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Sarcasm Aside

random thoughts of a self-diagnosed neurotic with the attention span of a five-year old... a blog by Alternati

A Fork in the Road

Tuesday, January 30, 2007



It is frEEEEzing here in Baguio the past two days. Anyways...

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Which of these have you watched?

Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song
Bart: I thought I'd be jumping for joy the day Skinner got fired. Now all I have is this weird hot feeling in the back of my head.
Lisa: That's guilt. You feel guilty because your stunt wound up costing a man his job.
Bart: I guess it is guilt.
(Useless Trivia: In the opening sequence of this episode, Bart writes: "I will not celebrate meaningless milestones")


The One with the Triplets
Chandler: So, uh, now that little Chandler turned out to be a girl, what are they gonna name her?
Phoebe: They're gonna call her Chandler.
Chandler: That's kind of a masculine name, don't you think?
Phoebe: Works on you.
(Useless Trivia: The other two babies' names are Leslie and Frank Jr, Jr (not a typo. :P )


3 Sing
Fantasia: Chain of Fools, Fool In Love, The Greatest Love of All
Diana: Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Because You Love Me, Don't Cry Out Loud
Jasmine: Saving All My Love For You, Mr. Melody, All By Myself
(Need I remind all y'all who got booted the following episode? (who should've been axed earlier?))

What the...? Part I
Survivor: Pearl Islands. Return of the outcasts. The best twist the show offered.
(Useless Trivia: Sandra Diaz-Twine won this season)


It's Not Over Until Phil Sings

The Amazing Racers break bottles over each others heads at the sound of a cuckoo clock in Munich. All this to get the next clue. BJ and Tyler eventually won this season.
(Useless Trivia: The detour was called "Break it or Slap it")


Ch-Ch-Changes
Grissom: I thought you'd want to know what happened to Wendy.
Mimosa: I appreciate you telling me. Killed by someone in our community. As is we don't have enough enemies. Her parents never understood her, but still I think they should know. What do I say?
Grissom: Show them an oyster.
Mimosa: I'm sorry?
Grissom: There are two types of male oysters, and one of them can change genders at will. And before man crawled out of the muck, maybe he had the same option. Maybe originally we were supposed to be able to switch genders, and being born with just one sex... is a mutation
(Useless Trivia: Kate Walsh, Dr. Addison of Grey's Anatomy, plays Mimosa)


Centennial Charmed
Phoebe: Cole?
Paige: I'm telling you, he's gone for good.
Phoebe: Yeah, that's what we thought last time.
Piper: And the time before that.
Paige: This time is different. He straddled two worlds just like I did, but he wasn't invincible there. Cole's not coming back ever.
Piper: It just feels far too easy. I don't know how I feel about that.
Paige: I think you should feel good about it, you know? We don't have to look over our shoulder's anymore. It's over.
Phoebe: (picking up a photo of her and Cole) I guess it just wasn't meant to be.
Piper: Let's go.
Paige: Happy Birthday, Cole.


The Gift
Buffy Ann Summers
1981-2001
Devoted Sister
Beloved Friend
She Saved The World...
A Lot


There's Only One Sydney Bristow
Will gets abducted. Sydner ends her maternal leave prematurely to join her posse to do some old school espionage. T minus five (episodes) until series finale.


One Hundred Tears
Ally Mcbeal: I feel like I've known you forever.
Havrvey Hall: Ally, I'm not dying. I mean, I might be. But not today
(Ally talking to a man she was defending who believed he can fly)


SCORES:
0 - Have you seen a TV?
1 - 4 - Not Bad... not bad at all
5 - 8 - Close, but no cigar.
9 - 10 - Welcome to the couch potato club, I am your sponsor.

(Ok, ok... I am being biased with the 90's to 2000 TV watching generations)

And what, you say, is the point of this post? The 100th episode usually entails a shift in the direction of a TV show, some for the worse... some for the better. These are the 100th episodes of some of my the shows I watch/ed like a friggin stalker. (the list is a lot longer but there's only so much TV I can blog about) Some of the other shows I really like ended just before they reached the milestone (Sex and the City, Ed) and some are yet to reach this fork in the road.

I just did.

