Annika's Birthday

The AUHC Video

2008-11-21T00:12:00.002+08:00

Asian Underwater Hockey Competition Plug from fiona borres on Vimeo.

The guys from the Underwater Hockey club are so talented and so diverse. Jay Abello, who hails from Bacolod, is a film director and got his group to produce this 30-sec. TVC for the 2nd Asian Underwater Hockey Championships. Now everyone wants to see the unedited footage.

The AUHC starts tomorrow and we've all been practicing for over a month now. Results to follow!

Black Tie Brawl

2008-10-26T22:51:00.004+08:00

Tyrone and I were invited to the Black Tie Brawl last October 18th. Now ordinarily, I would never be able to drag Tyrone to any kind of social event. The draw of the BTB though, is that it's eight Mixed Martial Arts fights thrown in with a five-course dinner at the Hyatt Hotel and Casino. There must be some bloodlust in my son, because he readily agreed to go to the fights with me.

The BTB was a dress-up event, so a few days before, Ty and I went off to find a suit for him. We found one in our first stop - The Landmark. On the third floor kids section, we found a blue suit for P1,980. Add in a few pesos more to get it cut the right length and we had a great deal! This is what we looked like before heading off to the Hyatt:

At the event, quite a few people were actually wearing tuxedos! It's a good thing that Tyrone and I dressed up. T was actually of the opinion that there might be a few people in jeans with jackets, but actually there were hardly any dressed down attendees. If anything, my light grey suit was under-dressed, a fashion faux pas!

We sat at a table with guys from IPVG, as I had been invited by Enrique Gonzalez, their president. We decided to put up a small betting pool, with the pot going to whoever had the most number of correct guesses as to who would win each of the eight fights. Tyrone and I could only get 3 of 8, less than a 50:50 rate! The winner was Rodney Hall, who is in the Sports Betting area and got 8 of 8 correct. I guess his abilities to spot winners extends even to sports he is unfamiliar with.

Valdes Bonding at the O3

2008-08-03T18:31:00.003+08:00

"I love it when a plan comes together!"
- Col. John "Hannibal" Smith from the A-Team

I just know yesterday is gonna be one of the highlights of 2008 for all of us. Our O3 adventure turned out fantastic, with a 3rd place finish among the relay teams.

We're all still on Cloud Nine, but just to bring us back down to earth, perhaps it is also best to clarify how we got our podium finish.

First off, only 7 teams registered for the Relay O3, and then, only 5 actually showed up.

The first place Powerade Team was unbeatable. They had the Philippine Long Distance swimming champion, who did the 4k swim in about 48 minutes, then a Tour of Luzon biker for the 120k ride and finally a champion marathoner for the 30k run. Their total time of 6:05 was so fast that they caught up with the overall O3 winner, Mathieu O'Halloran, who was flagged off 30 minutes ahead of the Relay and finished on his own in 6:36.

So really only 4 teams were vying for 2nd and 3rd. Then the two other teams actually got DQ'd, the Cagayan de Oro Team because their swimmer started with the O3 pack instead of with the Relay start, and the Happy Feet Team because, unfortunately, their biker had a crash as she neared the finish.

So that left Team Valdes vs. the Ocean Adventure Team, who all turned out to be pretty young and athletic guys. Ocean Adventure won 2nd place with a strong 8:20 time, a good 48 minutes ahead of us, with each of their team members winning against us individually: their swimmer finished in 1:09 vs. my 1:21, their biker did 4:01 vs. Robin's 4:15 and their runner clocked 3:09 vs. Tessa's 3:31.

I think Robin could have potentially matched or beaten their biker, but he had a bike crash in Tagaytay a week ago and was still nursing bruised ribs and hips. We're just glad that he was able to make it to Subic. Tessa's best 10k is already sub one hour, so the 3:09 is within her reach. As for me, 1:21 is the fastest and longest I've ever swam, so a 1:09 seems pretty far away.

Well, win or lose, we did have loads of fun, especially with Dave, Mona and the kids in our support group. Lots of pictures will be loaded up on our Multiply sites soon.

The official race results are here. Our official times are:
Swim 4k 1:21:01
Bike 120k 4:15:56
Run 30k 3:31:10
Total 9:08:07

47 is the new 30 = O3

2008-07-06T22:00:00.001+08:00

How strange it feels to get into one's late 40's. A few days ago, I could still legitimately call myself "mid-40's." But now a new plateau has been reached and my math skills tell me I should be rounding up rather than down.

One consoling text was received from my bro, Robin, who noted that "47 is the new 30." Well, let's just hope I can continue to keep up with the many tireless thirtysomethings in the underwater hockey games.

Perhaps in "celebration" of this latest milestone, I started training today for the upcoming O3 triathlon. The official race name is the ITU O3 Asian Long Distance Triathlon and it is scheduled for August 2, 2008 in Subic Bay, just 27 days away.

All this is to help T with her preparations for the New York Marathon in November. As part of her training for that 42k run, today she ran 21k in the Manila Half Marathon, finishing in a strong 2:13. Her coach, Ani, says she should be scaling up to the 30k level by August, so the O3 is perfectly timed.

Unfortunately for me, the O3 is a triathlon, so for T to run the 30k leg, she first needs teammates to do the 4k swim and the 120k bike. Robin is a very good biker and has been pressed to duty to take care of the 120k bike.

That leaves the challenging swim leg, which is described as:

O3: Two 2km loops (Cut-off: 2 hours & 45 minutes, 8:45AM )
Description: Clockwise direction with a surf-run each loop. The swim course will be marked with buoy lines. Kayaks will be deployed to guide some of the swimmers or provide safety assistance. A C-shaped buoy line will be located offshore. The distance from swim exit to transition is 50m, beaches and path with shower.

Today I swam 1.5k at the Polo pool, with no waves and with 30-sec breathers every 500m. I'm quite far from getting to 4k. But I guess that's what goals are for.

Robin, of course, quipped that he and Tessa may not even get to start their races in the event I don't finish the 4k! Ah, now that's a consoling thought!

A Long Time Ago in a Tunnel Far Far Away

2008-07-05T14:30:00.002+08:00

During our HavItAll scuba weekend, Ichay B and I were reminiscing about our scuba diving days in the eighties. We remembered one near accident we had inside the Mapating Cave, which is a tough cave dive complicated by its deep depth.

Not surprisingly, we had different recollections of the near-25-year-old event. The third person in the cave, Jingjing T, couldn't be reached by cellphone but we all did get to contact each other weeks later.

Here are the e-mails and the three versions:

To: Jingjing
From: Dennis

As I recall that dive from 20 years ago, we were all in the short tunnel in Mapating - me in front, followed by you and Ichay. Somehow, I remember looking back (for what reason I cannot recall) and then seeing Ichay and you moving into a buddy-breathing position.

However, you couldn't get your reg into her mouth. When I looked closer, I saw that her reg's mouthpiece was still in her mouth! Somehow, her reg and mouthpiece had separated in the cave! I remember sticking my finger into the mouthpiece hole, still in Ichay's mouth, and flicking it off with my finger. Then I gave her my reg and I went for my octopus.

Once we were both breathing again, we moved to the cave mouth, I gave her the octopus and I got my own reg back, then we made our ascent with you following closely behind.

In Ichay's version, she recalls that she started buddy breathing with you in the short tunnel and that I took over for some (unrecalled) reason.

-------

To: Dennis
From: Jingjing

Well, for my version of the story...
Before the dive, Ichay and I had an agreement that since we were buddies, that we would do the buddy breathe just in case anyone was low on air during the deco stop.

What I remember is that we just got out of the cave and before our ascent, Ichay pulls my reg from my mouth. I obliged because I had expected it. But I wondered why it came a bit too soon. Anyway, so we calmly moved into the buddy breathing position. I didn't notice she had her other mouthpiece still in her mouth. That's why she had water every time she inhaled and couldn't get enough air. I thought she was breathing well. After she took two breaths, I was expecting my reg back but she wouldn't give it back yet. I waited another 2 breaths and before the situation got worse, you came along. You saved both our lives from damage at that point. We never thanked you. Thanks!

-------

To: Jingjing
From: Dennis

How galing your memory. My recollection has got to be wrong then since I must've sensed you both struggling with the reg - that's the reason I must've looked back. The only question is whether we were still in the short tunnel or already in the entrance.

And, of course, the craziest question of all - how did Ichay's reg get separated from her mouthpiece in the first place???

-------

To: Dennis
From: Ichay

My and Jing's versions match. Dennis, you're not much older than us ha! :)

To add on to Jing's version- we were in the short tunnel, Dennis was ahead, I was next, then Jing. I started breathing water and immediately, there was a sharp and intense pain - must be the lack of air at 150 feet. When I was at the verge of blacking out from the pain, I just had enough sense to think that I needed air so I turned around because Dennis was too far ahead and saw Jing's silhouette (the light from end of the tunnel was several meters behind her). I grabbed for the general direction of her mouth. At this point, everything was a blur and luckily, my hand landed on her reg. Until now I wonder what would have happened if my hand missed Jing's reg.

I must have not been thinking well anymore because I realized after the dive that I never gave Jing back her reg. Sorry Jing!!! That's when Dennis came.

So Dennis, yes. Thanks for saving Jing and I! :)

And as to why my mouthpiece came off, I have no idea.

-------

Funny how a single event can have multiple shades of memory. Very Rashomon.

The reason Ichay never got into any trouble, of course, had nothing to do with me. It's because she has six toes! (As blogged by her sister here.)

Her Dad once told me that because of this, "maswerte si Ichay." And true enough, she has always been a lucky person.

Fourteen Years

2008-06-27T00:20:00.005+08:00

June 24th was our 14th wedding anniversary. T and I have come a long way from marching down the aisle of the Santuario de San Antonio, with a long-haired Afghan hound as part of the entourage. Funny how it's the little details that I remember.

The morning of the wedding, my Mom woke me up with a frantic phone call. "Dennis, is there a dog in your wedding?"

"What? Of course not, Mom. Why would we have a dog in the wedding?"

"Well, I'm looking at the entourage list and it says right here, D-O-G."

"Oh that must be a typo or something. It's probably a code from the bridal consultants. D-Oh-6 or some crazy thing like that. Don't worry about it."

Of course, T had never told me about the dog. Apparently one day about a month before the wedding, she'd been walking in Urdaneta Village and saw Lito and Kim Camacho (this was way before his Secretary of Finance stint) walking their Afghan hounds.

She quickly convinced Lito to lend her the dog for our medieval-themed wedding. Their ten-year-old daughter Bea became a last-minute additional bridesmaid (to control the dog!). When designer Inno Sotto's staff presented me the additional bill for Bea's gown, I still remember saying, "What's this for?" And T snatched the invoice and said, "Oh never mind, it's a surprise for you. Just pay it."

So on the evening of the wedding, there I am at the foot of the altar watching everyone walk slowly up the aisle, the violin strains of Pachelbel's Canon providing a medieval ambiance. Suddenly I see this beautiful hound bouncing up the aisle, led from behind by a young girl (I'd never seen before).

In my mind, the only thing I can think of is, "Oh my God. On my wedding day, I lied to my Mom."

So with that intro, I must say it's been a remarkably interesting fourteen years. These days it's no less subdued, especially on T's part. The costumes continue to be outre, the wigs outlandish, the accessories oversize.

(This photo is from our anniversary dinner at Azu Thai, the Gamboa's new restaurant at the Milky Way Building. T's necklace was a gift from my Mom.)

Thing is though, we don't have any dogs. But things do come full circle. Annika is ten now and she's been asking for one.

P.S. I was looking through our old wedding albums and came across this photo, which includes the very svelte Gigi and the alluring Rosan. Very worth posting.

Fathers' Day at the Shang

2008-06-15T23:22:00.008+08:00

Today is Fathers' Day and I spent most of it in a business lunch with some foreign visitors. Ironically enough, just outside the Shang's Inagiku restaurant was a small exhibit celebrating the day. The sign says,

"A Tribute to Fathers"
Captured moments of distinguished men in the role they play best ... fathers.
June 13 - July 6, 2008
Makati Shangri-La

The exhibit featured a framed photo of a bunch of different fathers, all from pictures taken by their kids. Thanks to T and her good friend, J, who works with the hotel, my photo was deemed fit to join the exhibit.

We decided to submit a photo taken by Tyrone when we stayed at the Sangat Island Reserve in April this year. Funny but I just realized that I never blogged about that trip. All I did was post our pictures in Multiply. The caption under my photo says,

"a photo taken by Tyrone on a scuba diving trip in Coron, Palawan"

That was a fun trip, a continuation of the annual Father-Son Trips that Bryan and I used to do when he was younger. Sangat isn't a plush place; in fact, it's quite basic in amenities (although they did have wireless connectivity at the resort's bar). For me, its key attribute is its proximity to the ten or so Japanese World War II wrecks in Coron Bay and Busuanga Island.

Ty and I got to dive six of the wrecks: Tangat, Kogyo maru, Irako, Taiei maru, Akitsushima and Olympia maru. Actually Tyrone skipped the Irako as that was a deep dive, and the dive guide and I penetrated into the ship's kitchen at 113 feet. The wrecks and Coron Bay have lately been getting a lot of good press. Hopefully that will improve the tourism numbers of the area.

As can be seen from this photo alone though, it was a good bonding trip for both of us. And Ty is clearly learning to frame his photo subjects properly. Some good thoughts to take away from the exhibit ... when I should be home with the kids and not negotiating contracts.

An Old Hockey Picture from Marilen

2008-06-13T22:05:00.006+08:00

In our underwater hockey group, the "vets" are those players who have been playing since the early 90's, when the Philippine Underwater Hockey Confederation or PUHC was formed. There are also those who've been playing since the 80's, of course, during the Jurassic, pre-hockey Period when we were all U.P. Divers.

Marilen Carpio recently sent this blast from the past, a hockey picture from September 1989. From L-R, that's me, Marilen, Gigi Santos, Martin Reyes, Toti Turalba, Freddie Reyes (Martin's brother), Jingjing Llamas and my brother Dave.

How time flies! Gigi looks like Marcie, the friend of Peppermint Patty in Peanuts. Toti looks like a boy and now he and Jing are married with two kids. And we all miss Martin, who passed away a few years ago.

