Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Episode 30: Forged Signature; Forged Pregnancy!

Every time fate handed you a victory with one hand, watch it, don't just go, on a drinking spree, like Carlos Eduardo did tonite, because you will recieve from the other hand, your next temptation. May God help you if you go into slumber, while in the examination room of fate. That is one irreversible truth of life that this telenovela has epitomized, on and on.

If you are still in doubt on whose side God is, in the cupid battle of the Gardener's daughter, tonite's episode must have shown you the move and the passion of God for verity. Jennifer de la 'Cunning' (that's what I call her), over dramatized her self-pity, to the point that it back-fired on her and exposed her intricate web of lies. Marissa, the noble woman of this telenovela, became so concerned that she pricked the conscience of her son, Carlos Eduardo, to take Jennifer to the hospital for proper care so that she would not lose the 'pregnancy' she was carrying, why? because Marissa thought Jenny was truly sick.

Carlos went to Jenny's house to check on her to confirm her state. Jenny's purpose was to make him have pity on her and "...stay a little longer", knowing that he was presently enstranged from his adored girlfriend- Luisa Fernanda. Jenny 'consoled' him on the separation between him and Luisa, but did not fail to register her real motive and ultimate desire, by telling him that: "...let's bury the past, we can get back together again..." Carlos was hurting and knew that was impossible again, so he stood up, and assured her that he would not abandon his responsibility for her 'pregnancy', but declared to her saying: "...I can't promise you anything else".

Next day, Carlos rushed to "Jenny's Doctor" to tell him that his "patient" was not feeling well. He submitted the ultra-scan video and the medical record, which the doctor supposedly gave Jenny, upon confirmation of the 'pregnancy', for re-examination, while awaiting Jenny's arrival at the hospital. The doctor, upon re-examination said the ultra-scan was not a foetus of one month as Carlos was made to believe, but over 2 months. Secondly, he admitted that the medical record's stationery and the seal on it were his, "...but that's not my signature, it was a forgery". He also told Carlos that he knew the names of all his patients, and Jennifer de la Vega is one name that did not ring a bell.

To confirm this further, he called the nurse (Josephina), that served as his secretary, to bring his dairy of all his patients to cross-check. There was no such patient by the name: Jennifer de la Vega, so he, along with Carlos grilled the nurse over the anomaly; at the threat of imprisonment for forgery, she confessed that someone paid her to fabricate the record and forged the doctor's signature confirming the pregnancy. Carlos was relieved and didn't press further the victory to know the name of 'merchant of lies'. He said he knew the culprit, he thanked the doctor and left.

Jenny got to Carlos' house in the morning to alert L.A. of the impending exposure, as Carlos was planning to take her to the clinic that morning. She was told by Calrita that L.A. has gone to the office. Marissa saw her, and was wondering why she had not gone together with Carlos to the clinic. She was shocked to learn from marissa that carlos has gone ahead to meet with her doctor whom Carlos traced through the address on the Doctor's medical record. She ran out in a desperate move to starve-off further investigations that may expose her wicked schemes.

Jenny ran to meet L.A. in his office, telling him that the Alarm of their deal has blown open as Carlos has gone to confirm the authenticity of the records from the doctor. L.A. was mad with her for carelessly leaving the records and the phony ultrascan video with Carlos hand in the first place. When jenny asked him: "...what are we going to do now", he replied rhetorically saying: "...What are we going to do? or what are YOU going to do!" He washed his hands off the mess and asked Jenny to leave his office.

L.A., in his characteristic cunning, phoned Josephina, telling her that he is already aware that the alarm has blown, and warned her to keep quite and never mentioned his name in the messy deal or she would regret it in prison.

Carlos was overjoyed and went to celebrate his relief at a beer palor. He met Augusto there and called him to reconcile, but Augusto was still hurting....and...broke...after blowing up his money on the fruitless yatch cruise in pursuit of Luisa Fernanda's love. Carlos was drunken to a state of stupour. He asked Augusto to carry him to Jenny's house, since she has not been picking his phone calls, because of her guilty conscience. He said he wanted to go and 'blast' her for tricking him with a phony pregnancy.

Andreina and L.A. are falling apart, she told him pointedly that she is tired of being his 'toy baby' and 'life' mistress to be fondled and left dried. She told him, matter-of-factly that, she had more aspirations in life than being his mistress for life. She gave him an ultimatum to go and divorce his wife, Marissa, and marry her, or forget about coming to her house again. When he complained about her growing love-affair with Leopoldo, she shut him up and ordered him out of her apartment. He left quietly, but with a determination to get rid of any human opposition to his relationship to Andreina. I would not be surprised if he begins to scheme against his best friend, Leopoldo to get him out of Andreina's emotional life, before Andreina kicked him (L.A.), out of her romantic life.

L.A. had a meeting with Consuelo in his office and assigned her afresh to go and lure Amelia, to a restaurant making sure she brings her daughter to the restaurant, because he is desperate to know and meet his daughter. He told Consuelo that Amelia works as secretary, to his wife in the Metropolitan Bank headquarters. I am not surprised that L.A. is very comfortable with Consuela after the exposure of her wicked schemes. It must have been because both of them are birds of the same feather. huuuh, sending the devil on an errand? Let's wait to see how Consuela, the evil architect, would reconstruct this new assignment to her favour, or do you think she would just go and deliver the message without distortions?

