Thai Conversations

We had dinner at our favorite Thai place earlier. The missus was salivating for tomyam so I obliged but on the condition that I won't sip the spicy concoction.

So with the dinner-list already reviewed from the menu, I called the waitress:

"One deep-fried ffffrawn...."

I guess my F's and P's got mixed up with that tongue-twisting appetizer. The missus obviously noticed it, unable to control her laughter in front of the waitress, who at this time was wearing a smirk.

With the rest of the menu given, the waitress left. The missus and I were discussing on our next problem: where to eat on Sunday evening (ahhh yes, we have very huge problems here). She suggested the Ming-Tien open air food court:

"Alam ko na! Portuguese Pish."

Touche!

Lines

Isn't it amazing sometimes, that the simplest of things affect us in the greatest of ways? The virus that can define the line between life or death, the simple "hum" that can end up to be the greatest song you've ever written, or that right dash of pepper that will make your t-bone steak taste perfectly well.

Another example of this is a simple line. If one would see a line or two drawn on a piece of paper, for example, most often the average Joe (or Jane) would think nothing of it.


Yes you maybe curious at first, but only for a few seconds. It is of no significance so it doesn't scare nor excite you. It is totally devoid of meaning. You'd either leave it alone, or pick it up to throw in the trash bin, or recycle the piece of paper for later use. It is forgotten during the rest of your day since it is of no importance, for your mind is too busy on sentences that begin with what-if's or where-shall-we's.

But, what if, you see those same two lines on something like this?

You become curious and amazed at the meaning of these lines. Time suddenly stops. It scares and excites you, both at the same time. You'd never want to throw it away, for its meaning is of the greatest of importance. You spend the rest of your day on a high, for you know that, through those 2 lines, its meaning has affected you in a whole new way, and you are changed forever.


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Originally written on Nov. 1st, 9:57pm, I only sent this blog out to the world now since we've confirmed the baby's heartbeat earlier today. We first learned about it last Oct.29 thru a home-pregnancy kit.

Yup, it's the best belated birthday gift I've ever had.

Back To The Beach (Day 98)

Nasa huli ang pagsisisi.

I’ve been eating a lot again lately. Sunday dinner was no different. We ate at The Gourmet Café at a Rockwell-ish mall called The Curve near Ikea. We satisfied our tastebuds with meat antipasta, veg-cream soup, baked shepherd’s pie, and chicken-pineapple adobo casserole (yup, amazingly they had adobo, a favorite Filipino dish). Like my friend CM once said to me while sipping nilaga in Singapore,

Ipikit mo mata mo pre habang hinihigop mo ang sabaw, parang nasa ‘pinas ka na, di ba?

The missus’ appetite was low so I had to lend a helping hand stomach. I had to finish it in aid of the old adage “madaming nagugutom na bata ngayon.” (as if makakatulong ano?)

Thoughts of Sunday after-Mass family lunches at Jollibee in Makati Cinema Square come into mind. I remember clearly during my early-teens when my 3 sisters would all order 2-piece chickenjoys each and I’d only order pancit-palabok with toast bread. Mom was surprised the first time I did this.

Yan lang kakainin mo?

Ahhhm. Opo.

Halfway into my palabok, my sisters, all being takaw-mata, would’nt or couldn’t finish the remaining 1pc chicken so they’d all look at dear old Kuya and say,

Kuya ayaw ko na. Gusto mo (nitong chicken)?

I guess as young as I was I had the gift of foresight. Yup I ended up eating 3pcs of chickenjoy aside from my original order. Well to my satisfaction hindi ako tinablan ng taba coz my metabolism was still high at the time (I was an all-around athlete: piko, tumbang-preso, taguan, taguang-lata, monkey-monkey, patintero, and of course that high-burning calorie game called TEX). I could swallow all I can eat and won’t feel guilty of gaining weight coz, tried as I would, I didn’t gain a single pound.

Ahhh yes, life was good back then. Of course it became a gamble on the following Sundays as my sisters’ appetites grew. So on the lean days (pardon the pun) I’d end up with only palabok and bread for lunch that I would crave for merienda at 3pm (ensaymada and Coke…mmmm).

Fast-forward to 2005 and I’m a hefty 176-pounder who can’t simply deny the penchant for food. As our previous houseguests here can agree, except for last Friday night where my homemade contribution of beef with brocolli was a disaster, ang sarrrrrap talaga ng mga pagkain dito! It is really hard to lose all the unwanted weight (40lbs to be exact, as was indicated in the ideal BMI for my height) but the important thing now is that I KNOW that I need to lose it.

Nope I’m not saying that I’m going to go on a son-of-a-beach diet again. I’m also not saying that I’ll be exercising everyday (I could hear the missus now saying “Yeah right” if I said it). What I’m saying is I’ll try to be MORE AWARE of losing weight while I look, sip, and gobble up the sumptuous food that’s on the dinner plate.

Or I can always try on the sauna-belt that the missus bought.

Yeah right.



Hmmm…san kaya kami kakaen bukas? Hehe.

Trade-in

Expect a lot of trade-ins to occur once this phone is out.



Speaking of trade-ins, I finally got to replace my old phone (Nokia 6260) yesterday. Here's my new toy packed with full 3G service:


The missus was able to "break-in" my new phone last night when she used it for surfing the 'net via bluetooth connection to the laptop. She says the speed was as fast as when we go wifi at Starbucks.

