Rommel's Random Ramblings

I've been working on a few video projects:

• A Fall Festival promo video for Woodbridge Community Church. It's basically a Halloween alternative event on October 30th. It sort of has a country fair atmosphere. They gave me a bunch of pictures from previous festivals. Some of them are from as far back as 1997. I think I'll arrange them into some sort of slideshow, but they suggested having some banjo music in the background since it's a country-type festival. That's where I'm kinda stuck. Where am I gonna find banjo music? Anyone know of any Christian/worship songs that feature a banjo? Or anything that might work?
  
  
• A series of Children's Christmas Musical promos for my church, FACI. The plan is to show a different promo every Sunday up until the week of the musical (starting November, I think.) I know for one video I can just use a number of clips from the musicals of the last 3, maybe 4, years. The musical is called The "S" Files, and it's about a bunch of kids who set up a website and answer emails from other kids including the key question, "What is the real meaning of Christmas?" Maybe for another video, I can work with the email thing and stick a subtle Strong Bad reference in there. Only a few people would probably get it, but hey, as long as one person notices it, that's all that counts.
  
  
• A video for FEBC showing some of their ministry work in the Philippines. I'm not too sure on this yet. I have yet to receive video footage and details on what they're looking for. FEBC is a missions organization that mainly works with radio and everything involved with it such as sound engineering and music. I believe they were planning to open up a video department, but I think there are still some issues to be worked out concerning that. So I guess right now, I'll be working with them on just a project by project basis. That'll be so great to be a regular part of that team, though.

It's great that I have these things to do, but I still need something more regular as a source of income. At first, I thought that all the video production jobs are up near Hollywood, but there are quite a few video related openings here in Orange County... from the police department to legal videographers to biotech labs... We'll see where I end up. I could always go back to IT. Bleh...

I ran/walked around Fashion Island this morning for the Race For The Cure 5K. It was fun, but now my legs are starting to hurt a little bit. No, I didn't really prepare for it. I figured I was just going to walk the entire way, but then I got bored so I started running about half a mile into it. Kevin beat the rest of us to the finish line, and he was wearing flip-flops! I brought my camera along to take some pictures, but I ran out of batteries. Argh! That must be some cardinal rule of photography that I broke: Make sure you have fully charged batteries. I left my spare batteries in the car, too, so that they wouldn't weigh me down. Then again, for the rest of the race, I was carrying around some pretty useless weight with a camera I couldn't even use. Nevertheless, here are the pictures I managed to take. Enjoy all seven of them.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rommel4321/album?.dir=57ab

fi·an·cé (n.) A man to whom a woman is engaged to be married.
fi·an·cée (n.) A woman to whom a man is engaged to be married.

I didn't realize there was a difference. Haha, I learn something new everyday...

Now before you all go crazy with speculation, I was just proofreading a script. Ok? No need to read between the lines. ^_^

I had worship team practice tonight. Good set.
  Come, Now is the Time to Worship
  Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?
  Never Gonna Stop
  Tenderly
  He Knows My Name

Ate Rachel shared a story that we'll end up relaying to the congregation on Sunday. The story goes that there was this African-American woman who went to Africa to help out at one of the hospitals there. The hospital was packed with patients dying of AIDS. A short distance away, she saw a number of holes dug on the ground. When she asked about them, she was told that those were graves that were already dug out in anticipation of the inevitable deaths of the AIDS patients. The situation was so bad that many times they were forced to bury multiple bodies in a single unmarked grave. She came to realize that even though people may not necessarily know who is buried where, our wonderful God, who has created each star in the sky and calls them by name, knows each and every single person there and cares about them. That's when we lead in to the song He Knows My Name.

I think it's an appropriate story, considering Gertrude from Uganda will be visiting the church on Sunday. Also, Joe mentioned that he's planning to go to South Africa in June. He was saying how one reason AIDS is so widespread there especially among young girls is because of the hunger problem. Rich men or men with food would come over to the villages and offer food for sex. Crazy...

Revelation 5
⁹And they sang a new song:
   "You are worthy to take the scroll
       and to open its seals,
   because you were slain,
       and with your blood you purchased men for God
       from every tribe and language and people and nation."

