Shooting Myself

"Posing for a picture is damn hard..." - me


Photos by Ben Albenio



I thought about doing a photo shoot for myself for the past few weeks and decided to go on with it just a couple of days ago. It seemed a bit hard than I thought it wouldn't.

First, the location that we underwent was a disaster. It had only 1 corner that looked as a pretty good spot. It was closed, therefore it was hot. A corner where we hang our clothes... yes, the lines that you see are actually clotheslines that I managed to use as a material for the shoot.

Second, the wardrobe that I used no longer fits me. The jacket that I'm wearing barely fits and I can no longer close the buttons of the suit. Even the inner sleeves that I have bought a couple of months before barely fits. Its a disaster.

Lastly, my friend and I had a hard time defining myself on how to portray and pose for the scene. We thought of moods that I could show during the shoot but didn't go the way we wanted it to. So I said, might as well get on with it and did some poses for whatever way that I can. Seriously, we managed.


Photos by Ben Albenio

I thought of other photo shoots that might fit me. A sports photo shoot perhaps. Imagine me doing cardio workouts in the gym. Its like a candid moment wherein I portray myself as a determined athlete that needs to reshape himself and bring back the man inside of him drama.

Currently, we are planning to do a second try on it. It might still be a landscape photo shoot where in I still wear my "barely worn jacket" but with a different environment. Still have to find a good location though. Wish me luck!

-Post Script-

We used a 12mega-pixel digital camera. It sucked. I know.

My friend did all the magic using photoshop.

Hope we can find a professional shooting camera, or whatever they call it these days.

Child's Dream Gone Flying

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" ...and I said, "I want to be a pilot... so that I can travel the world and visit many places!" - A 4-6year old me

It was always my childhood dream to become a pilot. I love airplanes. When I was asked what gifts I wanted whenever my Grandmother or other elderly relatives come home from abroad, I always say, "Remote-control". There was nothing more beautiful than having your own radio-controlled vehicle. But I ended up getting something else. I did however got one and it was a silvery smooth sports car. It only ran on smooth cement though. It was too sleek to run on rough roads. I couldn't get enough of the fun because the RC was too fast and it consumed batteries like hell. Funny how ironic that was, back in the day when I get to have all the things I want, the one thing I wanted most was the only thing that ever got in to my hands... once. It was always been my dream to own a radio-controlled airplane. When we were still living in a subdivision down south of the city, I always go to this big grassy field where I lay down watching radio-controlled airplanes fly. I tried to look for the man controlling the plane, but unfortunately, I never did. I could have approached him and excitingly asked him if I could man his airplane.



I love airplanes and I love to travel. Since I was a kid, we'd go places domestically. Visit the relatives there, visit the relatives here. But that's not what I'm excited about, the flights are. Flying up there is the best feeling for me. When I see the clouds, I always wonder what it's like to touch one.



Whenever I was asked what I am going to be when I grow up, I'd always say a pilot. I have high respects for pilots. When me and my Grandmother went to Hong Kong, during the flight, A flight attendant asked me if I was interested to go inside the cockpit, but I didn't do so because I was too shy. Maybe I was only interested with attendant. Just joking. The Flight Attendant gave me a souvenir bag instead. Till now, I have always regretted declining that offer. It was an offer that may or most probably would not happen again. I wish I was 6 again and said yes.




Now, I'm over the age of 20 and I write blogs. Boring? No. But thats okay. I may not have pursued my dream but I still get to fly with airplanes. I love the International flights best. They have more service to offer than the ones here in the Phil. Practically, pilot schooling is way to expensive. Totally expensive.

Back in the day, What did you want to be?

