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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.)

I Survived My First 5K Run

I was among the NatGeo Earth Day runners who flocked to The Fort, Taguig during the wee hours of Sunday morning. Light-headed, due to lack of sleep, and filled with anxiety, I was overwhelmed by the view of thousands of people mostly wearing either gray or yellow Earth Day Run shirts. Each color signifies registered race distance: gray is for 10K and up, yellow is for 3K and 5K.

Excited and determined to join my first ever official 5K event, I found myself in the middle of yellow runners getting ready and warming up along with the stretching exercises led by the race host—one of them is weatherman/celebrity Kim Atienza. And in the same manner as the 21K and 10K races were started, the 5K countdown came.

As soon as the big bright red digital timer hits 0:00:00, a chorus of “go” from the eager crowd and with the accompanying fireworks display (with the sun already peeking out of the horizon), runners begin crossing the start line on the 7th avenue. The cadence each pair of running shoes make, and the huffs and puffs of runners around me were infectious—somehow intimidating but most times encouraging. Every sight of the distance markers (1-km increment) and water stations also made me to keep on running.

Less than 40 minutes later, the finish line becomes visible after the last turn on the 9th avenue. (I realized that it must be every runner’s happiest moment to see the capital letters F, I, N, I, S, H up ahead while trying to summon whatever strength is left.) Handing over the race bar code capped the race for me. Thank you lord for good health, treadmill and a sneaky and supportive wife—everything made me survive my first official 5K run.

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Based on the figures from natgeorun.com, there were a total of 8,337 finishers in all four (4) races. 2782 finished the 5K race and I was the 1039th placer with an official time of 41 minutes. Not bad.

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Trivia: April 10, 1996, or exactly 15 years ago, I was rigging TCP equipment with wifey.

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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (I’ll definitely participate in more 5Ks.)

Will Burn Calories and Gas

About 10 hours from now will be a day about burning calories and gas. Weeks on the treadmill and just a day on the road (to pace myself) will prove its worth during tomorrow’s NatGeo Earth Day run. It will be my first official 5K and I am already excited to see how it will end up. Of course, I’d like to see myself finish in less than an hour—as my wife indicated on the online form when she secretly registered me for this race.

Immediately after I burn calories in The Fort, Taguig, I will be on my way back south to join my wife, kiddo and my in-laws for our annual summer outing which was scheduled just last week during their town fiesta celebration. It was supposed to happen next month but for several reasons they decided to have it tomorrow instead. And this is the reason I have to get back home in Cavite alone from a week of vacation in Batangas so that I can get my NatGeo race kit, be with hundreds of runners tomorrow, and then drive around 100 kilometers back to meet everyone at the resort. Burn baby, burn. Wish me luck.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (I cannot recall the last time I was home alone. Silence.)

Surprise! You’re Running

The explanation why my wife has been interviewing me while I kill my Sunday time in front of the TV has come. She asked me a couple of seemingly unrelated questions: “what is your favorite program?” and “how soon are you going to finish a 5K run?” The query happened as I watch a NatGeo special about the Nazis. And last night, like a perfectly organized Schutzstaffel plan, she told me to check my email in the morning.

True enough, in the middle of the Jobstreet, JobsDB, oDesks notifications and spams on my inbox is an unfamiliar subject: National Geographic Channel Earth Day Run – Completed Registration. Details of the email confirmed my suspicion – I’m running on April 10, 2011.

I checked today’s date and it’s just the 7th of March. I still have a month to prepare to make it to the finish line. Yes, I have to or else the P700 pesos that was charged to wifey’s credit card would be put to waste and she won’t like it. Come April 10, I should be able to cross the line in less than an hour or wifey might execute another SS-like plan.

But I think I have a good chance. During my recent treadmill sessions, I have clocked 30 minutes while on a sweat suit. Distance travelled indicates around 2.2 km and based on the last fun run I made, the treadmill has an approximate error of 50% which means I can actually do twice the distance at the same time–especially if I lose weight.

