Best Moments of My 2018
When a new year begins, we have no idea if it's going to be a great year like my 2017 or a year shaped like an asshole like my 2016. 2018 was no different. I was in my second term of my masters degree and I was beginning my solo thesis. That was all I could reliably know, so it was all in God's good graces that this unassuming year became hands down the greatest year of my life so far.
I couldn't let this year end without highlighting my favorite moments from the year. This is in approximately from least epic to most epic order, but I moved some stuff around so I can tell sort of a story. Without further ado, let's begin.
Binging Inside No. 9
2018 holds the record for most shows binged by me, so it's only right that I start this list with my binging of this genius show from Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. Seriously, this show is absolute genius and I absolutely recommend it.
I do put this moment on here mainly because of one cute little thing that happened on Twitter. I made a positive tweet about the show and then this happened.
As an aspiring writer, Reece Shearsmith is one of my heroes after watching this show. To think there was one moment in time when he acknowledged my existence. I am very happy.
CPL Internal Contest
Ever since 2016, I have been a member of the CCS Programming League or CPL in De La Salle University - Manila. Basically we're the programming varsity of the school. After particular complications, CPL was dead for a while, before a graduating member, teammates of my friends Marc San Pedro and Johan Tan, saw the results of my term break boredom. Long story short, I solved 100 problems in 10 days and he was so impressed, he endorsed me to replace him in Marc and Johan's team.
In 2017, we were rejuvenated. Well, Marc didn't take masters so he was replaced by the junior batch's genius Kevin Chan. We had two other teams, Blackjack and Panic, and it was a good time for CPL. You see, Marc became a coach around this time and was grooming the league for a brighter future.
This year, we held a contest to recruit freshmen into the league. After one term of training, our coaches, Marc, Arturo Caronongan, and Duke Delos Santos, decided to hold an internal contest. Basically, the senior members would be paired with one or two new members. The senior member can't touch the keyboard until the last 30 minutes.
This was where I met Carlos Ngo. Long story short, we won the contest and as far as I'm concerned, the victory inspired Carlos enough to the point that Marc considered including him for the 2018 ICPC on December. You see Marc was competing too since he was going to start his masters, so he needed two teammates. Well, one bad thing that happened this year was that I was delayed due to thesis, but it wasn't all that bad, since that meant I had one last ICPC.
Screenwriting Palooza
In 2018, I subscribed to Masterclass and took a bunch of classes. One of those, I took with my friend Jonah Syfu. It was Aaron Sorkin teaches screenwriting. It was absolutely inspiring, to the point where I decided to write some new screenplays. I ended up writing two short screenplays.
The first was entitled "Touched by an Angel", which was about a man who suffered a rough breakup and has been letting his life waste away until one day he meets a mysterious woman who entrances him deeply, but he soon finds out the woman is hiding a dark secret. If you want to read it, the link is here: Touched by an Angel v6
The second screenplay was called "Save Me" and is about a man who lost his brother a few years back in a situation he feels was easily avoidable. Ever since he has been blaming himself for the incident and has resolved to save his loved ones as much as possible, to the point where it has become an unhealthy obsession. After his workplace friend almost dies and his girlfriend gets mugged, he believes he has failed, but then receives a mysterious email telling him someone close to him needs saving. He clicks the link and is zapped three days prior, where he is thrust into a difficult mission to save this mysterious mark. You can read it here.
I then took Shonda Rhimes' class on writing for television. Then I had a crazy idea. I'll actually copy paste the entire idea post here.
Passing Proposal Defense
I mentioned I was starting my solo thesis. I actually struggled with finding a topic until I had a spark of inspiration. I'm part of this research lab named COMET headed currently by Mr. Jordan Deja. I approached him with my idea and he took me as advisee.
In a nutshell, my research is about creating an agent that can identify if a website interface is well designed or not. After two terms of struggle I was able to defend my thesis in a proposal defense with a pretty intense panel. Thankfully, I passed with some fairly major revisions, but I'm trying my best to finish my thesis by next term. Of course this was a milestone for my masters degree. I couldn't leave this moment out of this list.
Avengers: Infinity War and Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Oops. Spoiler Alert. These are my top 2 movies of the year. Watching them multiple times in the theater was a blast. These movies breathed new life into me as a film viewer because they mark me being absolutely invested in characters again after quite a long time. Black Panther was actually quite disappointing for me so when I saw IW, the last time I was crazily invested in characters was either Thor: Ragnarok or Coco. Infinity War's ending absolutely floored me and had me hyped for the next Avengers movie, now known as Endgame. The crowd I was with during my first IMAX screening was insane. They were cheering throughout but my absolute favorite moment was when Thor enters Wakanda. We all went absolutely ballistic at that grand entrance and it might be my favorite moment at the theaters in a long time.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout was similar but different at the same time. The crowd I was with during my first screening was also quite fun. They were reacting quite violently to the tense scenes. Two in particular stick out as particularly fun. One was when Ethan was chasing Walker through the rooftops and he did that epic jump across two rooftops. The second was near the end when Ethan was trying to climb onto a helicopter and proceeds to plummet a few feet down, before catching on to a rope. Fallout was absolutely tense and is my pick for the best movie of 2018. Yes, all of you have to watch it now. That's a requirement to complete your 2018 experience. Chop chop. :D
Binge Moments: American Vandal, The Good Place, and Bojack Horseman
Around November, I kinda had a nervous breakdown and put my thesis on the backburner to focus on CPL and myself for a while. As a result, I spent hours on Netflix binging these three fantastic shows. (Special mention to Haunting of Hill House, which was also good, but it didn't stick the ending so I didn't want to put it on here)
American Vandal is a mockumentary parody of true crime documentaries about someone who draws dicks on faculty cars in a school's parking lot. They begin to investigate the crime to determine #WhoDidTheDicks . The story is pretty standard, but the presentation is what really sells this show for me. Being a pastiche of true crime documentaries, they treat this prank with utmost seriousness and the meticulousness with which they investigate this crime, especially in episode 5 of season 1, is especially amusing. Season 2 is also a lot of fun, but I think S1 is better, but don't take my word as gospel. Almost everyone I showed this show to thinks Season 2 is better. I and my friend Roey are the only ones in my circle who think S1 is superior.
The Good Place is the newest and possibly best offering from Michael Schur, writer on The Office and co-creator of Parks and Rec and Brooklyn Nine Nine. I love those three shows, but on a story level, it is possible that The Good Place is his best work (even though P&R is still my favorite). Let me explain. The Good Place follows Eleanor Shellstrop (played by Kristen Bell) who ends up in the afterlife after dying a terrible death. She is placed into a neighborhood in The Good Place where Michael (played by Ted Danson), the neighborhood architect, commends her on her work as a death row lawyer and her efforts in relief operations in Africa. When left alone with her afterlife soulmate, she confesses that she didn't do any of those things and that she is a terrible person and that someone has made a mistake putting her in The Good Place. Thus begins a ride of moral quandaries and basically a show that perfectly integrates amazing character work and character development, moral philosophy related thematic content, and hilarious comedy. It is the smartest sitcom I have ever seen in terms of thematic depth, because let's face it, as good as Arrested Development or Parks and Rec are, they are comedies first and stories after. The Good Place manages to be a great story and a great comedy both first at the same time and that is why you should watch it. P.S. Jason Mendoza is God's gift to humanity.
The best show of the three, however, is Bojack Horseman. I think this show is best left unspoiled, but all I can say is, Episode 1-5 of Season 1 are pretty meh. Episode 6 is where it starts to get good and Episode 8 is the point where it starts to become great. Season 2 vastly improves upon Season 1. Every season is better than the last. Finally, all the Episode 11s will mess with you like Game of Thrones Episode 9s. Just trust me when I say, this might be one of the greatest dramas on television, because it's not afraid to make you laugh five seconds before it absolutely crushes you and to have the audience's emotions switch just like that on a dime is masterful writing and this show does that on an episodic basis.
ICPC Asia Singapore Regional Preliminary Contest
So after the internal contest of CPL, Marc was looking for a potential teammate for us, since I got delayed. Then we saw Carlos Ngo get 100 problems solved on UVA. So during an event that will appear later on this list, we asked him if he wanted to go with us to Singapore to compete and he was very willing. I asked him if he could come with me on biweekly trainings and he said yes.
So after a month, the preliminary contest happened. Carlos, Blaise, Josh, and I crashed at Josh's place the night before because school was closed on the day of the prelims and we wanted to wake up together. Marc picked us up and we went to Art's house to do the prelims.
