Thursday, December 30, 2004

auld lang syne

a premature greeting.

happy new year folks! i might not be able to post an entry during the turn of the year.

new year. new challenges. new failures. sigh.

guess i'll have to seek a new life.

latest musing of Etchie at 16:05 0 comments

climbing the rig

haha.

got my head functioning again.

a perennial predicament suppressed. good thing. now, my problem is the `how-to-?'

yeah. my computer crashed.

damnit.

latest musing of Etchie at 10:31 0 comments

Thursday, December 23, 2004

crash

my notebook crashed.

it was expected anyway. probably more like saying "you oughtta get a new one". yes. i will. eventually.

my sights is in an Apple iBook (notice the caps hehe). or an ibm thinkpad. or...

being a loyal mobile companion for four years is enough. hm. so long, acer travelmate. it's been a great four years.

latest musing of Etchie at 16:34 0 comments

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

calling

i want to write.

the problem is: what to write?

facing another bout of mental collapse. searching and scrawling. scarfed with inevitable dumbness.

black.

argh. just want to squeeze something.

cerebral emissions lost. drained.

latest musing of Etchie at 23:32 0 comments

Monday, December 20, 2004

slumber

it dawned to me. a few more days and its Christmas.

and i've been away for 5 months. living the american dream with the thought of waking up. i know anyone would barter anything to be in my shoes, but i think otherwise.

dorothy would say 'there's no place like home'. uh-huh. walking the yellow-brick road, heading nowhere, searching for somewhere. lost in the sea of fantasies. weeping like a child. i don't know where i'm going.

somewhere far ahead i might see what is missing. i know i'll get to smile in the end.

live the american dream, they say. it's either i wake up or continue dreaming.

latest musing of Etchie at 21:21 0 comments

back in circulation

posting this entry at work.

got a new job. whew. end of monotony. start of new one.

good thing though. my bank account is resuscitated.

compensating irony.

latest musing of Etchie at 14:44 0 comments

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

frozen

we're clocking 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit the past couple of days.

and it seems it's a bit odd considering we're in Florida (or so they say).

yeah. i'm freezing.

on the edge of hypothermia. numb. shaking.

latest musing of Etchie at 14:47 0 comments

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

far

it's nice to have some people you know try to correspond anyway they can. however, the downside is they make the homesickness recur. and it's difficult to surmise that you're thousands of miles away, slapping the fact that you're here for good. unless you can gather enough money for a ticket home.

yeah. i miss Manila. all the squalor of that third world city. carbon monoxide fumes and gridlocked thorougfares. hoping, in anyway, to liberate itself from such degradation. beyond all the derogatory euphemisms, my heart goes where I came from. some patriotic shit, I know.

this will be my first christmas away from home.

trapped in a black and white world. wandering. diverting.

out of reach.

latest musing of Etchie at 16:55 0 comments

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

eyes wide shut

i can't sleep.

facing the luminous glow of my laptop monitor. anticipating. blinking. skjoldbjaerg and nolan applauding.

insomnia. hehe. stephen king in sandbox.

two servings of starbucks breakfast blend. caffeinated. fixed. reeling. high.

quoting Frost in gibberish:

"the woods are lovely, dark and deep,
but i have promises to keep.
and miles to go before i sleep,
and miles to go before i sleep."

latest musing of Etchie at 02:37 0 comments

paris, florida

my wife told me she heard a rumor that Paris Hilton was recently admitted at the hospital where she's working.

damn.

if i only have that dvd...

...i'll ask for her autograph.

latest musing of Etchie at 01:15 2 comments

Monday, December 06, 2004

5 things to do before i die...

...or succinctly put: My List of Impossibilities.

in no preferential order:

1. learn to play the saxophone (a college dream)
2. write a novel (procrastinator on the loose...)
3. own a learjet/maseratti/yacht (a bag of loose luxuries)
4. hang out at a Paris bistro (working on it...)
5. be a chick magnet (!)

uh...

live in the present, dude.

dream on, Etchie. dream on.

latest musing of Etchie at 18:14 0 comments

good scripture

current read: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

Carina said Rushdie wrote my biography.

