It's really too bad a lot of crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. - J. D. Salinger

after my semi-retirement from all things stressful, i devoured tv shows like i would devour chocolates and pastas. my studio type apartment has a television but it doesn't work. the picture tube or whatever they call it does not spout pictures until it's warm enough which can take as long as 20 to 30 minutes (sometimes longer depending on the strength of the gravitational pull of moon). i got tired of just watching static and listening to disembodied voices so i stopped using it after watching, excuse me listening to 30 minutes or so of kris aquino's movie fengshui. well let me tell you it's a helluva way of scaring yourself to death. so for nearly five years, i watched tv shows and movies through other people's television. i saved a lot on electiricity too.

when one of my college friends (who is another tintin so let's call her by her other nickname, puds, to distingished her from the 5 other tintin's in my life) came home briefly to naga, we traded stories about tv shows we watched when we're not busy looking for a job (we were both unemployed during that time). puds is a huge movie buff and i'm not. i was embarassed to admit that the last movie i watched was the Ring; and it was not until jade dragged me and my brother to edsa shangri-la to watch one of the movies showing in the 2007 japanese film festival that i managed to step inside a movie theater again. i was feeling low at that time because my mom just passed away from breast cancer just a few months ago. but by some twisted fate the movie that we watched (inochi) was about a guy who died of lung cancer. after that i never entered another movie theater again until my brother and i got dragged by my cheatmates at the PHP & MYSQL class i attended in UP diliman to watching Kung Fu Panda. it was hilarious. it was the only time i've gone into a movie theater in 2008. oh wait, that's not true, my sister dragged me (yeah i got dragged a lot) into watching madagascar 2 which was not as funny as the first. i wished we watched daniel craig instead in james bond's quantum of solace. he's hot.

during my two months of unencumbered tv bliss, i watched a lot of geeky shows from discovery channel and national geographic. (geeky shows abound!) i didn't think i'd enjoy animal planet but i did so i watched that too and several other channels about food. so maybe that's where all my excess weight came from.

there are so many shows to choose from but i had a lot of time on my hands then. first off let's start with one of my all time favorite, Don't Tell My Mother. it's hosted by diego buñuel. he's very witty, funny, persistent and his sarcasm will make you grin. i think at one episode i heard him say he was french.

he's been to some hostile countries like afghanistan, congo and the holy land. the most menorable episode for me is the don't tell my mother i'm in North Korea. after watching this episode i remember thinking that if that's how communism is, i hope to god this country i live in never end up in the hands of the reds. i know my country has some flaws like any other place in the world but after watching this show, it made me feel better i live here. duh... who would've ever thought i'd still feel that way considering the fertilizer scam etc.

from tour guides to the ordinary people who were interviewed they sometimes sound like robots with their ready answers. it's obvious they have memorised and rehearsed them a lot of times. it's unbelievable, i thought this things are only the stuff of movies. one memorable scene was the visit to the ostrich farm where he asked his guides about gays and aids in korea. the first one isn't legal and the second is non existent in that country. one of his guides on the farm had a very funny expression on his face when diego was describing what a gay or a bisexual man or woman is. in the end you can hear him say, who would have thought you could earn so much by just feeding ostrich?

i've seen other shows featuring the north and you would find most journalists mention that the north is trying to cover up a lot of stuff. you would find buildings with beautifully painted facades but if you go inside them or look at them from you hotel room window, the insides are very different.

this week is shark week on discovery channel. most of the shows will feature lots and lots of sharks. sometimes i can't help but think the guys on these shows must be lunatics to tempt sharks like that. better them than me i guess. i hope they have good insurance policies.

so in deference to shark week mythbusters is also all about shark this week. wait till the part when you see grant screaming in the water when a shark brushed by his legs. poor guy.

memorable episode for me was when corey was water skiing and being towed by a cruise ship. but most of the dangerous stunts are performed by their dummy, buster. one more thing they like to do in this show is blow things up from water heater to real explosives. the results from the experiments and tests they made on the show are documented at mythbusters results.

