Jan 01
ErinGarbage
With just a few hours of sleep, we drove back from Cabanatuan to Pasig in record time: 2 hours and 30 minutes including the pit stops! We averaged at the speed of about 60km/hr. 🙂
The drive was almost perfect. We left at around 5:40AM so most people going back to the city after the short weekend/holiday is still asleep due to celebrating the coming of 2012. Sounds good enough for us. We actually made it out of Nueva Ecija in 30 minutes 😉
And there is something to be said about the weather conditions. We left Cabanatuan with the road covered in fog, and we arrived with Metro Manila still covered in smog. 😐 Here are some snaps that my wife took on the San Leonardo to Gapan road:
Oct 16
ErinGarbage dumb, meme
This post has been making the rounds again in the social networking sites:
Girl: don’t drive so fast, im getting scared. Guy : can you hug me tight? Girl : sure, Guy :do you love me? Can you hug me and tell me you love me? Girl : I love you so much… Guy :I love you too.. can you take off my helmet? Cause its bothering me. I cant see the way so clearly. Put it on your head. After a few minutes, they crashed. The guy died and the girl survived. The guy already knew his brake was broken. That’s why he asked the girl to hug him for The last time and take off his helmet and risk his own life to save the girl.
Do you think it is nice? Try to replay that scene in your head. Notice anything wrong? You would be correct if you said “Dumb DRIVER! If he stopped feeding gas to the motorcycle it would have already slowed down to a stop during the time that conversation happened!!!”
Reality check please.
Feb 10
ErinGarbage, Literature
Sarap ng saging
May yogurt pang kapiling
Wag lang tibihin.
ref: link
Nov 29
ErinGadget, Garbage
Too much tinkering killed the cat. Now I am bummed out. 🙁
Time to watch another episode of The Walking Dead to pick myself up.
Nov 28
ErinGarbage, Reviews dining
I am one of the proud to proclaim as a “promdi” (“from the province”) and one of my early memories was when the whole family undertakes a trip to Manila every few years to spend some time in the city during the Christmas season. We would always go to SM City as it was the first huge mall in the country and still spanking new. Daddy will always take us to the basement food court and if we are lucky we can get to watch a live episode of “Kuwarta o Kahon”. We will always order our lunch from the “Sizzling Plate” kiosk which always sports a very long line of waiting customers. I always wait in anticipation as Daddy and Kuya brings in the sizzling plates bearing different meat viands. Daddy always orders the sizzling porterhouse or tenderloin steak which in my young mind was very expensive (around Php35-45 I think).
Fast forward two decades, and I find myself in front of the “Sizzling Plate” kiosk in the SM Taytay food court. Neth is on her 6th day of the General Motors diet so she can only eat beef and vegetables. We were eyeing the tenderloin steak (~Php130) after confirming with the kiosk servers that it is indeed of the beef variety. While I was deciding on what to get, the servers offered their new Christmas sizzling plate: stuffed squid with a piece of pork asado and two pieces of fried bananas plus a small serving of coffee jelly for dessert, all of it for an affordable price of Php125. I like grilled squid so why not?
As sizzling plate orders are always prepared or finished off only after being ordered I waited for a few minutes to get our order. I asked Neth to scout the other kiosks for vegetable viands as she won’t be able to eat the rice that comes with her beef tenderloin order. First to come out was my Christmas plate. The squid was a bit small and orange-y in color but it is definitely stuffed. The pork had some asado sauce poured in it with a few strips of semi-fresh cabbage on top for garnish. I took it to our table as the sizzling plate and drinks was already crowding the tray. When I got back into the counter the sizzling tenderloin was already coming out and I was suprised at how tiny the tenderloin meat was. It was a good thing Neth already ordered one fresh lumpia to augment her meal. I proceeded to our table with the tenderloin and we settled in to have our lunch.
Everything went downhill after the first bite. The squid tasted bland even with the pork stuffing. Neth complained that her tenderloin tasted like it was a few days old and tasteless even with a healthy dollop of gravy. After a few more bites she pushed her sizzling plate away and concentrated on her lumpia. I took a few bites off the tenderloin and it indeed tasted like some leftovers that I have left in the refrigerator for a few days. It was that bad. I manned up and tried to finish my own meal which was an exercise in practicality (hey I paid for that food so it shouldn’t go to waste!) and futility. The pork asado, being served in that tiny portion already, had a large bone. I thought the coffee jelly was going to be the redeeming portion of the meal but I was wrong. I put it down after the first bite which amazed Neth as I rarely waste any served food. I said that it was literally coffee jelly: you can see the separation between what is coffee and what is jelly. She asked for a tiny sample which I obliged. She suddenly went to a Batanguenyo[1] accent saying “Ala e, sa amin ay iniinom lang ang kape. (Ala e, in our place coffee is only being drank) to which I gamely responded in the same accent with “Ala e, sa amin ay tinitimpla muna ang kape at hindi ibinubodbod ng ganyan-ganyan lang (Ala e, in our place coffee is prepared first and not just sprinkled over food just like that)”.
