Our boys Bobby and Rico celebrated their 7th birthday yesterday! As always, they got a nice chiffon birthday cake of their own to eat (with our help). A few pics.
Bobby waits for the ceremonies to begin:
The brothers patiently wait side-by-side for more of their share of the loot from Obachama* Yoriko-san :
Can we have seconds? Please? Iye? Honto? But it’s our birthday!:
* ‘Grandma’ in Japanese.
After editing and writing for magazines for years, it never fails to tickle me pick whenever I get a cover story out on the stands. Even if it’s for a magazine I don’t edit. Especially if it’s for a magazine I don’t edit. Most especially when it’s a major title with a big national circulation.
One came out this week: Metro’s March issue, with my cover interview of actress Cristine Reyes.
After trading my old editorial duties for a more organizational role in magazine publishing, I don’t get to write as much as I used to, so I really like it when I get a chance to do a piece. I’ve been writing tech pieces so much for the past decade I hadn’t realized I missed writing about non-geek stuff. About people that make you blink, instead of things with lights that blink at you when you turn them on. (Hmm, that’s a thought. I think I’ll think I’ll give my geekery a rest this year.)
Cover stories are the Holy Grail of journalism. (That, and Pulitzers.) My first cover was when I was barely out of high school, for a mag called TV Times, and a cover story about Champoy, the old comedy sketch show of Noel Trinidad and Subas Herrero. (I think Dad still has a copy in a drawer somewhere in the old house. He and my mom, God rest her soul, were prouder than I was, I think.) It’s a heady feeling, having something you wrote partly responsible for the sale of a magazine. Scary too. Never forgot it; no matter how many times it’s happened, that feeling is still the same, after all these years.
I last wrote for Metro almost two decades ago, as a freelance contributor. Back then it was staffed by my idols in feature writing. Who would have thought it would still be around 20 years later – Metro celebrates that milestone next month – and who’d have thought I’d still be writing for it? A cover story, no less!
Get a copy of the March issue of Metro when you can, read it, and tell me what you think.
Is it creepy that my true inner voicetrack sounds like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory? Sarcastic, snotty and snarky to the core. I’ve been that way since I was a child. I just don’t act on it, nor speak any of the words that run through my stream of consciousness—although sometimes some of it slips out, as those who know me well will attest.
Have you ever tried to count how many remote controls rule your life?
Mine crowd the table like so much driftwood, jostling each other for position. Sometimes I think I’m going to drown in them. The pic above, while slightly intimidating, is even missing a couple. Must be under the bed or under the rack. Or maybe the dogs ate them. (When he was a puppy, Bobby once chewed the AV Receiver’s remote close to death; only 40% of the buttons work now. I still haven’t forgiven him for that—all the settings are on the remote. My bass is permanently overcranked, to the chagrin of my wife.)
Hey, come to think about it, I’m missing four more, actually, if you add all the damned wireless game controllers. Ack. That’s an even dozen. And each of our Macs at home have their own remotes too. That brings it to what, 15? That’s downright ridiculous.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve grabbed one of them and pressed a button only to have something else turn on rather than the one I was meaning to. They all look alike. Four of them have the red-green-yellow-blue AV row which makes them all look like each other. By far, the worst offender is the PS3 remote. Since it runs on Bluetooth, just inadvertently brushing against any of the gazillion buttons on it, whichever way it’s pointing, turns on the PS3 as long as it’s within range. Even Bobby can turn on the PS3.
I have a big, clunky old Pioneer Universal Learning Remote, but I can’t find the manual and can’t remember how to add devices to it. Nothing on the net about it either. Which effectively turns it into a big, clunky old paperweight. Oh, my kingdom for a Logitech Harmony 1100!
Had the rare occasion to take a tricycle from the house the other day, and found one that was put together with a bit of style and a lot of overkill. Hell’s Angel with a sidecar. Coolness. Aliw.
(Gamer post; those who aren’t into these things can click away now.)
