New Year, New Cocktails

I have decided to learn how to make new cocktails. I know, most people resolve to stop drinking but here I am trying to find new and wonderful ways of getting drunk.

So today's drink is called the Bourbon Highball. It has been pointed out that I have been drinking too much bourbon lately. Well what can I say, I like 'em boys down south ;)

1 1/2 ouces bourbon
1 piece of lemon (no lemon now, so I subbed a dash of lemon juice)
Ginger ale for topping up
1 lemon peel spiral (again, no lemon in hand!)

Put ice cubes in a highball glass, pour bourbon, then lemon. Top up with ginger ale. Then add lemon peel spiral.

It was absolutely yummy. Bourbon and ginger ale make it sweet and just a little hint of sourness from the lemon. The kind of drink you won't feel till you've had about 10 and it hits you and then you're down on the floor.

Much like a Cosmopolitan, except manlier! :D

The Bunny That Could Have Been

I found this on a really old CD while cleaning my room. I think I wrote it shortly after grade school, and somehow, it survived the long journey from written journal to floppy disk to email to archived CD.

To be honest, I was tempted to edit heavily; I remember my English teacher when I was a sophomore saying "write in red heat, edit in cold blood." I guess I'm not so cold-blooded, I can't touch a word; every one evokes some memory, a distant sound or a familiar smell.

So as not to appear too much of a softie, I will comment on it instead, maybe even make fun of it a bit. Hey, I'm allowed my pretensions! Comments are in [brackets] and italics.

The Bunny That Could Have Been

One day, when [while, while, while! repeat after me, while!] my third grade classmates and I were playing in the school playground, we found a small rabbit hopping around some low foliage [yes, i read the dictionary for leisure]. It was such a cute thing, with thick brown-black fur, long ears and a puffy, bushy tail, so we decided to adopt it. We named him Bunny [with this one act, proving our inherent lack of creativity]. We agreed to share ownership of the animal and [to] keep him hidden where we found him [hidden, found-- I am a word smith!] because we knew that our parents would never consent to keeping this rabbit as a pet at home. “You found that animal where?” they’d be sure to ask and judging that it probably had rabies or some other nasty things, they’d quickly put it to sleep. That [comma, I believe] and the fact that we had absolutely no idea how to divide a live rabbit equally does this mean we knew how to divide a rabbit, just not equally? Would it had been easier with a dead rabbit? I probably would have gone for a foot].

One of my friends, who lived nearby, rushed to his house and came back with an old bird cage. We placed Bunny in there and hid him (we presumed it was a he, though we never really knew) behind some bushes. Everyday during break time and after school, we would visit Bunny and play with him, giving him our leftover snacks and sandwiches. We became so fond of Bunny that we couldn’t imagine what it would be like without Bunny [at this point one can say that I have not yet realized that pronouns were my friends].

Then one day, while we were feeding Bunny, a man came up to us and said that our Bunny belonged to him and that it got lost a few days ago when its cage was broken. We didn’t believe him, or rather, we didn’t want to return Bunny, so we took the cage and ran off. We hid Bunny in a new place far away from the old one so that the mean and nasty stranger would never find him.

We continued our routine everyday, visiting Bunny and feeding him after school. Then one very ordinary day, we saw Bunny lying still inside the cage. We called to him and shook the cage but he did not stir [out of the whole thing, this is the single word I wanted to edit. Stir? Oh I shall rue the day...]. We tried to make him hop by gently spanking his bottom but still he did not move. Eventually, we accepted the unacceptable fact. Bunny was dead. It would take a few years and a lot of science classes later for us to find out the cause of Bunny’s death: rabbits, as a rule, could not live on junk food alone [now THAT is a gem, even now. The Biblical undertone alone is genius!].

We cried silently and secretly, mourning the loss of someone very special. We buried Bunny in a shallow hole and marked his grave with some stones.

Up until now, I can’t help but wonder. What if we gave Bunny over to that man? Would he have taken better care of Bunny? Would Bunny have lived to become a successful and accomplished rabbit?

I don’t really know and I don’t think that I shall ever find out. [End]

Well, there you have it-- my prepubescent attempt at writing. A lot of style and content has changed since then, though some still remain the same, if you know how to recognize it.

