Resolutions

This year I'm aiming for more realistic targets. Last year's projected invasion of Sabah using sea turtles did not work as well as I hoped it would. So here's my list:

Things to do for next year:

- Publish "the" book

- Give car a serious maintenance run  , Brakes, wheels, suspension

- Give standup comedy another go

- Read at least one Elliot Wave theory book

- Cook the perfect steak

- Find another

Others (aka shit that may or may not happen, kinda like sex on the first date):

- Android programming

- 10 lap regular swim

- At least one marathon

Facebook One Liner Roundup

A banana cue is just a more liberal turon.

"Niche companies that would die without Christmas: Mug makers, Song remixers (Christmas version), Queso De Bola manufacturers, and companies that make "Something green", "Something red", and "something cute"."

"Give a man another hundred years to live and a hundred year hence, he'd be laughing at every problem he has now. Most things in life's a joke, medyo slow lang ata talaga tayo."

"So if some pageant contestant privately disses the same stupid show that everybody else was publicly dissing a few months back, it's now a big deal? Filipinos just love to rage about all the unimportant things."

"Sana ako na lang si Mabini at ikaw si Bonifacio. Para 10 piso lang, magkasama na tayo palagi."

"Listen, I don't care how new you are to driving or what kind of backwater driving school you went to. You really should learn to use the signal lights whenever you're negotiating a corner or changing lanes. (hint: It's the stick behind your steering wheel that doesn't control the wipers)"
  
"Luckily a vampire never needs coins, because he doesn't need to follow barya lang po sa umaga. "

"Ever notice how trends are getting stupider and stupider? They're not. That's old age settling in without you noticing it."

"So the SUV in front of me had a faux-european carplate beneath an NBI comemorative plate, yellow lights for braking, an anti-RH bill sticker, and a bad case of smoke belching. I never thought a vehicle's rear could drum up so much hate in such a short time. Mind. F'ing. Blown."

"I refuse to acknowledge that a hero like Andres Bonifacio always went to war with a half unbuttoned shirt like the monuments and paintings would have us believe. I'm sure somewhere in the KKK Kode of Konduct, there's a clause there against man cleavages."

"If a Bohol rep can change EDSA to Cory Aquino Avenue, I propose we change Tagbilaran's name to Peanut Kisses. Everybody loves those things."

"The real worst airport is the one where you land in the middle of the ocean. Good luck clearing through immigration when your ass is five miles away from the rest of you. "
   
"What the Arroyos don't want you to know: That neckbrace can connect to an exoskeleton that has chainsaws for arms, rocket boosters, and ten-wheeler truck feet. You let her out of the country, she'll return as mechagodzilla or something."

"Last Sunday the priest had the gall to say that Santa Claus does not exist in front of so many children. He's lying because there was one time I saw him running on our neighbor's roof carrying their colored TV."

"Oft a grave error to mistake being swept by the current as personal progress."

"Thank you Vice. 95 million people, 3 joke variations."

"People will believe anything as long as you include a badass soundtrack to go along with it. #gullibletoads"

"‎(3:36:34 PM) nefasturis: I was going to ask for your comment about people who invert their names for nicknames and then realized it doesn't apply to names like Anna
(3:36:49 PM) nefasturis: Because, how would I know if you're already doing it? :|"

"Every 4-person thesis group ever: Leonard (leads), Donatello (does machines), Raphael (Cool, but rude), Michelangelo (#@$*& party dude)"

"‎"Sinong sumanib sayo? Sino? May pangalan ba sya? Kung sino ka man na nanloob sa aming kaibigan, magpakilala ka!"

"Ako si Red Horse. Red Horse Extra Strong.""

"Taena. Saludo ako kay Noli. Nobody can report about elves, ghosts, and other folklore with a serious tone for many years and still retain enough credibility to run and win vice presidency AND go back to reporting evening news."

   
"just keep chipping away at it. like the sea pounding a rock solid cliff it will erode over time, not because of strength, but because of consistency"

"Until facebook, I didn't know God talked through apps."

"I wish I had a dog named 20k so when people ask me what I do to exercise, I say "I walk 20k in the morning and in the evening.""

   
"The scariest part of growing up is watching everybody around you grow younger. There's something disconcerting about seeing your grand old barber replaced by a kid who would not look so out of place in "Ang TV"."

"People say fortune favors those who know how to wait. What they should be saying is that fortune favors those who know what to wait for."

"If you can give advice that's generic enough to say even without understanding the problem, you have a future as a horoscope writer. : )"

"Bago pa nauso ang planking, hindi ba mahilig na tayo manabla?"

"You're 30,000 feet up in the air where there's not enough oxygen for any scream, moving 3x faster than anything alive in nature, strapped to an heavy metal object that only flies through the explosive power of combustible fuel. So who was the smart ass that thought "Hmm, maybe this is the best time to sell duty-free gucci watches and fine wine"?"

"Globe's finally connecting people by forcing to meet them up in person."

   
"There are two kinds of dreams. One that you spend sleep on, and the other, with everything else."

"In hk, night buses go half as fast with twice as many stops. The same cannot be said of edsa buses that turn on warp speed at the strike of midnight."

"You mean the world to me, if I cared for the world, I mean."

"Why is San Marino Corned Tuna trying to market their product as a symbol of romance? ITS CANNED FISH. Barring mass hunger and the extinction of every marine life on the planet, giving somebody canned tuna floating in salt and vegetable oil in the interest of romance is NOT going to end well."

"Whenever somebody asks me for payment, I ask them if they accept time deposits. I don't have money but I certainly have time to spare."

"If you're obsessive compulsive, does it also mean you support arranged marriages?"

"In between moments you're telling the world how much youre having fun, you really should."

"You'll know democracy is dead when somebody loses a national election horribly and still manages to get power higher than the office he ran for. Binay's evil and all, but seriously, **** Mar Roxas for being the biggest line cutter in the land."

"Why are eggs sold by the dozen? Who decided that if I wanted to consume one, I might as well eat eleven more?"
   
"So do you click because you like something or to do you like something kasi click?

"As a kid I also had dangerous toys, but not because they might poison me. We were playing with tops with cold hard metal nail tips spinning at a hundred rpm thrown with a lashing cord that made the trajectory even more unpredictable.We caught them with our bare, prepubescent hands. There was not so much danger of getting cancer as there was the danger of accidentally reenacting the climax of The Passion."

"And the funniest thing of all, is that the things they scold you for in school are the ones that actually count! TALKING. PLAYING. STANDING. Reporting for f'ing duty, life!"

"So if we celebrate Christmas as soon as the BER months start and end it by Three Kings, that means we're spending more than one third of the year celebrating it. By comparison, there are only two weekends per week, which means we get more Christmas days than all the Saturdays and Sundays combined."

"Wala palang silbe sabihin ang "Pag di na ako busy, gagawain ko na ito." kasi mahirap talaga maging hindi busy para sa isang bagay na hindi mo pa ginagawa. Kung gusto mo talaga ang isang bagay, simulan mo agad. Dahil hindi lumalaki ang oras sa isang araw, kusang magaadjust na ang buhay mo para pagkasyahin lahat ng ginagawa mo. Di mo lang mamamalayan, may puwang na para sa pangarap na dapat matupad."

Metro Manila Film Festival is a Joke

I won't pander on the issue. The so called Metro Manila Film Festival is a joke. I have long since considered the yearly activity as an exercise of abuse of the entertainment industry to cash in on people's aguinaldos and government-officiated holidays. Even Wikipedia doesn't give a rat's ass about who started it or why it even exists. Whereas most Film Festivals encourage high quality and original content even when the films are bound to be unpopular, the MMFF is a cash-cow milking exercise where movies with recycled content and slipshod, hastily-assembled narratives are the main event. Instead of making people aware that there are movie types that go beyond the usual stereotypes, what we get are rehashes that reappear in the festival every year. Mano Po 6? REALLY?! At this point just about everybody in show business has played the role of a Chinoy at one point or another.

 Don't get me wrong though. Indies do have a place in the festival, just not the main place where they belong. No, in the school bus called the MMFFs, the indies get the plastic seat attached at the end of the bus where the spare tire is chained.

Here are the winners for the last 16 years:

  1996 - Magic Temple (Peque Gallaga tries to prove he can make quality movies that aren't glorified porn. Decent, until he took a shit at on a year later when he released Magic Kingdom)
  1997 - Nasaan ang Puso (Decent, if only due to Maricel's powerful acting)
  1998 - Jose Rizal (School teachers love this shit to bits as it saves them time from doing actual teaching)
  1999 - Muro Ami (Like Rizal, but under water)
  2000 - Tanging Yaman (Standard formula of old, powerful actors mixed with shitty upstarts to bloat the roll call)
  2001 - Yamashita: The Tiger's Treasure (WORST MOVIE IN EXISTENCE)
 2002 - Mano Po (Golly, pinoys sure love their racist jibs!)
 2003 - Crying Ladies (Let's have more jabs at Chinese customs because last year, it worked!)
 2004 - Mano Po 3: My Love (How about we add more Filipinos faking Chinese accents? Yay!)
 2005 - Blue Moon (See Tanging Yaman's formula.)
 2006 - Enteng Kabisote 3: Okay ka, Fairy Ko: The Legend Goes on and on and on (The movie as stupid as the title, proving once and for all that writers have long since stopped trying to sound legit)
 2007 - Resiklo  (Zero plot, zero acting, horribly out of place special effects, Ramon Revilla)
 2008 - Baler (Jericho Rosales pretends hes mestizo, while Ann Curtis pretends she's a local)
 2009 - Ang Panday (See resiklo, minus robots, plus several inches in Ramon Revilla's waistline)
 2010 - Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last na 'To!) (Title explains it all, minus the "ing")


And here are this year's contestants:



Enteng ng Ina Mo! - Too many sequels already? Mix and fucking match with other long running movie lines.
My Househusband (Ikaw Na!) - Too many sequels? Change character names and setting, rehash the rest.
Ang Panday 2 - Too many sequels? LIE ABOUT THE COUNT. This has got to be the twentieth already.
Shake, Rattle & Roll 13 - Too many sequels? WE WONT EVEN TRY TO HIDE IT.
Segunda Mano - Spoiler:  KRIS AQUINO DIES. Like every movie she's been in.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - See Tanging Yaman's formula, insert Gabby Concepcion.
Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story - We haven't had an action movie in years so this is the only real movie to look forward to OUT OF SEVEN ENTRIES.


