"Here Comes the Bride"---Definitely a Film to Watch!

I seldom watch local movies and whenever I do it’s usually not a matter of choice but a matter of love.

You see, my wife is a Tagalog movie buff and would usually watch them with my teenage daughter. However, my daughter already watched “Here Comes the Bride” with her gal pals and my wife is left with no one else to go with but me. Well, she’s got veto power so when she says we’ll watch a Tagalog movie---we watch a Tagalog movie! Now that’s love!

Anyway, I normally sleep it off (with the occasional elbow from my wife specially when I start snoring) but I must admit, “Here Comes the Bride” did not provide me the usual “zzzzzzzzzzzz’s” since I was mostly laughing at every sequence! The best parts however are those with Angelica Panganiban in them! There’s really nothing quite like it seeing a beautiful lady doing crazy comedy! Her role as somebody whose body was taken over by a homosexual soul was down right hysterical! I specially liked her honeymoon dance routine! I’m definitely putting that scene in my stress relief kit!

Election Aftermath

With 89% of the election returns in, Noynoy Aquino is leading the second placer with an insurmountable 5 million votes. That basically assures us who will be the 15th president of the republic.

Well, I'm not particularly happy since my bet, Richard Gordon, can only place 6th on the race BUT I'm definitely thankful that Noynoy did run for the position, otherwise, ERAP would have been president again! God does work in mysterious ways!

Halalan 2010

Voting number. Sequence number.

Our government have poured resources to explain how to use the PCOS machines but seemed to have forgotten to explain the changes made in the queuing process. The result: BEDLAM!

The voters were used to the old procedure where you just look for your assigned precinct room and then getting in line to vote. Now, you need to go to a table where you fill up a while paper slip (surname first please) where they will identify your precinct’s voting room. Once in the room assignment, you’d already think of lining up to vote---no, no, no---you need to get a pink paper slip from somebody. Nope, this person is mobile and no table where you can easily go to and get what you need. Eventually you notice a group building up in a corner. It was like seeing a floating carcass being feasted on by a group of sharks. After getting through the throng of eager voters, you are again lost! Can you line up now? No, no, no---the pink slip contained your voting queue but the lady distributing the pink slip was too dazed to explain I still needed to go to the voter’s list and look for my sequence number. Apparently, the sequence number will help the watchers to easily find you on the list where you need to sign after voting. Not knowing what to do, I did the next logical thing---MAGTANONG-TANONG!

The voter’s list was posted somewhere. Lo and behold---there’s another “shark feast” building on the door of the other room. It was chaos just weaving your way in this melee! After much jousting I finally got my way to the list and found equal disarray! There were 4 lists posted and it was like playing find-the-key-that-opens-the-box! My oh my! Finding the precinct number was equally challenging since it was of the same font as the rest of the text---Times New Roman 10!

It was two hours wait time after this and if you have your list ready, around 5 minutes voting time. I was number 237 and my wife 239. In a way, ours was a more organized precinct since the other precinct beside our room was only at # 85!

Hay buhay! At least I and my wife are done exercising our voting rights! Now we wait who’s going to be our next president! God help us all!

Rating My First Foot Spa Ever

It has been a long understanding of mine that SPA-ing is for women and gay men only. Hence it is anathema for me to even hint of wanting to get one less I want to be labeled as gay!

This notion has ebbed in recent past with a couple of my male (tunay na lalaki) friends getting into foot spa-ing! “Sarap feeling”, “nakaka relax”, and “nakakatangal stress” are the most heard of comments from them, but still, at the back of my mind, it is and always be a girl thing!

My wife---well, she’s a foot spa addict! Once a month she’d text her home service practitioner to get her dose of foot spa and pedicure/manicure. Naturally, her Mother’s Day request was---you guessed that right---FOOT SPA! So there we were at the “Nature’s Way Aroma Therapy Salon” in SM Fairview looking at the various foot pampering services: foot spa with pedicure, foot spa with pedicure and massage, foot spa with pedicure/manicure/massage---how gay can you get?! Anyway, my wife was prodding me to join her in this trip and with nothing better to do---I gave in!

The service took a little more than an hour with a whole lot of scrubbing, massaging and an occasional question, “sir, magpapa pedicure ba kayo?” Hello! Ganon ba kapangit mga daliri ko sa paa?! Glancing at my feet…well… “E ano naman kung mukhang pang magsasaka ang paa ko?!”

Personally, I found nothing special to it. The scrubbing was not particularly relaxing and my son Ringo can give me the same quality foot massage at a significantly lower price! The seat was soft and comfortable but being positioned one way all throughout the experience kindda gave my rear end the same numb feeling during a long bus ride! In fairness though, my feet did feel “silky smooth afterwards”.