From every tribe and language and people and nation -- Wow. That's a lot of people from all over. King brought up this verse yesterday. I had mentioned to him that I was looking at the stats from this blog, and I saw that people from all over visit this page. At first, most of the hits came from the United States with the Philippines in second place. That's understandable. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Singapore became the second most popular country of origin while Peru was in second place. After that are about ten more different countries... like United Arab Emirates. What the? I haven't given that country much thought until now. Surprisingly, some of the people end up being returning visitors, too. It's cool how StatCounter shows each country's flag along with the statistic. It helps me become more familiar with them. Anyway, I guess one way for me to reach people around the world would be this blog. I should probably put more thought into what I write here. You never know what people could get out of this. I'll probably post some silly and random things from time to time, but I think I should share more of what God's been doing in my life.

When Lanie and Faye went on their mission trip to Uganda last year (see the Safari Planet video), they stayed with a lady named Gertrude who ran a Christian school and orphanage. Well, Gertrude flew in yesterday at around midnight to stay here in the US for about a couple of weeks. She's quite a nice lady. Lanie, Faye, King, and I took her to Rock Harbor for the evening service and then to Denny's for dinner afterwards. King and Faye talked about a conference they went to on Friday and Saturday with a mission organization called Frontiers. The organization's main goal is to plant replicating churches among Muslim peoples. Is this something that I would like to take part of? I don't know... but it's another option laid out in front of me.

I learned how to transfer an audio cassette tape into a CD. I sort of knew how to do it in theory, but I didn't actually end up trying it out until yesterday and today. I had to burn a copy of this year's children's Christmas musical into a CD so the kids can start practicing tomorrow. It ended up being a little bit more of a hassle than I originally thought. I forgot to take into consideration mixing the volume levels to minimize static noise and dividing the music up into tracks. So I took longer and wasted a few blank CDs. Oh well. Trial and error is one way to learn. So yeah, I had to convert the tape into a CD. I mean, who uses cassette tapes anymore? In case you're wondering why we didn't just buy the CD version in the first place, it turns out that a CD version of that particular musical doesn't exist. I was surprised when I saw that it was made in the year 2000. Being available only in tape format, I would have thought it was from the early 80's or something. Weird.

I saw a couple of Korean movies this past week. One of them was Arahan. It's a pretty cool martial-arts/comedy film with some levitation, running down the walls of skyscrapers, and "palm blasts" mixed in. It's sort of like Volcano High but with a lot more emphasis on the actual martial arts than on the special moves and effects. And that's a good thing. Typical summer action movie. Fun stuff. The problem I sometimes have with foreign films is that the DVDs of ones I would like to see are set for a something other than Region 1 (North America and Canada). Sometimes I get lucky and they release the movie in a Region 0 DVD which works with DVD players from anywhere in the world. So unless I get a region-free DVD player (which works with any DVD), I usually have to get the VCD version which doesn't have any region restrictions. However, the quality is not as great. Even if I get a region-free DVD player, though, I'm still limited in locations where I can watch the film. It sort of hinders me from showing other people a movie that's quite "share-worthy." So I guess I'm researching how to read and extract the contents (including subtitles, of course) of a foreign DVD and burn it into a DVD that's friendlier to American DVD players.

Oh yeah, the second movie I saw was Windstruck. If you've seen My Sassy Girl, it might seem like the same stuff. They have the same director and the same actress, Jeon Ji-Hyun. In fact, I've heard people say that Windstruck is a prequel to My Sassy Girl. I don't think so, but I can see how people would think that. In My Sassy Girl, Jeon Ji-Hyun played a somewhat crazy, psycho girl with past issues. In Windstruck, she plays a somewhat crazy, psycho girl with issues waiting to happen. It's cool if it is prequel, and I'd like it to be, but it's not. There are far too many plot holes for it to be one. Anyway, I've listed a few arguments for and against that theory. Highlight the empty space below to reveal possible spoilers.

