the mungo conspiracy

I had a dog once. I think I was eight or nine. A neighbor’s dog had six puppies and decided to give us one. So, in a sense, it was the family dog. But in another sense, since I was the one who bathed it, fed it, and cleaned up after it. That made it MY dog.  There was nothing really special about my dog. It was brown and had about three-fourths of a full-length tail. The reason I named her Putol.  I loved that dog. Played with her every chance I got. Walked her, even talked to her. When I come home from school, my dog was always the first one to greet me, her three-fourths of a full-length tail eagerly wagging behind her.  I told her to never put her dirty paws on my white school uniform and she never did. I really thought she understood me.  One day, in school, some friends decided to play basketball the coming Saturday. I thought great! I’d love to play too. And then another volunteered that he would be bringing his dog to school. Okay, I’ll bring min...

(photo from here; http://www.skepticworld.com/ancient-artifacts/baghdad-battery.asp) You have to feel for the guy who invented the battery. And I am not talking about Allesandro Volta, who made his own version around 1800.  I am talking about the work of some anonymous inventor archeologists dug-up in what is now known as Iraq. That’s real genius right there. But, of course, no one recognized that for what it was. Volta, at least, got his name on the measure of electric potential. And I am pretty sure, the man who invented the wheel got accolades from his own tribe-mates. After all, his invention made moving that wooly mammoth carcass that much easier. The battery? What good was it when flashlights, transistor radios, and i-pods were yet to be invented? Not for another two millenniums, at least. The man was way ahead of his time. That is often the predicament of being ahead of the curve. You have to give the world some time to keep in step. Like knowing only gr...

A writer friend of mine was applying for a job in one of those Makati ad agencies. Feeling that she got through most of the interview just fine, she was finally ready to face the big boss, the last interview that will make or break her application. “So do you like Air Supply?” a simple enough question, if you don’t think about it. But underneath the seemingly harmless question was a trap. A “yes” answer means you have no taste. Anything that you can half-expect blaring out of a clunker jeepney can’t be that good. A “no”, on the other hand, would mean dishonesty. After all, who has not hummed to an Air Supply song or two? But being the real writer that she was, she had the perfect answer.  “Do I like Air Supply? Yes... secretly.”

  Is it just me or is anyone else bothered by the fact that getting 90% in the medical board exam considered a very high mark?  I've heard it is very hard. I can only imagine. I am not even qualified to take it. So maybe I am just being naive. And who am I to complain, right? But think about it for a minute. Ninety percent means that he/she was wrong 1 out of 10. This newly minted medical doctor, now licensed by the board to literally cut you up every which way, is wrong 10% of the time. And he's on top of his class.  I don't know about you, but I don't like those odds. I play poker online and I've seen too many 90-percent-sure-things drown on the river.  Is this the reason why they call the work of a medical doctor a "practice"?

(photo courtesy of Dezi Ann Dayao Martinez, a diehard Noynoy supporter) That your mother, whom I loved dearly like she was my own tita, died recently is not the reason I was finally swayed over to your side. I voted for you with no small amount of trepidation. Close to the end of the campaign, I even defended you in forums when reasonable men argued rightly, that at the very least, you lacked both the seasoning and the necessary credentials to deserve that highest office. Normally, I would follow the same line and vote for the one most deserving of that honor, privilege, and great duty. But these are not normal times.  You are, apparently, the chosen one. Even before the final ballots were cast, the Filipino people, or at least, a great many of us, have pinned their last hopes on you. This is the silent voice of the many, brushed aside and long ignored for almost a decade. Finally, by casting that one ballot, we’ve aired our grievances over the failure of the impeachment...

Call me a romantic fool, but for me, Manny Pacquiao’s best fight was the first fight against Erik Morales. The one he lost. I was no Manny Pacquiao fan before that, and was severely disappointed when he lost his WBC flyweight title via 3rd round knockout to an unknown Thai fighter. It was a fight he lost even before the actual bout as Manny couldn’t even make weight. It was all too easy to dismiss Pacman as just another Filipino world champion, in a long string of Filipino world champions, who got too fat and lazy after achieving some modicum of success. But that was before Freddie Roach. Freddie took the raw Manny and taught him the finer points of the sweet science. To Manny's credit, not everyone is coachable. Perhaps the toughest to coach, in fact, would be former champions who learned the sport the wrong way, gaining some measure of success, while employing the wrong techniques.  But not Manny. He would diligently learn everything that Freddie had to teach h...

If a man is allowed to hate one word with a passion, that word for me would be “nice”. Clichés are at least mildly amusing, though it is really someone else’s words, and probably for some other totally different occasion. “Nice” is just a word, not even a cliché, and the laziest excuse for an adjective. I don’t want to hear about you visiting nice houses, going to nice parties, seeing nice vistas, meeting some nice people at the nice funeral service. I’d rather you skip the word and just say “I met some (insert positive word here) people”. That, at least, would be a little funny. But let me stop right here as I’m currently multi-tasking and playing Zynga poker on another tab. Let’s see if I can win some nice hands.

