A day in the life of a late night driver
July 20, 2008Driving around in Manila during the day is horrible. Especially in the more densely populated portions traffic becomes the non-movement of vehicles. The horrendous situation is the norm during daylight. At night it becomes a different matter especially during the hour after night and before dawn. It is at that magical point in time when all vehicles are silenced by the dark. Like grazing animals fearful of predators the cars and their owners retire to their respective garages at night.
I, on the other hand, had to drive at night. My cousin, my girlfriend, my sister and some of her friends would be riding home with me that night. My trusted steed Betsy became yet again the magic school bus of good old days. We all met up at Alchemy club or bar or whatever its called and spent a few hours there. Having reached the point where we could get no more fun out of the place we decided to leave. First I dropped off my cousin at his hotel. The club was in Pasig City his hotel was in Manila. We stopped by McDonald’s Paseo (the one near Greenbelt) for breakfast, yes breakfast.
My sister’s friends needed to be dropped off as well in Sta. Mesa. I have an aunt who lives there. We used to visit her often so the area where they asked me to drop them off was quite familiar to me. Or so I thought. I had to keep asking my sister’s friend for directions, the entire Manila landscape is transformed at night. The roads change from ugly squawking duckling during the day to a calm swan at night.
Night driving is a joy. I dropped off my sister first and then my girlfriend.
I went back home to the blinding light of 6am and the stirrings of the whole of Manila waking from its slumber.
How we should start our day
July 18, 2008I am currently being infected with nationalism and nostalgia. MABUHAY ANG PILIPINAS
What’s an X-link?
July 16, 2008As I went around different blogs I came across a term that I still don’t understand. X-link.
Bad writing is offensive to the senses.
July 13, 2008Here is the blog: askgreg.i.ph and this is the author’s entry.
This is a copy of my reply to that entry in the blog I found.
Applying theories in the Philippines
I have yet to synthesize my random thoughts into a coherent proposal. I want to apply what I can learn, from the internet and from other places, in the Philippines.
Life in the glamorous cities of Manila.
I’ve stayed in the Philippines for my entire life. As I posted earlier I’ve yet to go around the rest of the Philippines. In fact, I haven’t gotten around most of Manila even.
The National Capital Region (NCR) for brevity is a hodgepodge of cities. I found several blogs that cover the subject I’ve most wanted to write about, the beauty of the cities of Metro-Manila (especially the City of Manila itself) and the complexities of living.
The City of Manila is a beautiful city, it may be old and overcrowded but its beautiful. The people there go in and out, around and through some of the oldest buildings in the Philippines. My friend is trying to flesh out all of his experiences together in the city as a blog. Here’s the MetroRat!
Another blog is about living life in the projects. A blog that I already linked in the links pane on my page but I’ll link to them nonetheless here. The projects in NCR are mostly well-organized communities designed to provide low cost housing for government employees. This was the concept back in the day but the projects have transformed from being a purely residential site to having a smattering of bars, schools, internet cafes and hardware supply stores. Check out Life in the Projects.
Best Games of the Week
I accidentally broke my Diablo II character when I unplugged my external harddrive. It sucked so I went around the net looking for something fun to see. The Beijing 2008 Olympics game is visually great, gameplay might be a different issue. Historically most Olympics themed games suck, but with how this looks it just might actually be fun.
Another video is about the upcoming Diablo III release.
It looks great though it seems more lively than the previous 2 diablos. The report is right in stating that the previous 2 incarnations of the game have been in really dark settings. There is a funereal feel to the lighting and soundtrack of the game that serves only to heighten the good versus evil concept. The new Diablo III looks like a FUN fun game, the game that kids will play for hours instead of a gripping nerve wracking experience.
I’ll just wait and see for Diablo III and BJ 2008 Olympics.
Subway surprise!
July 9, 2008
Some improv stuff I found on the internet. It was on the Yahoo homepage. Nice clip, very amusing.
E-jeepneys
July 7, 2008My friend recently posted a link to the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s article on electric-powered jeepneys. The e-jeeps are being run in the city of Makati as an experiment for future roll-outs.
Can’t fit Cyanide and Happiness strips onto blog
July 6, 2008I can’t seem to properly fit the cyanide and happiness strips onto the blog. This sucks, sucks as much as being a character in depressing comic week. In any case I hope you just click on the entire strip so you can be directed to the cyanide and happiness main page and peruse the contents at your leisure. If you keep an open mind, open even to depravity, then you might enjoy some of the strips!
Horton Hears A Who
July 4, 2008Who did I watch Horton hears a who with? Or better yet where did I watch it? I know I saw it. But with whom? And why? Where?
These are the great mysteries of my existence.
Honey the baby’s kicking!
July 3, 2008
It’s just genius. I’d like to post a lot of their material on this blog. Sadly, I don’t and I don’t know why either. It’s sick and at the same time amusing. The best part of it all is that they don’t always contain anything useful in real life. Its a waste of my time and your time for internet funny time.
Aid, Trade, Security and Government
Another ted.com talk on how to help the bottom billion.
Paul Collier talks on what it takes to help the poorest billion people in the world.
He also cites democracy as a complex mechanism. It may or may not help the economy of an extremely poor country especially when there is a mineral resource boom (oil, gold, etc.). More often than not democracy does not help.
I think that democracy is actually a problem in a developing nation. The Philippines is devoid of a mineral resource boom (or one that’s highly publicized anyway we have our iron, copper and other mineral extraction projects in other parts of the Philippines) yet we suffer from too much freedom. The people are too free to complain about anything, they always want to unseat the President, they always want a revolution. Yes, I claim that the excessive freedom of the FIlipino people is actually stunting the country’s progress. This, however, should be taken with some caution. As the talk stated there might be some problems with a dictatorial form of governance in the sense that it will be more than open to abuse. The situation in the Philippines is that our system is already being abused. The people themselves open up the avenues of abuse. During elections, the people line up to have their ballots bought. I don’t know what else to say anymore. We’re in a bind. Too free yet too poor to do anything right with our freedom.
Watch it and leave a comment if you’d like.
From the archives of Cyanide and Happiness
This just goes to show that some emo-things are funny things. There are a lot of funny things on the Cyanide and Happiness websit, or rather the website that hosts the Cyanide and Happiness web comic.
Writer’s Block? Or student life?
I still can’t seem to begin writing the McDonald’s Story I promised a few days (weeks?) ago. I can reconstitute the salient points of it but I can’t quite recapture the elegance of that short story. I wrote it locked up in my room, without food. Imagine that! Me without eating? I must have been delirious when I wrote that piece. I had no intent to make it humorous but it turned out well bathing in its absurdity. I’ll just write about it some other day. As for now I’ll just relax and complain about other things. Such as wonderful Manila traffic.
