Sunday, October 30, 2005

ode to pain

i was cleaning my computer today when i came across this, which was sent by a friend from canada. wala lang. reliving the moment. he had no title back then. i suggested 'ode to pain'. hah!

dreamt of you last night
woke up sad, crying inside

thought i was sober and thru

i was left here still thinking of you


everyday i sat and start
forgeting things, going nowhere
imagining i was there beside you

never thought i'd hurt much but i do


wondering why, wondering when

when will i ever see you again?

why did we, have to end?

can the pain pass me by?

can my heart learn to fly?

can i let all my tears run dry?

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Friday, October 28, 2005

because i'm an alias addict...

i got so excited when i saw these stills from one of my favorite blogs [thanks jared]. look closer. you can't miss it.


closer look at the middle photo. what's michael vartan doing there? could it be that he's aaalive? hmmmm. or is this a dream sequence? i really hate you jj abrams for playing with our minds!

anyhoot, he's there, in a scene with the pregnant sydney. what's a fan supposed to think, ha? jennifer looks good in a green sari. scrolling down, i saw this.


yay! methinks this is the planned beach wedding scene in santa barbara. sadly, i think sydney's character during this scene is hallucinating, thinking about what could have been...

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Thursday, October 27, 2005

2000 and counting


here's the front page of the daily news today. 2000. that's the number of american soldiers killed in iraq. actually, using 'american' is a misnomer, since most of these brave soldiers come from different ethnicities. in fact, some of them are not even u.s. citizens yet. sigh.

i've personally covered a number of filipino-american soldiers who were slain in iraq and talking with their wives/parents/relatives is heart-wrenching.

when will bush realize that he is essentially killing all the few good men that this country has, in the name of his fight against terrorism. it's sad, indeed.

shock and awe. with the rising number of dead americans, who's in shock now?

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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

a3m and lea salonga

the asians for miracle marrow matches held its eighth charity event last night at the cerritos center for performing arts. the night's big star? lea salonga.

lea signing autographs after the show. she waved when she saw me. o ha!

hehehe. people close to me know that i am a fan. well, not really. okay, fine.

i had no plans of watching because i had no tickets. normally, i have tickets but this time, i did not have any. it was a benefit concert so the tickets were kinda pricy. i didn't feel like buying.

so on saturday night, an angel named janelle called. she told me that someone was giving her a ticket for the concert. a ticket. one ticket. une. uno. isa.

i told her that i needed to find out if any of my friends will be there to watch the show. on sunday morning, i found out that i had friends who were watching, so it was okay if i flew solo.

anyhow, the show was good. it was hosted by abc-7's denise dador, another pinay who's making it big in the local broadcasting industry here in hell-ey. i sat beside cher calvin and her friend. the show, like a musical, had two acts and a 20-minute intermission.

i was not able to watch lea's concert at the universal amphitheater since i was still in manila for my vacation, but i heard she sang almost the same songs that she sang last march.

needless to say, i enjoyed the show. i loved her version of broken vow. and too much for one heart (the song that was cut from the original miss saigon soundtrack). and new york state of mind. and someone else's story (from the musical chess).

the audience gave lea a standing ovation after the show. actually, wala akong ma-i-caption dito.

there was a 30-minute autograph-signing session at the end of the concert. fans of all shapes, sizes and races took the opportunity. about a hundred people were 'turned away' because she was only scheduled to sign for half an hour. bummer.

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Monday, October 24, 2005

sparkle, sparkle

i had a great night last night.

went to rex navarrete's show at the wiltern LG theater in koreatown. the show was scheduled at 9:00 pm and we were there few minutes before the clock struck 9 but the line was just too long it snaked down to the next street. lots of young people (read: college students from ucla, uci and various cal states) were there. i think they composed around 65% of the entire audience.

the long lines stretched down to denny's down the block. this show was a certified blockbuster. congratulations, rex!

the show was good. it was called 'badass madapaka.' it was (almost) a two-hour show and (almost) the same as the one i saw in manila (at the sm megamall) weeks ago. well, almost.

