TheFranciscos.Net

I’m going to go see the Passion of Christ later today. Can’t wait to see it, even if just to see what the hype is all about. I’ll post a review after seeing it.

Currently listening to: The LaSallista Song – sino ba’ng kumanta nito? I’d really appreciate if somebody gave more info about this song. It’s really catchy, but Atenistas probably wouldn’t appreciate it.

I’d Rather Be Green Than Be Blue (The La Sallista Song)

Kamusta na mga ‘tol, kapwa kong LaSallista

Year 2000 na, di ka rin nag-iba

Magaling gumalaw, bolero nga naman

Nguni’t bilib ako sa layo nang iyong narating.

(Chorus)

Arvin sent me a text message this weekend about one of our high school batchmates’ troubles with his business dealing lately. Apparently his restaurant, Country Waffles, has had some troubles paying off investors lately so his investors have filed an estafa case with the DOJ against him, together with his family. This news is quite sad, especially since I don’t think he’s the type of guy who would deliberately do something like this. He was probably just overwhelmed by the amount of money that they owed.

Still, fleeing the country to escape is an admission of guilt in my book. Come back and face the music. I’m sure they’d be able to explain their side and maybe even save the business.

This restaurant, in my opinion, overexpanded too quickly. I think they opened 4 or 5 different locations in the span of about 2 years. It would be all well and good if it was the type of restaurant that was always packed, but in the few times that I passed by their locations, the place was hardly half full. Buti kung tipong Gerry’s Grill sila na palaging puno.

As usual, the people who are on the raw end of the deal are the employees. I’m sure my thesismate, together with his family, have stashed enough cash to keep them comfortable, at least for a little while. The employees on the other hand, are barely getting by. I heard that they haven’t been getting paid for the past few months, and have resorted to getting the cash from the day’s sales. One story I heard was that they’ve even been selling the credit card swiping machines to raise enough money for their 13th month pay (of which only P500 per employee was given). That would explain that sign I saw in front of their branch right next to Oakwood that said “Cash basis only. Credit cards temporarily not accepted.”. It was handwritten on a piece of cardboard, probably from a box of supplies. Really sad.

Anyway, hopefully this thing all works out. Hopefully, new investors will come in and take over and rehire the employees. As for Jans and his family, sana umuwi na kayo to clear everything up.

Old man winter has really hit now. Since Sunday, we’ve had a wintry mix of heavy snow and freezing rain. My back’s starting to hurt from having to shovel the driveway almost every day. The nice thing about it though is that Aileen feels sorry for me and gives me a back rub every so often.

Zoe seems to like it though – whenever I complain about the snow she tells me “Daddy, snow is nice. I like playing in it.”.

Still, there’s something to like about being able to leave a case of beer outside the porch and have it being ice cold all the time. 🙂

One of the things I always make sure to buy when I go to Manila is buy new alternative OPM music – lots of it. I’ve always liked listening to Philippine music “on the edge” since the days of WXB102 with the likes of The Dawn, Identity Crisis, Dean’s December, Betrayed, Urban Bandits, and the rest of the old TRC bands. I’ve always thought that OPM music is at least as great as bands abroad – and this batch of music that I bought this time around hasn’t disappointed. Among the CDs I bought, these are the ones that are getting the most playtime on my player:

Marty McFly (Leinil Yu of X-Men fame’s band, sounds a lot like The Rentals)

Sugar Free – Sa Wakas (great pop songs)

Oranges & Lemons – Love in the Land of Rubber Shoes and Dirty Ice Cream (music in the old new wave vein, ala Orange Juice and The Railway Children)

Pinikpikan – Kaamulan (awesome tribal rock)

Pan – Parnaso ng Payaso (punk rock, the way only Dong Abay can deliver it)

Noel Cabangon – Medjas (the Philippines’ finest folk rock artist)

and my current favorite –

Urban Dub – Influence (ang galeng nang mga ‘to)

I kinda liken my buying OPM as my way of supporting the Manila music scene, and Philippine music as a whole. Filipino artists need all the help they can get. If you’re a balikbayan, make sure to buy original OPM CDs. If you need to pirate something, do it to foreign artists. Support OPM!

It’s official – The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is now my favorite trilogy of all time. Taken as a collective whole, it’s better and more enjoyable than Back To The Future, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and yes, even the Godfather. Will this set a precedent on how to do trilogies? We were so excited to see this movie that this was the first thing we did after enduring a 30 hour trip back to Pittsburgh. Yup, we went straight to the movie theater after coming from the airport. It was well worth it though – now I can’t wait to have the extended edition of this movie (which I hear will be out in August to September).

If this movie doesn’t win the best picture this year, it will be a crime.

The down side to this trilogy ending is that it’s over and done with – no more LOTR movies to look forward to. I hope they get started on a movie version of The Hobbit, with none other than Peter Jackson at the helm. In the meantime, there’s other movies this year to look forward to – among them Spider-Man 2, Hellboy, and I’m also looking forward to seeing The Adventures of Riddick (the sequel to the much underrated Pitch Black).

I just learned recently that a cousin of mine, who is a US Marine, has been deployed to Iraq for a 6 month tour of duty. We hope and pray for his safety while he defends the country. We’re all very proud of you, Adrian!

Today marks a milestone as my lovely wife turns 30. Like a fine wine though, she just keeps getting better with age. It must be starting to affect her mind a little bit though, as she accidentally placed herself on call today while she was doing the call schedule last month!

To my wonderful wife, a loving mother, a dedicated doctor, and my best friend – Happy Birthday!

