June 2012
1 post
“If you think love is just a chemical reaction, then you don’t know a thing...”
– Yours truly. (Not sure which side of the brain though)
May 2012
5 posts
The prime of life
What is so special about the 20s?
We don’t know too much, that we become cynical.
Yet, we don’t know too little, that we are left ignorant.
Of the future.
"What do you plan to do after graduation?"
"Oh, study some more. Find a good country to send my brain off to."
"Just your brain?"
"Yeah, I plan to leave my heart here. Unless, of course, she's coming with me."
“When life hands you lemons, extract D-limonene.”
– The immunology report due Tuesday, procrastination, and thesis in the pre-conscious.
Science is a kind of faith
The debate between science and faith is, to me, one of the most futile cycles man wastes his triphosphates on (more so than coupled anabolic and catabolic reverse reactions). While I used to believe they were non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA)—that is, two fields of life that do not intersect and thus cannot be against each other (one revolves around the physis while the other revolves around...
Dear God
Please save me from myself…
April 2012
2 posts
A burger, a blueberry crepe, and a mistake
Have made my heart quite heavy tonight
Completely different things
We never “get into another relationship,” or “get into a relationship again,” or even “fall in love again.”
We only always fall in love for the very first time, with different people. With someone new.
March 2012
3 posts
Motherhood vs. epigenetic research
I was sharing the epigenetics of diets to mother today.
In a nutshell: Swedish researchers discovered that during important pre-pubescent years (10-12 years old), the diets of males affect the characteristics (including life span) of their future kids and grandkids in a profound way. For example, they found that a sudden shortage of food for the grandfather extended grandchildren’s life...
5 days until 1 year
March 7, 2012 will mark an entire year since my last “serious” post.
Took a year off to stop thinking and start living a little bit.
While I’ve lost a lot of style, a little bit of grammar (hopefully not too much), and about 4 pounds, I’ve had a good time.
It’s about time that the swirly thoughts have come back.
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
2 posts
Of moments and happily-ever-afters.
I am part of a generation bred to find happiness. We are like happiness-sniffing dogs. Case in point: YouTube comments and general sentiments on the following movie scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m2T5yfgsZ0&feature=related Figure 1: Infamous scene from “Love Actually” where man confesses to woman that he has been in love with her for a long time, and makes her realize that...
June 2011
2 posts
Bad night.
After seven years, I realized that I never wrote a eulogy for my father.
Paco's guide to writing good (Part I)
First thing to note, it’s “writing well.”
Unless, of course, this were a penmanship class of some kind…
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
Of God and "Why."
It all begins with the lack of an explanation, or so they say. God, people long ago believed, resided in the sun. God, they then proclaimed, lied in the forces of nature that lead to life and its proliferation. God, many now say, is difficult—practically impossible—to understand, yet He is here and now. Theists from many different backgrounds all face the heat with regards to this...
January 2011
4 posts
“Can love be anything but diastereomerized? No two kinds of love bend...”
– de Jesus, 2010
Oh, the humanity!
I had your brother killed. It was premeditated and completely intentional. I bought rights to his body, paid a man to slit his throat with a cleaver, and collected his lifeless corpse. We let him bleed out, so there would be no mess at home. I paid another man to singe all his hair off with a butane lighter, and yet another to torch your little brother’s skin to a bright-red crisp. The mass...
Why do I love deriving my formulas?
Because memorization is a drag and deriving makes you feel (and sound) smarter than you actually are. But seriously, it’s much like going back in time—a history lesson of sorts. It is the process of encapsulating entire lifetimes’ worth of work through years, decades, or even centuries of continued knowledge-building, and jotting it all down in pen step-by-step… Tracing...
December 2010
1 post
Reblog this if God is more important to you than...
makemyheartpop:
melamelamon:
jponduty:
biancarnation:
lastofthetimeladies:
heeeee:
kyuhyunismyeverything:
wishuponaconstellation:
yougotmefallinginlessthanthree:
I WILL KILL YOU IF YOU DO NOT REBLOG THIS.
mahiya naman yung taong di magreblog nito.
i’ll never ever forgive you if you don’t reblog this
^
Guilt will swallow me whole if I don’t do this.
haha :DD nakakatakot...
November 2010
2 posts
What is living a pious life like? I'm not quite...
“Just like boxing” is my guess. You bob in, weave to the side, keep punching, keep stalking, knee strike here and there if Muay Thai serves as a better analogy for your particular brand of spirituality, exhaust yourself, and when the bell rings, drink Tropical or Pocari Sweat or maybe just water, and wait for the next round. That time is your only respite; to your weary body that time...
Truly a wonder...
Backtracking, rereading past blog entries and ideas I’ve written and/or mulled over this past year, is a funny experience. From where I am now, I don’t know how I ever came up with such things. I’m reluctant to call it a “phase”—as to me, philosophical thought is among the few activities of man that must not be simply explained as a segment of our lifetimes, as...
August 2010
11 posts
There is a cuckoo clock...
There is a cuckoo clock in the living room of my house, just about one-and-a-half meters to the right of the door. It’s a simple little cuckoo clock (my parents like cuckoo clocks), with little dancing folk and simple music box-type tunes playing every half-hour, and, of course, a simple little bird popping out of the door in the middle to go “cuckoo.” It’s pendulum-based,...
I'm sorry, Tumblr.
But for the sake of the academics that drives my college life, I must let (and have been letting) you go for a few weeks.
Welcome to Loneliness (A review of Welcome to the...
