Sunday, June 5, 2011

HP Veer by Manny Pacquiao

Here is an advertisement video in Youtube.com of HP Veer, touted to be the smallest 4G smartphone by HP webOS, with eight-time World Boxing Champion Manny Paquiao as endorser. While a lot of people love the ad, there are others who posted negative comments, mainly aimed at the supposedly "ridiculous-sounding" English accent of the boxing champ. Sadly, some of such comments came from fellow Filipinos, who seem to have no other important things to do than be overly critical of even the most trite issues. Personally, it was a great ad; HP Veer could not have chosen a much better endorser.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Summer Station ID's - GMA 7 & ABS-CBN

Summertime in Manila means brand new Television Station IDs created for its loyal viewers (as well as advertisers) by the two premier Broadcasting Networks in the Philippines - GMA 7 and ABS CBN. What about ABC 5, clearly the 3rd largest and poised (?) to become the 2nd(according to its publishers)? Perhaps busy taking care of the improglio that the station has found itself in, what with the current hosting fiasco committed by their very own (butter-and-butter) Willie Revillame.

In the meantime, let's just focus first on ABS and GMA's IDs, check them out and see which of the two is better.




Halo-Halo Station ID of GMA 7




Bida Best sa Tag Araw ABS-CBN ID Station

Have you decided yet which of the two is better station ID?

It's Summertime Once Again

Summertime is officially open in the City of Manila and the whole archipelago in general. Unusually however, the cold air is still here to give one quite some chills (like me for instance) in the early morning, even in Manila City. Today, the average temperature is 31 degrees Celsius, which we can still as very comfortable by Philippine standards. And I believe it should already be hot by this time if I would base from my previous summer experiences in the country. Anyways, welcome to a hot and hopefully short summer season!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Eat Bulaga's Sugod Bahay in Blumentritt Manila

Tomorrow is gonna be LE....wait for it..(in the tradition of Barney's famous line in US sitcom "how I met your mother")GENDARY..and AWESOME even as Eat Bulaga, the Number 1 Noontime show in the Whole Wide World, oops, not that much, but at least in the whole of the Philippine archipelapo, especially in Metro Manila, will be broadcast live from streets of Blumentritt. That's right, to be done here in our very own place in Sta Cruz Manila will be a few segments of the show. I believe one of the segments is called "All for Juan - Sugod Bahay" and it is here where they give all sorts of goodies such as sacks of rice, grocery bags and even thousands of pesos to the lucky home owner. So who's gonna be the lucky one in our place tomorrow. I will definitely stay tuned. Anyway, here's a sample video of the popular Sugod Bahay segment of Eat Bulaga.



Monday, April 4, 2011

Unusually Cool Manila Morning

It must be true what the weather experts here in the Philippines said in their announcement that it is going to be a short and cooler summer this year. I just awoke to quite a cool morning that I decided to take my usual bath a little later and instead have some nice cup of coffee. I checked on the internet for the temperature in the city of Manila and it says 26 degrees at around 7 o’clock in the morning. This is definitely a welcome surprise!

Manila City and the rest of the country is hot and humid, even so sweaty, at the time when the summer season arrives. This is the time when most malls are full of people just to take advantage of their cool ambiance. More and more people troop to the Manila Bay for some supposedly cool dip in its dingy, polluted and hence unhealthy waters. The more conscientious ones go to other cleaner (read: less dirty) beaches and springs of Cavite, Batangas and Laguna provinces.

Hopefully the pleasant weather stays around much further up until June or July or up to October even. How I wish I am not pushing my luck too far.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Mornings of Coffee and Hot Pandesal, AM news and Defective Digicam

It certainly is a great way to start the morning than having a nice coffee, with hot pan de sal (Filipino bread: literally means bread of salt) and slices of cheddar cheese. I wake up at 5.30 in the morning, most of the time that is. Immediately I bring my HP laptop downstairs to start my online work which is the usual stuff like updating my blogs and writing my daily work (articles) assignments. Mornings are not complete without my usual dose of early news from GMA DZBB. With just the right volume, the radio newscast complements my doing my online tasks amidst a still quiet morning atmosphere. There would be times when the news can be not so nice to hear and so it does affect my concentration on the current task at hand. What I do is switch to hearing some pop music stored on my computer instead.

Once I decided on forgoing doing my online work one morning and just go out to take some pictures which I can use and post at My City of Manila blog. After some quick coffee, I went out at 5:30 AM and took the jeep going to Taft. For my destination I decided to check on Lawton so I can take some pictures of the gargantuan Post office Building. Actually there are so many structures and landmarks that I can take shots of such as the Metropolitan Theater, the Pasig River, Jones Bridge, and the Quiapo Bridge.

Once I got off at Lawton, I immediately took out my Olympus SP-310, insert two fresh AA batteries which I just bought from a neighbor sari-sari store. Immediately, I took one, two shots of the Post office façade. When I clicked on the digital cam for a third shot, a message flashed instead, saying “Empty Battery” Was I dumbfounded with disbelief! The batteries are new, or were they really? Perhaps they were old stock. I tried taking them out of the camera and reinserted them back. Still, empty battery the message says. Oh how I wished I brought the other camera, my Sony Handycam, but I decided against bringing it along as I find the photos I get from using it to be quite not very clear.

I have no other recourse but to get back home; an exercise in futility that particular morning I thought. Getting back I checked on the internet for any other similar “empty battery” problems with Olympus that might have been posted online. A whole lot. Sadly, no concrete solution was in sight. Some suggests using Lithium battery instead as these are more reliable. Others suggest interchanging and reinserting of the batteries. Still, many others suggest bringing the problem to Olympus. Most did have nothing good to say about the company. Hopefully, I would find a better solution, making my digital cam a lot more useful. Perhaps I would just go to any camera shop along the Hidalgo Street at Quiapo Manila. Wait, are they still there? I remember going there years ago just to have my films developed. Perhaps they might have the right batteries for my digital camera, which simply is an indispensible tool that one certainly needs when he maintains a personal blog.

Manila's Secomoro - Herbal Demonstrator

These were taken at the Plaza Goiti, now known as Plaza Lacson in Sta Cruz Manila City, right in front of Roman Santos Building. Our main man (the albularyo), the one in charge and giving some supposedly medicinal massaging, offers pedestrians some health medicine in the form of oil. I am just not sure if the oil is made from herbs or parts of snakes.


Dried Snake Skin, bones, head; number of bottles containing whitish oil - usual medicinal implements of the typical Philippine herbalist

Albeit I saw his assistants likewise giving massages to people. It was almost nightfall yet he still has a lot of bottles to dispose. The placard placed in the midst of his wares and snake parts, like scales and bones, read reflexology and Secomoro; it even has his specific job title written on it – herbal demonstrator.


People crowding around the “Secomoro” herbal demonstrator asking for more details on the oil

Our herbalist tries to make people realize the efficacy of his oil by rubbing them some of the oil on a person’s affected (painful or diseased) part of the body and massaging it. You can have some oil at 100 pesos, probably the smallest bottle.


Oil rubbed on leg of a patron seeking some relief

Indeed, even in a supposed modern City of Manila, a good number of people would still go to cheaper means of getting body relief and even cure from any disease if given the chance.