This is a really cool service from Load.com.ph! Imagine, loading your cellphone via the Internet! It's so easy to use and you get to save money than the traditional loading methods like going to a store and buying cell cards. With everything going online, it's not surprising the cellphone loading will follow suit. And check out the Load.com.ph video that was aired over Studio 23. COOL!
Just the other day, I had nothing much to do at home so I decided to do a little clean-up in my room. I have always been organized but sometimes I can be a bit messy. As I was rummaging through old stuff, I came across an old photo album and, voila, it contains photos from high school!
Even before I flipped it open, I was already laughing my socks off. I knew these photographs. I remember them clearly like it was taken yesterday. High school is more than 10 years ago. Fourteen to be exact. Wow...seems like ages.
The photos were taken during my senior year. Most of them were from the prom and the rest were from the retreat in El Retiro and the days leading to graduation. I looked so goofy back then. Hell, we all looked goofy! Panget, in local parlance. Har har har!
We were a tight bunch, my classmates and I, and I remember having really no group that I strictly associate myself with. I was kinda into everyone. He he he. I was friends with this crack-up gang namely Michael, Beatriz and Mary-Ann. I was also comfortable with the "sosy girls" aka Eunique, Margie, Kathy, Ellen and Tintin. But I had a blast too with other friends like Ivy, Marian, Tina (de Mesa), Henry, Renato, Vivien, Eddie, Lowell, Andre, Flor, et al. And of course, I was also frequently seen with the cool gang: Raymond, Roselle, Gil and Mel.
I was an introvert child during grade school and I only started forming meaningful friendships when I entered high school. Maybe that's why those four years in my life are special to me. And I'm still quite shy as an adult. I don't strike up conversation with strangers. I really don't go out much. I can count in a single hand the few friends I have. That may be a bit strange considering I have worked in people-centric industries like television, advertising agency and print media. But then I'm a writer so I guess that explains a lot. Writers act a tad silly.
Getting back to the task at hand, I scurried to my desk and started scanning the more than 40 photos while I finish a few stories I had in the backburner. I'm really good in multi-tasking and so in an hour's time, I finished three stories and uploaded the high school photos into my Friendster profile.
Hey, guys...this is a blast from the past so I hope you enjoy as much as I did. Click on this http://profiles.friendster.com/kikohierba and look for the photos in my albums section.
Manila, RP -- There’s a particularly contagious strain of the dreaded lupus that has allegedly been spreading across the metropolis. Authorities have pinpointed ground zero: ABS-CBN 2, right from the bowels of its inner sanctum of creativity. Sources say that millions of people will contract this mysterious condition when it rears its ghastly head starting 28th of January.
Earlier reports last year confirmed the identities of two host carriers: Piolo Pascual and Angel Locsin, residents of the compound that is now being ravaged by the plague. Pascual, a long-time party member of ABS-CBN began exhibiting symptoms of voracious appetite, nocturnal wandering and heightened senses shortly after a brief encounter with Locsin, rumored to be the mistress of darkness. The two were reported to be inseparable, appearing in attention-grabbing public displays.
Secret formula stolen
Locsin rose to notoriety during her stay at GMA-7, craftily planning her every move and acquiring massive mass support to launch a pre-emptive strike on an unknowing populace. It was also alleged that she was seen going to a secret rendezvous with a still unknown person affiliated with the enemy camp, carrying vials of the secret lupus formula that has been in development in both camps. During the now historic breakaway, she was heavily persecuted by officials and close associates.
For years, authorities were desperate to come up with a solution to the burgeoning indifference and apathy of the people. ABS-CBN and GMA were quick to pick up the slack and went into crazed rituals that reached fever pitch upon the exposure of an unrelated scandal concerning mind control experiments bringing into the fore issues of party loyalty.
ABS-CBN said in a closed door meeting that Locsin brought with her the missing link that would complete the formula. A high-ranking officer of the party said a huge amount of manpower and material resources were spent to ensure her smooth escape. Locsin contracted the condition when she willingly injected herself with the formula when efforts to smuggle a vial without being caught were deemed impossible.