  (Photo from inothernews.tumblr.com) I could hardly believe it myself. But there it was on the news just a few hours ago, proof positive that the rumors that had all of internet-dom abuzz were true. A Jolibee store was caught on-camera in a Glee episode. Yes people, we can uncork the champagne now. The Pinoy has finally arrived. We are now worthy of being an unintended backdrop in an American music video. Yeba!  The event almost rivals the importance of that one woman’s quest to stitch-up a world record setting biggest flag ever – a Philippine flag. Too bad those cows weren’t privy to the importance of the occasion and decided to come crashing the party. Perhaps it was the red field on our flag? Let’s petition congress to just drop that. We are not planning to go to war anytime soon anyway -- not with our AFP. What’s wrong with fuchsia? Alright, aside from the fact that it is hard to spell? I believe, the biggest flag in the world, if it happens to be a Philippine f...

Don't you dare believe the  cliché that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Not true. Men are simple creatures. We've hardly evolved from our cave-dwelling ancestors, except that now we've decided that clubbing the woman of our choice on the head is no longer legal.  The way to a man's heart is simple, show up. He asks you to go, you show up. Done deal. To show up in time is a bonus. To show up at all is enough. Women, however, are not that simple. A woman needs to be wooed. Thus the appropriate name, get it? And I dare now turn the cliché on it's head and say that the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach. Ever wonder why a pencil-neck chef like Rob Pengson is so "sexy"? Even I was befuddled. But my sister thinks so. And being the woman (and I am not), I have to take her word for it. Go ask your sister or a female friend if this is not true. Go ahead, I'll wait for you back here. Yeah. Amazing right? Apparent...

Non-smokers will probably not get what I am going to rant about. But I've a major problem. There is a great Winston Reds shortage in the Philippines right now. Yes, people, the world is near the end! At the moment, I can only get my fix from Manang Sari-Sari Store at the corner. But she is selling it at 10 pesos more than she should. The Mafia, apparently, is no longer content in just manipulating the mungo market in the Philippines. They've diversified and are now targeting my beloved smokes. This, I believe, is going too far! So why not just Marlboro? Or Fortune? Or Bowling Gold? You non-smoker, you! Smoking cigarettes that is not your brand is like doing the deed with a woman you do not love. Yes, it is something like that. After spending nearly an hour in the wet market yesterday looking for my brand of smokes, I finally had to give up. And yes, was forced to buy yet another over-priced pack from Manang. She is really riding the short supply end of the law of su...

I don’t know enough of Japanese pop-culture to know for sure. But somebody please tell me, are the Japanese makers of “Iron Chef” serious, or are they being sarcastic? Is all the cheesiness, a tongue-in-cheek salute to all the over-the-top Japanese martial arts movies? Or is that, seriously, their idea of what ultimate competition ought to be?  You know what I mean, the costume, the kitchen stadium, the music, and the final one-on-one combat format. Hey, even the way they shot how Chairman Kaga bites into that bell pepper is seriously funny. And what’s the deal with always beginning the annotation to the theme ingredient intro segment with the line “If memory serves me right”? 

I normally do not subscribe to clichés. Dismiss it outright. After all, for every “look before you leap” there is almost always an equal and opposite “strike while the iron is hot” so it seems. But one cliché I’ve learned to respect is how curiosity killed the cat. And I learned the lesson the hard painful way. I’ve always had this morbid fascination on elevator safety measures. That is ever since I had to go to this Makati office building where one elevator shoots 28 floors up, almost breaking the sound barrier, all the while making all sorts of weird mechanical whirring noises and lights flickering almost dying. Then after a brief pause at the 28th free-falls all the way down to the ground floor no matter what button you press. And because I am usually there around 11 pm, for final editing, I am always all alone in those elevator rides from hell. “Chose the wrong elevator again, eh?” Our computer graphics guy would often greet me when I do finally make it to the editing suite al...

President-elect Noynoy Aquino. We are all counting on you.

Last time I checked, William Gates III, co-founder of MicroSoft, had 38 billion US dollars to his name. For awhile back there, he was the only man on the planet who can lose 37 billion dollars in Texas hold ‘em poker one night and wake up still a billionaire the next morning. Now that is truly impressive. I did quick calculations, figured how much money Bill made, spread out for every second of his life since birth, and came up with over 20 US dollars. I am not so easily impressed, but show me a guy who can average more than 20 USD every second from birth and that would impress even me. But that got me thinking. At what point did the billions stop making a difference? Would an 11 billion US dollar billionaire live just a little more prudent than a 12 billion US dollar billionaire? Would his private jets be just that little less ostentatious? Would defecating on a diamond studded golden bowl be more satisfying than my normal immaculately clean white porcelain bowl? I’ve not tried...

