incessant rambling

Very few understand that Misa de Gallo is a fairly recent tradition celebrated by Filipino Catholics during Christmas Advent Season. Literally translated into Rooster's Mass, it is also used interchangeably with "misa de aguinaldo" and the local term "simbang gabi". Added to this, there is confusion in terms of the actual time it is celebrated as simbang gabi is often referred to as the vigil mass done a few hours before the eve of Christmas. On the other hand, other people refer to simbang gabi as the masses held at dawn, nine days before Christmas day and starts from December 16 to 24. So which is which? A little web sleuthing revealed that Misa de Gallo started its roots when the Philippine Catholic Church applied for a special indult from Rome to hold novena masses during the season of Advent in 1953. A novena is a Roman Catholic devotion of prayers done for nine consecutive days which explains why Misa de Gallo starts on December 16. Special per...

in the philippines, enough food is consumed during Christmas Season to feed Ethiopia for a year. While that is oooobviously an exaggeration, the reality is that on average everyone gains a pound over the holidays. make that another pound, and another one, heck, make that a lot of pounds. it doesn't help that i get invited to christmas parties, potlucks, snacks, merienda, breakfast, lunch and dinner. add to that fiestas, midnight meals on the eve of christmas and new year and the never ending boxes of fruit cakes that gets delivered to the office. dong juan - sour dough burger so what does one do? make up a long list of excuses to avoid going to parties, drip oil all over the gym, huff and puff through hours of aerobics classes, steam yourself to a dumpling in the sauna and go on a calorie restricted diet of oatmeal for breakfast and dinner. the upside? my meals cost less than Php 20 a serving. don merto, classic burger the downside? oatmeal tastes like paper at one po...

songstress. scribe. master of ceremonies. totally clueless. insensitively discriminatory. introducing natasha cang. she used the first three to describe herself. you can also add the last two to her resume after she hosted the company 2010 year end party. towards the end of the show, she announced the best dressed male and female awards. and sounding like a TV sales channel, she said.. "but wait! I said we are awarding three best dressed awards for tonight, we have an award for the in-between..." dead silence. "maybe i should call this CREATURE on stage." ooohhh... i can hear the kitty claws popping out. some high profile officers beside me literally cringed when natasha said those words. the company i work for has a very strong policy regarding racial, religious, political and gender discrimination. to have a host refer to an employee as an in-between and a creature is plain stupidity and shows an utter lack of sensitivity. at the very least, she coul...

hayden kho has a better chance of reinventing himself as a porn star than a perfumer. then again it just might be a "short" lived career if you are to base it on his uploaded audition pieces in youtube. to say he comes up "short" is an understatement. nevertheless, his recent foray into the scent industry has met a lot of talk in the blog world, mostly criticism, with bong revilla leading the pack in a verbal tussle with hayden. i find it amusing that revilla, a rumored serial womanizer, thinks he is much better than hayden. rumor has it that what gets revilla's goat is the award winning, critically dissed porn movie of hayden with bong's former alleged paramour, a comedienne with well endowed inflatable life buoys attached to her front. with all that sweet talk, i still can't get over hayden's history of drugged induced proclamation that he formulated his own religion (with vicky as his sole worshipper) and that he is a disciple of Jesus, Shiva ...

someone rams his car into someone else's vehicle causing the death of the male driver and seriously injuring the driver's wife. the case is brought to court where the other driver is charged with reckless imprudence resulting in physical injury and damage to property and is also charged with the same condition except that it results in homicide. the supreme court dismisses the charge of homicide quoting the double jeopardy clause as the driver was already convicted of the first one resulting to physical injury and was given public censure as token punishment. the irony of the situation is that the driver admitted to the second case of reckless imprudence resulting slight physical injury thus leading to his conviction. he then moved to have the other case dismissed. utterly ridiculous. the driver got away with homicide and was charged only for slight physical injury. why not convict the driver with homicide and dismiss the physical injury instead? The death of Nestor Ponce...

i find it a bit interesting that just when a person is about to board a plane for a any destination they would call a "native" to ask what they can do in the place. and if you got here because you googled "things to do in bacolod" then you're one of the rare trip planners who want their day jam-packed with activities. click to enlarge and keep open in another tab. this is THE guide Cebu City is my adopted home. Originally though, my root are from Negros Occidental and it is inevitable that people automatically assume I lived in Bacolod City. Furthermore, they also assume that I am an expert in everything Bacolod - never mind that i haven't lived in the city for close to 22 years. as a favor for my colleagues, friends and strangers that are on the lookout for things to do in bacolod, i've compiled a list of things to do complete with maps and directions. ready? first of all, book yourself an early flight, a really early flight so you get to do ...

