Pretend

I was just watching the opening segment of the The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and I couldn’t help but let out a rather loud chuckle when he had quipped about the subject of “pretending to be a student”. He had opened the joke by plaintively stating how this famous guy (the rockstar Tommy Lee I think) had complained about how tough or disagreeable it was for him to be pretending to study for eight months—-referring perhaps to the television reality show “Tommy Lee Goes To School” that he starred in.

And then Mr. Leno said that Tommy Lee was just complaining too much and being a sissy for he (Leno) himself did not pretend to attend school for only eight months, BUT for four disagreeable years. And then I laugh so hard inside me and bented out that loud chortle.

Who really says school is fun? If there is anyone out there who think it is, please raise your right hand.

I am not saying that attending 5 to 8 classes everyday (as it is in college) is such a disagreeable activity. I know some of us here are educators and wouldn’t take it quite so well if somebody else says they hate it to be within your area of practice or occupation. For the record, I didn’t hate attending college. But at the same time——just like most of the population—-I was not exactly very fond of it either. Maybe just somewhere in between; liking to be at school half the time and being lazy at some other time. Maybe this was the reason why I haven’t got “A” grades in my college years—-unlike in my elementary and highschool years.

Education is really mostly of motivation. What drives the student to thrive harder in school? What’s their incentives other than still a mostly mythical success in the future?

I have seen some of them excelling almost all the time and I thought I should have reasonably equal intelligence quotient with most of them, maybe even higher at that, but somehow I was just not so industrious to be a wunderkind in the classroom.

There were many times back then that I had daydreamed about the day when finally I would be free from classrooms and all those mushy blackboards that was in front of me almost on a daily basis. At that time, it was nearly a utopic idea for I was still planning to take up law after my accounting degree.

I had wished then that I should be like a bird (with wings of course) and fly away from all the lazy afternoons that I got myself stuck in classrooms that could be so eerily silent—-especially when the respective teacher was a known terror—-when all I wanna do then was take a nap. But one could not just say to oneself “I shall take a nap” when one is in a classroom with a bespectacled teacher holding a long wooden rod, ready to whack one’s butt if one make the slightest mistake. I know that there aren’t no more whacking in college; but I just felt that some of my college teachers were so much inclined to harm us physically—-especially when almost everyone had blank stares, not being able to fully absorb the lessons she or he had blabber-mouthed all afternoon.

So there I was, trying to hold off sleep in some lazy afternoons while attending accounting classes full of “income statements” and “journal entries”. There were times that I just could not listen to the lessons being given for my mind was so windy and fragile, like I wanted to be somewhere else rather than inside the four corners of an electricfannized room. I believe that I had passed all my accounting subjects by mostly self-studying at home, not really listening to the lectures in classes I have attended but merely cramping up in my solitary room when the night comes and read the lessons taken for the day all by myself or read future lesssons in advance. I like it that way. I was more comfortable with that self-imposed learning system and luckily, I passed all my accounting subjects—-the hardest subjects for me—-and did not repeat any of them. That was some feat I realized by now.

So mostly when the lazy bug had hit me then and I found myself stuck inside a classroom and the class is often more than an hour—-like one and a half hour or sometimes for straight three hours—-I just sit at the back of the room oh so quietly and open up a thick textbook (or maybe some other book) and pretend to read and then giving stares at the teacher blabbering in front once in a while, and pretend to listen.

You know if anyone thinks that studying hard is so difficult, then he or she hasn’t tried “pretending to study hard”. It was just so bad and thorny, like being held by a Gestapo officer and tied to a wooden chair.

Now I ain’t downgrading here the value of education or boost up the crazy comfort of laziness. Education is so important for all of us and I do realize now that If I weren’t so lazy then, I would have had a better occupation by now, and have more money in my pocket. So kids, if ever any of you happen to read this, remember to study hard and don’t imitate Major Tom on this aspect. And also, always remember that smoking is always dangerous to your health.

