Golem

LIFE-GRAPH OF FRANCIS RAYMOND S. SANTOS

MARCH 25, 2007

2003-50349

P.I. 100

SIR MATA

BIRTH: DECLARATION OF MY LIFE’S VARIABLES

Start. Let me just give you a recap of how I suddenly sprouted from mother earth. 

edit : i removed my birth certificate

That’s right! This is how our country identifies its people, through burnable, weak-materialed, drenchable, destroyable, decomposable paper that can easily be disintegrated, distorted, misused and can effortlessly be altered by simple chemical phenomena (Shift-F7). But through this document only can one be a bonafide member of his or her country. This is the only concrete proof that a person can present to any of the institutions here in the Philippines in order for that person to enjoy more of his or her country’s benefits. A person will have the opportunity to study, to work and the likes. In short, this is one’s passport to get hold of his or her rights. The lucky thing is that I didn’t have problems with the encoding of my birth certificate unlike my other siblings. Siblings …yes my family. Let us get to them.

LIFE: A GRAPH-BASED DATA STRUCTURE

Let me just define a term, “life-graph”, that I will be using in some parts of this post. After taking up a college subject that teaches about data structures in computer science, this was what I have come to realize - my life is a fast-growing graph. What is a graph data structure? Basically, it is a composition of vertices. Vertices can be connected to each other through edges or lines. In representation, the vertices of my life correspond to the people I encounter. The edges denote the relationships that exist between me and those people that I stumble upon. At first the only vertices that existed in my life were the members of my family. I will not get into the details of the lives of the members of the family but I shall address how my family has affected my growth.

In descending order according to age, I shall state the gender, the names and the year of birth of my brothers and sisters respectively: Male-Christian Lucas-‘78, Female-Armi Katrina-‘80, Male-Andrew Nicholas-‘85, Male-Ryan Daniel-‘89, and Female-Carmina Joy-‘93. As for my parents, my father and mother are Honorato Domingo Santos-‘57 and Maria Cristina Fetalvo Samala-’58 respectively.

FAMILY: INHERITANCE, POLYMORPHISM AND ENCAPSULATION

In various ways, all seven of my family members have contributed to how I act, speak, eat, and the likes but most especially, they have played a major part in structuring the inner workings of my mind. My family is my primary social group. My parents, who are my siblings’ and my fundamental source of knowledge and morals, got their ways of thinking, feeling and acting through our ancestors. So in effect, that is how large the bloodlines influence people such as us.

If you would model this in order to see the relationships, it is just simple. You have a class; say the family that is just a collection of persons sharing common attributes and methods. In our case, it is our blood, our practices and yes our public static surname. Now I am trying to organize how my family has been declared as such. My family is just an instantiation of the main class, our ancestors’ families, and I am just an object that inherited my attributes, behavior and methods from my family. I am principally an extension of the bloodline. The unique characteristics of our family are encapsulated and can only be attributed to us. Has this object-oriented approach cleared it up? Good.

Who was I? Without absolute control of myself, I was sort of a sponge who tried to absorb things by simply imitating from what I perceived, experienced and felt from other people, somewhat Peter Petrelli-ish. Such things of course were specifically acquired from my brothers, sisters and parents. Like for example, I tried to learn music just because my eldest brother and my father were into guitars. I wanted to be a jack-of-all-trades because of my dad who does carpentry, cooking, racing, and whatnot. At least, I tried as best as I could to be God-fearing and “pure” because my mother and my eldest sister were really on fire and passionate about God. I tried to draw, sketch and play games all the time because I was influenced by my brothers. Things like being so into books, art, being studious, slightly religious, being crazy, being into computers, music groups, girls, food and movies were basically combinations of the skills, talents, methods, attitudes and interests of my siblings and parents.

Let us discuss more on how my environment shaped how I perceive life and reality, how our society has made me who I am right now. Yes, when you come right down to it - how our country produced a person like me.

PROTOCULTURE: ZENTRADI EQUALS IGOROT

“Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.”