The funny thing is that this is probably the only hockey game I played in 1989. I left Manila in 1988 to take my MBA. In between the two years, I got a summer job working for NutraSweet. What I did that summer was to fax (no e-mails yet) John Concepcion in Manila and talk about launching a diet version of Sarsi.

That project worked out pretty well because at the end of the summer, NutraSweet sent me to Manila with another manager to finalize the launch plans for Diet Sarsi. I was only in town for about five days, but obviously I found time to squeeze in a hockey game one night. I guess that's why Marilen describes me in the photo as "visiting."

I ended up working for NutraSweet until 1996, during which time I didn't get to play any hockey at all because they stationed me in Chicago, then Singapore, then Hong Kong and finally in Manila when T and I got married in 1994. Gosh, indeed how time flies!

A Visit to the Rainbow Warrior

2008-06-02T00:28:00.001+08:00

OK, here's a good debate. On the face of it, "Quit Coal" seems like something we can all agree with. Even the totally uninformed must have some awareness of "global warming," "Al Gore," "clean energy" and the hundreds of buzzwords and issues surrounding climate change.

One of the best articles I've read on the issue was in National Geographic, entitled "The High Cost of Cheap Coal." Here are a couple of choice quotes from that issue:

Coal-burning power plants ... supply the United States with half its electricity. They also emit a stew of damaging substances, including sulfur dioxide—a major cause of acid rain—and mercury. And they gush as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as America's cars, trucks, buses, and planes combined.

For the past 15 years U.S. utilities needing to add power have mainly built plants that burn natural gas, a relatively clean fuel. But a near tripling of natural gas prices in the past seven years has idled many gas-fired plants and put a damper on new construction. Neither nuclear energy nor alternative sources such as wind and solar seem likely to meet the demand for electricity.

"Aye, there's the rub," as Hamlet debated with himself: Coal is bad, yes, but other sources of electricity are more expensive. And given the current national debate on the already high electricity prices in our country, majority of which is coal-derived, clearly the issue is not easy to resolve.

So on a sunny Sunday, T and I decided to go and visit the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of Greenpeace's "Quit Coal" efforts in the Philippines. We may not have the solutions, but we can at least listen to what the vanguards of alternative energy have to say.

Trouble is we came late and so didn't get to fully hear Greenpeace's solutions. Looking around, the crew seemed just like you and me and not the fanatic, tree-hugging vegans that one might expect from their anti-big business exploits. And yet, there on deck were those massively powered rubber dinghies that Greenpeace puts to such media savvy use, zipping around international waters buzzing Japanese whalers and such.

For me, Greenpeace is on the fringe of these debates. Does painting "Quit Coal" on the side of a freighter resolve the issue? Wouldn't a contribution to research on how to make alternative energy cheaper be a better way to resolve the debate?

Still the afternoon is pleasant enough. There's Dave the Dolphin gracing the ship's bow, always a good spot for a photo op.

And there are a lot of students aboard, some probably just getting their first thoughts centered on this Gordian knot called energy. I just hope they keep an open mind towards the myriad solutions that are out there.

Athena and T for Met Tathione

2008-06-01T23:16:00.000+08:00

Looks like the Met Tathione wars are escalating. (And I don't even know what the product does!)

Anyway, T is on one of their billboards. Here it is, on the corner of Quezon Blvd. and EDSA. (I got quite a few motorists angrily blowing their horns at me as I stopped to take this shot with my Nokia.)

T also just recorded this TVC 15 for Met Tathione. The maids said they saw it on a GMA show tonight, so it is airing already.

Not to be outdone, Athena decided to record her own version. Unfortunately it's only a sound clip, so to listen you'll need to visit my Multiply site.

Post update:
There seem to be some Blogger video issues, so here is the same clip via YouTube:

A Time Capsule for T

2008-05-26T23:20:00.004+08:00

About a month ago, T's MacBook crashed. A hard disk failure can be like a death in the family especially when, as in T's case, her last backup was from a year ago. (Of course, the lack of backups was my fault, but I won't get into all that.)

Here's part of T's Inquirer column about her Mac crash:

Parting with my cyber memories
By Tessa Prieto-Valdes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:16:00 04/27/2008
MANILA, Philippines - Lost in cyberspace, I have a year’s worth of digital photos and files waiting to be retrieved hopefully by some computer geek. Just last week, my iMac’s hard disk crashed. When the screen went blank, my electronic life flashed before my eyes! But as with any loss, I’ve learned to “just let it go!” To help me move on, this week I want to write about cleansing, both in the real and cyber worlds.
I had failed to back up my files, so my first call was to Mac genius Elbert Cuenca. I went to visit him in his superb restaurant, Elbert’s Steak Room at Unit 3-A, an almost hidden walk up the side stairs of the Sagittarius Building at 111 H.V. De la Costa St. in Salcedo Village, Makati. If you’re lost, call 3393363 or make reservations at www.steakroom.com.

Unfortunately not even Elbert could save the disk. All T had done was initiate the Shut Down procedure and then closed the MacBook cover. Elbert said that wasn't the cause, but who really knows with computer gremlins?

MacBooks are equipped with SATA hard disks, which have a small failure rate. Worse, when a crash occurs, the SATA drives have a rep as being unrecoverable. All this was explained by the techies at Ynzal and Xyon Systems, where we sent the hard disk for any possible Lazarus effects. They suggested sending the hard disk to the U.S. for clean room recovery, but the price tag on that is $2,000. Hmmm. Luckily, T said no.

After I got her new hard disk installed, I decided to also get a Time Capsule for the house. I first read about TC from David Pogue's column, Pogue's Post, in the New York Times (which unfortunately came out two weeks after the crash).

TC backs up a computer automatically, constantly and wirelessly. I named the machine Yellos Base, after one of Tyrone's Internet code names. YB does a backup of T's Mac every hour, on the hour. At the end of the day, it saves one version for the day. It does the same at the end of the month.

In the event of a hard disk failure or if T wanted to find a file she had previously deleted, all she'd have to do would be to start up Time Machine. The display would show a space continuum with all the backup versions lined up. When she finds what she's looking for, she simply clicks Restore.

At home, YB is not a one-trick pony. It's connected to the main internet cable and acts as a wireless router to connect Tyrone's, Annika's, Tessa's and my computers together. So all our computers are now backed up regularly. Of course, true disaster-recovery pros would still scoff, since our backups are not stored offsite, but hey, these aren't the Bangko Sentral's records.

Also when we have guests who want to connect to the web, they can easily do that since YB acts as a wireless hub. Why talk when we can just check each others' Facebook accounts from across the table? That's what I call cloud socializing!

Garage Sale

2008-05-23T21:27:00.002+08:00

I never thought a garage sale was a bloggable event, but apparently, T's garage sale made the blogosphere. As always, it was another of her charity fundraisers together with her Assumption Batch 81 classmates.

I was just amazed at the whole production, from the posters to publicize the event all the way to the security guards to - what? Guard against shoplifters?

I also found out that in Forbes, you can't just have a garage sale. You have to notify the association and, I love this, pay a garage sale fee. It's all of P50 so I don't even know what this covers.

The complete post, including great photos of the stuff that was sold, is here.

Kids are coming!

2008-05-19T20:56:00.003+08:00

I can hardly wait...

P.S. Thanks to Meyan's blog for introducing me to Daisypath.com.

A Mom's Day Surprise

2008-05-14T22:13:00.002+08:00

On Mother's Day, I found myself lounging around the Polo pool with the rest of the Valdeses - a laid back way of celebrating the day. Suddenly my cell rang. Joey Campillo, an old friend I hadn't seen in ages, was asking where I was. Minutes later, he was walking towards our cabana.

That's when I noticed there was a wide-brimmed hat bobbing up and down behind him. T was back from Tubbataha one day early! She had enlisted Joey's help to be able to sneak up on all of us.

It was such a cool Mom's Day surprise, especially since all the kids are in Oz and the house has been empty.

Tubbataha weather had turned bad on their last day, so they had come back a day early. More photos of their trip are on Vina M's Multiply site
and will eventually be on Cris H's Multiply site, when our fave photog gets the energy to post them. This photo by Cris is a good example of the great viz they had during their week there.

T's early return without advance warning to me generated a lot of funny comments. The best was from her Tita M, who noted, "You're lucky. Many wives would be the ones who are surprised."

Acquire Night

2008-05-08T23:55:00.002+08:00

Over the past decade, four friends and I have been playing Acquire. We average four nights a year when we all get together at someone's home and play three games for the night.

Total accumulated winnings for the evening determine the winner and runner-up, who then share our prize pool in a 2:1 ratio. The pool is pretty small, P500 each plus fines for latecomers and for the last to arrive. The pool just brings a bit of excitement to the game.

The complete rules for Acquire are here.

We've been playing so long that when we first started, the game looked like this, with a Dracula-type banker on the box cover. (It was produced by 3M, the Scotch tape guys. The modern version above was developed by Hasbro.)

On Acquire Nights, we bring our wives, who gossip on their side of the table while the five of us play and chat on ours. (Note that I'm being politically incorrect by saying the women "gossip" while we "chat," as if our talk was any more substantive than theirs.)

Over the decade, four of the five of us have remained with the same spouse, which is a pretty good batting average for Manila. Also, about five children have been added in that decade, which is a pretty low figure for the country.

Acquire was invented by a board game designer named Sid Sackson in the '60's (interesting job title). Sackson also collected games and when he died (in 2002), had over 18,000 in his collection. As a nice touch, when Hasbro updated the game, they named one of the corporations Sackson (although they also used it for the cheapest corporation, which is kind of a cheap shot).

There are various websites that talk about the history of the game, its rules, variations, tournaments and all sorts of Acquire trivia. Naturally I read through it all, especially since there's nothing to do when nobody else is at home.

The point of all this is that we had an Acquire Night last night and I just now figured out we've been doing something wrong all this time. We've always dealt each other $5,000, and just tonight I read the exact rule:

Each player begins the game with $6000 in cash ($1000 x 4, $500 x 3, $100 x 5) and six tiles picked at random for their starting racks.

Oops, time to return all bets!

Athena's Birthday

2008-05-05T23:20:00.001+08:00

I called her up this morning. When it's your third birthday, it's important to get a call from Daddy.

We had a fairly long conversation too, as discussions with three-year-olds go. She was babbling away and in the back, I could hear Yaya Juvy instructing her, "Thank you, Daddy," "I love you, Daddy," and finally "Bye-bye, Daddy."

All the kids are in Oz with their Prieto grandfolks; T left yesterday for a week of scuba diving in Tubbataha... the house is dark, hot and humid. To keep myself occupied, I played 22 holes of golf and swam a kilometer yesterday and then swam another today.

At home, it's the second round of mechado and binagoongan, but one hardly cares when you get home from the office past ten. And anyway afterwards, there's this blog to keep me occupied!

Why We Should Scrutinize Our Meralco Bills

2008-05-02T20:54:00.003+08:00

I've often been amazed by our electric bill, which makes me feel like I might have an entire barangay surreptitiously connected to my meter or something. Last summer, for instance, T and the kids were all in the U.S. for a month. So I decided to "minimize my carbon footprint." At the end of a month of April's heat and darkness, our bill was still over Php 30k.

Here's a classic story of a guy with a high electric bill who should have bothered to look into it, from Agence France Presse:

AMSTETTEN, Austria (AFP) — A former tenant in Austria's "house of horrors" ... could have pointed to the secret dungeon where a woman was held as a sex slave by her father for 24 years, in an interview published Friday.

Sepp Leitner told the daily Die Presse he had come eerily close to discovering the windowless prison a decade ago. Leitner lived for four years in a small flat on the ground floor immediately above the cellar in the 1990s. He said he could never understand why his electricity bill was so high, considering he was frequently absent and did not even have a washing machine.

Leitner only realised this month after the case emerged that he was paying the utility costs for the underground prison as well, which had an elaborate security system installed by owner Josef Fritzl, a former electrician.

"If I'd been a bit more persistent and not let it go until the mystery of the high electricity consumption had been resolved, perhaps we'd have found out about the dungeon earlier," Leitner said.

This month, Ty, Annika and Athens are all in Oz with their grandparents. Only T and I are home, but she leaves for a week of diving in Tubbataha on Sunday, while I hold the proverbial fort. With the lights and the aircon shut off...

You Can HAVitALL!

2008-05-01T12:53:00.007+08:00

It's not often that T's "SE" (social events) stuff can actually be fun, but it was when HAVitALL multivitamins paid for us plus six friends to have a scuba weekend at Dive Solana.

We ended up inviting u/w hockey players aka the Solana Six (although the rest of the group who didn't get to sign up called us the Solana Seniors). All our pix are on our Multiply sites, so you need to click here to see them.

Here's what Tessa had to say about the weekend in her Inquirer.net column:

New challenges

The newest multivitamin in the market, HAVitALL, has been actively promoting their product by inviting friends to take on new challenges. The invitation was a marvel of cute packaging, encouraging me to take up a new activity, like surfing, karting or even pottery making. Although I already scuba dive, I chose this activity so that I could bring along my husband, Dennis, and several of his friends from underwater hockey.

Dive Solana was our chosen resort, because of their friendly service and homey accommodations. In between the dives, we visited with agency bigwig Ichay Bulaong, who was spending her weekend on a personal social responsibility project with her family and friends—to help paint an underwater mural on the fence of the San Teodoro Elementary School in Barangay Mabini. The project organizer, Sandy Hammet, noted that the mural painting was part of Project Utay Utay, the barangay’s environmental initiative.

It’s great to see how many Pinoys find different ways of helping their communities. For me and the underwater hockey group, it was a great way to spend our HAVitALL weekend. Indeed, good deeds are cleansing for the soul!

Cross-posting from Multiply to Blogger to Facebook...

2008-04-11T20:28:00.001+08:00

Amazing. FB has an app called My Blogs, which imports postings from any blog URL. So I can write this in Multiply, which would then cross-post to Blogger and finally be grabbed by FB.

What's all that about? Why have so many ways for Google Ads to be displayed? It's really amazing how Google's hegemony has completely changed the world.

For me, the best thing about FB has been Scrabulous. The other apps don't really hold my attention, although Text Twirl is promising.