After three hours, we were able to solve around 3 problems. Thirty more minutes and I had a eureka moment with Beehouse Perimeter and when Marc submitted it, I said something that Art Caronongan deems the history making moment of the day and has never allowed either of us to live down ever since. Then another eureka moment happened in the last hour when we were able to solve Grid Game. We ended up the top PH team and this meant one thing: we were going to Singapore.
COMET Teambuilding
The attendance for COMET's teambuilding was lower than last year, but that didn't mean it was less fun. When we got there, we played with the karaoke machine for a while before we had some games. Paulo Delgado thought of this genius game where he made scripts for classic Disney movies but some key parts were replaced by words from a sheet we filled out. Our movie was Beauty and the Beast. In our sheet, one item was labelled "A Book" so I wrote down "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein. So in the script, it said "Belle walks through the town carrying her book, 'Introduction to Algorithms' by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein.".
Afterwards we had dinner and then we had a heart to heart talk. I can't talk about that here since it's confidential but it was nice. Then I challenged Blaise to FFTCG and we just played for a while. At the unholy hours of the night, Blaise and I played chess and he resigned saying he was too fucking tired to think after I pinned his queen to his king with a bishop.
The rest of the night was spent on the karaoke machine. It was pretty fun, especially when Luis Lopez and I got a 100 on "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen.
The next day, we were eating pizza and ice cream and some of us decided to put ice cream on pizza. It was not that bad. I rate 6/10.
Overall, really fun day.
CP3 Binge
Marc ordered Steven Halim and Felix Halim's "Competitive Programming 3" early this year and did a heavy grind on UVA from 400-ish problems to about 650+ problems. I decided to order with some other CPL members and I got my copy on July 29, 2018. I began grinding on UVA, starting at about 230 problems and ending up around 708 problems by September 26, when I finished all the starred problems in the book. I have since read the book three times cover to cover and I can safely say it has made me an infinitely better programmer. In my opinion, the book is not only for contestants of ICPC and IOI, but rather for any programmer who wants to improve their algorithm proficiency. Being an effective algorithmist begins with toy problems like the ones in UVA. Then you start to see real world problems and you can begin to think "Ya know? That sounds like this problem I solved on UVA." and you use that knowledge to end up with an efficient solution. So yeah, if you want to be a much better coder, insert shameless plug for CP3 here.
Reunion at Greenbelt
So I went to Singapore in December, which I'll be talking about more later on. On my last day there, I got added to a group chat that I thought was just started that week talking about a meetup the Sunday after. I skimmed through the group chat and I discovered I had been inadvertently forgotten for about six or so months. Ouch. But I ignored it because I'm the kind of person that eventually gravitates toward zen these days and I said I was going.
I saw a lot of my college friends again that day.
We talked about our lives for about 3 hours, drinking beer and eating good food.
Then we went to Cold Stone and got some ice cream and talked for 2 more hours.
There was a particularly hilarious bit where this woman was yelling quite
violently at these guards for some reason we couldn't discern. Marc then
noticed the guy holding up the menu at Cold Stone dancing to some cheery af
music while looking at the awkward scene. We couldn't stop laughing for about
three minutes.
Binging Sense8
I separate two shows from my binge entry for this blog because they had a much more profound impact on me emotionally. If you spent any time around me at all this year, you should know which is the other show. As for this one, well let me paint a picture for you.
Sense8 is a Netflix Original about eight people who become connected one day. Connected how? Well for starters they can "visit" other sensates. This means they appear to the other person as if they were in the same location but only to them. They can be seen and felt and heard. They can feel the environment around them. But the highlight of this connection is when they "share", which can only be done within their cluster (the eight of them). Basically, they can lend a skill to another member of the cluster, which looks onscreen like them taking the other person's place, but to everyone else, it's the person doing it. But this is where it gets fun. Each person has a special ability. Will can pick locks and fight and do detective work. Nomi is a hacker. Kala is a chemist. Wolfgang can fight and handle weapons. Sun is a kickboxer. Capheus is a driver. Lito is an actor. Riley is... well... the entire reason I picked up this show because Tuppence Middleton is cute af. So together, they're a Swiss army knife of skills.
The show runs like eight parallel stories, one for each sensate. The stories are mainly disconnected, but what connects them is the characters. Every now and then they lend their skills across stories. Sometimes, however, stories collide and merge. It's really fun to see unfold.
But why do I love this show so much? One big reason is the diversity of the cast. Character-wise, we have two from the US, one from Iceland, one from India, one from Germany, one from South Korea, one from Kenya, and one from Mexico. Their cultures are all different and the eight characters are very different. Their stories start out as stereotypical examples of movies from their country. Kala's story is a Bollywood movie. Lito's is a telenovela. Wolfgang's is a crime thriller. But the side-characters in each story make it more unique and eventually, the stories twist into something else.
Also, from all the shows I have seen, this show has the best LGBT representation I have ever seen in any show. This made me especially happy, being queer myself (coming out to my friends as bi being another amazing part of my 2018). It doesn't force it down your throat. There are a grand total of four LGBT characters in this cast of about 30 people, so it's still a minority, but the way their stories are handled are amazing and inclusive and revolutionary and heartwarming.
I cannot rave enough about how warm this show made me feel. I felt I was with family while watching. I felt I was with the sensates as I watched them struggle through their storylines.
As you might know, Sense8 got cancelled after Season 2, but the fans rioted enough for Netflix to give them a grand 2.5 hour finale. So how does the finale hold up? Well, it is pure fanfiction. But I am such a hardcore fan of this show, that a 2.5 hour fanfiction wrap-up was exactly what I needed. Every character got a chance to shine and the last 30 minutes of the finale was just a perfect send-off to these amazing characters. I love every single one of them to death and I cannot recommend this show enough. Sense8 is my second favorite show I discovered this year, but hold your horses, because we have one more show that topped this one.
Revisiting Persona With Roey
Do you know what my favorite game franchise is? Well it's Final Fantasy. But my second favorite is definitely Persona. Besides, my actual favorite game of all time is Persona 5. So when Roey, my friend since high school, was having a bad week, he asked if we could hang out. I made him play Persona and he was hooked.
We ended up going through Persona 5 and eventually, Persona 4. I then told him to try out Final Fantasy. Yes the original game from 1987... well, the PSP remake, which he also liked. He was less happy when I made him try Final Fantasy IV (again, the PSP remake), not because of the gameplay, which he loved, but the story... he didn't care for that much (I beg to differ :D).
We did this for about two months. It was two of the best months of the year, and it was a great way to spend time with one of my best friends before he went to law school.
Final Fantasy Trading Card Game
If you followed my old secret blog, you should know I was a casual player of Weiss Schwarz back in 2015. I didn't have much money through but to be honest, that game was really fair to cheap decks, at least back in 2015. I have no knowledge of the current meta.
In May of this year, my friend Jonah Syfu told me that he and my other friend, Ken Hosoya, bought this bundle of FFTCG trial decks and singles. I tried my hand at the game and bought my own FFVII trial deck that day. I was pretty bad at it but I wanted to practice so the day after, I bought an FFIX trial deck and some boosters and wrangled together two decks I could playtest against each other.
Syfu and I would have intense games. At this point he was rocking an FFXIII themed Ice/Lightning deck. Either of my two decks can hold a fun game against his deck. He won most of the time but it wasn't a hopeless fight. After a while, I wanted to try a non-trial deck based deck. I looked at the top decks in tournaments and noticed Mono Ice was a popular choice so I built a deck based around my favorite game in the series: Final Fantasy VIII. It was a Squall/Laguna build with Rinoa support. I used it to place 3rd in a tournament at our card shop and was very happy. I started losing games though so I went for a more meta build, this time using my second favorite game, Final Fantasy VI, as an engine. This deck was a Locke/Celes-centric build. I had a high lose count with the deck, but when I tried it at a tournament at Neutral Grounds Glorietta, I ended up in the top half.