here's rex from where we were seated (mezzanine). i started singing 'muntik nang maabot, ang langiiiiiiit' and my friend started laughing. kidney aside, thanks for the tix winston.

as an added bonus, i got a kiss and a hug from iza calzado. woohoo. hello albert! iza's such a cool gal. i met her last week at the presscon for sigaw's participation at the screamfest. their group consisted of direk yam laranas and the film's editor manet dayrit.

the pretty pretty iza calzado after the showing of her movie 'sigaw' at the screamfest los angeles held at the loews universal citywalk cinemas. now i know why my friend albert is so smitten by her that he hasn't missed an episode of encantadia.

iza also introduced me to richard gutierrez, he of mulawin and sugo fame. hehehe. he was quite cool. my friend, however was not, when he met the former child star. he clammed up. he froze. almost.

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Sunday, October 23, 2005

meet my new toy

ladies and gentlemen of the jury, meet my new toy.

i wonder how much bono got paid for this

i haven't thought of a name yet. baka sydney. hahaha. o kaya michael. shoot.

anyway, the first time i laid my eyes on it, i fell in love. damn. feeling in love with an inanimate object. i never thought it was possible. hahaha.

the road to me being happy with sydney/michael was not paved with gold, or silver, or bronze.

last week, my friend and i went to the apple store at the grove. i bought a white 60GB unit. however, when i got home, i found out that no matter what i did, the thing would not connect with my imac. it took me hours and numerous visits to various forums and websites to finally figure out what the hell was wrong. it seems that the unit i got was programmed for windows. whatever.

the left-most one is my first ipod. it's 2nd Gen 10 GB. the one on the right is my 4th Gen 20 GB. sadly though, it's dead. i think it's the battery. in the middle is the 5th Gen 60 GB that i bought and i had to return because it was a defective unit. what's wrong steve?

so i went back to the apple store to have the thing replaced. so the apple guy checked and checked and checked what was wrong with it. this was after i told him what was wrong with it. he was hell-bent on proving me wrong and make me feel stupid. so i went to the apple website itself and showed to him my diagnosis.
Your iPod isn't formatted for Windows

iPod for Windows Software only recognizes iPod for Windows. You cannot use iPod for Macintosh with a Windows PC. To see which platform your iPod is formatted for, follow these instructions.

so after what seemed like forever, he relented. we went to the counter and told me the good news: they have sold out of 60 GB units. he volunteered to call 2 other stores: santa monica and glendale to check if they have the units. they didn't.


then the clincher. he said that before he could replace my unit, he needed to go to the genius bar upstairs so they could check what was wrong with it. after a while, he was back to tell me that they could not make it work. in desperation, i quipped that out of a million units shipped, i get the most defective one. sucks big time.

anyhow, i ended up getting sydney/michael 30GB in black. i was so excited that the first thing i did when i got home was to check if it already worked. and yeah, baby! it freaking worked.

so all weekend, that was all that i did. i gathered all my CDs and ripped them using itunes. i used to own a second generation 10GB so i only selected which CDs to rip. now that i have upgraded, i can rip more CDs. now i have close to 4,000 songs and i am about to consume 20 GB of space.

damn, i should have stuck with the 60 GB. but then again, i wanted it now, now, now, so that's the price i have to pay.

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Friday, October 21, 2005

am i the only one watching?

it seems that the apprentice: martha stewart has failed to to make the TV-viewing public watch the donald trump-produced show. it's on its 4th (or 5th?) episode and yet, the ratings are still not substantial. in fact, reports say that the premiere of this show posted the lowest ever rating for the apprentice franchise. ouch. to make matters worse, the donald now says that martha's show is dragging his own ratings down. double ouch.

come on, mr. trump. blaming good ol' martha for your miseries?

anyway, despite the low ratings of martha's apprentice, i still am hooked. why oh why? i have no idea. maybe i am curious about martha post-prison, and about the projects she would make these constestants do.

since i had stuff to do last wednesday, i had the episode taped. a revamp had to be done because one of the teams has been on a losing streak and they have ben decimated. for tonight, they were tasked to make a new flavor for wish-bone, a brand of salad-dressing.