Gaining that accounting degree in the end wasn’t so easy for me. It was tough and rigorous especially when at times I got too bored with numbers and statistics, having nightmares. I think numbers was just not for me. But there was I, by some circumstances, studying how to count other people’s money.

And it was not easy counting at all. You could count bills from one to a million and that’s easy. But in accountancy, we got to learn to count the monies by using hordes of yellow-colored and very wide worksheets and must know how to balance some balance sheets (they ain’t balanced all the time especially if one didn’t study too hard) and got to reconcile bank statements almost often that at one time, when I got so freaking out tired of all the numbers, I had wanted to ask my accounting teacher why the bank statements won’t better decide to patch up their differences and stop fighting with each other, and be reconciled? Why the hell did we have to reconcile these bank statements by ourselves? But apparently that was a very brainless question, so I didn’t ask anymore.

Oh, I had meant this initially to be fully a humorous post. Now I think it had gotten a little too serious and stern.

But honesty is a virtue. It was hard for me to study. But it was even more difficult to pretend to study. That I have learned before and Mr. Jay Leno could joke about this for all I care.

This post by the way reminds me of this REM song“World Leader Pretend” which is to me the most politically sarcastic song and comically brings and raise up the tragical state of our present global politcs……This is my world… Michael Stipe sings, “…And I am world leader pretend..I sit at my table,
And wage war on myself. It seems like it’s all for nothing…. Listen to it, maybe you’ll like it. Like I did and made it one of my all-time fave rock song. See complete lyrics here.

Merry Xmas to One And All!

Merry Christmas to one and all, and Happy New Year too. If your year were good this year, there’d be no reason why it won’t be so much better next year. It would be, I am sure.

This greeting goes to all my blogger friends and to all my blog readers out there. Holiday greetings to one and all.

This would also serve as some sort of apology as to why I have not been blogging as frequent as I should be. I’ve been so busy with my new vocation as a University lecturer. While I thought at first—-since I would be just a new entry into the teaching staff—-that I wouldn’t be immersed into more demanding tasks and work schedule, I was a bit mistaken. Teaching is not like many other occupation where the initial phases would be more on orientation processes, taking on light tasks and schedules, saying hi’s and hello’s to everyone in the office. In many ways, the initial phases of teaching is one of the most critical point in the overall approach to the job, sizing up the classes in terms of number and in terms of the amount of preparation needed, where too much becomes ultimately unviable (as learning would not be fulfilled to the hilt) and too little of it would mean lackluster instruction. It’s like walking on a tightrope I felt sometimes there.

It was of note how “academic freedom” meant that a teacher virtually has total control of what he or she has to feed the students, in relation to the title and scope of the subject course, and by this, I had to scramble for materials, doing intensive and extensive research in such a short window of time and opportunity. It was of much luck that despite I am just a newbie in this profession; I was able to collate and compile much of the needed materials and information that I needed to fulfill my lecturing tasks.

It was I think of good opportune that my short but very memorable stint as guest lecturer in the past, particularly in the Alternative Class program of my other alma mater, Ateneo de Zamboanga, had somehow helped me in giving important prior perspective on the business of teaching, providing me insights and helpful experience for such. That at times, I felt like I have just slid from one phase to another, that I am in my own water and have always been there, and have just gone for awhile and then returned in the end.

And in the short period that I have been in this job, I am been exalted that it becomes somehow a wonderful experience for me to become part of a student’s education and growth, and ultimately in his or her future success. It is a wonderful experience altogether. I have the most gratitude to my colleagues in the workplace for being so welcoming to my presence and have provided me great support in the time that I am just learning the main tasks of teaching like an infant, still walking unsteadily, still striving and struggling somehow. I thank our dean Prof. Eddie Ladja for this, King Sali, Sir Perry, Sir Saymaran, Sir Kams, Sir Al, Dams, Choy, Ka Dayyang, Ustadz Bulkhari and Ustadz Tanjilul for treating me with all kindness and friendship that there could be had.

Merry Christmas again to one and all. I’d be back to regular blogging once this “adjustment” period is done and over with. More power to you all.

