stories from the middle earth press room

yes, getting older is such a drag when you want to have lots of fun.

my sisters, cousins, my sister's bestfriend, Other Half and i celebrated my ate's birthday at IO ktv bar along jupiter st. in makati last night. and i got drunk. i did stupid things that elicited laughter from the bunch. we were a noisy lot.

and i got a f*cking headache today.

and i did not even drink that much alcohol -- not as much as i did 5 years ago, anyway.

and yes, scribbledbabbling, i have a video of you singing that dido song. *evil grin spreading across luthien's face*

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of course, we couldn't help talking about transformers. we would be watching the movie again after the crowd has dissipated. or maybe we would even attempt the impossible and join the crowd. whatever.

i don't care if some people dismissed the film as shallow and empty. i just had a jolly good time watching robots fight and get blown apart. what else can you expect from a movie that is based on a bunch of toys? if i like a thinking movie, i know what to watch and this is NOT it. if i want art film, i'd just raid quiapo for unseen and unheard of movies.

but please, don't diss the people who liked transformers. if you like to be a pseudo film critic, just stick to the movie, not the audience.

defensive bah? hehehehe.

aw gad, my head is killing me. hangover not yet over.

for making an awesome film about the transformers!

i was speechless the whole screening. gad. i can't say anything else but michael bay and the rest of the movie makers (i call the CG people movie makers) are really really good at what they do.

i love optimus prime!!!

i was awestruck by the action sequences and (optimus-prime-and-another-decepticon-combat on the higway was waaaay too cool for school!). basta lahat maganda.

the director's decision of not exposing all the robots in the trailers is a really good move because it leaves the audience wanting for more...atsaka the action scenes are not all in the trailers, unlike some movies na kung ano lang ang nasa trailers yun lang ang maganda.

i would've been crushed if peter cullen was not hired to voice optimus prime. for me his voice was the autobots, enough said. glad that he made the cut. listening to prime brought all the good feelings i had when i was a kid watching the cartoons. there's something about cullen's voice that makes me feel safe -- probably because optimus prime's character makes you feel that way anyway...iba talaga pag narinig mo "autobots, transform!" o kaya "autobots, roll-out!"

kaso ang naalala ko lang na narinig ko, "autobots, fallback!"

sadly, frank welker was not hired to do megatron since accdg. to the movie makers, his voice has aged a lot for the old fans to recognize him. cullen's voice has aged, too, but it was still recognizable as prime. welker was demoted to voicing megatron on the video game. hmpph.

who provided the voice for megatron? hugo weaving. buti naman hindi mala-matrix ang boses nya. they did something to make his voice sound mechanical/alien-ish. but it was not as matining as frank welker's.

i did not hear star scream's annoying screams. so sad.

another thing, it was so funny hearing optimus prime saying "ebay". hahahahahaha! *luthien falls off the bed laughing* who would have thought that optimus prime checks out ebay!

or the web for that matter.

i love how starscream transforms mid-air. he is, i think, an F-22.

i have always thought that it was unfair that autobots were disadvantaged since most of them were cars or land vehicles whereas decepticons can either fly or float on air. in the movie, they are mostly military vehicles like tanks, military choppers, jet fighters, etc.

and megatron is no longer a sissy gun. bwahahahahaha! it would have been too awkward to have starscream pointing megatron (as a gun) at optimus prime. imagine a beautiful CGI-laden movie with a gun as the main antagonist. nyi...

go, watch the movie. i can go an and on about it but it's futile to describe it. go!

sounds gross but this is the only place within the conference area in manila peninsula where i can recharge my laptop. there are no electrical outlets in the lobby where the wifi signal is strong. the best place to stay? in the hotel's restroom. it's not bad as it sounds.

actually, it's quite comfortable. it's also the best place to transcribe my interviews since it's relatively quiet.

one of the most irksome thing that i have to contend with when staking out sources is looking for the best spot where i can easily see sources coming in and out of the conference venue without PR people or assistants waving me away.

i guess i have to get out now. i may miss some action outside.

tried to start it but i guess i'm not seeing any progress...

people thought i was already pregnant...one even had the gall to rub my tummy and ask when is the baby due. gusto kong paduguin ang ilong nila.

