When It Comes To Love, It'll Be Always Your Choice

I borrow this line from a t-shirt that my Malaysian friend is selling to raise funds for his organization named Choice.


The message of the design is that in love, anything is possible and that love is unbounded by anything including language, beliefs, race, nationality, or even religion. The boundaries are represented by the differences between the pig and the chicken and that love can make any person cross such boundaries, which resulted in the "pig-chick" at the back of the shirt.

A good example of this is the wedding reception I attended earlier today. The groom is a high school classmate who I think is the most faithfully-aligned among the boys in our class. He even attended the 1997 World Youth Day in Manila and that he had traveled before to the Vatican. Given his background, I don't believe that his family gave him a simple nod when he asked for their blessing to marry a Muslim girl whom he fell in love with after years of working in Singapore. He had to convince them of the love he's experiencing and why he's willing to convert to Islam and take the big change in order to be with the one he loves. Indeed, love knows no boundaries.


After enjoying a completely halal banquet and chatting with the other guests, we had to sibat or what we colloquially term as "Eat and Run".

I was with another high school classmate and before we parted ways, we stopped by a food court and had a couple bottles of Guinness while catching up.


On the bus ride to home, I overheard a pair of college girls who were talking in Tagalog with a mix of English but strangely in the fast Singlish accent. I'd like to call this new language "Singalog" or "Singsilog" in honor of the traditional Filipino breakfast and it's going to mean "Singlish na Sinamahan ng Tagalog".

Away from Home but Still Happy for the Holidays

My first time to celebrate Christmas and the new year away from home - far away in another country with different customs and practices.

Christmas, being a Christian holiday, was celebrated with fellow Filipino Christians - a little party with the tradition of exchanging gifts and some party games to make the night more interesting. Of course, there's drinking and karaoke to spend the night away. A few hours after midnight, my beloved and I had to leave ahead to rest. Christmas is a day of obligation and we had to attend mass and I don't want to be sleepy in church.


For new year's eve, we were planning on going to Marina Bay to watch the fireworks but my Malaysian friend attested to the size of the crowd that would also be there to witness the event. This lessened my interest and so we decided to watch it on live TV - better coverage and more convenient. Although not in person but I got a clear view of local artistes like Joanne Peh, Jeanette Aw, Jade Seah, Michelle Chong, Fann Wong, and Phua Chu Kang himself, Gurmit Singh. In the absence of TFC, I've come to know these artistes better and have even forgotten some Filipino actors/actresses. The fireworks were spectacular but are still not comparable to the ones we witnessed in Disneyland Hong Kong.

On New Year's day (or rather, New Year's night) we celebrated with a liter of Jose Cuervo Especial - bought from Duty-Free by my good friend and room mate who went home for Christmas. Unfortunately, he has to report for work later (only the 1st of January is a holiday) and he went to bed at the stroke of midnight - the bottle still half empty and just the two of us enjoying it - and I finished the pulutan of canned Gulong Stewed Pork by myself while watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on MediaCorp 5 - the gay and disgusting Frodo-Sam and Merry-Pippin relationships, shield maiden Eowyn killing the Lich King, Denethor II trying to burn Faramir but got burned himself, and Aragorn cheating his way to victory in the battle of Minas Tirith with the help of the Spectres. It's a Saturday and he promised to be home early so we'll have enough time to finish the rest of the tequila.

It's past one in the morning and if you're wondering why I'm writing this entry, it's because I'm the most expressive when I've had enough to drink.

Spare me the criticism. Even in this condition, my spelling and grammar is still flawless. If you find anything wrong, leave a comment...

To my sober self, when you read this later, don't you ever edit this post.

Bottomless Pits

As the end of the year approaches, my term as Safety Officer is about to come to an end. I am RND (Research and Development) Department's representative to our company's HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) Committee for 2009. To show his appreciation, the Committee Chairman treated all of the representatives to a buffet lunch at Ellenborough Market Cafe in Swissotel Merchant Court.

The food was undoubtedly superb - Asian cuisines (mostly Chinese and Japanese) - but I'm not going to talk more about it and do a food review. I've been in Singapore for almost 20 months now but this is the first time I've eaten with a large group of locals at a buffet. All I can say is - these Singaporeans are voracious eaters! Not only the men but also the ladies! For me, two rounds to the buffet table is normal but three, four, or even five?! and that does not include the dessert! The third time we got up to get more food, I headed straight to the desserts. One of them said, "Are you sure? So fast lah." I had to eat my dessert very slowly for them to catch up. What amazes me more is that these people aren't fat. I wonder how they can consume this much food and still maintain fit. I don't believe all of them have time to go to the gym. Could it be stress?

The End of Meaningless Clicks

"So many apps, so little time." One of my Facebook friends once posted this status. If you are hooked to this social networking site and its applications, you might feel obligated to accept app requests. There's always the Ignore button but sometimes curiosity compels you to do otherwise and once you start with an application, you'll see yourself visiting it everyday. "It's just for fun. I only do it to kill time." But is it still fun when you wake up at three in the morning because you've replenished enough energy to get even with an enemy mafia? Are you enjoying yourself when your wife quarrels you for hiring someone else to harvest your pineapples? And why risk telling someone your username and password just because your King Crab Bisque needs to be served and you're nowhere near a computer? Yes, I've heard stories like that and to add my own, I once almost wasted our dinner because of Restaurant City. It's been more than a year since I played these games and all I gained was nothing. It's all just a waste of time - non-productive, non-profitable, and meaningless. They don't even exercise your brain.

The last time I logged in to Facebook was five days ago. I logged in today and ignored 309 app requests. From now on, I'm only using Facebook as an avenue to share and learn about people's interests, thoughts, ideas, and experiences... hopefully... and play poker.

Pacman Makes History

Once again, The People's Champ demonstrated his prowess in the boxing ring. At a quick glance, Miguel Cotto seemed to be the more dominant fighter but looking at the measurements, Manny Pacquiao is surprisingly taller by 2 centimeters and they have the same reach. His coach, Freddie Roach, was very confident before the fight and the reason was clear. They had a game plan and it worked. The first two rounds were all for Cotto, boxing aggressively while Pacquiao looked hesitant and just accepted his advances. When the third round came, Pacquiao already made a good assessment of Cotto's style and power and started his attack. Cotto fell in that round and again in the next with a straight hit to the chin. It was already clear in the succeeding rounds that this fight is Pacquiao's. The question now is how long will Cotto last? Cotto's aggressiveness is gone and he's now the one backing up and avoiding the ropes. There was a funny part in the tenth round when Manny suddenly stopped following Cotto, shrugged, and breathed deeply like he was saying, "I'm tired of walking around. Can we box now?" After the tenth round, Cotto's coach, Joe Santiago, said to give it one more round before they throw in the towel. Cotto was successful in avoiding Pacquiao's power punches and staying on his feet in the eleventh round so Santiago let him continue to the next round. This time, Cotto was not so lucky. At 55 seconds in the twelfth round, referee Kenny Bayless stopped the fight when Cotto can no longer answer to Pacquiao's barrage of punches. At this point, Pacquiao became the first boxer to hold seven world titles. An honor achieved by a Filipino. Bisaya pa gyud.

What's next? Will Money Mayweather answer to Pacquiao's fan's taunts and prove his claim that he's still the best Pound-for-Pound fighter? Let's wait and see.