Leave Us Alone

Administration...
Military and Police Chain of Command...
Military Adventurists...
Communist Insurgents...
Street Parliamentarians...
Civil Society...
Erap Loyalists...
Makati Business Club...
Catholic Bishops...
Bro. Eddie Villanueva's JIL...
Urban Poor/Labor Groups purporting to represent the poor...

I SAY, KILL `EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT `EM OUT!!!

Apathetic

To paraphrase Ninoy Aquino, "All it takes for evil to triumph is for the good people to do nothing."

Below is a conversation I had with someone in chat. Hers is typical of the mindset of the so called young urban professionals who worry more about the calories they ingest with their grande mochachino lattes than the welfare of the country. God help us all.

MsMontero> from UP ka ba?
Ritsard> yup
MsMontero> okei
Ritsard> i graduated 10 years ago
MsMontero> ok
MsMontero> wat cours?
Ritsard> civil engineering
MsMontero> k
MsMontero> <+Ritsard> where have all the iskolars ng bayan gone?:
MsMontero> korni mo din noh
MsMontero> hahahahah
MsMontero> sorry.. jk
Ritsard> this is no time for being cool... our liberty is in peril
Ritsard> heheeheh
MsMontero> oh yeah?
MsMontero> i don't care
MsMontero> :)
MsMontero> liberty in peril
MsMontero> im sorry ha
MsMontero> i just find it disgusting mga liberty in peril
MsMontero> ahhahahahahaha
MsMontero> dont get offended
MsMontero> i just hate mga pretense of being nationalistic or patriotic or whatever it is you call it these days
MsMontero> hahhaahhahaha
MsMontero> osha.
MsMontero> babush!
Ritsard> its ok, we'll gladly sacrifice our blood to guarantee that you enjoy your life
MsMontero> sows
MsMontero> potang inang arte nyo
MsMontero> ahahahahahahahahahahahhahahah
MsMontero> ang dumi nyo tingnan sa edsa.
MsMontero> hahahahahahah
MsMontero> sumasama ka ba sa ganun?
MsMontero> demmet.
MsMontero> do you even know what you're there for?
Ritsard> to fight for liberty
MsMontero> or is it just something that you do for the sake of having an identity?
MsMontero> haahahahha
Ritsard> in case you dont know, your libert has just been killed by PD 1071
Ritsard> liberty
MsMontero> ay ewan
MsMontero> sige na
MsMontero> that's a cliche
MsMontero> whoever fed you that shit.. should be dead.
MsMontero> YOUR liberty siguro
MsMontero> hhehehhehe
MsMontero> wag na
MsMontero> aawayin lang kita eh
MsMontero> babush
Ritsard> i'm not convincing you
Ritsard> time will tell
Ritsard> be safe
MsMontero> time will tell your ass
MsMontero> hehhehehe
MsMontero> bye

BLOG ON!

The Chinese have a proverb, "may you live in interesting times".... ok, that's a curse - not a proverb... Don't you feel like we are in the midst of "interesting times'? Why cant this country be boring and uneventful for a change?

As we have shown the world 20 years ago, it is again time again for us as a people to assert our rights.

BLOG ON!

Drink Bacardi Like Its Your Birthday

Forgive my ignorance, but I went to a friend's house the other night and was treated to my very first taste of Bacardi Rum (Superior)! Ok, so i'm a neanderthal when it comes to good liquor. Now I see why 50 Cent (for you non-gangsta types, the name is pronounced as fitisent) made such a fuss about it; even writing it into his song.

The rum was so smooth that i didnt need any chaser or mixer with it. I drank straight shot after shot. It may have helped that our pulutan was Mussels Lombardi (Italianni's style) and the best beef siomai I've ever tasted. The food must've dulled my senses against the kick of the Bacardi.

(couldnt think of a topic for today.. thats why i just posted this.. less mental exercise needed)

Changes

I found out last friday that I would soon be coming back to our head office in Makati after 2 years of being on remote assignment....

Culture Shock!!

After living the simple life, I will again be confronted by the sights, the sounds, the smells.... and the costs of the central business district. Let's enumerate the changes I'll be going through.

1. No more free lunches - At the project site, I always have buffet lunches free! In Makati, I'd have to shell out more than a hundred bucks if I want a side order of vegetables aside from the dry, bland, fried chicken swimming in polysaturated fat.

2. Parking fees - for 2 years, i never had to worry about where to park. I never had to worry about possible carjacking too.

3. Clothing - for the last 2 years, i've accumulated clothes that suit my environment - jeans, t shirts, sports socks. Now I find that my business clothes dont fit anymore and I have to spend good money on Makati-appropriate clothing. I dont feel comfortable anymore wearing ties or long sleeves. I dont even know what the fad is nowadays. Oh the humanity!

4. Traffic - need I say more?

5. Snotty Makati People - The past 2 years have seen me acquire a rather "provincial" disposition towards everything. I've got this feeling that the snobby set over at greenbelt would laugh at my rather simplistic view of things.

6. Soup #5 - Not all changes I'll be going through will be negative though. Already, I'm starting to salivate for my eventual reunion with kabayan's soup #5, bulalo, etc. over at my friendly jolly jeep stand. The downside? My cholesterol level is going to hit the roof!

