Author: crisn

I'm Cris Nacionales from the Philippines.

Should We Stop Shooting Our Children?

Vanity is my favorite sin. – Devil’s Advocate

Have you ever heard of KGOY or Kids Grow Older Younger? And do you know one of its causes? According to what the NYTimes.com article Why We Should Take Fewer Pictures of Our Children implies, the digital camera is to blame and I can’t help but agree. Shooting photos of kids has escalated from what was once just a fad to a regular sight. We see this almost every day, everywhere, any time: kids striking a pose in front of the camera whether in front of their parents or done on their own. It would have been fine if these are innocent poses but there are already those we see masquerading, unknowingly I hope, sensual or offensive gestures obviously influenced by what they see on TV or in print materials such as the glossy magazines.

Thanks (but not thanks) to the availability and affordability of gadgets, this addiction of kids to the camera in any form, whether through a mobile phone, a point-and-shoot, or an entry-level DSLR, became very irresistible. Plus the lure of social media, such as facebook and Twitter, or photo-sharing applications such Instagram and Flickr have made taking and posting pictures online a must-do activity for both parents and kids.

So is this frequent photoshoot of your kids destructive in the long run? Well, in my opinion, it depends – though for sure it’s annoying to some of your facebook friends if you keep on flooding their timeline especially with not so attractive pictures. For some, it’s one way of relieving the longing of their love ones who are away from them – like lolos and lolas. And for others, it could be another medium of boosting their child’s confidence. But whatever the reasons are, I acknowledge that it is about time we realize that we need to do everything in moderation including exposure of our kids to the camera. Let us make them live the moments without any worries if they appear good in the pictures of not. Let them be just kids, not little wannabee models.

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Our own kid is actually among these little models. I still remember the night when we passed by Roxas Boulevard in Manila and we noticed Marcus, who was just barely 2-year old then, staying still and smiling at every headlight, and even lamp posts, outside our taxi cab. We soon realized that it must be because he thinks these bright lights are camera flashes that he has gotten used to seeing as we have been pointing a camera at him since he was still a small baby. His fascination with these flashes continued until about a few months after that but nowadays it has stopped. He has, however, transitioned to doing the check-chin pose and some other weird facial expressions. Ti abi.

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Mood: 5/10 Honks! (Going to a car dealer to have our car’s headlight checked.)

My Own Share of Driver’s Bad Luck

Drive home this morning was eventful. Firstly, I arrived at the toll area with a truck that has just slammed into the opposite toll gate’s concrete barriers and its driver, who appears drunk or sleepy, still arguing with the authorities as if they’re the ones at fault. Then unknowingly I lined up behind someone who, according to the security guard, picked the wrong exit to enter (have you ever realized that either way, a toll gate is always called an EXIT?) and refuses to move out thus requiring me reverse back to transfer to another gate (I have this habit of not tailgating so I was out real quick) . And as if to share the misfortunes of the others, my headlights conked out while I was waiting my turn to cross an intersection — thankfully, dawn is already breaking that time. Ti abi. Not call center TGIF day.

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I searched the web and found a good DIY link that could help me save P4,000 in headlight switch replacement — parts and labor. I’ll find out later.

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“…and those who own BMWs.” (I was telling wifey about the three people in this world: the poor, the rich, and the contented when a shiny brand new bimmer passed by. Talk about distraction during a financial discussion.)

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This is my first post in Status format.

The World Has Ended

Are you one of those people who got panicky when the year 2012 started because you know that this is the year when the dreaded doomsday is set to happen? Well, I hate to break this to you but the world has ended already – at least it is what should have happened had some genius did not correct the calendar about 400 years ago and with the assumption that the popular ancient Mayan December 21, 2012 doomsday prediction is correct.

Let’s all rejoice now, however, and accept that 2013 and all the annual routines are coming, like it or not, because like damage control done by some analysts the moment they see that what they once have strongly forecasted are starting to go the opposite directions, I am now starting to see more articles about why the Mayan doomsday might not actually take place this 2012. One good reference I have is from one of my old textbooks which I brought with me to kill time inside a bank whose tag line is ‘We Find Ways’ but so far haven’t found the way to fix its ever long queue (but it is another long and sad story). Pages 58-59 of the book Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney, has this very interesting information — which I read while standing in line for about an hour:

…By the sixteenth century, Easter Sunday was slowly but inexorably migrating toward Christmas.