I eat rabbits now, by the way. They make particularly good stew, with potatoes and leeks. Again, some things are still the same. Most of my mourning and crying I still do in secret. I still accept that there are questions that will remain unanswered and that some things will never be explained. I still maintain that sometimes it's better to let something that you love go and lose it, maybe because it's better with someone else or you're holding it back from becoming what it was meant to be.

Sometimes, in a moment of clarity, peering through uncertainty and fear, you realize the best thing is to let go and walk away.

Free Burma!

Inmates Dance to Thriller

If you can't put Michael Jackson in jail, you might as well have his music performed in it.

Clips of prisoners doing coordinated dance routines have been popular for some time now on YouTube. Here is a BBC article about the inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center dancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

It's really fun to watch and, I have to admit, this is one of the few videos (the other one is the algorithm march) on YouTube that made my stomach hurt from laughing.

I can't help but nit-pick the article, though. Let's start from the moderately serious and move on to downright silly.

FTA: He said it had helped "drastically" improve inmate behaviour.

I wonder how improvements in inmate behaviour was measured. Decrease in shivvings? Fewer prison rule violations? More warm fuzzy feelings and tingling sensations? Give me numbers, otherwise it doesn't hold up.

FTA: Inmates say to me: 'You have put my mind off ... thinking how to escape from jail...'

Seriously now, if you were an inmate, would you tell a prison official you were thinking of escaping?

FTA: "The inmates are very happy at the interest, they are always talking about it, and they ask how many people have watched it on YouTube"

They can see for themselves how many people have seen the video. It's right there on YouTube. What? They don't have broadband internet in prison? WTF??!!

And my personal favorite...

FTA: Other early choices included In the Navy and YMCA by the Village People, which were chosen so that macho inmates "wouldn't be offended by being asked to dance".

Yes, because there is absolutely nothing gay at all about the Village People...

The Emperor's New Blog Entry

No Drinking Straw Day

Today is No Drinking Straw Day at McDonald's. It's on the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month. While I laud their attempts at being environmentally friendly (by reducing non-biodegradable waste), it does, however, leave some interesting questions.

Do they actually reduce the quantity of drinking straws that they order? The whole idea is not just to reduce demand, but ultimately, supply. It's not just about reducing the drinking straws that we use, it's also reducing the harmful by-products of plastic manufacturing.

When they took the straws out of the dispensers last night, did they throw them in the trash? It would surprise me if they didn't. Remember, this is Hong Kong where the letter of the law is followed, ummm, to the letter.

And finally, what happens if you order a milkshake?

Kaputol

galera
Originally uploaded by rgucci

Here is a quick lesson in Filipino slang.

Tol - as difficult to explain as dude, buddy, man, pal or mate. Can be used to address someone you are very close to, or when talking to a complete stranger, as in "Tol, pasindi naman." (Hey mate, you got a light?). A contraction of utol.

Utol - refers to a sibling or someone as close as a blood brother or sister. In itself is a contraction of kaputol, which is what this post is about.

Kaputol - literally means cut from the same branch. I'm willing to bet it stems (yes, it is an intended pun) from horticulture, where new plants grow from cuttings from the same vine.

I like that idea, but it suffers from an inherent lack of choice-- we are connected because of where we come from and not because of what we do or the choices we make.

So I am going to create a new meaning for the word.

Kaputol - someone with whom you cut/break/partake of/share something with.

Now that's more to my liking. More in tune with breaking bread, for example. Now I have a word for a special group of friends that have shared themselves with each other-- dinners, countless DVDs, public transportation, nearly being washed away by the tide, hangovers, sleazy shoes, hot dogs, soft-shell crabs, more drama, broken skulls, A&E, unpacking parties, exploding tonics, what-have-you.

At the risk of betraying my ever increasing age, I will have to say that the final scene of The Breakfast Club comes to mind; each of us is

• a Captain
• an Oongi Boongi
• an Aunty
• a Show Poney
• a Rimmer, O.D.

Thanks, guys. Salamat, mga 'tol.

It's alive. It's alive...

After a long hiatus, the Flip is back in the blogosphere!

It's been a couple of years since my last post. Periods of intense work, deadlines, life and all around laziness are to blame, maybe even carbon emissions, but I haven't completely thought that out yet.

One thing I've learned-- writing is an intrinsic expression for me, maybe even a need, and I can't go without for very long without suffering some sort of withdrawal symptoms.

So expect more (and much).

See you in the next post!