Big Bear

Went snowboarding for the first time this season a couple of weeks ago. The timing was perfect. A storm was blowing right as I was driving up there so there was a lot of fresh snow. This is the view from the cabin that Sheila and her classmates rented. Big thanks to them for letting me crash at their place for the night since the roads were closed. Had a lot of fun and good food too. They brought up Armenian BBQ which was excellent. The next day we got up and a lot of snow had fallen. So after rolling a few snowmen and a snowball fight it was time to put the chains on and drive back home.

The Outliars

Went to the Whiskey a Go Go in West Hollywood to see my former coworkers Carrie and Micah's band, the Outliars. They've put quite a bit into it, go out and support them. They play about once a month, check whiskyagogo.com for the schedule or go to myspace.com/theoutliars and get tickets from the guys.

Bad Ass Keychain

Found this little toy at Target. It looks exactly like my bike but tiny. It looks like a tiny little bike is riding on my handlebars while I'm riding around.

Rib Eye

Broiled a steak for dinner, mm came out awesome. Went well will a potato that I carved up into chip. Send me your recipes, I should probably not eat man food all the time. This one came out a perfect medium. I tried it again the other day and I screwed it up, I think the weather got cooler so my stove didn't burn as hot and it came out really rare. I still ate it like a caveman but then a part of my brain felt bad about it.

>On 2007-12-04,17:40:37 Kathryn wrote:

>>Goodness! You are quite the cook!

Vegas

Was in Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Anyone got ideas on what to do in Vegas?

Salmon Dinner

Today I made baked miso salmon for dinner. Came out yummy. My special ingredient is filipino brown sugar and red miso. Hmm I think I should invest in some fancier table wear.

>On 2007-11-10,01:28:05 Blaise wrote:

>>5 minutes later ...

Going to Miami

This weekend I went to Miami and suprised Ray, Val and Scott who were coming to town. Had a lot of fun, big thanks to Alex for putting us up and showing us around. We hung out at the beach, lounge hopped in the Art Deco District, harassed some aligators at Everglades National Park and had some great Cuban food. Anyone want to go again?

Universal Studios

This weekend I was at Universal Studios, where I haven't been to for like 15 years. We hopped on the tram tour and it took us through a couple of sets, including Val's show Desperate Housewives. Everybody on the tram got really excited when we passed Wisteria Lane. Anyway back on the upper lot, we were walking around and this convoy of ATV interrupts us. The Green Goblin, Captain America, Spiderman and Storm were in them. They reached a plaza and hopped out. Captain America, Spiderman and the Green Goblin immediate start grab-assing. The trio pretty much ignored Storm. Captain America in particular really liked touching Green Goblin. The Waterworld show was pretty good, had a lot of stunts. I got totally drenched. The Terminator 2 show was hilarious too since it was pretty dated. The guy who's suppose to be Edward Furlong playing John must have been like 45, but the woman playing John's mom was a dead ringer for Linda Hamilton.

Street Folk

Lately I've been encountering a lot of street folk. "Homeless people" just doesn't seem like the right term. We don't call pedestrians carless travellers right? Well today Little Red Riding Hood was riding the Big Blue Bus and its not even holloween yet! Unfortunately she bears little in common with this picture I found on google image search. To my suprise, Little Red Riding Hood look more like Aunt Jemmima, although she sounded like big bad wolf. Who knew big bad wolf would get so worked up over getting cheated about an all day pass. Little Red Riding Hood did have a bright red velvety hood, some suede ugg boots, and a big pair of noise cancelling headphones. Little Red Riding Hood obviously had some checks to cash. She didn't forget her big wheeled push basket either. But her basket contained no food for grandma. This was truly a tragedy because instead she had a black 5 gallon pail which LRRH opted to sit on instead of the bus benches. It was infact no ordinary 5 gallon pail, LRRH told us. "Does an ordinary 5 gallon pail have a toilet in it?" LRRH boasted to us rhetorically. Well that was about when I started praying for the bus to get to my stop as gently as possible. It was too early still to be covered in Little Red Riding Hood's shit and piss.

