human in brine

Inadequate resources and perhaps, lack of training have compromised rescue operations off the coast of Masbate where M/V Princess of the Stars sank last Saturday due to Typhoon Frank (Fengshen). Three days have passed after the tragedy yet hundreds of passengers are still missing. Some are trapped or left underneath the capsized ship (for lack of resources to bring them to land) for fish to feast on. There are even stories of drowned corpses with body parts eaten by fish being washed ashore. Now, if our little finned friends had a way of canning humans, that would be their perfect revenge.

it's not a robot, you moron

Credits: To the amazing nataliedee

jobhunting 101

Rule #1 It's all about patience...
-------------------------------------patience...
--------------------------------------------------------------------PATIENCE! dammit.

wifi-detector t-shirt

Clearly, the geeks keep outdoing themselves. Swoon over

The Wi-Fi Detector T-Shirt

Thanks to the ingenious monkey robot inventors from ThinkGeek, now we don't even have to be bothered by such unimportant stuff as cracking open our laptops to check for wi-fi connection.

Check out more of the Wi-Fi Detector T-shirt here.

malicious, masquerading Trojan!

From an AVG virus scan report (lol):

ipod talk

Catholic saints are interesting

Take this one for instance. The image of this skewered saint stands before the old Spanish church in Liliw, Laguna along with other statues which supposedly take the form of other Catholic saints and martyrs. These cemented replicas bear the name of the saint below them. But I was stupid enough to exclude the name plates when I took the photo.

Why this particular scene in the entirety of his life was chosen, I have no idea. Maybe it's supposed to show martyrdom of some sort. But isn't it a little too morose? The sky seems to agree.

Megan Fox hailed sexiest woman in the world

"Who's gonna drive her home?"

At 21, the star topped this year's list of FHM Online's 100 Sexiest Women in the World displacing last year's reigning hottie, Jessica Alba, to 3rd. You might recognize Fox from her recent memorable role in the multi-million blockbuster hit Transformers.

Coming in at close second is Jessica Biel (What is it with Jessicas anyway?) ahead of Elisha Cuthbert, fourth and The Other Boleyn Girl star Scarlett Johansson, fifth. It is also interesting to note that Spears, mother of two, barely made it to the list at number 100 after her life and career went downward spiral as a result of a multitude of personal and mental health problems that have afflicted the 26 year old star. Just four years ago, Spears was voted sexiest woman in the world.

Click here, here and here to see the entire list.

Credits: IMDB for the photo, Yahoo News for the story

When lunch becomes art

Obento from Japan are a creative take on packed lunch. Each obento is carefully handcrafted to create a feast that is both appealing to the eyes as it is to the palate. You'll never look at your "baon" the same way. Notice how each seems to have been painstakingly created. According to an internet source, an obento is prepared for about an hour to look like the ones below, that's about all the time I have to prepare for work.

Credits: http://www.e-obento.com

day old

yay! Another live comic. :D I wanted to do a 4-panel horizontal one but it will wreak havoc on the alignments. So I guess this 2x2 will do. Click on the image for a larger version.

Credits: augie for the photos of himself, some image adjustments by moi

intense BINGO!

(click the image for a larger kickass version)

flora

Lush greenery... Flowers in full bloom...Gotta love Baguio for the foliage. I handpicked some of the best photos from the bunch and made minimal adjustments for brightness, contrast and saturation. (Photos taken mid-February)

Credits: violet flower from http://maeness.multiply.com; the rest taken by moi using joakim's sony cybershot cam

DOND at Timezone

hit the jackpot, baby!

I never win at anything thanks to my superbly consistent luck (or lack of it). So basically, winning the jackpot entails me shutting up and letting my friends pick the briefcases. A hundred tickets? Not bad. Though we learned afterwards, that they only award 50% of the actual number of tickets won. So there.

coffee prince

Big Bro and I had Coffee Prince marathon Saturday night at an aunt's place. Although I liked the TV version more (despite the hideous dubs, it had awesome Tagalog script which captured my perfectly Filipino taste for cheesiness in soaps) I wasn't able to religiously stick to watching it because of the horrible time slot.

Thanks to piracy, the DVD had repulsive english subs. I was able to finish the series but I also incurred a terrible headache, which now I think is not so fair after all.

The series was OK. But if you're gonna watch it, don't get the pirated copy. It will only be a waste of 80 precious pesos. Instead, watch it on mysoju.com (great subs, korean dubs so you get to hear the real voices of actors and the best thing is it's absolutely FREE).

Fasting food

Yesterday was Maundy Thursday and the sup made us go to work. Real unholy. I was starting to wonder whether she has something against Catholics, when I noticed her display of a crucifix behind her desk. Then I thought, she really just hates us.

And since it was a holiday, everyone else was on vacation. Aside from a couple of maintenance people and security guards doing rounds at the campus, no one else was there but the 6 of us. In fact, no one else was anywhere. Manila had virtually been a ghost town. On the one hand, it was a relief, on the other, it was starting to get creepy. Flashback to I Am Legend.