Yes, it's a prequel:
· Cha Tae-Hyun, the actor from My Sassy Girl, shows up at the end of Windstruck at the train station as apparently the same character. It is a scene similiar to how they met at the beginning of My Sassy Girl.
· They never mentioned Jeon Ji-Hyun's character's name in My Sassy Girl, so she could be the same character in Windstruck. She has the same personality even.
· She plays the piano in both movies.
· The boyfriend dies in Windstruck. In My Sassy Girl, her previous boyfriend had died the year before.

No, they're two unrelated movies:
· She's a cop in Windstruck. In My Sassy Girl, which supposedly occurs later, she's still in college.
· The circumstances in which she met the soon-to-be-deceased boyfriend are different.
· During the train station scene in Windstruck, she was wearing her police uniform and she wasn't drunk. Different circumstances from My Sassy Girl.
· The necklace that the old boyfriend gave her in My Sassy Girl was never addressed in Windstruck.
· It was implied in My Sassy Girl that the guy died from drowning. Although he almost drowned in Windstruck, he died from a gunshot wound during a later scene. (This isn't very conclusive, actually, since the drowning part wasn't explicit in My Sassy Girl.)

There are probably a few more points for each argument, but those are most convincing ones I can think of. For the record, I still think My Sassy Girl is better. If you can get a hold of it, go see it if you haven't already. Or wait until the remake comes out (in 2006, I think?) I hear the Bend It Like Beckham director is directing it.

Race For The Cure
On September 26, 2004, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation is holding the Race for the Cure, a 5K Run/Walk around Newport Beach, in order to help raise funds for cancer research. Some of us in the FACI College and Career group will be participating that day in support of three women in our church who have been diagnosed with cancer: Marie, Milna, and Menchu. For these "Three M's", we have formed a team and even have a team page set up. Please keep these wonderful women in your prayers.

In case they take it down, this is the mini essay that Aimee wrote for the team page:

An old adage says, “Heroes are born, not made.” Three women’s lives show us how life, and the circumstances it brings, produces heroes out of ordinary people.

Marie Sapinoso is a nurse, wife, mother and proud grandmother. Marie’s home is always filled with the most wonderful smells, and for years she opened her home every Thursday to the women’s fellowship of the Filipino-American Church of Irvine. In October 2003, Marie was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery in November. After several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, she was told that her cancer was in remission and the doctors told her she could go back to work in September 2004.

Throughout her battle with cancer, Marie drew strength from the prayers of her church family. When she lost her hair from chemo, many women showed their support by wearing hats during the church service. A verse that spoke deeply to her was Isaiah 41:10, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Marie was able to see how God had upheld her and learned the awesome power of prayer.

Milna Vales is also a nurse, wife and mother of three grown children. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2004 and underwent a mastectomy in March. Ever vivacious and energetic, Milna did not allow the cancer to dampen her spirits, even when she had to go through chemotherapy treatment for three straight months. Although the treatment may have worn her out, no one could tell because of her energy and optimism.

Fighting cancer is by no means easy and at times, the day to day struggles of living with cancer did affect her. She remembers times lying alone in bed, thinking about the reality of her condition. At those times, she would ask the Lord to “give her a hug.” He demonstrated His presence in her life through the support of friends, family, her church, and through His word. She clung to the words of Proverbs 3:5,6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” The Lord answered her prayers for healing, and is now happily cancer free!!

Menchu Sacramento is an accountant, wife and mother of four grown children. An open door policy has always existed in her home, and countless relatives and friends have benefited from her hospitality. In April 2002 she was told she had cervical cancer and had a hysterectomy in June. After undergoing chemo and radiation, she was cancer free until a recurrence appeared in January 2004.

In spite of her ongoing battle, Menchu has found joy and peace. The woman who took everyone in has found herself taken in and taken aback by the generous outpouring of love she has received. She has learned patience and to value taking care of herself. A book on Psalm 23 showed her the most important healing is spiritual. And so, because of Christ, she knows she has already been healed.

