incessant rambling

I didn't know that this particular teleserye existed in ABS CBN. My TV is usually stuck on BBC, National Geographic, Cartoon Network or Hero TV. To make the long story short, i got this text message from a friend: Ako si Sam Milby, ang kalaban na umiibig sa DYOSA! Ako si Luis Manzano, ang lihim na umiibig sa DYOSA! Ako si Zanjoe Marudo, ang mortal na umiibig sa DYOSA At Ako si Piolo Pascual, ang... DYOSA a ha... ha... ha ha ha ha... ha . ha ha ha ha... leche ka judith sakit tyan koooh!

okay, judith and i decided to go running around the covered track in the gym (yup, our gym is so sosyal , it has its own 200 meter running track on the second floor). running is usually boring as it inspires visions of hamsters running in their spinning wheels. anyways, pardon the detour but as the title of this post suggests, it is about koreans. particularly, bad mannered koreans. two teenage girls were running with hand held weights and one girl drops her dumbbells on the running track. okay, didn't realize that this is a hurdle's track. judith and i wanted to call their attention, but like ninjas, they disappeared by hurriedly turning the corner. we finally caught up with stoopid one and stoopid two and just as we were supposed to call their attention, stoopid two drops her weights on the running track. i wanted to jog, not do the obstacle CURSE. putang na nyo, leche packaging shet mga hinayupak na tokwa na tooooh! (click on read.more for the continuation of this telenobe...

if you've ever seen clips of kung-fu panda doing hip hop, that's me in a bear suit. believe me, there's nothing funnier to watch than a hairy shamu flip-flopping on a dance floor for what passes as an imitation of hip hop. who bloody cares? my goal is to get some sweat pouring and doing some jerky struts and headspins (okay, that one is a major fib) is just as effective as running around a boring track. anyways, i (sort of) memorized the routine well enough for a final showdown. everyone's pumped for at least four rounds of the whole production number, err, routine when this lady comes inside the studio, plants her fat ass right in between me and the instructor and attempts to memorize everything in a less than a minute. even einstein's brain implanted in her noggin is not going to help. i mean, it gets a bit distracting when everyone is doing a backflip and she's attempting what looks like a spinning top on the floor. darn, dancing on grease coated floor is not...

for a while, cebu pacific prided itself with the tag line "we are on time 99.99% of the time!". i guess it's purely coincidence i almost always end up on the 0.01% of that equation. flying budget does not mean having to put up with crappy service. last saturday i was looking forward to getting home around 5:30PM just in time for a dinner invitation from my friends around seven that evening. by 5:30PM the plane was just taxiing for take off from the new terminal 3 in manila. let's just say that i didn't even make it to bloody dessert.

today i pulled out the papers of two of my students taking their midterm examination. contrary to general perception, most teachers don't take particular delight in having to dispense disciplinary action. sometimes students feel singled out for some perverse desire of the teacher to torment them. get real duh. with almost 250 students that a teacher has to monitor, score, grade, motivate and educate, there is just no time for "torment". i am terribly disappointed with the ethics and values of this current generation that finds no fear in blatant cheating. they're freshmen for God's sake. i can assure you that i have forgotten their names but i haven't forgotten the disappointment. i guess i failed life's lessons where lying and cheating became skills instead of sins. i'd gladly fail. again. and again.

i'm quickly typing this in a Smart Bro kiosk in Mactan International Airport, Cebu (definitely better than the Globe 3G mobile service!). Which means that I was able to make it in time for my flight at 4:25PM - the question of whether the Cebu Pacific flight is on-time is another thing. a little bit wary as i have a working engagement this evening and i'm hoping to check in the hotel and take a nap for at least an hour before starting my day at 10PM. yup, i am a callboy. sort of. i work as a consultant for BPO and call centers, so what else do you call someone working for the Call Center Industry? call-boy. (click on read.more) okay, have to log off now. i have a line waiting behind me wanting to get on this unit. at least i was able to verify my hotel accommodation. darn, it's not the mandarin (the usual) but am billeted at the BSA Suites.