Multiply on the other hand, is good for posting pix. It's photo loader is so much better than sites like Kodak Gallery. So I think I'm gonna be loading more pix on Multiply than the latter.

The other thing I like about Multiply is the polling thing. This way, I can see that 3 people read one of my posts and bothered to vote. Ha, ha.

As for Blogger, it's claim to fame is that it is still a better blog template than Multiply or any other site I've visited. Plus, since I've been blogging on that since 2004, it has all my content in its archives already. I also like the Preview function, which allows me to see if a photo is properly placed on the site or not.

With all this digital dallying, it's a wonder I find any time to go to the beach and hang out with the kids...

Whatever happened to March?

2008-04-10T00:23:00.003+08:00

I blinked. And March was gone.

How funny that life can suddenly speed up and just like that, the blog gets de-prioritized. I guess Holy Week took up more time than its actual 7 days.

This image is my favorite from March. Tyrone and Annika walking on the beach in Surfers Paradise, on our way to body surf. We spent 11 beautiful days in Oz - great bonding time with T and the kids.

The pix are all here. Multiply has the best photo uploading software, so now I am uploading photos there rather than Kodak Gallery.

I'll post more about Oz when I have time this weekend...

Annika's 10th Birthday

2008-02-22T21:37:00.004+08:00

Annika's Birthday Party last January 19 was a dance party. Dance obviously is not one of my passions, so I'll quote from Tessa's Inquirer column of Sunday, February 24, to describe it:

"The freedom of expression in dance is liberating. I’m so hooked on the series, “So You Think You Can Dance.” In fact, for my eldest daughter Annika’s tenth birthday party, we chose a dance theme. As she enters her pre-teen years, Annika and I have started enjoying more girly activities together.

As with any party, preparations start with the invitation itself. Talented graphics couple Norman and Mye Cruz of Adworks (tel. 688-0085 or e-mail adworksgrfx@yahoo.com) artistically creates both the invitations and the giveaways; always perfectly done despite the limited time I give them. This creative duo does everything from wedding invitations, baptisms, birthdays and debuts. For an artistic twist to your own invitations, check out Adworks and have a really personalized and wonderful memento made.

Once the invitations and giveaways are settled, my next appointment is at Cupcakes by Sonja (tel. 856-0308 or e-mail at socampo77@mac.com) in Serendra. For two birthdays in a row, Sonja Ocampo has made Annika’s cake along with a smaller version for Athena. And so all the kids get a bite of the delicious cake, there are matching cupcakes for all to enjoy.

And what’s a dance party without dancers! Dance sport champion Ednah Ledesma, one of the world’s best ballroom dancers, was our very special performer. Ednah had training in almost all dance varieties from ballet, jazz and hip-hop, but not ballroom, until entering the sport in 1997. Her performance was graciously captivating.

To date, Ednah has won over 5 major titles, including the championship in the prestigious Senior Latin Division of the Blackpool Competition in 2005. To those in the know, this is considered the Holy Grail of Dance Sports, held annually in England.

At the Ginajane Grey Dance Show last year, Ednah did a Latin Tango number with her partner Cecil Go. In her own show last month at the Music Museum, she showed off her skills accompanied by other dance sport champions. Entitled “Adventures of Dancing with The Champions 2,” the show’s theme was Hollywood Silver Screen musical scores. The show featured celebrity guest performer Regine Tolentino reprising the role of Catherine Zeta Jones in Chicago.

After watching the highly entertaining show, I congratulated my Assumptionista friend and Dance Sport Champion Anna Marie Periquet for her action-packed samba with heart-stopping stunts, performed to the theme of Mission Impossible. She was so kind to reprise her act for Annika’s party at Bykes Café, along with Ednah’s Catwoman number and a special Cheetah Girls dance by Margie dela Rama.

To those who want to venture into the exciting world of dance, Ednah gives lessons at Studio 116 at 116 Building, V.A. Rufino Street, Legaspi Village, Makati City (tel. 813-1549 or 0917-628-2477). I will be taking lessons soon, but honestly, I am just excited to try on a Catwoman costume and other outfits.

Adding to the high-energy at Annika’s party was the break dancing of the hip-hop group, All-Stars. These international champions can spin on their heads, balance with one hand and defy gravity all together!

The girls at the party were also interested in Nail Art, a digital airbrush painting by Creative Party & Balloon Design. All girly parties should get this feature. Call Cory Marquez at 0917-624-2679 or e-mail creative_party_design@yahoo.com to ask about her other party activities."

I sure wish Annika would take up underwater hockey. Then I'd have more to write about!

Feng Shui Sudden Death

2008-02-21T23:51:00.003+08:00

The quick news: 3rd place for the Metal Team.

We had one more game left in the round robin; unfortunately we lost a squeaker to the Fire Team 2-1. When the standings were done, Air and Earth played for the Championship, with 3-1 win-loss records. Fire and Metal had 2-2 records and played off for third.

Our medal match turned out to be really exciting. Fire scored in the first half and we were unable to match until the closing seconds of the second half. With 10 seconds left, we managed a goal. On to sudden death OT and in the ensuing play, we stayed down long enough to find Center Forward Cesar free, and he scored the winning goal.

All in all, a good tourney!

Our Feng Shui Hockey Tournament

2008-02-20T23:32:00.003+08:00

I can't believe it. The "old men of hockey" are both on the team that's leading the tournament.

We started our Feng Shui Underwater Hockey Tournament last night at the rejuvenated, crystal-clear Army Pool. I was on the Metal Team, together with Boying Santos-Viola, a fellow diver from the echoes of the U.P. Divers past in the late '70's. I'd known that Boying and I were some of the last remaining dinosaurs still playing but I hadn't been in a pool with him for at least a decade.

We also had stronger and younger players, of course, but when I was looking at the team line ups, I couldn't help smiling that the two of us "olds" had somehow been put on the same team.

The five teams are playing a round-robin over two nights, and we just happened to play 3 games last night. In the first game, we beat Water 5-1. That got the adrenalin flowing and we managed to squeak out a nailbiting 1-0 over the Air team in the second game.

Perhaps age or conditioning was starting to show, as we lost the third 2-3 against a fired up Earth team.

So after the first night of games, Metal leads the tourney with 4 points (2 points per win) and 8 goals, followed closely by Air with 4 points and 7 goals. Earth and Fire have 2 points a piece, although the former has the goal differential lead. Water has a way to go, what with its 0-2 record for no points.

Let's see if we can hang on for victory tomorrow night!

Another Day, Another Cover

2008-02-10T16:37:00.004+08:00

It's amazing to me that Athena is not yet three and can hardly speak a complete sentence, and yet, this is the fourth time she will be on the cover of a magazine. She must truly be lucky!

Here are the other three:

From the Mouths of Babes

2008-02-05T19:23:00.001+08:00

Children, it is said, cannot lie. T and I got a huge kick out of Annika's English test, which we just got last night.

In Section B, the test asks her to write a sentence for the preposition "after."

Her answer: My Mom always comes home one hour after the time she said [she would].

T and I could only tell Annika, that's so true!

Being the wanna-be editor that I am, of course I also went through the test and cringed at the grammatically challenged portions (like the rule redundancy "Follow grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation rules in spelling.")

My favorite "gotcha" in this test though has to be:

6. The Titanic sank because it sailed towards an enormous iceberg.

If it worked for the Golden Arches...

2008-01-20T22:59:00.002+08:00

It was Saturday, January 19, Annika's 10th birthday, and she was working hard on a drawing. She said she had just gotten an idea - that Shakey's pizza parlors should have roofs shaped like giant pizzas.

I said if she wrote a short note to her grandma Marixi, then I would send the note onwards.

I kinda liked the drawing though, so I scanned it first. The details are amazing. There's a parking lot, with just one car slot empty. There's even a drive thru, and the car going through has a doggie in the window.

Annika is a smart one.

Like a Mexican Jumping Bean

2008-01-18T22:39:00.001+08:00

What Athena likes to do these days is jump. She's forever hopping around, whether on the floor, on the bed, or even from table to sofa, as she does here on the beach last New Year's Eve.

Pop Psych

2008-01-10T23:23:00.001+08:00

Here's the latest Pop Psych stuff on the web. How much is really true?

What Dennis Valdes Means

You are balanced, orderly, and organized. You like your ducks in a row.
You are powerful and competent, especially in the workplace.
People can see you as stubborn and headstrong. You definitely have a dominant personality.

You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone.
You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together.
At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people.
You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts.
You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.

You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing.
You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long.
You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start.

You are the total package - suave, sexy, smart, and strong.
You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know.
You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do.

You are very hyper. You never slow down, even when it's killing you.
You're the type of person who can be a workaholic during the day... and still have the energy to party all night.
Your energy is definitely a magnet for those around you. People are addicted to your vibe.

You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection.
You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.
You have the classic "Type A" personality.

You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow.
You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily.
Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

Coming Soon ... the 3rd Anniversary

2008-01-06T12:16:00.001+08:00

I was just working on my calendar for the month, when it struck me ... January 19 is coming soon.

Spot the Changes

2008-01-03T23:43:00.001+08:00

At the Prieto New Year dinner, conversation turned to the Prieto book that's soon to be released. I was reminded of one of the photos from that book, of some of the Prieto cousins as pre-teens.

It's interesting to spot the changes vs. the picture from New Year's Day 2008, about 35 years difference. There are four people who are in both pictures - Jane, Karla, Nannette and Tessa.

New Year in Bora

2008-01-02T21:25:00.001+08:00

We welcomed 2008 in Boracay. New Year's in Bora is something we've never done before. In April 2007, I was able to book two rooms at newly opened Discovery Shores, thanks to C, the wife of the owner and also an old friend from high school. With that we decided that we would, for the first time in a decade, not spend New Year's Eve in Tagaytay.

We flew down a few days after Christmas and were greeted by perfect sunny weather. The sand in Boracay is perfect for sculpting. This little mermaid is something I've been carving from Boracay sands since the early 80's when I first visited the island. Annika was happy to be my little helper.

Tyrone's own sand castle had all the anime effects imaginable, as well as some perfectly formed sand cannonballs. All the kids loved the water and even Athena had her first chance to go wading at night.

This was also Athena's first trip to Boracay and she really enjoyed just swimming in the beach and in the pool, and also jumping around the resort - this video from when we were waiting for the New Year's Eve fireworks. That was a fantastic sight, as all the resorts along the 7-km. long beach put up their separate displays. The result was a barrage worthy of a war zone.

Among the hordes of people on the island, we somehow managed to meet other Prietos. So a dinner was planned and it turned out that each of the six branches of children of Lolo Bibilo and Lola Chucha Prieto were represented:

Bianca and Karla (2nd from R), representing Tita Peachie; Tessa, representing Poplex; Nanette, representing Tita Bettina; Jane, representing Tito Raffy; Anito, representing Tito Mauro; and Martin, representing Tito Jaime.

Now that's serendipity!

Bora Sunset from Jonah's Fruit Shakes

2008-01-02T17:30:00.001+08:00

I took this shot with my Nokia E90 while waiting for my Jonah's fruit shake. I'm going to try and cross-post from Multiply to Blogger and see how the two blog services compare.

So far, I like the ability to insert a Poll into my Multiply blog. On the downside, Multiply doesn't seem to have a good preview system.

Or maybe I just haven't figured it out.

Finally done ... the Christmas Blog

2007-12-27T22:57:00.001+08:00

It took a lot of arm-twisting, bribes and cajoling but finally I finished our Christmas blog, which can be found here.

Oddly enough the younger kids were quite enthusiastic about the project, as soon as they had been bribed with enough rewards for sitting down in front of their computers and typing out something.

T and B came in last, pushing their submission deadlines. B wrote a beauty though - it's so rewarding for a parent to read good stuff that a child has to say.

It's amazing that we've got our Christmas letters on the site dating back from 1994. Reading through it all is getting to be an exercise in archeology!

Dancing on Christmas Eve

2007-12-26T19:16:00.001+08:00

Athena decided to dance all night long on Christmas Eve:

Child Labor

2007-12-17T22:54:00.001+08:00

Here's our latest addition to the workforce ... Athena!

It's amazing that DOLE actually has pretty strict procedures on child labor. This permit is only good for two weeks and only for her Nivea "spokesbaby" appearance with T on GMA. That appearance was supposed to happen two weeks ago but the organizers forgot to get this permit.

Now that we have this, can we get celebrity manager Joji Dingcong to handle Athena too?

Size DOES Matter

2007-12-13T22:59:00.001+08:00

I just saw the Palau pictures of CH on her Multiply blog and I suddenly feel inadequate.

Here are two pictures of the same Napoleon wrasse:

All the pictures on the left were taken by CH using a Canon 300D with a beautiful, domed u/w housing and two strobes.

The pictures on the right were taken using my little Sony.

Spot the changes eh? The amazing thing is that I actually felt good about my pictures when I first saw them. At least until I saw CH's output!

CH's blog address is minischnauzer.multiply.com and it is worth a visit to see all of her great photos.

Here's another example of what strobe lights do to improve color underwater:

This black manta was really amazing. He (or is it a she?) stayed with us for about 40 minutes, all the while doing loop-the-loop turns as he fed on plankton. I've got some pretty good videos of this feeding behavior on my YouTube site.

The black manta is also very identifiable because a piece of his left wing tip has been bitten off. Perhaps he was attacked by a shark when he was younger, as the crescent-shaped bite looks about the size of a shark's mouth. Luckily he survived to regale us with his u/w antics at German Channel.

I'll end the post with a couple more comparison shots. The first set are of grey reef sharks at Blue Corner.

Here we can see the greater color variation in the Canon, as the silhouettes of the sharks are more pronounced against the lighter surface. The Sony produced a more monochromatic image.

The last set are of the spinner dolphins that visited us twice. The first shot was taken by CH during the dolphins' sunset visit.

T took this second image, the shot of CH and her husband R with the dolphin - a perfectly timed shot! This one was taken during the dolphins' day visit though, which is why the sunset has disappeared.

My complete pictures, together with T's, can be found on my Kodak Gallery site.

Pilgrimage to Palau

2007-12-09T22:02:00.001+08:00

Palau is first and foremost about sharks. Sharks in Blue Corner, sharks in Ulong Channel, sharks in Siaes Corner, sharks everywhere.

But this year, it was so much more.