After a very long and relaxing vacation in Manila, we’re now back here in Pittsburgh. Nothing like being with family and friends during the holidays. For some reason, Christmas and New Year is just so different in the States compared to Manila. There’s just more of that holiday spirit, at least for me, going around in the Philippines.

Among the highlights of our trip was a 3 day stay in beautiful Boracay. Zoe absolutely loved being on the beach for the first time and she had a blast swimming in the ocean and playing in the sand. Aileen and I mainly just took in the scenery and lounged around. Being at the beach for the first time in years felt wonderful.

Christmas and New Year was also a lot of fun, with the time spent between my family and Aileen’s. It’s overwhelming being a part of Aileen’s family, mainly because they have so many family members – 6 siblings and 10 grandchildren. It’s a lot of fun though because when everybody gets together, it’s an instant party.

Another highlight (at least for me, I hope it was the same for Aileen as well ) was our celebration of our 5th year anniversary. We booked a room at “historic” Oakwood. I found the hotel and the rooms to be decorated nice and simple, but radiated an overall elegance. I semi-surprised Aileen with 5 dozen roses (1 for each year of marriage) and an anniversary ring, which I presented to her after our night out. I say “semi-surprised” since Aileen apparently knew about the roses from an email to my mom that I accidentally left open on my computer. She didn’t know about the ring though, so at least part of it was still a surprise.

I have to say that the way the setup to the roses was excellent, since the staff took the time out to spread rose petals from the door all the way up to the bed, where they laid down the 5 bouquets. We capped our stay at Oakwood by having an excellent breakfast (with the best tocino I’ve ever had), and getting a massage at the spa. All in all, it was an anniversary to remember.

Like the saying goes though – all good things must come to an end. It was sad to end our vacation, but we have a lot of great memories from it. There really is no place like home.

And now… back to the grind!

Check out our pictures from Manila:

Boracay

More Boracay

Even More Boracay

Christmas

Various Nights Out

New Year

5th Year Anniversary

I found a really good article about Filipino Food while looking for pictures of balut and soup number five to gross out my co-workers:

Filipino Food

Filipino Food

Kainan na… A Matter of Taste

By Matthew Sutherland

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Samuel Johnson

I HAVE NOW BEEN in this country for over six years, and consider myself in most respects well-assimilated. However, there is one key step on the road to full assimilation which I have yet to take, and that’s to eat balut. The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask them to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will be no turning back. Balut, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips, by street vendors-usually after dark, presumably so you can’t see how gross it is.

It’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can’t imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially-formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just to drink the so-called ‘soup’, the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds the mentioned feathery fetus…

Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat. They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are called, in order: breakfast,snacks,lunch, merienda, pica-pica,pulutan,dinner, and no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn’t-count.

[NB:

merienda: Afernoon snack. Usually something you can pick up from a street vendor.

pulutan: You eat this with your buddies while drinking cold beer and playing the guitar.

]

The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on every desktop.

You’re never far from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you’re driving home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing food-and I don’t mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fishballs, or a man walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it’s less than one minute.

Here are some other things I’ve noticed about food in the Philippines. Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice even breakfast. In the UK, I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it’s impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel Beer just isn’t the same without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from their house without baon and a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home without his pants on.

And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in sauce with a knife.

One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to share their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always go: “Sir! Kain tayo!” (“Let’s eat!”). This confused me, until I realized that they didn’t actually expect me to sit down and start munching on their boneless bangus [milk fish]. In fact, the polite response is something like, “No thanks, I just ate.” But the principle is sound-if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier.

I think that’s great. In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further. Many Filipinos use “Have you eaten yet?” (“Kumain ka na?”) as a general greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.

Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: spicy dishes like Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked in coconut milk; anything kinilaw [soaked in vinegar]; and anything adobo [soaked in soy sauce]. And it’s hard to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterholic frenzy of a good old-fashioned lechon de leche feast. Dig a pit,light a fire, add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm…you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive mouthful. I also share one key Pinoy trait-a sweet tooth. I am thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it! It’s the weird food you want to avoid.

In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in the Philippines include pig’s blood soup (dinuguan); bull’s testicle soup (the strangely-named “soup number five” – I dread to think what numbers one through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, bagoong, and its equally stinky sister, patis (fish sauce). Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA, which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces.

Then there’s the small matter of the blue ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating blue food; the ubiquitous ube leaves me cold.

And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that kalderetang kambing (goat) could well be calderetang aso (dog).. The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food humor.

Here’s a typical Pinoy food joke: “I’m on a seafood diet.” “What’s a seafood diet?” When I see food, I eat it!” Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals-the feet, the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty names, like “Adidas” (chickens’ feet); “kurbata” *tie* (either just chicken’s neck, or “neck and thigh” as in “neck-tie”); “Walkman” (pigs ears); “PAL” *Philippine AirLines* (chicken wings); “helmet” (chicken heads); “IUD” (chicken intestines), and “Betamax” (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum.

Bon appetit!

It feels kinda strange being in a big house and having it all to myself. Aileen and Zoe left yesterday to go to Manila and I’ll be following them this coming Sunday. In the meantime, I’ve got all this free time and I don’t know what to do with it. I’m sure I’ll find something to do… 🙂

With my gaming interest revived by new Gameboy Advance. I started thinking about all the games I used to play way back when. Remember King’s Quest and Quest For Glory? Those awesome adventure games from Sierra? Apparently, they’re being remade by a fan group called Tierra Entertainment Website. Worth checking out… with free downloads as well!