Fuck. This. Shit.

Baryang Magiliw - A Review of Philippine Coins

When I was younger, money was very different - the money that I could get my hands on, anyway. The five and ten peso coins did not exist, which was a problem, because bills were much much more fragile than coins. In the hands of a child, the bills were practically wooden ships in a perfect storm of destruction. Banko central probably takes note of the number of five and ten peso bills that get destroyed every year, and 3 quarters of those would be attributed to "left in the pockets of a gradeschool student's shorts and then machine washed" and "crumpled beyond recognition by grubby little oilstained hands"

On the other (grubby) hand, we had the two peso coin. It was awesome. Like, the pinnacle of modern currencies. Hot-blooded and bare chested Bonifacio solo'ed that coin, until he moved up a notched and started bunking with Apolinario Mabini in the 10 peso bill, and then later in the 10 peso coin. I'd say it's tantamount to a barkada dick move, hanging out with a friend with a higher face value just because. Well, I don't blame Andres Bonifacio hanging out with Mabini. Who'd he bunk up with? Aguinaldo? History says that guy had him shot, twice probably. Putting them in the same coin would be like a spanish-era Tom and Jerry commemorative. Funny, but morbid.

haters gonna hate


The two peso coin was decagonal in shape. What was that? You thought it was octagonal? Well, welcome to the club. It was heavy, and its shaped gave it sharp angles. If you didn't consider how much candy it could give you, you could think it was designed to be a child's perfect throwing weapon, like a minor denomination ninja star or something.

Actually the same can be said about most of our coins before. They were heavy, and pitched at the right force,

they can do some mighty damage. They're twice as light now, probably adjusted so on humanitarian grounds and on

the pleas of the thousands of coin-flinging victims all over the country. I remember before when the newer, lighter coins came out, people went batshit insane about how the coins are so small we'd start losing them. We probably did, but the Department of Jeans, Shorts, and Paldas is happy to report that the number of busted pockets per capita has drastically gone down after a bag of coins stopped being as heavy as .50 rifle rounds.

Thinking about it, the weight probably has something to do with our perceived value of two pesos. Back then, like when you went christmas carolling and the house gave you a 2 peso coin instead of having the dog chase you for two blocks, you felt like you had a lot on hand, and that's because you DID. The coin is heavy, large, and you'd see Bonifacio's stern face staring at you from his decagonal frame, as though he's alive. "Where the fuck is the rest of my body," he'd probably say. And that made it feel even more important.

But no. Nowadays, you get two one peso coins with Rizal's face in it. Rizal in case you didn't know, is a richboy kid who barely spoke Tagalog, loved everything Spanish, went against independence and the revolution. If Rizal were alive today, he'd be that crazy hipster who makes Starbucks his second home and  keeps on advocating we should have stayed an American colony. And you get two lousy coins with his face on instead of the 2 peso coin.

I say, let's remove the one peso coin instead and reinstate the 2 peso coin, remove Bonifacio from the Baryang Walang Hagdan and place him back where he belongs. What can 1 peso buy nowadays anyway? Then just so we don't look like heartless bastards, let's bunk Rizal with Aguinaldo, and maybe he'll have him shot again, which might not be such a bad thing because hey, free holiday.

Let's just hope he does it sometime after Easter Sunday, holiday economics and all.    

Toilet Tourism

Not too long ago, news came out that our flagship airport the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, ironically named after a victim of the facility's lax security, is the worst aiport in the world. Not surpisingly, Filipinos came out of the woodwork like malignos in the night to pitch in with their criticisms of the place, admittedly with me included, about the shitty restrooms, overexpensive food, and unprofessional staff. (200 pesos for a hotdog sandwich and water? really?)

Many efforts have been made since then to improve the place, but sadly the "maduming toilet" notion has stuck on and has become the rallying cry of people whenever the subject of tourism comes up. Matter of fact, during a discussion on the new facebook group Come Visit My Philippines on Inquirer.net, people refused to participate in the "invite a foreigner" campaign because they could not bear to bring them to a country where even the restrooms are dirty.

Not to stray too much off topic, but when I was a kid, I hated going to school because I felt that laziness was more of a human right than a social defect. I made up every excuse everyday in the span of 14 years just to justify not having to go to school. And that's what's just going on here.

It's like people just don't want the burden of action on them so they find something else to blame. And it just so happened that the toilet thing is the most convenient excuse off the shelf. Criticizing the goverment has become the official reason why people shouldn't do anything, on the argument that whatever they do won't really have much of an effect because of tax vampires in the goverment.

BULL. SHIT.

Sure, the goverment is incompetent and yes, passing through NAIA does feel like passing through a particularly diseased rectum. But is that really something that should stop us from inviting people over?

Of course there will always be dirty parts. It's just like your house. Who invites a guest over to show them the bodega or the dirty kitchen? For the case of the airport, that'd be like having a dirty door - a filthy entryway. But what's one dirty door if tits, great food, assloads of entertainment, and tits (twice for good measure) were on the other side? If I were to invite foreign friends, I'd be telling them about the best parts, and if you have been to those best parts in our country, you'd think all the imperfections this country has wouldn't matter all that much. 


*deep inhale*




Problema kasi sa mga Pilipino andaming preconditions bago magsimulang tumulong. "Eh madumi yung ihian sa erport. Pano ako magiimbita? Nakakahiya naman! Government! Gising!" Susko. Common sense. Then tell the foreigners you're inviting that the airport CR is crap and that they should use the plane's CR or the lounges instead, if you do have to. 

Di naman tanga din yung mga foreigners na di na sila pupunta sa napakagandang beaches dahil lang mapanghi yung cr ng airport na pagttransferan nila. If you can't workaround that simple marketing problem then you have no business criticizing what the DoT is trying to do.

And what about the foreigners? I have talked to a lot of foreigners about our country. They talk about a lot of things, from the beaches, to the malls, to the mountains, to the fucked up but interesting food (mostly about balut), to, yes, even the hospitality of prostitutes (which they love, in an awesome/depressing kind of way). They do mention the traffic, pollution, and occassional petty crimes - all in passing, but do you hear about them complaining about the toilets? Not really. These are people from the first world, who after they shit simply refuse to wash their own asses with their bare hands even when we are providing them with amplewater and a bar of soap. And yet they have no problems with the toilets. It's us Filipinos that are complaining more than the people who are supposed to shun what we are gladly pointing out. They're not.

Point of the matter is, we just can't seem to find it in us to love our own. I'm not saying love filthy toilets. That's borderline fetish level love. I'm saying overlook some things, and focus on what's good.

And that probably is the real reason why we can't promote our country efficiently. For every guy promoting the country, five others are badmouthing the place. Even our comments on the net contribute to the problem, seeing as google gladly hands all that info to anybody who bothers asks about our great nation.

To be fair, a lot of progress has been made to change our view of our country. Props to the Gokongwei's Cebu Pacific, and the other budget carriers for shattering the transport costs for joe ordinary like me to see the sights and sensations of places other than Manila and Luzon. More and more people realize that yes, most of Metro Manila might look like a turdhole, but like all turdholes, it's only one, and having to go inside it to have fun is completely optional.

NEWS FLASH: OUR COUNTRY IS AWESOME.

MORE AWESOME THAN JEJU ISLAND. FUCK JEJU ISLAND.

WHY DO YOU THINK SOUTH KOREANS ARE BEING EXPORTED HERE BY THE CRATE?

Tourism is all about perception. And until realize that to improve thigns, it's up to us to  change how we perceive our own country, our culture, and our responsibility to go beyond what we currently have.

Toilet Tourism.

Battlefield 3 Hangs Up (A Rock And A Hard Place)

Just raising this fix for those who have been encountering issues in the Battlefield 3 campaign, specifically the mission where

[spoiler]the soldiers mutiny after campo dies[/spoiler]

the only solution was to put it in window mode (alt+enter) right before i found the bodies and let it load the game (and it did!) and then when the next level started i resumed it at fullscreen by pressing alt+enter again. hope it helped. 

Cred goes to this guy:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111101071254AApL8ye
Also, it helps if you reduce the detail level if you're not playing in a high end pc. You can set it back to normal afterwards.
 That said, enjoy the game. 

P.S. Will post on the tagaytay trip in a while.

Tagaytay Overview : )

Tagaytay is a mountain town south of Manila famous for its cool climate, specialty restaurants, fresh fruits, and soup made of a cow's bone marrow (and I shit you not, good sirs). Located in the province of Cavite, its population consists of mostly Filipino Locals and rich uppity bastards that seek to invade the countryside with their posh sprawling manions large enough to accomodate up to 5 Sharon Cunetas* on any day. 

