Torotot

Well, I’m writing this as the year 2004 is drawing to a close. Fucking shit. Did it have to happen that the worst natural calamity in recent human memory struck days before? I’m speaking of course of the genocidal effects of the tsunamis spawned by a 9.0 undersea earthquake last December 26. The death toll seems to rise exponentially as each day passes and the last time I checked while watching CNN it was now up to 116,000.

A lot of people would say that this year was a terrible one. It’s a damn shame though for me to say it because I thought it was one of my best years ever. I got to go to Europe. I started blogging. I bought a bunch of new stuff: a Suunto watch, Oakley prescription glasses, the MPIO MP3 player, a Montblanc ballpen, a Pioneer Pro-Logic amplifier for my DVD player. My lovelife, well, no news is good news in that department. I did manage to get laid a couple of times but I’d rather not get into details.

I’m going drinking with my buddies after media noche and I’m just passing the time downloading stuff from the Net and watching some boring TV. I wish these network news shows would stop parading all these psychics and their vague predictions for the new year. Isn’t it a little too obvious that these people are just shameless hacks who can’t even predict what time the ten p.m. Lufthansa flight leaves for Frankfurt every Sunday? I mean if they’re really that good in predicting the future, how come I’ve never heard of a psychic who’s won the fucking lottery? And all these Chinese hoodoo- voodoo stuff about positioning your ass at a certain spot in the house when the clock strikes twelve tonight so good luck will manage to find you. Phooeey. What’s the name of that fat Chinese Feng Shui expert who was a perennial guest of Julie Yap-Daza? Didn’t he die at the Mandarin Hotel a few years back? Here’s my point: How come he didn’t divine that the room he was staying in had bad feng shui? You know, feng shui so bad that it was gonna, oh, KILL HIM?

Here’s a test for the psychics in the house – I have my left hand behind me. I’m holding up a finger. Try to predict what finger it is.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I Plod

I’ve had a Creative MP3 player now for more than three years. It’s a piece of crap. The LCD display doesn’t show jack shit and its internal memory is only 64 MB. That’s right, 64 MB. You know how pathetically low this is? It’s about equal to the brain power of three Star Struck Avengers combined.

So when I first saw the Apple iPod last year in Singapore and heard about its 40 gigabyte capacity, I thought that I had found my new MP3 player. But then, society’s rules against shoplifting have once again come between me and my dream of owning the latest must- have gadget. Because, tang ina, if it has the “Apple” imprimatur on it, it’s bound to be as expensive as a full-on herpes treatment. If I remember correctly, the first generation iPods cost something like three hundred US dollars. This year’s models cost much less in the States but due to the faggotty performance of the peso against the dollar, they cost an unbelievable four hundred dollars if you convert the peso equivalent.

And so I continued using my Creative MP3 player resolving that I’d save some money so I buy an iPod for Christmas this year. When the iPod mini came out, I thought that its 4 gigabyte wasn’t so bad because, honestly, the MP3 folder in my computer holds about 500 songs I’ve downloaded through the years. My library could easily fit into the iPod mini’s capacity for 1,000 songs.

I also held out buying till this week because I was confident that I’d win the one that was being raffled off during this year’s office Christmas party held last Friday. As the iPod mini God would have it, this fifty year old spinster won the fucking thing. She wasted no time selling it for twelve thousand pesos right then and there in the hotel where we were having our party. Imagine that. A person who couldn’t tell an MP3 player from a vibrator won an iPod, whereas I who have been praying to be given such a blessing received an eight hundred peso SM gift check instead. No wonder I’m a kili-kili hair away from turning into an atheist.

So yesterday I went out after lunch to a big appliance store in Greenbelt. I was all set to lay my hands on an iPod mini when I noticed another MP3 player called MPIO. I checked out the specs and became convinced that the MPIO HD200 was the better buy.
In the tale of the tape, it kicked iPod ass. First off, the MPIO had a bigger capacity at 5 gigabytes – a thousand more than the iPod mini. It came with a built-in FM tuner and recorder. This meant that I could record any song I fancy playing on FM radio using the MP3 format! It even had a connection for analog devices to be used for converting analog recording into MP3. Best of all, it would only set me back eleven thousand pesos – a little less than the iPod mini’s sticker price of fifteen thousand seven hundred pesos.
Did I end up buying the MPIO instead? Is Osang a lying sacko’ shit?

And so there I was this morning after enduring the customary eight-hour wait for the lithium ion battery to finish charging. I was as excited as Boy Abunda would be trying on a skirt. I turned it on and went to check the directory which contained some sample MP3s. Nice crisp sound. The bass was a little off though so I pressed it to get to the main menu and then…it stopped playing. The fucker went dead. I pressed all the buttons. I attached the remote control and pressed all the buttons there as well. The thing wouldn’t play. I pressed the hard to use Reset button and the thing went to life. I went to the directory again and…the LCD display wouldn’t change. I pressed all the buttons again but it was frozen to the display showing the directory. Fucking shit. I pressed the Reset button again. I turned it on and I get the same result.

Putang ina, why didn’t get the iPod? Who ever heard of the stupid brand MPIO anyway?

