After a long wait for Motorola to reveal a successor to their Honeycomb-running XOOM tablet, today the company officially announced not one, but two XOOM tablets – the XOOM 2 and XOOM 2 Media Edition. Both tablets boast slimmer and lighter bodies and design features, which seem to be taken straight out the RAZR and initially will be available in Wi-Fi variants only. Motorola XOOM 2 The XOOM 2 is the direct successor of the original XOOM, packing a 10.1-inch 1280×800 display with Corning Gorilla Glass for extra protection.

Powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, the XOOM 2 comes with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage, which is yet unknown if could be expanded via a microSD card.

Motorola has really tried hard to improve the XOOM 2 and as a result it weighs the whopping 131 grams less than the old XOOM and is thinner by a nudge over 4mm. The XOOM also comes with splash-guard technology, like the RAZR, which features a special coating to prevent incidental splashes from ruining the device.

Motorola XOOM 2 Media Edition

With its 8.2-inch 1280×800 display, again coated with Corning Gorilla Glass, the XOOM 2 Media Edition fills the company’s blank space in the sub 8.9-inch tablet market quite well. Just like its bigger brother the XOOM 2, the Media Edition packs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and 5MP camera at the back.

However, unlike it, the XOOM 2 Media Edition weighs in at 386 grams and is a hair under 9mm thin. Naturally, the battery is smaller, due to the size of the tablet, and is good for 6 hours of web browsing and about half a week of music playback, Motorola claims.

Parian is one of the oldest and most historic places in the country. It started as a small community of Chinese traders in the sixteenth century, grew into the residential headquarters of the most dynamic entrepreneurs of Cebu and became the genteel district where resided the wealthiest families of the city.

Parian evolved into a distinct settlement around 1590 when Chinese traders and artisans came to reside on the north side of the Spanish settlement of Cebu which Miguel Lopez de Legazpi had founded in 1565. The Spanish settlement was the section of the port area them called ciudad. An  estuary (later called Parian estero) flowed on the north side of this settlement and on its opposite bank the Chinese built a community that came to be know as Parian (a word somewhat perplexing etymology but most probably derived from a Mexican word for market place).

Chinese traders participated in the lucrative galleon trade and somehow had to settle down in Cebu. In time, Parian evolved into a market and trading center. Our first first reference to it comes from Pedro Chirino, the famous chronicler who was Superior of the Jesuit residence in Cebu. Chirino recorded that the newly-arrived Jesuits preached in the “Chinese quarter of the city” which had “more than two hundred souls and only one Christian”

The Jesuits opened a free primary school ( the forerunner of the Colegio de San Ildefonso, later Colegio de San Carlos). Here also, the Chinese Christians built a church that was to become one of the most magnificent in the province. Parian formally existed as a parish from 1614 to 1828. It was also a separate pueblo or municipal unti from 1755 to 1849. These facts indicate that the district had a corporate  character vis-à-vis the other districts of the Cebu port area, like the ciudad, San Nicolas and arrabales (suburbs) as the Ermita-Lutao area.

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Parian changed its identity into a district of mestizo-sangleyes (Chinese mestizos). Then during the nineteenth century, the Chinese mestizos of Parian were the most active entrepreneurs of Agriculture and agents of commerce.

The rise to prosperity of the Chinese mestizos was displayed in their lifestyle. The large canteria y teja (stone and tile) residences in Parian served as headquarters in the management of their agricultural estates. Their children were trained in business and the social graces, went to San Carlos or Santo Tomas for their studies.

At the turn of the present century, Parian was the residential area of the city’s wealthiest families. The district had a large concentration of stone and wood housed and was a center of the social life of the Buena sociedad cebuana.

The physical boundaries of Parian have fluctuated in its know history.  There was a time when its parochial limits stretched as far as north Talamban. And there were times when it was merely a barrio of several blocks. Through all this time, Pairan gravitated around a center constituted of the small, triangular Parian Plaza and adjoining it was the Parian church. In the succeeding years, this area remained a public place for it was variously the site of a schoolhouses, a firehouse and a local library.

The Parian of Cebu is one of several parian in the Philippines. And, in sense, parian itself is merely a touchstone for those old places out of which our collective life was shaped.

Actor Andy Whitfield, who found fame playing the title role in the TV series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, has died of non-Hodgkin lymphona aged 39.The Welsh-born actor passed away in Sydney, 18 months after he was first diagnosed with the disease, according to his manager. ‘On a beautiful sunny Sydney spring morning, surrounded by his family, in the arms of his loving wife, our beautiful young warrior Andy Whitfield lost his 18-month battle with lymphoma cancer,’ his wife Vashti said in a statement.

“He passed peacefully surrounded by love. Thank you to all his fans whose love and support have helped carry him to this point. He will be remembered as the inspiring, courageous and gentle man, husband and father that he was.”

Whitfield moved to Sydney from his native Wales in 1999, and appeared in a number of Australian TV shows – including sitcom Packed To The Rafters and drama series McLeod’s Daughters – before being cast in the title role in Spartacus: Blood and Sand in 2010.

May his soul Rest in Peace.

friends are the flowers in the garden of life,
they help you through times of trouble and strife;

there’s nothing likefriends to make a heart sing,
true friends will share with you most everything;

they will not abandon you in times of need,
they aren’t overcome by envy or greed;

friends are the icing on life’s great big cake,
real friends will give and allow you to take;

i don’t know how i would survive without friends,
they applaud my beginnings and mourn my sad ends;

tell me, please tell me, what would i do,
if i didn’t have a garden full of friends just like YOU!.

-anonymous-

Saw franchise veterans James Wan and Leigh Whannell team with Paranormal Activity writer/director Oren Peli to give the familiar haunted house story an exciting new twist with this tale of a family that moves into an old house and begins to suspect they are under siege from otherworldly forces when their young son inexplicably falls into a deep coma. As devoted parents Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) struggle in vain to uncover the root cause of their son’s condition, the stress of the situation gradually begins to take its toll on their once-strong relationship. Later, when darkness falls and specters appear to reach out for them from the shadows, the frightened parents realize they’re dealing with powers beyond human comprehension.

Frankly speaking it’s not that scary, I even find The Ring (the original Japanese horror movie) and Shutter (the original Thai horror movie) much scarier than Insidious.  The Ring was horribly disturbing, especially with that video thingy and Shutter gave me the goose bumps especially with the nightmarish shocking ending!

Insidious? Let’s just say I was not at all traumatized after watching it. Perhaps I watched too many horror movies and it’s getting harder to scare me? I think.  But that does not mean Insidious is not a good movie. It was simply not scary enough for me, but it was engrossing enough to keep me at the edge of my seat, at least for the first half of the movie. Yes, it was more suspenseful than it was scary, at least to me.

It may be an essentially shallow ride, but it will make you scared of the dark again. It is a strangely comforting to be reminded of what that feels like.  Director James Wan here proves himself very adept at building dramatic tension and making you anxious about the things going on in your peripheral vision.

Insidious is happy enough with elevating your breathing pattern every now and then, as opposed to choking you outright with one shock after another.  For the majority of its running time Insidious is a scary good time at the movies.