Solzhenitsyn: Tribute at 89

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn went to his final sleep in accordance with his own desires, to die in summer and to die at home. Perhaps, as great as a writer that he is, it is but fitting that in his very final moments, he had gotten what he wanted—- what he desired.

But Solzhenitsyn did not had such luck all his life, being a sufferer of labor camps during the Stalin years in Russia, where to such torment that he had experienced, he had seized the inspiration for most of his written works, mostly so poignant and so honest, detailing without any hint of hesitance most of the time, the boundaries of human agony that slave laborers had suffered in Russian labor camps, and for that, he had garnered his one moment of glory, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972 for his novel “The Cancer Ward”.

Yet, the great modern Russian writer owes much of his fame to the very comprehensive and absolutely masterful “The Gulag Archipelago”, a whole narrative written in three series from 1973 to 1978, and I know this for sure for I had my hands on the said book when I was a young college student more than a decade ago. I was so very awed and overwhelmed by the expanse and candor of Gulag; the efficiency of the Solzhenitsyn’s skill and method had been so profound that while I was reading it (although I haven’t got to finish it), I had felt as if I myself was thrown into those Russian labor camps that he had tried to specify, feeling the coldness of malice that lies in them, the rust of terror that had terrified the prisoners so malevolently, with fear and sorrow penetrating towards the bone, as slime and filth permeates all over like wafting demons in the air, and so pervasive the decaying smell that had surrounded the unfortunate souls caught in that quagmire. Solzhenitsyn was one such writer—- a very rare one—- to be able to let the reader enter the dimension or sphere of reality that the writer is presenting and propositioning, and eventually to be caught without any qualm into the truth that lies behind them, like being caught in an ever encroaching web of poignancy.

Definitely, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn is one of my most favorite writers of all time, along with other great Russian writers like Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alexander Tolstoy.

Obama's Presidency in History

Already, a record of some sort had been made with the first “Black White House” ever in history to which President-elect Barack Hussein Obama could just become the first ever political personality of African descent to rule a most powerful nation throughout the history of the world. He’s the first at that.

Or I might be a bit mistaken.

Prominent black rulers have been noted in the past like for example the Black Pharaohs of Egypt who had conquered the Nile after venturing from deep Africa in 728 B.C… Also referred to as the Nubian Kings by many historians, coming from a location that is now present-day Sudan, these African conquerors had made great impact in Dynastic Egypt, reuniting the often tattered kingdoms that had been devastated by petty territorial warlords aiming to control power over the fertile Nile Valley.

Another black personality was Haile Selassie I, the Ethiopian emperor who had gained cultic adulation from not only among black people in Africa but throughout the world, he who had been believed to be a descendant of King Solomon and even referred as a god-incarnate. Emperor Selassie was a defining figure in the entire African history. His followers have been called as Rastafarians.

And And then there was Shaka Zulu, Africa’s most-well known warrior and ruler of the great Zulu tribe in southern Africa. He was well-known for innovating very clever war tactics that even with just a miniscule army of tribal fighters, he was able to conquer and reunite the entire southern hemisphere of Africa, sometime in the early 1800’s.

Or perhaps, we could include Idi Amin, the Ugandan military dictator, often feared and dreaded by his own people, among the lists of well-known African rulers. But he was such a notorious guy that he shouldn’t be noted at all in any list.

Under Pressure

Yesterday was the last day of classes and that means the beginning of the Christmas vacation that we teachers and students get every year. And that also means that I would be finally getting some break from the hectic schedule I have had in the past weeks and that’s a very nice and refreshing idea.

Not that I am complaining. I love my work. I reckon educators are among the noblest in occupation. And besides, I had always prided myself for almost always wanting to have work at hand and have my hands full and do abhor to be doing nothing and getting paid for doing nothing, in contrast to NBA stars, to be doing what they do best and still be getting paid very handsomely for it. We all desire to be like that, don’t we all?

But just to sit around and getting paid for being that is just not my style. Although I have a feeling that it is just the style of some if not many people in our midst.

