My Pink Shoelace

Teacher: Ni zai na li?
Me: Not here … [we both burst out laughing]
Teacher: Create two sentences using the words we learned today.
Me: Ni … ni hen chou.
Wo … wo piao liang.
Teacher: (laughing out loud)

A friend of mine from college sent me a message over at Facebook asking if I have the following movies:

1. Memento
2. Seven Samurai
3. Raise the Red Lantern
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
5. Blade Runner
6. Goodfellas
I used to have the movie, Goodfellas but when my first 1 TB hard drive was damaged beyond repair I lost that movie along with so many others. She said she needed at least of these movies on September 5 as she will give it as a gift to a friend. I have been wanting to watch Seven Samurai but somehow I would keep on forgetting. It would always fall right back into the deepest recesses of my mind especially when I am deeply addicted to anime these days.
I have included it in my to do list to find Akira Kurosawa’s movies and collect them. I already have Seven Samurai, so that one down and tons more to go … lol

When Lindsay got married and then later on announced that they were expecting their first baby, she sent us an email with a list of gift ideas that we could bring during the baby shower. It is rather straightforward and some might even think that it is pretty demanding but Lindsay has always been like that. For the first baby shower one of the things she asked for was a pink ergo baby carrier and even included a picture of the item in the email. I think it is pretty cute and seems like Emma gave it to her.

One of the things that a friend of mine would want to buy for himself on his birthday is one of those hip and cool MP3 players in the market. He is thinking of getting a Sansa MP3 player or maybe a Zune player. I asked if he considered getting an iPod player and he said the price is rather steep. So he is thinking of either getting the Sansa, a Creative Zen or maybe a Zune player. These three are the top contenders he is considering.

I haven’t been blogging for a while as I have been extremely busy. My hours are spent working on various projects and what little time I have left I use it to jog, attend my Mandarin class, visit mom and see friends. It has been a very tight squeeze and I am expecting to be a whole lot busier next week. Instead of the weekly class, starting Monday it will be on a daily basis.

Sometimes I wonder what have I gotten myself into …

When Alessandra’s friend became disabled due to an accident at work she said that this friend availed of  the social security disability insurance benefit from the government. Though this friend is already out of danger his left leg hurts when he walks long miles and he can no longer climb as fast as he can on ladders like he used to. So he decided to work from home doing consultation work and Alessandra thinks that he is getting by perfectly.

Last Monday, our neighborhood was almost caught on fire. The fire started at a neighboring area which was way too far from where I live but the strong winds carried its flame to our direction. The people in my neighborhood were on panic mode and for the life of me I did not bother to pack as much. My neighbors all took their things out of their houses, appliances, bedsheets, clothes and just about anything you could think of.

The only things I secure for myself were my laptops, external hard drives, cameras, photo albums with photos of mom, my family’s closest friend helped me out in carrying all my boxes [containing my collection of books and manga] while I took my piggy bank. When the fire was too close say 4 houses away from my house I had no choice but to move out and stay on safer grounds. Panicking won’t do me any good, it’s not like if I panic the fire would stop right? So I took photos instead … someone actually mistook me as part of the media lol

And oh … the fire brigade managed to put out the fire and my house was saved. All Hail Buddha!

Monica has been trying to lose weight since time immemorial and she has always been the first one to learn of any new diet pill that’s making waves in the market. Her latest find is a pill called apidexin which according to her has gotten several rave reviews and since the reviews she found are rather great she ended up ordering a box so she could try it out.

We have been looking for some coogi t-shirts that are on sale and we found several websites that actually have then on sale. Luis have always wanted one and since his birthday is fast approaching, this might just be the perfect gift for him. We plan on buying it online and have the store ship to him directly and add a small note that it was coming from us.

Doi had been telling me about this nice place to chill out at IT Park, Cebu called Wanna Eat. She said the place offers good food at a decent price, the place is neat and they have free wi-fi connection. I said that definitely is a good place for bloggers and freelancers like us to chill. We went there after our short stop at SM and ordered Pork Belly, she said its yummy and recommended that I try it. It was my first time there and I ended up ordering it.

The food came, we ate and we started working. We did not use our battery chargers since our battery was full, a hundred percent full. Ed arrived and ordered burger and spaghetti while Doi and I ordered Tacos. Our battery went down to 30% and we started using our chargers, this was around 45 minutes before 11 PM. 30 minutes or so after this man came to us and said that they charge customers who charge their laptop batteries and thats 30 PHP per 30 minutes, so thats 1 PHP per minute.

I was disappointed and I found it rather rude that he approached us about 30 minutes after we started using it. I mean if its company policy they should have some signage informing the customers of this and that. It did not matter if you order food the minute that charger of yours hit their socket the countdown begins. Doi said at Coffifi the charge was 20 PHP per hour and there’s a huge sign inside the coffee shop informing customers of this policy, Wanna Eat Cebu does not have that. That’s a real bummer!

Blimey! I have been to several coffee shops in Cebu and none of them charged me for charging my laptop batteries. I spent almost every day during the summer of 2008 at Starbucks IT Park and never was there a fuss about me using their socket. It was a shame that Wanna Eat Cebu would have what I think a ridiculous policy. My biggest disappointment was that they didn’t inform us well ahead of time. They saw us using our laptops for two hours they could have approached us and informed us …. common sense would have told them that eventually the batteries of their laptops would ran out soon and they’d start charging. Don’t tell me they were busy … for crying out loud only two tables were occupied and there are plenty of them at the counter.

My first experience at Wanna Eat was a disappointment and here I thought I’d be chilling there from now on, bad idea. Stick with Starbucks Weng, they have the best signature hot choco.

August 2, 1948 was mom’s birthday. She would have been 62 years old today had she still been alive. Together with mom’s closest friend and together with another neighbor we went to the cemetery to pay our respects. It has been close to 3 years since she passed away and I still haven’t gotten over it fully. I guess it would some time … but I kept telling myself that where ever she is right now … she is in a much better place and someday soon I’ll see her again.