i've never really idolized manny pacquiao. i have seen him up close a couple of times, both of us were guests in a town fiesta. never mind that he's the honored guest and his bust was set up in front of the gym after the motorcade where people lined up the streets and chanted his name. it bears noting that his father comes from pinamungahan in cebu, that explains the horde of pacquiao's that came down from the mountain barangays to meet their famous kinsman. i really don't care. my friends demanded that i take their pictures with the pacman, and this was before he won his sixth world title. it was a different story with pokwang though. i had to elbow, box, jab and shove people out of the way so i can grab a pose beside her. there must be a reason why i am not so "lady gaga" over the pacman. let's just say that familiarity does breed some form of contempt, specially when one hear (alleged?) stories about the pacman's activities outside the ring...

Queen Cebu had goddesses as its theme for 2010 and like the proverbial messenger of the gods, two golden clad acrobats soared through the air in a spiraling motion using a single piece of silk rope suspended in the middle of the grand ballroom. two bodies contorted and fluidly morphed as one, mimicking constellations that dot the night skies and eliciting amazed awwws, ooohhhs and aaahs from the audience. in keeping with the theme of THE event, the stage was set up like mount olympus, with a mounted platform on top of the stage accessed by three staircases, one in the middle and the other two on both ends. a long wide ramp ran right in the middle of the ballroom where dancers pranced in the gayest (pun intended) display of gold hues. the audience, very much like the commoners of middle earth, stared in amazement and clapped, the thundering roar could easily be a bolt sent down by zeus himself. there was a split second of silence when the announcer called out the first goddess fro...

the first communion dress of shalani in her willing willie debut did nothing to spice up her presence. it was like watching the living dead. the very least they could have done was to lessen the canned shriek and clapping of an imaginary audience. willie should have done the barangay election trick. pay the audience to clap for shalani. i am glad noy dumped shalani, anyone stupid (or scheming) enough to get on stage with willie (post ABS) has got some few loose screws in their head. when you consider that willie's regular victims are the sexy bombshell screaming co-hosts, can we expect shalani to eventually loosen up? that or they plan to convert the show into a prayer meeting. on the other hand, willie did a master stroke in getting shalani as her co-host. the recent news of the break-up should generate enough sympathy viewership. what's tacky is the fact that shalani couldn't wait long enough to jump right into showbiz. it was reported that the queen of all medi...

today i met two super villains. REPULSE and DEATH MACHINE. One had the ability to cast an invisible forcefield that had a perimeter of 6 feet around him, no one can stand close enough and last longer than a few seconds before they are engulfed in a hallucinogenic effect that mimicked a spaced-out drugged feeling. the other left a deadly trail of destruction, every thing he touched was stained by his mark that infects your clothes, your hair, your skin. ever stayed in a club for two minutes and have your clothes smell like smoke? i swear, my clothes still had traces of his bio stench despite the one liter can of lysol i used. at floral scented pa ang lysol. di pa rin kaya. i had to rub, and rub, scrub and drown myself in hot water to get the scent off me. nag perla na ko pero pumuti na lang ako andun pa din ang smell. now imagine REPULSE and DEATHMACHINE combining powers. atomic bomb effect. i have never seen so many people run off and clear a path every time the evil duo approa...

the devil has white hair and wears adidas i was on my second lap around the ayala complex and lolo passed me three times already. i swear i heard him scoff at me. and i swear i heard him mutter... "sissy". and i swear i can hear his evil-max-alvarado laughter long after he's disappeared from view. pak you lolo! paaaak youuuuuu! that of course happened only in my head, except for the part where lolo passed me three times on the road. i really didn't feel like getting up from bed at four so i can keep my promise to jackie that we'd go running together. not when i spent the better part of my night vegetating in front of the TV watching movies. by the time i parked my car behind immaculada, i was awake - blame it on a bottle of Lipovitan XL, i definitely needed the extra caffeine boost to get me warmed up. mami: anak, gusto mo taho? anak: mami tama na taho, tumataba ka eh. mami: anak, kabag lang to. ayala is unfamiliar territory. most of my runs were do...