At the Graveyardish MCC

The old Makati Commercial Center used to be deserted, save for weekends when residents around the area went to the Makati Supermart and perhaps watched a movie at the Rizal Theatre. Sundays with the family was enjoyable because we had simple pleasures – sipping Orange Julius OJs and corn dogs after Mama was done with her groceries. If we were lucky, our Dad would even treat us to lunch at the adjacent Chinese restaurant.

The 1- and 2-story buildings soon gave way to the QUAD Mall, the Greenbelt Mall across the street, and one other mall which housed the first McDonald’s I’ve ever eaten in. Today, only a couple of original buildings exist.

Apple’s New MacBook “Air”

Mouth-watering – this is the adjective that first popped into my head the first time I saw Apple’s new MacBook Air – currently world’s thinnest, at three-quarters of an inch at its thickest point, in its category. Sure, it has its share of downsides, such as the need for an external disk drive, but no matter. I’ve never been a fan of leviathan notebooks, anyway. They look like flatbed scanners which you have to lug to a conference and open with nary an iota of elegance.

The MacBook Air has a silver-and-black body, weighing all of 3 pounds. The MagSafe power connection is at the left, while the retractable port hatch is at the right. What are these ports? 1. a USB 2.0 port; 2. a headphone jack; and a micro-DVI port that supports S-video, VGA, DVI, and composite output. In layman’s terms, that’s where you’ll connect your “projectors and stuff.”



Their sales pitch is that despite its impressive size (in the IT world, bigger is not always better), its features have not been compromised. The LED screen is still a respectable 13.3 inches, with a built-in camera and mic above it. It has a full-sized keyboard for Alf fingers, which is also backlit when the MacBook Air detects a decrease in ambient light – a feature that was long overdue. With it, you don’t have to pester your airplane seatmate or squint to see the keys inside a darkened conference room or lecture hall.

The trackpad, too, improves on what the MacBook Pro already has. It’s bigger and enables pinching (using thumb and forefinger in zooming in or out), swiping (swiping three fingers across the trackpad to navigate between pages), and rotating (rotating a photo, of course).

It boasts wireless use for a full 5 hours. By the way, their “wireless” feature keeps Apple on top of the game by enticing you to support its other products, such as its DVD rental service. But no matter. A notebook this size would have to bring hardsell with it one way or another.

Now, the question on everyone’s mind is: How much does the MacBook Air cost? It retails at $1,799. That’s EUR 1,224, Yen 192,477, SGD 2,579, or PHP73,760. I hope “me not desire it a long time.”

The Year of the Rat

Astrologists claim that Snakes will be lucky in business this year. It isn't officially the Year of the Rat yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Here's a video of the kids making do with what weren't prohibited last New Year's Eve.

Happy 2008!

Dad initiates Migs and asks him to light a Judas belt.

Special Kids at A.P. Santos School

Busy December

I hardly have time to put up my feet and relax these days. There are gazillions of social functions to attend and I haven't even dealt with half of my Christmas list...but it's only a mere 48 hours before Christmas! What's a harassed mom to do?

December 22, 2007. Shopping at the SN Tiangge. I took Sabrina and Seth to "SN" (San Nicolas) – our version of SM here, actually named the 365 Mall – for some more shopping. I was wearing a bacon-collared tee, because whaddaheck, it was comfy and I was only going to a tiangge, anyway. But horror of horrors! While we were eating at Shakey's that afternoon, I ran into one of my professors; Inaki's best friend's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Church; Sabrina's best friend's entire family; plus the Manager whom Raul personally knew. That'll teach me not to wear bacon-collared shirts in public from now on.



December 21, 2007. We left Laoag for Sarrat at about half-past 3 in the afternoon for the PAGCOR Employees' Annual Gift-Giving Activity. At around 9 PM, I took Inaki to the Capitol to watch a fireworks display and to check out the other entries in "Zoom In," a photo contest sponsored by Councilor Kristian R. Ablan. He took a photo of me and Inaki (here shown "showing off" his Kuya Jack's entry).




We then walked to Total Department Store, about five blocks away, to buy some last-minute presents.