Ok, ok... juxtaposing a free blog with a multi-million dollar TV series is a tad ambitious... But I am (most times)

If you haven't caught my drift yet... this is my 100th post.

Woo Hoo!
I will not celebrate meaningless milestones I will not celebrate meaningless milestones I will not celebrate meaningless milestones I will not celebrate meaningless mi

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My favorite Bard's 100th Sonnet
Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make Time's spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.

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Spent Spending

Sunday, January 28, 2007



Ruminations on a one day trip to Divisoria (aka my feet ache so badly I think they're gonna fall off)
  1. Spending is such an odd word. Try saying it thrice and it loses meaning.
  2. Bus conductors have excellent memory and superhuman balance in moving vehicles. I can't, for the life of me, imagine working as a long distance bus driver or conductor... Traveling the same route back and forth for n times a day. I'd be bored out of my mind! Although I must say driving a double decker is extremely enticing. I wonder if I'd be more confident driving a bus than I do a sedan or an SUV.
  3. Chowking, from multiple taste tests, has the most scrumptious Danggit and the best Tofu.
  4. "So this is how the world looks like at 6 in the morning... meh"
  5. I've been to Divisoria twice before and the whole layout of the place still doesn't make sense to me, even after I looked it up on Wikimapia. Baguio's swerving streets are fairly easy to navigate, and most of Manila is planned with a gridiron pattern. Divisoria's streets however are a concrete and asphalt chop suey. The road signs (when available) aren't clearly visible, although my poor navigation skills would find no real use for them if they were. It isn't much different from Rome if you think about it. Replace the Tiber with the Pasig River, replace the Pantheon with the Tutuban mall, the Trevi fountain with leaking hydrants, gelato with dirty ice cream, "Quanto?"s with "Magkano?"s and you've got Divisoria. (oh, and add the smell of "cockroaches" ala Claire Danes... olfactory prude b*tch)
  6. Divisoria is so chaotic... I love it to pieces. Aside from the streets (or lack thereof) the place is teeming with people. People walking, people running, people getting conked on the head by the massive sidemirrors of delivery trucks with drivers who have a compulsion to honk every three minutes. Honk and conk. Honk and conk.
  7. Calamares tastes excellent with adobo if you're really really exhausted.
  8. Here, 6 pieces is considered wholesale.
  9. "Wait! this costs thrice in (insert overpricing mall here)!!!
  10. Piracy has a class system according to apparent resemblance with the original. It takes a CSI to determine genuine Fendi bags or Hugo perfumes in these parts.
  11. Small retractable trolleys cost 300 pesos (6 dollars)... believe me you'll need one (or two) Do you have any idea how much 140 pieces of box board weigh??? Let's just say, I was this close (making an action with my thumb and forefinger) making a collect call to Phil Pfister.
  12. Even the most comfortable Chuck Taylors (mine) and Hushpuppies (ate Pam's) fail you if you walk all day. Masseuse!
  13. When going to Divisoria for bulk shopping... go in droves. Ate Pam and I were contemplating how we could have possibly done the whole trip without my Dad and her brother. Elbow grease! That and my Dad is a supernatural navigator.
  14. I have newfound respect for rickshaw drivers pedallers. Two carried all of us and all the boxes and bags and bales we bought to the terminal. There were no other accessible forms of transportation. Ate Pam and I must've looked terribly ridiculous when we see-sawed back and forth trying vainly to add some momentum to the struggling pedicab. We didn't notice because we were laughing our asses off.
  15. A sore butt from a five to six hour bus ride makes everyone cranky.
  16. I am stymied by people who watch Steven Seagal movies. There are people who actually like him? Gawd... degradation of the species. His name conjures images of birds in my mind. Especially those who say "mine, mine, mine" on the Sydney Harbor in Finding Nemo... stoic, and not the fashion forward super model stoicism nor the helpless botox induced stoicism. It's the "I don't have talent and/or thoughts in my brain and/or nerve endings on my face" type of visage. One was shown on the bus back to Baguio, it was the perfect sedative.
  17. "It's a small world..." It's interesting... I usually ride Victory Liner buses, but on this rare occasion, me and ate Pam rode on a Genesis one because the station is closer to our destination. And it just so happens a highschool buddy of mine was on the same bus going home. He saw me smoking in one of the stop-overs. I forgot to mention that also during the Sagada trip, in the heart of the Sumaging Cave, I met a friend of mine from primary school as well. Is the world shrinking?
  18. Divisoria should be on a tourist's itinerary. It's one of those gems only a few foreign tourists get to see. Don't ask me why it's called "the dividing line"... The answer was probably explained during one of my history classes while I was reading Scott Summers and Jean Grey's third attempt at a wedding... (Silver Surfer will be in the next Fantastic 4 movie! Can't wait! I wonder if Galactus tries to make the world a kebab)
This is Divisoria as the Silver Surfer might have seen it from his board.

