the smell of idiots

Sol and I were at Kimono Ken today. That's our new favorite japanese restaurant. I've been disappointed at Sushi-ya the last few times we've been there because while they've kept the prices the same, they've reconfigured the menu so that cost is lower (i.e., they provide smaller portions).

At the low end, the other alternative is saisaki. But that's like the Delifrance at St Lukes for me now. I will never eat there again. In fact, it's possibly worse than the Delifrance at St Lukes because I will never eat at saisaki again even if someone else pays for the buffet.

The food is reasonable, but saisaki is part of a group of restaurants that includes Dad's and Kamayan. Unfortunately, Dad's (or Kamayan, but now the whole group of restaurants) has a singing group at each combined restaurant. They're cute, I suppose, for people new to the Philippines, but they're extremely annoying to anyone who just wants to enjoy their meal. So we're never going there.

But back to that title there. We were at Kimono Ken. It's our new favorite japanese restaurant (Sugi in Makati would be an easy favorite, but we can't afford to go there more than once or twice a year). We've had a few great meals there. Today though, the waiter was wearing some cologne that smelled like ammonia. Seriously, what non-idiot would spend a fortune on a scent that makes them smell like a toilet? I have never thought it was a good thing for anyone (particularly men) to wear any sort of scent. But when I can smell someone from 6 meters away, I start to estimate how dumb that person must be, and the further away I can smell them, the dumber they must be.

I wouldn't mind if they were just dumb, but, like smokers, they force their stupidity into my consciousness just by being there and stinking. Next time, we might go to another Kimono Ken branch. Or if not, I'm certainly going to request another waiter.

The salmon sashimi, yaki-soba, yaki-udon ang uni were wonderful though. The spicy maguro sushi wasn't any good. don't go there. the juice shakes were too sweet, but after I'd cut my shake with about a glass and a half of water I could finally stand it.

Too sweet is a problem in this country, but it's not something i fight too hard. Some wars are not worth fighting (and this one is unwinnable). I would have ordered beer, but we had gone to the Podium by motorcycle, and I won't have a single beer if I'm going to be driving within the next twelve hours :-).

Timmy's Birthday

It was Timmy's first birthday last Friday, Nov 2, 2006. Fortunately, that's a holiday due to All Soul's and All Saint's day. We're going to miss Nov 1, Nov 2 being holidays when we're in New Zealand.

We decided to go to a hotel, take a suite and have the party there instead of at home. Home is a bit small and parking is impossible, so having the party in a hotel works *much* better. We liked that enough that we'll probably be at the same hotel (at the same floor) for New Year's too.

The preparations started at home. The suite at Richmonde hotel has a kitchen (and two bedrooms and a living room area) but not enough pots, pans and other gear for everything sol and her mom wanted to prepare. So most of the food was prepared at home.

There were the shrimps for the pesto
That shredded bacon is for the carbonara that's left of the pesto there

Timmy met his cake early on.



The cake was home made, by Sol. Carrot cake with lovely lemon zest and a picture of Timmy on top.


Timmy was very happy while waiting for the guests to arrive.


His mother was very proud.


Sol thought the candles and the whole celebration would be better with the lights out. I think she was right. The video comes out a bit dark though.

The pump had to be primed a bit
But Timmy got the idea and started to do some damage

A whole bunch of celebrities wanted their pictures taken with Timmy

That's my mother-in-law	Pats
Ardie	Bobot and Keith
my brothers-in-law, Jay on the left, Bobot on the right

Timmy's cake was a work of art when he was done

The pasta was great, missing from the picture was the most incredible clam chowder
The cake barely survived :-). So Sol had to make more when we got back home

	Timmy met Julia, Sol's godchild, daughter of Rhoda, Sol's best friend, and one of mine now, too

The exhausted birthday boy

New desktop background

Timmy is, once again, on my desktop:



That's from a few hours before the actual party.

I'm sure Victoria is going to say something about that right second toe too :-).

[Update]
Sol changed my desktop background for me ;-). I agree though, this one is even better.

A week in the hospital

Ok, it wasn't really a week. It was four days. It sure felt like a month though.

We'd all been having a pretty good night, timmy read his books as part of his nighttime ritual.