*(An endemic species of large, song-belting creatures often featured in late night television) 

The main languages of Tagaytay are Tagalog, English, and Coñospeak. In the recent years, the subdialects of Jejemon (backwards retarded tagalog) and Bekimon (homolust tagalog) have slowly crept in, brought in by visitors from the corrupted lowlands of Metro Manila. 

The main currency of Tagaytay is corn and Collette's bukopie, both of which are readily available for exchange in shops located along the roadside, with one bukopie shop sometimes barely 5 meters apart from another shop of the same franchise. I don't know why, but apparently the locals love their bukopie. Don't ask. I know I didn't. Peso is also accepted by most major establishments, but as peso is not in pie form, edible, and filled with sweet buko inside, usage is frowned upon. 

Don't even get me started with credit cards. Seriously.  Last time somebody brought that up, it took three years for the body to surface. Don't court trouble, go with buko pie.


(Disclosure: Collette's paid 3 bukopies for this placement)

Another big feature of Tagaytay is the spectacular view of Lake Taal, which contains the Taal Volcano, dubbed as the smallest volcano in the world. It's well worth noting that it is not small at all, would not fit your pocket, or your luggage. And thankfully so, otherwise it would have long since been stolen by the neighboring province of Laguna. As a minor trivia, Taal Volcano is actually not part of Tagaytay. As any Batangueño will gladly tell you at knifepoint, it is part of Batangas. Recently there has been a proposal to put a signboard that says "Batangas" on the goddamn volcano. It did not push through, thankfully, otherwise we'd have to update our National trait from "Hospitable" to "Horribly Tacky". But I digress. Every now and then, it is worth noting that the view of the entire Taal Lake vanishes into a white screensaver, presumably during the extended maintenance period when the Taaleños clean the projectors that are used to create the world's largest hologram of the world's smallest volcano. [Citation Needed] 

Tagaytay is also a famous place for weddings, presumably becuase it's far from Manila, so fewer guests tend to attend weddings there. Since it's traditional for Filipinos to feel entitled to attend the wedding of anybody they barely know (i.e. bumped into on the way to work etc), and no sane individual will finance a banquet that can satisfy an entire refugee camp,  setting the event in a mountain is an effective way wither down the headcount pretty quickly, or failing that, a short controlled landslide does the trick with the low overhead of using explosives. 

Tagaytay also features horseback riding tracks where both pros and novices from all walks of life can relive what it feels like being a rich haciendero riding an aging horse in a shit-infested track, which the locals fondly call "El Turista Trapp".  But seriously though, who DOESNT want to ride horses? When I was a kid I thought I could ride one, give it a few kicks and hightail it out of the shitty track, going back to Manila with a horse that I can show my friends. Of course later on, I learned that if I kick the poor aging horse more than once, it'd die of rib fracture or something, and I'd get no further than about five meters away from the road before the horse goes belly up and I hit the pavement with my face. 


Aaaanyway, Tagaytay is an awesome getaway that is about as close to Manila as you can get. With the cool climate, fresh fruits, sweet-tasting beef from mountain cows, and lots of restaurants to choose from, Tagaytay is a nobrainer when deciding where to take your rich foreigner buddies for a tour of the local scene (hint: if you're not local, ignore this statement)

 Tagaytay, it's like Baguio, but helluva closer.

Taxi Drama

Wednesdays are usually taxi days for me. My car's not allowed on the roads due to the coding scheme and while theoretically I am supposed to be commuting instead, I end up waking up too late for that. So I take the taxi, where I can continue my sleep at the minimal risk of ending up somewhere else when I wake up (like Alabang).

Anyway, today's one of those days and I plan to check the stock market for a few minutes, and then sleep the rest of the way. But when I rode the taxi and told the driver my destination and preferred route, he answered in a weird voice "wag mo tatanggalin" (don't remove it)

I was like, "Remove what?" I almost chalked up the driver as one of those shabu-addled once who I've encountered more than once before, but suddenly somebody actually replied in a very minute voice "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeh".  I looked at the shotgun seat from the back. There was nobody there. And then it spoke again "Masikip papa!" I leaned forward and lo and behold I saw a 3 year old kid (or so I think) sitting up front. It was also kind of cute, until you realize that an adult's seatbelt protects a 3 year old kid from accidents in the same way a condom protects you from gunshot wounds.

But yeah, not my kid, and I just wanted to sleep. If ever, it's just going to give the taxi driver an incentive to not drive around like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse spreading death, destruction, and traffic everywhere he goes.

The kid kept on complaining about everything. At first it was cute, because her voice was cartoonish, and then it was annoying, because I planned on sleeping. She wanted more food, and the driver, who apparently was her dad, promised her ice cream after dropping me off. She said she was thirsty, so he gave her his water bottle. (I could not see, but how the heck does a three year old drink from a litre plastic bottle anyway?) and then finally she complained that she just wanted to go home.

At this point the dad's voice changed from the usual half-annoyed-half-concerned voice to a stern one. And that's also the point when I started paying attention (while pretending to not care of course). "Walang tao sa bahay," he said, "wala ang mami mo dun. Anong gagawin mo dun kung magisa ka lang?"

So the guy's babysitting, I get it. I suppose it could be done, provided most of his passengers are like me, no more than 3 people and not really giving a shit if there's another person inside besides the driver.

And that was when i was caught completely off guard.

"Anak, dapat lagi na tayong magkasama ngayon," the driver continued with a raspy voice and a sad undertone, "kasi wala na ang mami mo. Iniwan na nya tayo." The kid could only say "iniwan? mami?" And this was while we were cruising down the highway.

I looked at the driver for the first time since the trip started. He looked tired, and somewhat sad. And that was what distraught me. What if this guy is sad to the point of being suicidal? No more sleep for the rest of the trip, that's for sure.

After a while the kid finally fell asleep. The driver would occasionally glance at the kid, still straddled with the oversized seatbelts and he'd give a warm smile, and pardon me if I might embelish the story a bit, that sort of told everybody who saw it "Don't worry now, everything's going to be alright."

It felt like I was inside a drama story waiting to unfold. As though one day that kid is going to grow up, and have a chat with his dad, and bring up the day that her mother left them. And I saw what would've been talked about ahead of her.

Sad and wonderful at the same time.

 

What The Hell Happened

1800s - Amigo

 1920s - Pal

 1940s - 友達

1950s - Pare

1960s - Pards

1970s - Repapips

1980s - Tol, Tsong

1990s - Dude, men

2000 - Bro, dude

2012 - Ate, Teh, Titah

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED, PHILIPPINES? Y U GO GAY?

Signs you're getting older

It's normal. It's expected. Yet for some reason aging occurs in such a subtle way that makes denial such a tempting option for most of us. Time is such a good thief of youth that it manages to spirit off chunks of your life with the subtlety of a customs official - without tripping any Senate enquiry and/or burglar alarms.

The whole process, however, is far from fool proof. Occasionally you get these reminders that you are, in  fact, slowly inching your way towards old age, demise, and horribly sagging testicles.

 Here are some signs that you are aging:

 1. The jeepney driver looks like he just got his license five days ago. He's listening to things you thought only hyperactive preteens listen to. (Justin Bieber? Really?) Also, he's driving like Takumi from Initial D, and not because it's all happy coincidence - it's because he grew up watching THE Takumi on TV.

 2. And your barber? Long gone is the grand old barber who seemed ancient enough to have cut Manuel Quezon's teenage hair. While he may not know jack about stylishness, he probably mastered his trade long before you even knew how to masturbate. He could  do a heart bypass with his trusty scissors and comb and that's why you're confident your hair will be cut properly. No, now, he's replaced by a guy who's probably about your age, or worse, younger, and there's that lingering feeling that you shouldn't be trusting him with scissors any more than you trust a five year old with a kitchen knife.

  3. Music sucks, and you have your own channel or radio program playing music that you like - and they're either called "rewind", or "retro" or simply "classics". 


 4. And it's pretty okay for you to accept that. 


 5. People you grew up admiring are dying off. Michael Jackson, Cory Aquino, Steve Jobs, Jimmy Santos (EDITOR'S NOTE: For the last fucking time Jet, he's not yet dead. Stop killing him in your articles) 


 6. All your friends in FB have turned into babies, if you're to believe their profile pictures. 


 7. Remember that time back in college when you attended like, 5 debuts a month and had to be eighteen roses/candles/condoms in at least three of them? You didn't even remember the name of the debutante half the time. Weddings are like that now. 


 8. You're appalled at the fashion sported by kids nowadays. 


 9. You're using the term "kids nowadays", clearly accepting you've long since graduated from the demographic. 


 10. Half the time you're online, you're reminiscing about childhood stuff that your younger friends have no idea of. And I'm not even talking about your inaanak. I'm talking about the new intern at work not knowing who Computer Man is and why he's badass. (hint: he can travel through electrical wiring. Why? because he's a badass computer man, that's why. Fuck you.)

Twitter One-Liner Lowdown

To be human is to think alone and feel collectively.

That which does not kills us makes us reconsider insurance.

Wag mong gawing trabaho ang bagay na gusto mo kasi hindi pwedeng bigyan ng parehong paggalang ang bagay na iniibig sa bagay na pinagkikitaan

Mark my words, we will be spending 10 years trying to record everything in our lives and the next 10 years trying to erase them

It's easier to pretend that Marcos is the long and short of the evils of that era, rather than consider him as a mere symptom of the times.

In light of SM Pampanga shooting SM pulls back selling SM Bonus bullets and personal firearms.