Initial infection event
To resolve the problem, ABS-CBN assembled an elite team of scientists headed by Ricky Lee. Hailed as the Miracle Maker, Lee helped create La Aunor--a groundbreaking project on supernatural-induced mass hysteria during a bygone era. Shortly though after the preliminary tests on Locsin, complications arose after a chance encounter with Pascual who consequently tested positive on lupus.
Pascual, a charismatic man long considered to be a master in hypnotism, has recently earned the ire of certain sectors for figuring in a scandal. Rumors claim that he found an ally in Locsin whose personal magnetism perfectly matches his own inner aura. Lee, who has been closely observing the two, quickly saw a potential source of power never seen before, atleast not in more than 50 years. Such raw power was first witnessed during the Golden Age that many look back to with much nostalgia.
Guided by a new goal, Lee hoped to re-create in his laboratory this primordial energy in a bid to outrun the enemy camp in producing the ultimate arsenal of Weapons of Mass Domination.
Lupus throughout history
The Society of Ecbatana quickly picked up the story when Locsin announced her breakaway. Soon, she was seen consorting with Pascual in highly publicized events. They became fodder for nasty gossips and tall tales and the Ecbatana hailed them as avante garde, harbingers of a new age. The ordinary people were instantly hooked in utter awe. But the Council of Elders disagrees and released a document detailing the long history of lupus in cultures the world over.
Lupus turns out to be as old as civilization itself as evidenced by passages in Ancient Greiko parchments that surfaced during Europa’s Dark Times. Lupus is a term of Latinho roots which refers to a werewolf or “man-wolf”. From lupus, the Hispanioles gave birth to “lobo”, a word which entered our vernacular during the Age of Oppression. Magik practitioners believe that a lobo is a cursed man doomed to suffer the fate of a caninis when the moon is in full wax. He turns to a monster with an unceasing thirst for blood and hunger for flesh. On the flipside, the lobo is an extremely guileful person during daytime and his powers are most subtle yet potent when he deals with the masses.
It is this power that ABS-CBN has been craving to harness to finally crush their number one enemy: GMA. But Lee’s experiments went awry when the lupus began exhibiting traits of mutation that the initial host carriers, Pascual and Locsin, started to manifest. With Locsin, she began oozing with sexual energy in levels that dangerously went off the charts sending men—young and old alike—to mad frenzy. Pascual was reported to have directly caused spontaneous combustions not only among the female species but also within the Hommos group, an ostracized sector that went underground 10 years ago after the demise of their deity Meister H. Ledger of Brokeback, Australandia.
No cure, scientists say
Reports of infection started among Pascual’s and Locsin’s followers who frequented the ABS-CBN camp for worship activities. Investigations that followed reveal that the initial mode of transmission was direct physical contact although succeeding medical studies have shown that lupus can be transmitted by merely watching a pre-recorded worship activity. Symptoms of infection range from isolated fanaticism to mass-scale hysteria. Persons who are infected have been known to abandon previously cherished posts, pick fights with infidels, blindly advocate products laced with hypnotic transmitters to finally fall into a coma-like stupor.
Scientists explain that Pascual and Locsin, who were infected by the master lupus strain, developed beneficial or alpha symptoms unlike the rest who were exposed to a mutant strain known to pass on the fatal or zeta symptoms. The scientists now fear that an outbreak will occur during the project launch date on January 28. As of press time, there is still no hope for a cure.
Ecbatana agents were sent out to secure any comments from Pascual and Locsin but to no avail. The couple are heavily guarded and kept away in an undisclosed fortress in Mutra Ignaz. In a statement, ABS-CBN says that the pronouncements of the scientists were unfounded and that Lee’s team is in total control of the situation.
As the day of reckoning nears, there is obviously one question in everyone’s mind: “Will Lobo signal the end of us all or will it herald a new age for our species?”