My work motto was “I work best under pressure”. Although I must admit that it’s not an original motto of mine. When I was an editor in chief of a college publication back in my college days, I once had found myself interviewing this lanky and fair bespectacled lad who had applied for a position in the school publication. I asked him that since he was an accounting major as I am, and that I know how hard it is to be one, could he handle more work as a news reporter? He had said so gallantly and so confidently, like an unbending soldier, that indeed he would be able to handle that and that if he could describe himself, he had said that “he works best under pressure”.

I was awed of course by his answer and plus the way he spoke it in flowing English, I was ultimately impressed. So in short he was a shoo-in.

I kept thinking about that motto, or principle, or dogma or whatever that kind of thing is termed as. I even had some feeling of envy on why I didn’t thought about that for myself as it came to me as an original idea. I thought a little that he was a humbug (His name by the way is Mr. Jason Teng and he is a CPA now). What if I put him in a pressure cooker, could he work the finest? Now that’s just kidding on my part.

But I hope he won’t mind if I’d be using it to describe my work attitude. In fact I had already used it once or twice before just to impress somebody.

But hey, with all the pressure from work I had most recently, I’d be careful in declaring that motto. So I guess I have to say, “I work best even without pressure”. Now that sounds better.

THE FOUNDING OF THE MAJAPAHIT EMPIRE

This is a short play about the very dramatic and often tumultuous events that led to the founding of the Majapahit Empire.

I have written this for the celebration of the the very first Asian Studies Week of our college slated next week. It is to be demonstrated in Bahasa Melayu, with translation by the narrator.

The Mongols of the Great Kublai Khan became part of this historic event, bringing more drama and color to the play.

(From Wikipedia)
Majapahit was an archipelagic empire based on the island of Java from 1293 to around 1500. Majapahit reached its peak of glory during the era of Hayam Wuruk, whose reign from 1350 to 1389 marked by influence, including trade empires, which extended through Maritime Southeast Asia.

After defeating Srivijaya in Sumatra in 1290, Singhasari became the most powerful kingdom in the area. Kublai Khan, the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and the Emperor of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, challenged Singhasari by sending emissaries demanding tribute. Kertanegara, the last ruler of Singhasari, refused to pay the tribute. In 1293, Kublai Khan sent a massive expedition of 1,000 ships to Java.

By that time, Jayakatwang, the Adipati (Duke) of Kediri, a vassal state of Singhasari, had usurped and killed Kertanagara. After being pardoned by Jayakatwang with the aid of Madura’s regent, Arya Wiraraja; Raden Wijaya, Kertanegara’s son-in-law, was given the land of Tarik timberland. He then opened that vast timberland and built a new village there. The village was named Majapahit, which was taken from a fruit name that had bitter taste in that timberland (maja is the fruit name and pahit means bitter). When Mongolian Yuan army sent by Kublai Khan arrived, Wijaya allied himself with the army to fight against Jayakatwang. Once Jayakatwang was destroyed, Raden Wijaya forced his allies to withdraw from Java by launching a surprise attack.[10] Yuan’s army had to withdraw in confusion as they were in hostile territory. It was also their last chance to catch the monsoon winds home; otherwise, they would have had to wait for another six months on a hostile island.

In AD 1293, Raden Wijaya founded a stronghold with the capital Majapahit. The exact date used as the birth of the Majapahit kingdom is the day of his coronation, the 15th of Kartika month in the year 1215 using the Javanese çaka calendar, which equates to November 10, 1293. During his coronation he was given formal name Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.

                                                              <strong>  ACT ONE </strong>

(A troop of Mongolian warriors just arrived in Sisanghari, seeking tribute in favor of Kublai Khan. About ten men is about to approach the group of King Kertanagara to demand tribute.)

OGEDEI: I am Ogedei, loyal warrior of the Great Kublai Khan, we come here to your kingdom to demand tributes for our great leader.