Hannah Montana Tickets

150 Dads run in a radio station high heels 50 yard race to win Hannah Montana concert tickets for their daughters. Best part is the winner wasn't even a dad, or a cross dressing pedo. Just a ringer who ran the race for his boss's daughter. Looked like he enjoyed the competition, some of the dad's were dead serious. They were probably discussing tactics and strategy and best places to get high heels in a size 15 while warming up.



>On 2007-10-20,23:02:25 grandmasophia wrote:

>>naaasty

Les Miserables

By Victor Hugo. Great story. The only weird part is that the novel is written more like a play because of the recycling of characters. I think modern novelists try to inject more believability into their novels. It seems Javert and Thenardier keep showing up in and it seems to be a huge coincidence.

Dispatches

By Micheal Herr. After reading half this book, I realized I've seen half the scenes in Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, Herr cowrote the screnplays for both. The book is based on Herr's accounts as a war correspondent in the early years of the Vietnam War. His writing style and the outrageousness of what he recounted, and it being the 60s and there being a whole lot of drugs makes his retelling almost unbelievable. But after reading it, pretty much every vietnam war movie you've ever seen from Full Metal Jacket to Platoon Leader took something from this book. It also makes sense now why the protagonist in Full Metal Jacket was a journalist.

>On 2007-10-03,00:55:55 grandmasophia wrote:

>>book stealer!

Kite Runner

By Khaled Hosseini. Hosseini is first generation Afghan-American, the son of a diplomat who moved to San Jose, got an MD from UCSD and wrote his first novel, Kite Runner, in 2004 after practicing medicine for 8 years. The book is a work of fiction, but like they say, first novels are always somewhat autobigraphical. This one also ties in closely with recent current events. The book is written through the perspective of Amir, who grows up in Kabul with his best buddy Hassan and eventaully flees to Hayward, CA with his father and renturns to Afghanistan months before 9-11 to fulfill a dying man's wish. All the while he struggles with inner conflict and comes to grasps with the truth about himself, his family and his culture. A Kite Runner is one who chases down plumetting kites after their lines have been severed by the glass encrusted line of another kite.

>On 2007-09-29,20:50:27 Blaise wrote:

>>Oh, this book also has gay pedophilia. Hey I just read book, I don't know why there's always gay pedophilia in them.


>On 2007-10-01,18:24:17 Kathryn wrote:

>>I still loved the book though! They're making a movie out of this book too.


>On 2007-10-02,19:24:32 Blaise wrote:

>>What! I should just get netflix.

Launched

Dawn up and signal picked up. Haha here's an odd quote from Dr. Russell:

The Delta 2 rocket, fitted with nine strap-on solid-fuel boosters, safely climbed away from the Florida coastline and launch complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. "We have our time machine up and flying," said Dawn Principal Investigator Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Bike got Couched

Somebody dropped a couch on my bike. The front tire which was hanging on by a thread blew up and the rim was bent. Actually it was already bent before, but having a couch with a bum sleeping on it wasn't helping. So getting the rim straightened, getting a new tube and a new tire put on came up to 38 bucks. This 10 dollar bike is a freakin money pit.

>On 2007-09-27,00:39:16 grandmasophia wrote:

>>maybe you should get bike insurance


>On 2007-09-27,20:08:02 Blaise wrote:

>>Good idea, I bet the deductible would only have come out to 5 dollars.

Running with Scissors

The memmoirs of Augusten Burroughs. This guy either had a pretty crazy upbringing or a very original perception of it. Either way his childhood and the lives of those that surrounded it makes for an interesting if not criminal tale. This book also has lots of gay pedophile sex so be warned. The people on the bus or the pretty bookstore girls might look at you funny. I hear it also has a movie adaptation. If after I read this book and found out they were going to make movie about it-- I wouldn't believe it, half of it couldn't be made into a movie. Sure raises the bar for tu vida loca.