7. Pollution - I've been subjected to a different type of pollution at my old project site - dust. Now I will have to contend with carbon monoxide, garbage, etc.

8. iPod - I have the feeling that most everyone I encounter in Makati will be wearing his own iPod or other MP3 player. Should I buy one to be "in"?

9. Yellow Boys - I'll be dealing with Makati's finest again. Have to remember the traffic rules in the land of Binay again.

10. And.. the top 10 thing I would definitely encounter when I go back to Makati - girls in minis!! Yey!!!

Diaspora

A friend of mine is leaving tomorrow... for good. She just got married and is about to migrate to the US to be with her husband. I've got 2 friends currently abroad. One lives in Belgium and comes home maybe twice a year. The other is working with the rehab team rebuilding last year's tsunami ravaged island of Banda Aceh. Another friend has frequent trips to parts of asia.

One friend is waiting to be deployed to Australia for a 2-year work/training stint. Another is scheduled to follow my other friend in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Worst of all, my wife works in the US and comes home only once a year.

Life sucks.

One for the road

Whilst I prepare my next blog (doing some research) let me post these first. I posted these in my MySpace blog but nobody seemed to notice.. anyway, I'm posting them here so that more people will FAIL to notice them.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Jesus said unto them, " Who do you say that I am?"

The apostles replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed."

And Jesus replied, "What????"


Psychiatric Clinic Answering Machine

"Hello, the doctor is busy at the moment, however, if you would like to be transferred to another correspondent, please press the number that best fits your personality:
- if you are an obsessive compulsive, press "1" repeatedly.
- if you are codependent, please ask someone to press "2".
- if you have multiple personalities, please press "3", "4" and "5".
- if you are paranoid delusional, we know who you are and what you want, just stay on the line so we can trace your call.
- if you are schizophrenic, isten carefully and the little voice will tell you which number to press.
- if you are manic depressive, it doesn't matter what number you press, no one will answer."


From Calvin and Hobbes, Something to Think About

Calvin: "Do you believe in the Devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption and ultimate destruction of man?

Hobbes: "Im not sure man needs the help."

Curb and Gutter

I got the name of this blog from one of me and my friend's bright ideas from way back (sorry Poks, i appropriated the name for this blog. It seems our plans won't push through anytime soon anyway). Curb and Gutter should have been the name of a business that my friend and I was supposed to be setting up.

There is a saying among drinkers.. "one for the road".. meaning the last drink before leaving. Well, as it usually goes, we dont stop drinking after finishing off the "one for the road" drink. We normally end up ordering more. So what do we call those drinks that come after the road?... Well there's the curb, then the gutter, then the storm drain, so on and so forth... (Its an insider joke among civil engineers. I dont expect non-engineers to get it)

And thats what we planned to call our future bar. Apparently there is already a bar named one for the road... so we had to do them one better... we shall name our bar Curb and Gutter.

After some thoughts though, we decided against starting a bar. With all the friends we have expecting free drinks, we'd be out of business even before you can say "heineken".

So a bar? Bad idea. Blog? Hmmm good idea.

Ultra Stampede Rant

Much has been said about the Ultra Stampede, about ABSCBN, about poverty, etc. It gets tiresome just to watch the same old issues fly like... well, flies on turd.

What about the structural design? Nobody seems to be interested to know whether the venue was properly designed for such an event. How many pedestrian entrances does the the Ultra have? Are they adequate for a venue of such capacity? At full capcaity, how long does it take to fill the stadium? how long does it take to empty the said stadium in an emergency?

We have a national building code that guides builders and architects on such matters. We have laws such as the fire code of the philippines mandating the number of entry and exit points for all types of building. Were these followed by the builders (in the case of Ultra, wasn't it Imelda Marcos who commissioned the building of the then University of Life?)? corollary to that, was the stadium originally designed for such events in the first place? Wasn't it originally intended for a school gym?

From what I gathered, the stampede happened at the vehicular entrance going into the open field. Why was that gate used when it was clearly for vehicles only and not for pedestrian traffic? There were no turnstiles there, no ticket booths, no ticket checker personnel - only a gate and a driveway that inclines 30 degrees downslope. Clearly, the organizers fumbled the ball here.

I envy other countries that can easily mount huge gatherings. the UK's Wembley Stadium, the Houston Astrodome (not to be confused with the Cuneta Astrodome - another crowd unfriendly venue), LA's Staples Center (where Kobe lords it over during Lakers games) - these are only some of the great venues that accomodate upwards of 20,000 people on any given night. They also have dozens and dozens of pedestrian entrances with hundreds of turnstiles and barriers that segregate people, that make their passage orderly, etc. And after the event? ultra-wide exits that can accomodate the rush of people.

My First Blog

Cool!

This is my very first real blog.

Yes i do post "blogs" in my MySpace.com page but that's different, right? I mean, MySpace is great and all but it just seems a bit too cutesy for me. Furthermore, everybody knows that MySpace is good only for stalking underaged colegialas.

I'll post a real blog next time.. this is just a test broadcast