Around the day of the preliminary contest for ICPC Singapore, Syfu, AJ, Johan and I were playing at the card shop when Blaise dropped by tagging Carlos along with him. He wanted me to teach him, while Blaise played with Jonah and AJ. I had no extra decks at the time since I left my VII and IX decks at home or stripped them for Title Format, so I borrowed Syfu's Water deck. It was the greatest deck I have ever played in my life. I instantly looked for a build of Mono Water that I felt was my style, since Syfu and I had different play styles. As a result, my build was very different from his. Thus, my Mono Water was born. AJ and I had pretty fair fights with it, when my Mono Ice would just die to his decks. Even Syfu was pretty impressed since he was using this fun Golbez deck at the time. My Mono Ice couldn't deal with that deck at all. It spit out Forwards like there was no tomorrow. My Mono Water, however, was pretty even with it. It wasn't a sweep all the time, but it was miles better than my Mono Ice. I placed 2nd in a tourney with it.
Overall, I'm glad I joined this community. Meeting the other players and playing in tournaments has been a great part of my 2018.
Binging Black Mirror
For about five years prior to this one, my favorite show had been Breaking Bad. I just could not find any other show that had emotionally manipulated me as effectively as that one. LOST and Game of Thrones come close. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Doctor Who come super duper close. None of them succeeded.
Each month, there's usually buzz on Facebook or YouTube about a new Netflix release. Last January, it was this little show called Black Mirror. It was described as an anthology show: a new story each episode. It was a modern day Twilight Zone. I thought, "Sounds cool. Let's see." One comment had me worried though: "If you like Westworld, you'll like Black Mirror." I disliked Westworld so does that means I won't like Black Mirror? Well, in discrete structures class, I learned that denying the premise of an inference does not mean denying the conclusion. So I took my mom to see the first episode.
If my mom was any less awesome, and if you know anything about Black Mirror, you would know that would be a GRAVE mistake. Yes, this is me warning you to be careful who you watch episode one of Black Mirror with. Anyway, I was expecting her to be disgusted, but she immediately said "More!" So that weekend we binged all four seasons. It was hard. It was the single hardest binge I have ever experienced, but in a good way. Because ladies and gentlemen, Black Mirror is the single most emotionally affecting show I have ever seen. What makes it even more impressive in my opinion is that, take Breaking Bad, for example. That show had 5 seasons to build up Ozymandias, its greatest episode. When I watch Ozymandias, I was wrecked. But that emotional response does not even hold a candle to how fucked up I was after watching White Christmas, and Black Mirror built up that resolution and reaction in 74 minutes. White Christmas fucked me up so hard, that I had to stop for a few hours. I had seen The Human Centipede and all the Saw films, but none of those hold a candle to Black Mirror's ability to fuck you up, because it doesn't use shock value to arouse a reaction. It uses legitimate existential dread. Intelligent existential dread. And it did this almost every episode.
The highlight episode has to be San Junipero. I went from happy to sad to absolutely devastated to ecstatically happy in the span of an hour. San Junipero is the greatest episode of television I have ever seen. Don't start with it though. If you want to start, I recommend Nosedive or USS Callister.
Black Mirror is my new favorite show. It did to me what Breaking Bad did in its entire run, almost every episode. It had me emotionally invested almost every episode. It is amazing, and it set the tone for my 2018.
Pray for the Wicked Tour 2018
I don't go to concerts. I couldn't afford them before. Now that I had money to spare, however, I was able to go to one concert this year. (If I had to pick a second one to go to, it would have been Paramore, but we all know how hard it was to get tickets for that.) Panic! at the Disco is my favorite band, probably, so it wasn't a difficult decision for me to make to end up going to the concert. My good friend Alds Hade also bought VIP Standing tickets, as well as Marc. The three of us were supposedly going together.
Marc's new job had to send him to South Korea for a few weeks though, which coincided with the concert. Thus, he gave the tickets to another good friend of mine, Blaise Cruz. So it was me, Alds, and Blaise who were going to the concert.
So we arrived at MOA Arena and stood in line for about three hours. We went in and took some photos. Then IV of Spades did their opening act, which was great.
Finally, there was a ten minute countdown to the start of the concert. After the longest ten minutes of my life, the music started up, and the opening notes of (Fuck a) Silver Lining came up. AND THEN BRENDON FUCKING URIE ENTERED THE STAGE. It was surreal. I was a few meters away from Brendon Urie. We sang along to every song. I was having an extraordinarily good time.
Two hours later, the show ended, and my legs wanted to die for standing for five hours, but it was worth it. Totally worth it. That was one of the most amazing nights of my life.
CPL Teambuilding
Marc talked to our Vice Dean Dr. Nelson Marcos, about a teambuilding for CPL. He decided to get all his orgs: SPRINT, PTS, and CPL, and have one teambuilding for both of them. I was iffy at first, since I didn't know most of the new SPRINT people, and I just wanted to spend quality time with my CPL family, but I soon discovered it wouldn't matter.
The day came and I entered our special CPL van. Duke was late so we waited for them. Marc and Blaise didn't tell me to bring my FFTCG deck, so they were playing while I was thinking of Convex Hull. Duke arrived and we were off.
We spent most of the van ride singing and talking about programming problems and Blaise complained about being dizzy because we were driving on a winding road later on.
We got there and I had to be grouped with some random SPRINT/PTS people for the first activity, which was fine because I was an extrovert anyway and I didn't mind interacting with people I didn't know too well as long as they weren't shy about it, which these people weren't. We then went to the obstacle course. Our team leader was Duke, while the opposition was led by Art. Our team was pretty sabaw for most of the challenges. One in particular had a sort of spider-web with bells attached. Each hole could contain one leg/foot. We had to step from one side of the web to the other without ringing any bells. SIXTEEN OF US. Holding hands. Not letting go. So we rang a lot of bells and to mask the sound, we'd make a noise. My noise of choice was Tidus' laugh from FFX.
After all this, we were up for rappelling. That was fun. Carlos was deathly scared of heights but he survived. Then we ziplined to the pool. The pool was where it was announced that Art's team had the best time. Oh well, papel. We had a fun time at the pool.
We took a shower and had dinner. SPRINT did their retrospective, which I watched. Blaise and Marc didn't though... because they were playing FFTCG. I also asked Doc Mac if I could be a coach for CPL. He told me to send my resume. Alrighty then. (I would be approved later on.)
Nighttime came and we had a campfire. There was a game based on Riff-Off from Pitch Perfect. Despite me not liking Pitch Perfect in any capacity, I do like Riff-Offs. However, the first version we played during this TBA had too many rules, so we didn't enjoy it that much. The second version felt more like the movie and was pretty fun.
Afterwards, we recruited Carlos for Singapore and he said yes to the contest and biweekly trainings. We were all set.
In the deep recesses of the night, everyone was at the central hall. Some were playing tabletop games. Some were just talking. Duke, Art, Marc, and Blaise were in one table. Guess what Marc and Blaise were doing.
I suggested we play Coup. I didn't have a set though, but we made due with spare FFTCG commons I had in my bag. Can I just say, we had the greatest games of coup ever played in history? Our meta was people spamming Ambassador claims, which is unusual because usually people spam Duke claims.
The next day, we had breakfast and then went home. We talked about the future of CPL and overall just had a great time. I spent over 24 hours with Marc, Duke, Blaise, and Art and became much closer to them. It was the seventh best day of the year, because the other six days go to my final moment.
CPL Goes to Singapore 2018
Starting September, we began training rigorously for Singapore after qualifying for the regional contest. We'd train every Friday officially, and I'd hold unofficial biweekly sessions. In total, that's 7 hours of training a week for 12 weeks. Doing some quick maths, we clocked in around 84 hours of training, and this was only in school. Of course some of us would practice outside sessions. If you think about 84 hours, that's a little bit longer than the entire runtime of the TV show LOST. It's longer than all the Bond films combined. So I'm proud to see our team's dedication, especially Carlos Ngo, who was there for every single session without fail.
I went to school on Monday, December 10, 2018, planning to sleep over at Josh's with Blaise, Jasper, and Carlos to make sure we make it to the airport on time. Josh's place was unavailable though and school was closing at 2 PM and we were all sleep deprived (I slept at 5 AM and woke at 10 AM), so we even considered booking a SOGO room (but I raised the concern of the beds being impure) and an AirBnB near NAIA. Eventually, Blaise and Josh just wanted to get some sleep before planning so we decided to meet at 6PM at Archers. Josh didn't show up and Blaise and I had dinner then we decided to stay at the unilounge until 6 AM. We spent all night working. I was watching Kevin Atienza talk about combinatorics and computational geometry (or Doctor Who videos, sure). Blaise was doing his ADVSTAT case study.
