Vamos, Rafa!

Rafael Nadal is the 2008 Wimbledon Men's Singles Champion! Woo-hoo!!!

In what has to be arguably the best Wimbledon final - heck, best Grand Slam final - ever, Rafael Nadal squeaked past Roger Federer in five intense and absolutely gruelling sets of out-of-this-world tennis. It was so tense that I actually stayed up until 430am to finish the match. It lasted 4 hours 48 minutes, the longest men's final ever. And that's not counting the two rain delays - one that came towards the end of the third set and another that came in the start of the 5th - or the fact that it started about half an hour late also because of rain. And me being the Nadal fan that I am, I actually stayed up to watch the whole trophy ceremony.

The final had it all - swings in momentum, fantastic rallies, unbelievable mental toughness from both players, breakpoints, set points, and even match points saved.

Rafa won the first set after breaking Roger early. Then he was down a break in the second set when he managed to break Roger back twice to take a commanding 2-0 lead. One more set and the title would be his.

But Federer is the best grass court player this decade - the defending champion has won a record equalling five Wimbledon titles in a row, a record 10 consecutive grass court tournaments, and a record 65 consecutive matches on grass. He was not about to roll over and die. He took the 3rd set to a tie-break where he scored a mini-break of serve and held on to it to take the third set.

The fourth set was decided once more in a tie-break. Nadal initially had the upper-hand, he was 5-2 up, with two mini-breaks of serve and was two points away from the title. But nerves got to him and he double faulted. Nadal actually had two matchpoints in the tie-break, but on each occasion Roger raised the level of his game to even things out. And when Rafa hit a backhand long on Roger's 2nd set point, the match was dead even at two sets apiece. Oh the stress!

I was seriously worried in the fifth set. Roger seemed to have the momentum on his side, and for a few games he seemed to have figured out Rafa's forehand. Moreover, most players who led 2-0 and had match points who then found themselves in a fifth set would have withered and died. But not Rafa. He showed that his mental frailty in the 4th set tie-break was temporary and proved his mettle by staying toe-to-toe with Roger until 7-all.

It was at this point that Nadal then scored the all important break of serve to leave him serving for the match at 8-7. By now the it was almost half past nine and the lighting was very poor. But matchplay continued. Rafa had another match point which Roger saved with a sublime cross-court backhand. Finally, on his fourth matchpoint, and after nearly five hours of nerve-wracking, breathtaking tennis, Roger hit his forehand to the net to hand Rafa the title.

It has to be the absolute best match I have ever seen in my entire life. Any other male tennis player who saw that match probably realized just how much ground they have to cover before they can really challenge the world's top 2 tennis players, at least on grass.

Nadal has now won a tour-leading 6 titles this year, including two Grand Slam titles. He is still behind Roger but so far this year he's had the best results by a mile. If he can continue to do well, he has a strong chance to finish this year as the #1. Which I think he truly deserves.

Go Rafa!

Marathon training tracker - July 3

Target distance: 16 km
Target time: 1 hr 41 mins
Actual time: 1 hr 42 mins

Short of my target time again but not by much. Seems like I'm over-estimating my abilities LOL.

I had dinner at around 615pm - 2-piece fully loaded meal in KFC - and since I was planning to run at a bit past 8pm, I felt that 1 1/2 hours would be enough time for the food to settle in my stomach and not be a distraction during my run. It didn't seem like it though when I started running at around 820pm - I could somehow feel some extra weight and I actually felt like throwing up a few times during my training. Clearly this is not the way you are supposed to do it LOL but then again, I've never really been very scientific with my running.

Next target: 24 km in 2 hours 40 minutes.

I will also attempt to run on the road for the first time in my training this year. I'm a bit worried since the circuit I plan on running is 3k long, and so far I've been rehydrating every 2k. I guess this just means I need to stay well-hydrated tomorrow and on Saturday before I run. Wish me luck!

One round to go before Roger-Rafa III

The men will be playing in the Wimbledon semifinals tomorrow. Roger Federer will be facing Marat Safin, the man who beat Roger in the semifinals of the Australian Open way back in 2005. Safin, an ex-#1 player, has regained some of the form that has seen him win two Grand Slam singles titles in his career, but he is up against a very in-form and hungry Federer.