"NO. i just got fatter, you idiot!" i wanted to scream.

ergo, i must take this weight loss program seriously.

other half and i bought bikes eons ago as part of our weekend exercise regimen and now they're beginning to look like some art installation at the back of the house. brilliant way to blow a few grand. tsk tsk.

i inquired about gym fees in megamall and -- o boy! -- the amount of money that i would be spending on membership fees can buy me a new PC set-up with intel core 2 and genuine windows vista. *geeky self coming out of luthien's nose*

let's see, if i would go to the gym regularly, i would develop washboard abs that i would fall in love with. baka mamaya pipicturan ko na rin at ilalagay ko sa blog ko at sa friendster pics ko. hahahahahaahahahahaahaha! sounds familiar bah? *insert insane laugh here*

oh dear, i'm beginning to be like sisa na.

i have around a thousand photos here. can't download them in bulk -- egad! i have to download them one-by-one. goodbye free service! *luthien blowing her nose*

and flickr is such a miser when it comes to space allocation. even if the peso is strengthening against the US dollar, $25 is still expensive for me. this is equivalent to my credit cards' annual membership fees. damn.

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speaking of web, just saw the black version of google search.

why the "black google"?

"Black Google Saves Energy

A few months ago, TreeHugger Mark Ontkush wrote a post on his blog EcoIron titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year. The post lays out the following train of thought. “An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts.” Google, which has a white background and gets about “200 million queries a day” could reduce global energy use by 750 Megawatt-hours a year by simply changing the color of its homepage to black. (For more detailed calculations and assumptions check out the original post here.)

In response to this post a black version of Google emerged called Blackle.com. According to Blackle’s homepage at publication time, 4,408.917 Watt hours have been saved by. The site encourages users to “make a difference today [by] … Blackling "energy saving tips" or visit[ing] treehugger.com a great blog dedicated to environmental awareness.” Nice ideas. But how does the search measure up? Very well indeed. Give it a whirl yourself and start saving energy one search at a time. :: Blackle.com"

-- lifted from treehugger.com

 

while i was waiting for my professor (or whoever there was who would sign my form-5), i re-read a copy of PJR Reports in the dept.'s sala about the missing beats.

to the unitiated, the missing beats are: agriculture, science and technology, education, health -- you get the picture.

actually, it has been my frustration -- and i guess my old colleagues' frustration (tama ba, barefoot tennis, rayts?) also -- that there is no room for science journalism in this country. we are subjected to stories that are scientifically incorrect and/or shallow. or subjected to lots of mudslinging stories.

or kris, gretchen or ruffa stories.

i remember reading an article about the brouhaha over the supposedly amoeba-infested waters of boracay due to the alleged faulty sewerage system years ago...the reporter mistakenly identified amoeba as "a kind of bacteria". dear lord, bacteria are prokaryotes wheareas the amoeba is a protozoan -- a eukaryote. from different domains. it's like saying a human (animalia) is "a kind of mushroom" (eumycota). at least humans and fungi are both eukaryotic.

sorry for being OC about this but newspapers are used by students (who do not have access to the internet) as reference materials. they refer to newspapers for additional knowledge about who is the secretary of trade, what is the capital of turkey and other stuff. before the advent of web 1.0, my teachers made us read the papers to increase our stored knowledge.

it's so frustating for me because i am a science journalist. or was. i took at least 24 units of science courses during my undergrad years (hello bio 150, good bye zoo 155!) so i would develop an appreciation of science and make science more palatable to the masses. close to 3 years i tried have my popularized (i.e. layman's science) stories published in mainstream media but i guess they love mudslinging better.

sadly, the philippines is not like the more developed countries where they can afford to run stories on the human genome project or medical stories that readers digest publish. we seldom read see stories in our dailies why the world's weather these days has gone haywire (watch al gore and his power point presentation). that's why we still have mothers who still believe in feeding their children lizards' eggs to cure asthma or use breast milk for sore eyes.

that's why we have science journalists confined only in DOST and DA.

without sounding so nerdy about it, i hope that we could dish out science and technology stories for the masses, like what Time and Newsweek publish.

however, these stories are not sexy and won't sell papers. so my wish is doomed.

if there is one thing that could lure me back to hong kong, then it is...

...no, certainly not the toilets. there are more western-style toilets here than in mainland china. in shanghai, i dreaded going to public toilets because i had to squat while my ass was freezing. however, a tourist should experience urinating in one of these...just for the heck of it...

...no, not the ladies' market. the stuff they sell there are the same as the ones you see in quiapo, divisoria or greenhills. besides, similar items are a lot cheaper in shanghai...

...neither the electronics stores in mongkok are enough reasons to haul my ass back to HK. better go to singapore...

...not even the efficient train system is enough for me to think about going back...