These women may disagree with the label “hero” being given to them. They would say they have done no great feat, made no groundbreaking discovery, done nothing too remarkable. But it is in their humility, their undaunted courage, and their unwavering faith in God that we find what truly makes them heroes: their lives inspire imitation. And so for you, our beloved “three M’s,” we run our race together with you, our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus, our hope and inspiration.

A new name for the career group is still up in the air, but there was one suggestion made that I kind of like: Mosaic. Donald Trump didn't like it, but as James said, it might work for our purposes. Anyway, I was thinking of some of the implications that were brought up with having the name Mosaic. Let's see... diversity, but at the same time unity. Individually, we're a bunch of broken pieces, but together we're a work of art. Someone said it was classy-sounding, too.

We tried to think of a motto, as well. I jokingly suggested, "If you don't feel you belong anywhere else, come here." I was a little surprised that some people liked it. They probably took it differently from what I originally intended. I say jokingly because I meant that it sometimes feels like there is no single category you can place our group under. You can't really call it the singles group, because there are a few married couples there. Although it's going to be a separate group from the college group, some people who identify with the career group are still in college. I don't know... I thought the motto would make us sound like a bunch of rejects or leftovers. haha that's not necessarily bad either. Maybe it should be called the "People-that-are-25-to-35-years-old-(give-or-take-5-years)-and-have-no-kids" group. That's the least common denominator that I can think of. Actually, scratch that... that's not gonna work either.

So I guess I don't see any reason why Mosaic wouldn't fit. Unless a much better name comes up, this might actually end up being official. Eric and I were thinking that we should make up a logo and place Mosaic Productions on all our future skit videos. Hmmm... that actually sounds like a pretty decent name for a video production company. I guess Mosaic can be used for pretty much almost anything (except for apparently a masculine Apprentice team name.) It's like the chicken of group names or something.

We had the 5-on-5 basketball tournament today. Joe started it off with a few worship songs, and then Josh gave a short devotional. Roman gave a testimony. I liked how he started by saying something like, "Dressed in this jersey and shorts, I look like a basketball player. But you won't know whether I'm a good basketball player or not until you see me play later on in the courts. In the same way, I may go to church every Sunday, go to youth group, Sunday School, etc., but you won't know what kind of Christian I am unless you see my heart." It was great to see him give his testimony. And to think that some of the guys met him through a pickup game at Heritage Park a few months back. Anyway, it was a single elimination tournament with four really good teams. It was pretty intense, but Roman's team came out on top at the end. Fun fun fun.

Afterward, a few of us hung out at the Abesamis house. It looks like King, Faye, Ed, and Aimee are not going to be around this Friday. So that means Icy and Josh are going to end up teaching youth group that night. I think Justine and I are supposed to help out, too. The regular leaders thus helped us substitute teachers prepare for Friday night over pizza.

Pictures of the day's festivities are also online:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rommel4321/album?.dir=c7fc

Woo hoo! I got the computer working. It turns out that certain internet settings were damaged when some (buggy) spyware was installed or improperly removed. I had to download a utility that repaired those settings. It's amazing what a few hours of research and surfing through forums can do. That's why I consider the Internet to be one of my favorite "books" (second only to the Bible).

Yesterday, my blog received its first visitor from the Philippines. It was someone who did a Yahoo search on "writing skit philippines" and stumbled upon this place. Of course, it's entirely possible that I've had visitors from the Philippines before. There was just no way for me to know that until I switched over to StatCounter. At any rate, I can now say that my blog has an international audience.

I've been trying to find a way to remove this adware/spyware called VX2 from this laptop that I'm working on. It's the second computer I've seen that has this. (I haven't been able to fix the first one either.) It looks like this program is keeping the computer from having internet access. Programs such as Ad-Aware and Spybot apparently are not able to remove it. I even found a VX2 removal plug-in for Ad-Aware, but that doesn't seem to work either. What's annoying is that after it's supposedly removed, it replicates itself under another random filename - even after booting in safe mode. Challenging and yet annoying...

Ang init! It's was so hot today (Sunday). At a high of 98°F, that's hotter than how the Philippines usually gets, but thankfully with less humidity.