A Lil' bit of Everything

"Key to Happiness is doing what you love..." - Larry Daley of Night at the Museum 2

I'm quite sure I understood what He meant. I love doing things and I love to do stuff. Something that tires and bores me is the least that I like. Say for instance, I don't like to take a bath. It bores me whenever I stand in the bathroom waiting to feel like I've been rejuvenated and refreshed from all the water flowing down from the top of my head down to the toes of my flat-footed feet... and I am just kidding. Who doesn't like a nice cold, or hot, shower? I bet the cat outside of our house doesn't.

My top 5 shallow things that make me a one-less-sad boy.

Number 5 - The Internet.

IT HAS EVERYTHING. I wouldn't survive without having to open any in a week. My emails are just as important to like waking up in the morning. Its a habit. Its informative, reliable, user-friendly, user-friendly when you have projects, user-friendly when you need to copy and paste infos from references, and most of all, it has everything you need to survive. I'm just saying.

Imagine life without the internet... see what I mean?!



Number 4 - El Gitara or The Guitar

Music is in my soul. It lives in my mind and heart and in my body. Passion for music action.

They say, to make music is like expressing your emotions. Its like when you compose music, you construct how you truly feel subconsciously. When I play my music, its like the whole world stops to hear the beautiful noise that comes out of the instrument that I am using. My life is accompanied by music that portrays the drama, comedy and action. The songs I play, I play it with all of my heart.




Number 3 - Food

Its a given. If I stereo type, who can live without it? But seriously, I love Food.

"I eat when I'm upset" - Po from Kung Fu Panda; We are practically the same.

Melancholic issues are cured by the consumption of food, most especially sweets. There is a scientific explanation for that, but I'll leave that out now.

I could not explain much further. Let the idea consume your imagination for food.






Number 2 - specifically, Halo-Halo from Aling Fopings

Oh the finely crushed ice, topped with the delicacies like pinipig, sago, pearls, leche flan, ube, and many to mention toppings, and a 2 scoops of ube ice cream. Combine all together, mix it up... Its HALO-HALO. For an english translation, its Mix-Mix. Forgive me if I could not find anymore spontaneous and unique words that I can say.

Whenever I place my eyes on the sign that says "Aling Fopings Halo-Halo", my heart is filled with joy and happyness overflows from this very heart of mine, located at Matina Town Square Davao, a stall at the end of the piazza.

Its nice to have Halo-Halo with your buddies.



Numero Uno - My Bed

Its where I take off to dreamland... and its also where I make too much noise, snoring.

Ah yes, the point of laying down is the time where my body says, "shut up and relax!". Sleeping is rejuvenating. Say if you have colds, the best way to defeat is boost your immune system and drink that Vitamin C, and of course sleep. Ample amount of sleep.

Before sleeping, lots of stuff pop into my head. Ideas, problems, daydreams, you name it. I found out that medically, based on research, people who find a hard time to sleep is most probably because they use their beds a lot. Our body recognizes the bed as a bed. So when we lay down on the bed, our body must switch to sleeping mode. Thus, if we use the bed as a commonly ground, our body may not recognize the bed as a sleeping material. Therefore may cause a hard time sleeping. I still remember this because I tried to trick my body to sleep even though it wasn't the actual sleeping time.

The bed is amazing. No sexual explicit intentions intended. Please refrain from imagining things that I wasn't suppose to let you imagine. Good.

Cyberly Chills and Thrills

Its the time of year where all of the geeks, nerds, pros and computer-related addicts come to meet. Davao Cyber Expo 2010 is being held at the SM Davao Activity center, July 23-25 2010.

There are lots of gigs going on in DCE. Attractions such as online tournaments is a part of the menu. Customized Personal Computers or "Rigs" are one of the highlights of this 3-day event, more commonly known as the LAN Party event. Blinque TechXtreme Exhibit are showcasing high end gadgets and hardware and are set for great deals. My most favorite of which is the DCW Open Challenge, which we totally sucked in DCE 09, and I have heard that a blogging competition is taking place in the event. If only I knew before hand, I would have tried to put my skills to work.