...but i would certainly go back to HK only to eat KFC's honey chicken barbeque. no kidding. see the chicken wings on the right? these may look like ordinary chicken wings but i tell you, this is the best chicken i've tasted from a quick-service restaurant...hmmm...i can't even decide which i liked better, Max's or this?

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speaking of food, Other Half and i tried to eat once again at the legendary Ma Mon Luk along quezon ave. pero i can't figure out what made this noodle soup so special? hindi ako nasasarapan.

iba lang talaga ang taste ko or nag-iba na ang timpla nila ng mami? sorry, hindi ko kasi nakagisnan ang Ma Mon Luk.

while we were waiting for darkness to fall (to see the lights of hong kong), Other Half and i whiled away the time in another mall at victoria peak. i tried the mcdo's chicken salad and it was rather good, coming from a fast food chain ha. i wonder why fast food chains here in the philippines serve blah food...yung yoshinoya sa singapore mas masarap. yung kfc nga lang sa shanghai may pagka-weird.

for HK$22.20, it was not bad and it was quite filling for merrienda.

i also tried the gelato there, which was kinda expensive at HK$45 for two small scoops. i'm not really adventurous when it come to ice cream/sundae/gelato flavors. just had the choco chips and pistachio gelato. bitin, sobra.

after that we spent some time making a fool of ourselves in madame tussauds wax musem. basically, you just take photos of yourselves there with the wax figues of famous people, alive or dead.

idol daw yan ni Other Half. hindi siya matatamhimik kung di namin mapuntahan yung statue nya sa avenue of stars sa tsim sha tsui, kowloon island.

konting pagpupugay sa ex-future mother-in-law ko. hehehe. we have more wacky photos of wax-celebs but they're too embarassing...hehehe.

when we exhausted all possible photo-ops with the waxen figures (and god knows how many hands have touched those), we went back again to the viewing deck to wait for the symphony of lights. this shot was taken when the buildings in downtown HK were just starting to light up.

here is the symphony of lights that we're supposed to see but we're too impatient to wait for that. plus it was getting too crowded there on the deck.

anyway, we took the tram again to go to the bus station that would take us to Central MTR station and then to jordan rd.

next day we went to ocean park. during breakfast i was arguing with Other Half about ocean park vs. disneyland since the latter costs HK$350 (a little over P2,000) -- it was a saturday -- while the older amusement park only costs HK$185 or P1,100. yung savings namin ipang-shopping na lang namin sa mongkok, di ba? hehehe.

actually mas gusto ko muna sa mongkok since it's SHOPPING (at minsan lang ako magyaya ng shopping sa tanan ng buhay ko) and it was nearer pero baka magpatayan kami ng asawa ko di ba kaya ocean park na lang.

buti na lang ocean park ang pinilit ko kesa disneyland dahil:

1) i'm not really a disney kid

2) mahal

3) sabi ng HK OFW (pinay) na nakasabay namin sa cebu pacific pauwi ng pinas, di daw maganda ang disneyland HK kung wala kang kasamang bata, mas maganda at maraming attractions ang ocean park.

so para di sayang ang pera namin, i tried some of the rides.

that's me, sitting alone in one car. takot asawa ko sa rides. *guffaw* you should have seen our photo when we rode the mala-log jam (ng enchanted kingdom) na ride nila (i forgot what's it called). Other Half's screaming face showed pure terror. hahaha. anyway, this roller coaster's highest point is 85 m above sea level.

this is chicken feed compared to what i tried later on.

that, my dear friends, is the abyss. i seldom get terrified (reaaaallly terrified) of a ride but this one is THE ONE that could blow my socks off.

that one is wicked.

to put it simply, the abyss is something that "raises you up and drops you straight down in free fall. making 5 secs seems like a lifetime," according to the theme park's website.

make that 3 lifetimes.

its total height is 185 feet or 20 floors.

that's me, saying my prayers. imagine, freefalling from the 20th floor of a building...

now i can say i am brave.

space shuttle of enchanted? peanuts. hahaha.

sorry, just bear with my gloating. i tried that ride since my husband challenged me and said that i couldn't do it.

...during my wedding vacation, i really made an effort to stay away from newspapers and tv news. if there was a newspaper around, i would read the business page and forget the whole thing. i did not seek it. the rest of the days i ignored the news. it's too stressful, reading news that is.

i never realized that it is possible for you to be out of touch that way, like being on the himalayas without any means of communication to the outside world. what's funny is that i was almost online everyday, even when i was in hong kong, i managed to sneak in a few minutes to check my email.

but still i managed to get out of the loop. ignorance is bliss.

so i was kinda lost when i got back in.