When all has been said and done, both of us agreed that it will be the last time that we would be eating at Sizzling Plate. And there goes a memory that will only remain as such in the near and not-so-near future. What a waste of a good franchise.
[1] Habitants of Batangas which is famous for strong coffee
ciao!
Nov 06
ErinGarbage
Most things they said are sweeter the second time around, but having snake visitors is not among them. After more than 4 years, our house had another snake visitor. Neth is the lucky one to have found it and this time it is between the door and the door jamb leading to the side laundry area. She couldn’t close the door and frantically called me when she finally realized what is jammed in between.
Not wanting to have a repeat of the in-house hide and seek, I opted to forcefully close the door and pin the snake in between. I was hoping that it will have its head out in the open but when I circled around the house I only saw its tail and a part of its body wriggling on the other side of the door. I don’t want to risk it causing more panic in the house and I am not equipped to handle snakes so I took the garden shears and cut the exposed body part into two. Hopefully by tomorrow the snake will already be dead and it would be easy to dispose it.
Sorry snake brethren, you shouldn’t have picked our house as your vacation spot. 🙁
[Nov-7 update] I got pictures! Pardon the quality as they are taken by my aging K618i phone. 🙂
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| Plastered |
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| Laid out |
ciao!
Oct 01
ErinGarbage, Work agile, rant, Work
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today so I need to vent out and nitpick… 🙂
I want to reiterate the advocacy of minimizing the use of the word “resources” when referring to members of your team.
A resource is a finite, inanimate stock or tool. A hammer is a tool therefore it is a resource. My time and skills are resources but I don’t want to suffer the indignity of being categorized as a tool. I am neither a tool nor a resource; and I would appreciate not being abstracted to the same level as a computer. Computers are dumb, they can only follow instructions.
Use FTE to refer to the workload unit, but use team member, colleague, personnel or employee when referring to the human being. Respect the person doing the work. The IT industry may be being overhauled and optimized with automation, but this remains a creative industry and not a place for human automatons. Each member is unique and brings something special to the table.
ciao!
Aug 08
ErinGarbage, Work Work
During this lifetime I have heard people say a few times that their work is too stressful that they want to vomit. I didn’t realize that this morning it would be a literal thing for me. 🙁
I went to sleep at around midnight after a healthy dose of boring reading material (aka project work package aka contract) for some big shot discussions this week. At around 2AM I suddenly awoke with a jerk with the words UAT[1] in my mouth and the feeling of having a lot of bile in my throat. Thankfully the trash bin was on my side of the bed so I swiped the cover open and started dry-heaving on it. The icky and rough feeling on my throat was not going away so I ended up drinking a lot of water and munching on fried and salted corn kernels to get the taste of bile away.
Now I can, with credibility, say that I can relate next time I hear somebody say they are sick and tired of their work that they want to vomit. 🙂
[1] User Acceptance Test
ciao!
Jun 11
ErinGarbage, Humor life
Who said being together for 10 years can diminish the sweetness of a relationship? The conversation below that Neth and I had while having dinner last night is a contradictory statement to that premise. Names were abstracted to protect the innocent. 😉
X: Nakakapagod kang mahalin?
Y: Bakit?
X: Kasi napapagod na ako tapos mahal kita, kaya ganon.
Y: Ganon ba? Then I am sick and tired of you.
X: Bakit naman?
Y: Kasi I am sick; I am tired; and I am with you.
I know it doesn’t make sense but aren’t those declarations sweet? 🙂
ciao!
Nov 08
ErinGarbage food, Garbage
During my high school and college days the instant noodle was the king of the kitchen, the ultimate go-fer for the hungry mind and stomach. Forget bread, back then I could live on instant noodles alone and with egg if I want a luxurious treat. Adding steamed rice makes it a full meal. Philippine noodles are notorious for packing large quantities of MSG but I was young and nothing can touch me.
When I started going out with Neth my tolerance for MSG-laden foods went down because Neth’s family doesn’t really use MSG because of the reported health risks associated with it. I still get to enjoy noodles every now and then, and MSG when we eat out but everything went south when a simple breakfast of noodles and pan de sal (local breakfast bun) turned into a 3-day toilet bowl marathon for us. Since then I gave up eating noodles.
About a year ago I started sampling local noodles again, especially during weekends. The temptation of a quick breakfast is hard to ignore. But I realize that when I do have noodles for breakfast then I will have an excruciating headache in the afternoon. I always blamed the afternoon naps but recently I put two and two together. One Saturday morning I tried eating noodles and not on the following weekend. Lo and behold the pattern recurred so I guess that means forever saying goodbye to those multiplying variants of instant noodles that are invading the market. 🙁
ciao!
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