Book Reviews

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Both are really good books. Into the Wild is about a 20 something guy named Chris McCandless who right after graduated from college sells and gives away all his belonging, leaves all family and friends behind and started wandering around the US. Eventually he walks into the Alaskan bush an ends up starving to death. Really interesting book, sums up a lot of things about certain young men. Maybe don't read it if you've got the wandering bug. Either way its a good book, read it and reflect about your sense of purpose.

Mario Puzo's Godfather I read after being recommended to me. Its also a good read, even after you've watched the Godfather 100 times like I have. The differences are interesting. The characters in the book completely contradicts the whole premise of Godfather III the movie. The book also goes a lot into what is going on inside the character's heads, which isn't as obvious when you watch the movie. Tom Hagen's part, or at least his point of view is also more front and center in the book. There's also a lot more sex in the book. Finally, the characters were played very well by Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and James Caan. If I read the book first and then watched the movie, I would have thought that they got the characters down exactly, except for John Cazale's portrayal of Fredo. They made him wa more wimpy than he was in the book.

>On 2007-09-21,17:15:39 Kathryn wrote:

>>So weird! I just read about Sean Penn making a film about this: http://movies.msn.com/news/article.aspx?news=276496


>On 2007-09-21,19:50:51 Blaise wrote:

>>Hmm that'll be interesting, it'd be hard to do without completely romantizing some characters even more so than the book already did. I think oddest of all would be the homeless people he met along the way who suddenly find out someone like Susan Sarandon is going to be be playing them on big screen.

FedEx Cup

Here's Tiger Woods holding up the FedEx Cup. I guess the FedEx Cup is like the Nextel Cup in NASCAR where the driver with the most victories or points wins it for the season. So for winning the FedEx Cup, Tiger gets $10 million dollars. Not in taxable cash earning though, it goes to his PGA retirement account, which Tiger can claim when he's 60. If everything goes well, or actually even if Tiger's performance sees a drop off, read this article about how much his retirement account could be worth.

Yahoo Article

So if he sees a modest 5% on just what he won this year and collects in 28 years when he's 60, his 10 million would be worth about 40 million. Gees, I thought I was getting a good deal with my Roth IRA.

Google "Man"

If you search for "man" in images.google.com, this guy is the first hit. Who the hell is this guy?! I thought it would be Tom Brady. Anyway watch out, some naked hairy gay men were also in the results.

DAWN launch

DAWN is one of the biggest missions we currently have at UCLA Space Sciences. Its about to launch on September 26th from the Cape. Here's an article on its ion engines.

DAWN Engines

DAWN has been a long time coming. Dr. Russell's first proposal for the mission was submitted about 10 years ago. I think it was originally suppose to go to the moon first. I remember when I was still a student in 2001 many of the staff were in DC on Sept. 11, either for the final succeeding proposal or a design review. Since we are on the science end, for most of us the job hasn't started yet and really won't get rolling for another 5 years. By that time, a lot of the systems I ordered and configured for handling the data will already be obsolete, but thats ok we already budgeted for upgrades. A lot of the people who worked on the original proposals have also already retired or moved on to other jobs. For now most of the jobs will be test data and checking up on the instruments aboard.

The great thing about the ion engines on this mission is its flexibility. The mission has actually already missed its first launch opportunity but its still on schedule to hit Vesta by manipulating the output on the engines. Beyond the second rendezvous with Ceres, its also possible to route DAWN to other objects. It all depends on the fuel and whether we can convince NASA's space science office to give us more money. The picture is of the spacecraft packed in its shroud.

Ray and Val's suprise

Ray and Val had a big announcement this Labor Day. What a handsome/beautiful peanut. Details are at their website www.valeray.com

Broken Leg

My mom broke her leg on Saturday afternoon so I spent most of Labor Day weekend at Methodist Hospital in Arcadia. She fell and broke her left femur. An orthopedic surgeon performed surgery Sunday morning to insert a titanium pin so she's recovering now from the surgery. Looks painful, but my mom felt a lot better after her pretty nurse, Michelle, stopped the morphine drip. I guess she didn't mind the titanium pin inside the femur bone as much as the drugs that were making her drowsy and giving her a headache.