Around 5 AM, Blaise was asleep, and I was solving UVA problems. I woke him up at 6 AM and we got ready at his condo. We met Carlos and Josh at Gox lobby and went for some breakfast. We made some prof puns along the way. I won't share them because there are corny as all hell. They are so corny, each joke we made sterilized the testicles of some man in the world. They were so corny, each joke we made halved the remaining years of the Earth. They were so corny... you get it.
We went back to the lobby to meet Jasper and Duke. Also, I kept getting thrown off because Blaise kept calling Jasper "Jappy" which is the name of my old friend Clarisse's twin brother. It's like if Tony from The Incredibles had a friend who called his other friend "Dash". Bad analogy? Okay...
Boarding the plane was painless. Over lunch... at Tapa King because airport food is expensive af, we made more puns. Duke was particularly mad at this one:
Me: "Ano ang favorite Gospel ni Marc?"
Duke: "It's right there!"
Me: "Matthew"
Duke: *facepalm*
On the plane, Carlos, ever the prodigy, was solving UVA problems which he downloaded in advance. I discussed some UVA problems with Marc. Art arranged this adorable shit with my companion and his companion:
Clarisse said "sayang ang plane tickets :(". Art got offended by that (for good reason. I, however, as previously mentioned, gravitated towards zen.) We arrived at Changi Airport and met up with Yel, who arranged a vehicle for us to ride towards Chinatown, where our hostel was. It was pretty bad, but the beds were cozy enough. Can I just say it took us way too long to check in?
The next day was the registration for the contest. Our teams were accompanied by two nice companions named Sonia and Permas (if you're reading this, hello! you guys are awesome!). We then were mindblown having existed in the same room as STEVEN HALIM, who was speaking in the lecture hall. Then the sponsors talked. Then we were off to the practice round.
Our team (Team Convex Hull), did really well during the practice round. We were the top PH team (again). Blackjack was pretty good. We were shocked Panic didn't solve anything, but it was partly our fault for not training in contest environment, because the focused on solving a time waster problem instead of ordering the problem set first. When we got back to Kent Ridge station, we tasted some delicious as fuck Laksa. It was so good, I have lost all sense of taste unless I am specifically eating that quality of Laksa. Then we went back to our hostel and did a retrospective of the contest. We gave some last minute tips for the next day and we were off.
The contest itself was pretty rough. We only solved 4 problems. Blackjack solved 3. Panic solved 2. My team was 36th overall out of 50, which was bottom half. It was still a good learning experience.
Oh, Duke sent us this picture of a gigantic dick in the contest venue. Look.
To explain: each problem is assigned a letter from A to L. If you solve a problem, you get its respective colored balloon. If you're the first to solve a problem, you get a golden letter balloon. So yeah, That team on the bottom left with a guy's face covered by a balloon? That's us. And behind us? WAS A BIG DICK. :D
We had some exploring time. I bought some souvenirs from the campus bookstore. We took this precious photo:
And then it was awarding time. The final hour's results were revealed with a live simulation of the submissions, which was really fun. Afterwards we got our copies of CP3 signed by Steven Halim and Felix Halim. Art and Blaise even got their shirts signed.
We did another retrospective and then went home. Blaise, Jasper, Duke, and Art went to Serangoon to play at the Virtualand arcade.
The next day was Sentosa day. I went with Krizia, Jade, Jolene, Carlos, Blaise, Jasper, Marc, and Duke. We all went biking except for Duke and Marc who went to the aquarium. Carlos actually didn't know how to bike. We were trying to teach him, but he ended up saying he was gonna figure it out himself. After one hour, he got the hang of it, so now the lucky man can tell his children "You know, kids. I learned how to bike in SINGAPORE!"
Afterwards, Duke and Marc went back to the hostel because they had places to go. I went with the others to the cable car. Apparently, Carlos was afraid of heights, so it was even more fun. Blaise, I think, called him "Cable Carlos". Hehe.
We actually took a detour at Imbiah Station to watch the Pikachu Parade, and then we bought some souvenirs. We went back to the cable car, this time to Mount Faber. At the top, Blaise googled whether there has been any deaths on Singaporean cable cars recently. The last was in 1994 apparently, but that didn't reduce Carlos' anxiety. We made it to Mount Faber and had ten minutes to take photos before the last cable car back to HarbourFront. We took it and went to the station, but first, we went for KFC.
I treated Carlos to some Fuji Apple FroYo, claiming it was Jesus congratulating him on a good job in the contest (SINCE HE CODED CONVEX HULL). Then we went back to Chinatown, but Blaise and Jasper accompanied me to Serangoon to get the key from Duke (since the rooms only had one key each). We arrived at the hostel and just chilled. We called Ms. Courtney to say hi.
The next day was technically our last day since our flight was at 3AM the next day, so we'd have to be at Changi at 11 PM. We left our stuff at a luggage storage inn in Little India and then went to Rochor station to go to Bugis. We had more Laksa. (I could taste this because it might have been better than the Kent Ridge laksa.) Then Art met us to take us to the escape room we were gonna try out.
Man... I thought Mystery Manila liked theatrics. The escape room we did in SG was pretty epic. I won't go into much detail here since it might spoil it for those of you who want to try the escape rooms near Bugis station. We solved it with Art's expertise guiding us.
We then went to shop in Bugis. I didn't originally plan on getting Clarisse a souvenir, but I saw these R2-D2 chopsticks that I couldn't leave Bugis without getting for her. I got my mom a Dany Targaryen Funko Pop figure. Then we went to Raffles Plaza to walk to Merlion Park.
Well, we were there. (Note: Marc was in Somerset playing in an FFTCG tourney.) We took photos. Since Marc wasn't there, Art said whoever photoshops him best wins a free escape room. The only one who tried was Jasper, so congrats? Here's his photo.
Jasper and I stayed behind to eat some salted egg crab and frappes at Merlion Park, while everyone else went to Bugis to eat. They changed their minds though. We met up at Somerset and had dinner there. Then we took the train to Dhoby Ghaut then Little India then Rochor to get our luggage, then back to Bugis then we had to decide. For your reference, here's the MRT map of Singapore.
That part where blue ang green intersect near the middle: that's Bugis. We could take the GREEN line eastward to get to Tanah Merah then to Changi. Or Duke suggests we go WHEEEEEE and take the longer BLUE line around to Expo. Nobody wanted WHEEEE but Duke, so we went green.
We got to the airport and checked in our luggage. Josh asked if he could check in his knapsack with Duke's check in. They weighed it and everything checked out so they were good. I went for a frappucino at Starbucks, which tasted exactly the same as in the PH. The others went for McDonald's. Marc bought Dasani water. Prior to today, he made a joke that "Dasani" is what you say when you see a knee. ("DA SA KNEE!") Anyway, Marc was drinking his precious Dasani water when Jasper started laughing like a jackass and pointed at Marc's knee. Marc then produced a spittake worthy of the Merlion in the middle of Changi Airport and we all started laughing... well they did. All Duke and I saw was Marc imitating the Merlion without any context so theoretically, we should still have been laughing but for no reasonable reason.
We went through immigration, which was automated. It turns out, however, that Josh left his passport in his knapsack, which you may remember, he checked in with Duke's luggage. It's a good thing it was raining though, because our 3:30 flight got delayed to 4:20 AM. Josh and Duke resolved the issue at 3:40 AM. We would have missed the flight.
We flew back. Everyone slept while Carlos played Smash Bros on a Switch. Day 6 was uneventful. We just arrived at the airport, got our luggage, and parted ways.
December 10 to 16 was the best week of my life so far. The Greenbelt Reunion was actually at the night of the 16th, so it was even more of a great capper to the week.
Overall, 2018 has been the best year of my life so far. I sincerely hope you too had a great year and regardless if you did or didn't, I hope 2019 grants you much happiness. Happy New Year, everyone!
I couldn't let this year end without highlighting my favorite moments from the year. This is in approximately from least epic to most epic order, but I moved some stuff around so I can tell sort of a story. Without further ado, let's begin.
Binging Inside No. 9
2018 holds the record for most shows binged by me, so it's only right that I start this list with my binging of this genius show from Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. Seriously, this show is absolute genius and I absolutely recommend it.
I do put this moment on here mainly because of one cute little thing that happened on Twitter. I made a positive tweet about the show and then this happened.
CPL Internal Contest
Ever since 2016, I have been a member of the CCS Programming League or CPL in De La Salle University - Manila. Basically we're the programming varsity of the school. After particular complications, CPL was dead for a while, before a graduating member, teammates of my friends Marc San Pedro and Johan Tan, saw the results of my term break boredom. Long story short, I solved 100 problems in 10 days and he was so impressed, he endorsed me to replace him in Marc and Johan's team.
