Promises abound at times similar to this in the past. Students in every school or university are simultaneously hopeful and fearful. This is true just about every year and everywhere.

Whatever it is that we wish for, it is highly probable that someone in the past may have had the same. The accumulated hopes and determination of these graduates were not enough to make everyone’s life more bearable. There are still a lot of the same old problems: hunger, corruption, crime, poverty, hopelessness, and injustice, among others. They do overlap and are interrelated. Some would even argue that many of these problems are acquired by choice!

These old problems have always been a challenge that everyone is aware of. The accumulated indifference to them has made them almost nonexistent. It will be good to remind people whom we label “achievers” of these problems. Then again, they are probably not the relevant ingredients to the solution. We have always had them, and these riddles persist.

Did all the promising students all over the world address only trivial questions? I am inclined to think that many of them do, but certainly even a small fraction did address some of these persistent problems. Or are they just made silent by the majority that select or vote individuals to positions of high impact in society on the basis only of self-advancement? Or were they made silent in a more direct manner?

Saturday just before the commencement exercises at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, we find a practically deserted parking lot at the 6th level of the Metroeast branch of Robinson’s. This was around noon too! At other times this would have been at least half-full.

Many family budgets have been busted by the season. Most of them are preparing for the expenses of the coming school year. Only the cries of children wanting to see “Iron man” may force parents to spend a bit more.

Nagging human obstacles/challenges we do promise to address after a break from attempting to pose the problem in a manner that we can trivialize and successfully ignore. Much in the same manner that successful people have in the past.

Here is a bromeliad that flower only at intervals of four to five years. Just about the same amount of time utilized by a college student to obtain a degree. It is more honest though. It doesn’t promise anything save for the drying of the blossom and possibly a copy of itself at the designated interval.

Nothing “better” is anticipated, just a resurrection.

After many years of “Diet Coke” (Since around 1986 . . . Later “Coke Light”) I shifted to flavored water. Initially taking Nature Spring’s Melon/ cantaloupe flavored drink, then Summit Clear’s Peach, before sticking it out with strawberry/ watermelon.

Once in a while there would be C2 (plain green tea). There was a time when I found their C2 (peach) version preferable to other drinks.

Propel (by Gatorade) is also a good substitute. It was the default choice in the absence of Summit Clear’s strawberry/ watermelon.

I did find the new strawberry/watermelon of Summit a week or so ago. They changed the name to “Zero Cal” and the bottle size reduced from 500 ml to 350 ml.

I was happy to find it again though I tasted a difference from the previous version. There seemed to be more “watermelon” than “strawberry” this time around – which is to say that that it seemed to have lost a bit of that sweet citric tang.

Lunch at our canteen one day allowed me to discover a 500 ml bottle of Zero Cal. It is of the tangerine/ lime flavor though. It made me wonder if there is a 500 ml version of the strawberry/watermelon flavor. The search begins.

Found the 500 ml version two weeks after this post. I am happy.

small white flowers

Originally uploaded by Ron27ald

It is almost always of interest to just about everyone to see the flowering of plants. It may be a reminder of how things are – that there is growth and death, and maybe rebirth!

There is something mysterious about the purity of white flowers. A strangeness that we realize once we start choosing other objects based on colors, usually not involving white.

When do we choose to deviate from characteristics we find pleasant in one and not in some other?

It is interesting to note that white flowers are preferred to colored ones in funerals.

The quadratic equation in the form

may be solved numerically for cases where there is a large discrepancy in the magnitudes of the coefficients to evaluate the accuracy of the numerical approach. . .

The following contains much of what may be necessary to properly post mathematical expressions in this site:
http://www.sixthform.info/steve/wordpress/

Guess I will need to do quite a bit of reading on this matter. . .

In a not too long a while we may have the choice of living a virtual life and that of life as we know it (or not) today. There will be quite a number of people who would choose to live a virtual life with all their fantasies programmed into their chosen artificial/computer life. There, as always, will be a relatively small number who would wish to have some fantasies suppressed and even have “accidents” programmed into their virtual life as long as they are able to reset their lives to properly adjust their direction. Demonstrating some learning without suffering relatively permanent damage to either their virtual physical manifestation or their virtual psychological make-up. Is this the ultimate kind of life we had hoped for? Able to reset our lives at times just before our mistakes and correct them?

I am certain that many would choose to live such a life. They probably already do in a sense limited only by our current technology.