Alive and Kicking

Wow, for a moment there I thought that I might end up neglecting this. But luckily here I am posting after a few weeks of absence.   Well there are a few things on my mind right now which I would like to share namely Brazo de Mercedes, Fruits Basket, and Mpeg-4s on PS3.

First thing is the best Brazo de Mercedes that I’ve ever had, although I would have to say I haven’t had that many and this wasn’t exactly in the shape of a Brazo.   For those who don’t know what Brazo de Mercedes is, it is a delicious dessert that has meringue, a custard or cream that is rolled into a log shape.  The one I had recently was different though.  It was not in the traditional log shape but instead it was square and it was frozen.  It still had meringue on top and the custard/cream, but it had the addition of cheese ice cream and sweet graham crackers for the base.  It was delicious!!!  I found out about this thanks to my brother who was the one who bought it ^_^.   He found out about it through the internet and bought some the other day in a cooler.  I really recommend those that live here in the Philippines to try it!!  They are located at 1243 Acacia St., Dasmarinas St., Makati and they’re number is (02)843-8086.  If you wanna see some pictures there are some  at this blog .

I just finished reading the Fruits Basket manga yesterday and I love it!  It is definitely a must read manga for me.  The anime pales in comparison since it lacked so much.  The anime stopped at volume 6 and there a 23 volumes total.  So thats a lot of the story missing.  The part of the story that the anime did cover wasn’t nearly as exciting as the rest of the manga since that was only the beginning.  You also get to see the characters grow more and develop into people who can interact better with other people(especially Yuki).  The drawings also show how much they mature with their looks changing.  When you compare how Kyo looks in the first volume to the Kyo in the later volumes you can see a real differences.   There is just so much that the anime left out.  I’m really glad that I decided to dl it.

Now on to my stupidity.  I recently dl-ed Red Kawa’s PS3 video 9 so I could convert my Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece into PS3 readable format.  After converting an episode of One Piece into Mpeg-4AVC I moved it to my WMP 11 library so I could share it.  But to my disappointment when I accessed it it didn’t work and I kept getting the “Unsupported Format” message.  At first I thought maybe the file wasn’t converted properly so I tried again, still didn’t work.  So I though maybe there was a problem with PS3 video 9, after searching their forum I found out that they had a problem before but that was fixed.  I decided to read more and then I found it.  I was an idiot.  WMP11 doesn’t support Mpeg-4 in its library. Thats when I thought “huh, thats why the file was 0 seconds when I put it in the library.”  So it works now, all I had to do was stick the file into my flash drive and plug it into the PS3. ^^;;

Well thats all for now.  It’s time to watch bleach! :d

Till next time!

Styro Connection

I really hate the internet connection I have. I’ve been downloading 20+ Gigs of One Piece for 29 days already and only a few files have finished. I’m only at around 30% done, or I might not even be at 30% yet. T.T Man I hope it doesn’t take me two months to dl One Piece. At least the episodes are downloading in order so I can watch while waiting…then wait a few days to a few weeks for a few more epi’s to dl. Oh well I guess thats life when you have a crappy connection.

Well since grad, or rather since May, I’ve been helping around my parent’s office. I haven’t been helping with much just been writing deposit slips, checking faxes, filing stuff, and inputting things into Quicken. I’ve been doing Sudoku in-between or playing with my pup, Whisper.

I’ve also been reading this magazine that gets sent to us for free. It’s called Masigasig, I think it means determination or something (not really sure since my tagalog sucks). Anywho, it has a lotta interesting articles about entrepreneurs here in the Phils. that have succeeded in their trade. It’s realy inspiring to read and it makes me wanna do something.

I’ve actually been thinking of all the scrap Styrofoam we have lying around and this show I saw on National Geographic about the Venetian Resort and Hotel in Vegas. All the statues and exterior moldings are made of Styrofoam. Right now we make Styrofoam moldings of any size. They are actually quite strong and may last longer than pre-cast moldings that are more popular here in the Philippines. Well anyways, we always have a lot of scrap and for quite awhile now we’ve been thinking of ways to utilize these scraps. Usually we just pack them into large bags and give them back to our supplier to be recycled. We have been thinking of getting a grinding machine to grind the styro so we can make bean bags or something. What I wanna do is to make small statues with the larger pieces of scrap. The problem is I’m no sculptor, but I figure I might as well try!

Wish me luck!

Till next time!

Almost didn’t march

Today I graduated BSIT , but before that could happen I almost wasn’t able to march during the ceremony.  I blame that on the fact that I woke up late and I didn’t prepare earlier…but mainly coz I woke up late.  Since I woke up late (which in reality wasn’t that late) we picked up my aunt 30 mins late and we arrived at Peking Garden 30 mins late as well.  Good thing there weren’t that many people there so my reservation was still there.

Peking Garden had typical chinese restaurant food, the good kind of chinese food mind you not that Hap Chan nastiness.  The xiao long bao was different from the xiao long paos that I’ve had.  The meat was juicy but it was the kind of juiciness that you can drink up like most xiao long baos.  That made it good in its own way, but I prefer Suzhou’s xiao long baos, which you can drink.

Anyways back to the reason why I almost didn’t march.  On our way to Peking Garden and stuck in traffic I realized that I had forgotten my Becca(beca? beka? how do you spell that?).  We couldn’t go back home since we wouldn’t make it back in time to make it to my grad so I started text messaging my friends and prof to ask if they happened to have extras.  I needed to find a becca since someone told me that I wouldn’t be able to march without it.  By the time we finished eating I still didn’t have a becca but by that time I was thinking “If I don’t find one I just wont go.  It’s just a ceremony after all.”  When we got to PICC, though, I was so relieved to find a bag full of IT-orange beccas waiting for me.  So I got to march , with my cap falling twice ^^;.  Other than that grad was great!  I got to see everyone and take pictures, well I didn’t take pictures, all my friends did.