Yes, I was born in a cold place called Baguio City just like what was declared in my birth certificate in my previous statements. This may not seem important but the place where I grew up is essential in the analysis of why I am who I am right now. I spent approximately 14 years of growing up in that cold place that they call the Summer Capital of the Philippines. (Maybe this explains why I am cold to people whom I do not know??). Although when they get to know and get close to it, they’ll feel that it’s not always cold and that in the end, they get to miss the place when they’re far away from it. Okay, enough said.

The main concept related to the environment I grew up at that time that I can think about that obviously influenced me is the concept of culture. Yes, the culture of the place. Specifically and technically, it was a Cordilleran culture. Okay, let me explain. To be called a Cordilleran is to be called an igorot. Basically, even if you do not have the blood of an igorot, but you already know at least some Cordilleran teachings and experienced the environment and festivities of the igorots, then you can be branded as an igorot. In the case of my family we have no Cordilleran blood. My Spanish-blooded father came from Reina Mercedes, Isabela so he is an Ilocano and my Chinese-blooded mother hailed from Calamba, Laguna so she is one of the Tagalogs. They just moved to Baguio during the early years of their marriage. So in parallel, my family is already part of an Igorot-Tagalog-Ilocano sort of group.

At least, this is the way that I interpret being a Cordilleran – you experience being with Cordillerans in a long period of time and hence you grasp the way they live and you understand their heritage and traditions. There is also no need of Igorot ancestry or blood for one to be an igorot. So in effect my family became one of them. Different aspects like the language, the attitudes of the people, the main events and festivities, are all part of the culture where we are included in. What I can say that I like about it is the deep appreciation for life, the Cordilleran heritage and the demonstration of cultural pride.

ABSTRACTION: FRANCIS, THE LITTLE RUNT

“We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth,
all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education” Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

From then on my life-graph extended to generate more and more vertices and edges; the edges began to initialize their weights. As my years passed as a pre-adolescent, I continuously learned what my family was trying to inculcate in me. Those were the times I began to absorb stuff like basic skills in reading, writing, mathematics, speaking in English and I added knowledge about drawing, musical and physical activities. It was the time to build up on cognition, dexterity; charm maybe, vitality, strength, agility and mental capacity. Those were things that other people taught to me. Just like other kids, I was bred in order to pass the modern standards of being a part of modern society, obviously, because I wasn’t raised in another time, at another place and in any other way that I could possibly be raised!

Still, I was just a kid who never really had control of what was happening to me. There were only a few things that I learned by myself. Maybe, I was just unconscious that I learned those. In any case the feeling of being a kid was unbearable, but it sure was a hell of a joyride. I was lucky just to experience those kinds of things. Even if some of my actions were wrong, I still tried to do things mainly because of curiosity, lack of attention and for the sake of adventure. I was a poor little unconscious kid who only thought to just be like a kid and not grow up at all. I was just a dependent little runt who seldom made my parents worry. I too, was sort of a static thing that was plainly doing things that were requested of me. I was a weak kid, a foolish kid at that who thought he was so clever. Maybe the only things that set me straight at those times were because of the disciplinary actions that my parents and elders conducted to me. If it had not been for those, I would have gone straight to prison by the time I shall have reached my adult years!

I said earlier that I was a kid who just tried to combine the characteristics and interests that I got from my family. I tried to combine the attitudes of my parents, specifically, in order for me to survive. The integration of such was necessary for me to live. Within that integration many thoughts came along. The thing I could not forget the most in me being a kid was that I had plenty, yes plenty of dreams and I was a kid who created hopes and dreams for my loved ones.

Anyway, considering the state of my life-graph at that time, factors like new mentors, new acquaintances, the church and the private Catholic elementary school’s environment that involved social learning and moral consciousness were also the core things that nurtured me to be me. I was equipped with almost all of the things that were needed by an ordinary boy through institutions such as the school and church.

