something different

i took a bath in the rain today. not intentionally at first. but i still stayed out and got really, really wet. soaking.

it was cool and fresh and relaxing and fun. its been quite a long time since i did that.

when was the last time you took a bath in the rain?

no more coke

i have stopped drinking coke in all of its two varieties — lite and original. for about four weeks now.

no pepsi, diet pepsi or pepsi max either.

no colas.

i drink c2 every now and then but not regularly. and only buy it when i need a bottle. i reuse their bottles kasi.

i do drink plenty of water though — about 3 liters a day. or there abouts.

no. no doctor told me to stop. i just wanted to. and i also have been saving quite a lot because of it.

now, if i can just find an easy way to stop smoking...

a good morning

i just had an early morning earthquake greeting. it felt like it was around intensity 3.5. and its robin's last exam day and start of a two week vacation. yey!

update: something's up in mindoro. they've had three earthquakes in the last two days. first thing that comes to mind is underground nuclear testing. ha!

escolta 10.2006

my girlfriend and i went to escolta yesterday. sorry no pictures yet. i was there more than 9 years ago and things are a bit different today. the place looks generally cleaner. there are sweepers at almost every corner keeping things tidy. there's a school — city college of manila — where the philippine national bank used to be so college students in uniform lend a "young" attitude to the street. there are two or three empty lots turned into parking spaces where buildings used to stand. there's less traffic now which i think is a good thing. people can walk. the street still has a lot of its character eventhough some people think or say that its time has passed.

there's a nice coffee shop near the end of escolta where you can have some brewed coffee and hopia among other things. polland is its name. its a good place to rest after a walk in escolta.

stormy weekend: part 3

30 september 2006, saturday
its strange waking up in a dark room and all is quiet. i got used to waking up with robin's night light on and some music or news from our neighbor's radio. but this time its all quiet. and dark.

cherry and i decided to trim some plants in the garden. they're thick with extra leaves and small branches especially the santan bushes.

i heard over the radio that there's another storm coming. neneng's the name they gave. ugh. i hope that thing doesn't hit us directly.

its been more than two days without electricity. it heard over the news that meralco asked for help in clearing up fallen trees so they can bring up the eletricity much faster

hmmm... how come when they can't give you electricity they ask for help. but you miss paying for two days and they immediately send you a notice of disconnection.

1 october 2006, sunday
we finally got the electricity back on by 5 pm today. i'm too tired to catch up on news. i'll probably do it within the next few days. i have to check my mails first.

stormy weekend: part 2

29th september 2006, friday
there was still no electricity in our part of the city. robin and i decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and take some pictures.

there's one uprooted tree in front of centro escolar university (ceu) but most of the trees in the area just suffered broken branches.

most of the new lamp posts that mayor atienza had installed a few weeks earlier in mendiola were still standing except for one.

a large branch fell on top of the guard house of la consolacion

mendiola on the holy spirit side was relatively passable

but the sidewalk on the la consolacion side was not

branches that fell in a creek behind holy spirit

more photos in my flicker thingy.

we had to get some supplies from the supermarket so we went so sm manila. bad idea. the trip was, to coin cherry — a disaster.

the mall was running on generators so there was no aircon. most of the people were fanning themselves which means its been warm inside. we tried getting money from the atms but there were long lines on every one. ugh. and there's a three-day sale going on which meant tons of people. we decided to just get what we needed from the grocery and go. no window shopping on this trip.

the supermarket wasn't accepting credit card transactions because they couldn't connect to the card companies. that's because of the storm. there were abandoned cars of groceries within the the supermarket area.

its been more than a day of no electricity.

stormy weekend: part 1

i got caught with the sudden power outage — more than three days without electricity! ugh! since i couldn't blog online, i went analog and wrote things down...

27th september 2006, wednesday
a storm is coming. they gave it the name milenyo. its storm signal #1 over metro manila which means robin doesn't have classes tomorrow.

28th september 2006, thurdays
the storm was expected to pass north of manila but this morning's news said it changed tracks and will hit the metro around lunch time. storm signal #3 is raised over metro manila.

the electricity goes out at around 11 am. this sucks.

winds are getting strong now. the eye of milenyo arrived around 1pm. well, at least it felt like the eye of the storm. winds were really strong that it started to tear away one part of the neighbor's roof. small billboards on the fence of a nearby school was torn off and sections of the gym's roof began peeling off.

the house is holding pretty well eventhough its around 40 years old already. there are some leaks but nothing serious.

we have a eucalyptus tree that's about a year old and around 4 - 5 meters high. it was riding out the storm. the topmost tip of the tree would touch the ground with every strong gust of wind.

by 3 pm the winds have died down and i went out to the yard to assess the damage.

the eucalyptus tree didn't break but the guava tree was lying down on its side. good thing it was still small enough (4 meters) that i was able to prop it back up with a thick stick.

there wasn't any other noticable damage to the house. everything was still intact.

time to clean up.

i just saw

on the way back from school with robin, a frigging ferrari. i said, "wow." robin said, "whoah!"

its not like the street in our neighborhood is lined with them. i've only seen a modena once in a posh neighborhood. but this is the first time i saw one in our area.

bad day

its been a bad day. i felt sluggish and tired for the most part. and it was pretty hot and humid during the middle of the day.

and robin's not really cooperating. well, he is a kid.

i'm tired. i'm going to turn in early.

for rain, wash car

its confirmed. everytime i have the car washed, it rains within 24 hours. everytime. well, probably 95% of the time. in the other 5%, it rained within 48 hours.

but still, do you know what this means? if i have the car washed then there will be a 95% chance of rain!

i'm not kidding. maybe its just my luck.

or that birthmark.

or i just don't get to wash the car that often.

xmas songs na

would you believe, they're playing christmas songs already?!?! i actually heard the first song at around 6 am on the 1st of september! they were playing the whole ray coniff christmas album.

aaawwww.

it seems they're really trying to to squeeze everthing they can get from the xmas season.

brings back memories though. mom still has that album somewhere. its just hard to get a cheap turntable these days.

start of the ber season

and everything seems to be happening one after the other.