and another show on my geek list is national geographic's i didn't know that. this is hosted by two funny english blokes rich and jonny. they've got great humor and you can't help but laugh with them as they go through their experiments.

there are shows you never get tired of watching and this is one of them. they discover how the ordinary and usual things we use are made of and how. they like to blow things up too and jonny is known to even take them apart just to find out what the inside looks like.

and then there's dirty jobs with mike rowe. this show is even more Hilarious than the others. as the title says it features all the dirty jobs there are. watch the promotional video below to find out for yourself.

all you got to do is get yourself a dirty job.

one of the shows on my non geek list is bondi rescue from the natgeo adventure channel. it's shown on thursdays. although lately i've been watching the re runs a lot. but i heard the new season's episode started this week.

it's like watching baywatch but only better. after all this is the real thing. real lifeguards. real rescues and real drowning people. i don't really have to say that some of the lifeguards are hot. drowning is no fun but i wouldn't mind being rescued by one of these guys. they've also got some real amusing names. hmm... if i start matching the names to the faces, i have to stop. it's too much.

if i enumerate all my favorite shows, this will even be longer. there is a cool new show hosted by emmauel belliveau, world's greenest homes. i hate bugs but after watching the episode about butterflies in bugging with ruud i became a convert of that show (but i still hate bugs). i also watch jeff corwin's show because it can be fun expecially when he's being chased by the very animals he's filming (and then you'd hear him say, the thing's i'd do for you guys). then there's extreme engineering with danny forster; monster moves which always amazes me and a bunch of other features like stephen hawking's theory of everything which made my nose bleed -but very cool anyway. then there was that feature on norway's fjords. it was amazing to know what can be found down there.

to cap this off, i'm posting my favorite promotional video ever. (i love the whole world and all it's craziness boom tiyaya boom tiyaya). i even downloaded it on my phone and it plays every time my sister calls me =_) it's so cool. i wish she would call all the time. i even have the lyrics down to a phat.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. - Kurt Vonnegut

The time that you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.- Bertrand Russell

it was lunch time. i was hungry and unfortunately... stuck in the office.

i was browsing through don and edel's website... and i felt even hungrier. i grabbed some photos instead. despite gaining more weight than i could lose (i'm too lazy to exercise) ever since i arrived in naga, i still want to eat that patatas from chocolate kiss. after getting a brain work out (which sometimes felt more like an electric shock to the brain) at our PHP & MYSQL class, we sit back, wonder what the heck the entire lesson was all about (thank goodness for having nice cheatmates - zai, don, gwen and popin - since without them i don't think i could have caught up, i'm not even sure i 'caught' up now that i think about it) and then gorge ourselves at this restaurant in UP known as chocolate kiss. the baked potato is bliss.

edel and jacques' birthday party at the rowdy house last September 2008 was one of the last parties i've attended before i went back. two memories stand out: car's awesome cocktails (we were drinking it like shipwrecked survivors who have never seen water or juice for a very long long time - and it's not even water or juice) and then there's mau getting wasted...

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have no virtues. - Abraham Lincoln

Uncle Pepe's birthday celebration

i know it's way too late...

but happy birthday....

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. - George Bernard Shaw

chillin' @ Sto. Domingo, Albay

Day 1 @ Costa Palmera Resort in Sto. Domingo, Albay (November 30, 2008)

after a couple of hours planning last saturday (Nov. 29), we finally made it to Costa Palmera Resort in Sto. Domingo, Albay. we've been planning to go there since last year but as plans go, nothing came out of it but a plan. so we've decided never to plan anything unless we're going the next day like we did this time. for some reason everytime she and i plan ahead (3 months or less), nothing comes out of it. it's nothing but a plan. but if we just decide to do something in the nick of time like this one, we ended up getting there. like our trip to baguio and this trip to sto. domingo. we didn't even know where in albay the resort was but good thing they have a website and we found out it's just in sto. domingo where my cousins live. about 5 to 10 minutes by tricycle. cool, we're on!