I am no otaku, but I’ve enjoyed watching Japanese animé ever since I was a young boy, and I’ve had my own share of imaginary ninja friends and devastating battle techniques (the names of which I’d have to scream at the top of my lungs before anyone saw results). In my life, I have five consistent favorites, in this order, and I do not think the list they form below will ever...
A little-big idea.
Face it: a theist cannot make sense of the world without viewing himself as unavoidably sinful to some extent, lest he tread beyond what is simply human nature and regard himself a god. But some simple physics can help us make this world inhabited by six billion of our sinful kind a better place to live in. Take Newton’s notion of force-pairs, commonly called the Third Law of...
Laughing at myself.
Just got rickroll’d. It’s actually really catchy.
We are all hypocrites.
I used to find brazen environmentalists irritating, then I discovered how pretty the outside of my room could be (and heaved on the air outside my condominium).
I abhor fanboys and fangirls of anyone or anything; that is, until I end up appreciating those things myself. Many times I don’t even try out what I criticize.
I find myself intelligent only within the limits of what I understand...
“Now I know why people call mutual love “reciprocated.” Because when...”
– Yours truly. (Any unsigned quote is mine, anyhow.)
July 2010
8 posts
Realization. (First post in so long.)
If you treat each movement of the Sign of the Cross as a vector in space, the resultant points to your heart!
(I’ve missed Tumblr. 9 exams in 2 weeks over, I’ll get back to reading the thousands of backlogged posts first.)
A packaged thought.
Rosario lived a long, active, and good life, and died at peace with himself and full of years. He died somewhere in Malate, fast asleep on his bed. His soul whisked upward quickly and he found himself before the Pearly Gates themselves, standing before Saint Peter. To his surprise, there was no Book of Names, just a little scale, and he was ushered onto it. After three digits written in Hebrew...
Biology.
It amazes me how developments in the material world strongly enhance and preserve life as we know it. One example: Ultraviolet rays from the sun helped catalyze some chemical reactions instrumental to the propagation of living molecules (via the chemical evolution theory of life). When life evolved to allow carbon-fixation photosynthesis (the one most plants generally perform), these organisms...
Exploring the soul.
I was thinking a lot about Gigi, our pet boston terrier, yesterday. She was with us ever since late 2003, but eventually had to end up staying at my aunt’s house in Makati after circumstances (change of house, lack of household help, limited pet freedoms in the condominium) changed. She has been there for almost half a decade, and I see her aging little by little each time I visit, and I...
Society, history, and chemistry.
Melvin See: why is the triangle the symbol of social stratification?
Paco: because it represents the upper and lower
Paco: haha
Melvin See: dapat pyramid na lang
Melvin See: kasi not only is it in 3 dimensions like most objects we can percieve
Paco: but it represents within itself
Paco: the ultimate symbol of equality in 3d,
Paco: the tetrahedron?
Melvin See: but it also represents the longevity of the social system
Melvin See: because the pyramids have lasted for thousands of years just as society has remained pretty much the same since the start of civilization
Paco: oh.
Paco: ahahahahahah
Paco: i liked the tetrahedron take better
Melvin See: of course it's chemistry
Last message received on 7/12 at 10: 42 PM
Paco: chemistry is sexy
Mula sa mga kukong nakipag-agawan sa mga kuko ng...
Contrary to the premise of essay-writing in Theology or Humanities classes (formerly Christian Life Education or Values Education), our online musings, or perhaps what we say to console friends over the phone, I believe that the character of man is sifted out most purely when he is given the least possible time to think over what he is to say or write or do. It is an instant of interplay between...
The meaning of selfstudy, an offshoot of...
Sometimes, you need to do things yourself. Organic chemical nomenclature is a vast and complex set of concepts, akin to the philosophy of Father Roque Ferriols, S.J., or the field of mathematics, or any number of things easier done than explained. So, after burning myself out answering online quizzes and worksheets from school, I randomly conceived of my own compound, adding doodles and atoms...
Fifa 2010.
The world cup this year has been surprising.
Top-tier teams knocked out early on—France, Italy—or just plain disappointing—England.
Many surprising twists and turns, like the USA’s sudden awareness of football or Brazil’s loss to the Dutch, and not-so-surprising ones, like the Latino domination.
In the end, I am happy Ghana got to the top 8. Their under-21 team...
June 2010
22 posts
Normality, morality, molarity...
With a conversation about AMF in Ateneo and Biochemistry in UP with Regine came a recollection of a most interesting idea by Dr. Viktor Frankl, founder of the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (following Freud and Adler): “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” -Page 38, Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl, 1984) Don’t ask how it got to that....
“Nagpaospital ako dahil sa sobrang sakit ng tiyan. Tanong ng doktor, “Gaano...”
– ‘Yun ‘yun e. (via lahatngbagayparangpagibig)
I am genuinely happy right now.
Thus I say this in a completely different context: Sigh. Such is life.
Amazing chemistry.
Atomic orbitals aren’t defined shapes—they’re basically just probability plots of possible electron positions given time and space and energy. The doorknob that is the p-orbital, and the two-eggs-and-a-doughnut that is the dz2 orbital, are all only probabilities. They’re intangible numbers.
And yet, in that intangibility is an actual physical reality. So real, in fact,...
It's that time of day. (Poem)
It’s that time of day When the summer solstice has extended its stay (it’s global warming, they say), and the carbon dioxide carbon monoxide oxygenous nitrogenous compounds permeate, carbon-based lifeforms proliferate, and there are too many photons bouncing and jiggling and shifting and superimposing on each other and all is well with the world, but no, the summer solstice has...