Sarap eh!

Hopefully may 3G na sa 'pinas next year.

Car-aoke

On the way to church for Sunday Mass earlier, I plugged in our American-Idol 2005 collection in the CD-player. We were able to download most of the video-files from a website and put most of it on CD for driving-enjoyment. It was really for the missus since she's a big Bo fan.

Well as Bo's "Time In A Bottle" played, I as usual, sang with it. I am convinced that I sound like Bo, much to the despair of the missus since I seem to have desecrated her crush. Anyway the song was ending so I went:

"if I....could spend time....in a bottle..."

Ano sabi mo?

Spend time in a bottle.

(laughs) Mali!!!! Save time in a bottle yun ah! Spend time in a bottle pala ah! (laughs)

(continuous laughter)

Then thoughts of a future MTV of Bo Bice trapped in an empty Johnny Walker bottle were circling my brain. I guess it went worse on our way home after dinner at KLCC:

("The Way" by Fastball playing on the FM radio)

Yang kanta na yan parang lumang style ano? Parang yung mga kinakanta pag may nagiinuman sa kanto nuong araw?

Onga parang yung Delilah.

Avoiding the obvious, I instantly replied with the song-title:

Ah oo yung "Why why why why Delilah?"

(2 seconds of silent assessment)

(continuous laughter again)

Abelgas-ah

If you’ve ever watched TV-Patrol or Private-I, you may have come across a reporter by the name of Gus Abelgas. He’s been of interest lately by me and the missus since we’ve noticed that he likes to prolong his lines. He has somehow unintentionally provided us comic-relief while we watch the sad state of our country through the news.

To give you an idea, here’s a sample mp3 (363kb). Take note of the following words he has “stressed” in his report:

fiiive

naitalaah
Taguig cityyy
makapilaaas
buwan-ah
Taguig-ah
holdapan-ah
syempre paaaah
private-iiiii
pulisyahh

Ok baaaaah?

Japanese Cake

Hmmm....yung kakaning Pinoy kaya ganito din ginagawa?

Kakatuwa talaga mga Hapon.

Stuck in Reverse

When you try your best and you don't succeed,
When you get what you want but not what you need...
-- "Fix You" by Coldplay

I've come into liking Coldplay's X&Y album. It just grew on me, really, while I'm driving from home to the office and vice-versa. Bamboo's self-titled and LifePeaceAndLove, and Hale's self-titled album had a similar effect. Thus Bamboo, Hale, and Coldplay are regularly spinning in the car's CD-player.

Well the missus thinks otherwise of Coldplay.

Ang boring naman ng tugtog nila e. Kakaantok.

Well beauty is in the eye (and ear) of the beholder. I find Coldplay as a breath of fresh-air after a long queue of alternative-rock songs on my MP3 list (add to that the missus' Kelly Klarkson and Luther Vandross CDs). Soothing, Colplay is like a kaleidoscope to the ears.

By the way, the attached pic was generated by typing my name on a website I found. Cool huh?

What you've missed

It was hectic at work last week so tried as I did, I never had a chance to blog. That is of course, say for one piece of good news. Nope I'm not gonna say anything yet but it will come soon enough. Just view my blog site in the next couple of weeks for it. So for those of you who know about it, just "zip it" for the meantime until I tell you so. ;-)

***

I'm finally getting into the thick of things in terms of work. Last week had two major holidays clashing so I had to be on-site most of the time due to some outages resulting from high-load. I have to admit that I love getting into the system, running scripts, analyzing technical faults, etc. but one week on standby-duty is enough for me. Hey I'm a manager! It's time to focus my energies from system-management to people-management. My "peeps" are already back from their holiday so it's time for them to "haul-ass" in work and for me to start, well, managing them.

***

After our Vietnam trip, we got an urgent memo from our condo-security that there has been a spat of minor robberies recently. We went to the homeowners-meeting and discovered that due to poor security, there were a few units that were broken into, mostly the 4th and 5th floor units. This shocked me and the missus coz our unit is on the 4th floor. We initially thought that since our unit was on a high-floor, we should not be worried. But after the meeting, the missus and I were already thinking of moving somewhere else.

So we called up several condos-to-let. Yes it's called TO-LET here instead of TO-RENT. Must be a British influence. Since I only have until April to work here, the most that we can stay on a new apartment is 6-months max. Unfortunately most of the sales-agents said the owners renting out the units prefer 1-year minimum. So the least we could do now is stay at our "safe" apartment and maybe move to a trendier (posh?) service-apartment by March.

Anyway I've set up "high-tech" burglar alarms on all the living room and kitchen doors during the night, i.e. pots and pot-covers hanging from the door handles. It's actually an effective deterrent against burglars as proven by my Dad. The burglar tries to open the door and when he does, KAPLAAANG! The pots emanate a medium-frequency clang that alerts both the household and the burglar thus preventing the crime. O ha o ha! Well I've been in the unit for almost 3 years now and, knock-on-wood, I haven't had any untoward incident. Hopefully it stays that way until we leave.

***

I remember when I weighed in last December 2004 for my medical-checkup, I was at 80kgs. After all the "attempt" to diet, exercise, badminton, futsal, and what not, I'm very happy to inform you that I weighed in a hospital-scale last week to find out that I AM STILL at 80kgs! Crap!!!! ARRRRGHHH!

I think when I go home later I'll throw our home weighing-scale (who's a f*cking liar) out the window.