The calm before the trip...

As I write this post I'm in Mav's bedroom. I'm sleeping here tonight because of the long-awaited Bohol trip tomorrow, and we have to leave for the airport by 3 am.

The funny thing about this is it still feels like the trip is weeks away and not tomorrow morning. Perhaps that's because Mav and I have been planning this for quite a long while now - about five months ago to be exact. I'm not psyched up about it. Rather I feel strangely calm.

We'll see if I'll be singing to a different tune when I get back on Saturday afternoon. Hahaha!

Until then, guys.

For the love of the track

Typhoon Ondoy wrecked our previous plans back in September, but tomorrow seems to be as good a day as ever to proceed with the Team Flat Out trackday. Since my first crack at Subic International Raceway in April, I've been itching to join another trackday, practice my skills and perhaps cut a few tenths (if not whole seconds) off my personal best time of 1:04.4.

Instead of upgrading anything mechanical on Aibo, the hip-hugging Recaro SRD seats were my answer to improvement. I wanted to increase my skill to their limits first, before becoming reliant on lowered suspension, power adders or trick tires --- or even higher-friction brake pads.

I took today off to take care of what I considered essential preparations for the trackday. Last September, Aibo already got a transfusion of Royal Purple oil, so today was dedicated to a flush and refill of coolant and brake fluid, the latter upgraded from DOT3 to DOT4. Afterward I decided to become independent with respect to headgear, so I got myself an HJC CL-14 full-face helmet in solid silver.

After spending the better portion of a day in shops and in bad Metro Manila traffic Aibo and I are probably as ready as we'll ever be. I'm just a little sad Mav won't be there with me because she has class.

Now for the not-so-little matter of waking up at 4:30 and getting to Subic at 7 am...

Soft spending vs. hard spending?

Two weeks went by so fast.

In that span of time, my beloved Auntie Carole and Uncle Butch visited from LA, stayed with us, walked around the malls, shopped for clothes, ate out, ate in, played golf, danced, drank coffee, drank booze...and generally just had a really great time. Just the other day they flew back.

I miss them already. I miss driving them around. I miss Uncle Butch's jokes and Auntie Carole's jolly demeanor. Even though I don't watch local TV, I miss how they'd all go ga-ga over Wowowee.
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As it turns out I might see them again within the year. If all goes well, I might be able to join them in Waikiki Beach in Hawaii for Uncle Butch's nephew Marco's wedding some time in August. I've already done my sums for the round-trip ticket prices, and as far as I know my US visa's still good for a few more years.

Uncle Butch told me he loves the place even though he's been there four times already. He would gladly forego buying a brand-new TV if it meant going to Waikiki again. He told me the material things will get old and worn-out, but trips and experiences like these with my loved ones are what I'd remember when I'm old and gray.

I'm already set on saving up for Aibo's mods...but the man has a point. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm planning to take Mav to Clark for the Philippine Hot Air Balloon Festival, and to the Avilon Zoo in Rizal. Those should make for a couple of interesting dates.

A productive week off?

I've been avoiding blogging for a while, I guess. The magic that used to fill me whenever I updated this piece of online estate seems to have gone. Hmmm.

Basically I took the last week of August off. In that span of time, a lot has happened.

The very first day, my six-year-old computer decided to die. Specifically, the motherboard went kaput and refused to accept RAM DIMMs any more. That 1.7GHz Pentium 4 rig lasted us a good six years. No matter, the next day we went to Market! Market! and had ourselves built a ridiculously quick 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad rig, with 2GB of Kingston RAM running at 800MHz and a 320GB Seagate hard disk. Advised against the pratfalls of Windows Vista, I bought a legit CD of Windows XP---my contribution to the cost of the PhP23,500 system.

Tempting as it is to bump up the cost more, my head just spun from the jargon, terminology and insane prices of graphics cards nowadays. Apparently, if I wanted to play anything decent released in the past year, I'd have to cough up PhP9,000 for Nvidia's or ATI's ridiculously named GPUs and onboard memory.

PJ is now a doting father to Chelsea Nikole, so he's out for the week too. Ronald, my colleague at the church choir, got me as godfather to his own three-month-old bundle of joy, Loraine Jane. After a hiatus of a few months, I showed up at my grandma's in Caloocan with the rest of my mom's family to dispense of my godfatherly duties to my own godchild Mikaila.

