hodge-podge: n a motley assortment of things.

That describes the breakfast I prepared today: guisadong burong mustasa (sauteed fermented mustard leaves), beef longganisa, garlic fried rice w/ star margarine, and then topped with tarragon tea. There is no binding theme except that they were all spur of the moment decisions and what is available.

Burrppp!

The beef longganisa was bought from our grocery trip yesterday, and it only made it because I haven’t tried that combination before. It’s an average tasting fare but I didn’t really expect it to compete with the venerable Cabanatuan longganisa (sorry my Ilocano friends, but your Vigan longganisa is a poor substitute. You just have the luxury of mass marketing. 😛 ). The burong mustasa is the last one from the batch we brought from Nueva Ecija five weeks ago. It’s a bit salty but this preparation got my wife to taste and like this delicacy. Plus I finally got to do something with the pots of tarragon that grows in the front-garden. 🙂

I am still smarting from the breakfast but there are some left-overs that will make it to lunch. 🙂

ciao!

Chin Wong echoed a Mozilla call to gauge the interest in creating a Filipino version of Firefox. As Chin has posted, the Firefox localization is not isolated to translation but the localization of the whole user experience. The question is if the Filipinos are going to be interested in joining this effort as localization is entirely a volunteer-based effort.

I have the same sentiment as Chin with regards to localization. The Filipino language is a romantic language that not suited for technical terms. I would hazard a conservative guess that at least 40% of the resulting translation is going to be a pidgin version where foreign terms without direct counterpart. For the rest will be some very deep Tagalog words that will not be appreciated by the masses unless they have a balarila ready at hand (online balarila, anyone?). Would you prefer reading a menu item labeled “Simulan|Umpisahan ang Pansariling Pagbabaybay…” or “Start Private Browsing…”. My translation may be poor but that is already a 15-character difference that will definitely be noticed.

Another point is that Filipinos in general are familiar with the English language. Another pompous guess from me would that a great majority 90-95% of Filipino Internet users are comfortable with using a browser using English menu items. The translation risk of introducing confusion due to the translated texts is greater than the benefit of using the English variant. Compound this with the risk that English-savvy support persons (cousins, child, grandchild, etc.) will be scratching their head on what the menu item in question is for.

With the other non-translation related customizations, I would rather have a firefox extension that does the internal reconfiguration seamlessly rather than messing up the standard Firefox UI experience.

Just an opinion on a middle-aged middle-class IT worker who hates the Tagalized cartoons and foreign tele-novelas and film shown in local channels.

$DEITY forbid that somebody starts using street slang and text-speak to fill in the void.

ciao!

I normally don’t frequently check my balances as a Php500 load usually lasts me 6 weeks. If my load runs out earlier then I can easily get a load from the Internet (hint: if you are near me I can send eLoads 🙂 ). I will be going to the province over the weekend wherein I have no reliable Internet as 3G/EDGE coverage in our Barrio is very spotty. I just found out that SMART has reformatted their balance SMS and it is way more informative than the old one which just contains the remaining balance and the time it was sent. The current format looks like this:

date/timestamp
Load Bal: P(amount)
Free Txt to
Smart/TNT:(amount)
Free Txt to all
networks:(amount)

Admittedly I would have wanted a few more information in there like the expiration but the current format will already run somewhere around 80 characters if the amount values are maxed out. I would assume that the carrier would want to keep the character count to the maximum allowed in a single SMS so I am already a satisfied camper. Kudos SMART. 🙂

ciao!

Everybody said that if you want to get the most nutrients out of a fruit or vegetable then you should eat the skin, unless it is a hard/thick skinned fruit like coconut or watermelon[1] where we usually discard the skin and concentrate on the fleshy pulp.

I thought the same goes for the kalabasa (aka squash) until we saw last Saturday a cooking show in a channel we less frequently watch wherein Nova Villa said that the kalabasa skin should be left in the pot as it will soften enough to be as soft as the pulp. Our food today was ginataang jalabasa at sitaw (squash and string bean in coconut milk) so we tried leaving the skin on. The skin was suprisingly tender.

This is why it sometimes pay to watch channel surf and watch boring shows. 🙂

[1] Although I have seen a weekend morning show feature cook the watermelon skin being into a candy product.

ciao!

