BMW Art Cars - Absolute Beauty

A year ago, on March 15, 2007, I got the opportunity to shoot the world famous BMW Art Cars at the Ayala Museum. I have with me my Canon 350D.

After a long day of work in the office, I drove from Manila to Makati to cover the BMW event.

The cars were absolute beauty which we Filipinos are appreciative enough as we ourselves have a great ingenuity and artistic touch in our jeepney designs. There were four actual cars on display, hand painted by famous artists and the rest are small scale replicas.

The centerpiece is the red BMW 3.0 CSL and the art painting was made by Alexander Calder. The white 3.0 CSL art was made by artist Frank Stella. Another white BMW 320i is crafted by Roy Lichtenstein. A BMW M3 art was created by Ken Done from Australia.

These are very expensive cars that were being displayed all over the world. We are privilege enough to have seen them in our country though not too many were able to but I’ll give you a glimpse of what I have seen…

click here for more photos

Bowling 2008 - Single Game High Score

It was our annual bowling tournament and I haven’t been into the scene for few weeks now so I went there tonight to play. It’s the fifth week of competition and I only played three games out of twelve.

I usually bowl with an average of 150 but never really mastered my game. I always wanted to play but obligations and priorities will always come first for me. Good thing though, nobody have a great game that night so I bag home the single game high scorer award with 194 pins. Six points less than our 200 Club Award which I always wanted to reach so that I can take home a bowling pin as a trophy.

I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer to get my dream but nonetheless I’m proud to take home the yellow smiley squeeze ball prize for bagging the highest single game scorer of the week.

Four more games before championship and more prizes to get. Hope I can get that elusive pin this year...

Spiderman - Out of the Box, Pinned on A Dart Board

In 2004, I saw an extraordinary toy in Toy Kingdom at Robinson's Place Manila and it was one of the best Spiderman toy I’ve ever seen locally. It's a bit expensive for my budget so I just let it go...

After a week, I went back to the store and noticed that they are on sale so I hurriedly look for it and guess what; it's on 50% off. So I bought it right away and even share this info to my officemates Tonton and Ryan and they bought it too...

I kept it in the box for years until today, we were cleaning our office area and my former supervisor, Alex, left his Dart board before migrating to the States. It’s an old board but with many memories for him so instead of throwing it, I said I’ll take it. Then suddenly I remember Spidey because I was cleaning my house last weekend and notice that I’ve forgotten to put my collections in a glass cabinet which I originally planned but our house is not that big so I just stack them up.

I’m planning to repaint it with light color and draw a web along the board’s lines but I guess that will take me another more months. I’m too busy right now with work.

It has 67 points of articulation and measured about 18 inches tall from ToyBiz. The colors are great and the best thing about it is that you can really manipulate even the smallest finger’s joint. I wanna share it with you thru the pictures I’ve taken today…

Failing CSP - A Great Learning Experience

A week before I went to Marshall Islands for a tour-of-duty (TDY) job, I took a week-training on Industrial Security at Bayview Hotel Manila.

On the last day we took an exam to qualify as a Certified Security Professional. The following weekend, we did a security survey and presented it as part of the requirements to be certified by PSIS.

The Philippine Society for Industrial Security (PSIS) used to be the Philippine chapter of ASIS (American Society for Industrial Security) but after years of its reliance, with the extensive growth of locals adhering to security profession and company security needs, PSIS became an independent Institution for security professionals who want to improve their knowledge and skills on vital security concepts but still following the American standards.

The exam is composed of 220 questions, 20 each from 11 security concepts with a passing score of 165 plus the security survey presentation by individuals. Unfortunately, I failed the written exam but my presentation is one of the best score but wasn’t enough to carry my written one. It wasn’t hard for me to accept my failure because my work is primarily on a single concept which is computer security but nonetheless, I learned a lot from this training.

Out of 40 only 15 passed and most of my batchmates already took their retake but I was in Singapore at that time. I’ll be taking mine this August and I hope to pass it this time. I took this training in preparation for CISSP which is my ultimate goal this year and that is different story…

I highly recommend this training for you who are in the security profession or would want to venture in security business. Very interesting topics, expert resource speakers and good food…

The Getty Museum - L.A.