Wish me luck.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Already a week without an oDesk job.)

Run Barefoot, Anyone?

I’m taking a break from a whole day of typing in my desperate (yet educational) dash to finish a research paper which is due for presentation this Thursday. So while checking my Twitter for updates, I stumbled upon this @TIME ‘s post: “Is running barefoot better for you?”

Out of curiosity if I’ll see the same post that was about how the Africans can run effectively and fast without any footwear, the one I saw was different but just as interesting. It is barefoot alright, but technically it’s not.

I don’t know when this Five-Finger will become a trend and make the current Nike shoes obsolete and cheap (to my delight), but right now I have mixed feelings about it. One part of me is excited to see it upfront while another part of me doubts that this is just another marketing ploy. It is just one of those things like when they’d like to sell green tea, they say that coffee is bad; when they’d like to sell a new coffee bean brand, they’d say that drinking coffee is good for one’s health. Well, make up your mind folks.

Anyway, my rant is a hopeless rant. It has worked time and again, despite having a poor product, businesses usually become better than ever. And so I know that this Vibram FiveFingers shoe will also pick up soon. It’s just all about good marketing and identifying gullible consumers who will get hooked to it like persistent leeches.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks! (Last stretch of my research paper and I’ll be running the treadmill soon…using my Nike shoes. Not barefoot. Yet)

Monthly Savings Achieved

Tonight I finished listing and computing our monthly expenses since it is already the last week of February. I’m not expecting further expenses as we have already bought our groceries and baby stuffs which usually share the largest slice of our expenses pie.

I have made a conscious effort to save since the early part of last year. The initial news about our company on April 2, 2008 and the other bad news—including the admission of the then US president Bush about the recession taking place—made it more compelling to be thrifty enough. It’s also a good thing that the number of training our company has arranged contributed to my knowledge on how to be in control of our finances. Although it may still not be half-perfect at this time, at least our drive and urge to save is already there. We just have to start somewhere, somehow.

While there are five more days to go before this month ends, I already feel accomplished in terms of our budgeting. After I transferred our expenses to the financial worksheet, I compared our current expenses with last month’s. I then marked red those that have increased and those that decreased in green. So far the greens significantly dominate the reds.

What went well then?

Dilute, dilute, dilute. I apply this tip to all our cleaning agents for years already. The cleansers we use at home like the toilet liquid solutions and car shampoos are basically concentrated enough to be used in its pure form. Even the manufacturer’s recommended ratio is still strong for the intended tasks that it is a no-brainer that a saving can be achieved if diluted it with more water.

Be brand-conscious. When I heard Mr. Bengco (Colayco foundation) talk about it during his recent seminar at our company, I couldn’t agree more since I’ve been doing it already. What I’m not aware though is by how much is actually saved when you know what you are buying. His example: the bath soap. In his presentation he showed one brand that cost a mere Php9 (USD0.2). The next foils showed several other brands that cost twice and even more than the price just because it promises extra germ killing action, catchy fragrance, and everything there is TV ads will do just to entice consumers like us. Right now, I try to settle for the ones in the mid-price range.

Buy two brands. This may sound confusing especially just after the previous tip but believe me this is what I’m doing. For almost a year already, I had two different deodorants (Disclaimer: not for the squeamish). I used one that has “superior” action every time I go to work or leave home. Then I use one with the “least superior” action if I know that I’ll be static at home and will be spending time as a couch potato and will just be home alone with the baby – at least he doesn’t know how to complain yet if the deodorant protection fails. Ewww, daddy!

Drive like your grandma. I mentioned this on my Being a Gas Miser post and I cannot stress it more than enough that driving habit does directly affect fuel consumption. This is where I often fail but I keep on reminding myself to get back on track. Until now, I’m still at least within the 13-15 kilometer per liter expected range of our car. Now I’m wondering if I’ll be able to save gas if I stop blaring (if this doesn’t save gas, just at least my sanity) my horns every time I meet a jeepney with only one headlight on.  I’ve heard that the reason why jeepney drivers do it is because one headlight saves gas than having two. Hmmm, sounds like an idea…Nah!

