Federer is gonna try again and Nadal will have something to say about that. But the big story is Henin's early retirement, which kinda pulls the rug out of Sharapova's bid. A pity since she's looking stronger than ever.

Ahh Sharapova. Wait, what was it I was talking about?

Oh yeah. I'm not gonna get any sleep. Strangely enough, I force myself to wake up at ungodly hours for the Opens more than the Playoffs. Not even the NBA Finals. I dunno why. Probably because I've been doing it since kidness I guess. Hard habit to break.

Senseless post this. I think I just wanted to post that picture up. Shutting up now.

But to those who want to make a change in this world, you can't go wrong in finding inspiration at the ostentatious, silly looking man in the top hat who, crazily enough, finds beauty in the Philippines. What an out of this world opinion, right? I mean, isn't the logical thing to get the hell out of here?

And so to you Carlos, whose tour I wanna join one day but probably won't do anything about (being a loser), here's my little post on my blog that serves to say how much I admire you, and people like you, who work against the literal tide of humanity making a beeline for the exit.

And secondly but no less as importantly, thank you for qualifying what I had known all along, but wasn't very clear to me until I subscribed to, and read more about you and what you do, via your blog.

It's the realization that I love my country, and that I want to be a part of fixing it.

Not only that, he doesn't even apologize, merely replying after I texted him about it that it's been relisted and it'll be back in a few days. Yesterday he then texted to remind me of payment, after which I said 'sure, just put me in your calendar (so it wont happen again) ok?', to which I got no reply. EXCELLENT service right there, don't you think? Especially considering I sent a fair share of business his way when I was still in the web design business. I'm just glad this is just a personal blog and not a critical service like the Exchanges. If I were still hosted at his service (he was my first host), I probably would've made a personal appearance to wherever he is in Laguna.

Anyway, to better things. Yesterday was my first basketball game in a long time and I felt good if it weren't for the lingering effects of my cold from the past week. This after I thought I'd come to actually 'retiring' from playing. Credit Gold's Gym for not hurting as much afterwards, which isn't to say I don't hurt now, except it's a good kind of hurt instead of the 'oh my God I'll never walk again' type of hurt.

Not only that but instead of just resting my tired, old bones I feel good enough to go to the gym tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the bike with the back support (as opposed to another type of bike without one), which helps old fogeys like me with back and knee issues. I wanna pound that thing for at least 30 minutes cumulative, interspersed with weights and stretching to help stamina and generally work some weight off if such a miracle is at all possible.

In a perfect world, all I'd do is gym in the mornings, hit golf balls all day and analyze basketball games for a living, dispensing my loads of crap wisdom towards my waiting, loving mass of worldwide fans. Yeah, the more I think about it, that's exactly what I'd picture a beautiful world to be. Considering I get to go to a Class A gym regularly and dispense my opinion on basketball (logic - deprived or otherwise) on a regular basis, I can't complain. I just need to work my ass on getting a sponsor or two for BallEx and maybe I can work on the golf part.

It's good that in our society, there are still things difficult to achieve - I read a book a few months ago about Indiana State's high school basketball program, the very one that produced the miracle team Milan, depicted in the film Hoosiers in 1954 (ok I know this sounds like I'm digressing into basketball talk but hear me out). Back in those days, Indiana high schools regardless of size compete in a single tournament for a single championship, making their win even more dramatic considering they only had a population of 165. This changed in the 90s when, due to overzealous parents (accdg to the book) who wanted their kids to taste a championship at least once in their lives, divided the tournament, resulting in different 'championships' throughout the state. Obviously this watered it down and consequently (possibly without their realizing it), negating the glory that came with it.

When I look at the bar (and herewith my point), I'm glad it's as difficult as it is, because for any society it's important to have goals or achievements that remain, so to speak, the gold standard of achievements. I honestly believe the majority of Pinoy's psyche allows if not wholeheartedly approves of the idea of receiving rewards without going through the pain, so it's refreshing to see people working hard and actually receiving their just reward. More often than not we tend to coddle friends and family, relying on padrino systems and contacts to achieve these things. It makes my blood boil to hear the words 'I know this person.., or I know that person.., indicating that because youre familiar with someone, you can get things done, as opposed to achieving goals via their merits. Not only does it award the non - deserving, it devalues the efforts of the deserving, and finally, tragically, condones getting something the easy way.