24 hour Koreatown

The nurses wanted to go out on Friday so we had a late dinner at BCD Tofu House in Koreatown. Its a 24 hour Korean BBQ restaurant so it has become popular with the night shift hospital people. Sure enough it wasn't long before a set of 3 filipina nurses in scrubs came in for Korean BBQ. The odd thing though was that their ages were set equally apart. They looked like a set of grandma nurse, mother nurse and daughter nurse coming in for their midshift break. Keep it in the family.

>On 2007-09-10,12:38:21 Kathryn wrote:

>>Mmmm! I love BCD tofu!


>On 2007-09-12,02:32:13 Blaise wrote:

>>So you've been there?! Usually I see a lot of Yong Dong Tofu. I think thats what its called.

Characters on the Bus

This week I've been mostly takingthe Big Blue Bus to work. There are some odd people taking the bus. Like today a guy with a suitcase and a sony walkman asked me for money cause he was hungry and its not the 1st of the month yet. I didn't give him any, I was scrounging for 10 cents myself. Anyway he asks me about Hewlett Packard printers, he needed one and was looking at one for $350 bucks. I told them they did the job. Hey wow, people pay me good money for that kind of advice and he got it for free. He wanted the printer to print out some legal stuff because he had an appeal that was going to the state or federal supreme court, or both. He did kinda look like a skinny Justice Clarence Thomas with Oakleys on.

>On 2007-08-31,02:28:39 Blaise wrote:

>>On the way home, this girl was chatting endlessly on her cell phone. The weird thing was she was speaking in Chinglish, but the Chinese part was in the dialect of my family. It was Fukienese, or Hokkien. I guess, I have just never really heard anyone younger than 30 speak it. Usually its my aunts, Taiwanese grandmother and old school chinese dudes like my doctor that speak it. There was too much English in her Chinglish though, but it wasn't Filipino English so it must have been from another English speaking asian country like Singapore or maybe Hong Kong. I didn't get to find out for sure, she never got off the phone.

Lunar Eclipse

Anyone stay up to see the total lunar eclipse? I'm kicking myself in the ass for missing it. I worked too late on Monday and konked out when I got home. Would have been a great one to add to my album. Oh well here's a beautiful stiched shot from skyandtelescope.com's gallery.

Filipino Movie

When I was on my way to the sushi restaurant in Glendale I passed by the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Brand Ave. It was showing a Filipino movie, "A Love Story". I did a double take because I didn't expect to see the words "ABS-CBN International" in large marquee in Glendale and I thought, wow, I want to see a Filipino Movie in Glendale. Then I went home and looked it up, 25 bucks for a ticket! Yeah right! I bet the movie could be had for 25 pesos on DVD.

Fishing

Ray wouldn't take his shirt off and do his best Vladimir Putin impression. In Mother Russia, fish catch you!

Anyway we didn't catch any fish, which was good because we forgot to buy fishing licenses. The guy who rented us the boat actually asked us if we wanted to buy bait but didn't ask us if we needed license. He must have figured we weren't gonna catch anything but figured he could get a few bucks from us for bait. We puttered around the lake, which wasn't really that big, but it didn't stop people from bringing huge floating nautical monstrosities. Do you really need a high speed hull and a huge 8 cylinder diesel to ply a lake where you could see the opposite shore? Its like using a Boeing 747 to buy diapers from the supermarket down the street. It was pretty nice to just take the boat out in the middle of the lake and lay under the sun. When we got bored of fishing we beached our boat on the sand and swam around.
We came back to LA and later that night Val came out and we got some sushi at Octopus in Glendale.