Sorry men, dahil may anti-planking law na, bawal na manabla.

Walang basagan ng trip!

When was the last time protesting actually fixed the problem?Bullets change opinions faster than placards, though not always for the better

When I have a kid I'll name him Winter so whenever he gets invited to a party, he can answer in the coolest voice "Winter is Coming".

I'll never get why people say being rich doesnt make you happy. Give me 500 thousand peso bills and I'll slap 500 people with them happily.

Madaling sabihin na "window shopping" lang. Pero pano kung lumundag yung mannequin papunta sayo at sinabing di mo na sya kailangan bayaran?

Never a love in the world for naught, if never a late realization left unsaid.

If you want to get into somebody's good side, never bring up any topic on politics, religion, sex, or UAAP.

God bless social technology for serving as the best jerkwad detector of all time.

Sometimes its not about solving something. Sometimes its just the acknowledgement that the problem exists.

You know its for real when the whole world seems to conspire for and against it at the same time, and you cant be bothered to care. 

You mean the world to me, if I actually cared about the world I mean. 

Balang araw,lahat ng non-negotiables mo sa paghanap ng pagibig lulunukin mo rin. Kaya kung ayaw mo mabulunan, liitan lang ang requirements. 

Behind every great man is a woman. If there's none behind you, well, we can't all be winners now, can we? 

Ang hindi lumilingon sa pinanggalingan, mabilis matututo mamisikleta.

People keep saying "never settle for less". What they ought to be saying is "never settle for less if never is fine with you." 

Stop quoting Rizal as a Tagalog-user. He wrote his novels, poems, letters in Spanish, and watched Marimar undubbed (citation needed) 

The fastest way to find out you can't change the world is to actually go there. 

Lesson 4 today: Dont trade and drive. U myt get hit b4 ur sell orders does. 

Sana magkaseat sale dyan senyo para makaupo naman ako sa tabi mo... 

Right before the market takes a huge dive, the forum I go to turns into chaos. After only few posters remain - then it's buying time. 

I once was sad because I had no shoes. Then I saw somebody with no feet. Who was white. And a lady. I was scared into not wanting shoes. 

Ang pagibig parang taho. Hindi dapat puro tamis. Masarap sa umaga. Habang nakakalog, lumalabnaw. At higit sa lahat, mas enjoy pag sinisigaw. 

Love is a lot like a pizza delivery. Getting there at record speeds means nothing unless the other side opens up. 

When was the last time you experienced glory? The only real faith that matters is that of tolerance and respect. 

You can't always get what you want unless what you want is not always getting what you want. Problem solved. 

The fastest way to drive out a nail is with another nail, unless not having any nails is your objective. 

People sometimes tend to say that they want a lot of things. I'm willing to bet more than half of the time, a simple hug will suffice. 

Everybody needs a certain degree of liquidity. Money that you cannot spend when you need it is of no use to you. 

It's easy to blame others for your future, but from the future looking back, you'll realize there's only you. 

If you always go for win-win in a zero sum game, consider that somebody might be getting the lose-lose end. 

Filmmaking, stories, games and jokes got replaced with work, business and everything in between. Growing up is as boring as everybody says. 

The last product anybody ever really needs is contentment. 

Teach a kid to ask "where to" and then watch him go farther than the kids who ask "how far". 

The management ability most needed for survival is the ability to handle disappointment. 

Wanted to use this wit-phrase "Am I in Vienna? Because I'm surrounded by sausages." but cant because it sounds gay in 19/20 instances. 

A good teacher is worth a thousand books, and a good student, a thousand dissertations 

Some people take a punch in the face better than they take a joke. The rest tend to fare worse in the fist-to-face division. 

As children we were encouraged to write long essays and as adults we're encouraged to write short tweets. Ano ba talaga? O-o .

Samsung Galaxy S2 Kies "cannot start service"

Just a friendly note to the people who are having issues with connecting Samsung GS2 to the latest version of Kies.
I have a Galaxy S2 running on 2.3.3, rooted. Unfortunately I am unable to connect my phone to Samsung's inhouse PC interface program called Kies. After what seemd to be years of searching for a way to connect the damn phone, I was able to make it work, finally.
Here are the methods that I used.
1. Stop using Windows 7 64bit. This OS is currently unsupported.
2. Update to the latest version of KIES and use the driver installation method.
3. Restart the computer many times.
None of those worked, but after reading something on the net about SD cards, here's what I did:

1. Remove the battery.
2. Remove the SD card.
3. Startup GS2.
4. Startup Kies
5. Plug the device to the USB port.
And it worked! What the fuck. Anyway, In case anybody stumbles upon this, I hope it also works for you.
Now I'm having issues with trying to make the Kies backup work.
Oh Samsung, what would we do without you?

Dead Island Review/Tips/Cheats

(It's been a while since I did a full article on any game, but then again, it's been a while since I played a game that can't be finished in one day. Anyway, yeah. Also, I'm reviewing this game on the PC with the game version only up to patch 1.1.) 

Let's just say I'm not a fan of games that stress me out. I actually like games where I'm not challenged, where I can get power, abuse power, and ultimately get away with abuse. Dead Island gives me nothing of those, and yet, here I am, taking the time to write an article about a game that basically took away hours of potentially good rest to be replaced with unwanted muscular jerking, heart pumping, and soiled underpants. We'll get to that in a moment.

Dead Island is a zombie-themed person shooter that shares the questing-and-collecting elements of Fallout 3 with the theme of .. well.. zombie apocalypse. Most people would like to compare the game to another previously successful zombie-themed FPS game, Left For Dead. The comparisons are somewhat justifiable. There's only so much innovating you can do to a niche theme that's been done and overdone through the years. Some mechanics are similar, the usual "escape or die" theme, and even the enemy roster (hint: zombies) are near identical. It's not all apples and apples though, as there's something about Dead Island that makes it different, and that something is enough for me to say that at the end of the day, it's an entire game of its own.

The story is a mixed bag, but it's not like anybody watches zombie movies for the unique storyline either. You're in a resort as any one of the four starting characters that happen to be immune to the virus, and then you work your way though (as a team or alone) the whole island trying to escape and help others survive at the same time. A mysterious voice on the radio and a particularly obnoxious asshole lifeguard lead the plot on, while characters you encounter along the way provide more meat to the whole experience through their own smaller storylines. The twists in the game are somewhat predictable, but the effort that you will be putting in towards progressing the plot will make you feel all the much immersed in the plight of survival. Seeing a person die from some trivial bullshit right after you pulled an all nighter trying to save his ass, for example, is heartbreaking. The game is not without the emotional moments that the trailer promised us, but lets just say the acting could have been done better.

Graphics wise, the emphasis to detail in the landscape is astounding. It's an island, and beyond the shadow of a doubt, you will believe that the places you visit could have been real places if you take away the whole zombie invasion thing. The lighting and weather effects have been masterfully utilized to set the mood and paint any stage with a certain emotion. The effect works so well that sometimes you will find yourself afraid without even seeing any enemies. The zombies on the other hand are well within the current roster of FPS titles. The splashes of blood on high settings will make you appreciate killing the undead. The facial expressions are fairly limited, which is quite a disappointment since the game is supposed to explore the human side of a zombie apocalypse. That said, the game looks the part.

Dead Island's strongest appeal is that unlike almost pretty much every zombie game out there, it's sandbox styled, meaning, the order of the quests, what you want to play and what you want to skip is up to you. Sidequests give you experience, money, and better weapons, as well as additional flavoring to the main quests, which need to be completed to progress the storyline. Vehicles help you get around doing quests and a fast-travel system between safe haven help you get rid of having to trudge Two kilometers just to fetch some guy something to drink. The sandboxing is almost like Fallout 3 actually. The only difference in Fallout 3 is that travelling 2km will likely end you up fighting once or twice along the way while Dead Island will make sure you will be earning meter by meter in blood. The zombies spawn everywhere and clearing an area will only be temporary at best.  It's because of this nature of gameplay that will make you hesitant to keep on venturing out on your own. The island is dangerous and the game makes sure you don't forget that.

Items can be scavenged around the island for use in quests, barter, or creating unique weapons. More than half of the time this is pretty much what you will be doing actually, but the implementation is okay and the game ensures your frustration will not make you pull out (all of) your hair. Items needed for weapons, for example, are randomly available from merchants every now and then so if you cant find it outside, you can buy it for a slightly ridiculous price.

Combat is stricly melee. The guns exist, but ammo is scarce and the effect they have on the undead is limited. A shot in the head is no better than a shot in the leg. I personally believe that FPS and melee just dont mix. Not when you cant see either your leg or fists. For some reason though, the style works for the game. At times the swings are inexact, but rest assured that it's a lot better than what you used to see in.. say... counterstrike. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be comlaining  anymore (much). Weapons range from oar paddles to katanas to cooking pans. Each weapon has stats and attributes that make it more or less powerful. YOu're free to upgrade these weapons and modify them with the junk you collect around the island, imbuing them with poison, electricity, or fire or just additional moving sharp blades. Weapons get damaged as you use them, however, and the more unique and powerful the weapon, the more expensive it gets to maintain. This blancing feature will leave you budgeting weapon use for only the most important of situations, as going on bloodlusts all the time will leave you weaponless at a crucial period.

Healthpacks are available although not nearly enough are around most of the time. You can drink canned drinks and eat candy bars for additional health but these cant be carried around with you and must be consumed on the spot. So to set the mood for you, you're basically budgeting health and weapon health. Run out of either and you end up dead anyway. I can't remember how many times I ended up almost finishing a mission and then getting clobbered to death on the way back because I did not think of a good exit strategy or the logistics to back it up.