This year, the mantas put on the show to end all shows:

(More manta videos are here and here. And here is a great shark video from Blue Corner.)

But the best part of Palau this year was just the people we were with - as usual, Tita Mary, but now also Tita Jojo Castro and her niece, Kimie, Rommel and Cris Hinlo, Gigi Santos, and Tessa and Annika. As usual, the crew of Capt. Ken was fantastic, Sixsei, Eddie, Richard and Chetra the chef.

In a day or so, I'll find the time to load up all the pictures to Kodak Gallery.

Yvette Lee's Pictures from the Dona Marilyn Wreck

2007-11-19T12:19:00.001+08:00

Yvette just e-mailed a link to her Multiply site, which has photos from our recent trip to Malapasqua. I "borrowed" these two from her album, as I don't think I have any photos of Tyrone and I underwater. (Thanks Yvette!)

These photos were both taken at the wreck of the Dona Marilyn, one of numerous inter-island vessels that have sunken off Philippine waters over the centuries. Although the shipwreck is only about a decade old, it is already well covered with soft corals.

Yvette gave us some pointers on how to be an underwater model. The obvious one is to avoid exhaling during the shot, so that no bubbles are there to distract the viewer. We also practiced looking off to the right of the photographer, as if we're seeing some huge whale shark or something.

Tyrone's diving has really progressed. He's grown since our previous dives in Dumaguete earlier this year, so he had to wear Tessa's Mares suit. With our matching gloves and computers, we look like a pretty good team!

Enkantada

2007-11-14T19:11:00.001+08:00

My wife truly leads an enchanted life. Tuesday, she jetted off to Hollywood to watch the premiere of Disney's "Enchanted" on November 21, on an all-expenses-paid invite from The Little Gym.

If that seems like a lot of flight time for a two-hour movie, let's not forget that Hollywood premieres usually have a bit of red carpet magic woven into the event. So, I am anxiously awaiting pictures of T in whatever Seaprincess costume she turns up in on the big night.

The trip was also a good chance for her to swing by SFO and spend some time with B, who is now happily ensconced in some internet company's cube farm, working at his first job. B will fly down to LA with T for the weekend, the better for the two to extend their bonding time.

Meanwhile, back here at home, I am already wondering how to spend the weekend with the three other kids...

Update:
Inquirer columnist Ruben Napales just wrote about T's trip to Hollywood:

"LOS ANGELES―Tessa Prieto-Valdes stopped traffic, literally and figuratively, on her way to and from the world premiere of Disney’s “Enchanted” at the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard..."

The photo caption says, "DUETS” champ Tessa Prieto-Valdes with Masi Oka of “Heroes.”

Yes, It's That Time of the Year Already

2007-11-11T22:39:00.001+08:00

There've been Christmas songs on the radio since September, so it's no surprise that Christmas wreaths and trees are now making their appearances.

For us, it's gonna be a bit of a longer transition from Halloween witches to Christmas trees this year. For one, T is leaving for SFO to visit B next week, and I'm not really into decor.

For the moment, the extent of my Christmas preparation has been limited to updating our Christmas list and installing this classic ringtone on my phone:

Also, I'm beginning the update of our Christmas blog. The old version is still up, but new posts have to be added. It'll be fun working on those with the kids again.

Meanwhile, in our office building, one sure sign of the season is that so many of us office drones are lining up to collect Starbucks stickers again. It must be a coffee high to get the 24 stickers needed for a 2008 planner that you won't use cuz you've already got a Treo.

Last year I was so bummed when I got to about 20 stickers and then lost the card! Oddly enough, if I had just re-started I'm pretty sure I could still have finished the 24!

I must be a glutton for punishment - this year, I not only have the Starbucks card but I've also started collecting the Seattle's Best stamps!

The reality is, though, buying a coffee from either store hardly makes any difference. Starbucks acquired Seattle's Best in 2003!

Seniors Save More at Save More

2007-11-05T23:38:00.001+08:00

Before I leave Cebu, it's worthwhile to revisit a conversation I had with a supermarket cashier when we arrived there last week. A bunch of us dropped by the local Save More to buy batteries and chicheria for the trip.

When I got to the cashier, we had this interaction:

C: Ma'am/Sir, do you have your SM Advantage card?

Me: No.

C: Do you have your Senior Citizen card?

Me: [pause] Is it part of your routine to insult your customers at Save More?

The Elusive Thresher Sharks of Malapasqua

2007-11-05T21:22:00.001+08:00

Tyrone and I spent the November 1-4 long weekend in search of thresher sharks. We were aboard the M/V Borneo Explorer, part of the Scuba World fleet, together with his scuba instructor, GS, and other hardcore divers.

The thresher is a notoriously shy animal. The best way to see it is to head to Malapasqua Island, on the northern tip of Cebu. The Monad Shoal, off the south end, has several fish cleaning stations, literally submerged beauty parlors for the sharks to get spruced up. At 5 A.M., just as dawn is breaking, the sharks come out of the deep and hang around the cleaning stations for several minutes.

Trouble is, we arrived at Monad just after the full moon and together with a wave of Korean divers. Not only is there too much light but there are too many unusually colored fins and other dive gear around. Over the five dives we did at Monad, only three divers got a fleeting glimpse of the thresher. The rest of us had to be satisfied with octopus, squid, tiny pipefish and other non-pelagic denizens.

Nevertheless we had a great dive adventure. Tyrone did all five dives on the first day at Malapasqua, a record for him, and completed a total of 11 over the three-day cruise.

We also did two night dives, during which he was completely comfortable - even during the first one when his flashlight bulb died. The night dives were, in fact, the saving grace of the trip.

On the west side of Malapasqua, just off the lighthouse shore, are corals that are home to the elusive mandarinfish. When Ty and I dove of Dumaguete earlier this year, all we got was a photo of the tail of this colorful fish. At the lighthouse reef, the mandarinfish were in full display. They come out at sunset every day in order to mate!

Ty and I took a lot of pictures of the fish darting around the corals, but we left the R-rated photography to GS and DC, one of the best Philippine underwater photographers. We took over a hundred photos, the best of which are on Kodak Gallery. Sea horses, crocodilefish, frogfish, etc., etc. - Malapasqua has a lot of things to offer ... just not the thresher shark!

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

2007-10-24T22:54:00.000+08:00

This page requires a higher version browser
This might be the quickest million that T has ever spent! :-)

Actually from the very start of Celebrity Duets, she had pledged the entire prize money, if she won, to charity. So it's nice to know that there will be ten charities getting some additional funding soon.

When the studio gives her the money, T and I agreed to have a small event where we can gather all the recipients and have them properly receive the money, and maybe even have a group photo. That will be a nice memento of the contest.

I got the above video thanks to a text tip from EB, a former colleague at the ill-fated Inq7.net who now works with GMA New Media. It's great to see that their Philippine Entertainment Portal website loads up all these quick little video bites. This where there are more PEP videos.

Meanwhile, here's a funny photo from one of the last few Saturday tapings at GMA, with Athena's hair seemingly electrically charged, but probably only unkempt from her removing her clips after an extra-long taping afternoon.

This coming weekend will be our first TV-free weekend. It's been months since we've been able to spend a quiet weekend in Tagaytay, so we're all eager to do just that.

T wins!

2007-10-21T09:50:00.000+08:00

Whodathunkit? From perennial "bottom two" to the Celebrity Duets champion?!?!? T and I are still in shock from last night.

Thanks again to nonshowbiz for loading these up so fast:

Before the winners were announced towards the end of the taping, a couple of production crew guys came over to Jessica's husband, Dave Bunevacz. We were actually seated near each other, so I could see that they were putting a lapel mike on him.

I thought, "Well I guess they want to get all three spouses' reactions." But after Dave was wired up, the crew left and didn't come over. I glanced at Vicky Belo, and she hadn't been wired either.

So I leaned over to Dave and said, "Hey Dave, that's a great sign, that they're wiring you up and not me." He replied, "No, no, this is for something else, an anniversary thing I'm doing for Jess. It's a surprise so I really can't explain."

"Really?" I felt that maybe he was just trying to make me feel good. I mumbled something about congratulations if/when Jessica wins and tried to re-focus on the stage.

Behind me, Alex P had also noticed that Dave had been wired and not me. Later Popsy told me that he started crying because he thought that T had certainly lost as the wiring must certainly be to get the reaction of the winner's husband.

So when Ogie called out T's name, I was all the more in shock. I really thought Jessica had won it. I actually thought that maybe the crew made a mistake and thought Dave was me. (Yeah, right, me plus 8 inches and 30 kilos of muscle.)

After the cut, we were all still on stage and the tabloid reporters and GMA crew were asking me what my "surprise gift" to T would be. Aside from a kiss, I really couldn't think. I mean, she just won a million pesos for charity. What was I supposed to give her?!?

When we got outside the studio, the haze was lifted.

Dave had just presented Jessica with a brand new BMW X5, complete with a big red bow tie on the hood. Now that is a statement!

Wired for sound, he could now explain to the TV crew how he was rewarding his wife for all her hard work on Celebrity Duets over the past three months, plus his anniversary gift to her.

AZ, the BMW Account Executive, came over to say hi. (Hoping to sell another, I suppose.) I said, "Wow, that's 5.5, isn't it?"

"No sir," she cheerfully explained, "5.6 ho."

Aray.

P.S. Some websites that carried the Celebrity Duets news:

Inquirer.net
It’s Tessa in ‘Celebrity Duets’
by Bayani San Diego Jr.
MANILA, Philippines -- Tessa Prieto-Valdes, Inquirer columnist, still thought of herself last night as the underdog, even after winning “Celebrity Duets,” a reality singing contest among celebrity non-singers on GMA 7...

Philippine Entertainment Portal
Tessa Prieto-Valdes beats Dr. Hayden Kho Jr. and Jessica Bunevacz in "Celebrity Duets"
by Jocelyn Dimaculangan
The Social Butterfly outperforms the Kilabot ng mga Kolehiyala and the Statuesque Beauty...
[The reader comments on this site are particularly insightful.]

GMA News.TV
Tessa Prieto-Valdez: Celebrity Duets champion
by Loretta G. Ramirez, iGMA
It was an afternoon like no other. All the finalists came in prepared to sing their last songs, but one star shone brighter than the rest...

PEP goes behind the scenes of Celebrity Duets
by Jocelyn Dimaculangan, PEP
The finals night of Celebrity Duets aired last Saturday, October 20, concluding the 11-week competition that was shown weekly on GMA. It premiered on the Kapuso Network last August 11, hosted by Regine Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid...

This is it!

2007-10-20T11:34:00.001+08:00

Win or lose, T is having a Thanksgiving Party after the Celebrity Duets finale today. The season has been 14 weeks long and tomorrow, we get our lives back!

Josh Groban

2007-10-20T10:56:00.001+08:00

Here are some uplifting videos from Josh Groban's recent concert. Something to put us all into a positive mood...

10.19 = 09.11 ???

2007-10-20T10:49:00.000+08:00

Do terrorists think about dates?

On to the Finals!

2007-10-14T20:30:00.000+08:00

There are days when just the YouTube videos of nonshowbiz tell the entire story. He has all the episodes on his YouTube site. Here are the ones that tell everything about the final elimination that got Tessa, Hayden and Jessica into the finals:

This is Tessa's performance with Michael V. I didn't load them here but a click-through to nonshowbiz will show you Hayden's and Jessica's, which are worth watching too.

This last clip is the cliffhanger ending, when Regine came down to choosing between Tessa and Doc Manny. Naturally the tears were flowing from the get-go.

An interesting aside is that Doc Manny's wife Pie has not been to the past few Saturday tapings (as can be seen above). The official line is that "someone has to do the operations," but the scuttlebutt is that she got pissed when, a few episodes ago, part of the post-performance routine was to get comments from the celebrities' supporters and direk called on Doc Manny's Mom instead of her. Rumor is that her complaints went all the way to FLG's wife. To the CEO's credit, nothing came of the alleged complaint.

Here's my own version of Tessa and Michael V., using my Nokia E90 video camera:

The best part of the taping day is watching Athena get more and more comfortable being around people. Here she gets up on stage and starts dancing! I guess she wants to be like Mommy!

Three Amigos

2007-10-12T20:51:00.001+08:00

JB, AL and I have been friends since grade school. Even now, when our scheds permit, we find time to renew hostilities on the golf course.

Today was perfect. A sudden holiday announced - the ~~start~~ end of Ramadan - and we all quickly re-arranged weekend plans to give us time off at Summit Point - to see who would get the bragging rights for the weekend.

On Hole 15, a short par 4, all of us hit spectacular iron shots, ending up all over the flagstick, PGA-style. We thought this sort of unplanned, coincidental excellence deserved a picture.

Of course, the knowing golfer will quickly ask - how many birdies did the group get out of this? Well, sadly the answer is none. (We don't have enough golf time to keep our putting skills honed.)

For the record, JB walked off the course with both AL's and my money. His 90 beat us hands down. Total take after 18 holes: P70.00.

Four to Go...

2007-10-07T14:10:00.000+08:00

What a sad day on Celebrity Duets, as Wyngard Tracy, arguably the best singer of the group, was eliminated. Just another sign that text rules our lives.

Here's the video of T with singer Aia, doing her hit song "Taralets," which is almost a musical translation of "We got the beat!"

The "official" video is here. There are two performances on the clip, the first being Doc Manny, so viewers are free to decide which performance is the better one. Hopefully, those who choose T's routine are also texting in their votes! Otherwise, the Doc's blast-text voting for himself will rule the day.

After the emotion of the afternoon taping, it was great to relax and take Annika and her cousins to Billy Crawford's concert at the Araneta Coliseum. When Billy asked for a volunteer lady to come on stage though, he sighted T in the second row (we were right behind VSR, who was instrumental in selling out the Coliseum) and called her. This is part of his song with T:

Ty's New Toy

2007-10-04T22:34:00.000+08:00

Got Ty a new iMac for his birthday and Christmas. (Just so we can quickly defuse any comments that he's spoiled.)

Am glad we did, even though at this point the brushed-aluminum beauty is just being used as a dandified YM machine. He gets home and starts chatting with his friends, both boys and girls(!). Twelve seems a bit young but I guess that's just my age showing.