I have a very unforgettable memory of DCE 09. We took part of the DCW Open Challenge last year for CAll of Duty: Modern Warfare. DCWired Team was challenging anyone in the game for 5 against 5. Any team who can beat DCWired gets a cash prize instantly. It took us about 2-3 weeks playing and practicing only to loose in a pretty convincing way. They said, DCWired Team didn't even practiced before hand. We were thinking just how wicked their skills were. On a scale of 10, with 10 being the highest, they score 9.99. They were that good. We were just not that good enough. They were like the A-Team of COD4. Our morale was just not the same. It was so degrading. That is why we decided to not participate in the DCW Open Challenge this year



DCE is a once-a-year event organized by the DCWired Team. This is the time where we drool in envy because of the latest hardware technology being used and displayed by the DCWired Team. DCWired displays their coolest and out of this world rigs. Rigs that are build for design and performance. I always have been fond of setting up my own rig and this is where my blogging leads to.

Everyone wants to be unique in their own way. I thought of a rig that might blow their minds out, a design like no other. A car-inspired rig with a wheel. A rig that will really look like a part of a car.



Outrageous Rigs around the world.



Tell me what do you think of my idea... or you can just keep'em if you'll just hurt my feelings. Toodles.

Habitually Insane at the Moment

Yes, I have been making my blog around 1-3AM in the morning. I need to get proper sleep. I have been missing out on my appointments and priorities not because of the thing that I do, but because of the time I sleep.

It has been an interesting two days already. Straight to the conclusion, I wake up around 2 in the afternoon and have been sleeping for 10hours since yesterday. And as usual, STI hasn't given me my course description yet... surprising.

Well I just recently watched The Last Airbender. To tell you honestly, I haven't really seen the whole cartoon series, I've only seen a few but managed to have understood the whole drama and story of it because my buddy told me everything. So for the first movie made for the The last Airbender(more commonly known as The Avatar), it was okay. It's hard to explain the whole story of the first book in just a matter of 2hours and so. Some say the author of the cartoon series didn't like it and made bad reviews about it, but I think I know the reason why. M. Night Shyamalan directed the movie.

M. Night Shyamalan directs and produces movies that are scary and have spiritual perspective aspects - Wikipedia

I ate too many ice creams today. Heavenly Vanilla, Coffee Crumble and a chocolate flavored one of some sort. I stopped by my drummer buddy's house and offered me ice cream. I could not resist the offer(*laughs*). We thought of maybe we could play music again and start out a new band but it might take us some time to get our acts up together again... procrastination. Hey, at least we tried looking for his old cymbals and fortunately we did. Thats the first.

I played "piat-piat", also called as the "good-better-best" card game. with my friends. As usual, I don't suck at the game but managed to have only have it quits. Practically didn't win anything at all. Still, I enjoyed the game. I tried something new that night, Lucky Me Pancit Canton mixed with fried pork chops. You can even put pancit canton on a piece of bread with sliced tomatoes in it. It really tasted good... seriously. We had dinner before the game and had ICE CREAM for desert. Thats where i had coffee crumble flavored ice cream. Third for the night. When I stopped by the convenience store to pick up some things for my cousin, i was thinking about having pinipig ice cream. Good thing I remembered all the ice creams I ate earlier.



I really hope that I could wake up early later so that at least I can attend to my appointments once and for all.

I just had a small bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lays and a cup of coke. Good luck to me.

Head over Heels

I can't elaborate more of the fact that STI College of Davao's system really sucks. I requested a course description list so that I can submit it to Central Queensland University so as they can soon credit some of my subjects taken from STI. How slow can it get?! Its as if I still go to that school. As soon as I arrived in the registrar's office, I was already waiting for the registrar to take notice of me. Am I that too big to not notice? And there wasn't hardly any students waiting at all. geeshhh!