December 18, 2007. It was PAGCOR's Christmas Party, preceded by the awards night and dinner for the 20-Year Loyalty Awardees. We decided to get a room at the Fort since the party for the kids would be starting at 9 PM. Tito, one of Raul's golf buddies, asked me to be his date at the dinner but we were late as usual, so all the seats at his table were taken.


I sat with Romy, another compadre, who didn't have his wife with him. The table was literally brimming with food – it was a P1,500 per plate dinner – with lots more to spare as several awardees didn't bring their partners along.

The menu: Clear Mushroom Soup, Cold Cuts With Seaweeds and Century Eggs, Spicy Pork, Lechon, Sauteed Mushrooms With Broccoli, Steamed Lapu-Lapu in Soy Sauce, Yang Chow Fried Rice, and about five other dishes I wasn't able to taste. I was stuffed!

The kids played a few games and everyone went home with prizes. Seth and Sabrina were already drowsy so I had to take them back to the hotel room while the boys and Raul stayed on until the wee hours of the morning.





The next day we had buffet breakfast at the Coffee Shop and the kids and I were in the pool till 12.

We checked out at 2 PM while Raul stayed on for a round of golf.




December 15, 2007. Gift-Giving by MMSU Students for preschoolers and special children of Shamrock and A.P. Santos Elementary Schools.

December 11, 2007. Inaki was a contestant in their English Fest Declamation Contest and Sabrina played the part of the "Sun" in a short skit entitled "The Wind and the Sun." Three days before, her teacher was SM'ing me about the costume and I kept ignoring them. I thought to myself, all I had to do was purchase about three yards of shiny gold material, cut a hole for the head, and have her wear it as a robe. How difficult could that be?

But I forget this is Laoag, where movies are shown two months late. The manangs at the shops didn't know what the heck "lame" was. I tried to idiotically describe to them an alternative material – "Yung sinusuot ng mga bading..." and all they gave me were blank stares. Well, at least there was one who pitied me enough to point me to a textile store. "Adeng, pumunta ka sa Scooty's."

I asked about a dozen people where I could find "Scooty's" and finally got to a nondescript hole-in-the-wall Binondo-style shop that's nowhere near complete but at least had the shiny gold material I was looking for. I looked up, and painted on the wall in capital letters was "Scoty's."

I bought Sabrina a small tiara (which she also wears while playing on our street, while eating dinner, etc.) and made a sash with the word "SUN" on which I painstakingly glued red glitter. To complete her ensemble, I also bought gold slippers for her and even cut out a sun from illustration board, again with the word "SUN" on it, just in case there would be cretins watching.

As soon as I stepped through the school gates, I bumped into a kid in gold face paint, wearing an elaborately fashioned sun costume, complete with 3-dimensional rays coming out of his head. Man, don't the other moms have work to keep busy with?

We (Raul, Inaki, Sabrina and I) had a quick lunch of kare-kare, stuffed crabs, and camaron rebosado at the La Preciosa Restaurant on Rizal Street. Raul had to leave the declamation contest-watching to me because he was on the 2nd shift. So off to the school we went again, but as soon as I turned the engine off, Inaki asks me, "Mom, where's my hardhat?" Arrghhh!!!

I had to go back home, but I didn't have the keys to the house. I asked Sabrina and Seth not to leave our bedroom and even turned on the air conditioner to make sure they wouldn't leave the room. It also ensured that they wouldn't hear me.

I phoned Seth from our landlady's phone, got the frigging hardhat, and drove back to school. Inaki was probably the fourth contestant, and by then my ears were already bleeding from hearing "Dirty Hands" by John P. Delaney over and over. When it was Inaki's turn, Raul suddenly rings me and asks me to coordinate their gift-giving activity. Perfect timing, as always. I almost missed Inaki's turn.

It was his first time to join a declamation contest (well, he actually joined one when he was 2 ½ years old, but that doesn't count) so he was understandably nervous. He stopped at one point and the audience started making this "humming" noise, but he was able to carry on and give a powerful ending. No prize this time around, but I assured him it was not bad at all for a beginner.