Camping this weekend

Ray, Josh and I went camping at Silverwood Lake. Silverwood Lake is a man made lake to the west of Lake Arrowhead. You get to Silverwood from LA by driving east on the 210, then take the 15 North and then the 138 to Silverwood. It was not bad, the weather was great and the sky was clear. We got to the lake in the dark on Thursday night and quickly set up our tent, built a fire and cooked our steaks. We basically just threw them in a bag with Lawry's steak seasoning and some seasoning salt and they came out great. I think we had about a pound of thick juicy ribeye each and mine came out a good medium. Easily the best steak I had all year. Something about cooking over an open flame makes food taste so good. We brought these cheesy plastic utensils but they were pretty useless so we just ate the damn things with our hands and teeth. Like animals! Good thing no park rangers came to check on us. They'd either get scared off by our primal grunting and steak juice covered faces or end up discarding their shoes and join us to dance around the fire. Anyway for civility we ate our steaks with beer and rice cooked over the campfire. Amazingly the rice came out better than any 100 dollar rice cooker could make it. Afterwards we smoked some cigars to celebrate our victory over beef. I had a Romeo y Julieta No. 5 which had a great aroma but was a lot stronger than the Flor de Filipinas that I smoked a couple of weeks ago. I got lightheaded and almost puked for a second, but it was pretty relaxing. Haha the RyJs are suppose to be mild as far as cubans go, so I guess something full bodied would pretty much send me to the moon. After cleaning up we went to sleep and got up the next day to go fishing on the lake.

Goji Berries

I heard an energy drink being advertised on the radio and it was suppose to contain goji berries from the mountains of Tibet. Well I though they were fictional berries but here they are in the flesh. An uncle of mine is promoting them to be good for the prostate. I guess you eat them, but that doesn't seem to be the most direct route.

One more car

I was driving down Pico Blvd. and this thing cut me off. Its a beetle, with a fin and a tail and the license plate 1SHAMU.

Bunch of Birthdays

Bunch of birthdays lately and coming up. Happy birthday to Warren, Benedict, Harry, Scott, Kevin and Sheila.

More Car Stuff

One of my neighbors has a cream colored classic Mustang like the one in this picture I found. Its not a convertible, or a fastback, or a special edition, just a nice classic Mustang. Yesterday he was getting groceries out of the car and this blonde calls out from a window upstairs, "Hey, nice car..." Haha, score. She even told him where she lives. I think its a daddy thing. People say some guys want to marry girls like their moms and girls are attrracted to guys like their dads. So it must help if you drive what daddy use to drive. Guys with classic Beetles get the same attention. I guess a lot of our dads had Mustangs or Beetles for their first cars. Look in those old photo albums. My dad drove an old green Toyota Corolla. I think it was also brown and red at some point in its lifetime. It did have nice curves though, must have been like a late 70s model. Hey, Sheila, Sophia. Better watch out for a loverboy in a Corolla. Its gonna be trouble. So if I end up having a houseful of daughters I'll have my shotgun racked and ready for the punk in the black Subaru.

On another note, I actually waxed my car today, Scott Lee-style. It all showroom shinny now and actually looks like I don't neglect her. I rode my Suzuki DRZ to work this week so the Subaru was collecting dust all week and really needed a bath. Hey if I keep up this waxing, it'll be around to race those daughter-dating-punks up to the dam.

Transformers

Saw Transformers this weekend. It was like a big millitary recruiting film/GM commercial. Join up, kill robots! Also drive this Pontiac! It was still pretty good. Shia LaBeouf is reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman. John Turturro is also in the movie, if you don't remember who he is, he's the pedophile bowler named Jesus in the Big Lebowski. "Nobody fucks with the Jesus!" The girl, Megan Fox, has a lot of sexy tattoos but I guess they airbrushed them all out in the movie. Bumblebee is the new ET. "Autobot phone home!" I also saw the Simpsons at the mall and 300 on DVD this week. That pretty much double or tripled the number of movies I saw this year.

BMW getting uglier

I guess BMW deciced funny looking was not enough and went ahead with just ugly. Apparently the new 5 series is also the worst in crash tests.

Yahoo Article

The Kia protected the crash test dummies better than the bimmer did.