I go to the appliance shop this morning and the manager I talked to was only too happy to give me a replacement model. I asked how many of these things they’ve managed to sell so far. He said that his store ordered three units. They’ve sold one without receiving any complaints. The second one was the defective piece of shit I got yesterday. And I was now the proud owner of the third and last one.

I asked if I could I get an iPod mini instead and he gave a laugh which secretly and rhetorically asked, What are you? An idiot?

Da King is Dead

That’s the headline which the Philippine Daily Inquirer carried yesterday in delivering the news that FPJ has passed away. Very rarely have I seen Philippine media united in expressing genuine sadness for any person’s death. This is evident on TV where I couldn’t help but notice Arnold Clavio’s look of utmost grief (which I bet is the same as his look of utmost constipation) and Love Anover’s sedate traffic reporting since Monday on their morning show. Even in print, all the dailies are one in saying more of the same.

Yes, it’s true. FPJ was a good man. He did help a lot of people. He’s inspired countless thousands of poor people to wallow in their laziness and depend on handouts from the rich. However, I’m stepping my foot down in participating on any movement nominating him for sainthood. Anyone who claims to have grown miraculous sideburns overnight and attributes this to FPJ’s intercession with the big guy, well, this person has got to have a problem with the drinky drinky as Poe apparently had.

It may also be true that FPJ won the presidential elections this year but he was still Angara’s stooge. Besides, if FPJ was declared President and he died in office, well, our president now would either be Noli de Castro or Loren Legarda. I don’t even want to speculate the cruel fate our country would suffer if either one of these numbnuts got to be president.

Here’s the deal: I was channel-surfing last night on the various network’s coverage of the FPJ wake hoping to witness Vandolph’s next violent episode as he spirals into lethal teenage alcoholism when I caught Oprah on Studio 23.

I only managed to watch a bit of Oprah’s intro on tonight’s show before I turned the whole thing off. You see, it was about Oprah and her bestfriend Gail spending some time in this place in Maine which seeks to simulate life as it was in the 13 colonies before the Revolutionary War which created the United States.

So there I was watching Oprah and Gail (both without any trace of make-up on) preparing themselves to go back in time to the 1650’s and all that this entails. No cars. No electricity. No refrigeration. No running water. They had to put on the clothes which the people at that time wore.

Fine. I was still mildly interested to see where this was going.

And then they had to tell Oprah that she’d have to take off her panties.

Oprah then says the word “panties” over and over again. She was apparently surprised that panties were a recent invention and that women at that time didn’t wear thongs.

Gail asked Oprah if she’s taken her panties off yet and Oprah said that she’s holding out till the very last second before she removes these.

At that point, I turned off the TV. I didn’t ever want to see Oprah surrendering her panties to a production assistant with special instructions on its upkeep and maintenance. I didn’t want to see Oprah’s panties PERIOD

I was all shaken up by this experience and with unsteady nerves I tried to sleep but just the phrase “Oprah’s panties” kept driving away Morpheus from lulling me to sleep.

Damn it. Where’s coma-inducing cerebral thrombosis when you need it?

Waiting for Godot

If one’s faith in a god can be quantified using the whole stretch of EDSA as the yardstick and on the basis of a south to north direction, mine would be somewhere along Las Piñas. This is to say I’m not religious at all. Thus, I don’t subscribe to the belief in an afterlife and, as a consequence, unreal estates like heaven and hell.

However, my recent experience waiting in line at a medical clinic, Malacañang, DFA, and the Spanish Consulate has proven me wrong about the non-existence of hell. At last I have autobiographical proof that hell is a real place where its inhabitants gnash their teeth in desperation.

One of the documents I have to submit to the Spanish Consulate is a medical certificate issued by a clinic accredited by both the POEA and DoH. I spent an entire afternoon in a clinic somewhere in Makati to go through my medical examination. This involved some waiting on my part for the nurses and doctors to finish their examination with the people who were ahead of me. Waiting in the clinic sucked donkeys because it just had a 12-inch TV playing a VCD of “A Few Good Men” over and over again with the volume off to entertain the denizens of the waiting room. I preoccupied myself with Michael Moore’s book “Stupid White Men” because I feel that watching that movie once several years ago is one time too many. I won’t even comment with my ideas on the nature of the clinic’s selection process that was involved and resulted in choosing “A Few Good Men.” I failed my eye exam and so had to go back to the clinic twice for a retest and, yup, there’s the famous “You can’t handle the truth!” courtroom scene from the movie yet again. The good news is I passed the drug and HIV/AIDS tests. It’s a good thing I didn’t have to take these tests four months ago.

So armed with my medical certificate affirming that I’m not a crack ho', I went to the Office of the President located in Malacañang so I can have my medical certificate authenticated . Why should the Office of the President concern itself with such pedestrian matters? One word: Moolah.

Malacañang charges a fee of PHP80 for the authentication of a document. This may not sound much at first but let me tell you the hellish part of my story.