EDUCATION: ANALYSIS OF A TREE-BASED MODEL

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education” – Mark Twain

Let us visualize education as a tree structure or model. It basically has a root node. I do not know the history of what were the general subjects taken up by students in the ancient times but what I do know is the root node must have been a combination of all the subjects that are taught at these times. The root node branched out to two main topics - science and arts. I am not sure. This was for the case of the early stages of education (maybe Greek times). As for Jose Rizal’s time, I also am not sure but there already existed sub-branches of the two main divisions of learning like physical and non-physical science like mathematics, organic sciences etc. and the arts were subdivided into humanities, philosophy and the like. So what about it?

Just like in the past, education in those years and education in our times have not really changed with regards to its objectives (the teach-learn-improve process). The only differences I see are mainly the content and the ways of presenting the content of teachings. Without doubt, the bounds of education have also broadened to new levels because of technology and many other improvements on the details of concepts and lessons. The past type of education is a different story compared to the modern style.

I can say that maybe I was better off if I’d lived in the olden times, if we are talking about my education that is. I mean, being all-knowing is not really an objective that I set for myself. Nobody has achieved that state yet and our society does not dictate that that is the objective of education right? It’s just that one of my key reflections when I am trying to learn new things is that, for example, I would say to myself many times, “Will I possibly use these mathematical equations in my life? Para saan ba itong mga cosecant na ito? Cosecant live without you? Hehe” Things like those go through my head every once in while but what is really bothering me is a hanging question on why education evolved to the point where it is right now . In conjunction to that, I know that I am not alone in the field of stupidity when it comes to certain subjects. Of course we can always say that things change for the better. In the case of our country I do hope that it changes for the better. Another question to ask though is what does ‘better’ stand for? Is the current state of education really a better type of education compared to the ancient methods of learning?

Education today grooms us for what is appropriate for our times. If we would still use the old methods of teaching and the old concepts and explanations about things, then it would not be education at all. The key term to education is “updated knowledge”. This updating of knowledge though, is just another one of those things that I am not okay with. I remember some saying of some person that states science-related knowledge as a thing that always changes is a problem– “They say science explains mysteries, but I say science only adds to more mysteries”.

THE UNIVERSAL ALGORITHM: BELIEF SYSTEMS

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom”. – Albert Einstein

I have this weird habit of always saying, “Tiwala tol, tiwala”. This justifies that you really do not have to believe in yourself in order to believe in others. What is wrong with not believing in one’s self anyway? For me, I see it as a venue for improving my self. You must contradict yourself sometimes because that gives way for one’s own enlightenment. So the saying, “Paano mong mapagkakatiwalaan ang iba kung ang sarili mo hindi mo mapagkatiwalaan” is just gibberish. What are my other thoughts on faith and trust?

I believe that the events of this world are actually programmed and that these events are programmed by an Omnipotent Being. There also exists a universal algorithm that can explain how all of us are here right now in this world and how everything came to be. This universal algorithm that only the Omnipotent Being knows of is collective and can actually solve all problems and paradoxes regardless of the size of input or the span of time. The possible and the impossible are resolved through this algorithm. This ain’t the String theory that a Japanese researcher is hypothesizing though.

See! The extent of how the church has influenced my actions up until now is extensive. As a person who never really believed in himself, my foremost characteristic still, was I believed in others and most especially I still believe in the existence of a higher being. When I was a kid, I practically memorized almost all of our church songs. I observed default policies set by my church. I was into the circulation. My business was to follow the system of being a Roman Catholic. Of course, this was in accordance to what my parents would advise me. The old saying that really reverberated through my moral consciousness at that time was “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light”. Certainly, a true Roman Catholic must never forget the Ten Commandments of God. Those Ten Commandments definitely became the basis of my everyday actions. The seven deadly sins that were said to be mortal sins were also part of my filter system. Going to church every Sunday of every week and every First Friday of the month was obligatory. At that time I really had no hesitations to the details that were part of the Roman Catholic religion or system. Currently though, I miss some Sunday masses. Now I think that the early stages of my faith were originally intended to establish my faith in God. But now that I am somewhat established as a moral and good person, I think that it is really not the complete attendance in all required church events that matters. Most especially the teachings that I have learned all those years are what are important. How you practice those teachings just shows how much you have learned from what your parish priest is recursively trying to say to you.