On the good side, the new Mac is sparking his interest in computers and the web. His other main interests now include YouTube and gaming sites.

I'm glad we didn't make a mistake and buy him a Window-based PC. I remember how we did that with B and within a year, he was screeching for a change. Speaking of which, here's a cool video about Vista that we can all appreciate:

Proud Mary Redux

2007-09-30T21:23:00.000+08:00

Immediately after Celeb Duets yesterday, T and I went off to the Tatler Ball. At the end of the evening, the band was rocking and oddly enough, launched into "Proud Mary," the same song T had just sung on TV.

With that, she hopped on stage and finished the song with the band:

Compare and contrast that with the "official" GMA video of her performance:

If you got to the end of that GMA video, you'll note my shameless plug for Wow! Magic Sing. L, seated behind me then whispers in my ear, "just goes to show all La Sallites are sluts!" I dunno. I think advertisers appreciate that sort of unpaid endorsement. :)

We Want Our Lives Back!

2007-09-29T18:05:00.000+08:00

Athena, Annika and I are getting weary of Celebrity Duets. It's an amazing effort to allocate every Saturday afternoon for a 13-week TV season - that's over 3 months!

Oddly, T's energy is still up, as you can see from her performance today:

This rendition of Proud Mary was one of her best performances yet. She is clearly improving from week to week.

Amazingly, the Celeb Duets season was just extended by a week. The finals will be on October 20, so we might still have a few Saturdays to go, assuming she does not get voted off.

Dimsum

2007-09-28T23:45:00.000+08:00

Raymund Isaac launched a book called Dimsum earlier tonight. Naturally, I was interested in who might have printed the book but there was precious little info on that.

Facial Care Centre helped publish the book, as both the beauty company and Raymund were celebrating their 25th anniversaries.

There's a great photo of T in it, entitled Sayuri. At the Ayala Museum exhibit, there's a five-foot-high version of the photo, with a short write-up explaining that Sayuri is a Japanese goddess of chastity and innocence.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't blog about an SE (aka social event, as Annika says) but that Sayuri stuff on "chastity and innocence" deserved a post.

News Flash: Autobots Win!

2007-09-27T23:12:00.000+08:00

Autobots defense prevented the Decepticons from scoring the tying goal during the last half of the game, thus prevailing 4-3 and winning the series 3-1.

The heartbreaking score does not show the fury of the last half, as the Decepticons controlled the puck on the Autobots' side, but could not penetrate the Mariano brothers' "wall" defense. Eventually, time ran out on the frustrated Decepticons.

Key non-play of the game was the altercation between players A and G, each alleging a holding violation, with tempers flaring all around. Luckily, all was calm immediately after the game. As always, what happens in the pool, stays in the pool.

Also heartbreaking for the Decepticons was the missed goal by player R on an otherwise excellent breakaway. With his adrenalin pumping, the puck was flicked over the goal, akin to missing a slam dunk.

R is pretty young though, and with his explosive speed, there will be far more many winning moments in his hockey career. He's the sort of new breed that can form a core RP Team that might contend in the U/W Hockey worlds one of these days.

Autobot captain B called tonight's game the roughest of the series. With 12 men and a shallow, narrow pool, it was pretty rowdy.

P.S. from Friday:

Polo management called me today and said a member had complained about the noise from the pool. It remains to be seen if this will be a cause for kicking us out of Polo.

Staying Alive

2007-09-23T00:11:00.000+08:00

For the first time, T was not part of the dreaded "bottom three" on Celeb Duets. Perhaps her rock-themed singing is catching on, who knows?

Here she is performing with rock legend Mike Hanopol (who almost kinda looks like ~~one of the guys from~~ Geoffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean).

On a sad note, Tim Yap was eliminated tonight. I can only guess that the Buzz Lightyear and doggy costumes hit the wrong demographic.

The "bottom two" were Tim and Wyngard. As much as I like Tim, I have to say I'm glad Wyn is staying, because he is truly the best singer of the bunch.

I Know!

2007-09-22T10:52:00.000+08:00

Athena's first sentence, from September 17:

Decepticons 3, Autobots 2 *

2007-09-20T23:06:00.000+08:00

New flash: Decepticons squeaked past the Autobots last night, 3-2, avoiding a sweep and bringing the series closer, 2-1.

The Autobots will call it an asterisk game though, as the Decepticons prevailed on Lifeguard Angel to call "time" at 9:50 PM, thus preventing a possible tie.

The Calayan Clause

2007-09-16T14:20:00.000+08:00

Quite a surprise on Celebrity Duets yesterday, when instead of culling the Sensational Six down to the Fab Five, GMA instead threw in a "Wild Card" - all votes were reset to zero and texters were only given from 6:45 PM to midnight to text in their votes. A further kicker was thrown in: only a maximum of ten text votes per cellphone would be counted.

Needless to say, T and I spent the rest of the night forwarding texts to everyone we knew. We'll know by next Saturday whether she gets to stay on the show.

I suspect the Wild Card was thrown in because the rumors had been that Doc Manny was buying load for his drivers and employees and just having them text in to keep him on the show. Whether true or not, I have to say that this tactic was well within the rules.

To the Doc, it made perfect sense. Why buy 30-second TVC's at P150,000 a spot when a text vote is only P2.50? In other words, everyday the good Doc stayed on Duets was free advertising for Calayan Surgicenter. So if the rules ~~allowed~~ didn't prevent a cellphone from submitting a hundred thousand or more votes, so be it.

Unfortunately for Doc, this oversight on the part of the Rules didn't necessarily make for good television.

Again the rumor mill was that yes, Doc was ahead in the total vote count, but if the rules only counted unique cellphone numbers, he was in fact, behind. So the rest of the Dueteers are actually more popular, but their texters just don't have enough load to spend.

Thus, new the Wild Card rule, which gives the unique cellphone numbers greater weight due to the ten-vote cap. IMHO, the Wild Card rule should truly be known as the Calayan Clause.

So all Six stay alive for another week.

Meanwhile, I actually believe that T's performances are improving. Here she is with Rufa Mae Quinto, singing "Like a Virgin" in flagrante delicto.

Autobots vs. Decepticons

2007-09-13T23:55:00.000+08:00

I thought I would put in a guest post from C, one of the stronger hockey players and apparently also a potential blogger:

“One shall stand… and one shall fall”.. said the great Optimus Prime. And in their quest to rule cybertron, Team Autobots once again defeated Team Decepticons 9-3. The scores may not be close, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Though missing their leader Megatron (A.C.) due to injury and Alex Reyes, Team Decepticons were clearly ahead in terms of firepower. They had their full roster (10 players) going against the depleted Autobots… who come game time, only had a dismal 5 players.

That alone caused concern throught the Autobot Camp… How the hell would they be able to defeat this team? Thoughts of forfeiting the game and just having an all mens mixed game that night were instantly brought up. But if you're gonna lose and die anyway.. wouldn’t you rather die fighting?

As expected, the game started with the Decepticons scoring the first goal but even if they did, Team Autobots realized then on that they actually have a chance. Because even with just 5 players, the Autobots were able to bring the puck into the opponents goal area and were able to hold most of their attacks. Playing 2:3, Team Autobots definitely had their hands full. It's tough enough to go against a team with 6 players.. what more if they have 4 subs?

Fortunately for the Autobots, Ferdie arrived just in time before the second strike. It's now even-steven. But how far can the Autobots last without an ample supply of energon cubes (subs)? Though they have a full team, they still don’t have any subs. Team Autobots were eventually able to tie the score and then get the lead. Just attack and pressure the defense of the Decepticons... that was the game plan of Team Autobots.

A.R. would later arrive as reinforcement for the Decepticons but was instantly barred from joining his team 1 nanosecond (hehe..) after the Autobots saw him. Unfortunately for Team Decepticons, though A.R. would have been a great addition to their frontline, they were already playing with their declared 10-man roster. Which to my understanding, correct me if I’m wrong, you won't be able to change once the game starts. B.J. arrived a couple of minutes later and joined his fellow Autobots, which instantly boosted the team and helped them seal the deal and get the W.

The night was capped at Pizza Hut with birthday boy Ferdie treating the after-hockey-dinner people to a sumptuous pizza buffet. Six(?) different flavors of pizza were laid out in front of the PUHCers and as a true PUHC tradition, the food was gone in a few mins. =P Happy birthday Ferdie!

Team Autobots now leads the best of 5 series 2-0. Game 3 will be next Thursday. Which surely would be the hardest game of the entire series. With their backs now against the wall, Team Decepticons will definitely come back with a vengeance. No team wants to get swept and Team Autobots can't afford to get too overconfident even with their 2-nil lead because it's common knowledge that in sports, a close out game is usually the toughest one to win. Just ask the New York Yankees (NBL) and the Dallas Mavericks (NBA). =)

In support of the team and to try and lessen the now tense and extreme tourney like atmosphere of the series., yours truly… the gentledog arrived with a mascot in tow.. Abu-Optimus-Dog-Rahim =).

To Bench or Not to Bench

2007-09-10T19:55:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow is the Bench Underwear Show. T invited me to go and she usually has a first-row seat, as evidenced by my video of Alessandra da Rossi from last year's show. However, tomorrow is also a Tuesday night, ergo an U/W Hockey night.

Hmmm. So do I watch men and women parade on a stage in their skivvies or do I flick a puck around with men and women in their swimsuits? Tough call...

We got the beat!

2007-09-09T21:26:00.000+08:00

Maybe it was because of her secret birthday wish, but T had a great performance yesterday on Celebrity Duets. She and her partner, Manilyn Reynes, sang that famous Go-Go's song, "We got the beat!"

I recorded the song using my new Nokia E90. T bought me the new phone at the Gifts and Graces Charity Auction a few weeks ago. I'm happier with it than the Blackberry, which I just never connected with. The key advantages of the E90 are:

1. a better Contacts database (I still find it hard to believe that the BB only allowed one mobile number per Contact)
2. a camera/video camera (better than the Treo's, but that's not saying much), and
3. the still-remarkable-as-ever Nokia speakerphone.

On the downside, the E90 database is still not a perfect match to the Treo and as we speak, Nokia Customer Care and Smart's Tech Team are still tag-teaming on getting the Calendar function to operate. Unfortunately, with the worldwide decline of Palm, I can see that their OS and products will soon go the way of Lotus 1-2-3. So a transition from Treo was always going to be inevitable.

The Blackberry functionality of the E90 is also not as beautiful as on the BB, but then that was truly the BB's only redeeming feature, and not one that's important enough to make it a primary phone.

Huwag na huwag mong sasabihin!

2007-09-03T23:21:00.000+08:00

I found the best quality YouTube video of T's performance last Saturday. You can hear every crack in her voice!
It was uploaded by someone sporting the username nonshowbiz, which just makes me feel he/she must be part of the Kapuso team.

In the second half of the clip, Tim Yap performs in a Buzz Lightyear suit and then wishes his mom a happy birthday. When the camera flashes on her, she looks like a super conservative Chinese lady, about as far removed from Tim's outre persona as can be imagined.

She also had the line of the evening. After Dr. Hayden Kho performed, she asked aloud, "Anak ba yan ni Vicki Belo?" In response, there was an audible gasp all around.

As Kitchie says, "Huwag na huwag mong sasabihin!"

And now ... Billy Crawford!

2007-08-27T22:50:00.000+08:00

These last two weekends have been a blast. First off, both have been long weekends, thanks to GMA's "holiday economics" that moved mid-week holidays to Mondays, thus creating successive three-day holidays.

Also, another GMA, not the president but the network, has been taping Celebrity Duets on Saturday afternoons. It's been tremendous fun watching T sing and dance with various professionals, and just this last Saturday was the hip-hop artist Billy Crawford.

Here's the short video of their performance that I took from my front row seat using my Treo 650. (Blogger has a new video upload feature, which I'm trying out.) The video is also on YouTube and I'm sure someone will eventually load up the TV version itself.

The inside scoop is that three of these contestants wanted to perform with Billy but T got the nod after some finagling between his manager and VSR, the owner of Gift Gate. Tita V, as we call her, is someone who really knows how to make things happen - at least in the showbiz world.

The whole weekend turned out to be a Celebrity Duets weekend because earlier this evening was the 40th birthday party of the show's host Ogie Alcasid.

GMA glitterati were in full force at the Polo Club for the affair. T and I turned up late but in good time to scout for possible future partners for her succeeding stints on C.D., assuming, of course, that she doesn't get axed.

Naturally, I also took the opportunity to have my own photos taken. After all, if the wife can sing with the stars, then the husband should at least get to pose with some heavenly bodies.

A Spokesbaby?!?

2007-08-21T09:37:00.000+08:00

What a pleasant surprise - I was flipping through the Inquirer over breakfast when I saw this article, "Motherhood becomes her," starring T and Athena.

MANILA, Philippines -- Lifestyle icon Tessa Prieto-Valdes, heretofore known to many for her colorful outfits, is now getting much-deserved attention for her mothering style and skills, too.

After being conferred the title “Idol ng Breastfeeding” by the Department of Health, she is now championing healthy baby skin as endorser of the new Nivea Baby line.

Valdes was chosen because she exemplifies the modern mother and she is a staunch advocate of proper infant care.

The accompanying picture had this caption: NIVEA Baby spokesperson for healthy skin, Tessa Prieto-Valdes, with 2-year-old daughter Athena.

It's a terrifically winsome picture, of course. Too bad Athena's vocabulary is limited at this time, otherwise she could have been the spokesbaby!

Even the Caddies are Voting

2007-08-20T22:51:00.000+08:00

T and I played in Canlubang South today and even our caddies have been texting their votes to Celebrity Duets. I just know this show will be central to our lives for the next few weeks...

Meanwhile, someone finally loaded up the YouTube video of T and Jolina. When Athens was watching the video, she recognized herself when the camera panned to us, and she said, "Dad" and "me."

... but not everyone will ...

2007-08-18T22:09:00.000+08:00

Today was the first elimination round on Celebrity Duets and T survived the first cut. YouTube has the playlist of all the shows, easily found by doing a search for "celebrity duets tessa."

The first victim was Bb. Pilipinas Universe Ana Theresa Licaros, which is too bad since the show lost some valuable eye candy. It's a text elimination process, which simply says Theresa wasn't able to attract as many votes as, say, one of the guys who gave his driver P20,000 of load to use on texting in his name. Well, some guys need to win more than others, I guess.