KERTANAGARA: I am aware now of your purpose for coming here, but I as the leader of the Sisanghari Kingdom, will not submit to your proposals and we shall not pay tribute to you!

RADEN WIJAYA: Yes, you hear the king, my father in law, we shall not become your vassals!

OGEDEI: We have stated our demands and warnings, the Great Kublai Khan will surely be angry and he will send 1,000 ships to punish you. I shall return.

(The Mongolian troops went away disappointed)

                                                            <strong>     ACT TWO </strong>

(Meanwhile, Jakatwang was not in agreement with Kertanagara and planned to overthrow him.)

JAKATWANG: I am Jakatwang. I have my own men, For we are not satisfied with your rule, I have come to fight you!

KERTANAGARA: In that case, be prepared to take arms and fight me!

RADEN WIJAYA: You certainly have evil motives.

JAKATWANG: We will fight to the end!

(Jakatwang and his men attacked and killed Kertanagara while Raden Wijaya was able to escape. Raden Wijaya fled to a village named Majapahit, after a bitter fruit found there.)

                                                           <strong> ACT THREE</strong>

(Raden Wijaya arrived at Majapahit and founded the Kingdom of Majapahit there.)

RADEN WIJAYA: What unusual fruit is this?

ARYA WIRAJAY: It is called Majapahit your honor.

RADEN WIJAYA: I shall call my new kingdom, Majapahit! And I shall avenge the death of Kertanagara!

(Raden stood up and shouted this declaration.)

The group of Mongolian warriors arrived at the stage.

OGEDEI: We have come back with 1000 ships and ten thousand men. We have come back to subdue the Kingdom of Sisanghari!

RADEN WIJAYA: Kertanagara is dead. But I will help you fight Jakatwang in Sisanghari for he has killed my beloved father-in-law and he is now my enemy.

OGEDEI: If that’s the case, we shall vanquish him together and you shall lead us to him.

                                                                      <strong>   ACT FOUR</strong>

Act Four consists of fighting merely as the Mongolian warriors and Raden Wijaya warriors have combined to attack Jakatwang. Jakatwang was killed in the fight as the Mongols and Raden Wijaya came out victorious.

OGEDEI: Now we have subdued and defeated Jakatwang, the Kingdom of Sisanghari is now our vassal kingdom and shall pay tribute to our great leader Kublai Khan.

RADEN WIJAYA: No, you are mistaken. I have planned to become ruler of all Majapahit and Sisanghari and in fact I have planned this ambush of your warriors.

(Raden Wijaya and his warriors then attacked the Mongols and many Mongols were killed and the rest fled away.)

RADEN WIJAYA: I am now the great ruler of Sisanghari and Majapahit kingdom, and I shall then establish the great Majapahit Empire to rule over many lands and over many kingdoms!

                                                  <strong>      END OF PLAY!</strong>

Profits In Summer

(This is a repost from March 2007)

It’s summertime finally as the kids stay home away from school and I get to have some extra time for myself; like watching wide-winged birds navigate the sky—which at times can be muddled these recent days—-while sipping coffee near our front porch. I don’t know if it’s climate change that should be blamed for this queer weather behavior but even others I have spoken to had wondered why despite the onset of what is supposed to be a season of warm sunny days and windy afternoons, the rain and cloudy skies have found its way into our part of town.

Yet to think, our area hasn’t had experienced any sizable rainfall for a number of months already and it is so ironic that it would be at this particular time that they’d have to come. Maybe we’ll need the rain now more than the expected summer days since the farmlands in our vicinity need them for ideal food productivity; otherwise prices of vegetables and fruits in the market would go haywire soon. Perhaps now, we need to do away for the meantime the innate joys that can be had when flying kites on wide grassy area or playing ball under a rainless sky—-on supposedly warm sunny days.