There’s another thing about faith. Not all who accept science as explanations to events refuse to believe in a higher being. It does not automatically mean that if you are for science, then you are not for religion. I am a living instance of the kind of person who considers both sides of the coin because both are not mutually exclusive.

TOYS ARE THINGS OF THE PAST: SEARCHING FOR THE GLOBAL OPTIMUM

“College is like a fountain of knowledge - and the students are there to drink”

I programmed myself to filter what was good for me and what was not. I learned that my life-graph involved a process of exhausting the possibilities of every action that I made. The mindset was that you had to think of the repercussions of those exhaustions. If I deciphered that I created a solution to a problem that’d only make things more inefficient and wrong and hence would make me inefficient and wrong as well, then I would have to discard that solution. I would have to find a better solution and repeat the learning process until I optimize and gear myself to be a better me. That was my education for myself and it has taught me how to eliminate most if not all of my common mistakes. If I could not do that then I just simply tried to reduce the disadvantages and setbacks that would hold me from improving myself.

I conceptualized my very own saying, “Tama o Mali. Yun lang yun”. This principle of mine is not exactly a two-valued “true or false” decision. Of course I learned that some things were neither right nor wrong. This was because I felt that some things definitely depended on situations. As a consequence, in a mere span of 20 years of my life I still could not correct and finalize a concrete description of my principle to its final state. It is okay I guess, because there’s plenty of time to modify my principles in life.

Up until now, I am trying to learn how to get along and train myself to just be that ideal me. In any case, what was my ideal self? In the early stages of my life, I just wanted to surpass my father. My father was the one that served as a comparison to me. He was the basis for saying how I have developed. He was my “threshold”. He was the measurement for determining if I was attaining my objectives. Maybe this is the side effect of staying in a paternal type of country like ours. Anyway, at some point of my life the distance between us, I think, narrowed. I’ve just realized that he served as my guide and mentor but he was not really the ultimate basis for my actions. I am still on the journey of finding an optimum version of myself because I observed flaws in my father, not only in him but in other role models of mine as well.

Therefore in my life, I tried to meet different types of people. The current problem is the people I encounter are also limited. My objective by the way is that in order to get closer to my ideal self, the depth or size of my life-graph must be large. The idea is that the more I extend my life-graph, the more people I meet, then the more I get to be closer to what I am trying to be.

I ended up in the University of the Philippines Los Baños. Nothing happened to me in this institution. By nothing, I mean everything. My average sleeping time has reduced to maybe sixty-five percent compared to the first sixteen years of my life. This is due to massive hours of drinking with peers, studying hard for exams, extra-curricular activities, computer-usage and recreational activities! I observed that I became more confident – actually, almost to the point of overconfidence! Not really! But all these started when I came to this college. Here I learned how to gauge myself and bring myself further to exceed my limitations.

Sadly though, ever since I got here, my attachments to my previous influences somehow went out of the picture. It’s a whole new playing field in the university. There are too many inputs that one can get from the different events that are happening – good and bad. But here I can say that my filter system has improved a lot. I have met many people here because I tried to be a member of different types of organizations and affiliations – an academic organization, a socio-cultural music club, and a socio-cultural varsitarian circle. I tried to be part of different groups of people and I tried to interact in sort of a different dimension that really influenced me a lot, just like my family. In connection with this, my principles have greatly changed. It is a testament that a person’s principles are affected by his influences. The diversity of the cultures of those different groups made me conscious of how large life can be. All in all, the drastic changes that happened to me expanded my life-graph to a colossal level.

NEURAL NETWORKS: MY BRAIN AS A PRODUCT OF MASS MEDIA

“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these” - Ovid

Additionally, an unavoidable concept called mass media has made quite an impression on me even at the early stages of my life. I love reading and watching stuff from the television, magazines, and comics. Common comics that tell stories of heroes who get beat up at first then suddenly become uber beings with supernatural powers then win in the end are my favorite type of readings back then. As a result, I think I am an epitome of such. I am. For example, instead of doing my best throughout the first and middle parts of my academic semester, I instead give it all that I got only when the semester ends! Okay, that was not a very good case of being a hero, I admit!

