomaniac or a wandering demonic minion.

It’s almost a week now and no clues yet to where the bag is, or who might have have it, or whether I can still get it or not. If I can’t find it, I might not be cleared from my scholarship and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that. I am naturally an optimist and I want to believe people are innately good, that Ateneans in particular are good, but 7 days and still zero? I might start rethinking that aspect in my personal world view.

digging portable apps

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.