Everybody’s Changing
 
If I were a dying man and all of you where gathered to keep me comfort in my last few moments before breaking free this mortal coil,  I would offer this advice to all of you given the considerable lessons I’ve learned and after sucking dry the marrow of this big bowl of bulalo called life:  Buy the first album of Keane called Hopes and Fears.

As much as I love the whole album, I love the single Everybody’s Changing even more.   This song is all I listen to when I’m in the car.   Yup, I’ve set my car stereo to repeat playing that song over and over again (redundancy intended) for two weeks now.   I am this obsessive (not to mention pathetic) when I love a song – I have to hear it all the time.  However, it’s not a normal occurrence for me and there are only a handful of songs which I’ve felt that way about.  The record for the longest time I’ve listened that much to a song and actually wore out the CD, is one month.  And the song is Chicane’s No Ordinary Morning.  

If you’ve never heard of Keane, they’re England’s latest export trying to make it big in the US.  They’re a trio but, get this, they don’t have a guitar player.  Keane are Tom Chaplin on vocals,  Richard Hughes on drums, and Tim Rice-Oxley on piano (and bass – so technically there is one person in the group who plays guitar).   The best way for me to describe Keane is that they are an accessible or perhaps a more user-friendly Radiohead. (When I asked our janitor why he sold his Sony Ericsson T-610 he said, “Ang hirap gamitin sir.  Di siya friendly-user.”)  Radiohead makes concept albums on the artsy fartsy side with deep dark messages on, say,  the great irony of technology bridging the continental divide and turning the Earth into a global village while at the same time turning teenagers into zombies playing video games, alienating them from family and friends and losing their grip on the real and the visceral.  Keane makes snappy pop songs without a guitarist.  Oh yeah, Tom Chaplin sounds a lot like Thom Yorke of Radiohead too.  

This may sound absolutely unbelievable but here's what I did:  I bought the CD of Hopes and Fears at Tower Records.   My point is that I couldn't wait for the pirated copy and so I bought the original instead.   That's how much I love it.  

A Record Sullied

Holy fucking shit! 

A traffic cop got my license this morning for driving past seven in the morning when my car's supposed to be grounded because of that color-coding scheme.

I didn't argue with the asswipe anymore because, basically, it's an indefensible offense - unlike, say, being caught driving the wrong way on a one-way street which I've bullshitted my way out off once or twice.  He's got a watch.  It says eight fucking am and my license plate ends in the offending numeral 6. 

Now I have to haul my sorry ass off to the mayor's office and get my license back before the five-day validity period of Ordinance Violation Receipt ends.

I felt pissy with myself but then I put things into perspective.  This is the first time I've ever been caught with this traffic violation.  Honestly,  I've been guilty of infringing this traffic law since it started,  what?, five years ago?  And so averaging everything out, I still have a more than 99% record of not getting caught.  I'll take that anytime.

Oh, traffic dude also caught me without my seatbelt on but, bless his civil serving heart, he cut me some slack and didn't include this on the ticket.

Barcelona

Some of the things I’ve learned while preparing for my trip to Barcelona next month:

There are just a handful of airlines which service the Manila to Barcelona route and almost all of these are European carriers.  Of course there are no direct flights out of Manila to Barcelona and the country where the airplane makes a stopover depends on what the carrier is.   For example, there’s the Manila – Bangkok  – Paris – Barcelona route of Air France.  Lufthansa has Manila – Bangkok – Frankfurt – Barcelona.   While KLM has Manila – Bangkok – Amsterdam – Barcelona.   I’m partial to Singapore Airlines though.  It has the Manila – Singapore – Paris – Barcelona route.   And for an additional of just twelve dollars, I can stay overnight in Singapore and see my dear, dear Engots.  I also want to have dinner in Newton Circus which has the best food in all of Singapore. I just love those half liter Heinekens they sell there.

For some reason, travel guides to Spain are big sellers in Power Books (there was a ton of travel guides to Germany available which must mean something).  There was only one left at the branch in Glorietta but it was pretty good and so I bought it.  It’s the AAA Spiral Guide to Spain.  Another great thing about it is it costs less than a thousand bucks.  Those fucking Lonely Planet travel guides are really expensive.  However, I did buy the Lonely Planet Spanish phrasebook.  It’s the only which had the translation for “prepaid SIM” among all the others one I glanced through so I guess it must be the most updated.   The only thing about using phrasebooks is, sure, you can ask the question correctly but can you understand the reply?

I’m applying for a Schengen Visa with the Spanish Consulate which would allow me to visit these other countries as well:  Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden.

