Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

- Apple Computer, Inc.

Up there in the title is a line from an Idina Menzel song that kept playing in my head today – “I wake up every morning with a penny to my name.” That’s sad. But times are hard, what can we do? I was at the grocery today and all I can think about while waiting for the cashier to finish swiping my credit card is how much I don’t want to do groceries again. If there had been freebies or a promotional product of any kind, I probably would have taken the time to get my share. I think I need to find that genie now.

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

As she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly

over her opened face, almost opaque there,
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once – in you.

-The Grown Up
Rainer Maria Rilke (Trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Have you ever felt like the weight of the world is on your shoulders? It’s not a nice feeling. One, it’s heavy. Two, it’s sad. Three, it’s useless. Because feeling it won’t make the problems go away. I’ve had my ample share of burden that comes with the idea of being a grown up. It makes me hyperventilate at times and the fact that it scares me when it happens gives me hope. It means I still value my existence despite the seemingly never-ending hurdles.

I do not mean to spread gloom and doom; instead, this is my way of telling myself “Get over it!” Because everyone else in the world is busy minding their own hurdles. Everybody goes through their own hard patches, and this is not a contest of who is more miserable. It’s just life.

Self-motivating much? Well, I’ve learned that when you’re a grown up, you pick yourself up when you fall down. Though it would be nice to have someone to scoop you up and take you to a safe place, such things do not happen always. Most of the time, we are alone. And I don’t fear that anymore. It pains me, but it’s OK. Because I’d rather face my dramas than regress back to being a child. Well, when it all gets too much, I go to that place just for a bit – like by crying inconsolably or by hiding inside an empty room and letting out a guttural scream. The last one works like a charm.

If New York Yankees tickets are what American sports enthusiasts go crazy about, there’s one event on the European side that I am very much looking forward to. Of course, I won’t get to be there in person but just the thought that Wimbledon greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf are going to play at Centre Court on SW19 after all these years is a dream come true for any tennis fan. For any tennis fan who don’t hate these two. But why would anyone hate either of them? Geez. So I’m a total fangirl when it comes to the Agassis (Andre by association; Steffi is my tennis hero along with Federer).

The husband-and-wife team will play a doubles match, in front of 15,000 audience members, on May 17, five weeks before the Wimbledon tournament. The event is dubbed as “A Centre Court Celebration” and the opposing team will be composed of Kim Clijsters and Tim Henman. This exhibition will serve as the try out to check the Centre Court playing conditions under the newly constructed roof. 

From AP:  The program will feature a men’s singles, a women’s singles and a mixed doubles match. The matches will be played in a pro-set format — the first to eight games, with a tiebreaker at 8-8.

Now that I’ve gotten away with all that site transfer stuff, same old same old.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

I’m on my new host, Lunarpages. Weee! Allow me a few moments to babble on this.

I just said in my previous post that I do learn things by “loitering” in the world wide web. I’m definitely no expert in computers and all of those technical programming language stuff. But I do surprise myself at times by the risk I’m taking just to see if I can make things work even if I don’t truly understand them. By risk, I mean shelling out more than a few bucks for something that may or may not turn out right for me. Specifically for this post, blogging on a personal domain and on a paid host. The first time I set up this blog, it took me more than two weeks of WordPress installation and re-installations before I was able to have a fully functional site. What I learned is that it requires a great deal of perseverance to achieve your goal by trying to do something you are practically ignorant about; you also need to have an ardent desire to go with it. Lucky for me, I relished the trial and error process even if it robbed me of hours and hours of sleep.

I also announced here that I may have to go offline when I change hosts because I’ll have to reassign the domain nameservers and I’m not really sure if the process will be instant. Without dwelling too much on it, it turned out the site stayed online after all. Which made me happy. Actually, that’s all I really want to say. I’m happy because I now have unlimited server space and bandwidth (this one I don’t think I’ll need), at least for the next two years. Brace yourself for unlimited gibberish from yours truly. (Well, at least if you’re still with me by this point.)

There was a time when I didn’t know what the triple W means. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn this into a confessional. I just love the Internets! I know, duh, it shows.

I’ve earned quite a bit from it, I’ve learned a few things, it’s still taking away a lot of my time and I have no intention of breaking up with it, because, hey, who else am I gonna break up with. Ooopps, sorry, again not a confessional. What I’m saying is that the Internet is not only a very powerful tool, blah blah, blah. It is also a very fun thing to get into.

Ok, I give up, I’ll confess. It’s also kind of addicting. I’ve actually “squandered” a lot of what I’ve earned by blogging on books, which I also order online. Because you can find anything you want and buy them online. Seriously. Even the best car insurance plan if you need one. So that’s one – online shopping. Then, there’s Twitter. For others, social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace are the “in” things. YouTube still rocks and is still one of the best sources of viral videos out there. Goodreads is my current to-go place when looking for book reviews because I get to find and filter perspectives from thousands of people with similar tastes.

The more I write about this, the more I see that I’m kinda lame. There are tons of better places in the Internet, that’s for sure. So I’m gonna stop this blabber and find something cool. If I find one, I’ll be back to share it here. That’s for sure.

I.ph is back online. Last time I checked, not every blog is back up, but mine, fortunately, got to be among the first restored. Now I can move on to manipulating this domain name to point to the new Web host. 

When I first got the domain [blog-of-z (dot) com], I heed the advice of some people in the forums to register the domain in one company and then get the Web hosting space from another. I’m pretty sure this has an advantage (I don’t really have data to back it up right now) but the only thing I regret is that it seems I won’t be able to use the free 1 year domain registration in my new Web host. Not that it isn’t possible. But the process would require me to provide credit card details, including the critical last three numbers on the back of the credit card. I’m not really up for that. It’s more than just me feeling paranoid at the grocery that my items will get swiped twice under the barcode scanner. I just wouldn’t be comfortable giving away that piece of information. I use PayPal as much as possible for online transactions. Not that you won’t give away credit card details on PayPal but I guess that’s another story.

Anyway, I just hope that I’ll do everything right and not mess up this site. Ok, the first part may be too much to ask but I’m sticking with the last.

I know I said I’m going offline. But my other blog is down since yesterday and I want to have at least one of these thingamajigs visible. For myself. Because I like myself too much.

Just kidding. I like myself just the right amount.

Some time between today and Friday, I’ll be completely transferring this blog to another Web host. That means a downtime of possibly 48 to 72 hours. I’ve been tinkering with the files and databases and have transferred most of them. It looks OK for now (although I’m not yet sure if I’ll have everything that’s showing here: comments, widgets, links, etc.) but I’m a little worried that transferring the domain will mess everything up. We’ll see. Ta-ta for now.

In the meantime, you can find me here.