Mav and I got along better than I expected, considering I had dealt her a lot of pain. I realize she's my friend after all, and one I don't really want to lose. I guess she's also done likewise. We're cool.

Finally I had the chance to visit Cel in Greenhills and ask her out to what my UK-based employers call "afternoon tea." She's doing well, and we chatted away over Mexican food over her sister's wedding plans, the details of her new job come November (at her uncle's Yokohama Tires distributorship---how timely, I was looking for new rubber for my Jazz), and a little something about work (or what she used to call work).

Was my week off a productive one? I'm not sure, despite Mav's retorts to the contrary. If the week off was supposed to be a restful one, it was way, way off the mark. Even so, I'm still sad it's about to end.

Beach trip? No thanks.

I gave up joining the Barclays summer outing to Cavite this year because it coincided with a long-planned outing my family and relatives had planned for about a month already. The plan was to go to Pangasinan.

So why am I still in Manila?

My dad decided to cancel the night before. Apparently, Nanay and Tita Hedwig were already there and it was definitely not worth the effort. After a long six-hour drive, they arrived at a resort that had so many people on a teambuilding event from some company that didn't have the common sense to just reserve the venue exclusively. They felt like gatecrashers. Add to that a beach that couldn't hold high tide in the afternoon, and with barnacles and sea urchins left in the tide's wake, and you have, in Tita Hedwig's words, "a vacation from hell."

I'm okay with that, to be honest. It's not as if the Barclays Cavite trip is anything to look forward to, anyway. Unlike the previous two outings, this wasn't even an overnight stay. Funny how the office summer outings just keep on going downhill year after year.

Wasting a week

Today is the last day of my week-long vacation. What was supposed to be a break to repair my Jazz's underchassis turned out to be just a simple break, due to the many customers requesting repairs at Honda Makati's body repair shop.

At least I made some sense out of this break, though. I caught up on my lack of sleep. I had the hub-centric rings for my wheels fabricated and installed. I finally met my friend Grace on quite a wonderful date. I canvassed the tire shops on Evangelista St. for prices of the Yokohama S.Drive tires I planned to replace my aged Bridgestone Potenza S-02s with. I went to Robinsons Place Manila and spelunked within its brand-spanking-new Midtown wing. I cursed the heat. I spent whole days texting with my new friend Mav about anything and everything. I drove to Trinoma, Banawe St., Greenhills, Aurora Blvd., and C5---basically wandering around in boredom.

Perhaps the next time I have a vacation this long I should put it to better use. But on balance, this wasn't so bad.

Wanderlust strikes again

My January trip to Leyte got short-circuited at the last minute, but that hasn't stopped me from trying to organize another trip out of Manila. This time though, the travel will take much, much longer...but I won't be leaving the island of Luzon at all.

Ria and I are thinking about going to faraway Vigan in the summer, possibly in late April or in May, on a very long road trip with my Jazz. While I have no doubt that my little hamster is up to the task, I wonder if I'm in the same condition.

Another concern is passengers. Ria will not be allowed to go if it's just the two of us; we'll need at least one more girl who's willing to go. I've invited Denise, but I haven't had any reply from her yet.

Oh well. We've got two months to think about this before the idea officially goes kaput.

Hontou no Nihon-ryori ramen da!

The week I was off work, Paolo Campos and his dad took me along to Makati Cinema Square with their shopping and errands. Our afternoon stopover was a rather run-down place called "Shinjuku." What the place lacked in glamour, it more than made up for with its authentic Japanese ramen---just about the most authentic Japanese I've eaten, even besting Jipan in Glorietta 4. Both establishments are owned and managed by real Japanese guys, not some gaijin who corrupts the process, taste and ingredients to suit local palates.

Just take a look at that countertop---exactly how you'd imagine a real-life ramen stand is in Japan. I'm planning to take Denise there for our next dinner date.

Hitching a ride, a game and a dinner

To cap off my week-long vacation leave, I spent a lot of time with my buddy Paolo Campos. Conveniently, he had arrived from his three-month post-graduation vacation in the US, and he invited me over for a few games of Forza Motorsport 2 on his brand-new Xbox 360.