I am a digital games addictus - from role-playing, to fighting, and online games. I just can not live without these. So what are the effects of this type of media to me? The thing is that I realize that sometimes I take my life for granted, that I think of life as a game where I just automatically gain experience and that I sometimes think that I could go back to a previous save point. The sad reality though is that I could not go to a previous state that already happened. Of course, this is not the case at all times. There is a popular quote that can attest to this - “Computer games do not affect us at all, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music”.

Movies play a large role in how I look at life too. For example, I just watched a recent movie called “300”, it’s a Spartan-Persian war movie, and I just wish that I lived in those times instead of now. Sometimes I really imagine myself not living in our times. I have this weird fantasy of chopping heads off with a samurai’s katana. Maybe this is because of the movie called “The Last Samurai” or maybe because of watching ultra-violent and gory Japanese animations or because I play Japanese card games that focus on the time of clan wars, “shogunate”, “bushido”, and “kamikaze” stuff. Yes I recall one thing that I asked myself once. If I were to choose between a life in the time of the Philippine Revolution and a life that’s exactly like the life I am in right now, I would instantly choose the first, to live in a period where your principles would truly be tested, a period where you’d even die for you country.

Frankly speaking, modern days are really just stressful, and not that “cool”. I mean not “cool” in a sense that there are I think less reasons to fight for what you really believe in. I know that today there are also many causes for standing up for what you believe in but the thing is, my comparison of ancient times with modern times is just plain different. People in times of war and grief were really put to the test. Compared to the old ages where life was for sure, something that’s worth fighting for because in those times, numerous events which would actually affect our country and in general many countries were happening. I just wish I had a part in the great battles of their times (Andres Bonifacio generation). Too bad I am not one of maybe the military or terrorists today so I won’t be caught up in those kinds of situations.

Yes compared to now, everyday you’ll just see on the news lots of crimes or immoral things but you can not do a single thing to change those because you already have a specific role that is set for you in your society, well at least in my case. In an indirect way of course we can always still fight for what we believe in. I’ve seen this in the common Filipino in issues regarding competition with other countries. Events like Manny Pacquiao’s fights, Efren Bata Reyes’ championship matches, Romy Garduce’s or Leo Oracion’s Mt. Everest expedition and the SEA Games are examples of such. Another example is the EDSA Revolution. Though I was still a baby at that time, no, I was not even born at the period of the first EDSA Revolution.

BETA TESTING: ERRORS I WISH I SHOULD HAVE DEBUGGED EARLIER

“I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life's experiences, bad and good, make you who you are. Erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake.”

A person’s past determines his future, that is correct. However, we can also look at it the other way around. Planning is essential in life because it is a risk management technique. Of course, human nature says that man is not perfect. It is cliché right? But it’s the truth. However, this does not mean that all events are already set and are just waiting for its turn to happen.

What were my mistakes in life that I want to clear up? One is nationalism. I wish I should have had a deeper appreciation of what our forefathers have given to us in an earlier stage of my life. The problem with me by the way when I was a lot younger was I never really believed that my nationality had the capacity to be different and stand out amongst all other nationalities. This is because maybe of the way I compared the levels of understanding regarding numerous concepts that Filipinos and foreigners have. I thought that Filipinos really can not leave incredible marks on world history. Also when I was a kid, I always would hear things like Filipinos are “gaya-gaya” or just imitators, that Filipinos are too simple-minded, lazy and some other negative impressions on Filipinos. Well, it was my fault that I believed in those. Examples of my being not so nationalistic were that I seldom bought foreign shoes, clothes, magazines and other foreign items and I appreciated foreign movies and books more than I would be pleased of Filipino works. Now, I realize how important nationalism is especially when you’re going to be one of your country’s labor force, when you are already an essential element in shaping your place.