i can't answer the question why hamsters run in circles, but i can definitely understand why people want to get up early and hit the road for a run. okay, make that a marathon. not just an ordinary run. it's called discipline and the bragging rights of finishing a 21K marathon. anyways, i got commissioned to do the artwork for the 2nd Holiday Gym & Spa Health Run. so i guess i have to promote it despite tha fact that my delusional fantasy is to live a very sedentary lifestyle rolling from one end of the couch to the other. (click on read.more) on another note, a friend of mine just recently finished the local Milo 21K qualifying run in Cebu and finished third in her category. That makes her soooo justified to brag about that feat (she missed the last few local marathons because of an injury). so what's the big deal about that? well, let's put it this way, when you're a mother of three, the biggest of your worries is not necessarily getting up at three in the mor...

dearest Kitty*, i keep knocking my head over the fact that i totally didn't call or send you a message on your birthday amiga! darn. no excuses (well... i was out of town over the weekend due to the loooong weekend... but that's not an excuse hmmmm?) for this one. but anyways, better late than NEVER. so here goes.... Merry Christmas . err... that's a Happy Birthday dear amiga! okay. hopefully you'll forgive your sweet, thoughtful(?) amigo with this totally public greeting. Biggest of hugs! Cacho (click on read.more) PS did i forget to add that my phone ran out of batt? hmmmm? wink wink . that's not an excuse ha?! *you know who you are luv!

mr. coffee in one mango is usually my preferred joint where i settle in and do my online work for clients. unfortunately, for the past two days they have been offline and i find myself working in brown cup near redemptorist. just wanted to share the picture of my dinner: HUMONGOUS pork belly (marinated tocino style), fried egg, a cup of rice and iced tea. oh yeah, it comes with a teeny weeny tomato and cucumber slice. need that to balance the diet with the right portion of greens. riggght. i paid Php 110 for this meal. worth it? definitely. which is a bit looney because brown cup IS a coffee place. wi-fi comes free :P - click on read.more okay, since you took the effort to "read more", i highly recommend the creamy, cold strawberry banana smoothie or the choco banana smoothie with real banana bits. in a coffee shop. right. this is so wrong. then again, i am not a coffee drinker. they have two branches, one in St. Patricks near Redemptorist church and the other is in IT Park...

the last time i crossed myself was in church yesterday. today, i hurriedly made the sign of the cross when i read the headline of SuperBalita. susmarya -joseph! explain to me then how the Sun Star Headline titled "Foreign student files rape case vs. compatriot" got transliterated, translated, transfigured into it's SuperBalita counterpart: "Koreana gi-finger sa laing Koreana, mikiha". click on read.more for screen shots of the website - i did not make this up, i swear! Sun Star Headline SuperBalita Headline transliteration - Conversion of names or text not written in the roman alphabet to roman-alphabet form; A systematic way to convert characters in one alphabet or phonetic sounds into another alphabet. translation - a written / spoken communication in a second language having the same meaning as the written / spoken communication in a first language.

john-john, a highschool batch mate ended up as an architect and i usually get quirky emails related to unusual architectural / interior design concepts. in a previous post, i wrote about a men's restroom design executed by women. let's just say that this montage can cause a sizable inferiority complex for men who aren't too comfortable with their "shoe size" (ehem). note the lady with the measuring tape, the camera and a magnifying glass. "measuring up" literally takes a different meaning. in another email, john-john sent another email with the question "how to get a man to wash his hands?" . obviously, if you haven't heard of that particular "debate" , the fundamental issue is whether to wash hands after taking a, ah... a... hmmm... piss (in the spirit of keeping this blog wholesome, i searched far and wide for the scientific phrase to refer to pissing to no avail). two schools of philosophy reason that washing hands is hygieni...

you've probably heard of polyester, but have you heard of recycled plastic bags as bathing suits? got this email from a friend. it is funny, but ultimately rather sad don't you think? well, let's see, if i have to make a bathing suit like this one i probably would have to use the bubble wrap plastic from my samsung 41 inch TV (i don't have one so i guess this is not going to happen). just in case you're interested where this "fashion" inspiration came from, click on read.more for the "original" picture. warning, the picture can cause biblical blindness. borat and his polyester swimsuit. this picture taken from the movie "Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan".

