is it Friday yet?

My list of observations in the Philippines is still growing so I’m going to post a few for now:

Camarines Sur Governor must own everything?:

No matter where I go in this province, I will ALWAYS see “Gov. Luis Villafuerte Jr.” plastered/painted on buidings, both public and private. Does this man OWN the province or something? WTH is his name painted everywhere? What is especially funny is seeing his name painted on the rooftops of buildings. So, is it some vanity thing to have your name seen from up above?

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

I noticed that Merry Calliope on my Twitter list was using Twhirl to make her posts, I decided to try it! I had been posting to Twitter using Gmail’s chat feature by adding Twitter’s email as a contact. It works just fine but I wasn’t keeping up with my Twitter list since I would rarely go to the Twitter homepage. I know, I know…I’m rather late getting into the whole Twitter game but *shrugs* I’ve been distracted by other stuff!

The Twhirl app is really cool! I like the interface and it does help with keeping up with my list of friends!

I’ve been using Twitter for more than a week now and I can see why it’s so addicting! I actually prefer using this to posting the small stuff (random) to my blog that really, don’t need to be a full post. Hehe, I also like how you can reply to “tweets” others have written on their accounts!

Katie & me were having a good time making fun of people who are hopelessly addicted to Twitter! You know, the ones that have to post EVERYTHING they are doing, like every single second!

Now I found another feature linked to Twitter that is also cool!

Neat! It will post a link of the picture you upload with your Tweet!

Anyhow, if you’re using Twitter, add me and I’ll add you back!

Popularity: 2% [?]

My uncle Pitts ROCKS! A couple of days ago, when he was driving us to the bus/van terminal for our trip to Legaspi, he told me about this incident that happen earlier this week:

Your auntie (Belen) and me were driving home at night. All of the sudden, the jeepney in front of me decided to stop and let passengers out. (Not uncommon…that happens all the time) The problem was instead of pulling to the right side of the road to let them out, he pulled over into the left lane and let them out! So, he was blocking both the right and left lanes with his jeepney! We couldn’t go past him in the other lane. I honked my horn when others behind us started honking their horns but the driver would not move his jeepney! After a while, he finally moved and I had your auntie write down his plate number.

The next day, I called the police and told them to arrest that driver! They were able to find him and brought him to my court where I gave him a serious lecture!

When he told me he had the driver arrested, I laughed so hard I couldn’t stop coughing! (yes, I still have a really bad cough) Duuude, don’t EVER piss off a judge, let alone the main judge for the city!

Now before y’all in the US or elsewhere start going on how my uncle probably abused his power or the power of the court, just remember that this is the Philippines and while it is a democratic country, they do things differently here. That jeepney driver was totally wrong to block not just one side but both sides of the road. Roads here are generally 1 lane so it’s extremely frustrating when you either have a slow ass driver in front of you or some moron who blocks both sides of the road. The driver did break the law and I can’t exactly remember if my uncle made him sit in jail for a day or let him go. Either way, my uncle said that all the jeepney drivers that sit and catch riders near his house are probably talking about him now and are wary. One of the main jeepney lines starts at the entrance of our subdivision and my uncle happens to live very close to the front of it so yeah, all the jeepney drivers know him cuz he used to ride the jeepney all the time before he starting driving a car.

Popularity: 3% [?]

On a recent Saturday, my mom invited the extended clan over to the house. I got to meet some second cousins I didn’t know about. Here are the pictures from that get-together:

The little girl is soooo cute and very photogenic!

Family portrait time!

Only one sibling is missing and that’s Uncle Jun who sadly was murdered years ago.

Heh, portrait crashers! Cousins Nonoy and DonDon!

Now for a clan portrait! There are waaaaaaay more relatives than this but they either didn’t make it or arrive after I took this picture.

You better RESPECT! The NUN says grace and any of y’all not respecting will find yurselves getting THE PINCH from her! LOL!

Filipinos don’t turn down an invitation to a party. Why? Who is gonna miss an opportunity for freeeee food? LOL!

Overall, it was great seeing more of the extended family!

Popularity: 6% [?]

My 2-month stay here in the Philippines is quickly coming to an end. Hard to believe that I’ll be flying back to the US on the 22nd! I can’t wait! Yup, I sure can’t! At the same time, I just wish I had more time to do and see more here in the Philippines!

I was getting bored with my blog theme so I changed it again. I was able to integrate the Twitter feature into it and also to show more than 1 tweet at a time.

The weather has actually been quite beautiful today! It was actually DECENTLY cool outside all day with it being windy at times. My uncle remarked to me how nice it was and I said “If only it was like this THE ENTIRE TIME!”

Oh, I just got a text from my uncle:

“Your auntie called and said there will be an earthquake tonite”.

