it’s now my turn.

i asked Other Half to take me to charlie’s burger in kapitolyo, pasig this saturday night. just to prove a point that we didn’t have to spend P1,300 to eat good burgers here in the metro.

• angus beef burger with fries = P195
• gourmet chicken burger with fries = P200

it’s half the price of johnny rockets burgers.

make sure you’re not wearing an expensive blouse, white shirt or a delicate top when you plan to eat there. i guarantee you that ketchup/mustard/mayonnaise/burger would come dribbling down your chin and onto your chest. the size of the burgers are similar to wham! burgers and brothers burgers. and yes, johnny rockets.

i tried Other Half’s angus beef; it’s quite good. i liked the smokey beef but the gourmet chicken was a little bland for my taste (i like my food to be on the salty side). i want to try their buffalo wings or philly cheese stakes. probably next time when i bring my sister there (her condo is near kapitolyo). Other Half said he wouldn’t go back to charlie’s. he still swears by johnny rockets burgers.

hmm…time to try elbert’s.

i have just hidden myself from my thesis adviser in facebook. i don’t want her to see me wasting idle time on the greatest time waster of all, next to youtube.

magic word: cram!

….si noynoy ang battlecry eh good vs. evil pero walang malinaw na plataporma? oo na, di ka nga magnanakaw pero ano ang gagawin mo?

…lahat ng kandidato pag eleksyon mahirap?

…si gibo tumatakbo under sa partido ng pinakacorrupt na tao ngayon sa pinas kung magaling sya? kung matalino sya, dapat simula pa lang alam nya di sya mananalo kasi kiss of death ang pagtakbo sa partido ni unano.

…si villar eh ayaw umattend ng hearing about the c5 controversy at hindi sagutin ang mga paratang sa kanya? paano na ang pilipinas kung ang presidente mo ganyan, duwag?

…si erap eh nagpupumilit pa? sabi nga sa akin ng asawa ko, pride na lang ang umiiral sa kanya kaya di umatras sa pagtakbo. he doesn’t want the unano sa malacanang to have the last laugh.

…si binay mahirap daw noon. ngayon mayaman na. eh ano naman ang ikinayaman nya eh lawyer sya by training at wala namang business na tulad ng vista land or something. unless he’s estelito mendoza, whose acceptance fee is around P8 million, hindi ka yayaman ng ganyan. so ngayon binay, ano nga uli? galing ka sa mahirap? paano ka yumaman?

…ang kulit ni brother eddie?

…di nadeclare na nuisance kandidate yung—sino nga ba yung councilor whoever ba yun? mas maganda sana tumakbo na lang uli si eddie gil, mas masaya pa.

…si gordon at si bf di ko nakikita?

…di pa sinisisante ni mar ang kanyang campaign manager/taga-gawa ng ads?

Other Half and i went to his province last weekend for his birthday.

we were holed up in my father in law’s library for 3 nights. there i discovered a lot of things that my father in law hoarded but never opened, used nor even touched for years. for at least a decade.

one of them was this portable paper shredder that he brought home from the US in 1994. he never used it. it was still new. imagine, it was just lying there for 16 years. we swiped brought it here in manila because i’ve been eyeing those paper shredders in Office Warehouse. but those blasted things cost at least P5,000.

you just put it on top of the waste bin and voila—office paper shredder.

now i’ve become a shredder maniac. i’ve shredded all of my paper clutter (i.e. old bills that i’ve already scanned, bond papers that have both sides used up, junk mails, etc.) so now i’m looking for some more paper to shred. Other Half warned me not to touch his stuff. hehehe.

a Lopez company sent me this book as a New Year’s gift—which i got just last week. (last year, they gave me the thick book about the history of the now-defunct The Manila Chronicle)

when i was browsing through this book, i suddenly remembered the strange feeling i had when i was crossing EDSA, passing through the ortigas-EDSA overpass…

i never thought Tita Cory would evoke something in me. but seeing all those people lining up the ortigas-edsa walkway going to SEC yesterday made me wonder: what does Tita Cory mean to these people, most of whom weren’t even there in the 1986 revolt at that same spot? what tugged at my guts was sadness, despair of some sort.

i saw photos and videos of people swarming the truck that carried her casket and it was raining confetti all around…

then i knew it was cory magic.

now i can put into one word what i felt that day: despair. because we will never see another mass action again like this. the era of cory magic is over. like what i’ve written here before:

it was also a sign that times are changing. and end of an era. she was a symbol of civil disobedience that led to the toppling of a dictator. people were paying respects to her and at the same time they are saying goodbye to an era when civil disobedience yielded change. her death is like closing a world-changing book. the writing is over and it will now be relegated to a museum of things that have come to pass, never to return…

people are also saying goodbye to somebody who never wanted power but was thrust into it because the country needed a symbol in the darkness.

there will never be like this again, i guess not in my lifetime.

but as i have said, civil disobedience nowadays doesn’t matter anymore. it is now regarded as noise and nothing more.