bottomline: martha fired one of my favorites - jennifer, a DA from the OC over jim, a graphic artist who has proven in the past weeks that he is a pain in the ass.

what i like about martha's version is that she herself "breaks" the rules when she deems fit. normally, the project manager of the losing team brings in two of the team's weakest performers. in one episode, martha felt that the person she wanted to fire (the cause of the team's loss) was not in the three people who came back so she asked her secretary to ask the "safe" contestants to come back. in the last one, she felt that the choice on who to fire was on two contestants only: jim and jennifer. and she fired jennifer. damn. makes me not wanna watch until jim is still there.

hahaha. affected!

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

what the...

my 20-minute commute to work is usually uneventful that i spend it reading a magazine or listening to my ipod.

today, something funny unusual happened. there on the bus lay this huge girl. i had no idea if she was okay or not. when we reached wilshire, she got up, looked around. as if nothing happened. the people who got in the bus had varied reactions.


i sat there, wishing i had a video cam to capture the reactions of people as they pass by this view. thank god i had my cam-phone (phone-cam?).

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Monday, October 17, 2005

hooked on: the reunion

okay, i am officially done with my catching up of this tv season premieres.

i am so hooked one. it's called 'the reunion' and it airs on fox. the network has aired only 3 episodes because of the championship of the baseball season (go angels! hahaha.) the show will return in november.

anyway, the premise is good. the show is about a group of six friends (like Friends). it traces their lives from the moment they graduated from high school in 1986. that was the first episode. every succeeding episodes will focus on the highlights that happened during a particular year. hence, episode 2 is 1987, episode 3 is 1988 and so on.

and the twist. one of the six friends is dead and one of the remaining five pulled the trigger. of course, they have not revealed who's dead but they (after 3 episodes) have focused on 2 of the friends, who are now suspects in the murder.

one thing great about this show is the music. the soundtrack is so cool. (80s music rules!) i hope they release these songs in one album.

okay, folks, meet the friends.

from left: samantha (alexa davalos), craig (sean faris), will (will estes), aaron (david annable), carla (chyler leigh) and jenna (amanda righetti).

the dynamics: let's divide the group of friends into two - samantha-craig-will and aaron-carla-jenna.

samantha and craig are a couple. craig and will are best friends. samantha and craig break up (told in a back story) for about a weekend. samantha and will hook up. samantha gets pregnant. whoa. f*cking friends.

the next half. carla is madly in love with aaron but he doesn't know it because he has his mind set on getting jenna. jenna, the ambition one, doesn't want to be with the "funny friend." mahal kita, mahal mo siya, mahal niya ay iba. so pinoy!

the season started with the friends having fun, since all of them are graduating from high school. at the grad party, craig had one drink too many and he asks will to go with him for a beer run. while driving, they meet an accident. craig, the rich boy suddenly feels his future crumbling. will, the sober one, decides to "save" his friend by telling investigators that he was the one driving.

complications arise when the driver of the car they hit dies. the simple accident became manslaughter. will was sentenced to 12 months in prison because of this.

3 episodes down. 17 to go. did i say i was hooked?

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Saturday, October 15, 2005

brilliant

i need to single out this billboard that really caught my attention.

it's promoting mickey d's new rice meals. as we all know, mcdo in the philippines has succumbed to what filipino people want. rice meals. onli in da pilipins. and mcspaghetti? you can't find that anywhere. sa pinas lang.

anyway, the copy says 'rice meals' in a huge font. huge, blurry font.

the first time i saw it, i squinted my eyes. i thought i was feeling dizzy.

and then i saw what was written under it. 'Hindi mo mabasa? Gutom lang yan.'

panalo
!