Um, WHAT? Right after that, I get a text from that very auntie (the NUN) saying:

“Jo, tell your mom 2 pray the rosary. New of a very strong earthquake passing us tonite.”

Um, YEAH. No one can predict when an earthquake is going to strike! *shakes head*

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’ve been able to keep up with American Idol while here in the Philippines. I just watch the shows the following day tho I already know the results by just checking online prior.

I wasn’t able to watch much of the show during the first part of my stay in the Philippines but have since caught up. Here are my thoughts on the remaining three:

David Archuleta: Ok, I HATE this kid. Why??? Because I have a feeling he’s going to win. Now, he does have a really good singing voice but aside from that, that’s all he has! I don’t think he has a very distinct style or personality that will really carry him on into a successful career post-Idol! Seriously! The kid just pisses me off with that whole “I’m a sweet boy” personality and he giggles when he doesn’t know what to say. Come on, GROW UP AND GET A PERSONALITY!

Aside from the personality issues, he’s yet another Clay Aiken to me. He appeals to the teen set and all the grandmas out there, just like Clay did. Yet did Clay REALLY have a successful career post-Idol? I don’t think so,…not when you compare it to Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtery and Carrie Underwood. All 3 of these people have very distinct styles and they really do stand out among the crowded music airwaves. Like seriously, what the hell is David Archuleta going to sing on his first album? All I can imagine are oldies or whatnot because that’s what he seems really good at singing. I haven’t really heard him sing anything that is remotely contemporary or fresh.

I must be in the small minority of people that just don’t like David, period. LOL!

David Cook: I hope he wins. He’s this season’s “Blake Edwards” in that he pushes the envelope and puts his own spin on songs. I can sit here and remember the songs I’ve heard David sing this season yet I can’t recall ONE song that kid David has sugh.

Syesha Mercado: I actually like her and I don’t think she’s as bad as the judges and most people think she is. Broadway type music is definitely her type and she’ll probably end up being this season’s Jennifer Hudson (maybe not with the Oscar).

I kinda miss seeing Brooke White on the show. I like her interpretations of songs but I think she was sometimes just a little too focused on the piano playing than the actual singing. Jason Castro has a cute personality but the dreads just got too much in the way for me. LOL!

After Ramiele got eliminated (hey, gotta support the pinoys trying to make it!), I was rooting for Carly Smithson. I love her voice! It’s just too bad she couldn’t decide what kind of singer she wanted to be. She needed to find the right genre for her voice.

I was VERY RELIEVED when Kristy Lee Cook got axed. WTF AMERICA? She’s HORRIBLE! As for Michael Johns,…he’s very cute but that’s it!

Now I have to go downtown and fill out some paperwork for some stuff. It rained really hard here half an hour ago so we are now going to make our run. Thank god the jeepney strike was only for one day (Monday)!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Tue May 13, 2:06 PM ET

OTTAWA (AFP) - Tickets, check. Passports, check. Luggage, check. Baby … oops.

A family boarded a flight on Monday in westernmost Canada, and forgot their tot at the Vancouver international airport, media said Tuesday.

The 23-month-old boy’s family had just arrived in Canada from the Philippines, but they were forced to repack their overweight bags before catching a connecting flight to Winnipeg, causing them to run late.

In their sprint to the gate, the family became separated.

The boy’s father Jun Parreno, told local media he had thought his son was with his wife and the boy’s grandparents, who ran ahead. They thought the boy was with his dad.

On the plane, the family members were seated separately and so did not immediately realize they had left the child behind.

Sometime later, a security guard found the boy, who speaks no English, wandering near the departure gate, and Air Canada officials tracked down his shocked parents on the flight.

Because the boy was so young, he was not issued a boarding pass and would have sat on a parent’s lap during the flight, so airline personnel did not notice a passenger was missing.

According to the Vancouver Sun, airport security found a Tagalog-speaking Air Canada agent who looked after the child while his father flew 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) back to Vancouver to pick him up and then return to Winnipeg to rejoin the immigrant family on their first day in Canada.

The baby was kept in Air Canada’s offices and staff found him some toys, said local media.

“Air Canada took good care of him,” Parreno told the daily Winnipeg Free Press upon arrival. “I’m grateful.”

What’s more important? Luggage or who actually has the baby on hand? How could the parents or the grandparents not have actually stopped to ask one another or checked to see who had the baby once they had boarded or even during the flight??

Popularity: 9% [?]

I’ve been meaning to post these pictures but I wanted to wait until we had our new dining room set delivered. Here are the pictures of the inside of the house (I promised Tasha I would post these!):

This is the living room. See the fan, it’s on ALL DAY cuz it’s too damn humid here. My mom ordered the sofa set with chairs/coffee table from the same place we got our new dining table set from. All are handmade. The ugly rocking chair, she bought from this old man that was walking down the street, selling them. He made them by hand. She was able to purchase it for 500 pesos! I think we should just varnish it a color to match the sofa set.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8% [?]