we 'planned' over yahoo messenger for a couple of hours and then we decided to meet tomorrow at 8am to go to legazpi. but we didn't get to leave at the designated time, instead we left maybe 3 hours later (again) hahaha! we took the aircon minibus and travelled for almost 3 hours because it has soooo may stops. When huge aircon buses were still in business it can only take 2 hours because there are no stops. don't ride the non aircon ones unless you want to arrive 6 to 8 hours later. seriously...

it's fortuitous that monday was a holiday and i have cousins living in sto. domingo. i immediately texted maida and she picked us up at the legazpi integrated terminal. she also texted us the order of the albay municipalities we're gonna passed through so we can let her know if we're near legazpi. so it's polangui, ligao, guinobatan ( i love passing through this place, lots of green hills and trees), camalig (where you can find the cagsawa ruins), daraga and finally legazpi. from the terminal we took a tricycle to gaisano pacific mall to buy the food we're gonna take to the resort. tricycle is minimum fare, P8 pesos only. from gaisano we took a jeep to sto. domingo, P20 pesos. it takes about 15 minutes to get there. we passed through the barangay that was washed out by mudflows from the mayon volcano during typhoon reming. we didn't know it was the 2nd year anniversary of the tragedy. there was a mass being held at a small chapel which is prolly one of the very few buildings in the area. i think it was built recently since it was open, no doors. there were some people who attended the service. the lady sitting next to abby was telling her the story and it creeped abby out. love told me not to take pictures because something might appear there. i didn't while we were on our way there but as we were going home (dec 1), i took some photos of the place. it's mostly rock and sand. it's now like a big quarrying site. the houses are all gone. it was very eerie. i'd hate to pass through that place at night. my cousin who drives a jeep there just smiles when we asked him before if the place is really spooky (since we've never been there). now we understand. it's a very sad place. nearly an entire barangay was wiped out and some families were actually wiped out. tragic. makes the hair at the back of my neck rise.

when we arrived at my cousin's house, auntie muying and uncle gil made us baduya (fried banana, i ate 9 of them, poor bananas never stood a chance) and fried sweet potatoes (my favorite! camote). after eating, we left their house at about 4:15 and took a tricycle to costa palmera for P50 pesos (there were 5 of us). the ride took 5 -10 minutes only. no traffic =_)

after checking out the place, we change to our swim clothes and swam until our skin shrivelled like raisins and we can taste nothing but sea water. we spent most of the time at the pool since (heck!) the waves were darn strong. even sitting on the edge of the stairs (yes 3 small stairs to go down to the beach) and holding onto the ropes is darned dangerous. current was very strong it can drag you very very far away (no matter how big or heavy you are). we arrived just when the tide was just rising and it was fun to watch the water fill up the small enclosure (about an arm's length wide). as the it gets darker and darker, the enclosure gets filled with sea water until it reaches our waist. the current was strong even the waters in the enclosure was frothy as they collide with each other. we swam in the pool just in case a baby shark managed to get in there, you'll never know. meanwhile the water level in the pool also rises and we can hear the sea roaring since it's now just outside the pool. whoever thought of this idea, kudos to you man. very very cool. we didn't leave the water until it was very very late, i think it was past 8 pm already. we ate some gulay (laing, yum...) which was cooked by auntie, and ordered crispy pata, and fried shrimps with rice from the resort's restaurant. the food is good. it was a very very hearty meal. (good luck sa puso dahil sa crispy pata), after eating we took a walk and sat looking for some stars. we didn't see them until we were about to go to bed. it rained that night but we didn't notice until we saw puddles of water outside in the morning since we were so tired we slept the sleep of the dead.

