la belle dame sans regrets

dansons tu dis
et moi, je suis
mes pas sont gauches
mes pieds tu fauches
je crains les sots
je cherche en vain les mots
pour m'expliquer ta vie, alors
pu ments, ma Soeur
tu brises mon coeur
je pense, tu sais
erreurs, jamais
j'ecoute, tu parles
je ne comprends pas bien
la belle dame sans regrets

je pleure, tu ris
je chante, tu cries
tu semes les graines
d'un mauvais chene
mon ble s'envole
tu en a ras le bol
j'attends, toujours
mes cris sont sourds
tu ments, ma soeur
tu brises mon coeur
je pense, tu sais
erreurs, jamais
j'ecoute, tu parles
je ne comprends pas bien
la belle dame sans regrets...

happy holidays

before i start playing with this new version of blogger i'd like to happy holidays to everyone. please safely enjoy the season.

peace

the season's rush

i feel that the season's rush is here. everyone wants to do 47 things at a time, go to everywhere where there's a sale, squeeze more money from anywhere and generally just walk faster.

i want to get off the rush. today. now. i'm not exactly a stranger to frenzy but things really get frantic in december. and one of the hardest parts of the day is getting out of a cozy warm bed while the sun is still out.

anyone of you want to sit still with me and just have coffee?

wassum

in the immortal words of mutley, "wassum fassum wassuum fassuum."

which roughly translates to, "me no like mondays. i no like."

crappy day

has anyone of you reading this thing ever had a day when you felt that the whole planet was conspiring against you for the past 364 days and you're now beginning to feel that it started its dastardly plans against you?

well, i'm having a week of it. a whole seven days. gaaackk!

i feel like i'm a bad vibe black hole which sucks up all the wayward bad luck within a two kilometer radius. not fun, really.

and i have this gut feel there's more to come.

i want to sleep for the rest of the year.

the deodorant

i just saw my 8-year old son put on deodorant.

its nivea's deodorant (whitening). his armpits doesn't smell bad nor do they need any whitening. he's white enough as it is.

the funny part is that he began rubbing his armpits with his arms (like when you're running) to spread the deodorant around. much like what his father does.

soul candle

i wasn't able to visit the graves of my brother (dennis), my lola and my tita last november 1. we had to go back to manila on the 31st of october. so i decided to just put a candle up and say prayers for each of them.

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.