Johngie Dilag Capistrano and Reazil Lanzarote Espinosa took their most solemn vow of loving each other ’til death do they part this May 17, 2010 at the San Antonio Abad Santos Church, General Lacson Extension, Bacolod City. In which the reception follows at the Garden Pavillion A, B and C of the Planta Centro Bacolod Hotel.

I love the way the miniseries was concocted as though it was an idea for a game. The idea of the story is the Objects from Room 10 obtained somewhat unusual powers when the Room was exposed from the Event that happened at 1:20:44 p.m. on May 4, 1961. From that time on, Room 10 and everything in it vanished as though it never existed. But later during the years, some people began acquiring some Objects that came from the Room. These Objects have one common property: it’s indestructible.  Some Objects lay dormant having no active powers, some are considered as weapons having destructible powers, like when wearing the Eye, it that can vaporise anything that it is stared at. New powers and properties can be obtained when Objects are grouped and used.

I noticed the acquired powers are somewhat randomized during the Event. Like the Coin that when swallowed can materialise a person dead or living as a real living person. Then the blank Polariod film can reveal the Room when directed at the vacant beside Room 9 of the Sunshine Motel outside of Gallup, New Mexico.

Logically “materialising” a person dead or living is like recalling the person when they were with us probably by watching a photograph or a video recording. Revealing the Room using the Polaroid is like beaming a flashlight on a dark room. And vaporising other objects is like burning it to ashes.

So I came up with an idea of a game for several players. It could be a card game, board game or a computer game I’ll call The Lost Cabin. There could be several versions of The Lost Cabin:

• A small cabin of an Oceanliner. Probably a small cabin on the Titanic.
• A ship’s cabin of the USS Elridge in 1942 during the Philadelphia Experiment
• A non-existent passenger cabin of a passenger train.
• A small mountain cabin in a thick forest.

The setup is simple enough:

• set the timeline as between 1900′s to 1930′s
• list all the objects that you can find in the cabin during that era
• describe each object for each general properties
• create a list unusual powers that you can come up.

For example, a few common objects that we can find in the 3 versions of cabins could be:

• a drinking glass – holds liquid
• a mirror – shows reflections
• a window curtain – hinders the view or darkens the room

A list of powers or abilities could be:

• telepathy
• levitation
• teleport
• hypnosis
• replication

Now, write each object on its own strip of paper, the properties on a separate piece of paper, and finally the powers or abilities on yet another piece of paper. Roll the small pieces of papers and put them on three containers: one for objects, one for properties, and one for abilties.

First draw a piece of rolled paper for the objects. For example we drew Mirror.

Then pick a piece of rolled paper from the properties. For example we got Holds Liquid.

Then finally draw a piece of rolled paper from the abilities. For example we got Replication.

With these three data, we could come up with an idea that if we hold the Mirror facing a waterfalls for example, the water stops flowing and looks like a vertically standing body of water. If we hold the Mirror towards the holder, the holder is replicated and a twin or perhaps several copies of the holder are materialised.

Now that we have a list of Objects, we create a card that has the Objects name, properties, and abilities. And probably some notes or instructions.

I am yet coming up on how the game is actually to be played but the objective of the game is for a person having most or all the Object wins the game.

Happy gaming!

Just this evening our visitor is again hanging upside down the terrace. It’s a small bat about 3 to 4 inches, nothing special. Just an ordinary bat. Obvously fond of small fruits that we called aratelis (Muntingia Calabura). The bat hangs on the purlins supporting the roof, about 5 meters from the terrace floor.

Searching the net, a lot of superstitions regarding bats in the house resulted:

• Having a bat in the house does not automatically mean a sign of death in the family but a bat flying 3 times around the house or over your head presages death.
• If, in trying to drive a bat out of the room, the creature should fly against a light or candle and put it out, it is a very bad omen.
• It is considered bad luck to kill one.
• If one flies past you then watch out for someone is trying to deceive you.
• If a bat flies into the kitchen and at once hangs on to the ceiling, it is lucky; but if it circles around twice before alighting, it is bad.

A bit scary I know, but some good omens are:

• A bat means long life and happiness, a good omen (China and Poland).
• If a bat comes out early and flies about in a playful manner – it is believed that good weather will come in the future.
• Bat holds the power of adaptability. When bat appears in your life its message may be to examine your surroundings to discern what bounty is being offered to you, and then alter your patterns so you can receive it.

Bad or good omens, I know for sure that being bitten by a bat does not turn one into a vampire but lands one in a hospital, presumably because of rabies. Although only a few bats are rabid, it’s better to be medically safe than sorry.

So May 10, I went early to the voting precincts as I usually do during election day. To my dismay, the queue was a long one. I estimated about a hundred people were in line on my voting precinct room. I estimated if one person takes at least two minutes, signing, selecting their candidates, reviewing, casting their votes, confirming to having voted. Well, for a hundred people ahead of me means two-hundred minutes which is about almost two hours of getting in line and waiting for my turn. So I decided to come back in the late afternoon. After all, the closing of precinct was announced to be until 7PM.

4PM I came back to vote, and indeed I was number 14 waiting in line. The poll watchers and election inspectors gave priorities to senior citizens. Since I’m not senior citizen, I waited in line. After about 10 minutes, I was selecting my candidates. Took me about a minute to mark my selections as I already have a list of whom I will be voting. Casting the votes was easy enough. Just slide the long thick paper that looks like the continuous computer paper that has guide holes on its sides as though I was inserting it on a dot impact printer. The machine took the paper, validated and displayed “Congratulations, you have successfully voted” or something to that effect.

I admit it was easy, fast and efficient. I know the long queue will be solved in the next elections as some procedural bugs needs to be ironed out. The counting of results is also super fast. Previous elections took a few weeks to finally announce who the winners are. With the new automated voting, after a couple of days about 80% of the total votes were officially counted and you will know who are likely to be the winners.

Though as usual on some isolated areas in the Philippines especially what we call the hot zones, election violence still prevail. I hope the new government officials will finally have solution to these unwarranted violence.

This blog is not new, just the design. The domain itself was registered way back October 2005. It was originally made using plain HTML, then upgraded several times to Joomla 1.0.13, WordPress, Joomla 1.5.x, B2Evolution, and now again to WordPress.

There were a few articles way back then but I figured to start fresh once again.