September Heroes

Before September ends (reminds me of the song Wake Me Up When September Ends), I'd like to congratulate some of my fellow Filipinos for giving a good name to the country in various fields:

• Manny Pacquio - Who else to top the list by this inspiring Filipino boxer and current hero of the country. Who doesn't know this guy? He's even in the list of fighters of the featherweight division in the EA Sports Fight Night Round 2 Playstation 2 game (never mind his awful yet funny dance routine in the game).


• Boxers Brian Viloria and Rey "Boom Boom" Bautista for knocking out their respective opponents, on the same night hours before the Pacquiao-Velazquez fight. Were these signs of the impending victory for Pacman Manny? Joyous night indeed.


• While lamenting over the influx of too meztiza-looking and foreign blooded types of Filipina beauties, it's refreshing to note that a Filipina came victorious after being crowned Miss International 2005 in Tokyo. Our country sure has more supplies of beautiful women (inner and outer beauty).


• And hear this (or rather read this), the news reported of a little known victory of a Filipino winning an international essay contest. I downloaded his essay and shall read it later. He might have written something controversial yet creatively to catch the attention of the judges.

Speaking of Pacquiao, he is one of the finalists listed in Time's Asia Heroes. As of this writing, he is in a neck-to-neck battle with Korean superstar Rain (Justin of Full House, a Korean tele-series of... ehem, silly pa-cuteness with a female companion in a single house; seems that many young Filipinos go gaga over cutesy antics than substance). I'm not familiar with this guy so I could not draw any inspiring conclusions from this individual.

So you could already guess to whom my vote goes to (no, not with the two feuding female political figures Aquino and Arroyo - they're more of the country's headaches than inspiring Asians).

On the other hand...

I can't help but post my sentiments of the hitting incident that happened yesterday during the first game of the UAAP 2005 Basketball Finals between DLSU and FEU. The game was won by FEU. Losing is quite hard to swallow, but it is an unacceptable act to hit a player out of flared up emotions just for a game. I share the sentiments in the last paragraph of Tin Gamboa's news report.

This is a game where it is expected that someone would win and another would lose. This is a game between schools forged in a pact of sportsmanship and friendly competition in which everyone is expected to act chivalrous and accept whatever the outcome of the game with dignity. A friendly game that should never be mistaken as a do-or-die situation or winning is all that matters only.

We expect this from older individuals whose experiences with life make them think and act maturely unlike the younger ones. But no, this time someone did the mistake to act immaturely and let his heightened emotions control him.

Whatever apology was stated, the deed was done. The name of the school has been tarnished, with the media unstoppable in magnifying the issue (even if he is, as the forum stated, is totally independent from the school). For the moment, let's keep our mouth shut, relax a bit, loosen some muscle, cool some heads, and pick up the broken pieces.

Let this be a lesson in responsibility for any individual, a member or not, who represents the name of an honored institution.

Charcoal For You and Me

"My momma always told me to use charcoal to deodorize a stinking smell"

Or so all mothers would say practically to remove the stink from the refrigerator especially the fishy odor.

That's what I found out upon entering the office room. Sprawled behind me is a pile of charcoal on an old newspaper sheet. Apparently, this was placed to suck in the nauseating scent of some paint product like turpentine.

And some playful individual decided to draw on a scratch paper using one of the blocks of charcoal (not me, I insist; that's not how I draw). A pig. With a moustache. With human ears.

Ah, the things you do to relieve stress.

Class, this should have been a photoblog. Bah.

43 Goals and Counting

A friend recommended me this site - 43 Things - and already, I have to say, I am quite hooked. This site is simply a list of goals in life per individual who registered with the site. Yes, we can make a list of our own by writing them down on a piece of paper (ala Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill where she list down the people whom she would kill. Uh, but that is a violent comparison), but this old idea was made practically new by letting your list be shown to others across the globe. Each list of things or goals you want to accomplish in life can be also included in another one's list of goals through linking (ala Friendster). And each goal can have an entry of its own (ala blog entries) in which any individual can pour his or her ideas or steps on how to achieve this goal. Even the craziest goal can be written down in your list.

Two of the most linked up goals that I've seen so far (and shared some of my ideas) are to lose belly fat and to be a better blogger. The former can have a post later on. The latter can be summed up as what I have shared in the site:

"Don’t blog if you feel not like sharing something. Blog only if it matters to you and you are really interested to share it. Don’t worry much if readers would not like what you have posted, as long as it matters to you."

Enough said.

Images in Chinatown

Along with a friend, we went to Chinatown, Manila yesterday to meet up with some of our friends at Wai Ying restaurant. Food is truly excellent and delicious. Inexpensive too. Don't expect much on the ambience. Loved the dimsum and the curry flavored fish fillets.

Took this photograph using my cellphone's camera. Bit dark. I really need a digital camera.

Almost there. Just a block away. The street we were passing through was filled with people and cars parked on both sides, even on a Sunday.

Can't get enough of my friend's new 4-doored Mazda 3 gray colored car. A sleek machine indeed.

