Month: November 2012

Thanksgiving Weekend and Fried Food

The long thanksgiving weekend in the US gave me another time to spend with Marcus. With my wife out of town to have her scheduled check-up–-also a disguised parenting day off–and with Marcus still needing to attend school, it was just me and him from Thursday until the weekends. During this whole time I assumed the entire alpha role at home including cooking – rice and anything fried.

If I am not mistaken this must be the longest time I ate the most fried food in just a matter of few days, not by choice but by the lack of it. And so today, Sunday, after just taking for breakfast the leftover we had last night–-fried meatloaf AND fried rice, I am looking forward to Batangas where I imagine myself having something green and leafy.

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Our recent father-and-son time made me discover something. Firstly, I can live unplugged. To focus on Marcus’ exam review as well as to spend more time playing with him after, I denied myself access to Wi-Fi and bedroom TV. Other than having more quality time (some usual quibbling in between), I have also proven that without these electronics inside our room, our son is able to be in bed earlier than before. This time he didn’t breach the 12 midnight period.  But if I can continue this, is now a big question.

Secondly, I realized that with the absence of wifey at home, Marcus and I would be 24X7 fast food customers. At first the thought of meatloaf and hotdogs seem exciting but just after two meals I began to accept that I am way past that enjoyment kids (and to mention that my birthday is approaching and I’ll be a lot older by then) get when they hear that sizzling sound the frying pan makes. In fact, if by some stroke of luck, wifey will be away for another day, I’ll likely grab one of those recipe books in the shelf and force myself to cook one that doesn’t have oil.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Gulay please!)

Marcus Shares His Old Stuffed Toys

Finally, after much deliberation, our son’s stuffed toys will soon have their new home. It has been about half a year already when we decided, with our son’s approval, that most of the stuffed toys that used to be on our bed will be kept. But hating that these cuddly toys will just remain inside a plastic bag for good, we have been thinking of potential recipients and this week we zeroed out on one – a child institution where my employer will be having its outreach program. So with some anxiety, very normal to someone letting go of prized possessions, the three of us dusted off, tagged each toy with a personalized gift card, and packed the toys ready to be hugged by some of the kids in Sto. Domingo.

Wifey and Marcus teaming up to tag the stuffed toys.

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Stuffed toys from Marcus to Sto. Domingo.

Please don’t feel bad if you can identify one of the stuffed toys. Be proud that a toy from you that once made Marcus smile, and feel so appreciated, will have another chance to cheer someone up and that it is also a toy that has taught our son the value of sharing this Christmas time.

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FYI. One of the Spongebob stays.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Exam day for Marcus. Another review coming when he wakes up. Will make it a love-one-another-warmly session this time. Will try.)

Oatmeal Breakfast

Oatmeal breakfast: both a confession and a penance.

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Have had sinful diet in the recent days, from wifey’s baking (like her Christmas cookies and one that’s ongoing which involves cream cheese) and the dine outs at work (with female colleagues who seem to have a different idea when they say that they’re on a diet). And with the holidays fast approaching, the trend is likely to continue thus the challenge in appeasing the palate while keeping my waistline in check could be a tough one.  Thankfully, there’s always the reliable oatmeal to the rescue though honestly, I really think that it is one boring meal just like any vegetable.

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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Wifey’s been making me help manually mix her batters. It’s tough. She needs a mixer.)

Wreck-It Ralph: Villains and Heroes

Image from Wikipedia

There are people that we tend to ignore their importance in our lives as time passes. Day in day out, as we continue to become more focused on our own self, they become a nobody, just someone annoying, just someone that badly needs to be controlled; and if things turn real bad or not as we want them to be, we freak out, we put the blame on them. They become the villain, us, the hero of our story. And this is what the movie Wreck-It Ralph is about. Disney’s latest animated movie which has a video game villain as its hero imparts another lesson-filled story to its viewers.

Wreck-it Ralph is the antagonist of who lives in one of the arcade’s video games and who, after years of playing the bad guy, got tired of being the outcast and eventually leaves his Atari-resolution-like Fix-It Felix Jr. game world to look for his own hero medal. He shortly finds his coveted medal in another video game by pretending to be one of the bug fighters in Hero’s Duty, an action-packed first-person futuristic shooting game.