Another one of my big mistakes I think, was that I never really tried to find time to develop my feelings towards possible significant others. I really regret this because now that I am at this point in my life that I feel like something is really missing. I therefore conclude that whenever I encounter matters of the heart, I really would never come up with the right decisions because I think I am still inexperienced in this field. To err is errrr to err. I recall this saying by my friend translated in English, “Why is it that even though your heart is your strongest muscle, it breaks so easily”? Oh well, I still have plenty of time to learn about things like this. Enough said, I really would not like to explain things like this.

Generally, a very big mistake that I do not always notice is that I think I do not have a mistake. This mistake I think is common in all of us. The wrong thing about humans is that we try to secure ourselves even if we know we are wrong. It is sort of a defense mechanism. I think that someone who does not accept this previous statement is overly being protective of himself or herself. So how can we address this problem?

In the early stages of my life I tolerated myself for not-so-serious mistakes that I’ve done. Things changed. Now, whenever I make mistakes, the tolerance level is lower. I have to say to myself several times, “Tanga! Ang tanga ko”, or , “Niloloko ko ba sarili ko, tapos na nga e paano ko pa maitatama?!”, but I know that it was just like a reverse psychology thing. I was forced to think that it was just a way to debug myself. It’s hard to correct yourself especially when you do not know your blind spots (Johari Window). Sometimes, it’s just better to let others criticize and contradict you because that is the avenue for one’s betterment.

No man is an island right? Like the bugs that are not seen by the programmers, there is a need for user and blackbox testing. It really has something to do in one’s own biases in life. You can’t help but to be not user-friendly. As the computer science saying goes, “Every programmer must have had compilation errors at some point in their lives.”

DIVIDE AND CONQUER: ME AGAINST THE COUNTRY AND GENERALLY, THE WORLD

“This is the end”

From the very first time I started to feel like a grown-up, that was when I became a college student here in the University of the Philippines Los Baños, some crucial thoughts were really disturbing me. I felt that there was a need to be decisive; to build essential goals for my family, my relatives, my friends, and certainly for myself. So I thought how would I deal with my life. It was really a matter of personal choice. It was then that I had to face two choices.

The first one was just to be happy and content with what I had. It is sort of a state of not really minding what is going to be there when one confronts the next years of his life. I thought that kind of life would be easier to handle of course and that I would just leave myself hanging on to simplicity, and effortlessness. The principle behind this choice is to just lay back, relax and enjoy life’s ride – bliss as they call it. Yes, the principle is that there is no point in sacrificing your happiness when it does not conform to what your heart dictates. The other choice was to be a busy man, a kind of person who must view his existence as an opportunity (Linderman, Episode 18, Heroes). That kind of life then is in fact complex, full of knots and perplexities yet there is a guarantee of becoming a more dynamic person. But of course, what about this choice’s drawbacks? I think that I would be too engrossed with my work, that I would be less sensitive of the things that are most important to me, that I would be eaten by my country’s goals for me and in general the world’s standards on how a man should live his life.

I feared that would really happen to me. How selfish was I? This is what I make out of all the things that are happening to me. What does our time want to dictate anyway? I think that our time is really pulling the strings on all of us. But like I said, it is more of an issue of personal choice. Now what was I to choose? But then again I still did not know myself quite well at that point. Now that I think about it, the choice was neither of the two! I guess I really had no choice but to combine both of the two choices. I reassured myself that I would take a blissful life and yet be a person that must improve in order to attain my objectives and fulfill all my dreams and expectations. That in doing so, I will honor what God and my family has given to me, I will not waste the immeasurable efforts and blood that have been used for my becoming, and most importantly I will learn to love (yacks!) so that I will not have any hint of regret that I lived in these times. End.

March 27, 2007

Sir Mata:

This is to certify that Santos, Francis Raymond S., 2003-50349 has an exam scheduled on March 27, 2007 7:00 AM for the subject CMSC 161 (Interactive Computer Graphics) that would conflict with his exam in PI 100.