Exactly 13 months ago, I was asked by our friends’ Me-ann and Edong to be the photographer for their twins Yani and Yori’s Dedication (Christian Christening) in Quezon City. My wife, who’s one of the godparents of one the twins together with our daughter are at the venue 40 minutes early for me to cover the setup and the guests’ arrival.

During the Pastor's talk, he mentioned story of two personalities who are unknown to most of us, if not all, present there. He tells stories of one Butch O’Hare and the other is Paul Getty. I was busy that time making rounds and taking photos so I could not concentrate in his stories but then he mentioned Getty’s Museum and I paused upon hearing it because I know I’ve heard about that place.

And I come to realize that not only I’ve heard about it, my wife and I were actually been there during our vacation in 2004. We’re visiting the Apayor family of Van Nuys, Los Angeles that time and Jay-Ar the youngest in the siblings took us to this place which according to him, he visited a lot when he has nothing to do. We took a bus and transferred to a train or tram going to the place on top of a hill.

Getty is a billionaire who has quite a number marriages and divorces but has a great passion for art. His collections are in this place which you’ll get amazed by how they are preserved and how old the arts are and made by great artists. I have a great time there and even if you’re not into art, you’ll surely like it, its one of the biggest museum I’ve ever been.

Check their website first for schedules before going there because I think it closes at 6PM and sometimes 9PM. We took the same route going back to Van Nuys.

Jay-Ar’s room is their old garage converted to a cute living room full of toys from all four walls up to the ceiling. He’s actually the one responsible for making me a collector of toys when he gave me one of his own, a McFarlane Series 1 of Allen Iverson.

Microsoft Certified Master - A Mesmerizing Title

Just checked my hotmail account and found this email from Microsoft newsletter. A new title, Microsoft Certified Master. The name itself is one of the best Microsoft has ever come up with or even against other organizations who are also providing certifications but sad to say, it's very expensive.

Pricing Structure

Nonrefundable program application fee: US$125
Program fee: US$18,500
Non-lab exam retakes: US$250
Lab exam retakes: US$1,500

Note

The program fee includes the price of first attempts at all required tests, including the final lab exam.

How can I pay for an $18,500 worth of training, how about my airfare, how about my allowances? The total amount is about a million pesos, a brand new car for me already. I think this is way too much for a certification...

I am a Microsoft product user, administrator and an engineer and I have taken most of their certifications so I would love to have it also under my name. But pardon me if I keep on questioning it, but really, I 'm having a hard time find the reason behind it...

If there's somebody wanna try this, please enlighten me or us and don't forget to share your experience in attending this...

Check this link and tell me if my IE is just corrupted.

Becoming a CCNA - Keep Moving Forward

The Robinson's family motto "Keep Moving Forward" is the simplest phrase to whatever motivation you would want to ask from inventors and scientists. I've been waiting for its DVD release at my favorite store Astroplus and after watching it with my wife and 2-year old princess at home, it made me grin because Cornelius’ mindset echoed in my being, to keep moving forward…

The day I woke up late in the morning, drove my wife to office, attended my daughter’s school parents’ orientation, the 40th year wedding anniversary of my parents, at exactly 1 PM, there I was in a small room taking my first Cisco venture, CCNA edition 2. And after six years of yearning, finally, it became official.

It’s a big accomplishment for me but it’s also a great challenge. I’ve always wanted to concentrate in Network Administration but my career took me to not so distant field, its twin brother, Systems Administration. Because of the nature of my company, though my job requires me to do almost everything, I don’t have permission to manage our routers and switches, I can only check if the port is up from the Intranet page, but that’s the realism I’ve long accepted…

However, after this year’s hardware refresh, the “Super Admin” team just left me two unused 4600 routers and a lot of 2950 switches and who could ask for more. That’s all I need. With your acquired knowledge but could not apply it because of a limited permission or no application at all sometimes hold you to not believing in yourself, in your skills and capabilities but you don’t have to. Someday, it will come to you, the responsibility will be yours and who do you have to ask when nobody else has the knowledge, it’s all you.

The Information Technology field is not just what you see in the server room or in the computer your working on or any computer equipment you’re ask to operate or seen in your workplace. It’s full of theories, full of techniques, has different approaches and all you have to do is to gather as many information as you can, store it, upgrade it and sooner or later you will apply it.

I’m having a successful career because my wife helps me a lot in managing my time. I’m proud of her getting her MCP with a perfect score. She’s on her way for her MCTS…

And hopefully, our second baby princess, next year…