My mom came visiting the other day and had brought a basketful of goodies to the kids. In the afternoon, I asked my eldest son Sef-Sef what had happened to the candies their grandmother had brought them since I didn’t noticed any traces of them while warning them about their teeth and how it will rot for eating too much sugary food. He told me that he had put it in a jar and tried to sell them to the kids outside. Well, I said that was a good idea and asked him eventually about how much he had profited so far. He didn’t answer that and with a sly smile on his face, he just went by with what he was doing outside together with his brothers and sister, along with a couple of kids from the other apartment unit in our compound.

The following day, Sef-Sef asked me to accompany him to buy the goodies they need to sell. I asked if he had the money, the ones he had gained selling the candies his Lola Dol had brought them. He said that he had it in his hands but he wanted me to buy the new inventory using my own money. Now I said, that’s a very cunning way to enter the business of selling; you keep all the money while your Papa buys the goods. I said I’ll buy the stocks this time but the next time, he had to show some money from the sales he had made or otherwise it’s just a thoughtless activity. I demanded that he make a profit this time around. He promised but the sly smile is still stuck in his face.

The next day, Sef-Sef wanted to buy more goods since he told me that the kids playing outside have already consumed most of the stocks I’ve bought the night before. I asked him about the revenues he had made so far and he showed me that, holding a jar full of coins and some orange-colored bills. I got to have them I said so that we can buy new stocks for his makeshift store but he fretted demanding once again that I use my own money once again. I told him that in business, one got to use his own capital and recycle them and that his idea of a business enterprise is not sound at all and it is not the way it is in real stores. But he really had wanted to keep all his earnings. I said to him that his Mom will buy the new stocks this time and she will have to explain how this thing really works. He just smiled and walked away.

My seven year-old eldest son knows how to sell alright but there’s just one thing he needs to learn and that’s accountability and financial forthrightness; like not spending his revenues in a way that he had bought more than what he had sold for the day and that he must be ultimately be aware of establishing trends for profits as against the cost of goods sold. It is clear that for now he—together with his siblings and friends—-are just doing it for amusement but I see in him a natural entrepreneurial skill that could be inherent in most successful enterprisers. He would sit there near our front gate for just a couple of hours and I can see how the goods are consumed so easily. The last stock I bought him was worth approximately 85 pesos all in all and he told me that he already had about 115 pesos in hand while there are still some candies left on his tray. I calculated in my mind that his business is earning at more-or-less twenty percent (20%) profit margin, which is not already bad at all.

In my college days, I’ve learned from my accounting subjects that the usual profit margin goes around 25% and anything less than that could mean an unsound business practice since a lot of supplemental expenses goes with the basic cost of goods, like fares going to the grocery store to buy the stocks and in real business, there would also entail other cost like those for plastic packaging and in big businesses, that would mean overhead expenses for salaries of storekeepers, electricity, fuel for delivery, water, rent of stalls or business area, and so on and so forth.

In my last business endeavor, that is buying dried fish products from farther down south and selling them to volume buyers here in the city and as well as in cities up north, the profit margin did go as high as 100% where we can get the much sought after product at 45 pesos per kilo and if we were lucky, at 40 pesos at that and then we can sell them at 90 pesos per kilo in this city and possibly about 115 pesos if we sell it on credit to individual buyers. A friend in Davao had informed me that it could even get to 120 pesos in there in their area only if we can find a way to ship him the goods.

At that profit margin, we have overhead expenses like 5 pesos for each kilo transported by ship and about 3 pesos more for each kilo for laborers and carters who would transfer them from ship to dock and towards a waiting transportation. The dried fish business was so viable in hindsight but it was so short-lived since in business, I have learned that it was not merely as convenient as buying them from one station and selling them to another. It was more intricate than that and even problematic than what could initially be expected. Apparently, we were in competition with big players from capitalists from cities like Pagadian up north and even from Davao and they can afford to release huge advances to fishermen who processes the dried fish products, that what those fishermen produces becomes exclusively set aside for those buyers up north and new players like us couldn’t gain the much needed volume in order to profit handsomely per trip made and even if we have to cajole the fishermen there to sell us their products, they would decline the offer, even at a much higher price than the usual. At that time, we just couldn’t match what those big players were advancing the fishermen there, which did go as high as 200,000 pesos each.