Women do not care about sports. Not the way we men do, anyway. I’ve yet to meet a female of the species who can recite from on top of her head the highest points scored by one Michael Jordan in a play-off game. That’s  63,  versus Boston, a game he sent into overtime via two crucial freethrows, and a game they lost. You know your girlfriend is a real sweetheart when you do not even have to explain why you are “occupied” when it is Game 7 of a play-off series -- halfway across the globe. She will even root for your team. And cry with you when your team loses. It’s almost as good as her using your birthday as password to her email.  When she starts rooting for the other team? I’d give your relationship another 3 months – tops.

There is a reason why I almost never respond to the question "What are you thinking about?" If I am allowed a nerdy moment or two. When I was in elementary school, I'd often play with absolutely no care about my school bus. As a consequence, I often had to walk from school to my house. At the beginning, I took the easiest path to remember (figure a). Just one turn and I'm home. However, as I grew a little older, I took the more adventurous path (figure b).  By the time I reached the sixth grade, I began to wonder, which is the more efficient path? I drew figure c and analyzed the problem. And I figured that the sum of the a1 to a3 segments plus the sum of the b1 to b3 segments is equal to the sum of a(total) and b(total). The easy to remember path and the adventurous path would have me taking roughly the same number of steps. But wait, what if I took a crazier path (figure d)? Same analysis, same conclusion. In fact, I figured, e...

QUESTIONS 1. What's the point of having my cake if I can not eat it too? 2. Who died and gave Disney the right to ruin a perfectly good story? "The Little Mermaid" did not end happily. 3. If the moral of "Beauty and the Beast" is that real beauty is not physical, why is Beauty physically beautiful? 4. Why is there only one female smurf? Who is the mother of Smurfette? 5. If in my dream I decided to sleep, do I need to wake up twice? 6. Is it ironic or appropriate that Turkey has no national bird? 7. What time is it at the north and south poles where all the international time zones converge? 8. Without resorting to a circular argument fallacy, how would one describe what chicken tastes like? 9. If human fingers were normally eight, would our number system be octimal and not decimal? 10. Why do lists like these nearly always stop at ten? 11. Would it be so awkward if I added one more? and question...

I do not get women. And I’ve come to sad the acceptance that it is pointless to even try. Women don’t understand women. So, as a man, what chance do I have?  They might as well be from another planet. I get the feeling, in fact, that they are on their own time-zones. Five minutes is not five minutes, believe me. Not when you are picking her up on a date -- five minutes is at least half-an-hour.   But knowing that does not give you the license to be 30 minutes late for the pick-up. You wait. Your time is not as important as her time. And don’t think I didn’t try to understand the other half of the human species. I spent a good portion of my young life trying. And now, before committing anything to paper, I did all the necessary research. Obviously, that means consulting the sages of Hollywood.  Remember that chick flick “Bridges of Madison County”? Damn! Girlfriend duped me into watching that. It had Clint Eastwood, she swore. And I, the fool, expected Dirty ...

A little something I produced way back in 1995. Yes, I am that old. But remember kids, Ely Buendia and I were BATCHMATES in UP. Although he went to Diliman and I went to Los Banos. I wrote the script, did the intverview (no, the oncam talent is not me, though we sound alike). I even did the video editing using a BVU U-Matic editing machine. Enjoy, fellow Gen-Xers. Part 1 Part 2

I am a homebody. My idea of a perfect Sunday afternoon is vegging out in front of the TV with absolutely nothing to do. It is my most guilty pleasure, that maybe I should have kept to myself.  Now that my siblings know that “I am not doing anything anyway”, I’ve become the Sunday designated baby-sitter. Well ok, it’s not that big a deal. And I love my nephews and nieces to bits. Really I do. But handling four or five at a time can get to anyone. And forget TV. Forget the lazy afternoon. You are responsible! But I’ve developed a secret method to control these bundles of virtually uncontrollable id. They are all going to Catholic schools, and I know what that means, having gone myself when I was that age. So when the playing gets too rough. When screaming “stop!” at the top of my lungs makes me feel as effective as a referee in a professional wrestling match, this is what I do. With my cellphone, I secretly make our landline phone ring.  “Who’s calling? Is that my ...

Busy week. Plus bad internet connection (where we work). I spent most of the week lying flat on my back screwing around. Wait... that didn't come out right. I spent most of the week crawling under a computer simulation system and literally screwing and unscrewing heavy metal panels. I'll try to post pictures once our "fat" German colleague posts our pictures on his facebook. Yes, he hates that I call him fat. But this is my blog, so tough. :D But no, we actually love the guy. He has made these last few busy days a little more bearable. And eniweys, most of our pictures are nothing but of us enjoying beers at Punta de Uian after a hard day's work. I'll post fresh material maybe tomorrow. Too tired right now. And there is still the laundry to do.