It takes a long-ass while to travel from Barcelona to Paris, something like nine hours.   So I can only imagine how much longer the travel time is to Rome or Venice.  A Eurail pass to 17 countries is pretty expensive too – about five hundred sixty dollars.   Well, I can only think that I’m going to Spain and staying there for free so I might as well make the most out of it and not bitch about how expensive it is to travel there in my free time.     

December 8 is a national holiday in Spain.  Why isn’t it the same for us here in the Philippines?  I mean the end of Ramadan is a  Philippine national holiday by law, right?

I’m most likely to spend Christmas this year in Barcelona.   There was only one other time in my life that I didn’t spend Christmas here in the Philippines.  Oh well, I wonder if they have raffles at the office Christmas party?

Grenwits

I absolutely fucking hate Greenwich Pizza’s on-air radio contest where two callers duke it out for its gift certificates by singing along to the fastfood chain’s new commercial jingle sang by Rivermaya entitled “Ka-Greenwich.”   The first one who fucks up by missing a lyric or skipping a beat loses. 

On the way to work this morning,  I was gonna change stations when the contest came on RT but this fucking bus was trying to pin me and so I couldn’t.  This guy Raffy was one of the contestants. 

The exchange between the DJ, Joe Schmoe, and Raffy went something like this:

Joe Schmoe:  “Raffy?  Your name sounds familiar.  Didn’t you already win yesterday?”

Raffy:  “No.  I joined the other day but I lost.”

Are you fucking kidding me?  Let me get this straight, Raffy.   You prepared in advance by memorizing the lyrics to that horrible jingle.  Then, you waited for the cue to call and join the contest which I’m assuming took several tries before you could be connected to RT.   After this, you’re put on air where your friends and family can hear you compete in an asinine contest.  Then you lose.   Undaunted, you go through the whole ordeal again on another day.

What for?   Fucking Greenwich gift certificates.

Tell you what Raf, come see me and I’ll go to Greenwich with you and buy you anything you want there.  

Anything. 

Just let me ride your time machine.  The way I figure it,  anyone who’s that cavalier with his time spent here on Earth and joins that Greenwich contest TWICE,  must have some sort of machine which enables him to bring back time lost in such a mindless and useless endeavour.

Cheap Bastards

Delamar, the better half of the radio duo Chico and Delamar, was talking in their morning radio show about her friend who was on the same flight out of Manila as Linkin Park after they performed here last month.    Said friend struck a conversation with the band members and they were supposed to have been surprised when they were told by him that the band just performed in the Philippines.   Linkin Park had no fucking clue where they were.  Just some vague sense that they were somewhere in Asia.

This killed me more though:   Linkin Park was travelling in coach.   Isn’t that fucking amazing?   Not only does Linkin Park not have their own tour plane, they take commercial flights – flying in coach no less.      

KYUSI TU

"Kyusi" was actually used in reference to Q.C. (as in Quezon City) in those scrolling text you usually see at the bottom of the screen in the news programs showing news headlines.  I'm not kidding.  I think the headline went something like:  HOLD UP BANGKO SA KYUSI ISA PATAY.  Doesn't this Filipinozation of acronyms using letters of the English alphabet defeat the whole purpose of abbreviation?   Wasn't it patently obvious to the encoder of the headline that using the correct acronym would have entailed using only two letters instead of four?  Should we expect to see headlines now using "YUPI" for U.P. or "EFPIDYAY" for F.P.J.?

Random Thought

Julie Delpy was on Leno last night.  Shit I'm getting old.  I can still remember when she actually looked hot.  

Kyusi
 
I went out with a friend last night in Quezon City and going back to Makati where I live, we went through Quezon Boulevard.  It was close to two in the morning and so there were these, um, ladies standing in strategic spots along the whole stretch.
 
I was driving and, apropos of nothing,  just decided to pull over near these two girls who were waving at us.  My friend opens his window.
 
Slightly Less Attractive Girl (comparatively):   “Gimmick kayo?”
 
My Friend: “Magkano?”
 
Moderately Attractive Girl:  “Six hundred – kaming dalawa.”
 
My Friend: “Ang mahal…”
 
He closes his window and we go on our way.
 
I see an old woman with a pretty mestiza next to her.
 
We pull over again.
 
Old Woman: “Gimmick kayo?”
 
My Friend: “Magkano?”
 
Old Woman:  “Si Tess?  Five hundred.”
 
My friend hesitates and I could hear the wood burning while he contemplates.
 
My Friend: “Ang mahal.  Three hundred na lang.”
 
Old Woman:  “Four hundred.”
 
My friend considers the offer.  Smoke is coming out of his ears. 
  
Just then a Pajero pulls up right behind us and Tess immediately approaches it and begins talking to the guy in the passenger seat.  Before we know it, she goes inside the Pajero.
 
Old Woman:  “Ay, nakuha na si Tess.”
 
No shit, Sherlock.

