FML stands for Fuck My Life. So, FML. That means I’m still alive.
I haven’t been up to much lately, and so I think (right now), I don’t have much to say, except mostly dorky things about:
1. Chuck. One Tree Hill could never combine enough girls on its cast to come up with anyone better than Yvonne Strahovski. I love every episode I’ve watched so far, and one day I think I’d want to write an episode for the series. Paging NBC! (Where’s my grape soda?)
2. Legend of the Five Rings. Pretty dorky game, I know, but it’s a guilty pleasure collecting these cards and playing the game. Now if I can only be competitive enough to join the Neutral Grounds games at Glorietta, that’d be hella great.
LSC, that Crane dueling stronghold, and CoT. I'm not a geek. I'm a nerd. You know, Nerd Herd? Ah fuck.
I dropped the Crane cards and shuffled the Iaijutsu cards into my Dragon Fate deck. Oh hell yeah, I did.
3. Dragonball Z Kai. It’s like Dragonball Z on fast-forward. Check this out: Raditz lands on Earth in the first episode, Goku dies in the third, and by the sixth episode, he’s reached the end of the Snake Road. It’s the best way to review the whole series if you’re a big DBZ fan, I think, since you won’t have to spend so much time dilly-dallying with unnecessary details and suspenseful, er, tag-games with Bubbles.
4. German Magic: the Gathering cards. Jen got back from her month-long stay in Europe earlier this month, and over lunch at Shiok, she handed to me her pasalubong from Vienna: German Magic: the Gathering cards! It’s weird seeing these cards in a different language, but novelty aside, I think I pulled some nice cards from the booster packs she brought. Too bad Worldwake was out of stock at the store she visited and I couldn’t resume my Jace lottery. Many thanks to Jen for the cards, you’re the best! Samba!
Boosterpackungshet.
Terminate.
5. Verdonia. There’s a fairly new Facebook game from Playdom (makers of Social City, Tiki Resort, and Treetopia) that looks and feels like a cross between Heroes of Might and Magic, Civilization, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The game, Verdonia, is a social turn-based strategy game with pretty interesting game mechanics. I say interesting because I already know how HM&M and RTK plays out in single-player mode, but I was wondering how someone would change the gameplay to support a community of gamers interacting with each other, such as casual players on Facebook.
That's, uh, Bilboldstar Baggins Town.
6. Ramon Bautista and Piolo Pascual. Two events the past few weeks granted me access to two of the most good-looking actors on Philippine TV: hunk actor Piolo Pascual and hunkier (and livelier) Ramon Bautista.
Pare, sinong kaaway mo?
Our friends from the Century Bangus team recently had a press event at Enderun Colleges to launch (kind of) a line of new products along with the announcement that Piolo Pascual is going to be their new endorser. I half-expected Angel Locsin (new product endorser for Century Tuna) to be there, but hey, food was great (as always with Century) and I’ve nothing to complain about. Friends I was with at the event – Carlos, Trixie, and Brad – had some words to say about the event.
Ramon and Sam: oh hell no.
I also got to meet the always-hilarious Ramon Bautista a couple of weeks ago at the Enervon Hapontukin press event; even sweeter was seeing a college friend, Jalz, at the event. I think it’s more than five years since I last saw her and it’s great to see old friends doing great after such a long time. (Makes me wonder about the rest of my blockmates and how they are right now.)
Anyway, after the program, I approached Ramon to take a picture and he told me, “Teka, kilala kita ah!” Oh fucking hell no. He remembered me from the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards in Singapore! It was flattering how he, a celebrity, remembers me from way, way back last year!
7. The Los Angeles Lakers. Or more specifically, Ron Artest. I can’t help but love this Ron Artest character. Sure, I hated him back when his Indiana Pacers got into a brawl at the Palace of Auburn Hills with my beloved Detroit Pistons’ fans, but think about it: have you ever heard of a basketball player thank his psychiatrist repeatedly on three interviews on the same night after winning the NBA championship? No? Thought so. How about earlier this season when on a Houston fastbreak, he picked up a shoe that accidentally slipped off Trevor Ariza’s foot and threw it at the cameramen, leaving poor Ariza to go fetch it and fix it while the two teams ran up and down the court? That was fucking awesome. How about the buzzer-beating jumper, screaming at the people in the press room, “Acknowledge me! (Please),” and the encounter with the post-championship Wheaties box? Enough said.