I got to Malacañang fairly early at 9:15 am. My receipt no. was already in the middle three hundreds. This means that were there more than three hundred people were already ahead of me since office hours started at 8:00 and when I got there at 9:15 am. Can you imagine a line of individuals numbering more than three hundred ahead of you? Who was it who said that hell is other people? Jean Paul Sartre, right? You know why he said this? It’s probably because he had to get in line to get a document authenticated by the good people of Malacañang.

So, I spent the whole morning waiting in line. And you know how I spent the rest of the afternoon? Yup, waiting for the fuckers to release my “authenticated” document. This was nothing more than a piece of paper signed by some doctor under the employ of the Office of the President.

I did the math and I figured that Malacañang earned roughly PHP30,000 with me and the more than three hundred suckers ahead of me. The office was only open for more than an hour and yet it’s already earned that much in fees collected.

After spending the whole day waiting, I finally got my authenticated document at around 4:45 pm. Now, I had to get the fucking thing authenticated AGAIN by the DFA before the Spanish Consulate deems this as an acceptable document for its AUTHENTICATION as well.

I thought that things would be a lot better with the DFA but as it is wont to happen, I was so very wrong.

By my estimate, there were as twice as many people in line ahead of me when I got there. There were over six hundred poor saps ahead of me. The line was so long that it snaked through four segments: inside the main office and then two spots outside the office and then inside again a smaller receiving office manned by just two ugly cocksuckers. Yup, there were only two people who were receiving the documents of over six hundred people.

The authentication fee charged by the DFA is PHP100 for each document. How much could the DFA in a day for this racket? I did the math and I came up with an amount that is just too fucking obscene to comprehend.

Because of the huge volume of the documents for the DFA’s authentication, it’ll take three days for the whole process to be over. This would just entail sticking a red ribbon to be glued on the four pieces of paper I submitted.

And so on the third consecutive day, I got in line again - this time at the Spanish Consulate. I was told my interview would be at around 11:00 am but I was called to go up at 3:00 pm. I waited for over four hours. By the second hour, I had finished the Michael Moore book and so was left with nothing to do for two more hours but WAIT.

Next week, I have to go to the DFA again and wait in line for the release of my red-ribboned medical certificate. I also have to wait again when I submit the same shit for the Spanish Consulate’s legalization as well. I have no choice because if I don’t submit this, my visa will not be issued.

Today, I was in line at McDonalds and this lady ahead of me was dissecting her bill with the cashier. She was asking why the six pesos she paid to up-size her order cost more compared to another McDonalds outlet. I didn’t give a shit. I’ve been to hell and back. Bring it on, bitch.

Take That

It’s been a busy two weeks for me since I got back. In addition to the work that I have to turn in at the office here, I have to complete the documents required for my working visa to Spain.

IMPORTANT ADVICE: If you’re going to use a working visa to leave the country, you have to present a POEA clearance to the immigration desk at the airport. Otherwise, your ass isn’t going anywhere past the airline check-in at the NAIA.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is the government entity charged with taking care of overseas Filipino workers. It has to go through all your employment documents to ensure that you, Juan dela Cruz, is getting a fair deal from your foreign employer. For all you know, your soon-to-be Greek boss had surreptitiously added a clause in your contract stipulating that you should give him a daily foot and back rub – and you’re going to Greece as a computer programmer. In the absence of any such contractual features deemed disadvantageous to the Filipino worker, the POEA will then issue the aforementioned Overseas Employment Clearance.

For this purpose, I trooped to the POEA office to show them my documents. The lady assessing these asked for my contract supposed to have been signed by myself and the foreign company. I told her that all I had was a local contract and that I was only being seconded to our foreign branch and therefore would remain under the employ of a Philippine company.

This threw her off big time. She said that I should talk to her boss so she can make a decision on it.

Her boss turned out to be this woman who was not only fat from overeating but because of her self-importance as well. Putang ina, she was as helpful as a solar-powered flashlight. She didn’t even want to see my documents and only said that I didn’t need any sort of clearance from the POEA because I was still technically a local hire. The fat piece of shit said that I should go to the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation (BID) to confirm this.

Well, Miss Piggy grudgingly showed me an inter-department memo from the BID to the POEA stating that local employees for secondment to a foreign branch need not apply for a POEA clearance. I asked if I could photocopy the memo and the seacow said I could provided that I return it to her after doing so. Duh?

When I returned to her desk, the obese bitch wasn’t around. I used her stapler for my copies and left hers unstapled.

It was then that I saw her reading glasses just lying around the table.

I began to think that I deserved more help from this government agency and specifically this fucking bureaucrat. I didn’t have to absent myself from work to receive this piece of information. Tang ina, I didn’t have to pretend to be nice to her just so she can condescend to assist me.

Fuck, I pay Jabba the Hut’s salary with my taxes.

I looked around and saw that the surrounding tables had people doing everything but working – you know, being a government office – and everyone was busy fucking around. The hippo’s table was situated far from everyone and so nobody would have noticed me taking her glasses and putting these into my bag.

Fuck you, I thought. You inconvenienced me, I’ll inconvenience you.

And so I left the POEA office and proceeded to a nearby mall for my lunch – but not before putting a pair of seemingly expensive reading glasses into the plastic cup of a blind beggar singing a Christmas carol.