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Soy Un Perdedor

Monday, January 22, 2007



Will tagged me with an "I never" meme. It's basically writing ten things you'd never do.

At first I thought the meme was like the "I never" drinking game (someone says a statement starting with "I never..." and whoever hasn't done it drinks a shot of the alcohol of choice... preferably tequilla) I never really got drunk when we played this. I've always believed in trying anything at least once (well everything except dog meat)

Hence, my mental list of things I'd never do border on absurd and/or amoral (killing someone with a dull samurai, coal mining, wearing spandex, getting a Winnie the Pooh tattoo, sticking chopsticks into my eyes, getting a gym membership, swandiving from Taipei 101, etc etc etc)

So instead of enumerating things noone in their right mind would ever do, I'm listing the 10 things I can't do:
  1. I can't whistle. I know I'm pathetic. Try being a five year old watching Snow white and the Seven Dwarfs, discovering you can't do a basic human skill when they start singing Whistle While you Work... It's devastating.
  2. I can't swim. If living in Baguio has any disadvantage, it's the absence of a beach. Many Baguio residents like me are born anchors. Buoyancy eludes us. But we do try... "Alternati Greenleaf long under tree, In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea! If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, Thy heart shall rest in the forest no more."
  3. I can't play the piano. Something is haywire between my brain hemispheres. The Piano: I can read notes... I can play the piano with my right hand... and my left... combine them together and what do you get? the sound of a cat running across the keys.
  4. I can't play the guitar. I look like I'm having seizures when I do try to do any chord requiring a bar. Those who can't, collect and admire.
  5. I can't keep a pet alive for more than a month. Don't worry I never really owned a four legged critter, just a number of aquarium fishes and an imaginary hippo.
  6. I can't write with my left hand. Ambidexterity has become a frustration since I saw The Wisdom of Crocodiles.
  7. I can't keep a written journal. Stacks of journals occupy one of my storage spaces. Each has a maximum of 20 entries... the time intervals between entries occur in a geometric progression to infinity. Thank gawd for blogging!
  8. I can't drive alone (yet) I'm a big scaredy cat behind the wheel... especially when I'm infront of a semi or a Philex Peter Belt.
  9. (Addenda to #8) I can't go from one place to another without consulting a map or asking a gazillion "Where is..."s and "Enshuldigung, Is this the way to..."s. Like 3rdwill, road signs appear to be written in hieroglyphics and directions in cuneiform.
  10. I can't shoot a basketball even if the fate of the world depended on it. (Go Mavs!)
Nothing like a list of your incapabilities to boost self esteem! "Soy un Perdedor... I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me..."


The tag ends here. I can't get Beck's song out of my head now...

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Me Likey 003

Sunday, January 21, 2007



Been busy as a frantic, multi-tasking bee. It's been more than a week since my last entry... my urge to post is a lot like the need (yes, need) to smoke after watching a Coldplay concert (or at least how I'd imagine the magnitude of the urge would be) My latest tenant came and went without a welcome post (Bad lessor!) and reply to comments and return visits are way overdue.

I wonder why all our clients at the office are adamant to build something at the beginning of the year. Anyways, Here's a hint of the other thing that's keeping me real busy (the good kind of busy)


I'll advertise talk more about it when we've had the chance to finish the website.

Me likey the view from the place we are renting for the business we're putting up. This is Session Road at night. I love this sloping stretch of asphalt and concrete. It's been a witness to my (and many other Baguio residents') life. Nothing can clear your head better than a hike stroll up this 30 degree (give or take) road.