In 2017, we were rejuvenated. Well, Marc didn't take masters so he was replaced by the junior batch's genius Kevin Chan. We had two other teams, Blackjack and Panic, and it was a good time for CPL. You see, Marc became a coach around this time and was grooming the league for a brighter future.
This year, we held a contest to recruit freshmen into the league. After one term of training, our coaches, Marc, Arturo Caronongan, and Duke Delos Santos, decided to hold an internal contest. Basically, the senior members would be paired with one or two new members. The senior member can't touch the keyboard until the last 30 minutes.
This was where I met Carlos Ngo. Long story short, we won the contest and as far as I'm concerned, the victory inspired Carlos enough to the point that Marc considered including him for the 2018 ICPC on December. You see Marc was competing too since he was going to start his masters, so he needed two teammates. Well, one bad thing that happened this year was that I was delayed due to thesis, but it wasn't all that bad, since that meant I had one last ICPC.
Screenwriting Palooza
In 2018, I subscribed to Masterclass and took a bunch of classes. One of those, I took with my friend Jonah Syfu. It was Aaron Sorkin teaches screenwriting. It was absolutely inspiring, to the point where I decided to write some new screenplays. I ended up writing two short screenplays.
The first was entitled "Touched by an Angel", which was about a man who suffered a rough breakup and has been letting his life waste away until one day he meets a mysterious woman who entrances him deeply, but he soon finds out the woman is hiding a dark secret. If you want to read it, the link is here: Touched by an Angel v6
The second screenplay was called "Save Me" and is about a man who lost his brother a few years back in a situation he feels was easily avoidable. Ever since he has been blaming himself for the incident and has resolved to save his loved ones as much as possible, to the point where it has become an unhealthy obsession. After his workplace friend almost dies and his girlfriend gets mugged, he believes he has failed, but then receives a mysterious email telling him someone close to him needs saving. He clicks the link and is zapped three days prior, where he is thrust into a difficult mission to save this mysterious mark. You can read it here.
I then took Shonda Rhimes' class on writing for television. Then I had a crazy idea. I'll actually copy paste the entire idea post here.
Anyway, I wrote a pilot but it was so bad that I don't want to share it. But yeah, this was a fun period of time.
[CRAZY STUPID TV SHOW NOBODY WOULD WATCH BUT MAYBE NOT PITCH TIME]Note: If I tagged you, that means I think your opinions would be either fun or amusingly harsh. Either way, I hope you enjoy the ravings of an inspired and bored individual. :DOkay, I was goofing around at COMET with Marc San Pedro, Josh Cruzada, and Kevin Chan (Jan Christian Blaise Cruz went in a bit later) while Giselle Nodalo was reading my new screenplay. Josh and I just spent like 2 hours discussing it and making it better.Well, Josh, Marc, and Kevin were there and I was struck with the best/worst idea ever.WHY DON'T WE MAKE A SHOW ABOUT CPL(CCS Programming League)?Think about it like a CS version of House, M.D. Every episode, a case is presented as a programming problem. This will be done in a highly stylized way by resident expy of House: Marc. His team tries to solve it, proposing multiple ideas, possible approaches, naive, brute-force, sophisticated, what have you. At the end, Marc himself, with the momentum of the collective brain juices of the team, shows how it's done. Arturo Caronongan is here too. He could be the Wilson to Marc's House or even vice versa. The point is they're a team.BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Why rip off just one show when we could rip off ANOTHER SHOW?This is half House, half fucking Glee. Think about it. Ensemble cast. We have the seniors kicking ass at programming contests. We have the juniors being the main cast learning to be better. We have the frosh and sophies slowly climbing up the ranks. Everyone has their own story, personality, dreams, passions, and lives. All are intertwined in the setting.So the A Plot of each episode is basically the problem. The B plot is some drama with Marc, or maybe Kevin, or maybe Josh. Who knows. With a large enough cast, we could have a lot.BUT WAIT. IT GETS BETTERWhat if, and this is just a crazy addendum to this fucked up idea, what if the nature of the programming problem of the week IS A METAPHOR FOR THE B-PLOT?!Forming Quiz Teams: Marc tells every senior and junior to pair up with a protege, but efficientlyCelebrity Jeopardy: One of the juniors auditions for Harlequin and ends up in jeopardy trying to balance their lifeThe Trip, 2007: The team is taking a team building trip to Mystery ManilaThere are so many problems and so many possible plots. I mean we could even rip off the "It's not Lupus" catch phrase with "It's not a naive solution" or "It's not O(n^2)"Now you might be saying "Austin, Austin, calm your ENFP tits down. You're targeting a very niche audience here. Who the hell would watch this shit?"To which I respond: "How many non-doctors watched House? How many non-chemists watched Breaking Bad? Did you understand all the medical shit in House? Did you understand the chemistry shit in BrBa?"I mean here's the hook, and you gotta take a deep breath.This is gonna be a sitcom.Personally, I think we could do it mockumentary style like The Office or Parks and Rec. Or we could just have a laugh track like Friends.If the characters are good and it's entertaining in the end, I think an audience will come. The show will also be highly stylized. The mental process could be like Sherlock with his mind palaces. I just need VFX.Now the chances of this getting off the ground are like 0.01% but I would imagine having a lot of fun with this crazy as fuck idea.I also know the chances one of you random people didn't read until the end but if you did, please oh please feel free to toss and brainstorm ideas down below. Criticize the concept. Suggest improvements. Suggest more problem - episode B plot relations. PLEASE SUGGEST A TITLE! And most of all, have fun. :)I really hope people join this conversation. I've never been this giddy since... I don't know.This is half a joke haha, but if people are g, I'd totally work on this.
Passing Proposal Defense
I mentioned I was starting my solo thesis. I actually struggled with finding a topic until I had a spark of inspiration. I'm part of this research lab named COMET headed currently by Mr. Jordan Deja. I approached him with my idea and he took me as advisee.
In a nutshell, my research is about creating an agent that can identify if a website interface is well designed or not. After two terms of struggle I was able to defend my thesis in a proposal defense with a pretty intense panel. Thankfully, I passed with some fairly major revisions, but I'm trying my best to finish my thesis by next term. Of course this was a milestone for my masters degree. I couldn't leave this moment out of this list.
Avengers: Infinity War and Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Oops. Spoiler Alert. These are my top 2 movies of the year. Watching them multiple times in the theater was a blast. These movies breathed new life into me as a film viewer because they mark me being absolutely invested in characters again after quite a long time. Black Panther was actually quite disappointing for me so when I saw IW, the last time I was crazily invested in characters was either Thor: Ragnarok or Coco. Infinity War's ending absolutely floored me and had me hyped for the next Avengers movie, now known as Endgame. The crowd I was with during my first IMAX screening was insane. They were cheering throughout but my absolute favorite moment was when Thor enters Wakanda. We all went absolutely ballistic at that grand entrance and it might be my favorite moment at the theaters in a long time.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout was similar but different at the same time. The crowd I was with during my first screening was also quite fun. They were reacting quite violently to the tense scenes. Two in particular stick out as particularly fun. One was when Ethan was chasing Walker through the rooftops and he did that epic jump across two rooftops. The second was near the end when Ethan was trying to climb onto a helicopter and proceeds to plummet a few feet down, before catching on to a rope. Fallout was absolutely tense and is my pick for the best movie of 2018. Yes, all of you have to watch it now. That's a requirement to complete your 2018 experience. Chop chop. :D
Binge Moments: American Vandal, The Good Place, and Bojack Horseman
Around November, I kinda had a nervous breakdown and put my thesis on the backburner to focus on CPL and myself for a while. As a result, I spent hours on Netflix binging these three fantastic shows. (Special mention to Haunting of Hill House, which was also good, but it didn't stick the ending so I didn't want to put it on here)
American Vandal is a mockumentary parody of true crime documentaries about someone who draws dicks on faculty cars in a school's parking lot. They begin to investigate the crime to determine #WhoDidTheDicks . The story is pretty standard, but the presentation is what really sells this show for me. Being a pastiche of true crime documentaries, they treat this prank with utmost seriousness and the meticulousness with which they investigate this crime, especially in episode 5 of season 1, is especially amusing. Season 2 is also a lot of fun, but I think S1 is better, but don't take my word as gospel. Almost everyone I showed this show to thinks Season 2 is better. I and my friend Roey are the only ones in my circle who think S1 is superior.