The enemies of this game are not particularly intelligent or diverse. Each type of enemy has certain movement patterns and once you figure them out, you can dispatch them easily, that is, if the game wasn't so goddamn clever in placing enemies around the ingame areas so strategically. The worst enemy of this game, when you think about it, is the island itself. It's the darkened corner of a seemingly clear hallway, it's the shrubbery placed alongside the main route, it's the detour through the showers that you have to go through. It's the fear htat any moment, you might make a mistake in clearing an area and have half of your life drained by a random zombie while you're in a hot zone. I cannot remember the last time I had a game that I played with a constant level of tension.

And that's what Dead Island is all about. You will never have the upper hand. The game ensures that you will be always at a disadvantage, limited in resources, and fighting for survival. When you get stronger, the enemies do too. When you start getting the hang of your skills, the game presents you with more targets. Until the credits roll, you will feel the need to survive more than to complete the mission. And as far as zombie games go, it doesn't get more immersive than that.

For all its limitations, bugs, and gameplay imbalances, Zombie Island is the zombie game of the year.

Some hints for the guys who are already playing:

1. Always consider running away as the best option. Level ups from fighting can only give you so much compared to quests, and every fight leaves you with less durable weapons and possible death. If you need to fight, fight near safe zones, workbenches, and sources of health.

2. Electricity > Poison. Stunning your enemies is a lot better than having them die slowly. Poison hardly has any effect even when in higher levels.

3. Dispatch Rams by running to the side when he's charging 5 meters away from you, then when he stops, hit him in the back. Grunts can be brought down by cutting of their arms when they're roaring. Drowners need to be flanked by running towards its back and then hit in the back. Infected need to be slashed right before they come at you, or if you suck at timing, a good kick will do the trick. If you're fighting 3 infected with helmets on, well, see rule number 1.

4. Always use the kick. They interrupt a lot of attacks (except from the larger enemies). At later levels you can dispatch downed enemies with just your foot. Save on weapon strength, use your legs.

5. Bundle quests objectives together to save time. Plan your routes to avoid dying in the middle of nowhere.

And lastly, if you are having a hard time with the game or are running on limited resources (i.e. time) because you're an adult who has to slave away countless hours at work, look for Razor 1911's Plus 10 Trainer. Works like a charm.

My Resolve

I've always prided myself in being able to find amusement in creating things instead of just watching others people's work. It's something I picked up as a kid, whence I found myself rarely able to get the day's rage in toys I was left to find substitutes using what toys I had (lego, being a flexible toy helped out a lot) and a good dose of imagination.

It is that same drive that convinced me to try out writing novels, doing comic books, writing countless articles in this blog, trying to write for print, creating my own website, creating my own programs, games, apps or what not, trying my luck in doing standup comedy, creating music, poetry (albeit sucking at it), working on videos with friends, doing business, and finding out ways to earn a living beyond what I'm expected to be doing. I succeeded and failed in varying degrees in each field, but the bottomline is I just had to try. I was able to push through because I was with people who had the same ideals, though unspoken, could be seen in the way they worked the world.

A lot of that has stopped in the last few years, and I also lost contact with a lot of the people I worked with and shared my dreams with. I have the best excuses. I dont have time anymore. I need to focus on more important things that will matter to my future more. I have a different set of goals now. I figured, it's alright. I'm trying to become an adult, and maybe the lot of those things is just part of being young and wanting to do everything.

Tonight I got to thinking again. Am I really losing time because of what I think I am doing? Half of the time I say I'm pushing through with work, second work, and other boring adult stuff, I'm just leafing through my usual site feeds. I'm watching videos on youtube. I'm thinking of one liners for Facebook or Twitter. If I'm not in front of a browser, I'm playing video games. Or I'm watching TV or a movie, or just reading some random book. If I'm outside, I'm hanging out with friends. Or going out on dates with my girlfriend. Or being out of town, chilling out in some far remote location, probably inebriated half of the time. Those aren't really productive things, but I keep on claiming, I'm being choked with work. I'm not.

I took a look at the monstrous stream of people's activities in Twitter and Facebook. They're basically doing the very same things. There's something inherently wrong with the idea that so much devotion is spent in entertainment in our generation. I seriously doubt our parents spent this much time on amusement. Even less so for the previous generations.

And for my part, I'm beginning to feel the toll that such a lifestyle exacts on my ability to create. The short bursts for twitter and facebook are hampering my ability to write full articles on this site. One liner quotes have taken over the ability to create full dialog, characterization, and even plot. It's the distraction that's starting to chip away at what's supposed to be the main attraction, and it's scaring me.

Without me realizing it, I've become the ideals that i used to hate. I have become the audience. Those who just sample life without ever wondering what it's like to be on the stage. I dropped my pen to write and picked up the papers to read.

But it's not too late. I have my resolve left and I vow to overcome this rut. Here are the things I have decided to start with:

1. I'll reduce posting bullshit oneliners in Twitter and Facebook fishing for random online countenance (or whatever is the equivalent of it). It's won't matter to anybody in the long run, and I can make use of those ideas better in bigger projects.

2. I have to uninstall distractions on my PC. Call off the feeds. Remove my bookmarks. My life is understandably short and I do not want to be doing accounting at the very end of it to find out I had pissed the lot of my time on entertainment alone.

3. Stop forcing myself to do things out of social contract. There's gotta be a golden mean somewhere, and I will have to strike that balance soon. I don't want to live like a hermit either.

4. Reassess again what I want to do. This will probably take the longest of the steps but I know it's the most necessary as well. I resolve that being an adult doesn't mean I have to let go of the things that I love to do. I just have to find out a way to squeeze the most of them in without compromising my ultimate goals.

It starts now.

5 More Uses of Phone Cameras

Thanks to the advent of technology, and mankind's apparent desire to record the shit out of everything for the next generation to ignore, we now have cameras in about every phone and the ability to store more stills than an average cinema reel. You'd think something that powerful would have really useful purposes, but right now, it's pretty much a social tool, mainly for sharing moments both public and intimate (read: scandalous)

I'd beg to differ, however. Apart from taking pictures of half-drunk friends, my chiseled, glistening half-naked body in the bathroom, and pretty much every sunset-bathed skyline in existence, here are five more uses of the phone camera that I've experienced thus far:

1. Ordering food where there is a language barrier - So you're craving to eat something you saw either on display or on somebody else' table, but you're in a country where English seems to have been outlawed five decades ago. The menu is posted where you can't pinpoint what you want without looking like a 3yo wanting his 'mamam'. That's a problem. You could drag the order taker to where you saw the food you want, or you can just snap a picture discretely and just show them what you want.

2. Recording details of a traffic mishap for insurance purposes - Let's be practical here. Accidents happen. Unfortunately for the lot of us, Insurance Companies have this policy of pretending like the term "accident" has not yet been invented until the very moment you claim it happened. They want proof. Usually in the form of a police report, which usually comes from police, which if you live where I do, are as rare as honest government workers. To make it worse, if you move your car from the scene of the incident, the police refuse to do the report, causing you to block the road until they confirm the incident. All the while, you earn the wrath of pretty much every car within the next two kilometers on both directions. So snap a picture instead. Or even better, take a video of it, like you're documenting some rare breaking news. Then move the goddamn car because the only thing worse than a bent fender is getting shot by a road-raging driver because if your bent fender.

3. Taking down blackboard/whiteboard notes - Gone are the days where you have to jot down everything like a chippy idiot in your notebook when you know you'll only be using that information for about 20 minutes many days later. Snap a picture instead. You'll save on paper, ink, and precious time you could spend doing other, more important things - like writing down articles about using camera phones to take notes down.

4. Recording taxi details in an instant - Capture the taxi name, plate number, phone number, and model in an instant, ensuring you can track your women friend's last ride in case shit without having to have them wait until you are able to jot the information down. Like a goddamn BOSS.

5. Remembering obscure places - Let's face it. While Google Maps is awesome, it ain't the one solution to all your locational problems. A small nameless tiangge where you bought your shady bootleg copy of Bang Brothers is probably in a sea of other tiangges inside a mall is not suppored by Google Maps. Solution? Take a picture of the place with the surroundings as reference. That way, when episode 5: Curvaceous Carla turns out to be a dud, you can always go back and swap it with some other sad variation of american pornography without problems.

Pambansang Laro Ng Pilipinas

Bakit nga ba SIPA ang pambansang laro ng Pilipinas? Wala akong kakilala na naglalaro ng SIPA. Di ko napapanood sa TV ang sipa. Sa totoo lang di pa ako nakakakita ng totoong laro ng sipa bukod sa PE namin nung highschool.

Talaga bang may sport na sipa? O kathang isip lang natin yun? Bakit walang binebentang bolang ratan sa mga sports shop?

Ang sipa lang na alam ko, yung larong pambata na ang gamit e tingga at balat ng kendi. Kung medyo sosyal, yung may parang straw pa na wig, ewan ko kung ano tawag dun. Tassle? Dapat ata yun na lang nag pambansang laro natin. Isipin mo, pag televised sya, pati yung sipa, may sponsor na - nakadisplay dun sa balat ng kendi.