Anyway, my day didn't start out right because my aunt called me and asked me to pick up her grocery in her office. I might have considered it as a good thing because I thought waking up before lunch time might help adjusting my body clock because lately I sleep around 3-5am in the morning because of my addiction to glee and NBA2K10 (*laughs*). Then the "as usual" incident in the registrar's office came along, which I was already prepared for did not caught me by surprise, but enough said. Then the fun part comes along. My buddy and I met for an afternoon of none sense... again.

First thing we did was sip a cup of Orbitz. I may have ordered the same thing over and over again. Cookies and Cream tastes bland after 10minutes or so. Might try the colorful flavors next time. We like staring down the mall because Orbitz stands in the fourth floor of the mall and their high chairs and tables were placed along side of the corridor and amazingly you can get to see everyone in the corner we were seated. Our eyes were like radars and all... surprisingly, we saw a fair number of familiar faces around. We pushed our fat legs and thighs and put it to work around. We came out looking for shoes; I for one hand need to replace my old shoes because it's sole is getting thinner and flats cause so much pain to my flat footed heels. Theres this one shoe I fancy, which was displayed in artwork for a fair price. It looks like a modernized topsider, color gray which personally fits my style, a bit of a casual formal-like looking shoe that would fit my everyday expos. My buddy Anot fancies the black topsider but I may have to tell him that He and I should think about buying the shoe together, because it may look silly that He and I both have the same shoe but with different colors.

Kathleen was around so she invited us to go to the cafe and bought us food. Thanks Kat! Keep the career up! Our girl buddy, came to join the fun... the none sense fun. And the first thing she did in the mall was sip a cup of Orbitz too. She had the red flavored drink, which I really don't know what flavor that was. See how exciting the day was. As we were heading off to Damosa for dinner, we saw my buddy's crush in SPC riding the jeep. He said that he always have been fond of that girl ever since He got into SPC. So I said why don't we ride the same jeep as her's, eventhough the jeep she was riding was en route for the other way, and we'll just take off in the nearest place to the destination and take another ride instead? Looking at my buddy's face, He couldn't say no to my suggestion and gladly griming His way to the jeep. My oh my, my buddy was right! The girl is so beautiful. I can imagine the looks she makes on her face. She looks like a Filipino version beauty of Quinn Fabray from Glee. During the trip, I was doing a lot of teasing to my buddy. He even sat down next to the girl and that was totally a thumbs up for him. But my oh my, the manners, He picked his nose while seated behind the girl. "What the hell man!" (*laughs*).

As this story seem to be a long one, I'll cut down to the chase. Tried having dinner in Patok sa Manok. The chicken was not ok-ok. It lacked effort. The bbq sauce painted all over made it seem like it was grilled to perfection... but it did not. Had desert in Mackers(Mcdonalds). Out of the boredom, my buddy drew something on my hand right next to the thumb portion of my fist. It looked like a cat that had a pig's head and feet that had 3 fingers only which made it look like a chicken's feet. Over all, it looked like a mutated animal. Then I made a drawing of a bat mobile on a piece of tissue and my buddy kept yelling out "fat mobile?", and our girl buddy just couldn't stop laughing. I mean, "what...? what the hell...", but thats alright. At least in the end you made someone happy and unforgetful. As the night started to end, I remembered something about hard rain when your in Mcdo, because for him the rain make some people sad but for him it makes him happy. I wonder why.


- mutated cat-like pig animal; I shall call him banokat


No, I don't want to be bitten.

She was

I think the last thing in my mind was her... before I knew it was her all along.

It was like something out of an instant. I did not expect that it would happen. Right on the moment I saw Her, i said, "wow! she's like amazing!". I did not think she's my type of girl. I just thought that how she looked and how she lives in style was cool. That moment on, I just had to make a move that she and I could be friends... and I did.

I had only a few days left before leaving town. I just made a few Hi's and Hello's right on the corner and conversations were flying in out of nowhere. Getting to know her was like being in High school again. All those chit chats over the net and phone were keeping me alive. As if there is still worth going home for. It pretty sucked that all this happened during the time that I have to leave the country.