Here's what the U.S. version of the show looks like:

"Anyone can ... sing!"

2007-08-16T14:46:00.000+08:00

T is now on the Kapuso network's new show, Celebrity Duets. Here she is, thanks to YouTube:

Part 1: Intro

Part 2: Performance with Kyla

Our good friend Rosan also blogged about Tessa's performance here and T herself wrote about the show in her Sunday column.

To support Tessa and get her to avoid elimination, text "Duets Tessa" to 367 (Smart/TalkNText) and 2344 (Globle/Sun/Touch Mobile).

Where's Macau?

2007-08-15T22:50:00.000+08:00

"It's in the bahn beside mah hoahse."

"Where's Macau?" used to be the kids' old joke. After all, who knew where this sleepy backwater of Hong Kong was?

When I lived in HK in the early '90's, I can still remember periodically taking the ferry to the Portugese enclave, lounging on the beach at the far end of Coloane island, shopping for bacalao and port wine, dining on Macanese food and even spending the odd dollar or two in one of the casinos.

How times have changed.

The Lisboa casino is a small indicator who how everything has changed. The old casino is now ringed with color-changing neon lights. Its most prominent feature, the wavy roof that was like a dragon's mouth that ate the gamblers as they walked in (the savvy ones took a side entrance to avoid the bad feng shui), is hardly noticeable.

Behind has mushroomed the Grand Lisboa, a giant soccer ball in front of a towering flame of glass. The soccer ball is coated with high tech, computer-controlled neon that can flash advertising messages as well as change colors and patterns.

And that's just the one, old, Stanley Ho-owned casino.

A Star Magic Ball

2007-08-05T23:49:00.000+08:00

Annika would have loved to come with T and I tonight. We saw her favorite Kampanerang Kuba, Anne Curtis, together with PBB heartthrob Sam Milby at the Star Magic Circle Ball.

After 15 years of developing stars, TV giant ABS decided to throw a dress-up ball for all its batches of talents. The idea came from PR guru Keren Pascual. There were so many glitterati around that we said the question of the night was probably, "Anong batch ka?"

Naturally all the star(lets) had to sing and dance as part of the show. The most notable dance for me was the tango danced to Norah Jones' Come Away With Me, which featured a wardrobe malfunction of sorts. I guess the starlets don't really practice with their gowns, so who can tell what colors of pantyhose might be inadvertently exposed by the odd dance lift or two?

I'm sure the paparazzi photos/video are already on the web somewhere, probably right next to the current YouTube hit of the Cebuano prison inmates dancing to Thriller. It's too bad we don't have a local version of PerezHilton.com to chronicle the miscues of our stars. Then again, maybe we're better off unchronicled.

Ironically, the scene stealer of the evening was an older talent whom I've never seen or heard of, a comic lady called Pokwang. Among her memorable lines was about how she had to earn money, "kasi may pinapaaral pa ako sa IS ... sa ilimintary school."

Kellogg 90 Reunion

2007-08-05T23:23:00.000+08:00

Way back in 1990, seven Pinoys graduated from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Four of us got together for coffee early this morning.

(R-L) Anthony Ty was back in town for a four-day visit. He currently lives in Southern Cal, working for Honda USA. Aleli Morales is working with Kellogg 89 alum Carol Dominguez of John Clements on an e-learning project. Giles Puno is CFO of First Gen and is staving off male meno-Porsche through early morning drives in his black 911 Carrera.

It was great catching up and seeing how life's journey has brought us all along these past 17 years.

The Return of the Natives

2007-08-03T21:10:00.000+08:00

August 1 was a complicated day.

Number 1 son, Bryan, left for the U.S. on the late PAL flight. His short, post-graduation summer is done and he is heading back to look for a job and enter the proverbial "real world." It's been a poignant last few days thinking about him, all poised for this next stage of life.

Of course, upon arrival in SFO, his first e-mail was somewhat more prosaic: "As usual, the house needs to be cleaned so for the most part of today will be spent cleaning."

Meanwhile, Number 2 son, Tyrone, arrived at 8 P.M. from his CISV summer camp in Florence. It seems our 11-year-old has grown up, evidenced by this text message from the mom of one of his companions:

From J: Super thanks! Apparently Tyrone has a girlfriend from France and Steffi has a boyfriend from London. Can we just kill the two of them. :-)

Well, at least she put a smiley emoticon at the end of it.

Blackberry Blues

2007-07-31T23:24:00.000+08:00

I got a Blackberry a couple of weeks ago and it's been a difficult transition. Smart actually sends an "After Sales" person to help migrate files over to the new phone.

I kept it simple. All I wanted were my Treo's Calendar and Contacts. These are files that started when I got my first Nokia 9000 Communicator in June 2000 so that's a lot of stuff. The data has successfully made several device transitions over the years, eventually into my current Treo 650.

The Contacts issue was that the Palm OS has far more fields than the BB. So none of the Birthdays, Spouses, Kids, etc. made it from Treo to BB. OK, so maybe some of that is not too important but the killer was that the BB would only take one mobile phone number and one e-mail address, and in doing so wiped out quite a bit of data from my Address Book.

The Calendar fared worse. The BB first showed that it got all the data but a few hours later, all had been erased save for data from the past month. After Sales Guy tried twice unsuccessfully. Worse, somehow during the transfers, certain events in the Calendar became double entries. It seemed that whenever I had used the Details field in the Event, the event got re-entered, this time with the details as just part of the Event, shown in parentheses. Worse, there was no coherent pattern to which Events were repeated and which were left alone.

So I tried a new method.

I first downloaded PocketMac for BB from the BB website. Separately, I synced all my data from Treo's Palm Desktop to Mac's Calendar and Address Book software. That actually synced very well, except now the Mac Calendar has double entries and is a mess.

From the Mac Calendar and Address Book, I synced with the BB using PocketMac.

The Address Book made it with more info, but I am still working on sorting out exactly what fields were left out and which made the entire trip.

The Calendar was a mess with all the double entries and BB still had issues with disappearing events.

So today, I have three gadgets to carry around. My Globe is a Samsung U600, my Smart is the BB and my old Smart line is the Treo. I still use the Treo as my Calendar. One of these days, I'm getting the new Communicator and moving all that data over to that device so I can finally retire my Treo.

As for the BB, bottom line is: it's a one-trick pony.

Huugen Daz

2007-07-29T14:07:00.000+08:00

We got a special delivery from the folks at Haagen Daz today - a huge container of one of their ice cream flavors: Pannacotta & Blueberry.

Unfortunately, there was no note attached, so we don't know if they were sending T a sample, hoping to get a mention in her column or if this was a misdirected delivery and should have been sent to an outlet instead.

Athena, of course, didn't have any problems with the delivery. She knew exactly what to do. Get it open now!

Interview with U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney

2007-07-27T17:22:00.000+08:00

I had a great interview with U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney recently, for Forbes In Touch magazine. Here is the article:

FIT had the chance to interview U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney last July 18, 2007 at the Ambassador’s residence in Forbes Park. It was a wonderful chance to tour one of the most well-known residences in our community and to get to know the personal side of one of our busiest diplomats, one who has risen up to the very challenging job of looking after the interests of her country. FIT is proud to introduce our community to the more personal side of Ambassador Kenney.

FIT: Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to meet with us.

Amb. Kenney: You’re quite welcome. Would you like some coffee? I figured since we were neighbors we could have normal mugs instead of the Embassy china. These are my Galapagos mugs.

FIT: Thank you. I’ve always been impressed to come here and see the nice little touches of the U.S.A., like the Embassy logo on the napkins, and meet your long-serving Filipino staff.

Amb. Kenney: These guys are wonderful – Sally, Ledesa and Edgar. They’ve stayed and looked after the house, they look after me, they look after my cats. As to the logo, every ambassador gets that. That stays with the house along the official china. I like my coffee out of a mug, but the official china is more of a cup. So these are mine. An actual Kenney household item.

FIT: As a career diplomat, you must have lived in a lot of countries.

Amb. Kenney: I’ve been to a lot but haven’t lived in that many. Let’s see … Jamaica, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Switzerland, the Philippines…

FIT: A lot of Latin America! Many people say that we’re very Latin American.

Amb. Kenney: I see a lot of that here but with a different flavor. There’s a lot of Asia here, too. I think some of the best parts of Latin America are here, like the attachment to family – which I think is great! Also, Filipinos and many Latin Americans are able to make events special. There are ceremonies that make events special, like company anniversaries, openings, school awards… All these teach Filipinos of every age to be good public speakers. It’s amazing to me that people become very comfortable very early in life with speaking in public.

FIT: You’re the first female U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines. Have there been any special challenges?

Amb. Kenney: No! Not at all. People here are very friendly. This is a country that has a lot of dynamic women – you’re married to one! You’ve had female presidents, female heads of corporations, female NGO heads … I’ve never had trouble anywhere I’ve served in the world as a female diplomat. It’s also a modern era. I don’t think people care that much about gender anymore. If anything, the challenges would be tiny, odd things. The chair in my office was designed for a large male. The first time I sat down in it, my feet didn’t touch the ground! Teeny things like that.

FIT: I guess most ambassadors are still male! I looked you up on the web and noted that your husband is also an ambassador.

Amb. Kenney: Yes, Bill is currently moving to Colombia. We met in the foreign service, when we were both working for [Secretary of State] George Shultz [under President Ronald Reagan]. When we got married 21 years ago, we decided we would never take separate assignments unless we were offered two really good ambassadorships – nothing else. And now it happened. Who knew? It’s difficult of course. We see each other every three, four months. I’ll catch up with him in Washington in August.

FIT: What brought you into the foreign service?

Amb. Kenney: Actually, sort of peer pressure … when I was at university. The State Department gives a test every year if you want to be a diplomat. So my friends were all taking it and they said, “Well it’s free, why don’t you just sign up?” So, I signed up and I passed the test. And then there’s an oral exam. And I sort of just kept passing and was offered a job. At age 25, I said this might be fun for a year or two. I liked it and never left.

FIT: Do you have any children?

Amb. Kenney: We don’t have any children but I have three cats – Niles is 10, Emily is 9 and Junior is 8.

FIT: What breed are they?

Amb. Kenney: I’m not sure. I found them in an animal shelter in Washington and adopted them. Niles is still quite wary of people and I suspect he must have been badly abused. Emily is very shy. I like to say that she’s sensitive because a photographer called her fat. She was quite thin and hungry when I first got her. They’ve been to Chile and they were in Ecuador with me. They’re all fat now. They’ve gained weight since we moved to the Philippines. My attitude is that’s okay as long as they’re happy. They have a great life. They sleep 18 to 20 hours a day.

FIT: You’ve always seemed like such a friendly person, so natural.

Amb. Kenney: I actually love people. The thing I like best about my job is the chance to meet new people and understand what they do and why they do and what’s different and what’s special. Locking me in an office is the worst thing you can do to me. I learn better by seeing. It helps me get a sense … Why are we doing that? Why do we have this program? Part of my job is to look at what the United States is doing here. Is it good? Does it make sense? Are we adding value here?

FIT: How many people work at the Embassy?

Amb. Kenney: We have 1,500 staff, with 1,000 Filipinos and 500 Americans. What I try to do is, a couple of times a month, I have a lunch with different sections of the Embassy. Sometimes I have lunch with just the Filipino staff; they don’t always like to talk if their supervisors are there. I had lunch with the Motor Pool last week. That was fun. The drivers, they have a lot to say. They’ve been here for years. They have a lot of views. I actually have a great job. I like living here. Filipinos fit my personality so well. Very friendly, very outgoing, very interesting. This is a huge city, there’s somebody who does something of everything. A place where people are easy to talk to. There’s no door closed.

FIT: Well, the U.S. has had a relationship with us for over a hundred years now.

Amb. Kenney: Yes, and you want to be sure you don’t take that for granted. Just because you’ve had a good relationship doesn’t mean you can sort of just say, “Oh well, we don’t need to agree.”

FIT: I think one of the things that has been fantastic is that the relationship has had its ebbs and flows, but the institutions remain. U.S. AID has always been here…

Amb. Kenney: … the Peace Corps has been here forever. In two weeks we swear in the newest group of Peace Corps volunteers. There’s always been good moments and bad moments. I think that’s to be expected.

FIT: Like in any relationship.

Amb. Kenney: Somebody asked me that on TV the other day – there have been issues the Philippines and the United States don’t agree on. And I said, I don’t know about you guys, but even with my husband we don’t always agree.

FIT: Exactly. But you move on.

Amb. Kenney: Yes, exactly. We can agree to disagree. Or this one we don’t see eye to eye. My husband “claims” he doesn’t like cats. We have three.

Good-bye Sister Nieves

2007-07-24T22:43:00.000+08:00

My Tita Hermy died last Sunday. She was 85. My Dad has two sisters and both became nuns, Sr. Nieves and Sr. Trinitas, both with the ICM order.

When she was younger, Sr. Nieves had worked a lot in Bontoc and the nuns talked about how a delegation from there was expected to arrive for the funeral tomorrow. When I was much younger, Tita Hermy had been one of the older ladies who taught me Scrabble.

I was able to make it to the wake just tonight, directly from work. Her elder sister, Sr. Trinitas, was seated in an anteroom having dinner. When I went up to greet her, my Dad asked her if she recognized me.

She said, "yes of course," but in her eyes I could tell the mental Rolodex was having trouble connecting my face to a name.

"It's Dennis, Tita Carmeling," I volunteered.

"Of course, of course. Your cravat is very nice, like the colors I see on TV."

I was wearing a fuschia tie, which T had bought for me in Rome. It was so loud that it had elicited undue mirth during our usual somber Mancom meetings earlier.

So now two of my Dad's siblings have passed away this year. Only three of the original seven siblings are alive, two having passed away two years ago.

Sojourn in Solana

2007-07-22T21:43:00.000+08:00

Weekending in Anilao is beginning to be enjoyable for all the kids, ages 2 to 22 (almost). T and I even found time for the special pursuits of each.

For B, it was a great time to go diving before he heads off to the U.S. again. His short, post-graduation vacation is almost over. He is due in Evanston in early August to take a YPO-Kellogg course called "Preparing for Professional Life" together with about 30 other fresh graduates from all over the YPO world.