Me likey the ink flow system we purchased for the business. It does make the printer look like it's hooked to an IV but you can print to your heart's content (Replace dextrose or your choice of intravenous sedatives with black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink)


Me likey the sudoku game I downloaded for my Palm. No more No. 2 Mongol pencils with treacherous red erasers.


Me likey my second batch of bootleg DVDs for my traditional oscar marathon for the year. My friendly neighborhood pirates finally have a copy of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. When I asked for this movie before, I was constantly given a quizzical look or referred to a stall with nauseous Chanel and Bvlgari imitations (don't even ask me how they reacted when I wanted to buy a copy of Borat!)









Also on my movie backlog are The Queen and Dreamgirls. I loved Helen Mirren in Calendar Girls but does anyone else think she looks like Sir Ian Mckellen in drag in the movie poster? In Dreamgirls, I wanna see why the HFPA gave Jennifer Hudson the golden globe over Cate Blanchett! I did like Ms. Hudson in American Idol (especially when she wore that pink dress) but I adore worship Galadriel. Speaking of AI, have you seen the latest batch of William Hungs?

I only wonder when I'll have the free time to watch them...

And finally, Me likey the holiday postcard the lovable che sent me. With e-mails, instant messaging and text messaging, I can't remember the last time I received something through snail mail. I was more than ecstatic when I found it mixed with the bills. It's a postcard of Schloss Lustheim. The butter yellow walls remind me a lot of the Sans Soucci castle in Potsdam (and my near "fall" into one of its fountains) Danke Che! Me lovey!!!

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13 Places to See (aka Sagada 02)

Saturday, January 13, 2007



When my 13th post meets my second post on Sagada. Brace yourself for an even longer post...


Something in the air in Sagada made a nocturnal like me retire way before midnight and rouse before a two digit AM time. I guess the anticipation of seeing the sites of Sagada help a lot in awakening even the worst of sleepy heads. Here are 13 places you must visit when in Sagada.


1. The Sagada Municipal Hall
Okey, this isn't really an exciting start, more of a necessity primarily because of the Sagada Tourist Info Center. This is where you can find guides for all the tourist destinations (see: caves) It's best to drop by the Municipal Hall when you arrive, so you can inquire to your heart's extent. You'll also have to pay a very minimal environmental fee (less than 10 pesos per person) I wonder how such a miniscule amount can contribute to ecological purposes...


2. The Sugong Coffins
One of the cliffs with "hanging coffins", a local burial (ok the term doesn't apply) tradition. You can see the wooden coffins on the lower left side of the rock face. Our immediate question was "how?" and the locals didn't really give us clear cut answers so we formulated a procedure involving catapults and harnesses. And of course the next question is "why?", like all great human traditions, the answer to such a question is often hazy and subjective, but it's this ambiguity that makes such traditions great.


3. The Sumaging Caves
This is one of the three main caves in Sagada discovered (according to a rock along the entry path) in 1966. I have only been to one other cave in my lifetime, and it's liliputian compared to this one. A guide is required to enter the caves and I promise you... you will need them. Our guides were Raffy and Tots. If your guides are/were/will be as great as these two, you won't feel an ounce of claustrophobia, you'll always have a lit path and "Romeo and Juliet" (stalagmites) will hold a whole new meaning.

Us at the King's Curtains.

The inside of the Sumaging is almost otherworldly. It's how I would have imagined Moria pre-orc/balrog occupation... I developed a kinship with Gimli.

