Aug 31
ErinTop of my head
Got snubbed on the phone by the Binangonan legal office for not waiting for the police to write an incident report in yesterday’s accident (http://ramfree17.net/capsule/2011/08/i-dont-need-this-right-now/).
Moral lessons of the story:
- it doesn’t matter if you took pictures and if the police doesn’t arrive after an hour in the incident; you need to wait for them to create the incident report if you want something substantial to hold on to.
- lacking the above, you can still file an affidavit.
- Legal advice cannot be made over the phone. You need something? Then get your butt in the legal office.
Kudos to the Binangonan Office of the Mayor. Their “tawag ka lang” hotline actually works!
Aug 30
ErinTop of my head shit happens
The universe really wants to flaunt the universal truth in front of my face. Two clichés come to mind this afternoon:
- Accidents happen anytime, anywhere.
- Accidents are most likely to occur near at home.
At around 1:30PM today, a metal bar came flying at us from a roadside demolition job that didnt have any barricades or safety nets against debris. One second I saw the construction worker dismantling the bar at the second level and the next thing I know I was hitting the brakes as the bar is already in the road and in our way. This is what came at us:
And thankfully the brakes limited the damage to the headlight and the front fender. It could have been worse as a second too late and it would have crashed through our windshield.
Now I have to go to the construction site tomorrow and settle how the contractors will pay for fixing this. Even though my car looks dirty[1], all repairs and maintenance are handled by the car dealer casa. And no way I can afford to get the car unusable for a few days for the next 3 weeks as I need it for the everyday errands that seems to sprout up like mushrooms.
[1] the dust cover you see is is a result of 1 day travelling along kilometers of under-construction road from Binangonan to Manila and vice versa.
**UPDATE 8/31** The site is being contracted to D. R. Robles Construction. Their site foreman, a certain Dennis Bonifacio (09157069096), is a man whose word is worthless. After agreeing to talk on the morning of 10/31 he is a no-show and is already dodging my calls.
**UPDATE 9/5** The D.R. Robles Construction secretary told me that they are going to pay the damages but I need to fork up the money first and submit the receipt to them. Now I need to figure out the optimal weekend (and Monday) that we can afford losing access to the vehicle while it is being repaired.
Aug 29
ErinTop of my head cooking, recipe
Posting for Macy.
Caveat Lector:
- I dubbed my cooking style as “Tantyamba” or “Tantyahang+Tsambahan” (Guesstimate+Luck-of-the-draw). I usually look at a recipe and then just follow the general procedures. You can do the same.
- Be adventurous, you only live once. My cooking satisfies that criteria, depending on how you look at it.
- Good for the Heart means its will make your heart take a break faster. Faster is good, no?
Required Cooking Equipment:
– Knife and chopping board
– Pressure cooker
– Grill (I use a stovetop grill as I’m too lazy to tend a real grill)
– Tongs, strainer (optional)
Ingredients:
– 1/2 kilo balingit (pig’s ears), can be swapped with fatty pork cuts with skin
– 1/4 kilo lean pork, which replaces the pork face mask.
– 4 cloves of garlic, or garlic powder
– onions (about 3/4 coffee cup when chopped)
– salt and pepper
– mayonnaise (2/3 cup)
– 3-5 pieces of calamansi (or lemon/lime)
– liquid seasoning (2 cap full)
– 1 finely chopped hot chili (siling labuyo), optional
Meat Preparation:
– Clean the pork balingit and mask.
– Put all the meat products in the pressure cooker, together with the crushed garlic/garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Cover with water, enough to cover the meat. If you are using both balingit/mask and normal pork cuts, don’t put the normal pork cuts yet.
– Put the pressure cooker on high-heat until it whistles. Once it starts whistling, put in low heat (enough to maintain the blasts of pressure every 5-10seconds) and maintain it for about 20-30minutes.
– If using normal pork cuts, add it on at the 15-20 minute mark and then bring the pressure up again. Resume the countdown when the cooker whistles again.
– Once the meat is soft enough (a bit gelatinous), strain them and let them cool enough to be handled without screaming.
– Once the meat is strained and cool enough, grill the meat until the skin pops and becomes crunchy (instant chicharon!). I like giving the whole meat pieces enough face time on the grill to dry them off.
– Once done, chop the meat into small pieces. Some people find it therapeutic to use cleavers but dont get carried away. The aim is to reduce them to small pieces and not to turn them to liquid.
– Mix 1/4 cup of the chopped onions to the chopped meat and set aside.
Sauce:
– Put the remaining chopped onions, mayonnaise, liquid seasoning, calamansi juice, and chili in a small saucepan. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper.
– Put the pan in low to medium heat and simmer until the onions are soft/wilted.
Serving:
– Coat the chopped meat with the sauce.
– Serve while it is hot. If it has already cooled down a bit, that is what microwave ovens are for. 😉
– Goes well as viand to freshly cooked rice and some ice-cold drinks, or as pulutan with alcoholic drinks. Greasy foods always goes well with alcoholic drinks!
ciao!
Aug 28
ErinTop of my head cooking
Kay hirap mong gawin
Kay dali mong ubusin
Coke o beer bilang inumin
Puso’y lalong aatakihin.
Aug 19
ErinTop of my head computer, furniture
Searching for computer table fittings and found these grommets in Asian Hardware in MC Home Depot Ortigas.
Aug 01
ErinTechnology
I have started listening to the GoodTimesWithMo Podcasts for those dead-air moments during my every day travel/commute. The new Android phone provided a good vehicle for listening to the podcasts. Way better than my old (and stolen) Sansa Fuze. The people running the podcasts are pretty much iTunes-specific so here are the steps I did to have the podcasts ready.
- Install a podcast manager in your Android device. I previously used the discontinued Google Listen but have migrated to ShiftyJelly’s PocketCast so you can search and install it form the AppMarket.
- Go to the www.motwister.com site and copy the link to the Video/Audio podcast. I dont want my phone to get stolen so I use the audio link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/gtwm-audio. You can also get an alternative link via the www.battleaxe.network site but I will leave that exercise to the reader.
- Launch the Listen application and go to the “My Subscriptions” section.
- Tap on the “Add Subscription” button and enter the link to the podcast feed retrieved in an earlier step.
- Tap on the GWTM podcast entry, refreshing as needed, and tap+hold on the episodes that you want to queue.
- Once done, go back to the main screen and tap on the “My listen items”. Tap/play the podcast you want to listen to and it will start downloading.
Some tips and notes:
- Google Listen will link up with your Google Reader account. Well it did on my setup. Use a separate podcast manager if you dont want to do this.
- Listening to a podcast will buffer and save it locally. Each GWTM podcast comes at around 50MB so be prepared to wait.
- My trick is to start a podcast, then pause once it starts playing. Google Listen will keep on downloading the podcast until it completes.
- While downloading, I repeat the steps above for the succeeding episodes on the queue. Only one podcast will be downloaded at a time but the application will start the other “buffering” episodes once the current one is done. A nice activity to do before you sleep. 🙂
- Make sure you revisit each finished item and remove the local data to free up some more space for the next wave of episodes. Or buy a larger SD card.
- Google Listen doesn’t have the feature of preventing your phone from sleeping. In my experience this means the player will suspend after 60-90 minutes of inactivity.
- Google Listen also doesn’t yet have the feature of moving the local storage to another directory, or importing an already downloaded podcast.
Have fun. And also try Gabe Mercado’s Geek Chorus podcast from the BattleAxeNetwork.
ciao!
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