GMail in Tagalog

I learned about this Gmail feature from Yugatech. After reading, I tried it out at once and, personally, I find the feature more annoying (and funny) than helpful. Instead of reading words in pure Tagalog, I get a muddled mixture of English and Tagalog words or Taglish. It's like I'm talking to a stereotypical colehiyala (Konyo English). Can't blame the translators though, for there are no direct Tagalog translations for common Internet words which most computer savvy Metro Manila folks would understand better in English. Take for instance, as shown in the image, the word Mail. I think it's koreo in Tagalog (I might be mistaken). But technically, the word is E-mail. So what should be the right Tagalog word? Kuryenteng Koreo? Eh? I don't know my Tagalog anymore.

Another word is burador. I tried to understand this word, until I gave up and went back to English language setting just to see what the word is in English. It was draft. Hahaha. I thought it was related to something connected to erasers (come to think of it, constant erasures would apply to sketches or drafts).

Now for the word spam, I know this is junk e-mail. But speak spam to ordinary folks here and most would recognize it as delicious canned luncheon meat or food resembling MaLing. And of course, the word basura. This is trash. No doubt about that. Trash indeed.

Now, like burador, etiketa made me scratch my head twice before I reverted back to English setting again. Etiketa meant label. I prefer label. I prefer to say, "Basahin mo ang label ng bote" than "Basahin mo ang etiketa ng bote" (eh?).

I suppose it's a way for Google Mail to include a Tagalog version for those individuals who don't speak in English (or who knows little English but prefers to use Tagalog). Good try though. But I'm thinking of using this language setting for a while until I get so annoyed I'll switch back to the real world of English.

Pardon me, Jose Rizal.

New Layout

A fresh start. A new site layout. In grays and bright hybrid orange/red color. Already checked the look and feel of the site in both IE browser and Mozilla Firefox. Currently, the layout works fine. The only strange behavior I see in Firefox is that the delete icon for comments is not displayed, unlike in IE browser.

And soon I found the same issue from other bloggers. I'll look into this if I have some spare time.

If you see something strange in the neighbor... I mean this blog's layout, please call my attention (commenting would be fine).

Congratulations Pacquiao!

Congratulations to Manny Pacquiao for winning (TKO) against his opponent, Hector Velazquez, in the concluded super featherweight bout yesterday. To me, his winning did more than lifting the spirits of his countrymen - entertainment-wise he made a good show worth watching while drinking and feasting with buddies. Meanwhile Erik Morales made a lackluster performance of his match and eventually lost.

You really can't win them all.

Anyway, we'll see if the rematch (scheduled by next year) between these two fighters would generate more fury and grit.

Ahem, let we dedicate the popular song, Noypi, of the band Bamboo to our boxing hero (we'll go directly to the chorus, and sing with pure angst):

...Hoy! Pinoy ako
Buo aking loob
May agimat ang dugo ko
Hoy! Pinoy ako
May agimat ang dugo ko...

People Power Doodle

The recent events in Metro Manila (and that is another story) led me to go back and rummage in my stock of drawings depicting events from People Power 2 (image above was more of a satire of what really happened then). I was present there along with a handful of officemates, as we were even encouraged by our employer to join and support the gathering. It was my first experience to be a part of a historical struggle. Indeed, I'll go down in history along with my officemates and friends.

And no, Optimus Prime did not join the rally (find him above).

Talent For Drawing

Cockfighting in Cyberspace

Tumbang Preso (Knocking the Can Down)

(Max, if you are asking if I still draw, here are the evidences. These are some of my works coming from my old blog)

I love to draw. I have this talent for drawing, sketching, and painting images of different colors and shapes. But since I am busy at work (for the past 6 years) and shifted my interest to other things, I have neglected much in improving my drawing skills. Add to that the fact that I have simply lost some inspiration to draw again.

But lately, I have found some sites (see some of the site links at the special interest blogs) showcasing their artworks. These gave me some of the needed inspiration to boost my interest again to pick up a pencil and sketch images.

I'll try to post some new artworks again if time permits.

Christmas Is Nearing To Town

Slightly groggy upon waking up, I was surprised to see the hosts of a daily morning show in the TV donning Santa Claus's hats. Behind them stood a Christmas tree complete with bright and colorful trimmings. Gifts abound their set table and the background music can be heard slightly to the tune of a Christmas song. I now realized that today is September. The first day of September to be exact.

This early celebration is perfectly normal around here in the Philippines, so please, don't nominate this situation in any list of world wide weird wonders.

So what is the significance of the first day of this month being the start of Christmas celebration? Beats me. Maybe it's because of this: Christmas is generally associated as a cold, chilly weather celebration. And when we feel cold, we shiver. We say "brrrr". "Brrrrrr....brrrrrr". And since the months of September to December end with "ber", some inventive Pinoy started to connect this with the icy sensation. "Brr" sounds like "ber", thus we get "Septembrr", "Octobrr", "Novembrr", "Decembrr". Then whoever made this logic started to don his house with Christmas decors, whistling Christmas tunes, making a Christmas list and checking it twice. He's gonna find out whose...

Anyway, class, particularly here in the Philippines, the "ber" months (months ending with "ber" - September to November) are the most anticipated ending months of the year. The yearly countdown to Christmas begins. Christmas music, local and foreign, can be sometimes heard in radio stations and shopping malls here. Numerous advertisements for Christmas bazaars start to pop up every where. Workers start to contemplate on how to save enough money to stack up on their Christmas gift lifts for their loved ones, friends, and even their godchildren who they usually try to run away from.

Expect more Christmas fiesta celebrations in the coming months here in the Philippines.