Anyway, what's been going on so far? Well, on Friday there wasn't a College and Career bible study, so I went to church to join the youth group for their bible study. That explains the pictures on my previous post. They've started a series on using the Law as an evangelism tool.

Romans 7
⁷What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." ⁸But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. ⁹Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. ¹⁰I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. ¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. ¹³Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

Yeah, so I think too often we hear about the benefits and blessings of accepting Christ in our lives (which are true to an extent) but without touching too much on the issues of sin and hell and the need for repentance. How can a person really accept salvation without the knowledge of what they're being saved from? Most people would probably think, "That's great that Jesus saves, but I don't need any saving. I'm a good person. I haven't done anything wrong." That's why we have the Law, not as a mere list of do's and don'ts, but to show us God's standard and how much we fall short of it. To show that no one is "good". Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever looked at another person with lust? I have, and that's only three of the ten commandments. By God's standard, I should be going to hell and deservedly so. However, I'm thankful for His loving grace and mercy that by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross and take my punishment upon Himself, I am spared from eternal damnation.

Romans 5
²⁰The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, ²¹so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Ok, well... Saturday night, I went to Saddleback Church to watch Mae in Ohana, the hula ministry that she's a part of over there. Afterwards, James, Mae, and I ate dinner at Pasta Bravo. I went to their house afterwards, and that's when James and I played 007: Everything or Nothing until 2 in the morning.

Sunday arrived, and we all find out at church that Jed and Aimee just got engaged. Uh-huh... I mean, Woo hoo! Congratulations! Hmm... when we were filming that Marli and Kevin video, I'm sure Jed got a lot of practice during the proposal scene. Well, after that, since Marli was working the night shift, I hung out with Kevin at their place and watched Master and Commander. It was pretty cool.

So there you have it, a pretty packed weekend. Oh wait, Monday's Labor Day. Weekend's not over yet...

can't continue sleeping... dry hacking cough... keep waking up...

Anyway, let me go straight to what a lot you are probably going to be looking for. *drum roll* Pictures from Friday night's youth group adventures - ready for MySpace use!

Pictures from my camera: (48 pics)
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rommel4321/album?.dir=30b4

Pictures from Icy's camera: (100 pics)
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeANWzVk2bt2rFCg

As you can see, Icy won yet again in terms of quantity. *grumble*grumble*

Since Blogger's bStats service is no longer working, I replaced it with StatCounter. This turned out to be a much better web stats service, and it's still free. Like the other one, I can find out how people find my blog. Apparently my first name alone is #20 on the list of results from a Yahoo search. Yes, that's the first page! It also tells me what operating system, browser, and resolution they're using. The coolest thing, though, is that it gives me a little map of the world that shows where they're browsing from. It's not always meaningful information, however. I'm surprised to learn I have visitors from Kansas and New Jersey, but I have no idea who you are. Eh, for all I know, those could just be where your ISPs are, and you're nowhere near those places. Now, those visitors with IP addresses in some hotel in Utah and in a company in San Jose, I think I can make pretty accurate guesses. So you all better be careful, I'm watching you. MUWAHAHAHAHA!!

Last Friday at the beach, Icy and I were wondering why our digital cameras sometimes took pictures that had some white spots all over them. They seemingly appeared at random times and at random locations on the photograph.

Here's one of them from the beach. Notice the spots in the air. There's one on the head of the old man behind Joe.


Some of my pictures from the Philippines had these, too. Here's one with a big spot on Jed's head as he was dancing:


And this picture has one right above my ear:


I've been wondering about these for a while. After a little internet research, it looks like it's a pretty common occurence when you use a flash in pretty dusty environments. Those spots are airborne dust particles that are floating pretty close to the camera. They end up reflecting the flash back to the lens. It happens pretty often on cameras with a flash bulb design that is located really close to the lens. Come to think of it, a lot of those pictures were taken outdoors during nighttime. Anyone else experience this problem?

Another interesting thing is that over the course of finding out about the spots, I saw quite a few websites that identify them as orb-shaped spirits. Sort of like ghosts but not in human form. They're invisible to the naked eye but are easily photographed. Umm... sure, ok.