Ducks and Bubble Wrap

It has been over 2 months since we moved to the new flat but it was only last weekend that I unpacked my rubber duckies. One of my friends (thanks, Oli!) sent them from Chicago as a thank you for a favor that I did for him (I don't even remember what it was, but hey, that's what friends are for). Incidentally, Oli sells these ducks along with soap, candles and other bathroom products at Soak. As far as I know, they only deliver to addresses in the United States but if you want to buy something from them, give me a shout and I'm sure we can work things out.

I received the package before we moved out from the old flat which had a bathtub. Unfortunately, at the new flat, we only have a standing shower so there really isn't enough space to display the entire flotilla.


So I had to choose which ones to display in the limited space in the bathroom. I ended up choosing just 3 devil ducks, the big one even glows in the dark!


They were, of course, wrapped in the ubiquitous bubble wrap and true enough, I couldn't stop myself from popping the bubbles. This was late at night, so there I was, popping until I was so exhausted I had to go to sleep.

I'm not sure what it is about bubble wrap that makes them so irresistible; what I am sure about is that I am not the only one that shares this fetish sentiment. So for fellow bubble wrap-a-holics out there, feast your eyes upon the Bubble Calender, a poster-sized calendar with a bubble to pop every day.



Now back to the ducks. Thousands of them have been floating around in the ocean for over a decade.


Now if only we get this kind of pollution in the beaches here in Hong Kong.

College Humor *Internet Meetings*

All these calls of "Photoshopped" reminded me of the series of videos produced by College Humour. If, like me, you have lurked in read a lot of forums and message boards, see how many comments you will find familiar!

Part 1: Internet Commenter Business Meeting


Part 2: Internet Commenter Retirement Party
And here I was thinking, where are the LOLcats? And where is goatse?!! (I realize that most of my friends read this from work and it is in my best interest to make sure they stay employed... so no links to goatse!)


Part 3: Internet Commenter Funeral
Gotta love ROFL!!!

More Photoshop, Ahem, GIMP Goodness

Wired has rounded up reactions to the Iran missile launch picture manipulation feeding frenzy.

This one is my personal favorite.

Nuclear Iran Powered by Open Source Software

A New York Times Blog entry calls attention to an "apparently digitally altered" picture of Iran's missile launch test. Comparing the picture above with the picture below, you can see that a fourth missile was added.



Their analysis of the image (below) suggests that it was digitally altered Photoshopped GIMPed (obviously, no self-respecting Iranian spin doctor would use software from the evil American-based Adobe Systems).



Of course there is not one shred of evidence that they used GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program), but hey, everyone's been making things up and I wouldn't want to be the only one concerned with actual facts so here is my contribution to this big fat web of lies: GIMP!

Dirty Wii Accessories

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

From the website: we search man and woman for a commercial.

Floppy Disks Missing From HK Hospital

From The Standard: "The public hospital in Tsuen Wan confirmed that a batch of 3.5-inch floppy disks was missing."

Floppy disks? Who still uses 3.5's? Hell, how many years has it been since computers actually came with floppy drives?

Official Beijing Olympics Cheer

"Beijing Olympic chiefs are introducing an official cheer for patriotic spectators to spur on Team China at the Games, Chinese media reports."

Video footage of the cheer being performed here.

Hmm, where do I start with this one?

Beijing Etiquette Institute? International principles of cheering? WTF?

Imagine thousands upon thousands of spectators at the Bird's Nest doing this perfectly synchronized...who knows, though? After completely mastering the cheer, they may reach the upper levels of OT and finally be rid of the tyranny of the evil intergalactic overlord Xenu... oh wait, I'm mixing up my cults!

Kool-aid anyone?

Yes, Sex Sells Everything, Even Religion

No, my Mormon encounter (or lack of it) has been discussed enough in other fora (EGO sum inflatus) so I will not repeat it here. If anything, it has led me to countless hours of googling as much useless information I can about our Latter Day brothers and sisters and the most interesting tidbits are these two:


The first is the Men on a Mission pinup calendar (yeah, you read that right--a Mormon pinup calendar). They sell funny T-shirts as well. This one is my personal favorite.


The other (and more serious one) is Julia Sweeney performing the first 15 minutes of her show Letting Go of God at the 2006 TED Talks. It's a very funny and reflective piece about religion, Santa Claus and of course, Mormons.



She drives home a point every rational religious can't help but consider-- that there is a difference between the two questions

• Do you feel that God loves you?


• Do you believe that God loves you?

And yes, Elder Paul, I am still waiting for your phone call ;)

GMA: The truth will make you go hungry. Really, it will!

The rice shortage in the Philippines may be strange but how it is being used by politicians for their own ends is hardly surprising.

Take GMA's latest rhetoric, for example.

Arroyo said, "No endless investigation will put rice on the table, computers in classrooms, or clinics in barangay [villages]."


Referring to continuing investigations of massive corruption in the government, GMA seems to be suggesting that in the face of the current rice crisis, we should abandon all efforts at solving our country's other deep rooted problems, such as corruption. This is a false dichotomy and ultimately self-defeating. The deeply-ingrained culture and system of corruption is in itself another crisis. Any attempts at putting rice on the table, computers in classrooms, or clinics in barangays... or any attempts at improving the economy will surely be undermined as long as there still exists massive corruption.

So it is important to continue the investigations and hold those responsible accountable. If GMA doesn't want them to be endless, then maybe she should do all she can to make sure that those involved facilitate and do not impede the search for truth and the carriage of justice.

food on the table, not politics on the frontpage...

Hmm, I wonder if this news made it to the front page?

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!