a little more extra in that mural

heading home from a doctor's appointment in the cubao/new manila area, we saw this uber cool mural by weewilldoodle in a residential area --even the gate has art!

beats mmda's silly pink and blue geometrical nonsense any day. check out weewilldoodle.com and see what these crazy creatives are up to (apparently i missed out on getting my very own uratex foldable mattress with the wwd designs all over it)



oh yeah, check out that article that says doodling helps you remember things better :)

swing shift

this week, a covered swing had to be moved to make way for a front yard project...so far it's doing well in its new spot, under the shade of an avocado (leafy but non-fruit bearing)...i've been told i can get wifi (from a nearby room, not the tree) so i'm doing some research on netbooks (imagine those aliens from sesame street: "net...book! net...book. netbook, netbook...yip, yip, yip!")

looks like a good place to read a book this summer.

eight books

as is typical, the sprout announced at the last minute he needed to create 8 books made out of 4 sheets of cartolina each for his english language project. after my usual lecture, he had to do some research to get the stories he wanted. it was assigned more than 3 weeks ago and had to be submitted by Feb 27...thank goodness the day before that was a half-day so mr. i-can-cram-this-really! could do his work before i stressed out.


my personal favorite: his illustration of the cyclops going after the greek crew in the odyssey (hehehe)


the crow and the pitcher

left brain, right brain

pop quiz: after not buying magazines for quite some time, you see a stall selling late 2008 issues at two for Php200. what would your immediate two choices be?


these were mine...i'm just as happy checking out what's new at True Value (or any mall hardware store...the occasional trip to the well-stocked warehouse hardware is also a great diversion for me, hahaha...you can take the kid away from the downtown area, but she's still gonna check the prices of latex paint and brushes :P yup i was one of those kids who watched the store on weekends or went from customer to customer to collect money --those were the days when kids weren't being snatched off the streets...the only thing you had to worry about was if they were canny enough to cross the street on their own, and i never went solo till Gr6 or Gr7. it's a "strength in numbers" thing...look at EDSA One...mass up enough people and you can stop a tank :D)
...as for the VOGUE, aside from having food critic Jeffrey Steingarten on board (I think Ted and the other QE gays should give him a makeover), I still love the photography and the writing. Hay naku...found myself wading through ads and whatnot till I got to the staffbox queened by Anna Wintour after more than 80-90 pages (!!!) (note: in my former life, the magazine i worked for had 100 pages, including the free poster that came with it, and the staff box only took up half of page 2 because we used a lot of space, haha.)

the slipper throwing capital of the world?

in the footwear-throwing scene, when you think about it, any pinoy with shoes or slippers should be considered a potential threat...we have childhood games involving throwing slippers at tin cans! (of course this game was probably invented by an adult who wanted to train kids who could unerringly kill cockroaches with a properly aimed flipflop)
when presenting a used pair of shoes (even when worn once) as a "gift," it has to be thrown (as if the owner were discarding them in a huff?) and then exchanged for the token fee of one peso (it could be 10 now, what with inflation)...can you imagine the jemaah islamiyah or comrades from the communist party taking a side course on footwear hurling in r.p. from the pros?
and when you take into consideration that we have wooden clogs (bakya)...it makes you wonder if pie-throwing at rich industrialists and people in power has become passe in favor of shoe hurling. think of the branding possibilities (nike: just throw it!)
...and then our choices of footwear suddenly become severely limited at press functions with important dignitaries as the Secret Service computes your throwing speed, your known accuracy/aim, the type/weight of your footwear (red alert on stilletos!), the trajectory your shoe will take based on where you will be sitting/standing...similar to guests checking in their cameras and cellular phones at events that ban pictures, guests may be checking in their shoes and wear paper slippers at public speaking engagements or press conferences.
forget shoe phones, daggers built into clunky footwear, and other exotic means of assassinating someone...you're going to be red-flagged one day at an event with a VIP if you wear chunky wedge sandals or platform heels made of hardwood.

happy karter

with the wife swap brouhaha surrounding the brit who called anyone "beneath" him a podunk redneck (as if he was a prize worth having, ha!), plenty of things raised my hackles, but denying his kids the pleasure of karting? what kind of narrow-minded a**hole would do such a thing? this is where F1 drivers get their first taste of racing, and gives us everyday folk a chance to take it out on a race track, instead of fueling our road rage.

with gas prices going up again, i can only look at these pics and just...*sigh*

can't wait to get back to the track :)

never kill this bill (please?)