Ecstatic of his first ever hero medal, he clumsily breaks a bug egg, steps into a space capsule and ends up in another video game, Sugar Rush, where he meets the witty girl named Vanellope von Schweetz who steals his newly acquired shiny medal and uses it to join the race she has been longing to participate. Ralph soon learns, however, that like him, Vanellope is also an exile of the confectionery world where she resides. And so seeing that they have something in common, they strike an agreement to beat the odds.  But it was short-lived.

After breaching a deal that is supposed to make him get his prized possession back and her winning the game’s race, Ralph later finds out that Sugar Rush’s King Candy is actually Turbo, a character of the video game Turbo-time that was  permanently unplugged long time ago.  Angered by the loss of his own game, Turbo sets revenge by infecting other games but finally settles in Sugar Rush and decides to change Vanellope from being Sugar Rush’s key player to just someone considered as a glitch. Turbo also made other racers believe that she is a threat that will lead to the demise of the whole game thus the utter hatred aimed at her. Stunned by this discovery, Ralph breaks Felix Jr. free from King Candy’s lair, where he has been jailed after stepping on a trap while on his quest to bring Ralph back, and had him fix the young girl’s car and gets her back ready for the race.

But while the cars made of anything sugar battle for first place, the sole bug that Ralph accidentally brought with him inside the space capsule has hatched more eggs underground. Mayhem soon ensues as in the middle of the race, the bugs spring out of their breeding place and terrorizes all the sweeties. The odd tandem of the short and bubbly Fix-It Felix Jr. and slender, feisty and armor-clad Sergeant Calhoun soon arrives to the rescue, albeit still outnumbered. In the midst of the melee, Ralph suddenly recalls how the bugs got defeated in Hero’s Duty and then devises a way to reproduce the ray of bright light that attracts and eventually kills all the flying adversaries.

In the end, Felix Jr. marries Calhoun, Vanellope gets her main spot in Sugar Rush and Ralph goes back to his Fix-It Felix Jr. environment, still the bad guy but with realization that his role and others is what makes the video game a video game – with a hero and a villain. Perhaps this is a fact of life. Perhaps it is also what parenting should be like. No one can claim to be a good parent without a challenging kid, and not one kid will be known as a good child without a strict parent – just like us right now, bad guy and good guy, Wreck-It Rafael and Fix-It Cris, not in particular order.

 ***

Mood: 1/10 Honks! (It’s Marcus’ 4th year.)

Tagawog

Coming from Nuvali and driving with poor headlight, we arrived home with me almost dead tired but with Marcus still full of energy — must be the donuts and Skittles he had. Riled up from his usual begging for attention I said something firm in straight Tagalog and his reply made me and wifey suppress a smile.

Me: …O, ayan Marcus ha, baka hindi mo pa maintindihan yan. Tagalog na yan!

Marcus: Tagawog? Daddy, what [is] that?

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Anxious. We are going to Marcus’ 1st home.)

I bought a Porsche

A friend on facebook bought a Ford Escape. I haven’t told them that I bought a Porsche and haven’t used it until now. (Petron’s promo is heaven sent.)

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Shell this time is facing stiff competition as Petron has its own promo that will attract little boys in the backseat and will confuse dads like me on whether to fill up from the one gas station or the other.

Shell has been giving away Ferrari merchandise for years and this year has Ferrari  Lego items that will be available only until November 30. Anyone with a P1500 receipt (one-time purchase or accumulated) can claim one of its six (6) Ferrari Lego collectibles or one of three (3) figures. Price range is P140-180 depending on the fuel (or oil product) variant that was availed. I already got the F1 model and has been in the hands of Marcus.

On the other hand, Petron has a cheaper deal. For just P1000 (also one-time purchase or accumulated), anyone can already get scale models of Porsche cars for only P180 each. What makes it more attractive is that their promo runs until January 31, 2013. I won’t be surprised therefore if Shell will either extend theirs or will sooner sell the Ferrari Legos at a marked down price just like what it did with their other Ferrari merchandise years ago.

I already got the Porsche Cayman but has kept it away from my son as I made a deal with him that he should improve on his writing subject or forget about getting another Ferrari or Porsche. (Shhh. It’s 1045 AM and he just woke up. Got to play.)

(Book Review) Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do

Image taken from Google Books

We have all heard it and will likely continue to hear about it: “We Filipinos are bad drivers…no, we are the worst.” “If you have driven in the Philippines, you can drive anywhere in the world.” These and similar other statements about driving in the Philippines have made us stereotype ourselves and in effect made most of us think that the rest of the world drive in an orderly fashion than we do. But wait, this could not be entirely true at all.