So bravo, to Jill. Bravo to her batchmates and everyone who passed. Savor that feeling of getting something because you earned it, and not because you begged, pulled strings, or used any other method than having to study 8 hours a day 7 days a week for a whole year to get it, which was what it necessitated. To me, that by itself serves a lesson and I hope they take it to heart, which brings us to:

An Opinion Article at Inquirer.net which I could not find after 20 mins of searching - Inquirer.net's Search function is COMPLETELY USELESS. Anyway, that opinion, which was probably written by Chief Justice Panganiban or Amando Doronilla sometime during the weekend (sorry, like I said, Inquirer's search isn't worth crap), mentioned the importance of morals and values in lieu of merely carrying out the wishes of your clients. It stated the most obvious example today - Gloria's use of lawyers to craft monstrosities like EO 464, the Calibrated Preemptive Response, and the law (I dunno if it has a name) that allows detention of media without due process - all brilliant works of genius legal minds worthy of mention in law circles for all of legal history if it weren't for the fact it's used for a purpose outside of what the law is supposed to do, which is essentially for the common good.

All professions whether medical, legal or even if you just make goddam websites, require a level of social responsibility that should precede your need to please your wallet. After you've managed to make enough to support yourself and your family, you're gonna have to reflect on how what you do is affecting your surroundings and the people around you. Whoever wrote those laws has clearly lost track of that. It's one thing to awash yourself in legal geekery and revel in the victory of finding a loophole in the law allowing you to get away with incarceration sans proper procedure, it's another thing entirely to see a person and his family suffer the emotional and physical drain of losing their freedom. How can you live with yourself knowing you created the law that allows the government to abuse its people? If you're smart enough to write it, you've got to be smart enough to know that Gloria, just by virtue of asking you to make it, will use it for her own nefarious ends.

In my field, I must know 10 to 15 guys that could make a comfortable living making porn sites or hacking accounts. Just like lawyers or doctors or anyone who works in their field long enough, in the course of your work you'll see loopholes, shortcuts and corners you can cut that can give you a boost, or a step up above the rest. We know this fully well and there's no question of their ability to get away with it, and yes some do. But for the most part, honesty and integrity kicks in, in the form of feeling sick when you look at yourself in the mirror. Common sense dictates those smart enough to do so should also be smart enough to see the folly of their ways. You must be living in a very warped world to think you're doing anyone a favor when you create something like that.

Yes, it's finally over. - Jill stayed at a dorm in Katipunan to study for a number of weeks last year, and I count those as some of the happiest in my life. I'd visit her and we'd hie off to a restaurant or Starbucks. I'd work on the sites using my laptop or read a book while she studied for hours. It was good quiet time and felt truly content with the universe and all that was around me. But would I wanna go through it again?

I look at back at that time and I'm glad to put it on shelves in my brain and mark them as 'good memories', because they truly were. But that's the only way I wanna look at them now, as something we've gone through and is now over. I think that's what constitutes most of the relief and anxiety I felt while I was pressing F5 *every second to get the results at the SC website last Saturday. We spent a whole year preparing for that thing and I couldn't wait to see if it paid off. Consequently, I realize now that if we hadn't put in as much effort, I probably wouldn't have been as nervous because I'd have less expectations. This as opposed to putting in the work, which means you value it a lot and hence value the results as well.

Anyway, whatever. It's all done now, and at some point we'll all be putting it in the back of our minds as another happy memory, and writing this (on a work day of all times), means I'm in the process of 'shelving it' so we can get a move on. Essentially, I'm glad she took the risk, because there is always big gain to get from big risks. The bigger the gain the bigger the risk, and we have a few more to work on, some in the very near future. All we have to do now is stay the course, get our ducks in a row and apply the same level of hard work and attention to detail exerted in previous examples. So long as we focus things have no choice but to get better.

Told you you had nothing to worry about.