Ems scaling a knotted rope, other tourists in the background

There is a junction halfway through the cave with imaginary signs: "Hard --->" and "<--- Easy". Of course we took the hard route, we never doing anything half-assed. We had to hold on to ropes, crawl thru guano and limbo under stalactites... we were shrieking the whole way through, I think our guides developed ear infections. We had to wade in really cold (and I mean polar bear cold) water, and our guides were so great, they placed our cameras in their bags and held them with such skill, the bags not only never touched water but the guides did it with a cigarette in one hand... hahaha. You gotta give the six of us, who don't work out at all, credit for accomplishing such a feat. Although I must say, the notion of working out did, for a moment, appeal to me when a couple of 10 year olds overtook me on the hike up.
This is us on a pitstop to the cave entry. It never occurred to me until I was hiking and gasping for air that every step (or misstep) I take toward the heart of the cave is every step I have to make out of it... uphill! But aching muscles aside, it was worth the trip.
Guide rates: 1 - 3 persons = 300 pesos; 4 - 5 = 400 pesos; 6 = 600 pesos... I didn't really see the rates for more people, these rates available at the Municipal Hall
The Gates of Moria Sumaging Caves close at 5 pm.


4. Mount Kiltepan
I'm not really good with estimating kilometer long distances, so let's just say Mt. Kiltepan is a tad far from the town center. You could take a leisurely hike to the apex through berry bearing bushes, but if you and uphill walks don't mesh well, like us, you can hire a local jeep at negotiable prices. From the top of Kiltepan the view of the rice terraces is undescribable.


5. Rice Terraces
All together... "Magtanim ay di biro..." I wanna see them during harvest time.


6. Big Falls
Locally called "Bomod-ok". All we saw of the big falls is the top (upper right) Our driver/tourist guide, Dexter, told us it's a 1 hour 45 minute hike downhill (and 3 Jupiter years uphill)... I know, we were such pansies. Then, more than ever did I wish I could move mountains telekinetically.


7. Small Falls

Locally called "Bokkong". Since we didn't see the Big one, we settled for the small one, which is only 15 minutes downhill (why is everything downhill?) It may not be as tall as a skyscraper but we loved it nonetheless.


8. Campo Santo

The Sagada Cemetery. Ferdz blogged about a tradition of burning bonfires instead of candles during All Saints' Day. His post here.


9. Echo Valley

Just a short walk from Campo Santo. It really does echo (especially if you use words that rhyme with "you") More hanging coffins can be seen on the cliffs here.


10. Church of St. Mary the Virgin

The shot is pretty dark... the church is very near the Municipal Hall. Inside, the rose window looks like a miniature of the one in Notre Dame de Paris.


11. The local Caltex


12. The Bilig Cafe
It's located right behind the Municipal Hall. We were really planning to eat at the Shamrock cafe whose spaghetti is raved about in Baguio, but ut sort of relocated here while the cafe is being renovated. Inside Bilig, look up. I've never seen such a wide collection of vintage postcards on a ceiling before. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain... I love it, my neck just felt stiff afterwards.


13. Souvenir Shops
I got all sorts of souvenirs but this printed shirt above is my fave.

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Sagada 01 - Living Under On A Rock

Wednesday, January 10, 2007



We finally got the new improved WiFi service at home. I have a whole new appreciation for the ionosphere and how it allows us to use it as a a wave-bouncing mechanism (yes, that's my technical term) Gawd I missed surfing at this speed. I was living under a rock, literally, when the Taiwan earthquake occured so I never knew about the whole subterranean thingy until i got back to the office, days later. What better way to celebrate the return to the internet speed of sound mind than to upload pictures in Photobucket. Light years reduced to light reading while they upload.
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Brace yourself for a long post

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It was midnight and I was stuffing clothes in my supposed Amazing Race backpack. I always pack better under pressure, plus the caffeine from the hot peppermint coffee I had with some friends an hour earlier was still in my system. 6 hours later and no sleep, I was with my fellow spelunkers in an ordinary bus leaving the station for Sagada. (Let me blabber on some more while the pictures load on your browser... I did my best to minimize the number of pics) Sagada is in the Mountain Province and is about 5 and a half hours away from Baguio (approximately 11 hours from Manila) There are no air-conditioned buses to Sagada but with the cool weather, it would just be downright ridiculous not to mention ozone-unfriendly.