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since there was no cable tv in our hotel in HK, there was only one english language channel we could tune in to. watching the news on that channel was like watching your history teacher doing a rundown of what happened after the pack at biak-na-bato.

was it because i am used to the "excitable" way our news anchors deliver news and the framing of news like it was some kind of drama?

i remember prof. rondina telling us about his experience in graduate school abroad when he showed a recording of saksi (or frontpage before the early evening news on GMA7 became 24 oras) to his class. i can't remember if it was saksi nga.

anyway, when rondina showed the recording to the class, the viewers were wondering what was happening since they could not understand the news as it was delivered in Filipino. they were alarmed and thought something catastrophic happened due to the "excitable" news anchors. it turned out that the anchors were just delivering a run of-the-mill news, something as mundane as a new appointment or something similar.

i remembered this anecdote while i was watching the news about one of HK's trams that got derailed where two got injured and were rushed to the hospital. the news was delivered in a way similar to how a mass commentator would read the marriage banns after the mass...

...then imagine mike enriquez delivering such news -- followed by footages and interviews of bystanders, of the passengers and of the injured themselves as they are wheeled towards the emergency room with matching crying relatives.

watching and reading the news in other countries led me to believe that i'm leading and living an exciting life here in manila and it's probably boring there in HK or singapore. i've read the newspapers in singapore and i remember one issue had a story of how commuters complained of "tardiness" of the efficient bus and railway system. 5 minutes late, it's already a cause for concern for these spoiled singaporeans. i muttered to myself, "come here in manila and probably you wouldn't last a week."

i'm already digressing. but the point is, i don't know if it's because of how we present news or is it because singapore and HK's media are state-controlled (directly or indirectly) so no real news items are written or aired? or life in manila is just truly chaotic that it merits such type of news coverage and delivery?

don't know the real answer to that one and all i know is, for a media practitioner like me, it's unthinkable that i've given up watching and reading the news.

or i may be too stressed that reading and watching the news just adds knotted muscles on my back.

i labored over our hong kong album last night (ordered the prints from digitprint.com.ph and had these delivered yesterday at home) since i've cut out brochures, maps tickets and put these on the album. i've been making "scrapbooks"(literal na scrap talaga yun) for years even before it became the rage with all those pre-fab scrapbook stuff.

ako what i do is naggugupit talaga ako noon (started in gradeschool) ng mga roman letters and pictures from magazines to form words and mga characters from stationeries and mga tickets nilalagay ko sa albums. minsan ang albums ko yung clearbook na nabibili sa school supplies store para mas nalalagyan ko pa ng mga kung anu-ano. kaya nga nagugulat ako sa mga presyo ng binebentang scrapbooks and paraphernalia na yan kasi people can make their scrapbooks without those things. mas interesting pa.

anyway, mawawalan ng business ang scrapbook ek-ek na yan kung mga tao eh ganun ang ginagawa tulad ng ginagawa ko.

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Hong Kong Part II

since we were already by the bay, Other Half decided that we should cross the victoria harbor via the star ferry to reach hong kong island for only HK$2.20 (almost P13).

it was such a short ride -- about 5-10 mins i guess -- that we didn't care if we were on the lower or upper deck of the ferry. when we got to the other side, we started our search for the victoria peak tram station. Other Half was consulting his tourist map (available in airports and any tourist spots for free) and we sort of got lost. or maybe it was not such a good idea to walk since it was far. the cheapskate me told Other Half taxi is too expensive for a sight-seeing trip.

that's the international finance center. we didn't get inside (there's a mall and a free viewing area on top) since we were rushing to see the view from vitoria peak before the sun sets.

and around and 'round we went searching for the tram.

people here do not look "busy-bisihan" and this was shot in HK CBD. very laidback nga eh, sabagay it was a friday afternoon.

and on and on...we went looking for the peak tram...

that's the bank of china building, which according to Fodor's Hong Kong travel guide (we bought days before the trip) has been designed with bad fung-sui in mind...triangles and two antennae on top? baaaaad fung-sui!

the ugly building (in my opinion) in the middle is HSBC, supposedly the most expensive building in HK. i can't see why.

after walking for i don't know how long, we were able to see the tram -- but a different kind of tram. it's the street tram, one of which got derailed during our second day in HK . anyway, we still had to pass by some plaza or garden to reach the peak tram station.

yey! finally arrived there. it gets better as it goes up the mountain.

me, waiting for the tram to "slide" down.

up and up we go...

...finally we arrived.

see that viewing deck? below that are restaurants, shops and shops. basically it's a mall with a viewing deck on top.

voila! worth all the hassle.