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billboards galore

the urban jungle otherwise known as metropolitan manila is littered with billboards, billboards and more billboards.

taken at the corner of edsa and quezon avenue. the hunks vying for your attention? rafael rossell hawking undies for bench and borgy manotoc selling shirts and stuff from blue soda.

on the upside, they are nice distractions from the bloody traffic along edsa, or any of the metro's major thoroughfares. distractions because more often than not, they feature the eye-candies that us mere mortals will never have the chance to have coffee with, lunch or dinner with, or go to bed with. ooops.

kris aquino, in one of her many billboards along edsa. this one's for metro and belo medical.

on the downside, critics say that these things cover the real beauty that is manila. i say, what real beauty? the slums that dot the landscape of pasig river? the pink railings on edsa? the pink urinals? there are beautiful sights going to the north and the south (through the expressways) and once they cover those with billboards (and believe me, they are starting to sprout like mushrooms there), i'd be the first to protest.

taken along edsa, by the guadalupe bridge. the green bus covered what i was trying to capture for posterity. nyahaha. but if you must insist... oh well, just click this.

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pink card gets the pink slip

time's almost up.

i've got two days to redeem all my remaining coffee bean pink cards (not that i have a lot. hehehe) i asked my favorite barista last week and she told me that they have not finalized yet as to what system they're gonna use after they stop honoring all those pink cards by sunday, october 16.


it looks like they don't have the system yet to use the automated pink cards that they have started using in san francisco. [thanks j for my card]

here's to all the white chocolate dream, dulce de leche, strawberry cream, chai tea and mocha-vanilla lattes and ice blendeds that the world has to offer!

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Friday, October 14, 2005

onli in da pilipins


while driving along the outskirts of bustling makati, i saw this. thank god the traffic was bad. hehehe. masakit na masarap, anyone? pinoys...

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Thursday, October 13, 2005

if you can't post...

photo-blog. my sorry excuse for not posting. this one was taken on our way back to makati from manila. traffic, as usual. the barquillos sold on the streets of manila are good. and really delicate.

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

and i drooled over the nano?

wow.

the new ipod has just been released.

15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video.

oh.my.goodness.

did i just die? am i in ipod heaven? damn.

excuse me as i wade through the closest apple store.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

so, who's a failure?

okay, so i got this from paris.

it's really simple. go to google.com. type in the word 'failure' [without quotes]. click search and/or i'm feeling lucky.

i say, 'ha!ha!ha!'

anyhow, the day went by almost unnoticed. this was one of my meeting-est days. first was the monthly meeting we had with our sf and lv bureau chiefs in attendance. that was from 10 to 1ish. then lunch meeting from 1:30 to 3. break for about an hour. then yet another meeting/bull session from 4 to 6.

had dinner with 3 friends i haven't seen in ages. it was fun. sanamluang fun. hehehe. then brought our friend to the airport. we got him there 30 minutes before his flight. good thing he got in.

who's a failure again? gwb.

i rest my case. for now.

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Sunday, October 09, 2005

catching up

okay, so the past weekend had me catching up with some of my friends and my favorite tv shows, namely alias, nip/tuck, desperate housewives, the oc, reunion, prison break and a few of my soaps. hahaha. sue me!

my 2 cents' worth on each one. on alias: i'm gonna say it on record. fuck you jj abrams! fuck you for killing one of the most liekable characters in the show. my excitement from summer's season finale was matched by scorching hatred when i realized that you killed michael vaughn. first, you said he's not michael vaughn. then, you kill him. how could you do this? sorry, i am just too attached. sigh.

on nip/tuck: i am still hooked. still loyal. same with the women of wisteria lane. bree van de kamp rocks! i love lynette scavo. susan's still funny. the oc: i might, or might not be a loyal viewer this season. i can't explain why. probably because i am training my sight on reunion and their happy bunch...not! prison break: thank you wentworth!

the past 2 days have seen me sleeping at way past 4 am because of all these catching up stuff. sigh. the complex life of a couch patatas. nakakainis. i am not complaining though.

an old friend picked me up this morning for breakfast. so much catching up had to be done that we extended it to lunch. and time was not still enough so we extended it to coffee. hehehe. so i got home almost 3ish, to catch up the remaining part of the buzz. yey! racquel is evicted from the pinoy big brother house! not that i care. hahaha.

pinoy big brother is a huge phenom in the philippines today. my nieces are hooked, from the eldest, a high school senior to the youngest, a four-year-old tyke who knows the name of each and every housemate. one sample conversation overheard in the car, on our way to dinner.

sibling A: sinong crush mo sa kanila?
sibling B: si rico, o kaya si sam. ikaw?
sibling A: si uma.
sibling B: ewww. si uma? bakla yun eh.
sibling A: hindi siya bakla. silahis siya.
me: la-la-la-la-la-la-la

goodness gracious!