Wrangler recently released a french campaign ad "We Are Animals" done by Ryan McGinley. women rolling around in a mud wrestling event is kinky and sexy. floating dead people is just sick. (click read.more for more pictures) Wrangler may think this is chic, but most of us "ordinary" peeps are not so thrilled with wearing dead people's jeans. they should have changed the tag line, "wear our jeans, it kills you". i guess when their CEO says "heads are going to roll" he sets up the guillotine. Wrangler sounds like a neck-breaking serial killer name. sick. really sick.

pizza is not really at the top of my craving list but i found myself heading off to Handuraw in One Mango over the weekend. given a choice, i go for extra thin pizza and not the deep dish variety of sbarro or the pan pizza of yellow cab or pizza hut. the dish is sinful as it is without the tubs worth of lard soaked up by the dough. handuraw special, perfect for meaaaat lovers. IMAO (in my arrogant opinion) handuraw possibly serves the best thin crust pizza. cebuana pizza (spicy skinless chorizo with kesong puti) is my favourite with handuraw special (meat and cheese loaded) coming a close second. they do have other interesting varieties like the mexican, german sausage, vegetarian and cheese on cheese pizzas. (click on read.more for more pictures) cebuana pizza - spicy sweet skinless chorizo on top of creamy kesong puti (cheese made from buffalo's milk) best part of the deal is that an 18 in diameter pizza (8 slices) will cost you on the average Php 210 - 298. You can ask the sta...

attended the 4th symposium for the mathematical aspect of computer science held in UP Visayas. The venue served as an art exhibit for joya awardees. Though am less than "inspired" by the art display, one work of art cleanly stood out from the rest. a blank canvas painted white and a cell phone SIM card stuck in the middle. duh. reminded me of certain people who has a knack for finding the deepest meaning out of seemingly meaningless random events. in an art exhibit in makati, an artsy fartsy fellow kept gushing about a free-form sculpture calling it the symbol of man's decay. the janitor came up and carted it off. startled, he asked where he was taking the object and the janitor replied: basura to ser. (this is the trash...) enough said.

in a surprising display of hilarity and wit, philippine daily inquirer lifestyle section did a write up about vicki belo and her beau hayden kho with an article titled "How Vicki Keeps her Hayden". that title is just so wrong from the get-go, "Hayden" sounds slyly similar to "hymen" thus alluding to the flower-arrangement procedure that ms belot went through. it would have been enough to refer to her anatomy as a body to die for, but the editors cleverly inserted " some indeed do die in pursuit of that body" - perhaps an obscure reference to the alleged / supposed / speculated case of a general's wife dying on the operating table (pardon me dear readers, my legal team of advisers told me to insert those words... just to make sure). click on read.more for more inanities... Adding insult to injury must be a special talent of the writers. The caption that goes with the picture of the lovers ask the question: The romance between a young [gorge...

In a rare display of prudence, Philippines sent the leanest Olympic team to the XXIX Olympiad with 15 delegates. one athlete, three coaches, eleven politicians. doncha labet?

had a casual conversation today with a colleague and some students who were complaining of alleged irregularities in the student election process. unfortunately, whining will not solve a perceived problem. in as much as i have other, bigger, more pressing concerns, i couldn't help comment: if you don't do ANYTHING about the situation, you are not solving the problem, you are PART of the problem. half a story is not a story at all. this one is something that happened in a conversation but will probably fade away as another footnote to an ongoing saga of perceived injustices. the reality is, there is probable cause for the issue raised, where it will remain, a simple probability. a war is won by simple inaction.

the 3pm sun can literally melt the cholesterol from my crispy pata(s) today. i promise you - i feel like a walking advertisement for minola oil. i casually wiped the oil from my face and smoothed my frizzy hair - not so effective when riding a jeepney ride from school heading home. as to why am riding the jeepney, patience is not MY virtue waiting for people to rearrange the car-parking-lot puzzle so i can drive out. okays... back to the estory. the earth being round and the sun revolving around it (at least in my world) there is bound to be a hot side of the jeep, the other side being hotter (in the philippines, it is only hot, hotter and very wet). it is but natural then that we choose to sit in a cooler side of hell. unfortunately, when you have two passengers riding the jeep it is perfectly illogical to ride on the same side. but perfectly logical to squeeze all sixteen (yes, that is 16) posteriors on ONE side. as i said, perfectly logical, for idiots. i stared incredulously at th...