Pope Gregory XIII asked Clavius to head a commission investigating the increasingly embarrassing problem. What was going wrong with the calendar? As it turned out, the actual solar year was shorter – 674 seconds shorter…What’s 674 seconds? Not much in a year, but problematic once compounded over centuries…

…In order to undo more than a millennium of compounded damage…Clavius’s commission had Pope Gregory XIII proclaim that in the year of 1582 the day after October 4 would be October 15. Even loyal Catholics had cause to grumble: their lives have been shorted by nearly two weeks.

I have actually underlined these while reading the book back in 2009 just because it tells about the origin why we now have the leap year and that’s it. Besides, during that time when I was still studying TSLEADER subject (under Prof. Lino Rivera who is currently DepEd Undersecretary) I haven’t even heard about any doomsday movie nor news about the end of the world other than what is written in the Revelation. But blame the movie 2012 and the hype surrounding it, December 21, 2012 became the dreaded D-day. Thankfully, as the abovementioned excerpt presents — if (and only if) the ancient Mayans indeed state the date December 21, 2012 in their prediction but failed to factor in the flaw that Clavius eventually corrected — the most feared December 21 has already past.

Yes, I know the feeling. No more modern Noah’s Ark, no more earthquakes of catastrophic proportion that will cause us to jump across gaping cracks on the ground, and the show Doomsday Preppers suddenly turns funny if not totally ridiculous. But who knows?

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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Friday afternoon. Watching TV with Marcus. Wifey still on her long siesta.)

Parking Confusion

Isn’t it strange that objects in the mirror are closer than they appear but they are actually farther when seen through the rear window?

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I am done reading Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic (How We Drive) and I have already drafted a book review which I wrote on my Starbucks 2012 planner (Finally, it has been used, however, late).

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Mood: 3/10 (Noontime. Tipsy. Experimenting with blog post format.)

Four-year-old Boy in the Backseat

I booked my sister’s family online for their flight to Bacolod and the mistake I made when I finalized the transaction with the wrong departure date requires me to go to PAL’s ticket office in NAIA Terminal 2 to get the revised ticket and pay for the additional fee in the process. But rather than fret about that costly mistake, which I did while sleepy thus missing the most important detail, I considered it as a blessing in disguise. What I initially plan to do by taking public transport alone and recovering my lack of sleep inside a cozy bus and taxi to the airport office, became a trip with me behind the wheel and wifey and Marcus tagging along. We haven’t been together in a mall for a leisurely visit so this one made a trip to MOA justifiable.

During the 30-kilometer trip, Marcus has been talking non-stop, asking repetitive questions. “Where’s the airport?”, “Are we near the airport?”, “Where is MOA?”, “Why are we turning here, not there?” had me and wifey exchange turns to give the same answer. However, other than these are-we-there-yet inquiries, there were those that we don’t know where to get the answers from and there was one that had both of us skipped a heartbeat. We’ve been preparing for the question and I really once thought that I will be ready when that time comes but yesterday I realized that I am not. What a four year-old boy can do. A special four year-old boy in the backseat.

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The reason I got the idea of taking a side trip to MOA is because Marcus had told his mother that he wants to go biking again in MOA and the last time we did this was more than two years ago when we participated in a fun run for a cause. So despite doing it in the evening, and with me restraining myself not to grab something alcoholic from one of the nearby bars and restos and which I know that wifey has another idea of a night out, Marcus successfully got his wish and pedaled his way in the midst of the crowd enjoying the colorful night in SM by the Bay.

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Marcus tweets

Starting today, I will use #4yointhebackseat to tweet about things (hopefully amusing ones) Marcus will say (or have said) while in the backseat. I once started #nurserylog which are about his school days but unfortunately I cannot retrieve the first ones. I am now wondering if there’s some application I can use to import a particular hash tag to my blog and to archive it as well.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks (Anxiety coming back.)