The Good Place is the newest and possibly best offering from Michael Schur, writer on The Office and co-creator of Parks and Rec and Brooklyn Nine Nine. I love those three shows, but on a story level, it is possible that The Good Place is his best work (even though P&R is still my favorite). Let me explain. The Good Place follows Eleanor Shellstrop (played by Kristen Bell) who ends up in the afterlife after dying a terrible death. She is placed into a neighborhood in The Good Place where Michael (played by Ted Danson), the neighborhood architect, commends her on her work as a death row lawyer and her efforts in relief operations in Africa. When left alone with her afterlife soulmate, she confesses that she didn't do any of those things and that she is a terrible person and that someone has made a mistake putting her in The Good Place. Thus begins a ride of moral quandaries and basically a show that perfectly integrates amazing character work and character development, moral philosophy related thematic content, and hilarious comedy. It is the smartest sitcom I have ever seen in terms of thematic depth, because let's face it, as good as Arrested Development or Parks and Rec are, they are comedies first and stories after. The Good Place manages to be a great story and a great comedy both first at the same time and that is why you should watch it. P.S. Jason Mendoza is God's gift to humanity.
The best show of the three, however, is Bojack Horseman. I think this show is best left unspoiled, but all I can say is, Episode 1-5 of Season 1 are pretty meh. Episode 6 is where it starts to get good and Episode 8 is the point where it starts to become great. Season 2 vastly improves upon Season 1. Every season is better than the last. Finally, all the Episode 11s will mess with you like Game of Thrones Episode 9s. Just trust me when I say, this might be one of the greatest dramas on television, because it's not afraid to make you laugh five seconds before it absolutely crushes you and to have the audience's emotions switch just like that on a dime is masterful writing and this show does that on an episodic basis.
ICPC Asia Singapore Regional Preliminary Contest
So after the internal contest of CPL, Marc was looking for a potential teammate for us, since I got delayed. Then we saw Carlos Ngo get 100 problems solved on UVA. So during an event that will appear later on this list, we asked him if he wanted to go with us to Singapore to compete and he was very willing. I asked him if he could come with me on biweekly trainings and he said yes.
So after a month, the preliminary contest happened. Carlos, Blaise, Josh, and I crashed at Josh's place the night before because school was closed on the day of the prelims and we wanted to wake up together. Marc picked us up and we went to Art's house to do the prelims.
After three hours, we were able to solve around 3 problems. Thirty more minutes and I had a eureka moment with Beehouse Perimeter and when Marc submitted it, I said something that Art Caronongan deems the history making moment of the day and has never allowed either of us to live down ever since. Then another eureka moment happened in the last hour when we were able to solve Grid Game. We ended up the top PH team and this meant one thing: we were going to Singapore.
COMET Teambuilding
The attendance for COMET's teambuilding was lower than last year, but that didn't mean it was less fun. When we got there, we played with the karaoke machine for a while before we had some games. Paulo Delgado thought of this genius game where he made scripts for classic Disney movies but some key parts were replaced by words from a sheet we filled out. Our movie was Beauty and the Beast. In our sheet, one item was labelled "A Book" so I wrote down "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein. So in the script, it said "Belle walks through the town carrying her book, 'Introduction to Algorithms' by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein.".
Afterwards we had dinner and then we had a heart to heart talk. I can't talk about that here since it's confidential but it was nice. Then I challenged Blaise to FFTCG and we just played for a while. At the unholy hours of the night, Blaise and I played chess and he resigned saying he was too fucking tired to think after I pinned his queen to his king with a bishop.
The rest of the night was spent on the karaoke machine. It was pretty fun, especially when Luis Lopez and I got a 100 on "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen.
The next day, we were eating pizza and ice cream and some of us decided to put ice cream on pizza. It was not that bad. I rate 6/10.
Overall, really fun day.
CP3 Binge
Marc ordered Steven Halim and Felix Halim's "Competitive Programming 3" early this year and did a heavy grind on UVA from 400-ish problems to about 650+ problems. I decided to order with some other CPL members and I got my copy on July 29, 2018. I began grinding on UVA, starting at about 230 problems and ending up around 708 problems by September 26, when I finished all the starred problems in the book. I have since read the book three times cover to cover and I can safely say it has made me an infinitely better programmer. In my opinion, the book is not only for contestants of ICPC and IOI, but rather for any programmer who wants to improve their algorithm proficiency. Being an effective algorithmist begins with toy problems like the ones in UVA. Then you start to see real world problems and you can begin to think "Ya know? That sounds like this problem I solved on UVA." and you use that knowledge to end up with an efficient solution. So yeah, if you want to be a much better coder, insert shameless plug for CP3 here.
Reunion at Greenbelt
So I went to Singapore in December, which I'll be talking about more later on. On my last day there, I got added to a group chat that I thought was just started that week talking about a meetup the Sunday after. I skimmed through the group chat and I discovered I had been inadvertently forgotten for about six or so months. Ouch. But I ignored it because I'm the kind of person that eventually gravitates toward zen these days and I said I was going.
I saw a lot of my college friends again that day.
Binging Sense8
I separate two shows from my binge entry for this blog because they had a much more profound impact on me emotionally. If you spent any time around me at all this year, you should know which is the other show. As for this one, well let me paint a picture for you.
Sense8 is a Netflix Original about eight people who become connected one day. Connected how? Well for starters they can "visit" other sensates. This means they appear to the other person as if they were in the same location but only to them. They can be seen and felt and heard. They can feel the environment around them. But the highlight of this connection is when they "share", which can only be done within their cluster (the eight of them). Basically, they can lend a skill to another member of the cluster, which looks onscreen like them taking the other person's place, but to everyone else, it's the person doing it. But this is where it gets fun. Each person has a special ability. Will can pick locks and fight and do detective work. Nomi is a hacker. Kala is a chemist. Wolfgang can fight and handle weapons. Sun is a kickboxer. Capheus is a driver. Lito is an actor. Riley is... well... the entire reason I picked up this show because Tuppence Middleton is cute af. So together, they're a Swiss army knife of skills.
The show runs like eight parallel stories, one for each sensate. The stories are mainly disconnected, but what connects them is the characters. Every now and then they lend their skills across stories. Sometimes, however, stories collide and merge. It's really fun to see unfold.
But why do I love this show so much? One big reason is the diversity of the cast. Character-wise, we have two from the US, one from Iceland, one from India, one from Germany, one from South Korea, one from Kenya, and one from Mexico. Their cultures are all different and the eight characters are very different. Their stories start out as stereotypical examples of movies from their country. Kala's story is a Bollywood movie. Lito's is a telenovela. Wolfgang's is a crime thriller. But the side-characters in each story make it more unique and eventually, the stories twist into something else.
Also, from all the shows I have seen, this show has the best LGBT representation I have ever seen in any show. This made me especially happy, being queer myself (coming out to my friends as bi being another amazing part of my 2018). It doesn't force it down your throat. There are a grand total of four LGBT characters in this cast of about 30 people, so it's still a minority, but the way their stories are handled are amazing and inclusive and revolutionary and heartwarming.
I cannot rave enough about how warm this show made me feel. I felt I was with family while watching. I felt I was with the sensates as I watched them struggle through their storylines.
As you might know, Sense8 got cancelled after Season 2, but the fans rioted enough for Netflix to give them a grand 2.5 hour finale. So how does the finale hold up? Well, it is pure fanfiction. But I am such a hardcore fan of this show, that a 2.5 hour fanfiction wrap-up was exactly what I needed. Every character got a chance to shine and the last 30 minutes of the finale was just a perfect send-off to these amazing characters. I love every single one of them to death and I cannot recommend this show enough. Sense8 is my second favorite show I discovered this year, but hold your horses, because we have one more show that topped this one.
Revisiting Persona With Roey
Do you know what my favorite game franchise is? Well it's Final Fantasy. But my second favorite is definitely Persona. Besides, my actual favorite game of all time is Persona 5. So when Roey, my friend since high school, was having a bad week, he asked if we could hang out. I made him play Persona and he was hooked.
We ended up going through Persona 5 and eventually, Persona 4. I then told him to try out Final Fantasy. Yes the original game from 1987... well, the PSP remake, which he also liked. He was less happy when I made him try Final Fantasy IV (again, the PSP remake), not because of the gameplay, which he loved, but the story... he didn't care for that much (I beg to differ :D).
