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.