8:40am – started backing out of the garage to start a hectic day. No breakfast as the instant noodles was already bad. 🙁
8:50am – got stuck in traffic right after getting out of the subdivision. It turned out that we were just in time to get cut-off by a funeral session. Went into a tirade why I hate funeral processions.
9:10am – arrived at the Parkway fresh market to drop the clothes at the laundry. Cursed the market administrator for closing the driveway with tiangge stalls.
9:15am – drove out to the main highway just to get caught up in another traffic jam. I initially thought it was caused by the funeral procession but it turned out that there was an accident a kilometer from Pantok. I still like blaming the funeral procession though.
9:30am – got past the accident area. Resumed cursing the inconsiderate jeepney drives. I really like driving, it increases and exercises my cursing vocabulary.
10:20am – dropped Neth in front of the Cityland Shaw tower for the doctor’s appointment. I was going to park in Megamall so she will go ahead to get her name listed in the queue. We already have an appointment but for some reason the secretary insists that everything is still on a first-come-first-served basis. It kinda defeats the whole idea of creating an appointment, doesn’t it?
10:30am – entered the Megamall open parking area and spent two minutes waiting for a high-end car maneuver and take two slots. I finally gave up waiting and backed off to an empty slot on the next row.
10:40am – after walking back to the Shaw building and entering the doctor’s clinic, Neth informed me that she was already finished with the checkup. If I had known she was the first there then I would have stayed in Megamall and waited for her there. 🙁
11:05am – we were back in Megamall and decided to eat at Red Kimono since we have it in our sights to eat there (actually in the Fort but who keeps tab on exact locations?). We, and by we I meant me, decided to go for the “eat all you can buffet” option.
12:00NN – Crawled out of RedKimono after ravaging two miso soups, one plate of crunchy maki, 4 crumbling gyozas, one kettle of beef kamameshi rice, two chicken yakitori sticks, noks, 5 shrimp tempura (it was too small to be prawn) , one plate of salmon/cream cheese maki, and one pork ribs teriyaki. The pork teriyaki and gyoza were not that good. Everything else was perfect. The bill ended up costing somewhere around Php1250 since I also had a bottomless drink. A bit pricey for lunch but definitely worth it.:)
12:15PM – We arrived at the Megaclinic to get a referral for a derma consultation.
1:30PM – We were done with the derma consultation which only took around 5 minutes.

Originally we had a Dental cleaning appointment for 3-5pm in Cainta but we had it moved in a satellite clinic in Ortigas so we had some time to burn. We did some window shopping in Megamall until 2:30pm.

2:45pm – we were already in the Medical plaza to wait for our dentist to arrive there.
3:20pm – our dentist finally arrived at the clinic.
4:45pm – Neth and I were already done so we started the trek to Megamall.
5:00pm – We already started doing our grocery. We initially planned to do it in SM Taytay since we would be coming from Cainta but due to the change of plans we did it there to save time.
6:00pm – Grocery was done so we started the drive going to Angono.
7:15pm – Stopped at the Bonsai carwash in Angono to have Ava (our Avanza unit) cleaned up. This is the time wherein I whipped out the RedKimono giveaway menu and computed the total costs of what we have eaten to see if we came out ahead. Turned out we did because the total amount was around Php1495. 🙂
7:45pm – We went to the nearby Scrapyard restaurant for dinner. I ordered Kalderetang Itik while Neth ordered Sinigang na Bangus sa Miso. Imagine our surprise when they finally served the food: it was good for 5 people!
8:45pm – we were done with our dinner with some takehome leftovers for tomorrow. The whole dinner course costed us Php361. Not bad.
9:30pm – we were backed at home and after arranging the groceries and cleaning up we hit the bed.
10:00pm – I had this notion of upgrading the wordpress version of this blog to 2.8. Thankfully the automatic upgrade script worked and even the automatic upgrade of the plugins returned! yipeee!
10:10pm – I had this idea of writing this blog.
10:30pm – The time when I finally finished this sentence with enough seconds to spare to click on the publish button.

I am going to sleep. It has been a tiring day…

ciao!