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Ibalik’s comment is the perfect segue into my next entry. I’m posting here a few pasalubongs* that I’ve received from various people:

Here’s one brought over by family friend Swerte from her trip to Europe. They’re mini chocolate donuts made in Spain called Filipinos. I believe they’ve been featured in a recent issue of Giant Robot magazine. True to form, an equivalent American snack is called Flipz which are chocolate-covered pretzels.

Here’s a PhilWeavers shirt courtesy of Kyo who brought it over from his trip to the Philippines back in December. Thanks Kyo!

Those things above are what you call katol, green coils of mosquito killer that you burn on one end. We don’t have a mosquito problem here in California, mind you. This was a personal request of mine, believe it or not. Over the years, when my wife’s relatives would go to the Philippines I would ask them to bring back a box of Elephant Brand katol. This is the katol I remember from my youth and I wanted to incorporate elements of the packaging into this idea I had for a design piece. Well, each time my wife’s relatives would come back from PI, they would bring back the wrong brand. I don’t think I made myself clear that any brand other than Elephant is useless to me. But who am I to complain? Katol is katol and apparently, the Elephant Brand is hard to find. So as you see I’ve amassed boxes of poisonous green coil that I’ll never use. The design of the Lion-Tiger Brand, however, is starting to grow on me.

*gifts brought from other lands (or more specifically, from the motherland)

Welcome back, ‘tol.

Click on the image below to see a row of abandoned shacks along the train route I take everyday:

[1.3MB, 14 seconds, requires QuickTime]

Saw the eagerly-awaited Matrix sequel today on opening day. Surprisingly, lines weren’t long at all. Well I suppose it helped that we watched the 12:35 p.m. matinee show. Yes, I took the day off. I’ll have to make my hours up on Saturday.

[next: spoilers, possibly]

I’m not going to do a full movie review but I’ll just say that I wholeheartedly agree with this one here. The reviewer’s observation that some scenes look like a computer game is one I share (see also my Hulk post). The freeway scene was amazing, however, and was shot in nearby Alameda/Oakland. The concept of “programs” as figures in the Matrix intrigued me but I soon realized that Tron already made use of this concept a couple of decades ago. Isn’t underground Zion something we’ve seen before? Doesn’t it remind you of the mutant underground society in Beneath the Planet of the Apes? Or was it the regressed society in The Time Machine? Anyway, the Zion council meeting looked like a Haight-Ashbury neighborhood meeting, didn’t it? Multi-cultural Zion is refreshing although the “rave” scene has got to go. Seemed pointless. In the first movie the allegorical rise of a messianic figure had clear biblical reference. Eastern philosophy, also present in the first movie, is given more consideration in the sequel and indeed, pagan imagery, more prominence. Which is okay, for this shift serves to distance Neo’s reluctant messiah role from any true biblical analogy. All in all, an enjoyable movie.

The baby urinated all over my iBook while I changed him last night. The iBook was on the bed as was the baby. I looked away for a second to get extra wipes and the next thing I knew a steady stream of pee was spraying all over the bed and the iBook’s screen and keyboard.

After quickly stopping the “leak,” I wiped the iBook down and shut it down. I then restarted it and I could hear the startup chime but no video. Well, there’s video but it’s very dim as if the brightness setting was turned way down. I told my boss about my ordeal (my work files are on this laptop) and he said to take out the battery and let the iBook dry out for two to three days. He then told me to bring it in and we’ll save the data on a different iBook. A technician will look at my laptop. I should prepare a little gift for him, says the boss. Thank goodness I work at a Mac computer repair shop! =)

So no iBook until then. I’m typing this on my desktop G4 at home.

[update: iBook’s fixed! Turns out the RAM got wet. Poor tech had to clean it up for me. Gotta get him a gift for sure.]

[update 2: I just realized I experienced first-hand what MSN could only conceptualize.]