Nov 01
ErinGarbage
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.
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!
Oct 23
ErinGarbage, Humor, Top of my head
- A SMS message flashing on a very early TV-Radio show:
“Pakigising naman po si [] … ” (“Please wake up [name]…”)
I am still wondering how mass media can do that to a sleeping person unless their TV/Radio has a programmable alarm and they have perfectly timed it that it will go off at the exact time that message was posted. It would have been easier to just call that person’s phone or somebody from the same household.
Here is your card….
- A radio news anchor broadcasting the latest news about a potentially strong incoming storm:
“May posibilidad na lumihis ang bagyo papuntang Taiwan. Magdasal tayo na sana lumihis nga at hindi na tamaan ang North Luzon.” (“There is a possibility that the storm’s path will deviate to Taiwan. Let’s pray that it will do so and miss the North Luzon area.”)
I understand what the news anchor intends to convey but somehow the sequencing of the sentence was not right. Unless the $DEITY is the mischievous Loki, I don’t think it is right to pray that you pass on the suffering to your neighbor.
ciao!
Oct 12
ErinGarbage, Work
– The car owners from Green Ridge who turns left too early; and those who hog the opposite lane of the Barkadahan bridge. I hope you have a worst day than what I had today and for the rest of your $DEITY forsaken lives while you are inside any vehicle.
– The 3.5 hours commute to the office. We left at 5:10AM and arrived at 8:40AM.
– The Pasig rainforest route is still submerged in flood water. We can still see the water from the west bank of the floodway road.
– The cyclist who almost let himself get run over by a tricycle when he made an abrupt left to cross the street.The reason: some street vagrants are having an early morning drinking binge and they offered him a shot of Red Horse Beer.
– Pasig Blue Boys (traffic enforcers) who opened a counter-flow west bound but made sure those those came from under the Jenny’s avenue bridge would not be able to use it and get stuck in horrible traffic.
– Jeepneys, FX taxis and buses plying the Ortigas route who insists on weaving through the traffic and loading/unloading people in the middle of the road.
– Inconsiderate pricks who keeps on ejecting their sputum and saliva on the side of the overpass that I am using such that their bodily fluids are always aligned with my line of sight.
– The other inconsiderate prick who blew his/her breakfast on the landing of the said overpass.
– The bus driver from hell who drives pedal to the metal as soon as the last passenger steps on or off the bus. I know there are hand-rails but human beings are not designed to be standing upright when their inertia shifts from 0 to 40kph. Sideways.
– The $#@%# building administration who insists that sauna treatments are good for your health by making sure their ground floor hallways and elevators are a couple of degrees above the comfortable temperature.
And my work hours has only just started…
Sep 23
ErinGarbage
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!
Jul 24
ErinGarbage
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!
Jul 12
ErinGarbage
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!
Jun 20
ErinGarbage
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!
Jun 10
ErinGarbage
While not a fan, I appreciate the Darwin awards which “salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it”. I sometimes describe myself as a person who have a low-tolerance for stupidity which is not really far from the truth. Note the highlight as that does not mean that I don’t delve in stupidity myself. I know that I do so more often that I would like.
Jeff Foxworthy/Bill Engvall, whom are both American stand-up comics, have a less honorable version for their routine in ruthlessly ripping apart common stupidity. The routine goes wherein they pay attention common real-life actions and instances that ends up with the quote “here is your [stupid] card”. I would pay homage to that routine for the small things that nag me every day.
Today I received another of those not-so frequent (thank you Fate) SMS from an unknown number that automatically launches to a greeting cum keeping-in-touch content:
God am jun mzta sanka nka detno ngaun c rudy 2. / Good morning Jun how are you where are you currently assigned this is Rudy.
Yes the human and English translation did not have any punctuation as the original message did not have one. This already tripped several alarm bells for being moronic. How hard is it to write human-readable non-encrypted words that can still fit the 160 character limit of a standard SMS? Since it was still morning and I am still in a good mood I opted to send a short reply in case the sender was waiting near his phone for a chance to get re-acquainted with Jun who for all we know was the only friend he ever had when they were growing up but for some reason his family moved out just when he was teaching Rudy how to socialize without becoming a menace to society. Alright that was over the top but I was getting ahead of myself in being riled up. My answer was:
Sorry, you sent the message to the wrong number.
And then I got this in return:
Nd aq wrong nm # sya ang nagbegay ng # nya skn. cno poh sla. / I didn’t send to the wrong number # He was the one who gave his number to me. Who is this?
This tripped several more bells that pumped my rage level from inconvenienced to peeved. I seriously considered wasting another peso in sending a reply but realized that it probably won’t matter and could only snowball at that point. I am just taking consolation in the thought that Rudy is still hovering near his phone and trying to wait for a message from his long lost best friend that has now opted to disown him. Mwahahahaha.
ciao!
Jun 09
ErinGarbage
As of last night, that is what I am. My victim is a medium-sized cat that either from lack of common sense or a heightened sense of panic ran directly in front of my vehicle. The event happened in an unpopulated freeway type road in Baytown, Angono. I am not a violent person and while I may have some regret for snuffing a life out of this world I don’t really feel any remorse. Cat-lovers might hate me for saying that but I only have the following pleas in my defense:
- Visibility was very poor. It was raining very hard that I had my wipers at the highest setting.
- My speed was under 40km/hr at par with the other vehicles going in my direction.
- The area was unpopulated and the cat suddenly sprang out of a bush and directly in front of my vehicle.
- I tried to brake to avoid hitting the feline but it was not enough. Swerving is not an option as I would hit the oncoming vehicles and the road is slippery.
- I think I scored a direct hit so it would have been painless and sudden for the cat. He was cold and shivering one moment and in cat paradise the next.
- When I drove past the same road on my way to work this morning, the roadkill was still there and was very flat. He actually looks like a cute area rug. The several oncoming vehicles and the torrential rain might have something to do with washing away much of the gore.
Not much of a defense but hey that is how things go in this world.
ciao!
May 30
ErinGarbage, Work
Right now my leg muscles hurt. Every single one. The last time I felt something similar to this was when we watched the E’heads concert. My lower back also hurts but that is something to be expected. The bedroom now stinks from the menthol-laced oil that I applied to ease the pain. 🙁
The reason for the pain was I had to stand up most of the day during the Agile methodology introduction that I co-facilitated. My physique is really not something that can tolerate standing up most of the time. Now I realize that aside from the time that I had willingly sacrificed for the training session, I now have to unwittingly sacrifice some more to the pain.
In retrospect I can say that I regret being the primary facilitator for the training. I don’t like speaking engagements because I am not confident enough to put into words what I am thinking, much less in my non-native language. Thankfully the audience today was very forgiving and the mood was relatively light. Jon who co-facilitated the training with me has me enthralled in his public speaking prowess. He seems very at ease in handling the audience and that is something that I would like to possess someday.
I am looking forward in seeing the feedback as I know this impromptu shepherd has lost some sheep along the day’s journey. But for now I would settle in looking forward to some reprieve from the pain.
Sleep, my mistress, I bid you to claim me tonight in your bosom and provide some relief. Please don’t let that mischievous Cramps worm his way into our union as he will definitely wreck havoc for tomorrow if he gets his way…
ciao!
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