Will I again pay for my own foot massage? Nope! But my wife, who was absolutely blooming after her service, definitely will!

Boracay Island Tour

Did I tell you that I have this big water phobia? Open sea actually. Well, I do. Now here's the dilema: I wanted my wife to enjoy our Boracay vacation and between the island tour and the buggy ride, the latter was the best way to go. So there I was trying to look cool and composed where in fact I'm near to shitting on my pants!

The ride started well enough. My wife snorkled for a while and was prodding me to get into the water. One look in the sea green water was enough to scare the living crap out of me---but---I calmly refused. Truth be known, I was so wanting to get to dry land! Then, when it was time to move on, the damn motor won't start! I looked at my left and saw land but as the boat drifted (and the bangkero trying hard to revive the motor), I glanced starboard side and saw an everlasting sea---i started praying! Fortunately, after an eternity of trying, the motor came to life and we were again enroute to the various destinations: Bulabog Beach, Puca Beach, the caves, and the various high end hotels on the other side of the white beach. I started praying again when we reached the bend back to the stations. It seemed that the sea was angry at that part of the island that our bangka was being tossed around by high waves!

I was in a mental panic and trying to be composed at the same time! Man! That was hard to do! It was 15 minutes of panic! Before we finally got into calmer waters my head was screaming "Susmaryosep! Susmaryosep! Susmaryosep!" and at the same time saying "Whooooopeee!" to my wife who was holding me tightly! Talk about multi-tasking!

But despite of this, Boracay remains to be an amazing vacation destination!

Ate Levi seeing us off to our island tour.

Our own private bangka: The Mac Mac

Our bangkeros.

D Talipapa
The Monaco Suites
Puca Beach

What happens in Puca Beach stays in Puca Beach.

Manny Pacquiao's Boracay West Cove

Shangri-la Boracay

Club Panoly

Can't seem to get enough of these sail boats! With the blue sky and clear blue water as foreground and background---it's simply spectacular to behold!

20 Years Ago Today

Some 20 years ago today, May 3, my wife and I said YES to be bonded as husbund and wife.

I was 21 and she was 19. It was unplanned. Our wedding was a quickie and was arranged at the spur of the moment. If I remember it correctly, our wedding was planned a total of two days! There were no formal invitation, no entourage. I was thankful to our friends who attended for having the presence of mind to just stand up and provide assistance with regard to the veil, ring, and cord. Not your ideal wedding, I tell you. It was forgetable to say the least but despite the whirlwind nuptial the important ingredient was that my wife and I were truly in love with each other! I do believe that's the bottomline in every marriage. Many have splurged on a very expensive wedding but ended up in court settling assets (not to mention child custody).

Did my love for my wife change after 20 years? YES. I love her more now! I love her so much that I gave her a heavy duty helmet---Kevlar---para kahit mabagok ang ulo e di sya matatauhan!-lol

Happy 20th Anniversary Sweetie! Tsup! Tsup! Slurp! Slurp!

The Answer to Poverty

"Poverty is the absence of CHOICE."--Richard Gordon

We Filipinos are by nature an industrious race. Our ancestors were either fishermen or farmers who used their hands to survive. No work is hard considering the need to fend for the family. Abroad, we Filipinos are the envy of other ethnic (and even indigenous) workers since we do our job well and then some. There is always something extra whenever we do things that foreign employers like hiring us. This trait made overseas contracting as the countries primary export. In other words, our government pimped its own people to compensate for what it cannot provide---EMPLOYMENT! The opportunity to work here in our own country is so limited that many are forced to go to other countries "for greener pastures".

Based on the influx of OCWs, one can surmise that the Philippines is not better off economically in 1997 versus 2008. According to the National Statistics Office (NSO), from 900,000 registered OCWs in 1997, the number has now gone to 2 million in 2008. Now that's a lot!

On a positive note, having this much OCWs infuses life to our economy. However, this has also led to a lot of broken families. Family values are erroded since either the father or mother is out of the country. Children are then left without a father or mother figure to help in their personal development.

In 2009, unemployment is at 7.6% or 2.9 million of our able work force do not have a job. This is 6.3% higher than the 2008 figure. How many president have we had since 1997? Erap and Gloria, right? Reminisce when they were still campaigning, didn't they promise to put down unemployment? They sure did! Now our current crop of candidates are promising the same thing. Are we going to get duped again when it comes to the unemployment issue?

Let's choose the candidate with a solid platform and the game plan with regard to what he plans to do in office. Let's vote for the candidate who has the track record to make this happen. No more BROKEN PROMISES!