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’m still sick, trying to get over the sore throat/cold + eye infection. Most of yesterday, I slept in my air conditioned room because it was just too damn hot to sit in the dining room and photoshop the rest of my pictures. My mom’s siblings were over to play mahjong so they were hogging the standing fan that I use to cool both me and my laptop down.

I didn’t realize that I had a lot more pictures to photoshop after coming back from Camaroan last week. Aside from the Camaroan pics, I still had to photoshop pics from Legaspi, party pics and about 50 other pictures I’d taken from the week prior that I didn’t get around to doing. Argh! Then this damn sickness/infection hits me and I’m out for 3 days just like that!

The funny part of all this was 2 days ago, my mom and me were sitting in the living room watching tv and TRYING to cool down. It was incredibly humid and the standing fan we were using still wasn’t helping. My mom turned to me and said “I want to go home now! I’m tired of this heat!” LMAO! I told her I couldn’t agree more! I am so sick of this humidity! We both are longing for central air conditioning. I’m probably longing for more things like our washing machine, well-stocked pantry (more on that later), MY CAR (unbelievable, I thought I’d never long for that) and my dog.

Mom said she will never come back to the Philippines in May. The latest she would stay would be April, at the most. May is just too damn hot for anyone that doesn’t like hot weather.

Ok, now onto the pictures:

These are my cousin Sammy’s girls. Aren’t they adorable? I love how one of the twins struck a pose in the picture! I got to meet the girls when my cousins took me to Milaor to visit them during the town fiesta. Milaor is very close to Naga City. The girls are currently staying with their mom’s family. There was a lot of food prepared for the fiesta!

Delicious food!!

After we lunched and rested there, cousins Jeff & Danny then took me to Laganoy that was also celebrating their town fiesta. We had dinner at the house of cousin Marcel’s (Danny’s brother) wife’s family house. Sorry, I didn’t take food pics there. The lighting was way too dim and I was rather hungry. Prior to dinner, I walked around the town center with Jeff.

The town church. Meh. It looks like all the churches I’ve seen in the Philippines.

Apparently, Laganoy is known for their native brooms or walis. So they built a gigantic one for show. Jeff said it was the largest one in the world. Hmmm.

Now this is something I’ve been meaning to post about for a while. Motorcycles are a very popular mode of transportation in the Philippines. The bikes aren’t that expensive and very economical when it come to gas. The funny and dangerous part to this is that I’ve seen TONS of people riding without helmets AND with up to 4 people squeezed onto a motorcycle seat! You read that right: 4 adults sitting on one motorcycle seat with no helmets and riding up to 35 mph!

What makes me cringe more is to see little kids riding on the bikes with no helmets. Now, I’m sure my cousin is a very cafeful driver if his kids are riding with him. But I do see others that are riding pretty fast with even younger kids, sometimes sitting in front of the actual driver.

Are there helmet laws in the Philippines? Yes, there are. I spoke to my uncle Pitts, the main judge for Naga City, about this. He said that the majority of cases he gets when it comes to ticket violations are those riding without a helmet. But then, the cops are more concerned about other urgent matters than people riding without helmets.

Heh, when I asked my cousin Jeff (who is one of the head nurses at Mother Seton Hospital in Naga) if they get a lot of people at the ER from motorcycle accidents, he said YES! When we would get passed by some hotshot motorcycle rider going really fast on his bike, Jeff would joke and say “Oh, that guy is in a hurry to see me at work!” Yeah, he’s just begging for an accident to happen so he gets sent to the ER!

Popularity: 5% [?]

I told PJ about this a few days ago after I saw it posted on Lifehacker:

Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera

*WARNING: TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK*

What does this little hack program mean for all you Powershot users (well, most of them)? It will allow you to shoot in RAW, automatic bracketing for your little point/shoot, faster shutter speeds than what your camera can do unhacked, SHOW remaining battery life and a whole many other things! Even better is the ability to load scripts written by others to do things such as motion sensing photography which is excellent when trying to take pictures of lightening! Oh, I’ve been trying to capture the lighting here in the Philippines!

So, check and see if your Powershot is on the list that will support the CHDK program. If it is, then read the directions carefully! You can’t really mess up your camera’s software as using this won’t erase the existing software. Canon has confirmed this, as it says in the article. But, I still say when you hack your camera or any electronic you have, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to get it fixed back to normal, especially by the manufacturer.

I will try this out when I’m feeling a bit better. Right now, I’m still battling the sore throat/cold plus my right eye is extremely red with irritation because I was too tired to take my contacts out last nite and I rubbed my eyes in my sleep. Ugh.

Popularity: 5% [?]