We did this for about two months. It was two of the best months of the year, and it was a great way to spend time with one of my best friends before he went to law school.
Final Fantasy Trading Card Game
If you followed my old secret blog, you should know I was a casual player of Weiss Schwarz back in 2015. I didn't have much money through but to be honest, that game was really fair to cheap decks, at least back in 2015. I have no knowledge of the current meta.
In May of this year, my friend Jonah Syfu told me that he and my other friend, Ken Hosoya, bought this bundle of FFTCG trial decks and singles. I tried my hand at the game and bought my own FFVII trial deck that day. I was pretty bad at it but I wanted to practice so the day after, I bought an FFIX trial deck and some boosters and wrangled together two decks I could playtest against each other.
Syfu and I would have intense games. At this point he was rocking an FFXIII themed Ice/Lightning deck. Either of my two decks can hold a fun game against his deck. He won most of the time but it wasn't a hopeless fight. After a while, I wanted to try a non-trial deck based deck. I looked at the top decks in tournaments and noticed Mono Ice was a popular choice so I built a deck based around my favorite game in the series: Final Fantasy VIII. It was a Squall/Laguna build with Rinoa support. I used it to place 3rd in a tournament at our card shop and was very happy. I started losing games though so I went for a more meta build, this time using my second favorite game, Final Fantasy VI, as an engine. This deck was a Locke/Celes-centric build. I had a high lose count with the deck, but when I tried it at a tournament at Neutral Grounds Glorietta, I ended up in the top half.
Around the day of the preliminary contest for ICPC Singapore, Syfu, AJ, Johan and I were playing at the card shop when Blaise dropped by tagging Carlos along with him. He wanted me to teach him, while Blaise played with Jonah and AJ. I had no extra decks at the time since I left my VII and IX decks at home or stripped them for Title Format, so I borrowed Syfu's Water deck. It was the greatest deck I have ever played in my life. I instantly looked for a build of Mono Water that I felt was my style, since Syfu and I had different play styles. As a result, my build was very different from his. Thus, my Mono Water was born. AJ and I had pretty fair fights with it, when my Mono Ice would just die to his decks. Even Syfu was pretty impressed since he was using this fun Golbez deck at the time. My Mono Ice couldn't deal with that deck at all. It spit out Forwards like there was no tomorrow. My Mono Water, however, was pretty even with it. It wasn't a sweep all the time, but it was miles better than my Mono Ice. I placed 2nd in a tourney with it.
Overall, I'm glad I joined this community. Meeting the other players and playing in tournaments has been a great part of my 2018.
Binging Black Mirror
For about five years prior to this one, my favorite show had been Breaking Bad. I just could not find any other show that had emotionally manipulated me as effectively as that one. LOST and Game of Thrones come close. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Doctor Who come super duper close. None of them succeeded.
Each month, there's usually buzz on Facebook or YouTube about a new Netflix release. Last January, it was this little show called Black Mirror. It was described as an anthology show: a new story each episode. It was a modern day Twilight Zone. I thought, "Sounds cool. Let's see." One comment had me worried though: "If you like Westworld, you'll like Black Mirror." I disliked Westworld so does that means I won't like Black Mirror? Well, in discrete structures class, I learned that denying the premise of an inference does not mean denying the conclusion. So I took my mom to see the first episode.
If my mom was any less awesome, and if you know anything about Black Mirror, you would know that would be a GRAVE mistake. Yes, this is me warning you to be careful who you watch episode one of Black Mirror with. Anyway, I was expecting her to be disgusted, but she immediately said "More!" So that weekend we binged all four seasons. It was hard. It was the single hardest binge I have ever experienced, but in a good way. Because ladies and gentlemen, Black Mirror is the single most emotionally affecting show I have ever seen. What makes it even more impressive in my opinion is that, take Breaking Bad, for example. That show had 5 seasons to build up Ozymandias, its greatest episode. When I watch Ozymandias, I was wrecked. But that emotional response does not even hold a candle to how fucked up I was after watching White Christmas, and Black Mirror built up that resolution and reaction in 74 minutes. White Christmas fucked me up so hard, that I had to stop for a few hours. I had seen The Human Centipede and all the Saw films, but none of those hold a candle to Black Mirror's ability to fuck you up, because it doesn't use shock value to arouse a reaction. It uses legitimate existential dread. Intelligent existential dread. And it did this almost every episode.
The highlight episode has to be San Junipero. I went from happy to sad to absolutely devastated to ecstatically happy in the span of an hour. San Junipero is the greatest episode of television I have ever seen. Don't start with it though. If you want to start, I recommend Nosedive or USS Callister.
Black Mirror is my new favorite show. It did to me what Breaking Bad did in its entire run, almost every episode. It had me emotionally invested almost every episode. It is amazing, and it set the tone for my 2018.
Pray for the Wicked Tour 2018
I don't go to concerts. I couldn't afford them before. Now that I had money to spare, however, I was able to go to one concert this year. (If I had to pick a second one to go to, it would have been Paramore, but we all know how hard it was to get tickets for that.) Panic! at the Disco is my favorite band, probably, so it wasn't a difficult decision for me to make to end up going to the concert. My good friend Alds Hade also bought VIP Standing tickets, as well as Marc. The three of us were supposedly going together.
Marc's new job had to send him to South Korea for a few weeks though, which coincided with the concert. Thus, he gave the tickets to another good friend of mine, Blaise Cruz. So it was me, Alds, and Blaise who were going to the concert.
So we arrived at MOA Arena and stood in line for about three hours. We went in and took some photos. Then IV of Spades did their opening act, which was great.
Finally, there was a ten minute countdown to the start of the concert. After the longest ten minutes of my life, the music started up, and the opening notes of (Fuck a) Silver Lining came up. AND THEN BRENDON FUCKING URIE ENTERED THE STAGE. It was surreal. I was a few meters away from Brendon Urie. We sang along to every song. I was having an extraordinarily good time.
Two hours later, the show ended, and my legs wanted to die for standing for five hours, but it was worth it. Totally worth it. That was one of the most amazing nights of my life.
CPL Teambuilding
Marc talked to our Vice Dean Dr. Nelson Marcos, about a teambuilding for CPL. He decided to get all his orgs: SPRINT, PTS, and CPL, and have one teambuilding for both of them. I was iffy at first, since I didn't know most of the new SPRINT people, and I just wanted to spend quality time with my CPL family, but I soon discovered it wouldn't matter.
The day came and I entered our special CPL van. Duke was late so we waited for them. Marc and Blaise didn't tell me to bring my FFTCG deck, so they were playing while I was thinking of Convex Hull. Duke arrived and we were off.
We spent most of the van ride singing and talking about programming problems and Blaise complained about being dizzy because we were driving on a winding road later on.
We got there and I had to be grouped with some random SPRINT/PTS people for the first activity, which was fine because I was an extrovert anyway and I didn't mind interacting with people I didn't know too well as long as they weren't shy about it, which these people weren't. We then went to the obstacle course. Our team leader was Duke, while the opposition was led by Art. Our team was pretty sabaw for most of the challenges. One in particular had a sort of spider-web with bells attached. Each hole could contain one leg/foot. We had to step from one side of the web to the other without ringing any bells. SIXTEEN OF US. Holding hands. Not letting go. So we rang a lot of bells and to mask the sound, we'd make a noise. My noise of choice was Tidus' laugh from FFX.
After all this, we were up for rappelling. That was fun. Carlos was deathly scared of heights but he survived. Then we ziplined to the pool. The pool was where it was announced that Art's team had the best time. Oh well, papel. We had a fun time at the pool.
We took a shower and had dinner. SPRINT did their retrospective, which I watched. Blaise and Marc didn't though... because they were playing FFTCG. I also asked Doc Mac if I could be a coach for CPL. He told me to send my resume. Alrighty then. (I would be approved later on.)
Nighttime came and we had a campfire. There was a game based on Riff-Off from Pitch Perfect. Despite me not liking Pitch Perfect in any capacity, I do like Riff-Offs. However, the first version we played during this TBA had too many rules, so we didn't enjoy it that much. The second version felt more like the movie and was pretty fun.
Afterwards, we recruited Carlos for Singapore and he said yes to the contest and biweekly trainings. We were all set.
In the deep recesses of the night, everyone was at the central hall. Some were playing tabletop games. Some were just talking. Duke, Art, Marc, and Blaise were in one table. Guess what Marc and Blaise were doing.