Kung sa dami nang mga sport natin na TOTOONG nilalaro, bakit di na lang antin palitan ang sipa? Eto ang ibang possible suggestions sa national game/sport natin:

1. Patintero Professional League

2. Ultimate Trumpo Championship

3. Putangina Mo Piko Tayo Federation

4. Henry Sy's Chinese Garter Open 2011

5. Pambansang Palakasan ng Inuman

6. Ewan. Matulog na lang tayong lahat.

Jai Alai is a Crazy Sport

Jai Alai

I was channel surfing the other day when I saw a telecast of a Jai Alai game. Am I the only one who thinks the sport was specifically created so nobody will ever know what the hell is happening at any point throughout the game?

The layout is already confusing. Opposing players are playing side by side, even though they're fighting each other, and they're enclosed by three walls, one of which serves as their target. The ceiling is ridiculously high and the audience are to watch in the missing fourth wall. If the athletes weren't playing with really fast moving balls while wearing grandpa trousers, you'd think you're watching a stage play based on Bucket List .

The crazy doesn't stop there.

The game is played with eight players or two paired players in eight teams. That's EIGHT competing entities in just one game. Imagine if boxing played out the same way, where the referee invites the top 8 seeds of the heavyweight title, gathers them in the ring and says "fuck it, last man standing gets the belt". Every game is a royal rumble. No, make that a battle royale. Each team/player faces off against each other per round, and whoever loses gets replaced by the next pair of queued opponents. So it's no more a tournament than it is a survival of the fittest, with a race to 7 rule implemented. I seriously think that rule is just to make sure anybody who gets too good walks away with the probability of dying from a hit from the fastest moving projectiles in any sport save for archery and trap shooting.

Oh did I mention that? The balls called pelotas are made of woven metal strands wrapped in goat skin (presumably so any injuries will look like a goat teabagged you at 300mph). These balls are hurled by one player at very very fast speeds to the opposing wall, which by laws of physics, bounce in the most unpredicable patterns towards the OTHER player, who is EXPECTED to catch the damn thing with a wooden hurler called a xistera and bounce it back without suffering from various penalties like clinical death. Oh and you're supposed to do this while avoiding hitting or interfering with your opponent who is STANDING right next to you. As far as sportsmanship goes, Nancy Kerrigan wouldn't be able to play this game without getting sanctioned two minutes in.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 Unable To Login

Am I the only one having problems? I also tried logging in via

https://profile.ea.com/login.do

and am unable to do so. Post here if you are having similar issues.

Anything but Classes

There's this interesting theory relating age and perception of time, in that the younger you are, the longer a unit of time appears to you. Like an adult's perception of a jailtime in years, would be relatively equivalent to a child's afternoon inside a classroom. (I am not shitting you, you can google "age and perception of time" and find medical papers on this issue). But whether or not this is the reason as to why, the 8 hours of classroom-based instruction felt like Reclusion Perpetua doesn't really matter. What mattered was that it did felt like Reclusion Perpetua, and that as kids we'd grovel for any hint of excuse so we don't have to stay glued to our seats, which at the time might as well been filled with spikes.

Luckily, during certain points of the year, we had these school events, which were still boring as fuck, but was a vast improvement from what we felt was destroying our souls - the four walls of the classroom. Here are some of those events:

First Friday Mass - The most common reason why we shouldn't be inside the classroom learning stuff, is that we're hearing mass as a school. The mass lasts for only an hour and it's pretty standard affairs, unless the ever colorful theater club decides to do a production number after the gospel which showcases their "diversity" by portraying a play with an all-girl characterization. (hint: I'm from an all boys school) I remember only two instances when this event broke my expectations - when our teacher thought every song in the mass should be given the DEATHMETAL treatment which turned out so epic, I bet Jesus reconsidered for a moment the ROCK by which he built the Church upon. The other time was when our class had to be placed next to a class of students from an all girls school across the street (that was awesome too).

Living Rosarhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gify - The Living Rosary, and I apologize for what insult I may cause by being honest, is the most boring event in the list, and I sometimes contemplate that somewhat, being stuck inside the classroom is better than this. It's like saying the rosary, but for an entire half day. Each hail mary is represented by some poor student rep who has to stand in the middle of the campus, under the heat of the scorching sun. Lots of intermissions happen in between prayers and at some point, people forget what the hell it is that they're doing. It's like the woodstock of Roman Catholicism. Best part of it is when they launch a set of balloons shaped like a rosary, for reasons which escape me to this day.

Mini fair/Mission Sunday - The only bad thing about these fairs is that they rarely ever happen on a school day. So instead of being saved from classes, you're forced to slice off a chunk of your weekend for these activities. I've covered in lengthy detail how much these fairs suck in another article, which can be read here: http://redkinoko.blogspot.com/2011/01/school-fairs-suck.html

Intramurals - I still don't know why they're called intramurals. Intramurals literally means "inside the walls", which is pretty much everything that we do in school. Why can't we just call it "sports fest" like normal people? Anyway, there are only three sports in my school - basketball, volleyball, and tug of war. The last of the three is taken so seriously, I remember one teacher feeding her players ever so generously right before a match so they can gain more "traction". It's crazy. Also, does chess count as a sport? No? Good. I hate chess.

Recognition Day - The time of the year where people recognize each other, because other days, they don't even know people's names. I don't really have a lot of stories for this event, other than during our batch, the clubs had this internal arrangement of giving awards to other clubs in exchange for receiving awards in return. There was like a black market of awards that flourished weeks before the event, so much so that by the end of the recognition day, the presidents of the Science club and Theater club were so loaded with awards and trophies they had to take the taxi home because they wouldn't have been able to haul their "awards" otherwise. Me? I got me a gold, a silver, and a bronze. Just for the heck of it.

Fire drills - For a school where the windows are made of wood, the flooring is wood, and two out of five buildings are made of ACTUAL wood, we rarely had this sort of thing. Matter of fact, I stayed there for ten years and can only recall two drills, one of which we were required to arrange ourselves alphabetically, which arguably took longer than just walking out of the fucking door, since we are arranged randomly inside the class room. (imagine in an actual fire you're yelling "WHO GOES NEXT AFTER TRINIDAD? HURRY MY LEG HAS CAUGHT FIRE")

Actual fires - The funny part is that this happens more often than the fire drill. If it's not our canteen catching fire, it's the incinerator placed conspicuously beside our oldest wooden building which also used to house the gradeschool library. And it happens again and again. You'd think we're a fireman training university or something. Still, whatever lets us keep away from regular boring classes is most welcome.

Life Updates

Just a quick roundup of the happenings of my life.

1. As I've mentioned before, it's been a year since my transfer to a new company, which subsequently got absorbed by another company. The honeymoon is definitely over and I feel that my adjustment phase is done. At the end of it, I feel that I have shed a lot of things I used to enjoy to be able to focus on this new work. Living my dreams of giving standup comedy another shot, writing for print, and writing prose have all but ground to a halt. I do feel that I am slowly able to regain back some of those things slowly, but I doubt if I can still manage to get back to how things used to be. Not that I want that.

2. I am starting to grow back my habit of swimming again. I have gained enough pounds to start exporting it to East Africa in bulk. I am trying to curtail my intake in the mean time, which is sort of working. Sort of. I really need to buy a weighing scale so my body mass measurement doesn't have to be as inexact as astrology.


3. I have gotten back to trading stocks. Pretty impressed at my streak this time, as lord knows I start losing my head the moment my pockets begin to fill. I tried to limit my own greed this time and it's paid off. The last few weeks' rollercoaster ride has proven very profitable. As of writing, I'm barely 10% in the market. And I think it's cool that way. God's been really generous, so I have plans on resurrecting my old charities as well. (treating friends doesn't count, so do don't get your hopes up)

4. My super duper secret project is doing good so far. Not great, and there's been a lot of hiccups along the way, but I suppose it's better than having it die in the Ningas Cogon brimstone hellfire. First windfall should be around this month or the next.

5. I'm going back to recreational programming to make the leap into the current generation of software dev. I've gotten myself an Android phone and I've laid out my first project, which will also serve as the "teach yourself how to" sandbox for the mean time. Can't disclose what the app's supposed to do, but here's a hint: it's got somethign to do with networking, black sun, and ARPs.

6. My recent plans into going into importation has failed during the first step. Shit sucks, but given my current loading, I suppose it wouldn't have worked out well anyway. I've no plans on giving up though. Next time I see an opportunity arise, I'll be ready.

7. I have a 1080p camera, a computer fast enough to do the editing, and some ideas in my head. You know where this is headed. :)

8. Im at a point in my life where I know I'm getting where I'm headed but I'm asking if I should be going there in the first place. It's crazy, and there's not even a term for it. Mid-mid-life crisis? Mid-quarter? Quarter-back crisis?

That's about it.

Rainy Day Blues

As a kid there were only two things that could make my weekday morning exciting: aliens invading the earth and the possibility of cancelled classes. Between the two, the former is less likely, but the latter is less likely to happen as it should be.

I don't care what people say. Kids nowadays have it easy when it comes to announcement of classes. Sure, the decision still gets delayed, depending whether or not the magical tarot cards of the Dep Ed secretary align with the planets, but things like that are just meant to stay the same.

What's important now is that people are actually paying attention, or at least seem like they're exerting effort to pay attention to whether or not kids should be commuting when half of the roads on the way to school has turned into a cholera-powered version of Splash Island.

Back then it was much crazier. The Dep Ed secretary seemed like the grand old man of Mt. Banahaw, who, if could not be found, is actually soundly sleeping to the tune of the falling rain. (and we all know how tempting this becomes during rainy season)

There was no internet yet, so we all had to rely on amazingly distracted AM newscasters who kept on changing topics every 0.5 seconds. One minute you're listening to them look for the DepEd secretary, and then the next, they're telling everybody tuning in, including the hapless kids of course, of a grissly murder that involves intestines being used as ornamental accessories.