Now, there's nothing wrong with ugly, people say my Subaru is a pig with lipstick, but I did crash test it myself (inadvertently) and I'd have to say those Subaru engineers make one incredible machine.

Vacation Pics

The rest of my vacation pics are here:

Pics

Pinky

A bunch of my very manly tightie whities got turned into pinkie man panties. I was doing a small batch of laundry and washed them with a very red blanket that I thought didn't bleed anymore.

Palawan

The last time I visited the Philippines I went to Boracay, an island resort in the middle of the country. It was pretty much the most laid back place on earth. If you want to just relax, party at night, wake up with a morning swim in the blue water then go to Boracay. On this visit I went to Palawan which is a little more of an adventure, or can be.

Palawan is a pretty huge island, it makes up the western arm of the Philippines. The nice thing about Palawan is a lot of the island is virgin land. There's a lot more to see there than the beautiful beaches and coral. There are subteranean caves, lush jungles and limestone cliffs. There's a couple of ways to see Palawan. For something like a honeymoon where you'd want to relax and be secluded, the best thing to do would be to charter a flight to El Nido and check in at the resorts there. It would be like Boracay but in isolation and there are secret coves and beaches that you can kayak to.

To see more of the island I would backpack it. First you fly into Puerto Princessa and from there travel up to El Nido. There's a couple of things to see around Puerto Princessa, Dos Palmas Resort is on an island in Honda Bay. Its named Dos Palmas because there were two palm trees which dominated the island. You could see them as you aproach the island by boat. One of the trees has since died so the name doesn't quite make sense anymore. Dos Palmas is pretty nice, they just recently rebuilt some bungalows. Its also the site of the infamous Abu Sayef kidnappings a while back. Now there's a detachment of Filipino Marines on the island. The Legend Hotel is building a resort on nearby Pandan Island, so Dos Palmas won't be the only all inclusive resort in Honda Bay. There are a lot of tour outfits that will take you island hopping on Honda Bay. We went with Elaine's Travel and Tour. When you land at the airport you'll get a bunch of fliers about what tour companies are in town and what tours are offered. Just find their flier and call them. Our tour guide Donna was great, see if she's available when you go down there. The good thing about Honda Bay is its close to Puerto Princessa so you can fly in on the widebodies, go to Dos Palmas or the new resort and fly back to Manila.

At night there are a few nice restaurants in puerto Princessa. I ate at Kalui's and Badjao Seafront. Kalui's translates to Brother Lui, and its pretty nice. Order the Kalui special, its a full course meal. Its Filipino style dining, you can sit on chairs or on the floor and you have to take your shoes off because they have a bamboo floor. The blue marlin in mango sauce is also really good. Badjao Restaurant is a floating restaurant, its built on a platform over some mangroves so during high tide the restaurant is floating over the water. Really nice place and very romantic with the open air, candles and tropical flowers. You have to convince a tricycle guy to bring you out there and bring you back since its on the shore in the outskirts of the city. 150 pesos should cover it. Make sure to tell the guy to take you to Badjao Seafront because there's also a Badjao Hotel in the city. Badjao means seafront. Hopefully your tricycle has a nice bike because there is a steep hill on the way out. Go to Badjao right before sunset so you can watch the sun go down over the water.

So after snorkeling in Honda Bay and watching the sunset over dinner, you'll probably be ready to quit your job and moved to Palawan but the trip hasn't started yet! We still have to travel from Puerto Princessa, which is in the middle of the island to El Nido on the northern tip. The best way to do it is either by bus or by motorcycle. You can take an air conditioned van, which is nice and air conditioned, but I think you'll absorb much more of the island on the Bus or on a bike. The bus or most probalby a stretched out jeepney is probably the cheapest way to get around, but it makes frequent stops to pick up more people and is going to get really crowded. A bike would be ideal. You would need a pretty tough and reliable enduro or dual sport and an iron butt because half the road isn't paved. But on a bike you can stop whenever you want and there's no glass between you and the island. Since we're going on a one way trip you'll either have to arrange for it to be either shipped back, ridden back or sell it.