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Thursday, October 06, 2005

sleep all day

okay, so i haven't exactly been keeping up with my word that i'd be more visible here. i tried.

just like last march, i attempted to work last monday. and we had quite a few meetings. bottomline, i was requested to report for work on tuesday, since one of our graphic artists is on a one-month hiatus. ok, so i obliged.

wednesday. i could not, for the life of me, bring my ass to wake up. i'd sleep for a couple of hours, wake up, then sleep for a couple more. next thing i knew it was already 1:00 pm. goodness gracious.

so i channel surfed and watched tv. slept some more. watched some tagalog videos (stuff that i bought in manila. i watched bikini open last night. it was hilarious. a biting commentary on the networks' fixation with ratings.).

saw the season finale of 'so you think you can dance?' melody lacayanga, the pinay who made it to the final four, was the runner-up. nick something won. ho-hum. also caught the apprentice: martha stewart. i actually kinda liked it. i wonder how long network execs can milk this genre.

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Wednesday, October 05, 2005

i knew you were gonna click that

sorry, i wanted to take a clearer and closer one, but the freaking green bus prevented me. this is for my friend who's gone ga-ga for rafael.

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Monday, October 03, 2005

back in la-la-land

hi folks! i'm actually back in la-la-land once more.

i was checking my blog and i was quite saddened when i saw that i was able to blog only four times in the past four weeks or so. damn. not good.

anyway, left manila last sunday around 10 something pm. dragged to the mabuhay lounge by my boss. met up with the hotdog singer and his wife (boss' friend) and some other business people from hell-ey. talked with jaya for a bit. she told me she's off to la to celebrate her anniversary with her hunny. good for her. former defense secretary renato de villa was also at the lounge, and so were a couple of congressmen. viva first and mabuhay class!

unfortunately for me, i did not fly business this time. boo-hoo-hoo. i was not upgraded because boss' coupons expired last september 30. we had a choice to fly back last friday (which was the 30th) but we opted (boss, actually) that we fly back to cali on sunday, which was yesterday. so there, no upgrade.

sulking in my own corner at seat 46K, yes by the window, i was quite surprised to see this singer who was walking towards the back. jay-r. yes, the prince of r and b. in the economy class with the rest of us! hehehe. suddenly, i did not feel so bad! i found out later on that he was seated in row 90. damn. that must be really close to the plane's tail. anyway.

i tried so hard (hello linkin park) not to sleep but it was already past midnight and they have served dinner (pork loin with rice) and they have turned off the cabin lights. i've read the latest mabuhay magazine (nothing much to read in this issue) and both the philippine star and the inquirer. cover to cover. i've got nothing else to do. i have also watched the film they were showing: fantastic four.

i succumbed to the pressure and the inviting cold atmosphere. i dozed off. and off, and off. i woke up more than eight hours later and they were already serving breakfast (fish and eggs). i missed the snacks? sayang. hehehe.

i told myself not to sleep because in a few hours, we will be landing, and i will be sleeping again in a couple of hours. that is if i do not want jet lag to take over me and my sked.

my good friend R picked me up. had a really nice dinner at sanamluang. coffee at the coffee bean. gee, i missed this routine. got home around 11ish. stared at my luggage for about an hour and started unpacking. and then the realization. more than half of my freaking luggage was not for me. for co-workers (one had an entire maleta worth of padala) and some friends and friends of friends. goodness, what was i fed with? i kidded my co-worker that she will feed me lunch for two months just so i can justify why i agreed to bring her entire wardrobe with me.

oh well, ranting done. regular blogging coming up shortly!

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