To make it worse, at times, you'd get two different radio stations saying different things. Dude A will tell you NCR has no classes (YAY), but in another station, Parañaque, where I went to school, is leaving the decision up to the school principal. Which is which? It's like googling for "will masturbation kill me", whichever answer you prefer, you can find it if you look for it hard enough.

Speaking of "leaving the decision up to the school", it has got to be the worst possible call of Dep Ed next to "make the kids scoop out the floodwater", because quite frankly, I wouldn't trust the same school that makes kids eat canteen food containing weaponized-grades of household bacteria to decide what's safe for students.

To make matters worse, the only way for you to reach the school is by calling the office number, which is, of course in an office, which is, of course, open during.. and I bet you wouldn't really expect this. OFFICE HOURS. You could call the guard, sure, but the best he can give you is whether or not the school gates look like the entry to the Atoll in Waterworld, and whether or not a no flippers no entry policy will be enforced.

So worst case scenario is, half of the known world has already cancelled classes, your neighbors are busy inflating their emergency rafts and bringing up their gargantuan television sets up stilts, and you're hoping for a miracle that wading into the floods to go to school will not give you gangrene, because everybody knows kids who have rotting flesh on them will never hear the end of jokes - the worst thing a kid can contemplate.

SO yeah, you go to school anyway, walk, ride, wade or even swim like you're breaking out of alcatraz and school is your only way out, and then halfway through- or worse, the moment you arrive, you, together with other students who look like they just went through a Pista de San Juan Bautista will find a nice piece of paper the size of a mobilephone sim card saying "Classes cancelled", signed by the principal, and tacked on the most convenient location - i.e. the top of your school tower.

So you brave the weather, accept your fate and try to go home. Half of your day is spent on begging strangers to take you anywhere the water is not waist deep and the wind doesnt rape your wet body. Against all odds and common reasoning, instead of finding yourself a dead corpse in some creek, you get home soaked to the pancreas.

Finally.

Thirty minutes later, it's sunny as fuck and nothing has happened, amd you're left to enjoy the rest of your surprise holiday with a burning fever and foot infection.

Some days.

Deadlines Shouldn't Mean Dead On The Line

Were it not for the last minute, nothing will ever get done. That's a very popular saying for both the academe and the corporate world. It's practically the most important invention of mankind next to creating fire. Matter of fact, you think fire would ever have been discovered were it not for some caveman manager pressuring the release of the beta? I bet some wise guy in marketing thought the then-new product "fire" can be marketed as that will forever revolutionize how people protest during SONAs. The project got finished at the last minute, but the true purpose won't be achieved until Erap's presidency thousands of years later. The caveman manager invented the last minute. Because last minutes exist, deadlines have to exist too.

It's understandable. If something has a start, it has to have a solid finish. Ask any porn director. Without the proper ending, things will just falter. I mean, look at the movie Clash of The Titans. That was just wrong. A two minute boss fight in a two hour action movie? REALLY?! But I digress.

The long and short of this tirade is that deadlines are important. There's a sense of drama in beating the deadline. Look at how the US congress passed the debt plan at the last minute a few weeks ago. Okay, maybe that was a bad example. Deadlines ensure that people know when things should be done. Otherwise, God help the cooks.

Be it as it may, deadlines should never be the endall of things. Every deadline should have a reason, and in my industry, projects falter the moment those reasons become unreasonable, or worse, forgotten.

In the world of IT, a product release, a project completion is very important. However, there are many things much more important than that. Product stability for one, and sustained effort of the producing team for another. Any reason behind a deadline should have considered both, and in the event that it acts to the detriment of either, that it should have a more important reason for going against any of the two.

Think about it. What's the point of releasing on time if the product is broken? What was that? Sorry, my hearing was blunted by Windows ME screaming at the back of my room of painful memories. What's also the point of releasing on time if the team that produces it, and will have to subsequently work on it in the future again simply burns out? I've seen teams lose swaths of their people because of crunch time burnout. It's never a pretty sight. Is a deadline worth that?

It's a sad fact that even though much of what I'm saying is common sense but things are all to easily lost in the chaos of day-to-day activities. An organization that has multiple levels of management and interworking architecture amplifies this problem. Sometimes, the reason for the deadline somewhat gets lost in between the layers of communication, and things boil down to the reason "because boss said so. are you going to go against boss?" Sure, fear of upper management is understandable. They're the ones handing out the moolah every pay day, afterall. But what's more important is the love of one's work, and consideration of everybody who has a stake in the project. This includes the clients, and those that labor to complete it.

A deadline should always be in everybody's minds when working on a project, but it should never be considered an unmoving notch that will either be reached or breached. It should be a guiding measure that can be moved if the situation calls for it.

And it should never come at an expense greater than what it can gain.

I'm cowriting in another blog

http://mgakacheapan.blogspot.com/


Chekidout.

DTI Application Form Requirement

Just a short tip for those people who used or are planning to use the BNRS/WebRNS (the electronic business name registration system) on DTI.GOV.PH's website. When you go through this application process instead of manually filling up forms, you will only be given the printed certificate when you claim the registration at the DTI office. Which is as expected, because hey, it's all electronic.

Unfortunately, some establishments, more notably the guys at the city hall and at the bank (BPI in my experience) tend to look for the signed application form that goes with the certificate, which can only exist if you're doing things manually. All explanations that the BNRS makes this unavailable has so far been troublesome at best and useless at worst.

To workaround this, after registering and obtaining a certificate number just go to http://bnrs.dti.gov.ph and then click on the "Request for Certification" link. Input your certificate number and the year that you registered and then wait for the application information to appear.

Click on "Download in PDF" and then open and print using any PDF reader.

For the case of the bank, they agreed to using this copy provided I sign in their presence. For what purpose, I have no idea, but whatever works works.

So there.

Meralco Time of Use (TOU) Meter Worth It? Theoretical Computations

Late last year, Meralco quietly rolled out a program where industrial and residential accounts that qualify for the requirements can equip a new meter that is similar to what they use in other countries, wherein the rate at certain times (off peak) is different from the regular (peak) rates for the rest of the day. How's the system faring? Let's have a look see.

This is the timetable set out on Meralco's Website:

Peak Periods

Monday to Saturday 8:00:01 a.m. to 9 p.m. (13 hours)
Sunday 6:00:01 p.m. to 8 p.m. (2 hours)

Off-Peak Periods (where electric rates are lowest)

Monday to Saturday 12:00:01 a.m. to 8 a.m. & 9:00:01 p.m. to 12 midnight (11 hours)
Sunday 12:00:01 a.m. to 6 p.m. & 8:00:01 p.m. to 12 midnight (22 hours)

If you're a working person like me who's only around usually at night, or are with people who are, this sounds like a blessing in disguise. 70% of my monthly consumption comes from air conditioning and water heating, which are both active mostly during the Offpeak hours.

Fucking brilliant? Not so fast.

Now that thing about this whole scheme is that you are going to be using a different pricing scheme that is only seasonally varying compared to the usual meter rates. This is a bit strange, but we'll get into that more in a while. For now, the facts.

This is the time table provided in the Meralco Website.

Now to translate that into pesosesoses, this is what I have in my bill last month using a normal meter:

GENERATION                                                               

 Generation Charge (PhP/kWh)            216     5.5265           1,193.72

On the assumption that I will be using a new meter and my Peak/Offpeak ratio is 3:7, here is the new computation:

Offpeak: 151.2 x 3.0925 = 467.57 pesos
Peak: 64.8 x 6.4852 = 420.24pesos

New total: 887.81 pesos

Total savings: 305.91 pesos

That's more than 30% savings right there. And this is talking about a load of 216 KWH, which is very low for a household. There's a catch of course.

To avail of the new system, there are fees to be paid, as indicated here:

On my account, I am using a 1-phase meter as this is what's commonly used in small-medium households. I need not make any additional computations, but let's do it anyway.

The supply charge amounts to about 2.35 pesos but the metering charge practically wipes out a good chunk of savings you may get. In my example,

305.1 - 2.35 - 117.20 = 185.5 pesos net savings per month.

Given the one time application fee of 2,720 pesos and dividing that with the savings per month (ceteris paribus), you will only be able to pay off the installation fee and really start benefiting after 15 months.

To keep this simple, in order to beat the system and save decent money off the new meters, you will have to consume a whole block of kilowatts only at night, because it's 2 pesos cheaper during that time (since the average actual generation cost is 5.5 pesos) as compared to the regular rate of the new meter which is 0.6 more expensive.

Now, in the other countries, this system is also in place, and unlike ours, theirs is mandatory. I will not go on to question the price of the generation charges in our country because we are largely dependent on two very volatile energy sources - coal and hydro, but I will question why in the world did ERC approve flat rating the regular and offpeak rates, where the regular rate is a lot higher than the fix-meter prescribed rate, and have a provision that Meralco can raise the bar if they so wish.

Sure, the 117 peso surcharge is okay. Maybe the extra CPU power to crunch the already computerized billing is that expensive. I'll accept that. But what does the new meter have to do with generation costs? These costs are sent to meralco from the power suppliers. And the ERC has already given them the go signal.

What does that mean? The ERC has forced the producers to sell electricity at varying costs during varying times of the day. That means Meralco is already operating on the variable cost system for everybody, except the customer (us). That means if your meter is old, but you're using a lot of offpeak KWH compared to the regular KWH, all the savings that you should be getting is being accepted by Meralco instead. If this is the case, it's no longer surprising that the cost of generating power in the country could be so high while Meralco is still racking up record incomes in the recent years.