We had trouble that night though. He kept waking up coughing. He'd been coughing for a day or so before, but we were concerned because I thought his breathing was too rapid and too deep. We decided, after consulting via SMS with Timmy's doctor (the lovely Dr Maria Elena Quimpo, his aunt and my first cousin) to bring him to St Lukes. After a few hours of nebulizing at the Emergency Room, we had Timmy admitted to the hospital.

He had to have an IV drip installed. He was pretty good about it, yelling when it was going in, but then calming down and getting used to it pretty well.




I had to take the week off from work. Fortunately I have enough flexibility that I'm able to do that. I thought I could do some remote programming at the hospital. I was sorely mistaken though. Taking care of Timmy was a fulltime job in the daytime. Even simple things like feeding him needed four hands since someone had to hold or watch him so he didn't rip the IV out by moving his arm too fast, while someone else prepared the food or milk. Timmy was attached to a machine that monitored and ensured the correct drip rate of the IV and that made the length of free tube very short.

With rest and medication though,
Timmy got well enough so we could bring him home.

He's making us worried again tonight. We're going to be nebulizing again every 6 hours. I hope that the virus goes away and he recovers completely.
The hospital stay was pretty expensive. St Lukes in Quezon City is one of the best hospitals in the country, but you pay for what you get. To be sure, $600 for the 4 day stay, meds, equipment rental, and emergency room care was worthwhile, and very cheap compared to what it would have cost in the U.S., for instance. But it's a significant chunk of change and we're very thankful we had the wherewithal to cover the cost.
We have to process a PhilHealth refund. That'll help a bit. I was pleasantly surprised, when I went to the Quezon City Philhealth office, to be able to get all the PhilHealth documentation I needed in about an hour. Some government systems do work reasonably well (although I've also been on the receiving end of some horrendously bad service by other government agencies). I don't think I've seen anything optimal in any government agency, but that some things work at all is good to see.

steak!

A month or so ago my mother came back from the U.S.

She brought cheese (a half circle of blue cheese, which I'm consuming diligently, and which enriched a pasta dinner we had two weeks ago, to deep and lovely effect) and six huge steaks. It's impossible to get steaks like that here. Meat is sufficiently expensive that there are no huge portions because there's not much of a market for 3 or 4 lb steaks. My mother bought these steaks at costco and they're monsters.

We had some of that a few weeks ago. and we had some more yesterday (Saturday). It's certainly not the case that everything that comes out of the U.S. is evil. The steaks are pretty good. We had a great time this week. Of course there was isaw at U.P. Diliman on Friday (which was a public holiday, being the end of Ramadan). My in-laws want to do that again, so maybe we'll do it this coming weekend or the next. And then there was steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. That was lovely. We've got one more steak and we seriously considered having steak AGAIN. Fortunately, today we had lechon kawali for lunch. That was heart-attack city and great with vinegar and garlic.

Despite all this wonderful food, I'm not gaining weight. Clearly, I need to eat some MORE! :-)

Bullshit

There's new evidence that the Blackwater guards who killed 17 and wounded 27 people (among them women and children), these heroes of the U.S. State Department, weren't fired on at all. They lied about a vehicle being disabled and having to be towed away.

And an american military official says, "If our people had done this they would be court-martialed.".

Easy for him to say. And bullshit anyway. There would have been a court martial, sure. Purely for show. And then no one would have been convicted. Those Iraqis got off easy, they weren't even tortured before they were killed.

Oh so sorry, we didn't mean anything by it - american bastards

"You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall. You have junior-level troops… will run into the other rooms and grab the family, and you'll group them all together. Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds…and you get the man of the home, and you have him at gunpoint, and you'll ask the interpreter to ask him: 'Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda…?'

"Normally they'll say no, because that's normally the truth," Sergeant Bruhns said. “And if you find something, then you'll detain him. If not, you'll say, 'Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening.' So you've just humiliated this man in front of his entire family and terrorized his entire family and you've destroyed his home. And then you go right next door and you do the same thing in a hundred homes."

In other news, Ricardo Sanchez, former commander in Iraq says:

"There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight," Sanchez told a group of journalists covering military affairs.