Have you ever felt the feeling of being so much excited about something that will happen in the future? Or maybe being excited of a plan in the future? I did have those feelings. Excited about a thing that may or may not happen. Its a plan, anything can happen. It just made me so attached that in the end it just broke my heart.

A promise is a promise. But promises are always meant to be broken. If you want to do something for another person, just do it. Don't swear on it. Do it like you mean it. Keeping those promises may or may not hurt.

I was eager to go home, and thinking from that moment on, I would have someone to share my coffee with, or spend the day together or maybe go to the beach and hang out together all day. When I got home, it seemed like it was just another day. It felt like as if swinging on a tree alone and sitting on a bench while cold crisp air blowing on your face. It was like cold nothing.



The mind knows what it wants, but my heart says she's what I need in my life. I could have just ignored her right from the start, and I could have just not said Hello. I want to regret it, but all of this seems worth it.

Hearing her voice in the morning, hearing her yell about this and yell about that and hearing her say she misses you, put me in a wacked situation again. It was like the summer heat bloomed me. Just hearing from her gave me hope. I may have put on some slack but I ain't giving up.

When everything goes wrong, I always pray to God and let all my worries be handled by Him.

Rain just fell off from the Sky I guess

"I am on my way... literally on my way to the movies and I'll see you there!" - Me

I live up north of the city so that would take me about 30minutes to get to the movie house with a bit of a traffic. As I was getting nearer to the mall, all HELL breaks loose. Jitters in my tummy! Thats what it is. I was having serious tummy aches again that I would want to go to the bathroom. It was quite disturbing though.

It was already 7:30 when I got to the mall and hurried through a number of CRs(bathroom). Enough of the tummy aches... "Where the hell are my friends?!". They're halfway through where I came from.

Anyway, I spent the first 10minutes of the movie trying to warm myself up because I was having a super seriously upset tummy... but I pulled through. Nicolas Cage does a lot of Awesome Action packed Disney films now a days huh. Thumbs up for that.

Then comes the part where we ask ourselves what to do after the movie.

"Legends of the Guardian" - To Jaggy Lopez; we should really watch that movie, I think It's an action packed schlong film. (Giggles)

We all make an excuse to be excused for a secret agenda. Thats alright man, I understand... I don't know about the other guy; the other guy? - Tom Cruise.

And car brakes have less friction, don't speed up more than 40Km, when it rains. Got it man.

I'm really running out of words to say, but I'd rather still stick with plan A.

Teresa Palmer - pretty girl from The Sorcerer's Apprentice >.<

Start of New Beginnings

Life's humor to me is about the journey, not the destination that brings us happiness - Frine Fuentes(My buddy)

True! I am mixed up in a number ways on how to humor one's self and others. Wake up first thing in the morning and turning on the computer - would be those things; or simply call your friends in the afternoon and enjoy their none sense with a sense company, just doing anything uniquely anything we can out of the ordinary - one would be like watching a movie like "Hot Tub Time Machine".

Great White Buffalo - the one who got away! Yes, yes! We do have those in our diaries simply because its part of growing up. To anyone who doesn't know what that means, simply watch the movie I said just a while ago, in the second paragraph... the last 4 words. We are men so we are allowed to fall in love. We are still human, we still remember the one's who may have left us hurt.

"I like you, but I don't LOVE you", to the Guardian - that suck! I know!

But still, we choose to get back up when we're down. Too much of a good thing is bad for you. Right Mr. Black, Mr. PUA...?

However, It's all part of our daily lives, humor is part of a habit that we cannot live with out. Whether It could be a wisdom tooth coming out, or talking to the one you fantasize about, or simply a nerve racking shitty exam that you so want to skip because your friends are watching a world premiere movie and your too frustrated you made a sissy.

There is no plan B my friend, and you'll love it when a plan comes along.