Yay for me I am now an official graduate of batch 2007!

 Till next time!

edit: Bout the image its just a panda I quickly drew in photoshop yesterday…and i’m really bothered by his bottom..hehe oh well

Grad Practice on Mom’s Birthday

Yesterday was my mom’s 58th birthday, but I wasn’t able to spend much of the day with her due to graduation practice.  My grad practice was from 12 – 5(but it really ended at 3:30) so I wasn’t able to eat lunch with my family, including my aunt(my mom’s sister).   I ended up having lunch at 10:30 and I left the house at 11 hoping it was traffic on the way.

My grad ceremony is going to be held at PICC(Philippine International Convention Center..I think) so it took me around an hour to get to the practice.  When I got there they confiscated my water bottle because we couldn’t bring food or drinks into the building, so much for going prepared.  We didn’t do much at the practice really, we just practiced entering and exiting the Plenary Hall.  We also practiced standing and sitting but for the most part we just listened to the moderator tell as the order of the events.  He also warned us that there might be a rally on Saturday(the day of our grad) since the counting of the votes by Comelec is in one of the buildings at PICC.  After all that we all crowed and somewhat lined up to get out tickets and togas.

 Eventhough we finished early I had to sit and get eaten by mosquitos for two hours(T.T).   I hate those evil little blood suckers.

 We went to eat dinner for my mom’s birthday with my aunt since I wasn’t able to eat lunch with them.  We ate at this great Japanese restaurant called Omakase.  They have the best sushi! Well that I’ve had here in the Philippines.

 Well tomorrow’s grad so I should get some beauty rest or something .

 Till next time

My Pyramid

So I was browsing WebMD yesterday looking at their articles for healthy eating and stuff when I stumbled upon mypyramid.gov. Its a USDA site which has lots of information about the new food pyramid. I spending the rest of the night looking at the site and entering stuff about my food intake and my physical activity for the day. Its a real interesting site with a lot of information about the different food groups and how much you should eat. I ended up copying and pasting most of it to Word since my mom wanted to read it.

They have this part where you can keep track of your intake of food and your physical activity everyday and they provide an analysis about it as well. This is all of course compared to your age, sex height, and weight. There are many choices to choose from when entering your food intake. The page is set up with a search and it will find any food that matches or is like what you entered. I even found Pinakbet even if it was spelled pinacbet. The physical activity that you can enter is also very detailed. You have to put in your daily activities such as showering, eating, personal hygiene, and hairstyling. Took me quite a time to fill in my physical activities even though most of them were under self care. They also have a feature where you can save the physical activities and foods you frequently select on a list so that you can search through and select them easily.

After inputting all your information for the day you will be able to see the analysis for you food intake, nurtrition, calories, physical activity, and how balanced you are along with a few others I forgot. I found out that the total calories I ate yesterday was 2053 when I should only be taking in 1800. But I did burn most of it from going up the stairs and doing housework. So it all basically evened out.

They also have some kind of worksheet for each day where you can estimate the amount of servings for each food group you’ve eaten and compare it to what you should have eaten. I saved a few of them to my desktop along with a whole lotta other stuff from the site.

I hope some of you find it as interesting as I did.

Till next time!

TriNoMa (my first real post)

Today I went to TriNoMa the new Ayala Mall here in Quezon City to watch Pirates . I’d like to share what I thought about TriNoMa.

Dislikes

It seems that they rushed the opening of TriNoMa. A lot of the parking building was still underconstruction, including the pour of cement for some of the posts. The interior had uneven painting of the walls and the walls themselves weren’t as flat as they could be. Also the majority of the shops were still closed. The shape of the mall didn’t seem that pratical to me. There were to many small walkways which I’m guessing is for more shops, which probably wouldn’t be visited that much once they open. That didnt install any kind of acoustic which made it quite noisy on all floors near the atrium. The top floor was also quite noisy due to Time-Zone and a carousel’s music. I really think they should have installed some kind of acoustic in the ceiling at the very least. Although, now that I think about it most of the malls here don’t have acoustics. The theater I found too big. What I mean by this is that they made the capacity for the cinema too big. They tried to make the capacity so big that it made the screen so small. Instead of a screen being wall to wall and ceiling to floor it had plenty of space surrounding the screen. The best seats are in the center of the theater, but the most comfortable would probably be the recliners. There is a downside to the recliners though, they are located in the back of the theater which is far from the screen.

Likes

Although the mall was rushed and most of it was underconstruction I thought that it was good that they are making lots of parking spaces since most of the malls lack this. SM North, which is next to TriNoMa, has an extreme lack of parking. I also liked that TriNoMa had a outdoor garden area where people could walk, although I couldn’t since it was raining. In the cinema there are a few seats that are recliners, which are the ones we took. It only costs 250 or so which is cheaper than Gateways 300+(Note: Gateway gives popcorn and drinks with it).

I’d probably wait a few more months for all the stores to open before going back.

Anyways enough of TriNoma. Pirates was okay. It doesn’t compare to the other two though and it sucks that Captain Sao Feng dies making Elizabeth the captain. I loved the multiple Jacks!! hehe Johnny Depp goodness

Well thats about it for today.

Till next time