Day 2 @ Costa Palmera Resort in Sto. Domingo, Albay (December 1, 2008)

we missed the sunrise because we woke up late (past 6am). after eating our breakfast of bread and chips, we headed down to the pool and the beach. we took some photos and swam until 9:30 am. the current was not as strong as yesterday. it was already low tide but we still didn't venture out to the deep. my cousin, maying who's the tallest of the 5 of us, tried to go down the metal ladder. she's already under the water from head to foot but she can't touch bottom yet. so we decided to just wade beside the sea wall. we sometimes don life jackets too just to be safe and besides it looks good in the pictures. we made some little friends. their familia owns the resort. they live upstairs. 4 siblings, one little girl whom we only know as ate. the oldest is of course, kuya. the two young and very very makukulit kids are daniel (aka dane) and the youngest is xander. nice names. dane is the most personable of the lot. when we left love at the pool she was single (pun intended) and when we get back (from swimming at the beach), she was suddenly nanay to 4 kids hahaha =) so i took their pictures while the kids trade stories with love and my cousins since apparently they're always there. we hope we can come back again next year. hopefully shobe and shoty can come too... we'll see.

before we went home, we passed through the church of Sto. Domingo. it's very picturesque, very lovely and well preserved. we didn't enter the church since it seemed to be closed but we found the priest outside with some men and mending some nets. i'm not sure if he's going fishing =) we said goodbye to maida and maying and boarded a jeep to legazpi. we passed through the eerie place again and i took some pictures of the place. imagine being buried by tons and tons of mud and sand. the rocks are so huge, you can only imagine how strong the force was that took them down from the slopes of mt. mayon. i've taken a look at the pictures and so far no faces that shouldn't be there just live ones. thank god =)

love shopped some for boom2 (that's judoy's latest name, don't ask why) and ate at graceland. good foresight since we arrived in naga 4 hours later! damned minibus stopped at every place he could find to park! they played a dvd of 2 west life concerts the entire trip. short of jumping off the bus, it's good thing i have my headphones. it's not like i hate boy bands but sitting through 4 hours of it is pure torture!

and now i am back in naga again. wednesday, i go back to work. more research. but i thank st. ignatius of loyola for one more day of reprieve. ad majorem dei gloriam!

Amen =_)

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow. - Evan Esar

i'm a twilighter too!

yes, i got bitten...  

i have all 4 books by stephenie meyer, but i've only read as far as the first book (twilight) and the second book (new moon), which was ed's donation to my growing book collection. hahaha! so thank u much ed =) that was very nice of you (read: the pautang that ended up as my going away present hahaha!). 

i've actually read them both twice.  when i first heard of the series, a love triangle between a vampire, a human girl and a werewolf, i thought "hmmm...  must be a  tamer version of laurell hamilton's anita blake series."  and maybe it is.

the characters have very memorable lines.  uber sa kilig factor (god, i hope the movie doesn't disappoint).  as i got to know edward's character in the first few chapters of the book, i want a vampire boyfriend too!  :D  if you read the back cover of the book, you will not be able to resist. i know i couldn't.

About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him -

and I didn't know how dominant that part might be -

that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

those lines did it for me. and before i knew it, i was signing up my name on the waiting list at powerbooks (yup, they ran out of it back in august).

edward is not exactly harry potter.  there's no comparison (at least not for me).  this book will take you through the agony and ecstasy brought about by first love (just like a walk down memory lane). first love complicated by the fact that bella swan is in love with not your average vampire, a vegan vamp (if you want to know what that is get your own copy of the bloody book).

the second book (which as ed's donation), New Moon is probably the most heart breaking book i've ever read.  spoiler alert: yes they broke up in this book.  i nearly wept when i got to the empty pages...  such emptiness (sniff...sniff).  

it's so bloody difficult not to feel sorry for her when they broke up. heartbreaks give you the illusion that time stopped for you.  but the truth is, the world goes on. it doesn't care about your pain. 

as for the female protagonist in the book, bella swan, you would either hate or love her.  she's a total Klutz.  if there's one thing she's certain about, she wanted to be with edward and she wanted to be a vampire.  unfortunately edward doesn't feel the same way.  he wanted her to remain human and age and die like any human beings do.  

and there are times when i can't help but get angry at bella for leading jacob (spoiler alert again: yes, he's the werewolf).  i mean he's such a nice guy...  reminds me of another werewolf, richard, of the anita blake series.  i had to put off reading the third book in the series (eclipse) because i'm uberworked (read: got a deadline again on friday!).  

anyway, this is on the back cover of New Moon:

"I knew we were both in mortal danger.  Still in that instant, I felt well.  Whole.  I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again.  My lungs filled deep within the sweet scent that came off his skin.  It was like there had never been any hole in my chest.  I was prefect - not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place."

simply unputdownable.  like i mentioned, i read the books twice. 

and if you're a die-hard twilight fan, aka twilighter, this is for u.

"Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you.  I'd been broken beyond repair."

-- Bella, from New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)

"Some mothers choose what their children will eat."

"Others choose which children will eat and which will die."

"The news from the World Food Programme is even grimmer: A child dies of hunger every six seconds, and hunger now kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined."

Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System," says the right to food should be seen as a human right. But, he says, powerful corporate food distributors control too much of the world's food supply to ensure a robust global food supply.

Patel says "2008 was a record year in terms of harvest. There's more food per person in 2008 than there's ever been in history. The problem is not food, but how we distribute it."

Other causes for the rise in global hunger have been documented. They include:

• Surging oil costs have made it more expensive to harvest, fertilize, store and deliver food.

• The rise in droughts and hurricanes worldwide has wiped out crops and made farming more difficult.

• The world is running out of the raw materials -- water, oil, good farmland -- needed to keep the food system intact.

"A lot of people have begun to understand at various levels that the food system, as it is, can't go on," says Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food."

Every time an American bites down on a steak or hamburger, they're contributing to global hunger, Roberts says. As other countries become more affluent, they're copying our meat-heavy diet. The problem: It takes so much grain and other resources to produce meat, he says.

"If the rest of the world were to eat like we do, the planet would collapse," Roberts says.

to read the full article by John Blake, "As children starve, world struggles for solution" visit CNN.com's website.

click to go to msnbc.com article

it's a shock isn't it? that there are mothers who would have to make this tough choice even today. you'd think this problem should've been solved at the end of the previous century but it's not. makes you feel guilty for eating that dessert even when you're stomach was about to burst; because now you know that there is a little child somewhere who's going to die because there's not enough food to keep him alive until his next birthday. even after all my raves and rants about how unfair my life has been, i'm still 'lucky' compared to those kids. my mother didn't have to make that kind of choice.

my brother was a project engineer in constructing a small school in one of the depressed areas here in bicol. it's a coastal barangay in sipocot. because of the distance from naga, he had to sleep there and go home only during the weekends. there's already an existing school building but they're adding another room since the first one is poorly made. school buildings usually serve as evacuation centers when disasters strike these areas during the typhoon season.

he told me that there was even one family there who have 18 kids and the oldest is not even 20 yet! one day he was eating his lunch (which was also his breakfast), sardines cooked with eggs. since some of the kids live far from the school, they bring their own baon (packed lunch). he sat next to 2 kids (brothers) who were about to eat their baon. he saw them share the rice but as he waited for the ulam, he saw them take out packet of toyo (soy sauce) and asin (salt) and mixed it with the rice! when the kids saw him staring (prolly with that shocked expresion on his face), they walked away and ate far away from him.

we remember hearing stories like these from our parents since our parents didn't come from buena familias. but as he was telling me the story i saw how sad and frustrated he was. my brother said he lost his appetite after that and decided to give all his food to the 2 brothers. he ended up just drinking coffee that day. when he saw the two kids sharing the rice mixed with salt and soy sauce, he promised not to leave a single grain of rice on his plate from then on. he told me that he would've understand seeing them eat tuyo (dried fish), but it looks like their family can't even afford to buy it. so when poor people can't even afford to buy the so-called poor man's food, what are they going to eat now?

i can understand how my brother felt after seeing something like this. we're so lucky. darned lucky. so when he sees my cousins playing with what they eat, he gets angry. after all, rice doesn't grow overnight; and there are empty stomachs who would love to have even just a few of it even without any ulam.

made me feel guilty for all the food i wasted all those years.




God gives every bird its food, but He does not thow it into its nest. - J. G. Holland