"aw barf", as mandy always says.

the year feels like its been preparing since january and decides to start dumping events in september — a field trip by robin, humid days and really stormy nights, a twister over at manila bay, a drive to cavite to fix six computers, no money, diving into php and css hacks for different browsers, a friend had an operation in his gall bladder (gone now), a father of a friend passed away, an uncle (in-law) goes to the hospital (recovering well), chats with friends who migrated to canada, an 87 kilometer drive — to have the car washed, and my license renewed, multiplication tables (again), a candle for 9-11, a cell battery that went bum on me, a spontaneous dinner at cafe adriatico, scampi palermo (yum!!), plenty of coffee, getting off coke (the soda), growing coffee, blocking with stupid wanna-be hackers, a birthday party, a smoke, initial d and gundam seed episodes aplenty, new uploads to flickr (finally), blogger decides to mess things up a bit and improve itself, barako (fantastic local coffee) in the evening and not getting enough sleep.

and its still the middle of the month.

sheesh.

the character mandy is copyrighted by cartoon network

bye croc hunter

steve irwin died recently while doing a documentary. he was 44.

first time i saw him i think it was in discovery channel. i remember him having a wacky accent and that boyish enthusiastic smile. one can tell he really loved what he did for a living. one cannot help but be pulled in to what he was talking about and gather a good tidbit or three about real knowledge of wild animals. he was both entertaining and quite informative and educational.

thank you steve.

a museum for san pablo

san pablo city is pushing for their/our own museum and preparations are on the way. as a start, a member of the cultural society of san pablo put up a blog about the museum.

take a look. i think i have a picture somewhere there.

secrets

all people have secrets.

we have that handful of pieces of precious memories that is always kept in that special hidden space no one else knows. more often, these special secrets are shared memories. of a walk on a beach of pebbles, a bus or a boat ride, a sunset, a dance and a drink. a touch. a kiss.

it only has a special meaning to us. no one else.

we lie, say nothing or just smile to keep our secrets hidden how ever painful some of them may be.

once in a while our eyes glaze over at a sudden recollection of something and we're swept back to that park bench talking and laughing. and then everything else seems a little happier. or a little sadder.

maybe one of these days we can have coffee and exchange life stories. that would certainly be an interesting experience.

pluto is no a planet anymore

"pluto is dead." read here.

as of today, there are only 8 planets in our system. pluto is now considered to be a dwarf planet.

changes. sometimes these sort of changes make one look at things from a slightly different perspective. but if you really think about it, nothing's changed but the people's definition of a thing. the "object" is still there, circling its merry way around the sun, not really caring if we call it a planet or not. we're just picky about these things, i guess.

one of these days our definition of time will change from 60 seconds for a single minute to a decimal system where one minute will take a hundred seconds. time himself will not really care. but we will. we're picky.

there are more changes coming and all one can do is have an open mind.

bloggle

ok. i just got news that there's a new blogger that's coming out. unfortunately, its just limited to a few lucky ones. still, its good to know that work is on going to improve the system a bit (or maybe a lot). its not wordpress or movable type but its really easy to use and new-user friendly.

breakfast at tiffany's

the next chapter in the retro series is breakfast at tiffany's. this time with george peppard. i bought this one yesterday at one of the malls nearby. it was just sitting there on top of everything else so what the hey. i got the vcd at 100 pesos. i've heard that they're remastering the old classics for dvd media but i can't wait for that. besides, it'll probably be expensive.

haven't you noticed that this has been an audrey hepburn series as well? what other movies did she have?

its the eyes i tell ya. its the eyes.

my first roman holiday

well, i finally got to watch roman holiday. for the first time. no one told me about the ending. my girlfriend knew but she didn't see it fit to tell me. so right after i saw the "the end" of the movie all i can say was:

"what?!?! no! no way!! no freaking way! it can't end that way!"

it was the same reaction i had after watching pirates: dead man's chest. but this time there's no sequel to roman holiday.

and my girlfriend has a pretty good laugh out of it.

aawwww, bugger.

retro mode

ok. for the past few weeks i've been in retro mode. well, at least, in my taste in movies.

and i've been busy with work which i am thankful for. i hate idle hands, don't you?

i was able to buy a vcd (retro mode) of sabrina — the one with audrey hepburn, humphrey bogart and william holden. yup. the 1954 movie. on sale for 75 pesos (around 1 euro or us$ 1.5). although my girlfriend said i should also get the one with julia ormond and harrison ford. that's for later. right now i'm enjoying this one. i would probably try to get a copy of casablanca and/or african queen one of these days but sabrina is just one of those lucky finds. i was looking around and i just saw it. and its cheap and original.

why not?

last week, i also got a vcd of roman holiday. audrey hepburn and gregory peck. 1953. 100 pesos. but i haven't gotten around to watching it. gf says its a pretty funny movie. so maybe this weekend i'll lay back and watch it.

retro. and i think i'm developing a thing for audrey hepburn.

who wouldn't, i guess.