The first stop from Puerto Princessa is Sabang Beach on the western shore of Palawan. Its about 3-4 hours away and there are a couple of secluded beaches there and of course the undeground river. The underground river stretches for about 5 kilometers and is a little bit spooky, since there's bats there and its pitch black. Saband is probably a good place to stay the night since there are some bungalows for rent right next the water.

The next leg of the trip is from Sabang Beach to Port Barton and from there to El Nido. Thats the part I haven't seen so I'm curious to see. Going by boat is also an option since these places are on the South China Sea side of Palawan instead of the Sulu Sea side. From there we can catch a flight back out.

So anyway get your malaria and tetnus shots and we'll put a crew together. We need at least one qualified medical person. The best time to go would probably be December or April, outside of the rainy season.

>On 2007-08-03,13:22:12 SKubomoto wrote:

>>Where do I sign up? I can do the medical stuff. I've been getting plenty of experience taking care of diarrhea and vomiting patients the last several weeks.


>On 2007-08-09,01:10:31 Blaise wrote:

>>Haha how about I set up an evite.

Manila

In Manila there was a lot of eating. One thing I picked up from the Marines was how to eat like an animal. If you want to make some baby back ribs, a steak, some fries, a molten chocolate cake and some enchilada cheesecakes disappear in 5 minutes, find yourself a candidate on liberty. But I had to raise the white flag in Manila. There was just too much to eat and try. The best food I had was in a kitchen in Baclaran next to the seafood market. We bought some tuna, shrimp, lobster, squid, seaweed and brought it up to be sauteed. Best meal of the whole trip. Despite all the food, I think I lost 10 pounds. All the travelling took its toll. The explosive diarrhea and respiratory infection that I caught on the last few days certainly didn't help. I need to start a new regime to gain it all back.

Manila is a pretty fun city. Nixon took me to Malate, which I guess is the West Hollywood of Manila. We went to a Comedy club called the Library where the comedians were all in drag. I think they had one or two real women up there, just so you'd have some doubt on who was who. It was kind of suprising how many people were out and about on a weekday. There were lots of bars, ktvs, strip clubs, discos and cafe that were all in full swing. Things don't slow down till about 3 am. The other weird thing is that among it all, like a lot of Manila, there were street people everywhere. But its not like here, where if you go to Holywood or Westwood, all the homeless are mostly men. Its usually entire families, the old the young, men, women, boys and girls.

The other things that there's lots of is malls and family. We stayed wtih Juliet and Siso at thier house in North Greenhills. They have a nice pool there for swimming in and the nice thing is the water is always a nice temperature, unlike here where the water always cools off at night. Juliet and Siso have 4 daughters all under 10 so its a lviely house.

Everytime I go back theres more malls and the merchandise is kind of expensive, especially the western stores. The Lacoste and Clarks stores carried stuff that costs more there than I've seen in LA or Paris. Even at the SM, a Nike shoe costs more than here. You wouldn't be able to find the same exact style here since they carry different inventory. Its fun to hang out in the malls, there's air conditioning and you always run into people.

Wedding

Picture of the newly weds, Joseph and Elaine posing with my parents and Giselle who MCed the banquet. It was a pretty nice wedding, definately the biggest I've been too. Nice white dress, old historic church, MIBs and and a big feast afterwards. Elaine's family is huge. The wedding was in Cebu, in the Visayas region of the Philippines, so we flew down there for a couple of days. Me along with most of the Chans stayed at the Waterfront. Cebu is pretty nice. Its not as crowded as Manila but big enough to not be boring. Its also close to some prime beaches and to Bohol, which unfortunately we didn't have time to go to. We did go and visit a couple of the prime resorts in Cebu, the Shangri-la is by far the best one. The grounds were perfectly manicured and they have their own private beach which they covered in white sand that they imported from Boracay. The places is Korean owned and managed, so if you speak Korean you're set at the Shangri-la.

