For this Sunday it was the wedding of my sister-in-law and Herman's sister Jean (first name Heidi) and Aladdin, who turns out to be Cathy Sy's brother (the one who answers the phone sometimes). Cathy was there, of course and was busy all day coordinating (typical of her not to relax, even on a Sunday) the entourage at church then later on at the reception at the Westin Philippine Plaza. Another surprise guest (for me, anyway) was Julie and Winnie Chen and the rest of their immediate family. She reminded me of the China tapes I've yet to get around to editing.

I've been making more entries here than in my office computer journal, probably because the latter is so freakin' slow. No signs of it getting fixed soon, too. sigh.

ANYway, today 3-Ku celebrated his birthday and for the first time he took a few relatives (all 23 of us) out to dinner at Le Souffle at Fort Bonifacio. I ordered the rib-eye Angus beef steak, while my Soup of the Day was a creamy orange-colored cheese whatever. My first taste of souffle was sweet...literally. It was like something you'd order at Dulcinea, all small and sweet, like a jelly roll squeezed into a dixie cup. The bill ran to about 20 grand. Sheesh. For 24 pieces of really salty oyster it was about 91+ bucks a piece.

I attended the wedding reception of Edwin Ong and his girlfriend Jen. I would've attended the wedding itself but the 8AM schedule was just too much. Parents were godparents and Boit was best man.

Before reaching the 2nd floor I ran into Christina and Kelly Cai who were attending the 1st B-day party of Aldwin's cousin. (Ran into Aldwin after the party.) Upstairs it was like a mini SJCS Alumni association reunion, with better attendance, at least when it came to alumni I actually knew. Batch 91 (Gregory, Polly, Kelly, Ann Margaret, Melissa) and Batch 92 (Laurie, Ida, Rissa, Kendreck, Nath, etc.) were in abundance. Even Walter showed up, sans socks and shoes (seriously...he wore sandals). It was thoroughly enjoyable, especially with all the hobnobbing I got to do.

Afterwards it all started to slow down (or maybe it was because I was feeling pooped). Kit Tanco pushed the term "fashionably late" to the extreme when she showed up to drop off the wedding gift just as everybody was leaving. Albert, Diane, Boit and I decided to walk around Virra Mall for a while. While browsing mags in National Bookstore I saw Avigale, still with her nerdy-looking boyfriend. (If you're reading this Avi, I apologize, but we've drifted anyway.) After getting my comics I rode a bus home since I still had to update the news on Touch Mobile.

My cousin took us to Rockwell's Power Plant Mall for dinner, specifically the Hot! Cafe. It was my first time at either place. The Page One Bookstore was fascinating. Better stocked than PowerBooks, presumably, except on the graphic novel section.

After some "fine Filipino dining," I tried to walk off my meal of friend dumplings, potato, cheese sticks, breaded porkchop and mocca frappe. My two surprise sightings for the evening cosisted of Sarah Hung with her (I'm assuming) boyfriend headed for the parking lot, and long-lost SJCS classmate Sherman Lee, now taller and running his own food stall somewhere in City Hall, according to him.

By tomorrow morning I would have finished all my rented videos: Almost Famous, Remember the Titans, The Mexican, Sugar and Spice and the last 2 volumes of The Sopranos.

My back-door neighbors burned their garbage again. I wouldn't have thought twice of it if it weren't for the fact that the smoke spread all over the neighborhood, particularly my street. And from the smell you could tell they were burning plastic as well as wood.

I had enough. In an act of machiso (can be exchanged with stupidity) I climbed the roof of the back-office and saw a kid burning garbage. The blue and green flames confirmed that he was burning plastic. I climbed down, got the hose, climbed back up and tired to douse the "bonfire."

At first I couldn't see what I was doing and just made sure the water went over the wall. A few minutes later I looked over and saw that the kid covered the fire with a G.I. sheet. Really ticked me off. I tried to aim for the fire but in the end there was just too much smoke. At least the grown-ups didn't get a look at my face. Still, they won this round, for now.