If the author Tom Vanderbilt is to be believed, there a lot others out there who are worse than us and our perennial bad traffic flow – and yes, believe it or not, perceived by many as where traffic laws are fully enforced, the US is included. According to his book Traffic, Why We Drive the Way We Do, bad drivers can be found allover the globe and continue to contribute to road congestion, road rage, and accidents, not to mention stress, just to name a few ill effects of the growing volume of cars and other vehicles that are present at one time in one place.

I got my copy of Tom’s book only after two years since the day I learned about its release and it was only because it was on sale in National Bookstore by half its original price. But sooner I realized that the P300 plus I paid for it is a real steal because the 400-page paperback has a lot more to offer than expected. As I progress from one page to another, it stomps out that know-it-all and I-drive-a-lot-better-than-you premise I have had and which I am sure that other drivers possess as well.

Aside from rich facts about relationship (or lack thereof) of man, machine, and the road, almost each chapter of the book contains information never been made known to common drivers. For example, are you aware that car designers, other than complex mathematical algorithms, also have to deal with factors such human psychology and pop culture to cope up with the growing demand for mobility, thus the need for cars, and its effect to traffic?

“Traffic has become a way of life. The expanding cup holder, which became fully realized standard equipment only in the 1980s, is now the vital enabler of dashboard dining…Fast-food restaurants now clock as much as 70 percent of their sales at drive-through windows…” (page 16)

How would you feel if someone presents to you the idea that road signs invite people to violate it more and that by removing these will improve drivers’ behavior?

“Do traffic signs work, and are they really needed at all? This question has been raised by Hans Monderman…How foolish are we in always telling people how to behave. When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like that.” (page 190)

And did you know that our balikbayan relatives could be actually lying every time they smirk in the backseat and follow it up with that famous cliché “walang ganito sa states….”? Why? Because Tom Vanderbilt also exposes the US as having its own share of jaywalkers (Why New Yorkers Jaywalk (and Why they Don’t in Copenhagen: Traffic as Culture); traffic light-beating drivers; and motorcycle riders who shun helmet laws.

Released in 2008, Traffic, Why We Drive the Way We Do, contains vast insights, supported by references and citations, about traffic and therefore makes it a must read book for all of us who continue to wonder what causes bad traffic and if there are indeed solutions to it or if there is none, at least change our own perspective of how we and others drive so that we co-exist better than we do today.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (We’ll be in Nuvali later. Driving with or without the low beam.)

Lotus’ Victory and Lego F1

The recently concluded F1 race in Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi was one for the books. Supposedly the third man on the grid after qualifying session, the young German driver, Sebastian Vettel, got disqualified and relegated to starting the race from the pits after allegedly failing to finish his run without the required amount of fuel for post-qualifying sample test. Despite this embarrassing snafu, whether by him or his team’s judgment, he charged his way from the back of the pack to reclaiming the 3rd spot in the podium. Just ahead by one spot, Fernando Alonso of Ferrari was able to stay consistent as before by driving strategically with the goal of closing the points gap with the German who is also the top contender for the driver’s championship.

Meanwhile, the winner of the race goes to the man who talks slow but drives fast – Kimi Raikkonen. The Finnish who drives for Lotus made history by bringing back pride to the team that has last seen first place victory way back in the late ‘80s. And not surprisingly, the sight of this heartthrob, who by the way returned to F1 just this year after a stint in the world of Rally racing, on topmost spot of the podium has made women screaming his name, and one of which I heard just a sofa apart from where I was seated. Yes, wifey was among his happy fans.

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Another fan who in spite of his young age and probably shallow understanding of what this F1 sport is all about also had a blast last Sunday. Our 4-year old son finally had the chance to get his hands busy in assembling his first F1 Ferrari Lego that we got from Shell.  Marcus who has been engrossed since a couple of years ago to building blocks (especially Lego) has been kept occupied by his Duplo set but lately keeps on asking for the much smaller Lego bricks. And so thanks to the timely Shell promo (that will end on my birthday), at least he gets to have his starter kits.

His first F1 Ferrari Lego. Still complete. Sticker intact. For now.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Back to school for Marcus after a 5-day off. Just back to reality for me and wifey.)