A Honda is a Honda. Well, at least that’s what I’m always telling myself whenever I’m on my Honda 100 cc motorcycle instead of our Honda City. That’s because when it comes to saving gas the motorcycle wins, hands down. No contest. But when it comes to saving lives…errr, wrong discus- sion. Hahaha. Seriously speaking, I recommend this tip for those ready and responsible enough to drive a motorcycle. And if you’re not yet in that mind set, it’s still worth taking a ride in that one-eyed jeepney – I bet, your wife will be even happy about it.

Go slow with the fast foods. So far, this is the biggest savings we had for this month. It was cut by more than 50 percent and it’s a welcome development. One thing that helped us do it is by avoiding the malls. There’s something about the scent of the malls that attracts each individual (or even group) to go and line up in front of the fast food counters. It may be due to poor air circulation or a deliberate ploy to set the minds of the mall goers to go hungry and crave for pizza, burger or doughnuts (and coffee) in an instant. But if you can’t avoid it, and just like what I’m doing, try going there with a full stomach—eat at home. It works for me, in fact I now eat Whoppers and half cup of sundae and large Coke. Ti abi.

Last but not the least, the No rot rule. This is still in the works after I told my wife that we should avoid foods inside the refrigerator from spoiling. Believe it or not, I used to admire people whose ref is so full of foods that most of the times, some of it will rot and end up as trash. Back then, I see it as abundance. Now, it’s nothing but waste – both food and money. So far, I’ve been successful but that’s after I’ve monitored and eaten the leftovers and had my weight build up as a consequence. Ti abi. I think it’s just about time to apply then the “No rot, No fat rule”. That I guess is win-win.

During these times when everyone gets so tired of hearing about the recession (and the rest of the similar tags that’s associated with it), the need to save and finding ways to learn more how to do it is already a must. This is also when sharing what we know, no matter how trivial, and learning from what others already knew would help each one of us survive the turbulent ride that the rest of the world experiences.

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Mood: 4/10 Honks!

The Christmas Leftovers and I

”People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.” – unknown.

It’s been three days already since I’ve been eating the chocolate roll that we had for Noche Buena. My diet since then has been on leftovers and thankfully, it looks like this day will be the last unless our refrigerator reveals another Tupperware with foods waiting to be consumed.

Leftovers, however, need not be boring. Thankfully wifey is good at cooking that leftovers get some twist during every other meal. Like yesterday, the embutido met up with the excess spaghetti sauce, and presto, instant spicy recipe that went well with rice for lunch. The dessert is the seemingly immaculate chocolate cake but paired with a couple peach-sago salad transformed into something better.

I’m not sure yet, if what’s happening right now inside my body as the last time I had an intense activity was when I joined a badminton dual-meet two weeks ago. After that whole day of flexing, jumping and smashing, I was on calorie collection as if some polar bear stacking body fats for hibernation. Now, I’m trying to avoid stepping on the weighing scale. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, right?

I don’t know if I could fit some real cardiovascular activities among some other plans I have during this vacation period. The nearest I can get some sweat out are cleaning up, detailing the car (which I already did from 7-12 noon yesterday), and fixing stuffs inside the house.

Fitness gurus say that what matters most with each person’s well-being is looking good and feeling good about his own self. Well, I think I’d prefer for now that ‘feeling good’ part. Let’s worry about the looking good aspect next year while I compete with those running the treadmill in the gym.

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Mood: 3/10 Honks!

 

Freewares Online

My mother’s 2-year old PC remains almost in its pristine condition. Until now, the only files that got updated or added are pictures. And normally, it is always us who did the downloading every time we pay them a visit especially during December. The whole year round she uses it only to get connected to us through emails.