A Tale of One Dead Rat:
Three nights ago the I heard a noise from the bodega. The rat has returned, leaving rat turd in his wake. Last chance, I thought. I got the can of flypaper glue and applied it on the floor of the bodega near the door and by the rat hole the rat chewed through.

Two nights around 1:30 AM I checked out my trap. Sure enough I caught the bastard (okay, it looked smaller but still kitten size, and with all the behavior I've observed I'm hoping it's the same rat that's been tormenting me all this time). When it saw me it SQUEALED like nothing I've ever heard before. Even Pa heard it from the 3rd floor. I got a hammer and whacked it 'til it shut up. The end.

A Tale of One Flying Rat:
Two nights ago I noticed deposits of sticky residue by the carpet in front of the stairs. It resembled melted sugar or the pulp of those red berries we used to have in our garden . At first I thought someone dropped some fly paper and tried picking it up. Turns out to be worse. Seems a bat has been flying into the house and resting up the really-hard-to-reach ceiling of the second floor. My father and I must've startled it trying to get rid of it last night because while flying away it dropped a dung bomb and almost hit Dad. Ugh. (Well, at least we know it's on a high fruit diet.)

First a giant rat eating through the screen windows, now this.

In the middle of lunchtime our CEO approaches my officemate Lala and asks, "Hi. Could you find out for me when the full moon is? The moon is waxing right now and I'd like to find out when it's full."

Now I know we're the research team, but come on.... If that doesn't make you raise an eyebrow or even chuckle I don't know what will.

While things are starting to calm down in the States, here in the office it's s bit of a wreck, thanks to the Nimda virus (or worm, w/c-ever's more accurate). It invaded the PCs via email (origin still unknown), worked its way into the network of both the 19th and 26th floors and *#@$ed up my WinWord. Howard and Dan started initiating "patchwork" this afternoon but I'm still weary of bringing files home.

Speaking of which, my boss said our Touch Mobile clients also want weekend news upadates and offered to up my talent fee by 3Gs if I agreed to do it. I did. Seeing as how I hardly go out on weekends anyway I could use the extra cash.

From ABCNEWS.COM:

Sept. 11 — In the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, hijackers crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, toppling the 110-story twin towers, killing all aboard the jets and an unknown number on the ground.

Another passenger plane was crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington, leaving a gaping gash in the nation's hub of military power, killing all on board the plane and more on the ground. Within the hour, a fourth airliner went down near Pittsburgh, killing everyone aboard.

There were no immediate details available on casualties, but thousands of people work in the affected buildings — 50,000 in the World Trade Center alone. Hundreds of people were in local hospitals. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the casualties would be "more than we can bear."

I've never heard words like cowardly, barbaric and evil thrown around by the media as much as I did today. On the Warren Ellis Forum someone mentioned "Manhattan Barbeque" and was kicked out.

Could this be WWIII? So much for visting Chicago next month with Emark.

A Tale of One Slow Mouse:

While surfing online a mouse (usually it's a lizard) climbed up the wires sticking out of the air conditioner (you'd have to see it to understand why). While in between the wooden frame and the wall I managed to squish it, its tail and hind legs still sticking out. I assumed it was still alive with it twitching and all. Where's a pair of pliers when you need 'em? Tweezers at least.

Anyway after enough frame-to-wall presses the mouse was out. Managed to place it in a CD envelope and wrapped it in two sheets of paper and lots of scotch tape. Now I now what a mobster cleaner feels like. Sort of.

A Tale of One Rat Bastard, Part 2:

Two days ago we caught a rat with the newly purchased Japanese brand flypaper. It wasn't the rat. Hell it was barely half its size, which was still bloody big. Now I know when to listen for scratching noises in the bodega.

This morning someone moved one of the three sheets of flypaper I set for "Big Brother" Rat. Must ask the maids later if that meant something was caught last night.

Office Spaced

They're telling me I can't take as much naps as I used to at work anymore. They are so killing whatever "fun" time I'm having in this office.

Used to be I'd catch some zzz's in the recording booth. When it got too stuffy I opted for the Operations' workplace (when they gave me a spot). "Not a good image to project," says the boss, sleeping out in the open. Okay, maybe inside the "walled" cubicles, out of sight. Used to be okay until today when they reminded me I'm up for regular employee and other employees might take offense to my work habits.

