patalastas muna

...from RockEd Philippines (follow them on Twitter @RockEdVolunteer click here for contact details):

The books that people donate to Book Bigayan are stored at UP Diliman. Before sending them out to public libraries and schools, we sort through all the donations and box them up nicely — separating preschool, grade school, high school and college books.

Our first book sorting soiree for the year :

• FEB 6, Sunday. 9AM – 4PM, in Quezon City.
• Why sunday? so we don’t bother offices and students as sorting is done in the corridors.
• You don’t have to be there the whole day. Volunteers can come in shifts.
  
• Bring your own water and baon If you have extra boxes and packing tape lying around at home, do bring them along.
• Will send exact details to volunteers.
  

bookworm & mom

so what does my mom read, apart from the Chinese (or English) newspaper, owner's manuals (for assorted appliances/gadgets), the occasional serial novel (if you see the books "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was based on --you really have a feeling that not everything was put into the movie. it would possibly be like making Harry Potter books 1-7 into a 2.5 hour film) and travel magazines?



anything about orchids, BUT it has to have practical applications. She bought this book at Fully Booked when it was on sale (after considering another book on orchids at NBS, which was more expensive and didn't have anything practical for her, what i understood from her was that "other orchid book" was geared more for the types who have greenhouses and gardeners who do the dirty work for the reader).


i ended up buying Kikomachine Komix at NBS :)


and this at FB (yay for discounts!)

stalking a star(fish), part 2

yup, beached starfish patrol again. not complaining one bit at all, hehe. met some interesting characters...
...leonardo? donatello? mikey? raf? where's the pizza?

when Cartoon Network had their "ordinary turtle vs. Ninja Turtle promo" the sprout asked me which I'd prefer. Answer: the ordinary turtle (para walang kaagaw sa pizza, hehehe)

while there's tons of beautiful beaches, people have got to learn to take better care of them...

(kind of evokes D-Day in Normandy...no? Or the Leyte landing gone wrong in an alternative history...Totally found it this way on the shore, not staged)

lest you think i've strayed far from the reading-themed nature of the blog...these are what i've been reading --just not at the beach :)

think of them as guides, one through the city, and the other through the ups and downs of life :D

stalking a star(fish)

tsk. what do you expect from something without brains...they never know when too much sunbathing will kill them...


patreeck istarfeesh...isdatchu?!



ay! eets aliiive!


back you go...go on, get away from the shore if you know what's good for you!

Maikling Patalastas

Para sa mga na-Ondoy sa nakaraang taon, may mga nagbebenta ng libro na "on sale." Kasama dito ang iba't ibang Powerbooks branches, at ang bodega ng Books for Less sa (loob-loob ng) Pasig. Kung kaya niyong mag-dyip o fx (kahit galing Shaw) upang makamit ang iba't-ibang mga diskwentong inaalok dito, saludo ako sa iyo. :D

how to kvetch...

this horrible storm (Basyang) reminds me of Milenyo, a howler of a storm that knocked over plenty of power lines. if going without electricity for 16-24 hours is agony for you, imagine going without it for almost two weeks.

despite reporting the situation several times to customer reps at Meralco, it really grated on our nerves to see neighbors have electricity and we didn't (eventually the servicemen discovered that part of our line had been stolen)...and it got so bad i didn't want to see another candle, not even on my birthday cake...so i emailed every Meralco branch in the area with this letter (result: we had servicemen by the end of the day) :


Imagine if you will being without electricity for more than a week
since the onset of Milenyo. Imagine the utterly ridiculous situation
of your neighbors having electricity -left, right, front (even the
squatters nearby have electricity) and YOU DON'T. Imagine the surreal
and frustrating experience of following up this situation with
apathetic customer service reps who don't log in your complaint. Then
again, why don't you try coming over to (street address deleted) in QC and SEE FOR YOURSELF? I and my family do not have the luxury of checking into a hotel when we don't have electricity. And it is obviously useless talking to a customer service rep when they don't
bother to log in a complaint from paying customers.

What kind of amends can Meralco make other than a lame "we'll schedule someone to check
out your situation but right now we don't know when we can service
you..." Wow. How about making up for our discomfort by waiving our
electric bill for this month? No? It seems your company is quite
content to allow us to go without electricity for another week, maybe
a month if your people seem inclined to do so. We have an invalid
96-year old grandmother we can't even check into the hospital so she
won't have to suffer from the heat and mosquitoes.

If your people cannot even inform us when someone will actually
restore power to our home (preferably this century, thank you), please
do us the courtesy of informing us if we should bother paying your
company for not doing a thing or if we can switch to alternative power
sources like solar energy, wind power, maybe hook up 100 hamsters to
exercise wheels to power an electric fan? 10 days without electricity
in a very populated and almost-commercial area is a pretty long time
to do without this urban necessity.

But then, I doubt your company CARES. Your neglect speaks volumes.



Sincerely,


(name deleted)
(etc deleted :D)

They did it again, and again, and AGAIN...

Pardon me as I lose my temper.

Years ago, my car was broken into, after making the common mistake of parking it in what I thought was the safest possible place: a guarded parking lot in a busy business district. Turns out you don't pay for "secure parking" --you just pay for that bit of land your vehicle sits on, and the succeeding hours fund those fancy attendant uniforms, computers that keep track of how many minutes you went over your alloted time, and that mechanized arm that swings up and down to set you free from the damned place after you pay through the nose.

As much as possible, I avoid any parking lots managed by that company, thanks to their shoddy handling of the situation. And now I learn that someone else recently had his car broken into IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. Where are the rent-a-cops when you need them? It's as if thieves view these places as their personal candy jars, to raid whenever they please.

One blog post pretty much summed the experience for many who were victimized. While there were those who had plenty to say about leaving one's personal belongings or parking in unlit areas, this reply did the job. (Thanks Annie)