Another problem during holidays is everything is closed save for a few greedy corporations, leaving me no option but to eat at Jollibee (even McDonalds had to close for the holidays). I ordered a burger steak meal, 2 shanghai rolls and a hot fudge sundae. Way to go fasting! The thing is, the taste of the patty just wouldn't go down my throat. I was burping burger patty hours after actually having eaten it.

Evil burger steak for lunch and Ice Craze Special for merienda

For snacks, I had the macapuno de leche ice craze special. It was nothing short of what I expected it to be and it was super filling. At that point, I've had too much Jollibee for the day. I felt so satiated plus I could still taste the burger from lunch that I wanted to barf er, purge. Bulimia? Maybe God's telling me to fast. In any case, I am off Jollibee, at least for a couple of months. :p

Star City

I originally wanted to go skating at the shiny rink over at MOA but O and J weren't really up for it. We were too tired to go booze fest that night and clubbing wasn't really an option (for me). Then we had the most brilliant idea. "Why don't we go to Star City?"

We have been meaning to go to Enchanted Kingdom with friends for a long time and every time we plan on doing it, something always comes up and we end up postponing the whole thing. But since we were all bored and we had to put our paychecks to good use, without hesitation, we were off to Star City and dragged quite a few people along the way too.

Thanks to O's SM advantage card we got a 20% discount on each ticket we purchased. That's a good 60 pesos off the original price of the ride-all-you-can ticket. So, instead of paying the full price (300 pesos), we only paid 240 pesos, even costing less than the 3-cheers ticket which was worth 250. Oh how i love discounts! The timing was superb too. There weren't so many people so we didn't have to wait in line for the rides. Sweet.

O got her kick out of the horror houses while we got ours from watching her. It was totally fun watching your reaction O! The horror houses were cleverly named too. Where else in the world could you find horror attractions named Kilabot ng Mummy, Haunted House and Gabi ng Lagim? Only in the Philippines.

(from left to right) Haunted House, Kilabot ng Mummy and Gabi ng Lagim

And we also tried the Starflyer, the inverted roller coaster they are boasting about which was a rather new addition to the park. If I had two words to describe it, it would be-- Oh yeah!

The Starflyer: At this point, I thought I'd die. Awethome.

Credits: photos from http://www.OurAwesomePlanet.com taken by Anton Diaz

Panagbenga 2008

If you want to experience Baguio, Panagbenga wouldn't be the best time.

I was there a few weeks ago, along with some friends. At least in my case, I wanted a change of scenery. Hundreds of people, two-hour traffic jams and overpriced merchandise isn't exactly what I had in mind.

The flowers were lovely though.

You would have to weave through this crowd to get to the floats.


The Nescafe float.


Floral butterfly

Yellow cab float: I think the Vespa is really clever.


The GMA kapuso float: my personal favorite.

always hit save

Except for the fact that I have lost a day's worth of work by moronically failing to hit save last Friday, I think I had a pretty good week at the office.

For one thing and quite a major one given my tainted track record, I haven't been involved in office mischief or at least haven't been caught doing any. I am extra cautious now and slightly paranoid that I've mastered the art of, dare i say, deception and stealth.

O and I have also started a daily devotion-- office exercise. We have resolved to once and for all put an end to unwanted bulges which have accumulated as a result of living our otherwise sedentary lives. The extra endorphins are quite useful too.

And yeah, I had a record-breaking earlybird streak. Four straight days (Monday was an exception merely because nobody gets early anywhere on mondays.)! It was actually starting to freak me out. It wouldn't have mattered had no one noticed but of all people, the Boss did. It was the perfect pat-in-the-back, ego-boost moment and I would have loved to put on my best in-your-stupid-face! look, but as I was early, no one else was there to witness my moment of glory. And as they say, it could have easily been just my imagination.

sharbat julia

" We have found her sister."

Tom of Finland

NOTE: PREVIOUS CONTENT DELETED.

What I love most about the new office is its extensive library collection. This morning O was going through a pile of books to be added to the shelves. She took out F.Valentine Hooven III's Tom of Finland His Life and Times from the pile and we started browsing through it. It read:

" Gay men had little reason to be happy in 1957. Homosexuality was a crime in every country on earth, frequently punishable by death. The phrase "secet homosexual" was redundant and the term "in the closet" was meaningless as yet since virtually all homosexuals were in the closet, except for those imprisoned, institutionalized or dead."

"In the East Bloc, homosexuality was handled with simplicity to be expected of a centrally directed society. The party line, as stated in Pravda with sweeping finality, was "There are no homosexuals in the Soviet Union." Period, Anyone who thought he might be homosexual was sent to Siberia to think it over for the rest of his life."

"The only reputable voices to disagree came from the psychiatric community. Psychiatrists claimed that the homosexual was neither a criminal nor a sinner. They said he was sick, and they treated those who fell into their hands with shock therapy and, for specially stubborn cases, prefrontal lobotomies."