8. Mag:net Cafe’s Closing. Despite all the love-and-hate stuff that I’ve had with Mag:net Cafe, I miss it for three things: Rockeoke, SPIT, and that nightly retreat from work (or not really, because I used to bring work there, sitting in one corner, drinking beer while working on presentations). With Mag:net Cafe goes Bart Hidalgo, I guess.
Saab takes the stage at Mag:net High Street.
9. The World Cup. I was very excited about the World Cup: was. I was going to root for Argentina and Spain where my favorite players are, but I guess I was too caught up with the NBA Playoffs (and watching sports-themed anime series) that I lost interest in watching football. That’s just that.
10. Blackberry. This is actually the main culprit why I haven’t been blogging as much lately.
Blackberry Bold: ang smartphone ng mga tunay na boldstar. Hecterrr!
Tweeting wherever, whenever; I could blog using Wordpress for Blackberry, but I think the photos I take using the phone look lame and aren’t up to the standards of photos I’d like to have on my regular blog. Well, maybe you can’t have everything.
11. Frustrating Mornings with Judd Sta. Maria. Okay, here goes. Since Ondoy struck and drowned my car last year, I’ve been riding cabs to work everyday. Remember when we temporarily moved to Eastwood City? It was easy then: there was a never-ending supply of cabs and I could hail one anytime. When we moved back to Antipolo City, getting a cab to work became a nightmare: I’d have to wait for almost an hour on the average just to find one taxi driver who doesn’t have passengers, who is willing to take me to Bonifacio Global City, won’t ask for fifty (or more) pesos on top of the metered fare, and isn’t color-coded for the day (lots of cabs who are color-coded go around Antipolo because that particular traffic regulation isn’t strictly enforced in these parts).
My record? I waited for more than two hours just to get a cab, because at that time, three other parties were lined up ahead of me for a taxi ride.
12. Windows 7. After several weeks (months, even) of having my operating system remind me that my “trial” version is expiring and I have to go out and buy a license, I finally bolted out the door and got myself one (even though it’s a bit of a downgrade). I was running Windows 7 Ultimate Edition’s release candidate but I could only afford the Home Edition license (not that I need anything more than that); after that, my wallet started screaming “putanginamo” at me.
Welcome to the downgrade.
13. Manute Bol. Back in grade school, we used to make fun of this 7-foot-7 NBA player featured on our trading cards; if I remember correctly, I owned a Kevin Johnson card in fifth grade and traded it for a Manute Bol common card, thinking, “Hey, this card says this guy blocks a lot of shots, so never mind the points, he’s a 7′7 monster!” I didn’t know about Kevin Johnson. All I knew back then were Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Toni Kukoc, and well, the rest of the Chicago Bulls. No, I obviously didn’t know anything about Bol: not a damn thing.
But over the years after he retired from the NBA, curiosity got the best of me and so I looked him up and I read about his career, and the things he did off the basketball court. His career was unique, being the only player in NBA history to block more shots than the points he ever scored (he averaged 2.6 points and 3.3 blocks over the course of his career), but you can forget about that. Forget about basketball as a game for one minute because his greatest achievements were off the court: he donated most of his earnings from his ten-year stay in the league to various causes in Sudan, his home country.
One of the things that struck me while reading about him was his establishment of the Ring True Foundation, an organization aimed at generating more funds for Sudanese refugees. Most of his earnings (about $3.5 million) were donated to the cause. Fox TV agreed to broadcast the telephone number for Ring True Foundation in exchange for Bol’s appearance on their Celebrity Boxing show; the referee egged him on during the fight, saying, “If you guys won’t box, you won’t get paid,” prompting him to fight and defeat his opponent in three rounds. Adrian Wojnarowski wrote just a few days ago:
“‘My God, they’ve turned him into a circus act,’ John Nash, the old Washington Bullets general manager, once told me. “To Bol, the only shame would be an unwillingness to use whatever means available to raise money and send it home. No, nothing was ever easy for him, except that laugh and a sweet, sweet disposition.”
I’m dedicating this post to you, Manute Bol. Have fun balling in heaven.
, 
, 
, and 
, he controlled the crowd with his signature moves and groovy tunes. He also introduced the crowd to new songs from his new album 
, including the hit 
(originally performed with the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am).