Typically, there is no mention of the living nightmare that the Americans have created for the Iraqis. They're just sand niggers, if a million die and a quarter of the population is displaced, no one cares.

Go home america. Fuck up your own country, leave the world alone.

Great day

Today was a most wonderful day. I didn't think it would be. Timmy's nanny went to Cagayan de Oro to help her husband with something and she's going to be out for a week. On the other hand, today was also Eid-al-Fitr, a muslim holiday which is an official holiday in the Philippines. So taking care of timmy was made much lighter by having many hands to carry him and play with him.

And then we thought to end the day by going to U.P. Diliman and having isaw for dinner. For those with great intestinal fortitude (which would be 99.999% of filipinos, excluding the very few vegetarians), isaw is chicken or pork intestines, skewered on bamboo sticks and barbecued over charcoal.

At U.P., we went to Manang's isaw stand behind the college of Law. She had run out though and was closing down when we went. That was too bad. Manang has the best isaw in the country, and perhaps the world.

Since Manang's wasn't available though, we went over to Mang Larry's isaw stand near the Kalayaan freshman dormitory. They were doing great business there. There were so many people standing in line, we had to wait perhaps 45 minutes for our order to be delivered. Timmy had a great time watching all the people (and the streetlights, as they came on with the night). I think we must have had too much (30 sticks of goto [pork], 30 sticks of chicken, 5 sticks of regular pork barbecue and 5 sticks of pigs ear). Hahahaha.

A great time was had by all though. Unfortunately, it was dark when we were all done, so we couldn't walk around the sunken garden with timmy in his stroller (with mandatory mosquito net). I hope we can try for that on Sunday, or next weekend. Tomorrow we'll be going to Greenhills. My sister-in-law will be walking, or jogging. We, on the other hand, will be at the weekend street market buying prawns, fish and vegetables :-).

killing more women, making three new girl orphans

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2231D735-2C65-49A4-97B8-A75E879E0647.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/09/iraq/main3346229_page2.shtml

go home America. kill your own, leave the world alone.

bad back

I've still got a bad back. And some dizziness. I think the dizziness is just from lack of sleep, and maybe too much coke light :-). I'm going to work, but I'm taking my time getting ready, letting my back relax.

I should do some stretching though. Sol tells me that all the time, I should do it. And I will. Right Now ;-). I just need to be reminded sometimes :-)

food trip

This week has been an awesome food trip. But first, a side-trip. I've not been in the best of health (late nights, back problems from carrying a baby who is growing into the Hulk). I had bad enough back trouble that I couldn't go to work (there was a typhoon going through too, so that was convenient). I still get spasms, but I think I might be able to go to work tomorrow. Or if not tomorrow, then on Tuesday.

I went to my HMO doctor a few months ago, they prescribed a muscle relaxant that makes me nauseous. So I don't take it. It seems there isn't anything seriously wrong with my back that good posture, lumbar support while sitting, and not having to carry timmy would solve. Unfortunately, that last is not negotiable, so I carry timmy anyway, and ache the while, and have trouble getting up the next day because of spasms :-).

They're spasms higher in the back though, not lumbar problems.

Anyway, this has been an incredible week for food. Tonight sol made French onion soup. The onion soup was good (caramelized onion is wonderful by itself, and cheese, like ketchup, improves everything), the french bread looked weird after being soaked in the soup, but it was all wonderful.

On Friday sol and I went to Sugi, at greenbelt. A friend of sol's from a previous life was going to New York, so a few good friends and one tag-along (i.e., me) treated her to Sugi. That is the most wonderful japanese food I have ever had. I'm sure there are better japanese restaurants, but they're not in the Philippines. Sugi is also about 2-3 times more expensive than other japanese restaurants. But the experience is incredible. That's going to be like Neo Spa at the Fort, an experience to be savored, but only once or twice a year :-).

I'm reminded that sol offered to treat me to Neo Spa because of my back problems. Like a fool, I declined. If she offers this coming week, I'm definitely accepting :-).

