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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
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10:29 pm - Masks
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"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
current mood:  blank
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| Sunday, October 19th, 2008
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6:11 pm - Slim Pickings
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Last night's Chocolate Buffet at the Manila Peninsula was, in a word, underwhelming. The last time I went, back in 2004, my friends and I had so much fun, we tucked in truffles and macarons between paper towels and brought them home for our families to sample. (This time, we came Lock'n'Lock prepared!) After years of abstinence, Reitch, TJ, and I, plus Burt, Liz, and Paul (who had a Fun Run the next day), were really looking forward to feasting on all the chocolate we could possibly take. However, upon getting there, the buffet was not as good as I remembered. This time there were only 2 small buffet tables, no chocolate fondue fountain, no crepes freshly made by a crepe-maker, no macarons, and very little variety between dishes. I mean, you could get chocolate tortes, cakes, mousses, tarts and brownies just about anywhere else, so what's to set this one apart? The most imaginative thing there was the nigiri sushi made with a chocolate bed, sticky sweet rice, topped with a slice of mango or kiwi. The most exciting thing for me were the truffles... but nobody comes to a chocolate buffet just for the truffles. There was nothing exceptional, nothing that kept us coming back for seconds and thirds, nothing that made us want to stuff our faces and proclaim to the world that everyone, yes everyone, ought to partake in this decadent madness! The chocolate sculptures were pretty nice though, and the lobby was pleasant and conducive to conversation, with its dim lights and music from a string quartet on the balcony. It was a nice evening out with friends, there's that.
( Random l'etranger moments... )
current mood:  ho-hum
current music: Ben Folds and Regina Spektor - You Don't Know Me
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| Thursday, August 21st, 2008
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11:21 am - Why Bother?
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The iPhone 3G is debuting in the Philippines tomorrow. And it is NOT $200.
What a buzzkill. To paraphrase the Conchords, "That's too many 0s- that's ridiculous!" I don't want it anymore!
For 43,799 pesos, I could:- get a laptop with great specs
- travel
- invest in time deposit/stocks/bonds/mutual funds
- become an entrepreneur
- rent and furnish an apartment of my own
- buy a phone, a digicam, a music player, AND a portable gaming system
- buy a bookcaseful of books
- quit my job and bum around for a month or so
Wow, this game is turning out to be too much fun to play.
current mood:  blatch!
current music: Flight of the Conchords - Business Time
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| Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
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9:35 pm
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metier: an area in which one excels; an occupation for which one is especially well suited.
bathos: the effect resulting from an unsucessful effort to achieve dignity or pathos; an unintentional dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous.
fantod: a state of nervous irritability.
lethologica: the inability to remember the correct word.
mamihlapinatapai: a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.
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| Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
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7:03 pm - Forging a relationship
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I... I hate myself for wanting one, but I really, really want to get a friggin' iPhone 3G.
I could say it's because my 5-year-old phone containing 5-year-old messages is worn and beat-up and showing symptoms that it's about to die soon (which is true), or I could say it's because I lost my portable audio player and I'm starting to feel the pangs of not having one on me all the time (which is also true), and really, I've been canvassing for a nice, fully-featured, relatively inexpensive phone for the past few weeks, searching for a sleek smartphone, an iPhone killer, and oh there have been many fine candidates for a phone I hope to keep for the next 5 years, but none that had me licking my chops, so I decided to wait for Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote speech before deciding on anything. I'm glad I did. The iPhone 3G is the iPhone killer.
Stephen Fry put it best when he wrote about the first-generation, flawed iPhone:What’s to set against these drawbacks?
Beauty. Charm. Delight. Excitement. Ooh. Aah. Wow! Let me at it.
In the end the iPhone is like some glorious early-60s sports car. Not as practical, reliable, economical, sensible or roomy as a family saloon but oh, the joy. The jouissance as Roland Barthes liked to say. What it does, it does supremely well, that what it does not do seems laughably irrelevant.
The iPhone is a digital experience in the literal sense of the word. The user’s digits roam, stroke, tweak, tweeze, pinch, probe, slide, swipe and tap across the glass screen forging a relationship with the device that is like no other.
“But I don’t want to ‘forge a relationship’, I just want to get the job done,” you say? Well then, you know what? Don’t buy one. And stop reading this. You’re only doing so in the first place to lend fuel to your snorts and puffs of rage. Allow us our pleasures. Now that a lot of the initial flaws have been addressed (feature-wise, price-wise, availability-wise), what's left to resist?
current mood:  yes
current music: The Zombies - The Way I Feel Inside
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| Monday, May 19th, 2008
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12:46 pm - False dichotomy
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Can't I just have them both?
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| Monday, April 14th, 2008
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11:32 am - Picture = 1K words, etc.
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Flickr photo meme! (via cyanidechild, jetcrashcity, typefiend)
Instructions:
1. Go to www.flickr.com
2. Type in your answer to the question in the "search" box
3. Use only the first page
4. Copy the html and paste for the answer.
1. What is your first name?
( I can has pictures? )
current mood:  relaxed
current music: Carrie Underwood - Alone (LSS!)
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