Perspective. Just do what you love.

An affirmation 

I had a chance to meet a friend of a friend who affirmed my passion and encouraged me to live life; it is comforting. I think the problem with me is when I decide on something, I do it immediately and do not think much of the consequences; I'm spontaneous like that. Not even sure if it's really a problem; most of the time it works for me, but sometimes, I hurt people along the way.

God has weird sense of humor  

Life has a funny way of telling you she's there, if it's God who does that, I'd like to understand more about his sense of humor because as much as what happened to me was painful, it's also ridiculously funny when I think about it.

For a while, I got lost in my comfort zone; I have a good job, made plans, I saved, I invested. For several years, it is as if life is going according to way I planned it to be. I thought I had a clear understanding of where I was and where I wanted to be (well for the most part) until an unfortunate event happened. Life, as I knew it, became meaningless.

When my savings got almost wiped out, I thought to myself, wow.. just like that, years of hard work were zapped in less than a month. Worse, I didn't spend it on myself, or on someone I love.. I spent it on someone who I hated almost my entire conscious life.

Take me back to the start 

Today, I feel that I just want to travel for a while, get lost, and hopefully be found again. My plans are ruined anyway, so what else am I to do but just adapt to the situation. Several times, I don't know whether to cry or to laugh at what life has given me; it is the kind that can make you snap and lose touch of reality. We have different ways of coping, but the important thing is we do cope eventually and move on with our life.

Anyway, I love good food and adding culture to my personality, so I bet mingling with different races will be a win-win situation for me. Plus, I may not have the chance to do this in the future. I'm 28, and everyone around me is either getting married or having children. But instead of being pressured to settle down, I'll do the opposite. I'm going to do just whatever the hell I like. This is my way of suicide.

A song playing in my head right now is Scientist by Coldplay.. specifically the line "Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it will be this hard.. so take me back to the start". I just want to go back to the start when everything was simple. I know the line was taken out of context, haha!

[Workarounds] iOS7 iPhone not charging using 3rd party cable

If you've used an Apple device, you'd also know that their accessories are very expensive. One lightning cable will cost you around ~1,000 PhP (~23 USD) and that doesn't include the charger you plug on the outlet.

If you're like me, you'd keep a separate charger in the office because you don't want to carry your lifeline all the time. If you have a car you'd probably place another one there too. My setup is to keep the original charger at home and buy cheaper ones for emergency use.

In CDR-King you can buy a third party lightning cable for P150 (~3 USD). Prior to iOS 7, the third party cable worked perfectly, even the data is working. After I upgraded to iOS 7, a message is displayed "This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably with this iPhone" and you have no option but to dismiss the notice. The phone displays a charging icon (lightning) but it's not really charging as the battery continues to drain.

Searching the internet, people try different things and this post will consolidate the workarounds to make third party cables work. None of them worked for me so far (though I haven't tried jailbreaking), so if you know know another work around, please post it in the comment section below.

[Update] Workaround 3B worked for me.

Workaround 1: Plug - Unlock - Plug again

This came from a reddit post.

1. Turn on USB power
2. Plug in lightning cable to iPhone
3. Dismiss any warnings
4. Unlock your iPhone.
5. Dismiss any remaining warnings.
6. Now with the screen turned on.
7. Unplug the knock off lightning cable.
8. Plug it back in.
9. Dismiss warning again
10. It should now charge

Workaround 2: Taking the sim out.

This is from a post in Apple forum.

Take the sim card out of the phone and try charging it.

Workaround 3A: Turn off your phone

This is a comment in the mobileburn post.

Plug the cable then turn off your iOS Device. Says, it should charge while your phone is turned off.

Workaround 3B: Plugin right before the phone turns off

This is a variation of Workaround 3A. I'm not sure what's the difference but I managed to increase my battery percentage by doing this.

Hold the lock button, then slide to turn off your phone. When you see the black screen with the busy wheel icon, immediately plugin the cable. You can't see any progress or use your phone, but after a while when you turn in on, it should have a higher juice. For emergency situations, this is better than nothing.

Workaround 4: Jailbreak iOS 7

This is just a possibility, an idea from a commentator in iphonehacks post that jailbreaking your iPhone might allow to bypass the security in using fake chargers.