We also went to Kimono Ken at the Podium. That was wonderful. It's always good to go on quiet dates with sol, but it's always better if the food is great :-). The service at the Podium was first class, and the salmon slices are (by size) almost as good as at Teriyaki Grill on U.N. avenue in Manila. Everything was wonderful though. I may have a new favorite japanese restaurant. Sugi is always good, but I can't afford to go there more than once a month, and I don't want to go there once a month since even then it hurts. Kimono Ken is sufficiently better than Sushi-ya that it's definitely my new favorite, particularly since Sushi-ya has reconfigured its menu and portions so that what seemed to be great deals a year ago are just a bit above average now.

Sushi-ya is still a great and convenient place to go, but it's no longer #1 for bang-for-the-buck.

New Timmy videos

This is Timmy's 11th month and he's been up to some new things:

He's been standing:



Standing some more and clapping:


And running:


The running is older than the standing. We've been capturing video and not saving it though, so we had a backlog of a week or two of video in the camera. There's a lot more video, but it's going to be backed up to my USB drive. Certainly, U.S. laws being all weird, we're not posting todays Timmy bathing video :-). His cousins can get that via CD/DVD maybe.

Cowards with more firepower than you

Blackwater Corp, killing women and children to keep America safe. Cowards with more firepower than everyone around them, not answerable to the law, bringing their brand of terror to the U.S. homeland next.

Those bastards are going free, of course. Bastard americans always do. Go home, bastards. And stay home. Kill your own if you want, leave the rest of the world alone. We don't want you.

ANYTHING

There's an ongoing flame-war on whether there's any truth to the story of a CIA plane loaded with 3.2 tons of cocaine that crashed in the Yucatan after being chased by Mexican helicopters

For instance, tommywotats says:

a gulfstream wouldn't even get off the ground with 3.2 tons of payload. writer is an asshat.

I'm tempted to say that anything and anyone loaded with 3.2 tons of cocaine can do ANYTHING. Unfortunately, I don't actually know anything about cocaine or any other illegal drugs (except for the fact that, uh, they're illegal). I'm an Uber Cool High Nerd, not a stoner, so all I can do is spout untested epigrams, witticisms, and the occasional solecism.

Or try to. Hehehehe.

[Update]
OK, so plane was used for CIA renditions, but has since been sold several times and fell into the hands of someone who was probably always running drugs. But then I didn't say ANYTHING about the CIA running drugs above :-). I'm just saying, anything loaded with 3.2 tons of cocaine can do ANYTHING!!! :-). hahahaha.

MEMO to George W Bush. If you invade Mexico now, you can get that 3.2 tons of cocaine. And then you'll be able to do ANYTHING!!!!

OLPC Pilot Project in Peru - awesome

I posted this on my other me because it's tech. But it's sufficiently good (socially, economically, emotionally :-) that I'll post it here too.

There's a great post on OLPC uptake and how it's changing the school experience in Arahuay, Peru.

This is very inspiring. If all (or even half of all) social/economic development projects were to end up 1/10th as effective as OLPC-Peru/Arahuay has been, the world would be incredibly good.
Antonio is repeating second grade, but:

The first day Antonio came to school with his XO laptop, instead of playing during recess, he kept on exploring the XO. He quickly became one of the most acquainted with it and empowered to help his classmates by telling them how to do this or that. The change was suddenly and highly noticeable. His teacher was amazed of how he had become more focused doing the class work and was helping his classmates with the computer activities.

And Diego's story is hard but heartwarming.

Diego is in second grade. He had stopped coming to school. However, he did come to pick up his XO laptop the day we handed them out. His teacher explained to me, that he has no father, and that his mother went to Lima, the capital, to work. And now, Diego and his two brothers are living by themselves, but a kind neighbor gives them their meals.

After that quote, there's a picture of Diego helping a first grader on using the OLPC.

Emilio is a hero:

“Once, when the teacher was explaining to the children how to look up some new words in the on-line Diccionario de la Real Academia Española [the best Spanish dictionary, costly and practically out of the children's reach in book form]. Emilio understood the procedure and quickly looked up the entire list of words while the teachers and the other students, together, slowly went through the process. The Internet connection went down. The teacher made the best of the situation and explained what the Internet was and about the satellite connection, for them to understand what was going on, and ended by saying, "We will have to wait a little bit until the connection is reestablished." To which Emilio replied, "No need, teacher. I got all the words, and everybody can copy them from me.”

But not just any hero. Anyone can shoot other people or order peons to shoot other peons. Emilio is a hero of the mind.