CD Sampler

Went to the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood with Scott Lee and his friend Pat to see a girl perform. The name's Marie Digby. I would describe her music as girl plays the piano and sings about aspirations, relationships or lack thereof with some guitar mixed in.

Cruel? Definately Unusual

My sister sent this to me. Its inmates at Cebu City Jail in the Philippines doing "Thriller". Damn what won't they use prison labor for?
Thriller - Incarcerated Pinoy Style
Who needs prison riots when you can DANCE! Watch it, there is a balding inmate in high heels and drag.

>On 2007-07-21,09:16:11 Blaise wrote:

>>They also did Sister Act
Youtube

Back from my Trip

I just got back from the Philippines. I'll post more about it later. One thing that you can't get here that is in abundance there is green mango shakes. Much better than a regular mango shake. Its made from green mangos, picked before they are ripe and they taste great because they're tangy. I ordered one at just about every place I ate at. Here's a collage of probably half of all the green mango shakes I drank. I tried to take a picture of each one I drank so Benedict, Sheila and Sophia can taste them virutally.

Lines for Stuff

Found this picture of people lined up for iPhones in NYC. Man-- If the USSR was still around. I can see the captions now, "Capitalist pigs line up for water. $10 per liter." I guess these days the truth is much more offensive. "Americans camp out to pay $600 and agree to pay $100/month over two years." Well that'd probably blow my mind if I was waiting to fill my jugs from the water truck. Actually it blows my mind anyway. But I was one of those cell phone late adopters and look at me now, I'm MMSing messages to this website.

My Cheap Bike

This was one cheap bike. It came with a cheap lock too. You should have seen it when I picked it up. The guy I bought it from offered it to me at half his listing price before I even spoke a word. Upon retrospect, I might have been able to get him to give it to me for free. Anyway, after some WD-40, a new tire tube, removing a bent gear and adjusting the brakes it now actually looks like it might be worth stealing. The bike pump I bought to pump up the new tire tube costs more than the bike and new tire tube. The bike pump plus the bike costs less my Kryptonite bike lock that I locked it with. For good measure I locked it next to a nice looking more worth it to steal cruiser.

On the Plus Side

On the Plus side, this is what greets me when I step out my door. Palm trees, sand, and the Pacific Ocean. And on occasion a groaning bum.

I moved to the Beach

This is my tiny studio in Venice. Looks like I need to buy some lighting. I measured the place out the other day. It's 250 sq. feet,bathroom and kitchen included. Despite the size, I still barely use half the place, I 'm just now getting familiar with my kitchen.

Lt. Mann and Lt. Shannon calle

Got a call out of the blue from Lt. Shannon who was retuning to Quantico for TBS. Nice to hear from them after all these months. Both Lt. Shannon and Lt. Mann were from Tennessee and drove up to Quantico for OCC-194. Lt. Shannon just became a dad and he was also prior enlisted and helped us non-priors along with our indoctrination into the Marine Corps. Lt. Mann is an air contract and he and I were in the same fireteam. Lt. Mann has a nice red jeep that we took around town to eat and buy all the odd little things that we thought we'd need for the next week of training. Here's a picture of Charlie Company, 1st Platoon, 3rd Squad chasing GSgt. Falcon on the Combat Rediness Course. Lt. Shannon is probably somewhere in there calling cadence.

Kobe for President

The TV was on ESPN and I think they went a little overboard with the on screen graphics. I shit you not, they had a US electorial style map detailing the trade Kobe, don't trade Kobe and undecided states. I don't know how that makes any sense, the NBA isn't even in a number of states like Nebraska. I couldn't find a screen shot of the map, so here's a picture of Mrs. Kobe Bryant instead.

A or B

I watched Pulp Fiction about twice this weekend and the questions came up in the movie. Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) asks Vincent Vega (John Travolta), "If you were Archie who would you do first, Betty or Veronica?" She also says, there are two types of people, Elvis people and Beatles people, you can like both but definately not equally, always one more than the other. Betty. But Betty with Veronica's hair is better. Elvis.