Got home late last night, as usual. This teaching gig in Makati is starting to wear me down, and I still have a week to go. (I work full time during the day, and instead of going home after work, I go to Ayala and teach.)
Got keyed up though, because everything in class went nearly flawless for the first time. The slides were tuned and trimmed and tweaked so tight they could scream, and the beats all fell into place perfectly. The class was the biggest it’s been since we started, twice as big in fact, and they were all receptive, appreciative and on the same page. They even laughed at my jokes. A teacher’s dream.
So the adrenaline was high even after I got home, despite the fact that I was tired. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I decided to play a few rounds of a new off-road racing game I’m reviewing called MotorStorm: Pacific Rift on the PS3. Frankly, even after finishing the first version, I’m still astounded as to the quality and innovativeness of the game, and of the technical expertise and programming skill that made it even possible. It’s the closest you can get to actually getting a chance to kill yourself racing your ass off. Definitely my favorite racing game of all time.
Anyway, I was racing on the Badlands track, a dangerous route with lava pits and heavy forest, and it was neck-and-neck with this AI racer named Leethal all the way through the three long, nerve wracking laps. He/She just kept coming and coming, no matter what I did. On the final stretch, it seemed that I would lose to him/her; Leethal was a good half-second ahead and I had no room to catch up. After all that work, I was going to lose. In desperation, I hit the Boost button—and didn’t let go.
Those of you who play the game know that Boost is best served in little sips. If you go whole hog it the needle hits the red, and your vehicle explodes into smithereens. It’s like dumping a gallon of gasoline into the barbecue pit. But at that point I just didn’t care and redlined the Boost meter. Amazingly, I pulled up even beside Leethal in those precious five seconds just before the car blew up, right at the finish line, and thought, screw it, I lost. Again.
But apparently the explosion had thrown the car forward just enough to give it the fraction of lead time I needed to cross first and win—by the tiniest of margins: 1/32 of a second!
Apparently, there are a lot of places where you can really go snacking with Adel. Or at least in a place called Adel:
Adel Baptist Congregation Cafe and Snack Bar in Leeds, West Yorkshire(Someday I hope to actually visit these places, and pretend they’re mine.)
You can also go drinking with Adel (or buy something to drink, anyway):
Adel’s Wine Cellar in San Francisco, California
And munch on imported nuts with Adel:
Sirjan Adel’s Pistachio Co. in Iran
Having Google around makes you write silly things.
Hello again.
I recently started teaching a workshop on blogging and online writing, and I realized with some embarrassment that I don’t, uh, practice what I preach. Not for a while now, anyway.
I used to blog like a man possessed. Personal blogs, professional blogs, group blogs. Then last year I just sort of …burned out. All my other work-related writing sapped my blogging mojo, I guess. It was all I could to tap out 160-character Twitter posts, and not even regularly at that.
When my students asked me last week for their teacher’s blog URL, I didn’t know what to say.
So I figured I’d reboot my blogging life so I can teach with a bit more authority. At first I considered reviving my old and venerable Electric Journal, but thought starting afresh was easier.
I really think we all need to wipe the blackboard clean with a damp rag every now and then. Find a fresh box of chalk. And then make the chalk screech something fierce, and often, and maybe rattle some teeth in the process.
So I’m back, for better or worse.
By the way, that Gaiman quote on the header? It’s a real quote. Really.
Saw it two years ago the day Neil it posted on his blog and used it immediately for the title of an experimental blog attempt of mine that hardly saw the light of day. So I got dibs on it, if anyone asks. I’m exercising my dib rights and using it again. I love the quote – it so effing perfectly describes my work, especially these days, as a full time copyeditor and sometime fictionist. I eat lots of vegetables on workdays and now and then I treat myself to dessert. But I think I’ll be snacking more often now.
(And the silly picture of Neil Gaiman burping? It’s a real one too. I took it myself. Really. Truly. Really truly.)
Ok then. Let’s get to that Snack Bar.
Snacker Snarking