That's me on the right clad in my idea of a Sagada tourist outfit and that's Tine on the left, a close friend/ officemate. Notice our matching Sayote colored tops. I felt adamant about posting pictures on the net because of that hilarious forwarded e-mail of a kid whose face was plastered onto this and that. (Don't you get any ideas, I know where you live and if I see my face on a Teletubby, you'll find me knocking on your door with a broad sword)


The first two thirds of the road to Sagada is paved with concrete. It always amazes me how roads are built along mountainsides and how such a feat is accomplished. People with altophobia should opt for the aisle seat, let's just say the sensation of being on the window seat is like being a jumper who glides sideways around the edge of a skyscraper. The last third of the road, somewhere in a low point of the route where the road is side by side with the Chico river, is a bot more arduous. "Rough road" is an understatement. It's like headbanging in a mosh pit without hearing the Sex Pistols. There is also a constant plume of yellowish dust that follows, and at times enters, the bus. I just loved that last third of the ride, it felt like I was riding with Thelma and Louise without the swan dive off the cliff.


Breathtaking huh? A landscape that fuses form and function.


Me, Tine, Itang, Chibe, Fio and Ems



The Rock Inn. I highly recommend a stay here when you visit Sagada. It is 2 or 3 kilometers from the Poblacion (town proper) depending on which sign you look at. It is nestled in a valley accessed only by yet another rough road. It is so desolate that when you look out from any of their balconies all you see are the silhoutte of the surrounding trees and the stars. No Globe cellphone signal in these parts, just Smart (which I detest) The rooms smell great, all the surfaces (walls, floor, ceiling) and the furniture in the rooms are made of pine... the genuine smell of pine, not the fake scented tree cut-outs in cars (like the one on the rearview mirror of the Ocean's 11 SWAT van) The picture above is taken from a natural rock formation (hence the name of the inn) An orchard of Sagada oranges on the right.


View from our room, a couple of huts and the Dap-ay where there's a bonfire every night. The first night we sat around the fire as a German, a Filipina and a Swede (I think) talked about politics... we didn't linger too long. The second night we went all kumbaya singing classic early 90's rock songs with an infectious, guitar-strumming pothead. I wasn't able to score a joint. Boo hoo.


The Cafe Bodega. The Rock Inn's cafe. Modern use of indigenous materials. Notice the use of cribs and vegetable containers as lighting fixtures.


Outdoor dining area of Cafe Bodega.


One must, must, must... must, must try their fresh Sagada orange juice... Mmmmm... Sagada orange juice (Did I sound Homer enough?) I am salivating just thinking about it. The perfect balance of tang and sweetness, and the best thing is it's 100% organic fresh from the orchard.


Since we're on the topic of food, eat lunch at Masferre Restaurant. The menu isn't especially Sagada (What's a Sprite bottle doing there??) but Masferre's photos lining the walls are worth the trip. He's the first photographer to take pictures of Sagada and his photos ooze of history. Taking pictures of his pictures isn't aloud.


And desert at the Yoghurt House. Try the granola one... (60 pesos or so)


I told you I love em oranges so much I had to take some home. At 35 pesos a kilo, it was more than a steal. I'll show the pics of the caves and the other spots we visited in the next post. This one is long enough as it is.

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If you're planning to go there:

The Rock Inn and Cafe
Address : Rock Farm, Batalao, Sagada, Mt. Province, Philippines
Phone : Bang - 0920-9095899 (A really charming and helpful young man)
Fely - 0920-9028608
E-mail : rockfarm_sagada@yahoo.com

Rooms good for 6 and 8 @ 300 pesos per head per night (cheap huh? even cheaper during lean season I hear) The rooms are very spacious but don't have individual CR's. A common one at the end of the hall. No hot water from the faucet, but you can request for a bucket of really hot water for 40 pesos. Meals (heavy) average at less than 200 pesos. They provide a free service to and from the town proper. If you need anything, ask for charming Wanda or helpful Bang. And no, the dried leaves they sell at the souvenir shop ain't pot it's mounatin tea leaves.
(With all these free promotion, I better get a free room when I go back there!)

