End of the world draws near

It always pays to be prepared.

MFPI Awards

MFPI Awards 2012 from Melissa Lynn Pablo on Vimeo.

The Mountaineering Federation of the Philippines, Inc. is an umbrella organization of mountaineering clubs in the Philippines, seeking to promote the practice of responsible mountaineering among its member clubs and individuals. During its annual congress this year, held in Botolan, Zambales, MFPI launched its annual MFPI Awards that aim to recognize the various accomplishments of its members in furthering the federations's mission-vision. Nominations will be accepted in the upcoming midyear President's Meeting this October.

MFPI Awards General Mechanics

Please take the time to read and understand the mechanics, it took us weeks of sleepless nights and heated debate to write them down.

New template after 10 years

I bid you goodbye, 10 year old layout!

Bike Adek

For someone who spent 30 years of her life not owning nor riding a bicycle, I'm a bit flabbergasted?flummoxed? to suddenly own two.

A couple of years ago, I got a folding bike for commuting, being the self-proclaimed environmentalist that I am. Spent 2 years fantasizing about it first before my sister said to stop dreaming and get one already. Then spent another year learning to ride my bike around town before taking the plunge and riding it to work on a regular basis.

I love every single ride on my foldie. It also made me want to go bike camping. So I started dreaming again. And I read about this couple from The Path Less Pedaled who went on a cross country bike tour on Bromptons (drool). However, owing to the fact that none of my camping friends owned folding bikes, I never went on a bike tour. Plus, I couldn't really go on bike trails with my folding bike. And I wanted to.

So I started dreaming again. This time of mountain bikes. This past year. Which I mentioned to my friend who had 3 bikes and had a partner who had six. She pm'ed the other day that she's getting a mountain bike for a friend for dirt cheap considering the bike specs, and that I'd better prepare a whole stash of cold hard cash because she's not going to let this opportunity of getting that particular model for cheap pass me by. She even picked it up at the warehouse for me.

So now I have a kick-ass mountain bike. I've named it Tanding, short for butanding. It's huge and it's blue. And it intimidates me with its size and complexity every single time I hop on it. I know next to nothing about it - its parts, the uses, the features - but it seems friendly enough and hasn't thrown me off just yet. 

By contrast, my old silver foldie is now named Tilapia, having taken on an identity by comparison to Tanding. Tilapia is comfortable. It's my everyday bike, my going-to-the-market one, do-errands-next-town one.

Tanding is adventure waiting to happen. Which hopefully will.

Oh yeah, now I'm also flat broke and in debt. Haha!

Whale Shark Amigurumi!

Recent obsession with whale sharks, fiber arts, and a need to look for other sources of income has inspired me to create for the first time ever in my life an amigurumi pattern in hopes for sustaining my existence through my increasingly expensive and thus largely unsustainable hobbies - yes, yarn is expensive.

Amigurumi is an ancient (;P) Japanese art of creating soft cutesy animal toys through either crochet or knitting. While this goes against my standard craft philosophy of "must be practical and useful," it cannot be helped that I did find the creation of this to be ADORABLE. (The emotions far outweighed the practicality; I'm sorry, little brain) So now I choose to share this ADORABLE WHALE SHARK with the world via Ravelry.com, for only 3.00 USD (plus taxes, I believe.) FREE!

This original pattern is designed by yours truly. Born of hours of hard work, this little whale shark is sure to inspire joy and happiness to whomever embraces it!

Promotion! This pattern is free of charge until October 8! So get it NOW!

[UPDATE 2013-04-17] I'm making this pattern a free Ravelry download just because I'm nice. And I need testers for my future patterns. But you're welcome to donate if you feel like being nice too! Just use the little button. All donations will go to a personal advocacy fund I'm putting aside for supporting local conservation efforts.

Oct 2 is #blacktuesday

Filipino netizens are up in arms about the controversial Cybercrime Prevention Act. Passed as a law last Sept 12, RA 10175 goes into effect tomorrow, Oct 3. As a supposed last minute addition, a libel clause was inserted into the Act before it was passed into law. The libel clause penalizes, with heavier penalties than print libel, online libel and anyone who shares, retweets, reposts, "likes", "diggs" any piece that can be viewed as libel. The inclusion of this clause may possibly (possibly, teh? haha) curtail our freedom of expression on teh internets. Others have already labeled this as a form of cyber martial law.

There are already 6 various petitions lodged in the Supreme Court regarding the new law. The petitions seek to nullify parts of the law that are deemed unconstitutional. Today, protesters in black are marching to the Supreme Court.

Read more about this issue (too lazy to S****-nize everything):

Sen. Teofisto Guingona III on Rappler
Rissa Robles, "Who inserted that libel clause in the cybercrime law at the last minute"