In other words, the less people who buy into this program, the better. They need some people to benefit, because it will give the ERC Meralco's justification for the program, but they also need to minimize the people buying in, and it seems to me they are doing it by keeping the savings marginal and the process convoluted. Less savings for us = more profit for them.

As a conclusion, the new meter can be good for you - eventually, and depending on your lifestyle. I won't claim I am sure that I did not make false assumptions here. I have not tried the system for myself but I am considering it. And it's also possible that the fixed-rates in their website is incorrect, which I'll try to clarify soon.

If you have any corrections or previous experience on this matter, feel free to comment.

Dish Is Wash Cooking

Ask me the one house chore that I do best aside from sitting down in front of the TV and I'd happily say it's washing the dishes. I understand why a lot of people hate washing the dishes. It's like half of the things you'll be washing has gone through, at some point, both directly and indirectly, into some other person's filthy slobbering mouth - while the other half may or may not contain rotten stuff. It's messy, definitely but I like it for the following reason:

1. I'm in contact to water so it's cool.

2. I have a perfectly good excuse to play with soap bubbles.

I started washing dishes when I was about eight, and at that age I still had to use some sort of stepladder or chair just to reach the sink. My dad always had this "earn-your-keep" way of running things and so when we came to live with him in Saudi, he figured if he's going to give us allowance, we might as well earn it through chores. Of course, Saudi is Saudi and the house we lived in wasn't exactly large so the two main chores that could be delegated was washing the dishes and ironing clothes.
Since nobody would let a 7 year old touch heated appliance any more than a gun shop would issue a license to an insane criminal, I got the dish washing gig.


At first I thought it was a bitch to do. You iron clothes a few times a week, but dirty dishes always have to done everyday, lest you turn your kitchen sink into a miniature primordial soup of bacterial life. Like for example, I remember forgetting to wash the rice cooker the other day for a grand total of four days and when I lifted the lid, it seemed like the fungus had evolved into the Renaissance period. Washing dishes everyday was bad, but on vacations, it turned into a three-times-a-day ordeal. Okay, maybe my sister and mom helped out, but still, it was a pretty shitty deal to me back then. I felt like it was eating into my vacation.

Later on in my life, I finally got to appreciate it more, for during school season, I always have an excuse to put off having to do homework in, so I got enough time to watch TV (Daimos, Voltes V, and La Traydora - the first mexicanovela in the Philippines) while washing the dishes, granted that I do the dishes really slowly.

I'd like to also think that my constant exposure to running water and cool temperatures is what enabled me to have the longest coughless streak - from 3rd grade of gradeschool to college, which is when I stopped washing the dishes because I was already driving and using the computer - and I might get the so called "pasma".

And to those bitching about how hard it is to wash the sebo/grease off the dishes now, as somebody who's been washing dishes for 20 years, we've already come a long way as far as dishwashing technology goes. Those commercials by Joy about they cut grease like a boss? It's all true. Because back then you had two options - a bar of soap, or dishwashing paste. A bar of soap is a bitch to get into the sponge. After a few uses, the powder washes off and you have to reload again. The other option is to drown it in water first so you can use the concentrate - same banana. It's just as bad in washing, and it's hard to get the soapy smell off.

Now the DISHWASHING PASTE. Now that's an improvement. You got it to stick to your sponge - and that's about it. It's terribly shitty at removing stains, grease, and odor - and for some reason it has a nasty habit of leaving behind, well, paste. Everytime my mom sees that a piece of rice or paste was left in a single fork, plate, or glass -she'd be more than glad to empty out the entire dish rack into the sink to repeat the arguably shitty process of washing all over again. This is probably why, even as an adult, I have the same sort of disdain at dishwashing paste as I would, for example, rapists.

At some point over the years, AXION, specifically, thought it would be cool to change the paste into GEL, which made the paste look like gelatin. I loved it. It smelled nice, and looked fun to play with. I loved it, at least until I got to use it for the first time and realized that because it IS gelatin, it will not stick to pretty much any sponge, and just end up fragmenting into smaller pieces and get stuck into the utensils and get me, of course, a healthy dose of "WASH ALL OF THEM AGAIN UNTIL YOU GET IT RIGHT" treatment. Thankfully, after a few tubs, a few months, and probably a stroke of sobering for the people in AXION, they decided that the gel thing is bullshitting nobody anymore.

Joy, on the other hand, now joy just made life a whole lot easier. It's syrupy so the sponge will easily lap it up. When diluted, it acts as a natural grease-remover, and when concentrated, it becomes the Jovito Palparan of sebo, the type of substance grease tells their kids to always pray they'll never encounter. The moment Joy became a staple washing substance, dishwashing was a breeze.

Even nowadays, I still find dishwashing a good way to relax. There's something about the way water interacts with the dishes and utensils that calms my head. I know it sounds quirky but I'll admit it does. When life is bad, and there's no good news in sight, I switch on the faucet and tell myself "ah at least there's running water, a good sponge, and dishwashing liquid thats neither GEL OR PASTE."

All That And A Bag Of Chips

Ever wondered why junk food containers seem so easy to open and yet can be a bitch to open without having to use your teeth, thereby making you look like you're an ugandan refugee desperate for food? How hard is it to make packaging that doesn't require cold hard steel to open up? I have no idea but that's just the case for every other junk food I eat. We should start considering putting our valuables inside potato chip packs. We'd catch robbers cold, with them still at the scene of the crime trying to bite the shit out of the container.

Still on the topic of chips, VCut and Potato Chips are fucking con jobs. Thirty seconds after opening the bag and you're already down to those shitty potato crumbs. How does that happen? How do you eat so fast? After exhaustive research and cloak-and-dagger journalism, I have found the answer. The trick of the magic is that [SPOILER ALERT] the bag was never full. The guys who pack the potato chips actually places just three chips, seals the damn bag with enough air for a lunar landing mission so you'd think there's a lot inside, and then punches the fuck out of bag so that only crumbs are left. That way, the makers of VCut can sustain their factory operations with just three pieces of potato per month.

How about Piattos? What's the driving force that made people think "You know what would be a fun snack? A hexagon." Why not a triangle? Why not an octagon? We can call it UFC snacks - the snack fighters crunch on when their bones get crunched up. Available in dried blood barbecue and what-the-fuck-is-coming-out-of-his-mouth yellow cheese. Fortified with steroids and adolescent stereotyping!

Humpy Dumpy is a really fast way to lose friends. Open a bag up and you'll never have to wonder what abandonment issues mean ever again. I don't know a lot about gastronomy but I do believe that you can increase product sales by something as simple as NOT MAKING YOUR CHIPS SMELL LIKE A HUNDRED DRUNK RATS SNUCK INTO YOUR FACTOR AND TOOK A PISS ON YOUR FLAVORING VAT. I had a bag in gradeschool where a bag of Humpy Dumpy unfortunately spilled. 20 years later, IT STILL SMELLS LIKE RAT PISS.

Lastly, stay away from Chocolate flavored Cheese Curls. ITS CHEESE. CHEESE CURLS. WHY WOULD YOU PUT CHOCOLATE INTO THE EQUATION? CHEESE AND CHOCOLATE DONT MIX. Here's an open letter to the manufacturers:

Dear Jack and Jill,

Please stay the fuck away from the guys who made Humpy Dumpy. They are a bad influence for you and the substances they make you inhale deteriorate your sense of taste.

p.s. Chippy is salty enough. STOP INCREASING SALT CONTENT EVERY MONTH.

Thank you,
Chips lover.

10 Year Fucking Saga

Harry Potter first came out 10 years ago, at a time when the hottest thing online was mailing groups, mobile phones could be operated with one hand, the fastest way to watch a movie is through VCDs, the PS2 cost 35k pesos, the iPod did not have a USB interface, and a burger-and-fries meal cost 30 bucks. The tweens you saw at the cinema back then have graduated from highschool, college, and are probably working with you at the office. That is what 10 years means. Now are you going to tell me the story's ending only just now?

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant Resort/Tour Info

In a bid to prove to people that the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is safe, tourism officials are now opening up the single highest concentration of national debt for curious lookers, vacationers, and tourists.

While I get the idea of having a nuclear plant for a tourist attraction, I can't wrap my head around the idea that doing so will prove the plant safe, given that the plant a) has never been activated and b) is more than 30 years old. That's practically tantamount to having people sit inside those ancient propeller planes in Sangley Point to prove that they're still good to fly if there's enough political will.

From the pictures, the BNPP is still in good condition. Good enough to tour, but I'm not really sure whether its good enough to house materials that can melt the face of a man and pollute our national waters for the next thousand years. Two different things really. Entry ticket is 20 pesos and tourists get a tour of the enormous concrete structure that sits 18 metres (60 feet) above the ocean on a mountainside.

Anyway, apart from the nuclear power plant daytour, they are also opening up the beach beside the plant. They also converted the nearby Environment monitoring station into a barracks-style villa that can house up to 45 guests (although I have my doubts on the capacity) including a room that can house 7 guests for 2700 pesos (Cheaper than Sogo Hotel's budget rooms). These prices are probably going to be adjusted for the demand, which I'm sure there will be a lot of. Because hey, we paid for it, we will be paying for it for a very long time, we might as well see what we got in exchange, right?

I'll be updating this page with more details as they come out, including the opening times, contact numbers, booking info, and how to get there.