Forza is just about the most realistic driving game I've ever tried. I had to relearn how to play using the Xbox 360's gamepad and how to drive using the game's physics. Driving there isn't as simple as just holding down buttons mindlessly; you have to feather your throttle and brake inputs and stay smooth throughout the course. Depending on your car's drivetrain and power characteristics, stabbing the throttle too hard too soon can cause your car to fishtail, while being clumsy with the brakes can send you straight to the barriers. It took me quite a while to get used to it, but on my second day I was driving pretty well already, cornering on part-throttle and making smooth entry with the brakes.

It wasn't all gameplay too. Yesterday we went to Greenhills, while today I hitched along with Pao and his dad while laughing along in their Pajero. They even brought me to Shinjuku, an authentic Japanese restaurant in Makati with the best gyoza dumplings in town, and their kakiage tempura udon is pretty damn good.

Not a bad way to cap off a week-long vacation, I reckon.

Bumming out is healthy

My ten-day vacation comes to an end tonight. Tomorrow it's back to the same old Tuesday grind, waking up at 6 am to haul my ass to the office by 7 and avoid the MMDA.

What did I do the whole time I was out?

I had my "live" facial mole removed, for one. I'm now living with the post-operation idiosyncrasies: not wetting the wound for three days, applying antibiotic ointment, and contending with the Tegaderm bandage that refuses to stay still because of the location of my mole. It's so conveniently located on the corner of my mouth. After two weeks I'll see if this was all worth it.

A visit to the HMO clinic was also in my itinerary. I had a blood test done, but the doctor was quick to rule out anything wrong with my endocrine system. The proof's going to come tomorrow with the result of the blood test.

Yes, I went to Trinoma again...and you already know my impressions of the place. You also know what happened during the party last Saturday. Watching the Turkish Grand Prix was also on the menu but that doesn't need a vacation to do.

One of the things I said I missed was playing involving video games for hours on end. It turns out I didn't have to look very far. I already had a few pretty good games here I just didn't get to play anymore, most notably "Super Robot Wars: Original Generation" on the Game Boy Advance. That turn-based strategy game is so demanding of micro-management it turned me off the first time I played it, but now I finally understand how it all works. It takes me hours to get through individual missions, though.

It was a good vacation, and the break from work was much appreciated despite the lack of money for a trip or some other event of the sort. Unfortunately all things must come to an end, and too much of a tension-free time like this will make me dull.

I think I'll do this again in a few months.

Oh, and did I mention I managed a surprise 13.521 km/L?

To blog or not to blog...

To blog or not to blog...

After the delays, Tita Vik's planned birthday trip to Sagada finally pushed through this week, and she came back just the other day. She got to use her new "toy"---her Canon EOS 30D---quite liberally and realized maybe she shouldn't be slaving away as a writer. In an epiphany that came after days of trekking and shooting photos, she told me maybe she should try being a photographer instead.

I told her why not combine the two and make a travel blog? If enough people go and visit, she might even make money off it.

The thing is, she and I are similar in not really promoting our published stuff. Sure, I post links to my reviews in MAHQ and Anime Otaku Fridge but it's not like I tell or text-message all my friends about what I've published, and we're the same in that respect.

There's also the issue of plagiarism. I'm no stranger to that either as I know someone ripped whole chunks off my and my ex's blogs and passed it off as her own life story a few years ago.

Well, there goes that idea...

Chasing the sun once again!

Chasing the sun once again!

Our summer outing is almost at hand. Currently the date is set for April 21-22, this time up north at Club Morocco in Subic.

It's still a month off, but I'm pretty excited already.

Instead of going with the bus as I did last year, my colleague Donald and I will be riding the Jazz to its first long drive with me at the helm. By then I hope to either have the Kenwood head unit fixed and spinning CDs, or the Sony Xplod USB head unit I like installed in its stead. It'd be nice to see just how efficient the Jazz is on an extended cruise, too. Besides, it's been four years since the last time I drove solo for the long haul.

There's just one sore spot about this year's outing and it's the lack of a "battle of the bands" competition. That was what I looked forward to last year, and while I probably humiliated myself trying to ape Bamboo's stage presence while singing Maroon 5's "Sunday Morning," there's nothing like performing for an audience. Unfortunately even if there was a battle of the bands, our best guitarist Mark has already resigned, so we don't really have anyone to take up the lead guitar.

This summer outing also officially marks my first year at work, give or take four days. It's had its ups and downs, but my colleagues at the Internet Channels team have been a big part of my life so far, both in and out of the office. Although I don't plan on spending my life in the IT industry, I don't mind staying a couple more years as long as it's with my teammates.