He had a mix of dives, ranging from a tough, current dive in Mainit Point, where we got to see some barracuda but also got caught up in Mainit's torrential currents, to a more leisurely outing at Twin Rocks, where we spent close to an hour finding octopus, terrorizing pufferfish, taking pictures of clownfish and nudibranchs, blowing bubble rings and generally just taking it easy.

At Twin Rocks, B also got to try out his videoing skills:

With us in Anilao was B's girlfriend J9, who took the scuba diving course with him and Tyrone. T's Speedo shorty wetsuit was a perfect fit on J9, which turned out great as her Scubapro suit was a bit too thick and unwieldy for her.

Annika got to try out T's octopus regulator after our Twin Rocks dive earlier today. She turns 10 in January and she is suddenly interested to go scuba diving before her birthday, just to beat her brother Tyrone, who went scuba diving in Palau when he was 9 years and 11 months.

Meanwhile, Annika spent a lot of time snorkeling, so I think she will be quite comfortable in the water if we can get her into a class in the next few months.

The last time T and I were here, in February 2006, we were able to visit with Ichay and Raul Bulaong, and took their girls and nephews to Sombrero Island for the day. Unfortunately, they couldn't make it this weekend, but we saw their new sailboat, Marikit, moored just off their house. We will have to try that sometime!

Earlier this year, while T and the kids were away, Tyrone and I spent a weekend in Solana with his cousin Francis. Some of those videos are on YouTube and I did blog that trip earlier as well. It's too bad he is still at CISV in Italy. The news we heard from Sunshine, his Adult Leader, is that he asked a French girl to one of their formal dinners and she said yes. Apparently he is supposed to be the heartthrob of the camp.

As for Athena, she is enjoying salty water more and more. She used to hate the feeling of the sand in her toes, but on this beach visit she was quite happy to sit on the beach and play, as well go dip her head into the water.

There's a great satisfaction, truly, to seeing the kids evolve, each at their own stage and at their own pace. When things are going great, it's much like a perfectly blown bubble ring, rising softly to the surface.

Would that currents never come into their lives to break up their fragile rings...

Cirque du Pasay

2007-07-15T00:47:00.000+08:00

R got invited by PAGCOR Chairman Efraim Genuino to the premiere of their show, Wanders, tonight, but his response was that he was unavailable and that I would be going instead. Luckily, T and I had only two other S.E.'s (Annika's term for Social Events) planned for the evening, so squeezing in Wanders was feasible.

The show was sort of PAGCOR's attempt to draw a wider crowd to its Airport Casino, which has a huge amphitheater. I was familiar with the theater because we had been able to use it for a couple of "Araw-Araw Premyo Sa Resibo" shows last year.

Wanders is basically a combination of Chinese acrobats with Pinoy singers and dancers. Tonight's premiere even included a cameo by Martin Nievera, as the President and First Gentleman, plus all the PAGCOR bigwigs were in attendance. Also in the main row were former First Lady Imelda Marcos accompanied by Teyet Pascual and pianist Ingrid Santamaria.

If one has been to Vegas and seen the Cirque du Soleil, then Wanders is clearly not in the same league. That said, Vegas is the center of the casino world, so it's unfair to compare. (Despite Macau's having beaten Vegas in total revenue last year, I still think Vegas is tops in terms of overall entertainment value - for now.)

When looked at purely for its entertainment value, then Wanders can be graded more fairly. PAGCOR has "spared no expense" (to use that well-worn phrase from Jurassic Park) in combining a very energetic Chinese troupe with equally eager Pinoy performers. Filling out the ensemble are six leggy models from Belarus who were more than adequate at their on stage performance - after all, all it involved were knowing just basic dance steps and getting in and out of feathery costumes.

After the show, T and I ran out of time for a swing by the Bastille Day festivities in Spirals at the Sofitel. Instead we headed to Cuisine to wish MVP a happy 61st birthday. It ended up being a full Saturday night, with two out of three S.E.'s completed.

Pork's Park

2007-07-08T22:12:00.000+08:00

Just flew in from Davao, where I spent the day touring a huge estate in the foothills of Mt. Apo. The owner started accumulating the 220-hectare Apo property in the '60's, after having started out in the piggery business.

His close friend, Col. Joseph McMicking, who developed Forbes Park in Makati to become the premier residential area in the country today, suggested that he call his piggery Pork's Park, and indeed, it was known by that name for a long time.

This house is the family's "Malayan House," still the center of their day-to-day activities on the estate. It's a unique design, with the roosters on the roof truly giving it a Malay flair.

Now in his 90's, the owner has always been a well known horse aficionado. His first big winner was a horse named Empire Joy, who won on his wedding day. Fifty years later, on the couple's golden wedding anniversary, another of his horses won, coincidentally also named Empire Joy.

These four five-month-old chestnuts come from a stud whose lineage can be traced to A.P. Indy, who won Belmont and was sired by Seattle Slew, the Triple Crown winner, who in turn was sired from perhaps the most famous Triple Crown winner of all, Secretariat. Amazingly, all four share the same white markings on their foreheads, although all come from different mares. Watch out for these four in the local horse-racing news in the months to come.

Weekend in Sofitel

2007-07-01T22:59:00.000+08:00

The midpoint of the year is always a time of nice surprises for me. The week before mid-year is our wedding anniversary and July 1st, the beginning of the second half of the year, is my birthday. T always has a little surprise around both events, so I've learned not to have too many plans around these two weekends.

This year the birthday surprise turned out to be a Sofitel weekend. This is a fairly new/old hotel in Manila. The Sofitel chain took over what was the old Westin Philippine Plaza, and put in $12 million worth of refurbishing into the rooms and the main restaurant, Spirals. The result created a "resort" in the city, all without the hassle of having to fly anywhere.

For me, the surprise started with T announcing that I shouldn't make any weekend plans. Somehow you didn't need to be a genius to figure out that something was afoot.

As early as Saturday, June 30th, I was receiving texts from "unusual" sources, like T's classmates. As there were quite a few, I already began to suspect that Saturday night would be a special.

One nice text came from Tita Mary de Leon, who was in Redwood City at the time. She also sent siomai with a signed card, which means she either couriered in the card or had pre-signed all the birthday cards for those birthdays she would miss while she was in the U.S. Either way, it was delightful of her.

MIL sent a couple of shirts, so I texted her back a thank you, to which she replied, "I heard you're spending the night in Sofitel." I just texted back that the rooms were supposed to have been nicely refurbished and I was looking forward to it.

Anyway, after the afternoon's underwater hockey game in the Army Pool, T, B, J9, Annika and I all got ready to head over to the Sofitel for what was supposed to be a private dinner. Once again, the cover was somewhat blown, as Rosan suddenly appeared and "decided" to join us for dinner. Perhaps it wasn't just us after all.

When we got to Spirals, I could see Kiko, Martin and several other nephews peeking out of the door to one of the function rooms, so clearly the jib was up. Inside were Mona and Elena. A surprise was that their respective husbands, my brothers Robin and Dave, were not there having decided to bike in Cagayan or someplace instead. Also around were Tessahay and Emily, Anton and Alexis, and Joey and Rosette.

The Spirals buffet is the mother of all hotel buffets, with amazing entrees including stuff that aren't in most other buffets like fresh oysters or chili con carne or cotton candy. It's so exhaustive that I gained two pounds over the weekend!

The thing about T is that even when the cover is blown, there are still surprises to be had - like an onion that has layers and layers of peel to be exposed. At the end of the dinner, Athena and a gaggle of maids suddenly appeared, to bring us to our room.

Just as we were heading up though, Alex and Tintin appeared, having finally put their own boys to bed. So we hung out at the lobby for a drink with both - nothing too involved as Alex was running a 21k at 5am.

Upstairs in Room 955, I found out that we had a two-bedroom suite: one room for the girls, a middle living room for everyone and a plush bedroom for us, complete with such romantic touches as a glass-walled bathroom. In the bathroom closets was what I might call the core of the onion - yet another surprise: two Zegna suits for me, which T had bought during her trip to Rome for the canonization.

At this point, parts of this blog have been expunged to be able to retain its G rating. Let me just say though, that we did get to see Sharapova in her "swan" outfit winning one of her early matches at Wimbledon.

The next morning, while everyone was still asleep, Athena and I went off to go swimming in the hotel pool. She now stays a full hour in the water before she gets cold. As usual, she loves jumping around and going underwater, totally unafraid. I would've taken her down the water slide but at the last moment, felt that maybe at age two, she should wait another year or so.

My parents and B joined us for a three-hour, Sunday birthday lunch at Spirals. The buffet was even bigger and this time there was free bubbly as well. I can't call it champagne as it was sweet enough to accompany the halo-halo dessert and therefore unlikely to have come from France. Still, a nice enough afternoon aperitif that my Dad had three glasses.

With a full weekend like that, I think the Sofitel should do quite well. There's no beach, of course, but between the pool, the food and the great city views from the room balconies, it's enough of an escape from the city. Perfect for a birthday weekend.

From Yamashita to the Abu Sayyaf

2007-06-26T23:32:00.000+08:00

I met a really impressive guy yesterday evening - Admiral Timothy J. Keating, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command. This is a photo from the front page of today's Philippine Star showing him touring an abandoned Abu Sayyaf stonghold in Jolo, Sulu together with U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney yesterday morning.

That same evening, they were both back in Manila at a reception in his honor at the U.S. Embassy. The second picture is of the Admiral and the Ambassador, flanked by the Japanese Ambassador, MRP and T.

Ambassador Kenney told us how the mud was so thick in Jolo that she had to take off her boots and walk barefoot to their plane. They arrived at 5 P.M. then somehow found time to shower, get dressed and get to the Embassy on time. (It looks like the Admiral had more stuff to put on!)

The reception was held at the "Chick" Parsons ballroom of the U.S. Embassy. It's an historic setting. After WWII, General Yamashita was tried and convicted of war crimes in the ballroom. Lee McClenny of the U.S. Embassy explained that it was one of the few structures in Manila left standing and where a war crimes trial could be held.

Lee also told T and I about Chick Parsons. He was an interesting fellow, with over 932,000 Google results. In the pre-Internet era, among other things he worked as a spy in Manila. General Douglas MacArthur called him "the bravest man I know."

Adm. Keating gave a short talk about the U.S.'s determination to win the war on terror. Whether one agrees with G.W. Bush's policies or not, it is admirable to see the dedication of these military men. It's not his job to question politics. He's been given orders and he's gonna carry them out.

It also gave me pause to think - the U.S. has been fighting wars in the Philippines for over a hundred years - from Aguinaldo to Yamashita to the Abu Sayyaf. That alone makes me wonder how long they will be in Iraq.

What a difference a year makes!

2007-06-24T13:28:00.000+08:00

T and I spent our 13th anniversary in Boracay. That's two years in a row that she's "kidnapped" me and brought me there as a surprise.

This time however, we had B, J9 and Ty along with us. All of them flew off to Bora on Thursday. When I got home that night, Annika gave me my tickets to follow them on Friday morning. The two younger girls didn't get to go since Annika had school on Friday and Athena, well, someone had to stay with Annika.

Bora was drizzly on Friday but the weather was perfect by Saturday. It's really a less hectic place during the off season. Flights were still full and there were lots of people on the beach, so I can only imagine the crush of the crowds during the summer.

It was nice to have the kids for the weekend. B hasn't been to Bora in ten years, but between getting a henna tattoo, accomplishing the Cocomangas challenge and chilling out on Jonah's Fruit Shakes, he did it all! (Note: the avocado-mango shake topped the taste tests.)

As for Ty, he's really soaking up the last week before he heads off to Florence for CISV. He has a great dragon tattoo to show off to the other 11-year-olds at that summer camp.

The scoop of the trip was meeting Kris Aquino and James Yap at Discovery Shores, where the coo-some twosome were spending the weekend. If T gets this photo into her article next week, she might even scoop Ricky Lo of Star!

As usual, more pictures are on Kodak Gallery.

Weekend in Yosemite

2007-06-16T11:00:00.000+08:00

At the very end of the Vernal Falls trail is Emerald Lake, a small quiet lagoon where tired hikers can stretch their feet before heading down again.

B, J9 and I trekked all the way to Vernal Falls - what a great workout. Along the way, the views are spectacular. I can't load up all the pictures here but they are in my Kodak Gallery and I also have videos on YouTube. Those are the best sites to view all my stuff on Yosemite.

This trip was a typical, all-too-short break for me. Basically, it was a weekend stopover on my way home from the gaming summit in Montreal. The kids picked me up in the airport and we drove straight to Yosemite from there, staying two nights at the Yosemite View Lodge.

Saturday was our busy day, doing the trek and also biking around the Valley. The next day, all we had time for was a quick brunch in the quaint little town of Groveland just outside Yosemite. Then it was straight on to the airport again to catch the flight home.

Loto-Quebec, the Gambling Lord of the North

2007-06-12T23:33:00.000+08:00

Walking around the Centre Eaton, the center of shopping in Montreal, we came across this kiosk for Loto-Quebec.

This state monopoly is the equivalent of PAGCOR and PCSO combined and they are everywhere. (Loto-Quebec runs all games of chance in Quebec, including casinos and lotteries.)

Their 2006 revenue was about P200 billion, 75% of which came from lotteries and P38 billion from 3 casinos. In contrast, PAGCOR revenue is about P25 billion from 14 casinos and PCSO only made P15 billion.

We spotted several other kiosks and on every floor, there were other simple outlets in souvenir shops and other stores looking to sell Lotto tickets along with Montreal keychains and other knickknacks.

Within the kiosks themselves, several "games" are available. The punter simply takes a card and darkens the numbers he wants and submits it to the elderly (they almost all were senior citizens) cashier, who then slips the card into a machine, which outputs a thermal receipt.

Interestingly, among its many lottery formats there is also a 6/49 lotto, exactly like the PCSO has here in the Phils. I note that the progressively increasing jackpot was at $35 million, which would be about P1.75 billion here! The PCSO 6/49 rarely gets into the hundreds of millions and when it does, people are lined up to buy tickets. Here, there was very little traffic at the kiosk.

Where's the Sun King When You Need Him?