"I need books, a reasonable hat and prescription shades. I also need rain."
--Bill Nighy (on what he needs during a vacation)

Karen Kunawicz said it all when she wrote about this gifted actor in The Manila Times about a couple of weeks back.

what Php165 can buy...

finally happy to have bought The Graveyard Book at the NBS (Php315) near the house, after asking FB branches kept saying they didn't have stock (they're selling pretty well at Php480)...after doing the math, you realize that's a Php165 difference (a bit over 5 liters of unleaded gas before prices went up during the weekend) and you can still buy plenty of books with that money.

before someone decides to challenge this claim, here are three purchases made this week (at Php20, that's not a typo, TWENTY PESOS each) at a bookstore in Greenhills...I would have bought more but I'd hate to have a huge stack of unread stuff (!!!)...and there was the matter of the cover art of some of the books being too darn cheesy...Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" tarted up to look like a Mills & Boon?! (yuck)

mini fruit

early avocados...just one of these can ruin Barbie or Ken's diet
I keep forgetting we don't have kamias in the garden :) maybe I should buy a sapling or something...

still cleaning up

during the cleanup there were plenty of bits and bobs to make up a whole new cast of zombie/misfit toys (remember those from Toy Story?)...then I found a legless MegaBlock Spidey...and then this



the cutlass appears to belong to Capt. Jack Sparrow (there are 2 versions running around the house, the good and evil twins...I'm presuming the evil twin did this because I can't find either one -which means good Jack got chopped up by evil Jack)

not my pets

at one point in my life i had one cat, two or three dogs, several parakeets and a tank full of fish (and a chicken that only laid one egg before being turned into soup) and ducklings. nowadays i'm content to admire other people's pets, maybe babysit them, but not keep them for myself.


exhibit a: the pomeranian with a fear of heights...this little guy once jumped off the seat of a dining room chair, then freaked out and started whimpering (i think it sounded like "omg, omg, am i still alive? am i now in hell? or limbo? or, or, could i possibly, actually still be ALIVE?!")


exhibit b: the tortoise that thinks its a dog. he filches food and water from the pom's dish, and if you offer scraps to it from under the dining room table, he'll snap at it and your finger too. unprotected toes are also bitten by this nearsighted creature


exhibit c: the dog that thinks he's cute. unfortunately he's dumb (compared to his more loveable askal companion)...one day i shall rename it "zoolander."


exhibit d: ninja chicken...actually not a pet but one bought from the market by a superstitious midwife who was advised by her albularyo to set one free in our garden (she had apparently offended a duende who wanted to be appeased)

and somewhere at home we still have a pond full of fish (with a turtle) and another fish tank with a couple more fish...at the moment i'm wishing for a smallish reticulated python to come along and eat the mice that have been hopping around the space between the ceiling and the roof...the neighborhood cats don't seem up to the challenge.

no man's land

cleaning a little boy's room can be more difficult than cleaning a grown up person's domain.
we're talking about archaeological expeditions, sifting through bits and pieces, making judgment calls on what's junk and what's not.
after a while you get dizzy and have to breathe but can't (because of the dust!)
never ask how much stuff a little boy can have.

78 :P

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

Out of curiosity, I checked out a 1000-book list of recommended reads.
Sadly, despite years of reading, I only totted up 78 titles. (Aided mostly in part by reading Stephen King, Herge, Michael Crichton).
Is this what dedicated nerdhood gives me? 78 only?!
Must. Read. More. (if I had the time and the money)
I really should renew my library membership.

can happy days or team manila put this on a shirt please?

one day at a t-shirt near you

tickles trinoma

why billionaires get depressed about being millionaires

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel Catch-22
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!
(Kurt Vonnegut, The New Yorker, May 16, 2005)