My uncle had advised me that in order to make good in the dried fish business, I might need to stay about a month in the islands at a time but I found that to be extremely not ideal considering the responsibilities I have here in the city and besides, I just couldn’t see myself living without regular electricity and water for that stretch of time.

But the dried fish business was to me a very viable enterprise if only one has enough patience and persistence. Now that I was able to size it up and learn about its intricacies and idiosyncrasies, I might make another attempt at it and make a reasonable fortune and then consider myself not to be always unlucky in every endeavor I find myself in.

But for now, I try to see how my son Sef-Sef do with his candy store business and see if it becomes viable in the long run.

Quick Press for Blogsome

It’s one of those nights that my mind is just about somewhere and I need some focus. In order to do this, I spent the night doing something that I like to do best when I am feeling this way—- Porting Wordpress themes into the Blogsome module.

Tonight, I have decided to port Quick Press Wordpress Theme. I have been eyeing it for sometime now and had almost decided to use it for my own site, if not only for the reason that I felt that it’s main style direction is similar to one of those that I have already use before. But I like it a lot. It has all the simplicity that I always crave for and the neatness on its façade, making reading all the more beneficial to the blog reader.

I liked the way its fonts protrude from the ultra-white background; so serene and so clear to the eyes, like leafing thru a favorite magazine I must say. The boxed image on the right upper portion catches the eye like a fresh sunshine on a happy morning. And you bet it could be also useful for a beneficial Google Adsense spot, as the blogger wish or not wish to. Bottles in crisp colors—- the particular picture is just wondrous, like an orange burst. Of course, you could opt to change that if you desire to.

The header is sprayed with a generous hue of blue, just the kind of depth and tint that I looked for in the color blue. Perhaps, it’s not a coincidence that I have a great interest in Quick Press for blue is my most favorite color. Perhaps, now you’d understand why most of the designs I used on my site has a heavy sprinkling of blue in it, blue headers, blue pictures or blue fonts.

Blue as a color they say, is the masculine color. To be male and chap, one must wear something blue and love the color. Guys shouldn’t say “pink” or “puschia” when asked what color does he prefer the most or else he’d be seen with a doubting eye. He should say “blue”.

That’s how it all began, why “blue” had become the color of choice for me. It started from a question, you know, those fancy autographs that were so in trend so many years ago. When I was a very young adolescent in elementary school, a very beautiful schoolmate one day approached me and requested me to have an entry in her autograph book. I was a relatively shy lad at that time that I never knew what to say as I blushed so clearly upon being approached by a very beautiful schoolmate. She was from the other section in the sixth grade but I had always pondered how beautiful she was every time I caught her passing. I often thought then that her looks was so neat and lively that she didn’t belong in a public school like where I was then.

There was a favorite fruit question in that fancy-looking autograph book and I answered thereat “Banana”. I was so conscious and uncomfortable at that moment for she might think of me as an ape. Then there was the favorite “actors/actresses” question and to be cool and swell about it, I answered “Robe Lowe and Phoboe Cates”, and that’s to be hollywoodish on that level. My favorite gemstone was “Ruby” even though I haven’t had any. That I remember too well. I think I remember those very particular moment so well now for the main reason that I was so feeling very conscious and extremely blushing to be near a very beautiful schoolmate and that kind of circumstance didn’t happen so often in the past. And what about love? Huhmmmn, I try to remember now…I think I answered that “Love is blind”, or what else can I say at that time.

And so there came the part where I had to answer the “favorite color” query and frankly speaking, I never had any at that time. So I thought for some seconds afterwhich I decided just to write “blue”; just to get on with it. And from that day on, I promised myself to love the color “blue”, to have blue shirts and blue sandals, and blue shoes, and blue shorts, blue hats, blue ribbons, blue notebooks and now that I am fully grown up, blue website designs. Or else, I’d be a liar.

Download the QUICK PRESS for BLOGSOME Zip.

See a quick DEMO here.

For the Wordpress whole pack, download here.