Okay, on the surface it's not exactly a good example of a model employee. If they ever hired an efficiency expert I'd probably be booted out. But what they'd fail to take into context (at least if I don't defend myself well) is the abundance of idle time. When I think about it my morning shift is made to work to give me as much nap time as possible by recording stuff early. And in a bit of a cheap shot, why they think napping employees gives a poorer image of the workplace here (such as it is) as opposed to bosses that make fun of you everyday and other employees that smoke a lot is beyond me.

Sometimes I wonder if the general enthusiasm I had when I first started working here has dimished. Stupid question. Of course it has. The question now is what am I gonna do about it: ride it out, or get out?

A Tale of One Bad Rat (Bastard):

The enormous creature had been skittering around the house for a couple of days now. It’s hard not to notice a rat the size of a Battle Cat action figure. Now I know why the corner of the bodega door was chewed away to a nice rat hole-size.

Two nights ago my dad and I managed to trap it in the kitchen inside the old unusable gas stove. Flypaper wasn’t working, and it seemed to detest the rat poison (Who wouldn’t?). Dad decides to Raid the stove, hoping to suffocate it.

Apparently it didn’t work as last night I still heard scratching inside the stove. At least I knew it couldn’t escape easily. I proceeded to sprinkle more rat poison around the stove (thank God we don’t have inner house pets), placed fly paper in front of it, then stuffed a roll of newspaper into the hole of the bodega door.

A couple of hours later I peeked into the kitchen with my flashlight. The creature skittered back from bodega into the stove. My roll of newspaper was shredded to the point where it almost chewed all the way through. Sneaky (as well as filthy) rat bastard.

I reinforced the hole with more newspaper, but not before placing flypaper inside and out the bodega door. That way if it tried to chew through the paper it might get caught, and it the first one doesn’t stick the second sheet might.

I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to check the trap. No new shreds of paper, but the kitchen showed signs of “panic,” as plastic jars and my box of cereal were knocked over. (I half-panicked thinking it raided the Cocoa Puffs.) Must still be inside the stove when it found out it couldn’t escape, clever ‘ol me thought.

I hate being wrong.

Come breakfast time I saw a rat hole-sized hole (about the same size as the rat-hole-sized hole on the bodega door) on the newly repaired kitchen screen window. Idiot that I was I didn’t close the glasswindows, despite the fact that’s the first thing I did two nights ago.

Yes, it had escaped, leaving poison untouched, flypaper unused (save for the smattering of newsprint all over it like feather on tar), and newly repaired kitchen screen window holed. What a piss-off.

Bucks for Bendis

Almost two weeks have gone by and boy, has it been a really expensive month for me. Two mall-wide sales and several comics and CDs later I'm starting to feel the pinch. Maybe it's because I had a big chunk of my salary thrown into a trust fund ('least that's where my cousin said she placed it) that I'm noticing how little spending cash I have to spend.

Speaking of comics I've resolved to buy the more readily available ones here (whether it be single issue or trade paperback) while saving those online dollar charges for the "not so popular, harder to find" books.

Speaking of spending I find myself at odds when it comes to Brian Michael Bendis. I started buying this guy's books solely by the strength of his reputation alone and so far it's not turning out so great. He writes great dialogue but like my experience with Paul Jenkins (another "rep writer") his endings in a lot of his stories are more or less anticlimactic, particularly in Sam and Twitch. In Bounty Hunter Wars: after a five-issue chase the Bad Guy gets shot between the eyes. That's it? Dumb laws and Eggs: jerk boyfriend is shot. That's it? Daredevil 16-19: 4 issues to tell a story that could have been done in two. THAT'S IT? Stuff like this makes me hesistant to get the trade editions of either Elektra or Alias. Then there's his pre-Marvel stuff Jinx, Goldfish and Torso. Should I be expecting the same blah endings?

Crapshot

It's been one of those days...for the past couple of days. Those days where (with the exception of rare exceptions) you try to call up someone and they're never around. You actually put it in your schedule to call these people, and one by one you notice they're never around. And with my luck being what it is they're probably around when I don't have time to call them.