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Cut and Pastiness

Monday, January 08, 2007



My post on the Sagada trip has been placed on the back burner. I'm still picking which pictures to post. I went trigger happy and now picking pictures is an ordeal much like Sophie's Choice. And then of course, there's the insanely sluggish uploading speed.
Cut me barber for I haven't trimmed. It's been 3 months since my last haircut.
There is something truly orgasmic about getting a haircut. I believe a visit to the parlor/ barber shop is one of the few remaining modern activities that make you feel genuinely regal but still satisfies three crucial factors:
  1. You remain within budgetary bounds. Last I checked I don't own a Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship and I don't own majority of Monaco.
  2. It is PC.
  3. You are fully aware your "reign" only lasts for a couple of hours max, but at least you come out of the place alive. Try reigning for 9 days and then getting decapitated, at 16 years old. Poor Jane Grey.

Anyways, I'm stopping myself before I start talking about Anne Boleyn or Helen Mirren's possible oscar.

dancollins

I've had the flower child look for too long. Gimme a tower and I'll do a flawless Rapunzel, it'll bring tears to your eyes. I've grown attached to the length of my hair, sort of like a security blanket attached to your skull. Having long hair is just way to taxing. It takes you forever to wash and condition it and it takes another infinity to dry it out. Hair products aren't cheap... what ever happened to the good old days of fresh gooey aloe vera? And then there's the ubiquitous strands of hair in the sink drain, on your pillow and the floor.

Yesterday afternoon, it took two cigarettes to stop myself from hyperventilating and to convince myself I WAS having my hair cut. It's hilarious how we attach ourselves to such transient things. Eversince I was old enough to afford a decent haircut, I've almost always gone to the same hairstylist. His name is Eugene. He is a legend in these parts. He's an artist. Eugene's haircuts always agree with my look and he has a "dark brown thumb" because my hair magically becomes better whenever he touches it.

We were chatting away the moment I sat on his cushioned chair. I was so into the conversation, I didn't even notice the first snip, kind of like what doctors do to vaccinate kids... "Look at the shiny coin" Eugene's memory is amazing. He remembers names and jobs and events like an almanac. I was confronted with this fact when he remembered what my Thesis was in college. Some of my close friends wouldn't know what it was even if their life depended on it (it was an Art Gallery and Cafe, just in case Armageddon depended on it my friends... tee hee) Eugene cuts hair at Gemini's Hair Salon.

I know this entry is long enough, but I just have to mention that the girl who shampooed my hair looked like Pumpkin. Not A pumpkin... but THE pumpkin from Memoirs of a Geisha, or at least how I thought she would look like when I read the book. She even had the powdered face, the pink cheeks and the perfectly positioned mole. I swore if she was wearing a kimono, I would've sworn I was lying in a genuine Okiya as she lathered my hair.

My head feels ALOT lighter. I guess climbing my tower would require the construction of a lift or at least the traditional ladder... the former more preferred.

Look at me talking about my measly haircut when there are real things happening in the world.

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It's Aliiiive!

Thursday, January 04, 2007





Hey everyone. Thanks for the greetings through the holidays... I'll start blogrolling to return my late greetings.

I haven't been able to update my blog. Nope, I didn't fall into a crevice in the caves... nope, I wasn't abducted by angry Plutonians... and nope, I didn't join the Peace Corps (although I really want to). After the trip to Sagada (which was fabulous... will tell more about it in future posts) I was so busy, I couldn't find time to go online. My yahoo inbox was practically full when I checked it two days ago (aka back to work). I've been preoccupied with the celebration for New Year's, with the business my sister, Pam and I are establishing and with work that piled up during the holidays. The past two weeks, "busy" meant:
Busy (n)
  1. Engaged in activity, as work; occupied.
  2. Multi-tasking ad nauseum.
  3. Dream imagery is dominated by office desks and staplers
  4. Activities like breathing and blinking need to be scheduled.


I might be whining, tugging at my hair and biting my nails to oblivion... but it's a good kind of busy. The kind of busy where you don't notice how physically spent you are until you stop and recline.

Also, I was supposed to update my blog last night but both the internet connection here at the office and the one at home are excruciatingly slow. I dunno if Blogger has a problem or if it's Firefox, but the sluggish connection was just unbearable.

Since I wasn't able to spend the New Year's with my blogging buddies (aww shucks), would you mind holding each other's hands and singing...

"Should all acquaintances be forgot, na na na na na na (I have no idea what the lyrics are!)... Should all acquaintances be forgot, na na na auld lang syne!!!"

Happy New Year y'all!!!

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