how many times have we tried to use that civil disobedience? i could not count and yet these have yielded nothing. the devil continues to go about her business, arrogant as ever. reviled by the people who are tired of going out in the streets because people power is gone. it couldn’t move mountains anymore. Tita Cory’s “my people” have turned into a fatalistic lot. we have resigned to our fate. we are now just trying to endure until we die.

the fight is gone and we are now dying a slow and painful death of the spirit. we have no soul, as rizal puts it. we may have snatched one for us 1986 but it slipped away like a thief in the night.

are we now reduced to being zombies, eating the rotten flesh tossed to us by this regime? when will we wake up?

it has come to pass…

—

but of course the Lopezes would give this kind of tribute to her (they were the ones who published this, i think through the abs-cbn foundation or whatever–i have to check the book). without Cory, there would be no abs-cbn as we know it today. correct me if i am wrong but i think it was lorenzo tanada (or wigberto???) who brokered the talks between cory and the lopezes for the return of the sequestered assets. including (if i am right) the much-coveted meralco.

a highschool classmate posted on facebook that he is already old and looking for a bride.

you see, this classmate is the classic good-looking but airheaded guy so he is never short of girlfriends and girls running after him. anyway, his last gf waited 10 years for him to grow up but apparently she got tired and ditched him. and now my classmate has finally realized that he had enough of sowing wild oats and is ready to settle down. problem is all the good ones are gone.

i chatted with another classmate yesterday about this and we concluded that it’s just too sad for those who are trapped in that peter pan syndrome. kasi when they finally emerge from that, they may look around and realize that they can’t get back the one who got away. and in the end they would, you know, just settle.

i have this 25-30 theory. a girl may feel like she’s ready to settle down at 25 but for guys it’s 30. so para hindi magsalisi sila, a girl has to be younger by 5 years. but it’s funny that this theory does not apply to my friends. even to me.

my ate’s guy barkada (who got married 2 years ago) thinks she’s sooo into her career that’s why she’s still unmarried. he once texted her that “without your car, your house, your salary, your job—what are you?” or something to that effect. she laughed. my sister said, “hindi nya kasi matanggap yung sagot ko na wala pa kasi akong aasawahin. kaya trabaho lang ako at nageenjoy sa life dahil hindi ko pa nakikita ang the one. eh anong gusto nya, mag-mope ako?”

kasi she said she doesn’t want to just settle. she has seen that a lot of her peers just settled and she already jumped to the conclusion that they aren’t that really blissfully happy—just satisfied—compared with people who married their mad love.

despite appearances, my sister is still a stupid romantic idiot. still waiting for that mad love.

ah mad love…we know somebody who has been carrying this mad love for 15 years. what’s crazy about it is that she just realized it. my classmate and i discussed her and my classmate said the girl thought the mad love was a non-issue so she just cast it aside and went about her business. but then when she suddenly had an epiphany, she realized it was too late—she really hasn’t moved on yet. she should have dealt with the issue before she got married. now she is carrying this burden. we arrived at a conclusion that the girl has to settle the issue and close the book, for her sanity’s sake, or else she would still be harboring this for the next 15 years or so.

the tragic thing here is that the guy (the object of the girl’s mad love) doesn’t know about it.

hahaha. talk about tragedy.

ah, yan ang mahirap sa mga highschool classmates. puro chismis. =)

two weeks ago, i did some purging inside my home office.

i finished these books last year

so i’m passing this on to others and make room for the new books i have to finish:

i cleaned out my bedside table where tons of old magazines piled up and sorted out the ones i have to finish and the ones i have to sell or give away.

but i will hold on to these:

for posterity’s sake. because far eastern economic review is no more.

…when it’s already too late.

and because of it, i may have lost a good friend forever.

ah…the tv networks and radio stations.

look at the number of horrible political ads. those networks would be reaping the rewards of subjecting us to nauseating ads. i often seek refuge from my ipod that i plug into my car stereo just to get away from the “kala mo konyo…” ad and the noynoy ad that sounds like someone has died again.

we’ll see by april 15 how the networks and radio stations performed in the first quarter (deadline for listed companies’ earnings report).

—

been chatting with a colleague. she told me that a network may see some of its reporters, editors or whatever leave by this year. management is poised to implement the inter-unit “integration”, which would require people from TV and other units to also write for the web. “hindi yung kung kelan lang nila gusto,” she said.

hmm…pirating season is on. woohoo!

…no word about that singapore trip. *sigh* deadline was yesterday.

still stuck with closing the next day’s issue by my lonesome. that’s why i finish at 10 pm. i sleep at 2 am. wake up at 10 am. leave for work at 1.30 pm. repeat.

that’s why i cannot tolerate whingeing and any form of emo-ness from anybody these days.

think i should cut back on my FB hours and do more offline reading. but social life now consists of avatars and conversations through fiber optics…

ah, now i know why editors have liquors stashed somewhere in the newsroom.