Down the Rabbit Hole

What a year 2013 turned out to be! Who would have thought that the year that shouldn't have been, if the Mayan calendar interpreters had been correct, was exciting? History was written right in front of my eyes as I watched the news or as I found myself where the history was happening. Pope Benedict XVI resigns. Yes, he has. At first, I thought that the announcements via social media was bogus until I saw the news clips on TV. And because he had given up the leadership of the biggest and what may be the oldest Christian congregation in the world, he has put the Church in a more positive light after news upon news of unbecoming behaviors of priests. Benedict XVI's last day as Pope was covered by a lot of news agencies. With the resignation of the Pope, the Church is in a state of Sede Vacante ("vacant seat"). The papal conclave began on March 12th in which one Filipino cardinal, Luis Antonio Tagle was considered a papabile (among other cardinals from different p...

Isang araw, makalipas ang Pasko, namasyal kami ng nanay ko sa isang mall. Dahil malamig, may suot akong makapal na jacket at botang panlamig. Sa kapal ng jacket, nagmukha siguro akong nagkakalad na marshmallow. At dahil nagkataon pang pink ang pantalon ko, nagmukha akong naglalakad na cotton candy! Kaya tuloy habang naglalakad kami, tinigil kami ng isang kapwa mamimili... "Filipino rin kayo?", tanong niya. "Oo, Filipino kami," sagot ng nanay ko. "Sabi na nga ba!", sabi ng mamimili sa nanay ko. Pagtingin sa akin, aniya, "Ang cute cute naman ng batang ito!" sabay pisil sa braso kong balot ng makapal na jacket. Paglayo ng mamimili, napatawa kami ng nanay ko dahil pang-ilang beses na ito na napagkamalan akong bata. Seryoso. :D

A few years back, I learned how to use R , a statistical software that requires one to write the commands (or scripts). While I enjoyed deciphering this new language and use it in numerous data analyses, other people are not big fans. They like to click on buttons and get the data analyzed without bothering with the script. Thus, statisticians in IRRI developed the Statistical Tool for Agricultural Research (STAR) , a program that does exactly that: analysts just have to click on the preferred/required types of analyses and the software will churn out the values. And did I say that the software is free ? Just like R, STAR is accessible for budget-strapped individuals. I've taken it for a spin during one of the introductory courses... The version I used in the course has a few hits and misses (particularly the color scheme of data points in graphs) but it appears to be pretty adequate for several types of multivariate analyses. Now, understanding what the numbers that STAR ...

  Obviously, I wasn't exactly riding a boat in the picture above. This is the first time since my Subic adventure that I took up an oar and went into the water. This is also the first time I've been close to a body water (not counting swimming pools) in a long time... I can't believe that it's been more than a year since I've been to the beach! Anyway, I was riding this bamboo raft on Labasin Lake in Villa Escudero, San Pablo City, Laguna. While the view from the middle of the lake was very nice, I didn't dare carry any electronic gadget with me on the raft because I might fall into the 30-m deep lake with them ( oh no! ). I left my gadgets on dry land and donned on a life vest. Then off I and my raft teammate, RK Singh's daughter, went. It took some time and muscle power to figure out how to propel and to direct the raft so that we wouldn't hit the other people in the rafts, the barge with the flags, and the banks of the lake. There were sever...

On my rest days (when I am decidedly out of the lab), I take some time to read. This year (as in other years), the books I've read for leisure are quite eclectic; I didn't stick to one genre. 1. Negotiate a Kick-Ass Salary (2012) by Nelson Wang 2. Lord of the Ring: Return of the King by JRR Tolkien 3. The Coming Famine by Julian Cribb 4. Snoops in the City 5. Lord of the Ring: Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien 6. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds 7. Presentation Zen Design by Garr Reynolds 8. Lord of the Ring: Two Towers by JRR Tolkien 9. Culinary Foundations by Le Cordon Bleu 10. Silmarilion by JRR Tolkien* 11. Inferno by Dan Brown* *NOTE: I haven't finished reading these books as of December 23, 2013.

If Phileas Fogg went around the world in 80 days in Jules Verne's novel, the Association of Fellows, Scholars, Trainees, and Residents at IRRI (AFSTRI) took the audience around the world in three hours through song, dance, and poetry during the annual Cultural Night. I'd normally come in quietly and just watch from the comfort of one if the seats at the Havener Auditorium; however, Ando, AFSTRI's current president, assigned me as one of the masters of ceremonies that night. I was co-hosting with Man. I sighed... I wouldn't be taking photos then. But despite being backstage most of the time, talking with participants about last-minute changes to their presentations and our impromptu spiels, Man and I did enjoy the co-hosting gig. Since the theme was "A Night Around the World", we thought it might be good to ask the audience to sit back, relax, and fasten their seat belts; this was going to be a zip through the globe. And what a fast trip it was: Five ...

Another late post... --- Team Tagumpay wins the coveted rice bowl trophy and the bragging rights! We won on a technicality though: Team Tagumpay placed second BUT the real winning team threw in the towel during their harvest phase, with the members saying that they didn't want to compete anymore. That's really sad because they never knew how close they were to winning when they quit. The organizers of Rice Survivor proved to be very generous with the prizes. All teams in the 2013 wet season received awards for some attention-catching performance or another. For me, I take the survival of the rice plants and the resulting harvest as victory enough since plants I take care of tend to die (like the basil plants I used to have in my backyard). Aside from the trophy and the bragging rights, I take the lessons that I learned as prizes in themselves. Being part of this season's challenge taught me part of what farmers experience during a planting season...

Sometime in November... --- After several months of hard work, nervous waiting, and harvesting, my team became focused on finding out if what we did in the field translated into projected profit. Here's how we did it: Profit (per hectare) = Sales - Expenses      where: sales (Php/kg) was based on data given by economists                  we assume that 100% of the milled rice was sold                  we actually dried the harvest to 14% moisture content and calculated the yield from that Then we made several options on selling the grain and calculated the projected profits from the different models: 1. We would sell the milled rice based on the market price  2. We would sell only the whole grain at premium price then throw out the broken grain 3. We would sell intact (whole/unbroken) grain and broken grain separately It turned out that we'd mak...