A Short Break... A New Job

It's been half a month of a hiatus from blog posting but those days were such a busy break to attend to offline activities and some online communications.

A job opportunity came at the beginning of the month and letting it pass like the rest that came during the early months of this year isn't a good move. I guess at this time, being on the engineering field again is where my bread and butter is. Well, i guess i just need to re-focus. So, i did grab the chance to send the application and drained a lot of energy studying and reviewing some technical details in preparation for the interview.

Hopefully soon, I'll be traveling back to where i used to work and be maintaining this blog from another spot of the earth. 'Guess that's the best thing about the web...it's world wide. (but hey! isn't that obvious?!)

Did i say i got the job?!... Uhummm...we'll i did.

Just a short note to close the post:
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Chinese "iPhone girl" Internet Fame by a "Beautiful Mistake"

An internet forum member had the very rare chance of knowing who assembled his iPhone 3G (or at least packed the device) from the production plant when he discovered some pictures pre-installed on the phone.

The "Chinese iPhone girl" buzz started when a macrumors.com member, markm49uk, posted 3 pictures of a chinese girl on the iPhone forum last Aug. 2o.

"Not sure if this is or is not the 'norm' but I just received my brand new iPhone here in the UK and once it had been activated on iTunes I found that the home screen (the screen you can personalise with a photo) already had a photo set against it !!!!
It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun - has anyone else found this ?"- markm49uk

In the photos, a cute young chinese girl is wearing pink striped factory uniform, a cap, and white gloves with yellow finger tips. She is smiling and making a hand victory sign (or is it peace?!) as she poses next to an iPhone in what appears to be an assembly line of the 3G phone.

The photos created enough attention on the web that news agencies in the UK and China did efforts to trace the identity of the girl. News reports say the young chinese girl works at a factory run by an Apple contractor, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group in the southern Chinese town of Shenzhen. South China Morning Post on Wednesday quoted Foxconn spokesperson, Liu Kun, confirming that the young girl dubbed as the "iPhone girl" in the photos works at Foxconn.

The spokesperson explained that workers testing the device may have snapped the photos and forgot to delete them. Early speculations were circulating that the girl was fired from her job but a Foxconn spokesman claimed it as baseless and said that such "beautiful mistakes" are unavoidable. The identity of the girl is still undisclosed and Apple has not released comment on the issue.

Will this be another chinese hype? We'll sure know in the coming days as the "iPhone girl" buzz continues to become viral.

(Chinese "iPhone girl" photo from www.macrumors.com)

A Gold Medal for the Philippines in Beijing 2008 Olympics

Finally, the Philippines got a gold medal in the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Filipino Wushu delegate Willy Wang won the gold medal in the wushu competition last Friday. Winning in the competition lifted up the spirits of the Philippine delegates several hours after the last medal hope of the Philippines, Mary Antoinette Rivero, lost to a Croatian fighter in women’s taekwondo’s -67 kg class. At last, the Philippine flag was raised and the national anthem played in the Beijing Olympics.

Though Wushu is classified as a demonstration sport in the Beijing 2008 Olympics and a medal won in this event will not be included in the official medal tally, winning a gold medal in the event indeed brings honor to the Philippines. A gold medal is always a gold medal anyway. A similar victory in an exhibition sport was achieved by Filipino bowler Arianne Cerdeña who won a gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

The other medalists joining Willy Wang are Marianne Mariano and Benjie Rivera who took the bronze in the sanshou events and Mary Jane Estimar earned silver.

In a bid to eventually get the game considered in the official Olympic’s event, 128 athletes from 43 countries who qualified in the last year’s world wushu championships gathered in the Beijing 2008 Olympics. As a demo sport, wushu debuted in the 1936 Berlin Games.

Though the 15-man Philippine contingent will come home without any medal from official sports event in the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a similar fate that happened in 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympics, they deserve the gratitude of the Filipino nation for they did their best and fought a good fight, which I think is most important. Anyhow, a competition has always a two-sided result, winning and having done your best. We could only hope that the Philippine government will truly exert efforts to revitalize its sports training program for the nation to achieve the ever elusive gold medal in the Olympics.

To the Philippine athletes, welcome home champions…Mabuhay kayong lahat!

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