Carlo J. Caparas
 
The local networks’ news programs reported the other day that Carlo J. Caparas is planning to produce and direct a bio-pic of Angelo de la Cruz.   Who is Angelo de la Cruz?  How big is that rock you’ve been living under?
 
Caparas however said that he’s holding back going into production until that glitch regarding that whole beheading thingy is resolved.  He’s already considering Boyet De Leon to play the lead role not because of his acting chops but because of his ability to grow his facial hair much like De la Cruz’s.  Caparas also wants to film the movie in Iraq to lend an air of visceral authenticity.
 
Good luck Carlo.  But this begs the question:  Who will play Carlo J. Caparas in his autobio-pic if he becomes a hostage himself of the extremists while filming in Iraq?   Boyet De Leon is a good choice I think.  He can grow his facial hair much like Caparas’.   I checked Boyet De Leon’s profile in imdb.com and was surprised to learn that his facial hair has never won an acting award.   Hell, it was never sufficiently credited in any of his 82 movies listed.  (Allow me an aside:  Don’t you think that Boyet De Leon has a tendency to overact?  Watching him in American Adobo, I thought that he filled that movie with more ham than an Excellente warehouse during Christmas)
 
I have to admit that I’ve never seen a single movie directed by Carlo J. Caparas.  Imdb.com lists eight movies he’s done  but I’m pretty sure the site missed some of his masterpieces.   Didn’t he direct that Vizconde massacre movie with Kris Aquino, which wasn’t on the list?  I remember that it had a long title as Caparas is a big fan of the use of the colon (um, the punctuation mark) in movie titles as a way of connecting long winded phrases which are actually complex sentences in their own right – I think it was something like Oh God! Have Mercy On Me and My Mother and Younger Sister And Please, Oh, Please Don’t Let Them Rape Me Not to Mention Kill All of Us In A Drug-Induced Murder Spree: The Vizconde Massacre Files.  And so it’s hardly fair for me to prejudge this De la Cruz  bio-pic as sophomoric and moronic even before a single frame has yet to be filmed.   However when you went to the toilet this morning,  you didn’t expect nuggets of gold to come out of your asshole right?    

¡Andale! ¡Andale!

I was talking with a colleague from the Singapore office and we got the chance to talk about my prospective move to Spain next month. She still has people working there on the project which I'll also be involved in.

She: "Don't think the grass will be greener there. The feedback I've been getting is that the people there are quite laidback and seem to have no sense of urgency. My staff ended up doing all the work which was supposed to have been done by the locals."

Me: "Well, I met some of the people from the Madrid and Barcelona offices last year and they said that the impression we have of long siestas was overblown and that they kept straight hours without breaking for siestas."

She: "My people have been complaining that half of them took really long siestas and now that it's almost summer there, all of them have been leaving at 5:00 pm to go to the beach. I'm just thinking that you might get frustrated with the delays you will encounter along the way because they don't work as hard as us."

All the time I was thinking that this woman gives me too much credit. Three hour siestas? Check. My ass is so there baby! Leaving the office at 5:00 pm to go to the beach? Check. ¡Madre de dios! I'm Spanish and I didn't even know it. Lackadaisical attitude towards deadlines? El checko. ¡Tómeme allí en este momento! ¡Más rápido! más rápido!

The Xenophobic Race

I caught the first episode of the fifth season of The Amazing Race this weekend. I think that more than anything, this show only proves that Americans are xenophobes who don't give a shit about foreigners living in strange lands with inexplicable cultures and unlearnable languages.

Haven't you ever noticed that when the contestants ride taxis in a country where they have the vaguest sense that the people there speak Spanish, they always command the driver to "Andale! Andale!" in their bid to make him go faster. That's about how far these people will go to to learn what they think are handy Spanish phrases - watch reruns of those old Warner Bros. Speedy Gonzales cartoons on Cartoon Network. If they have to go France, no problem. Pepe Le Pew can be the cunning linguist to help them speak French.

How about that time when that whiny bitch with the guy who had hair like Sideshow Bob from the previous season of The Amazing Race screamed at the poor fish sellers at a Vietnamese wet market, "Doesn't anybody in this country speak English?" I wouldn't expect her to understand that the Vietnamese people would rather not prioritize learning the language of their erstwhile combatants who bombed their country back to the Stone Age, poisoned their jungles with Agent Orange, raped their mothers and daughters, and used flamethrowers to turn their babies into crispy heaps of charcoal.

Take another reality TV show that proves this point further - Survivor. Get this, this show will give away a million dollars to the one American who can endure living in a foreign country for thirty days - where citizens of said foreign country don't even get a token prize for "surviving" in that place every day of their lives. Indirectly, the Americans seem to be saying: Your country is a mosquito infested wasteland not worth the bother to visit but we'll do only if you pay us a million bucks.