It's pretty clear that the OLPC is inspiring kids to stay in school. At best, they get interested in school and using the OLPC. At worst, they'll stay in school because if they don't, the OLPC will be taken from them.

Favorite

I have always loved this one. "I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?".

I didn't realize it was Tanzan though. Everywhere else I read it, it was always just "two monks" :-).

And I'd not heard this mother's advice before, but it's precious

Jiun, a Shogun master, was a well-known Sanskrit scholar of the Tokugawa era. When he was young he used to deliver lectures to his brother students.

His mother heard about this and wrote him a letter.:

"Son, I do not think you became a devotee of the Buddha because you desired to turn into a walking dictionary for others. There is no end to information and commentation, glory and honor. I wish you would stop this lecture business. Shut yourself up in a little temple in a remote part of the mountain. Devote your time to meditation and in this way attain true realization."

The united states of anuses

U.S. mercenaries provide firepower and protection to the U.S. State Department, so the State Department ignores numerous instances where the mercenaries kill civilians. When one mercenary kills the bodyguard of an Iraqi bigshot, INSIDE THE GREEN ZONE, because (from another report), the mercenary needed to kill someone that night, the mercenary is flown out of Iraq and is no longer available for questioning or justice

This has been a consistent pattern of U.S. imperialism. No one gets punished unless the shit hits the fan. Even when the shit hits the fan, no one gets punished unless there is an outcry in the U.S.

There's hardly ever an outcry. And even when there is, it's easily ignored. So Americans rape and kill with impunity. It's not just individuals they rape and kill, it's entire countries and civilizations.

Go home America. And stay the fuck home. Kill your own. Rape your own. Torture each other. But leave the rest of the world alone.

you missed two

So the Bush administration hires mercenaries run by some nutjob christian (there are quite a few of those, as there are quite a few in any religion, although there are fewer buddhist nutjobs than other religions have, and perhaps more pagan nutjobs than even christian nutjobs) fanatic. They strut through a foreign country killing people and there's neither oversight nor retribution.

And MarkTheShark on the Daily Kos limits himself to "Impede, impeach and imprison".

That's not enough. Close to (or perhaps more than) half a million Iraqi dead and millions of refugees cleverly created by the anti-christ in the white house and you shrink from penalties that don't fit your alliteration?

No, you missed two. Convict. Execute.

I'd consider torturing Bush and Cheney too, but I'm not an American.

Reich Wingers!!!

Hahahahaha in the comments to an article on "Taser This! FUCK BUSH", EnderW gives me a wonderful new phrase.

I once told a good friend the spanish for "To Fuck", and she started shouting it in public. At the time I was merely embarrassed. Now I know what she was feeling. Hahahahaha.

good news, bad news

First the bad. Timmy is sick. He's got colds and a cough. Because of the cough he's tired and irritable in the daytime and doesn't sleep for very long at night. He'll recover, of course, but he sounds bad when coughing.

We've been told (by maelene, his aunt-pediatrician) to give him medicine. I forget exactly what everything is, but there's a nebulizer, and solmux, and something else. All treat the symptoms only. But that's because the cough will go away by itself, we just need to suppress the symptoms so that timmy (and his parents) aren't too stressed out by the coughing.

I almost didn't go to work yesterday because I wanted to be home to help out. Went to work though. Today, it's similar. Going to work though, after this post.

On the good news side, we've got our invitation to apply for immigration to NZ. It's been a long process, but I've been glad of that. This way, the schedule works out pretty well. We have 3 months to actually lodge the application. And once that's accepted (probably within a week of application, NZ Immigration is frighteningly efficient) we'll have a month or so to make the trip. I hope we can stay in the Philippines up to 3 months after the application is accepted. I'd like to finish up some things at work. We'll see what happens though. In any case, we'll be in NZ by March, certainly, or maybe a little earlier.

There's still the option of sol going over and finding work and timmy and I staying in Manila until sol is stable. That would be much the more practical choice (financially). I don't think it's likely that we'll do that though, unless money is extraordinarily tight. And it's unlikely that things will be that tight then.

[Update]
It's Wednesday now. Timmy is still sick and the weather is bad. I'm working remote.