from last saturday to yesterday

Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.
--Nelson DeMille

at about 2 a.m. last saturday (october 8, 2005), i got back to the dorm from a beer-drinking session in padi's point-araneta center feeling sleepy and fully expecting that i'd be waking up later that day with a nasty hangover and, therefore, oh so sick. however, my expectations failed me.

i woke up at about 8:30 a.m. feeling fine. himala! all those glasses of beer i had did not cause my system to revolt... and i'm not really a beer drinker. i woke up with a major problem though because my hair was reeking with the stench of cigarette smoke. argh!

ewww talaga! i shampooed my hair twice to get rid of the odor... but what do you know? i was done rinsing the conditioner off my hair and was already preparing to get out of the shower cubicle when i caught my hair's smell. ewww! i could still smell fifty five thousand cigarettes slightly masked by the combined scents of the shampoo and conditioner. so what did i do next? i shampooed my hair with a solution of ariel detergent! haha, what i did was a desperate act and i'm giving you the permission to laugh. the ariel solution did the trick and killed off the stench of the fifty five thousand cigarettes. after that, i shampooed my hair with "real shampoo" and applied conditioner again. O.C.!!!

yes, i do admit to being O.C. (obsessive-compulsive). not only did i shampoo my hair four times, i also changed my pillowcases and bedsheets for good measure. there are really smells that i can't stand.

no, i did not smoke those fifty five thousand cigarettes because, for the record, i don't smoke. their collective smell successfully found its way to my hair during the six hours or so that my friends and i spent inside the bar.

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i encountered major laptop troubles this week. last monday morning, i found out that my dell's no longer capable of displaying anything except for some lines of colors which later faded and gave way to black. i could still tell that the system was booting up and loading, but that was all. because i couldn't see the display, i couldn't retrieve the files i needed for that day. pooh! on a monday? bad start. troubleshooting had to wait until thursday as i had other things to do...

last thursday, i brought my laptop to the lab so it could be connected to a separate monitor and see if there's any display. there was!!! oh gawd, that was not relieving because that implied an LCD problem. my dell can't go just yet! with my laptop connected to the external monitor, i did some system maintenance and i unconsciously did something which i really shouldn't have done because i ended up compounding my LCD problem with a software problem -- my operating system got corrupted and just wouldn't load!!! added to that, some of the keys stopped functioning. LCD problem plus corrupted operating system plus malfunctioning keyboard. oh noooooooo. oh nooooooo. oh no.

my laptop is okay now and is no longer 'possessed'. i was able to fix the problems myself with the 'press f8' help of my friend bau and techie advice from our geek friends. hek hek hek... because of everything that transpired, i'm closer to my dell now than i was to it before. don't ask me how i fixed the LCD problem or how i conquered the corrupted operating system, just beware of the curse of the 'possessed' laptop because once it takes a liking on you, it'll really test you again and again. when it strikes, even the experts will be at-a-loss and you're on your own.

my unsolicited advice: be ready with screwdrivers and derring-do. computers need r and r, too. r and r as in re-seating of modular devices and reinstallation.

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i spent time with the volcano and the entity yesterday. from diliman, we found our way to megamall to watch a movie and then later on, we went to shang where we window-shopped. because i've already seen most of the movies being shown in the cinemas, my friends narrowed down the choices to those movies i have not seen yet and we decided on the 40-year old virgin. methinks we made a very good choice because we all enjoyed watching the movie. the volcano and i accidentally spilled half the contents of our big popcorn bag and, therefore, we contributed to the stickiness of the floors in *toot* *toot* cinemas. hahaha! not only that...

while waiting for the screening time, we checked out some shops in mega until we found ourselves in marks and spencer. the rose met an old-time pal there and got involved in a chit-chat that lasted seventy five thousand years. the long wait made the volcano and i restless. to while away the time, we tried all the testers found in the scents section of the shop. i sprayed lavender on my left palm, magnolia on my right palm, orange blossom on the back of my right hand, some scent on the back of my left hand, another scent on my left wrist, lotus on my right wrist, issis on the side of my right hand, some body, linen and room spray on the side of my left hand, and more issis on my arm. the volcano also sprayed some scents on her wrists. we took turns in smelling all of the scents and in no time, we were both dizzy! hahaha.

p.s. two of the evidences of our time together can be found in my friendster photos.