Having used it again for this week’s short vacation, I had mixed feelings when I discovered about its almost untouched state. I feel happy that at least she haven’t installed any bootleg software but at the same time I feel a bit frustrated as it still obviously lacks MS Office, photo editors, file compression and other tools that I need to post blog and also share pictures to my distant sister who always craves to see what’s happening back here. So instead of wishing I have another $100 to shed for a genuine MS Office installer, I checked the web for what might be legally free so I can proceed with my business of blogging, editing, and uploading of pics.

Fortunately, my web search became fruitful enough and with the help of my mother’s PLDT Vibe connection I diligently spent some time checking these freebies:

*OpenOffice. This is an underdog with a surprising package compared to Microsoft’s Office. I’ve heard about this before from a friend who is an OSS (Linux) fan. But since I have a genuine MS Office software back then, I ignored the existence of a free OpenOffice. Now, after downloading the 150MB plus file, I became a fan. I never knew that this free software will match that of its Microsoft counterpart. In fact, I’m now using its Writer for this blog post and I find the interface and features not so far apart from MS Word. It has all the basics such as spell checker, formatting buttons and what surprised me most is that it also has an autorecovery feature–no need to worry when the PC shutdowns after the baby has pressed on some buttons in.

*GIMP 2. It’s short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. I downloaded this free photo editor with the intention of just resizing the large image files for an easy Flickr.com upload. It came as a surprise when I saw that this one is almost the same with my Canon photo editor. One cool feature I find is its ability to scale an image just by selecting the scale button and then dragging the corners of the picture. During the process, a window shows the aspect ratio of the file so that one can stop at the desired size. The downside of this software though is that it’s a bit slow and cannot accommodate multiple files in an instant. File size: 15MB.

*VSO Image resizer. Now this one means business when the job is just about resizing. VSO resizes multiple files in a jiffy. Period. This one is highly recommended. File size: 6MB.

With these files I now feel that I’m getting hooked to legit online freewares. I’m now looking for a free screen grabber but so far the one that I’ve downloaded (sreengrabberinstall.zip) seems to be a disappointment as its installation requires another file. Anyway, the three files that I have mentioned may be enough for now. Somehow, this just proves the cliché  the best things in life are free.

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I said to mark the word diligently when using PLDT Vibe’s connection. Why? That’s because it did not perform to my expectation. My mother has a P999 plan and it’s supposed to have at least 500kbps (or even more) connection speed but upon using speedtest.net’s tester it only yields 196kbps download speed. My Digitel connection at home can even match that at some point and my subscription plan is just for 128kbps. I have doubts now if I’ll change DSL provider next year. Ti abi.

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Mood: 3/10Honks!

Home Again

“Great things come in small packages” – anonymous

This afternoon I woke up from a long nap and being half awake half asleep, I strolled around the yard. Coming from a distance, I heard a familiar music playing that reminds me where I’m currently at.

The music was Life Dance followed by another which I’m quite sure I heard decades ago when both are still the in thing among the youngsters. I hate to admit it but I was one of the fans of these songs. My guilty pleasures, then and now. After catching myself pausing briefly to listen to the music which I know for a fact and based on experience, are all coming from a baylehan (dance/fiesta area) as we call it, I began to remember that prior to my mandatory siesta, we actually just had our son’s baptismal.

This event, thankfully, happened after one postponement due to a problem we encountered when we initially scheduled it in my wife’s place back in Batangas. This time, it was finally realized and despite bits of snags, upsets and confusions before and during the ceremony. Thirty minutes after the baptismal rites and photo ops, we ended at Imay’s restaurant where a simple yet fulfilling celebration with our closest family and neighbors took place.

I’m now still groggy and trying my best not to blame it either to the brandy I had nor the jet lag since we arrived yesterday lunch time. But deep inside I feel happy as after all the excitement from welcoming Marcus to the Christian world, I suddenly remember that also today is our father’s 75th and likewise my 35th birthday. Right now, I can’t think of a better way to be home again in Bacolod.

Baby window

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Mood: 1/10 Honks!