Ha-ha.

latest musing of Etchie at 11:36 0 comments

debug

earjacked by Bird Parker.

hallucinating.

doped.

jazz makes my day...

latest musing of Etchie at 11:10 0 comments

lost and found

We bought a new car last Friday. A 2005 Toyota Corolla LE. I'm fond of Corollas, my car back in Manila was a Corolla. And we shared a lot of moments together. Good or bad. Debauched or decent. I love my car.

Anyway, I test drove our car last Saturday. A kind of pre-break-in, I guess. We tried looking for the `other' mall that some people here are talking about. Yeah, there is another mall--quite different than the one we normally go to. I don't know. Maybe we're not mobile enough to search for it though. So we tried.

And got lost.

Ineptitude is not a mortal sin. It borders on being guilty and being innocent of the crime. The only thing different is you have excuse. Not an alibi, but a valid excuse. People will comprehend what you are saying. And they will nod to you in agreement. However, the lowdown is...it's a one-shot affair. You can't just say I did it once more unknowingly. Except, of course, you're fooling yourself.

We got back. Figured out the way.

Getting lost is John Coltrane on saxophones. Looking for the perfect tune to compensate a monotony of percussions.

latest musing of Etchie at 08:00 0 comments

Thursday, December 02, 2004

defrag

Listening to Coltrane...

Nuff said.

latest musing of Etchie at 02:01 0 comments

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

just breathe...

I have an asthma.

My daughter has asthma.

I don't smoke. Neither does she (she's four years old, for chrissakes). Well, I tried to once, but I didn't pursue a would-be habit 'coz I know it'll kill me in the end. Not that I wanted to, but I just attempted to put that darn cigarette in my mouth...

Just a single stick. It doesn't matter anyway. It makes no difference whether you it's a stick or a pack.

Anyway, Sas and I brought Brianne this morning to a pediatric pulmonologist due to a recent asthma attack. We don't have this nebulizer thingie here in Florida, so we had Brianne on a continuous medication of salbutamol and celestamine--which I believe would run out in a few days time--considering the dose we normally give her. Since it would be impossible for my folks in Manila to restock us with those medicines through Fedex or whatnots, we decided to have Brianne see a medical specialist.

What amazes me is how the medical system here in the United States caters to its residents, be it citizens or immigrants like us. Nebulizers are not over-the-counter medication unlike in Manila wherein you could purchase this in a drugstore for P 5,000. Since this was our case, we ran out of any option except to bring her to a physician and get us a nebulizer.

Following an x-ray and this some kind of sinus test, she was given a prescription for those steroid inhalers that I similarly use. I don't exactly know the reason, but they say it would be her some sort of maintenance drug, which in my case (it's different, I know)--I had to use it in 'this-dose-for-blah-blah-days-then-you-come-back-and-we-will-adjust-your-dose' thing. The doctor, also, told us that we could get the nebulizer in no time, which, true to his word, the health-care provider called us awhile ago and informed us the device will be on its way in three hours. Delivered. No questions asked and no strings attached.

Sad to say the health care system in the Philippines is far different from how the same thing works here. You pay your tax and the taxpayers literally see where their money go. The state offers you the best treatment you could possibly think of but of course, you have to have your insurance with you. It may take us huge deductibles in our paychecks, however, it is safe to say that you're covered from head to foot.

Still I can't find the answer why a lot of Americans could not see their advantages.

latest musing of Etchie at 16:43 1 comments

phlog

I've decided to put up a virtual photo album or photoblog or phlog, whatever. You can access the site by clicking the link under Connections (on the right hand side of the page, just below the Blogger icon) or you can direct the pointer here.

I'm still in the process of uploading images in the phlog, mostly our mini-excursion to Disneyworld a couple of weeks ago. There's nothing much to see, though, and you'll just waste your precious time perusing over a handful of photographs which will eventually be deleted by me, as soon as I filled up the space the server allows.

The phlog also serves us a wastebasket of images that I supposedly planned on putting up here (on this blog), but decided not to because I don't have the necessary software nor the knowledge of incorporating graphic files in the journal itself. The picture you oftentimes see below (or at the archive page of this blog) was simply a trial and error thing--used with the Hello software I could not quite understand how it works though--and I'm having this strange fixation of not deleting it. For vanity purposes it may serve, anyway.

latest musing of Etchie at 14:17 0 comments

No Smoking Joint