2007-06-03T23:05:00.000+08:00

Just checked into my hotel in Montreal - it's a grand name, the Chateau Versailles - but it's really just a dandified bed and breakfast. Looks like a four-storey townhouse with no elevators. Room is smallish with a big bed. The TV is mostly French but I found ESPN, so I guess it's ok.

The worst part is that the wifi in my room (only) is broken, so to do any internet I have to bring my laptop to the lobby and work from here. On the good side, the manager was apologetic and gave me free internet for the week because of the problem - at $16 a day, that's about $80 for the week, so I guess I can stand the trouble.

Rome vs. Montreal

2007-06-01T15:33:00.000+08:00

T left for Rome last night to attend the canonization of Mother Marie Eugenie, the founder of the Assumption. Seems like all of Assumption is heading to the Vatican for the ceremonies on Sunday.

T just rang from Frankfurt, where their plane stopped over. With her on the flight was my cousin, Chona, who will be attending the rites with her two sisters, Nena and Binky. Amazingly, their other sister, Teri, who was once an Assumption nun, is unfortunately unable to make it.

When one thinks about it, it's not everyday that someone is canonized, so all the hoopla is well deserved. Aside from the official logo, there is also an official icon. The Assumption website has a ton of information for the worldwide horde of Assumptionistas who will be in Rome this weekend.

Meanwhile, it looks like the kids are gonna be home alone, as I am leaving for Montreal tonight. The purpose of my trip is as far on the other end of the socio-religious continuum as can be imagined.

Next week, Montreal plays host to the 9th Global Interactive Gaming Summit and Expo. Gaming, of course, is just a euphemism for gambling. This is one industry that is constantly in search of words to disguise itself. The latest is that companies are becoming reluctant to call themselves "casinos." The new word is "leisure." So this junket conference will probably be called GILSE next year.

Meanwhile, it looks like T will be spending the weekend praying while I will be spending the weekend playing. Well, hopefully T will be saying penance on my behalf.

Why Kids Sometimes Hate Their Parents

2007-05-26T23:51:00.000+08:00

Annika was Reyna Esperanza at the Santacruzan in our village today, escorted by Tyrone.

I guess every Pinoy joins a Santacruzan at one point or another in his or her life. In the kids' case, it was kind of a shocker since they had just come in from their vacation in the U.S. Having to dress up in one of Tessa's heavy gowns and a barong was a mood dampener. And the heat and humidity of the afternoon did nothing to buoy their spirits.

The event itself wasn't too long nor too involved. Just a few pre-teen to college-age sagalas escorted by reluctant boys, one flower-festooned careton of the Virgin Mary and one drum-and-xylophone marching band. The little procession did a small loop of the village streets and then marched right back to the basketball court for a merienda of hotdogs and fries.

Afterwards, I took Annika to Rockwell and bought her Shrek the Third for her Nintendo DS. Then we had a steak dinner at Myron's, a new place in the basement that serves very nice, reasonably priced steaks. That got her somewhat mollified. After all, she's now the first kid on the block that will have Shrek.

In this video, you can just feel the enthusiasm of the two, as Daddy's plaintive requests to smile and wave at the camera are barely acknowledged. The band's cacophony in the background completes the ambience. For the aficionados of religious processions, I've loaded up more pictures and videos on Kodak Gallery and YouTube.

It's All Good!

2007-05-25T09:13:00.000+08:00

T and the younger kids flew in early this AM. They woke me up for a swim and then we all had breakfast at Pancake House. It's amazing how much the kids have grown in 2 months.

Minimizing My Carbon Footprint

2007-05-20T23:30:00.000+08:00

T was asking me the other day what I'm doing now that she and the kids are all off on vacation. I told her I was minimizing my carbon footprint, which of course brought up the obvious retort, "What is a carbon footprint?"

I guess it's the latest new age-vegan-Greenpeace-global warming thing. According to carbonfootprint.com, "A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house [sic] gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide."

In short, if you're breathing, you're contributing to global warming.

Of course, we can't all just keel over and stop breathing just to save the earth. So the tree-huggers came up with the idea that we can at least feel less guilty about global warming by buying what they call carbon offsets. (Who knew there was a shopping angle to this?)

The premise is that these carbon offsets fund "green" projects all around the world. It's certainly an innovative way to get people to contribute to tree-planting and similar activities. ("Don't worry about your 12-cylinder SUV; just buy another carbon credit.")

Interestingly, the idea has taken enough root in Europe, such that even Buckingham Palace bought carbon credits to offset the airplane emissions from Queen Elizabeth's recent visit to the U.S.

As for me, I'm just seeing how low our electric bill can get without the entire family watching TV, lighting up the house, using air conditioners, etc. So in the past month, my carbon emissions have been confined to surfing the web and using the electric fan.

Considering that temperatures here have been approaching 40C, I am so glad that T and kids are arriving on Friday - just so I can start maximizing my carbon footprint again!

The Struggle to Remain Relevant

2007-05-14T15:53:00.000+08:00

Ages and stages. The kids are so young and full of life, but on the other end of the spectrum are both sets of our parents, now in their 70's, now and then given to the strangeness of the old.

In a sense, all this reminds me of Dylan Thomas's famous poem. Here is a cool recording of the poet himself reading his poem. To those who are still on dial-up mode in this broadband world, just read this in a deep voice:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It seems to me sometimes, that as one ages, he/she struggles to remain relevant. It's not easy to be aware that one's physicality is gradually deteriorating, and hence to wonder if one's life has been of import.

Thus the inexplicable rage we sometimes experience from our beloved 70-somethings.

Weekend in SFO, Part 3

2007-05-10T00:11:00.000+08:00

Here's the other reason why I had to be in SFO for the weekend: Athena. At two, she owns me completely. I shudder to think what she can do with me when she is say, 16.

Her elder sister, the inspiration for this blog, is Annika (at far left). Annika is clearly the bright one in the family, with grades that would make any parent proud.

But it is Athena that has made my life stress-free. She has a look that would make any burden disappear. And an energy that keeps me awake, even after a 12-hour, trans-Pacific flight.

As she enters her "terrible two's," Athena is as active as the Energizer Bunny, continually running around and waving her hands in the air, always smiling, testing words like "Barney" (unfortunately) and "Dah" (for Daddy).

It almost makes me want to fly there for the weekend again...

Weekend in SFO, Part 2

2007-05-08T09:22:00.000+08:00

"If you were sure you could not fail, what would you choose to do with your life?" That's the memorable line from Bryan's commencement speaker at his graduation ceremonies last May 5.

I thought about that a bit - how the line really challenges these young adults to shoot for the stars. It's a great way to encourage them to take some risks.

That night at the dinner party, I noticed that B's friends were all writing him their best wishes in his Guest Book. I decided to also put in the flipside of the speaker's comment - that often in life, we do fail. In fact, we stumble countless times and in myriad ways.

The path to success is to never give up, never despair, never surrender.

One little story I remember comes from my first meeting with Cyril Pereira, then General Manager of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. I was just getting my feet wet in the printing business, trying to learn as much as I could from the old pros.

The SCMP presses that CP had set up were the creme de la creme of the industry when I first visited in 1996. You could walk all around the press hall and never get any stains, not even on the bottom of your shoes.

I asked CP how he had achieved all this, arguably one of the most impressive press rooms in the world. I'll never forget his response:

"What you'd don't see are the mistakes I made getting here."

Weekend in SFO

2007-05-04T13:51:00.000+08:00

Just a quick post while I'm dining al desko as usual. I'm really excited to be flying off to see T and the kids tonight. PR104 leaves at 10:30 P.M. and gets in to SFO by 8 P.M., still on Friday.

Tomorrow, Mr. B graduates from Notre Dame de Namur University. It's amazing that T and I now have a college grad. I was telling B to go work for Google and find out how they plan to conquer the world.

Tomorrow also, Athena turns two. That's a twenty-year gap between #1 and #4, from 1985 to 2005! We'll have a small, joint celebration for both kids tomorrow night and leave the big partying for when everyone comes home at the end of May.

It will just be a 50-hour stay for me, because on Sunday night I get on PR105 to fly back here. We're still finishing the Annual Report. This weekend is a perfectly timed getaway because the proofs are coming in this afternoon and the printers will be working over the weekend anyway. When I arrive on Tuesday morning, the first printed copies should be ready for inspection.

We'd All Rather Be Flicking!

2007-05-03T23:05:00.000+08:00

My hockey mates posted this invite for the summer, in case anyone is interested in learning how to play underwater hockey.

The Philippine Underwater Hockey Club aka PUHC is a fun group of young people, from very diverse places all over the world. For example, this "ad" was created by Margie, who in real life works with Arkeo Films, an indie movie group. Other members range from professionals to students, entrepreneurs to corporate animals, triathletes to weekend warriors.

The club has its roots in the late '70's, when the U.P. Skin Divers Club was formed, then later, the U.P. Divers Club came about. These divers were always looking for some water-related sports and underwater hockey was introduced. By the mid-80's, a core group of aficionados had broken away and devoted themselves full-time to hockey.

Today, three decades later, there's a hockey game in some pool somewhere in Manila almost every night of the week! If you liked the previous post on the hockey players showing off their flicking skills, this might be the sport for you!

I'd Rather Be Flicking

2007-05-01T20:57:00.000+08:00

This is a fascinating video of some really skilled underwater hockey players. They seem to get fantastic height when flicking that heavy, lead puck. More amazing is their ability to catch it in mid-water, spin and drop it in front of them, ready for the next flick.

Today's u/w hockey game wasn't quite the same. The Army Pool visibility was down to about three tile-lengths, so the best way to score was to start a big swing to the other end of the pool (where no one could see you), then continue on and swim to the other goal.

It was a good workout day for me though. With T and the kids all in SFO, there's absolutely nothing to do here but exercise. So I swam 1.2k in Polo when I woke up, then had an hour of Pilates with Linzi at 1:30 P.M. and finally got to the hockey game at 4 P.M.

With all my workouts over the past week, I'm down to 139 lbs.

Butterfly Kisses

2007-04-30T00:26:00.000+08:00

I was telling my friend P, who works with PAGCOR (the Philippine Amusement & Gaming Corporation), about how T and all the kids are all away now and I'm home alone. The house is dark, hot and quiet and I miss the sounds of the kids.

In response, P sent me the lyrics of the song Butterfly Kisses, by Bob Carlisle:

There's two things I know for sure:
She was sent here from heaven and she's daddy's little girl.
As I drop to my knees by her bed at night
She talks to Jesus and I close my eyes and I thank god for all the joy in my life
Oh, but most of all for butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer; sticking little white flowers all up in her hair;
"Walk beside the pony, Daddy, it's my first ride."
"I know the cake looks funny, Daddy, but I sure tried."
In all that I've done wrong I know I must have done something right to deserve a hug every morning and butterfly kisses at night.

Sweet 16 today.
She's looking like her mama a little more everyday
One part woman, the other part girl.
To perfume and make-up from ribbons and curls
Trying her wings out in a great big world.

But I remember
Butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer; sticking little white flowers all up in her hair.
"You know how much I love you, Daddy, But if you don't mind I'm only gonna kiss you on the cheek this time."
With all that I've done wrong I must have done something right to deserve her love every morning and butterfly kisses at night.

All the precious time
Like the wind, the years go by.
Precious butterfly.
Spread your wings and fly.

She'll change her name today.
She'll make a promise and I'll give her away.
Standing in the bride-room just staring at her.
She asked me what I'm thinking and I said "I'm not sure - I just feel like I'm losing my baby girl."
She leaned over ... gave me butterfly kisses with her mama there,
Sticking little white flowers all up in her hair
"Walk me down the aisle, Daddy - it's just about time."
"Does my wedding gown look pretty, Daddy? Daddy, don't cry!"

Oh, with all that I've done wrong I must have done something right.
To deserve your love every morning and butterfly kisses - I couldn't ask God for more, man this is what love is.

I know I gotta let her go, but I'll always remember every hug in the morning and butterfly kisses.

Alright, it's syrupy, of course, and the YouTube video is just further reinforcement of that. But hey, it's gonna be a long and humid summer, and there's not much to do other than blog away.

I Blog, Therefore I Am

2007-04-29T08:40:00.000+08:00

My Mom sent me an e-mail: "Are you still "working" for PhilWeb?"

I thought she'd been reading my blog and wondering where I find the time to do this. Well, to paraphrase Rene Descartes, "Blogito, ergo sum."

To my officemates, I'm probably like Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, trying to be "with it" by starting his own blog. At least, I can say that all these posts are truly mine. Or at least, I haven't found my own version of a Tina the Tech Writer to make my posts for me.

Moving On Ceremony

2007-04-28T09:30:00.000+08:00

Everybody moves on. Change is inevitable.

Oftentimes the occasions are happy, as when Tyrone had his Beacon School Moving On Ceremony two days ago. It's the school's transition from elementary to the middle school, which is grades 6-8.

In this photo, Ty is shaking the hand of his homeroom teacher, Mr. Quinto, who has been an enormous positive influence on Ty this year. His grades have progressed steadily, his focus is there and his teamwork markedly improved. Unfortunately Mr. Q is leaving Beacon to go back to the U.S. for the next schoolyear. He will be sorely missed.

Sometimes these same occasions are nostalgic, as when we load up pictures like this and wonder how much longer these boys will be clowning around, playing with their food. (More pix are on Kodak Gallery, for those in wilfing mode.)

Funny how I can still recall when I was in Grade 5, seemingly millennia ago, and remember which of my teachers were positive influences on me.

Ages and stages indeed.

More Wilfing Stuff, Thanks to Freckle-face

2007-04-22T23:30:00.000+08:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Freckle-face left a comment on one of my earlier posts, so I clicked on the name and got led to her blog, itty bitty jots. While looking through, I noted her VisualDNA and decided to click through and make one for myself too.

Discoveries Whilst Wilfing

2007-04-22T08:11:00.000+08:00

I was wilfing through blogs and discovered a website called slide.com in Cathy Babao Guballa's blog, Midlife Mysteries.

Slide.com allows you to load up selected pictures and then put them into a slide show that you can embed into a blog. You can also move pictures from Flickr or Friendster or MySpace so it seems pretty well-equipped to connect with other websites.

You can also add a Guestbook like this one below:

I wonder if Google will eventually buy these guys for $xxx billion...