Definition: when you're listening to something that doesn't seem to make any sense. in short, nonsense. the past few days are perfect candidates for an equivalent of a cerebral nosebleed. the activity title should give a clue: 4th Symposium on Mathematical Aspects of Computer Science. discrete mathematics, nonmonotonic reasoning, formal languages, parallel algorithms, modeling linear orders with partial orders ( by this time you should be experiencing nausea... ) , computational methods in number theory, finite frobenius rings and their bounds, ( skin hives breaking out by now... ) precise coloring of {3,n} Tilings of the Hyperbolic Plane, M-states phase modulation (M-PSK) => alphabet Zm ( am sure i heard someone mutter paking shet ) if your eyes aren't glazing over by now, it means you're just as a nerd as i am. (click on read.more for more catatonic rambling) blame it on my computer science background - but the talks and paper presentations have an interesting app...

rumor has it that napoleon bonaparte was an obsessive man that fixated on his overly huge nose and lumpy gut that he had a nose trim and tummy tuck to compensate for his height. speaking of overcompensating, i know of another person who can be best described as self-obsessed. the story goes that this particular compact-powder-mirror carrying narcissist has been involved in mini scandals for his odd body baring behavior. (click on read.more) in a number of marathons in the queen city, he is known to take off his singlet in the middle of the run despite admonition from the organizers. in a recent incident, he was spotted in celio looking at shirts - not content to use the changing rooms, he stripped in the middle of the store to try on the shirt. this of course caused some sort of titillation from the store clerks. admittedly, the guy has a passably toned body. guess what, he decided to try on pants. yup he stripped in the middle of the shop. at the full view of other customers. suffice...

Obviously, this looks like an extremely huge, hard... (click on read.more) lighthouse. So what comes to your mind when you see this picture? rumor has it, that Napoleon Bonaparte (pictured to the left), had this structure built to commemorate something that he physically fell short of... height. the height. you know what they say, small men usually have small... feet. add your own comments and i'd have them published as part of this post. :)

Batchoy (contention states that the word may have originated from the Chinese (Hokkien) Ba-chui (肉粹) meaning "pieces of meat") is a noodle soup which originated in the district of La Paz, Iloilo City in the Philippines. As with most noodle dishes in the Philippines, batchoy may have been first concocted by Chinese immigrants. -Wikipedia molo soup, lapaz ba-chui. comfort food that bring about memories of childhood on a late afternoon, trooping to a ba-chui house amidst the noise of patrons slurping up the soup. paired with sio-pao, it's a perfect end to a hectic summer day. (click on read.more for more food reviews) the last time i had really good ba-chui was when i spent the night in kalibo aklan on my way to boracay. ted's, a popular ba-chui house in iloilo has since gone commercial and opened branches in malls. expectedly, the quality has gone down. The heart of real ba-chui is the soup stock: leg of beef and pork boiled for long periods to extract the sinfully ric...

read the slogan: "We just try to beautify you". at least, if something goes horribly wrong with the procedure they can always say: We tried... we really tried . I was told that a certain lady from my gym nicknamed "The Mummy" because of all the formalin used to treat her face went to this salon for a makeover. Completely delusional, she demanded that she be transformed into a Ruffa Gutierrez look-alike. She promptly got a reply from the mortician, err... make-up artist: "Ay Tita! di na kaya ng siyensya yan! Divine intervention na po kailangan nyo!" - Science probably won't have any effect, you need Divine Intervention in this case! - another salon assistant threw in his own recommendation: "Ma'am konting blush-on lang mukha na ho kayong buhay!" (click on read.more for more misadventures of tita mummy) Of course the lady went berserk and shouted "NEVER, NEEVER, NEEEEEEEVER CALL ME TITA!" - oh yes, she definitely needs divine i...