I suggested we play Coup. I didn't have a set though, but we made due with spare FFTCG commons I had in my bag. Can I just say, we had the greatest games of coup ever played in history? Our meta was people spamming Ambassador claims, which is unusual because usually people spam Duke claims.
The next day, we had breakfast and then went home. We talked about the future of CPL and overall just had a great time. I spent over 24 hours with Marc, Duke, Blaise, and Art and became much closer to them. It was the seventh best day of the year, because the other six days go to my final moment.
CPL Goes to Singapore 2018
Starting September, we began training rigorously for Singapore after qualifying for the regional contest. We'd train every Friday officially, and I'd hold unofficial biweekly sessions. In total, that's 7 hours of training a week for 12 weeks. Doing some quick maths, we clocked in around 84 hours of training, and this was only in school. Of course some of us would practice outside sessions. If you think about 84 hours, that's a little bit longer than the entire runtime of the TV show LOST. It's longer than all the Bond films combined. So I'm proud to see our team's dedication, especially Carlos Ngo, who was there for every single session without fail.
I went to school on Monday, December 10, 2018, planning to sleep over at Josh's with Blaise, Jasper, and Carlos to make sure we make it to the airport on time. Josh's place was unavailable though and school was closing at 2 PM and we were all sleep deprived (I slept at 5 AM and woke at 10 AM), so we even considered booking a SOGO room (but I raised the concern of the beds being impure) and an AirBnB near NAIA. Eventually, Blaise and Josh just wanted to get some sleep before planning so we decided to meet at 6PM at Archers. Josh didn't show up and Blaise and I had dinner then we decided to stay at the unilounge until 6 AM. We spent all night working. I was watching Kevin Atienza talk about combinatorics and computational geometry (or Doctor Who videos, sure). Blaise was doing his ADVSTAT case study.
Around 5 AM, Blaise was asleep, and I was solving UVA problems. I woke him up at 6 AM and we got ready at his condo. We met Carlos and Josh at Gox lobby and went for some breakfast. We made some prof puns along the way. I won't share them because there are corny as all hell. They are so corny, each joke we made sterilized the testicles of some man in the world. They were so corny, each joke we made halved the remaining years of the Earth. They were so corny... you get it.
We went back to the lobby to meet Jasper and Duke. Also, I kept getting thrown off because Blaise kept calling Jasper "Jappy" which is the name of my old friend Clarisse's twin brother. It's like if Tony from The Incredibles had a friend who called his other friend "Dash". Bad analogy? Okay...
Boarding the plane was painless. Over lunch... at Tapa King because airport food is expensive af, we made more puns. Duke was particularly mad at this one:
Me: "Ano ang favorite Gospel ni Marc?"
Duke: "It's right there!"
Me: "Matthew"
Duke: *facepalm*
On the plane, Carlos, ever the prodigy, was solving UVA problems which he downloaded in advance. I discussed some UVA problems with Marc. Art arranged this adorable shit with my companion and his companion:
The next day was the registration for the contest. Our teams were accompanied by two nice companions named Sonia and Permas (if you're reading this, hello! you guys are awesome!). We then were mindblown having existed in the same room as STEVEN HALIM, who was speaking in the lecture hall. Then the sponsors talked. Then we were off to the practice round.
Our team (Team Convex Hull), did really well during the practice round. We were the top PH team (again). Blackjack was pretty good. We were shocked Panic didn't solve anything, but it was partly our fault for not training in contest environment, because the focused on solving a time waster problem instead of ordering the problem set first. When we got back to Kent Ridge station, we tasted some delicious as fuck Laksa. It was so good, I have lost all sense of taste unless I am specifically eating that quality of Laksa. Then we went back to our hostel and did a retrospective of the contest. We gave some last minute tips for the next day and we were off.
The contest itself was pretty rough. We only solved 4 problems. Blackjack solved 3. Panic solved 2. My team was 36th overall out of 50, which was bottom half. It was still a good learning experience.
Oh, Duke sent us this picture of a gigantic dick in the contest venue. Look.
We had some exploring time. I bought some souvenirs from the campus bookstore. We took this precious photo:
We did another retrospective and then went home. Blaise, Jasper, Duke, and Art went to Serangoon to play at the Virtualand arcade.
The next day was Sentosa day. I went with Krizia, Jade, Jolene, Carlos, Blaise, Jasper, Marc, and Duke. We all went biking except for Duke and Marc who went to the aquarium. Carlos actually didn't know how to bike. We were trying to teach him, but he ended up saying he was gonna figure it out himself. After one hour, he got the hang of it, so now the lucky man can tell his children "You know, kids. I learned how to bike in SINGAPORE!"
Afterwards, Duke and Marc went back to the hostel because they had places to go. I went with the others to the cable car. Apparently, Carlos was afraid of heights, so it was even more fun. Blaise, I think, called him "Cable Carlos". Hehe.
We actually took a detour at Imbiah Station to watch the Pikachu Parade, and then we bought some souvenirs. We went back to the cable car, this time to Mount Faber. At the top, Blaise googled whether there has been any deaths on Singaporean cable cars recently. The last was in 1994 apparently, but that didn't reduce Carlos' anxiety. We made it to Mount Faber and had ten minutes to take photos before the last cable car back to HarbourFront. We took it and went to the station, but first, we went for KFC.
I treated Carlos to some Fuji Apple FroYo, claiming it was Jesus congratulating him on a good job in the contest (SINCE HE CODED CONVEX HULL). Then we went back to Chinatown, but Blaise and Jasper accompanied me to Serangoon to get the key from Duke (since the rooms only had one key each). We arrived at the hostel and just chilled. We called Ms. Courtney to say hi.
The next day was technically our last day since our flight was at 3AM the next day, so we'd have to be at Changi at 11 PM. We left our stuff at a luggage storage inn in Little India and then went to Rochor station to go to Bugis. We had more Laksa. (I could taste this because it might have been better than the Kent Ridge laksa.) Then Art met us to take us to the escape room we were gonna try out.
Man... I thought Mystery Manila liked theatrics. The escape room we did in SG was pretty epic. I won't go into much detail here since it might spoil it for those of you who want to try the escape rooms near Bugis station. We solved it with Art's expertise guiding us.
We then went to shop in Bugis. I didn't originally plan on getting Clarisse a souvenir, but I saw these R2-D2 chopsticks that I couldn't leave Bugis without getting for her. I got my mom a Dany Targaryen Funko Pop figure. Then we went to Raffles Plaza to walk to Merlion Park.
Well, we were there. (Note: Marc was in Somerset playing in an FFTCG tourney.) We took photos. Since Marc wasn't there, Art said whoever photoshops him best wins a free escape room. The only one who tried was Jasper, so congrats? Here's his photo.
That part where blue ang green intersect near the middle: that's Bugis. We could take the GREEN line eastward to get to Tanah Merah then to Changi. Or Duke suggests we go WHEEEEEE and take the longer BLUE line around to Expo. Nobody wanted WHEEEE but Duke, so we went green.
We got to the airport and checked in our luggage. Josh asked if he could check in his knapsack with Duke's check in. They weighed it and everything checked out so they were good. I went for a frappucino at Starbucks, which tasted exactly the same as in the PH. The others went for McDonald's. Marc bought Dasani water. Prior to today, he made a joke that "Dasani" is what you say when you see a knee. ("DA SA KNEE!") Anyway, Marc was drinking his precious Dasani water when Jasper started laughing like a jackass and pointed at Marc's knee. Marc then produced a spittake worthy of the Merlion in the middle of Changi Airport and we all started laughing... well they did. All Duke and I saw was Marc imitating the Merlion without any context so theoretically, we should still have been laughing but for no reasonable reason.
We went through immigration, which was automated. It turns out, however, that Josh left his passport in his knapsack, which you may remember, he checked in with Duke's luggage. It's a good thing it was raining though, because our 3:30 flight got delayed to 4:20 AM. Josh and Duke resolved the issue at 3:40 AM. We would have missed the flight.
We flew back. Everyone slept while Carlos played Smash Bros on a Switch. Day 6 was uneventful. We just arrived at the airport, got our luggage, and parted ways.
December 10 to 16 was the best week of my life so far. The Greenbelt Reunion was actually at the night of the 16th, so it was even more of a great capper to the week.
Overall, 2018 has been the best year of my life so far. I sincerely hope you too had a great year and regardless if you did or didn't, I hope 2019 grants you much happiness. Happy New Year, everyone!
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