Roll of the dice, a matter of timing, I know. Some days they actually answer the phone. Most days they're nowhere to be found. It's both utterly frustrating and depressing at the same time. Even setting up lunchdates is a total friggin' nightmare.

And people wonder why I don't go out at night.

Gaye Who?

Just recently started getting (or is it keeping?) in touch with a long lost friend. Well, not so long and lost. Just didn't know how to reach her before. No-one at home answered the phone, and I was under the impression she was working on some tropical island down south, anyway.

If or when she reads this: Hi, Gaye.

Factoids

Yesterday I discovered two things:

1: Ms. Lopez (now Mrs. Lopez Forbes), my old Communication Arts teacher was the first million-peso winner on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Story goes: after answering the million peso question correctly she opted not to go for 2 million because she didn't know the answer to "What's the first name of Mr. Snuffalupagus?" (Aloysius). And, no, I'm not happy for her. Envious, yes.

2. Top Shelf Productions is currently featuring some cool online comics, the kind of indy stuff you won't find in Comics Quest or Filbar's. All free. So far I've finished Hutch Owen's Aristotle and Todd Webb's The Goldfish & Bob.

Oilphabet

While preparing my lunch cooking oil spat out of the pot of Vienna Tidbits and hit my left hand. Twice. Now the burn wounds resemble Morse Code. Out of curiosity I did some research. Turns out my injuries "spell" A and Z. Hmm, closure.

Happy Bitchday

Today is her birthday. My first love. My greatest joy and my greatest pain.

I think it's almost safe to say she ruined me for other women. Subconsciously I now expect them to meet her level of expectations. What we had I can probably never have again, but I still hope. (What else can I do?)

The problem with being with someone who was one of a kind is "replacements" are impossible to come by.

In the spirit of spite for breaking my heart, I wish that everyone she ever fucked becomes impotent and extremely allergic to cigarette smoke. Then they'll know how I felt.

Chip Up

After five hours sleep I woke up to a horrible revelation.

I have chin fat.

Chin fat. Double chin. Swollen turkey neck.

First the beginnings of a receding hairline, now this. And I'm not even thirty.

Of course, thinking too much about it would just cause further stress probably accelerate this condition. So I'm shutting up about it now.

A Nightmare on Agno Extension

At the risk of stating the obvious: I bloody well hate nightmares.

Whether it's being chased by werewolves or having my teeth fall out in front of me, the sense of realism of I feel every time (despite the absurdity of the scenario) gets to me.

This morning: I was watching what I thought was a grand fireworks display. Even climbed up my window to get a better view. Pretty lights and flashes. "Waitaminnut, are those bomber planes?" (Well, at first glance I didn't know what kind of planes they were. The fact that there were bombs attached underneath them just made me put two and two together.)

I realized it wasn't fireworks. I was in the middle of a war zone. Just then another bomber swooped down and dropped an iron teardrop in front of me. It seemed to take forever to hit the ground, because to my knowledge I was only two stories up. Now it seemed like I lived in the upper floors of a high rise apartment building. I even had time to get down from the window and steel myself for the impending boom.

When the bomb finally hit it was like how imagined it (literally, as this a nightmare): the floor beneath me collapsed, but I was pushed upward by a powerful force. Looking upwards I felt my entire body being burned, but the lack of pain made me think that since I'm at ground zero my vaporization was almost instantaneous but my mind played it it slow motion. It must have been over in less than a second but at the same time I thought wow, just like the car crash. No pain or panic. Facing death isn't as bad as I thought, particularly one by nuclear holocaust.

At that point I woke up. It was 3 in the morning. After taking a piss, for a few minutes I was actually afraid of going to sleep again, but eventually the tired body won over the scared mind.

Testing Testing

Initial entry, take 2. Obviously the first one didn't take. It's all so new to me. All this without the benefit of a spellcheck, either. Sigh. Wonder if I should put up pictures? Anyway, to reiterate: am now using Boss' computer because someone else is using mine. It's one in the afternoon. My partner quit about a week ago. I'm bored. More details to follow, hopefully.