First day at the university and it was all exitement for Luisa Fernanda. The only shadow cast on her mind was, what she saw as a Carlos' betrayal of her love. Later in the evening, when out of curiousity, she fulfilled the appointment with Jennifer to enquire if it is true, as Carlos told her, that he had broken up relationship with Jenny. Luisa received another upper-cut blow from the cunning Jennifer who lied that she is still on, with Carlos, and Luisa should "...come and see ('proofs') him in my bedroom, he is in our bed".

Luisa followed her and was stunned beyond any remaining doubt, when she saw Carlos fallen asleep on Jenny's bed with careless abandon, with his clothes and shoes on. The truth however was that, Carlos lost his balance in his drunken stupour and was urged to lie down to rest by Jenny.

Pedro, to me has become an object of cowardice. Instaed of accepting what fate has thrusted to his laps, he is fighting a lost and hopeless battle. He bursted into L.A.'s office and announced himself as married to Amelia Alcantara. L.A. stood up and both men glared at each other! Would a fight or scuffle break out between both rivals? Next episode would tell...

In Defence of Alexa: 10 'Lies' of John Chow

Triumphant Web guru, John Chow, coming out of a bumper 'Digg-effect' harvest week, has taken Alexa Ranking tool bar to the cleaners, calling it 'worthless'. On the contrary, Alexa parades 10 reasons for being one of the greatest utility index tool in the hands of webmetricians world-wide.

From the mouth of John, if you can read between the lines, you would see from his 'ramblings' that Alexa has indeed been of tremendous index tool in the hands of this 8-year, foremost pace-setter, mentor and web guru (...he has become my mentor for the last two weeks, I go for 'invaluable lectures' on his personal blog everyday of the last 14 days).

The first line of that blog post was actually the FIRST reason for Alexa's great worth: "...a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used..."

SECOND Reason: Alexa with millions of her toolbars installed by users is undisputably one of the largest Web crawls in recent technological history.

THIRD Reason: Alexa results are only approximate trends of traffic patterns which even many internet giants like Kevin Rose, John Chow and others who have been meritoriously mentioned in the Top Ten Movers and Shakers Sites as "moving up... in the traffic rankings, as measured by the change in the number of users visiting the site(s)", and have cupiously used this in buttressing facts of correct traffic trends.

FOURTH Reason: The traffic surge of a "FEW DAYS" that made John Chow's ramblings to outstrip AnandTech cannot satisfactorily and sufficiently displace the stable and reliable "three-month" record of AnandTech, which Alexa uses as her standard index, and has reliably advised all users to use, as minimum average for correct comparisons, as compared to transient results of a 'few days'.

FIFTH Reason: Alexa is transparently user-driven and that makes it democratic. It's a big aspersion, cast on her reputation by our darling Mogul when he wrote that "...You can even do it all by yourself by refreshing your site over and over again. Get a dozen friends to do it and you’re break into top 20,000 easily..." The Tech Zone's 23,150 rank obviously did not arrive at that figure by a few friends sitting down to connive and contrive with Alexa tool bar.

SIXTH Reason: To impute 'worthlessness' to Alexa ranking and tool bar is tantamont to surrendering to the articulate but emotionally partisan views of Forever Geek when it accused Digg's top users some six months ago of undemocratic friends-manipulating and gang-promoting, to the front page. Every democracy has its flaws, but such flaws can only be corrected or resolved by democratic means, not by a singular condemnation or commendation of an aggrieved or favored party.

SEVENTH Reason: To trumpetize the 'worthlessness' of Alexa would be to also dispute the statistical data of Sitemeter which John buttressed his arguement with. Alexa rankings does not depart from traditional counters on many websites. Alexa trends results are complimentary to the overall reports by web counters on our sites. For example, our first 30 days report shows a positive correlation between our Alexa rankings and our sitemeter report. We leapt from less than 10 visitors per day to 190 peak just as our Alexa ranking 'jumped' from 5.8 million to 1.5million. We have since crossed the 250 daily visitors mark, and our Alexa rank has correspondingly climbed to 1.09 million. The same can be said of two month-old Charl Norman's Basement Guru from 1.2million to the present 662,000 because of the spin-offs from John's guru effect. Can we then conclude that Charl's friends sat down and used Alexa tool bar to promote his site to 662,000 from nowhere in two weeks?

EIGHT Reason: What Alexa rankings 'told' us about the scenario painted graphically for us by John is that, John would have to consistently sustain the 'tons of traffic' that made his ramblings outstrip AnandTech for the next "three months" before Alexa could 'pronounce' John Chow (dot) com as a 'more important site' than, and over AnandTech.

NINTH Reason: AnandTech remains in her 1,552 aggregate Alexa rank, while the aggregate Alexa rank for ramblings significantly improved to 15,517 from 27,840. A far cry below AnandTech's relative importance, as measured by 'worthless' Alexa tool bar.

TENTH Reason: If Alexa were 'worthless', our worthy and beloved web giant would not have confirmed the 'tonnage' traffic (measured by Alexa and acknowledged by Sitemeter) with a positive correlation in an Adsense income of $352.94 in 13 days! John Chow is a worthy mentor to me, that is why he showed an example of charity by devoting that token income to his church and his foundation. But wait to see that, his 'ramblings' would soon cross over from token into the big league- the Google Whores, as he called them. It is tremendous to move from 6th postion to 5th on Alexa Movers and Shakers in one week! Let us appreciate and not denigrate the inestimable service of Alexa, just as we cannot despise the invaluable serbvice of darling Digg. We are webmerictians and not web magicians!