Masyadong Magaling

SONAs are always tense situations. If you're an oppositionist and you applaud, you're an instant balimbing. If you're pro-administration, you've got to flaunt it. If you're a hardcore brown nose such as Yoda Venecia, you gotta give a shout-out

"From where I sit, I can tell you, the President is always as strong as she wants to be." This is the line that's supposed to save the insipid SONA she gave? I don't even know what the heck it means! Come on. Your speechwriters can do better than that. It was so blah that there's nothing much to debate about after that 60-minute spiel...I miss the Bangkang Papel and the Celebrity Roll Call SONAs of years past.

I only remembered to turn on the TV when the SONA was nearing its end. Too bad. I'd have given an annotation on congresswomen's attires. All I saw was Kabuki Arenas' unmistakable mask walking by PGMA's right on recession.


"Jolens!"

Save for JDV's shout-out at the end, I didn't even have reason to glance at the television screen while working on my PC. I thought it was a wrap when the "smattering of applause" turned a notch higher, but I was jolted out of my stupor when JDV suddenly shouted into the mike, "Masyadong magaling!!!" D'oh!

World's Tallest Building - Until When?

I've lost track of what exactly is the world's tallest building. Every couple of years or so, one country seems to jump on the bandwagon of upending the titleholder. This year, it's held by that tiny-but-trailblazing UAE city of Dubai. On July 21 of this year, the Burj Dubai has reportedly surpassed Taipei 101's pinnacle, finishing its 141st floor at a height of 512.1 m (1,680 ft).

The hotel/office/residential tower comes off as a fusion of the East and the West. Designed by Arch. Adrian Smith of skyscraper expert Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (the brains behind Chicago's Sears Tower and NY's Freedom Tower), it utilizes the so-called triple-lobed footprint pattern in Islamic architecture. Its cross section at the upper half would reveal a Y-shaped floor, maximizing views of the Persian Gulf.



What's interesting is Burj Dubai's interiors would be designed by Giorgio Armani, and the structure would be housing a 37-floor Armani Hotel. Apart from the hotel, it would be home to some 700 private apartments and several floors of suites and offices.

The 123rd floor will feature a second main lobby and the floor next to that opens up to an observation deck. There will also be a zero-entry swimming pool (one with a shallow sloping entrance rather than those so 15-minutes ago pool steps) at the 78th floor.



To make do with the limited water resources (it's still right smack in the middle of a desert, whichever way you look at it), the Burj Dubai boasts a "Condensate Collection System" wherein the condensate from a combination of Dubai's hot and humid outside air plus the building's cooling requirements is collected to produce 15 million gallons of supplemental water a year. This would be used to water the plants of Burj Dubai's innovative interior landscaping.

The Bizarre Thing About World Records

One of my "bestest" gifts as a kid was the latest Guinness Book of World Records. I marvelled at how strange human beings could be. I realized the power of the printed word (because that's all a record really boils down to – seeing your name in print). I feared for the life of those who constantly challenged each other to do more, to go higher, to go faster.

I was relieved when Guinness ruled that "no further entries in this category will be accepted," referring to M. Lotito's eating-a-bicycle world record.

But further entrants to the World's Tallest Building category cannot be stopped. Already, there are at least three threats to Burj Dubai's unclaimed-as-yet title. These are the Al Burj Tower, set to be constructed a mere 50 kms away; the Murjan Tower in Bahrain; and the Mubarak al-Kabir Tower in Kuwait.

Is it just a mere coincidence that these future skyscrapers will all be erected within largely the same continent? Is the U.S. still licking its wounds after 9/11 and staying away from the infrastructure race in the meantime? Do you want me to go into Nostradamus' visions of world domination by the Arab Empire?

I'm sure you don't. For now, I'm happy sitting back and watching events unfold from the stands. Back when the Petronas Towers were the world's tallest, I planned on going to Malaysia. They were unceremoniously unseated by Taipei 101 (but I was never motivated to visit Taiwan, anyway).



Now I have to visit Dubai just to be able to gawk at Burj Dubai (they say you can see its spire 50 kms away), and perhaps have a glimpse of Burj al-Arab, the world's tallest hotel. Notice I said "glimpse." I don't have any plans now or in the near future to spend USD$1000 a night (minimum) to stay there. But I've heard some local politicians have gotten rooms here. Make sure you're paying from your own pockets, guys. As a taxpayer, I wouldn't wanna be slaving just so you could pop your champagne.