Having said all of that, this new season of The Amazing Race will see the teams going to the Philippines! Yup, Coconut Palace at the CCP Complex was designated as Leg 11 and El Nido in Palawan as Leg 12.

Dude, WTF?

I haven’t been watching CSI since Destiny got kicked out from the list of cable companies that could broadcast AXN last year. From the bits of the promos I’ve seen when I was at a friend’s house, a sea change has occurred in CSI’s third season being shown right now: Grissom has grown a beard. I’m probably not the first person to say this but facial hair is an unattractive addition to Grissom’s mug as a third hairy nipple growing on his forehead.

CSI would like to think that it showcases what the latest technology can do in helping to solve unbelievably tough to crack cases. I’d like to think that the CSI team is good only because the miscreants who commit the crimes are incredibly dumb.

Take that guy who murdered his wife with a pair of scissors in the second season. You know how he got caught? The dipshit didn’t bother to throw away his murder weapon. He just cleaned the blood off it and put it back on his desk at home. How fucking stupid is that? He spent a considerable amount of time planning every facet of the crime and when it’s done, he suddenly becomes a lazy ass witless retard and keeps the pair of scissors? And so in comes Grissom and team with their high-tech aquarium-ish thingamajig which detects latent fingerprints and that solution which shows blood traces even if the surface it’s been on has been soaped clean. Oohing and aahing at all this, I then thought that all of this technology would be utterly useless if the husband just had the common sense to chuck away the scissors into a dumpster. Predictably, this guy was caught at the intersection where cutting-edge technology and plain stupidity meet.

The show which I can’t bear to miss watching every week now is The OC over at ETC (AXN? CSI? OC? ETC? Dude, WTF?). It’s mainly the story of Ryan Atwood, a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks (he’s from, ewww, Fresno), and Marissa Cooper, a Newport debutante. Ryan’s been adopted by the Cohens and, week after week, you see how he adjusts to living side by side the Orange County jetset. He is our eyes and ears as he’s the outsider who is now allowed an insider’s view into the life of the crème de la crème of Newport society – a world which we’ll never experience firsthand. Actually, the head of the Cohen household, Sandy, is not himself wealthy – he just married into the Nichol family which has vast holdings of real estate in the area.

Anyway, forget about character details when talking about The OC. The show is basically eye candy. Every week, the writers always manage to write in scenes showing Marissa’s bestfriend Summer in the act of changing tank tops or lounging about near a body of water in a bikini. The demographic the show’s aiming for are American teenagers and so you’re guaranteed not to be bothered with complicated plot twists or moral dilemmas.

A recent storyline had the four main teenage protagonists going to Tijuana where Marissa caught her boyfriend cheating on her. Marissa gets so worked up on this and her parents’ marital problems that she OD’d on prescription drugs of Summer’s mother which Summer was bringing along (for some reason) in her bag during the trip south of the border. Now, Mischa Burton who plays Marissa is stunningly beautiful. It’s utterly unbelievable that someone like her would try to kill herself but The OC has found the convenient plotline to show that this is possible. So if someone as perfect as Marissa can try to kill herself, how about you lesser mortal?

Etch and Zed

I spent last weekend in Tagaytay. Is it just me or the people there have a penchant for picking nicknames which are, shall we say, out of the ordinary. I didn’t actually go around much – just that one the night in one of the resorts and a quick merienda in McDonalds. But in just those two places I spotted three interesting names contained in the nametags of people who worked at these establishments.

The first one was “Nhize” who worked the counter of the McDonalds. Nhize was pretty in the way that nineteen year olds are when life hasn’t taught them yet that dreams don’t come true. When I asked her about her name, she said that it was really Janice.

“So you say it like you would the word ‘This’? ” I asked.

“No,” Nhize said, “You say it like it rhymes with 'Nice'.”

Oh, Nhize also had the bluest eyeshadow I’ve ever seen worn by anyone. I usually don’t notice such things but the thickness of Nhize’s eyeshadow coating pretty much guaranteed that I or a geriatric with a full-blown case of cataract would.

“She” tended bar and the cash machine at the restaurant in the resort.

“So you say it like the pronoun ‘She’?” I asked.

“No,” She said, “You say it like it rhymes with 'Che'.”

She (the proper noun) was pretty nice too. She (the pronoun) let us smuggle our own beers into the restaurant as the resort’s policy was not to allow guests to bring their own food and drink and consume these inside. She (the proper noun again) also let us exclusively use the restaurant’s karaoke machine the whole night. My companions are all karaoke whores (okay, me too) and I think we did such a number on the machine that the following day the mike had to be fixed.

And lastly, there was a waiter in the resort named “Khriz.” I didn’t ask him about his name because, well, I’m not gay.