I was initially worried for Nadal - the little slip-up he had in the previous round against Kiefer made me wonder whether his knee wouldn't be in perfect condition. And his opponent in the quarters was Andy Murray who had been playing very well over the last week and a half, and was riding on the momentum of his come-from-behind win against Richard Gasquet. The fact that Murray had the entire crowd rooting for him was more cause for concern, but Rafa seemed oblivious to it all and swept Murray aside in straight sets.

He will now face the winner of Arnaud Clement and Rainer Schuettler, whose match has spanned 2 days due to rain delays and is currently at 6-all in the fifth set. The winner of this match will clearly be tired for the semifinal against Nadal, so I'm hoping Nadal can once again meet Roger in the finals of Wimbledon.

If Roger and Rafa do meet up, it will be the third straight year where they will meet in the final of The Championships. Should be a great weekend.

Marathon training tracker - June 25 to July 1

I think that tracking my training runs in my blog has actually been helped me have a lot more discipline in my training. In the four previous times that I have trained for a marathon, I occasionally missed training runs because I wasn't feeling up to it, or I normally shaved off a few kilometers off my target distance. This year though, I've been pretty solid in terms of meeting my distance targets. Which is good.

June 25

Target distance: 14 kilometers
Target time: 1 hour 24 minutes
Actual time: 1 hour 27 minutes

I didn't meet my target time but I did cover the full distance and I managed to keep a very steady pace without slowing down (except to drink Gatorade) throughout the run. And heck, 3 minutes off target is not bad at all.

June 28

Target distance: 21 kilometers
Target time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Actual time: 2 hours 16 minutes

Again, just a fraction off my target time. I was running at a pretty good pace actually until I got past 19 kilometers during which time I felt incredibly tired and had to slow my pace down. Once again, I need to figure out better energy management for the longer distances i.e. 15k and up.

July 1

Target distance: 8 kilometers
Target time: 47 minutes
Actual time: 47 minutes 4 seconds

LOL okay I just had to put the 4 seconds in there. I was kinda kicking myself in the butt for not forcing the issue and increasing my final 200m sprint speed to make sure I was under the 47 minute mark. But I guess I didn't really care. At around 6 kilometers I was actually feeling quite tired and was almost about to decide to slow down or even shorten my target distance to 7km but I found a second wind and actually ended very strongly.

Next target: 16 kilometers in 1 hour 41 minutes on Thursday, July 3. Wish me luck!

Tournament of upsets

# 1 Ana Ivanovic lost in the 3rd round. So did #2 Maria Sharapova. #3 Jelena Jankovic and #4 Svetlana Kuznetsova both managed to make it into the second week but then both lost in the 4th round. So the top 4 women seeds are out. This is the first Wimbledon event where all top 4 women's seeds were eliminated by the 4th round. Amazing.

The top men aren't faring that much better. #3 Novak Djokovic, #4 Nikolai Davydenko, #5 David Ferrer, and #6 Andy Roddick are all gone.

Of course you still have #1 Roger Federer and #2 Rafael Nadal are still on course to meet in the final. On the women's side, the Williams sisters Venus and Serena seem on course for a final. They traditionally have not played well when they played against each other but something tells me that if they meet here, it may be a bit better than any of their previous matches against each other.

I'm still hoping Rafa can cause the upset and win his first Wimbledon (and his first non-French Open Grand Slam event). The minor accident he had in his match against Mikhail Youzhny in the fourth round worries me a bit though. Anyways, just a few more days til the weekend. Can't wait to see how things turn out! :)

Friday night at the movies

I just got out of the cinema after watching the Incredible Hulk, and man, it was incredible!

The Incredible Hulk had been showing here for a couple of weeks already, which essentially means it would be taken out of movie-house circulation in Manila soon. So I made time to see it in the theater while I still could. And I certainly wasn't disappointed. I loved practically everything about it - the action, the conflict, the drama, and the set-up for a sequel. Definitely a film I'll be getting on DVD when it comes out. I really am such a sucker for superhero movies...

Marathon training tracker - June 12 to June 23

I've been incredibly busy the last week or so and haven't really been able to blog. So here's how my training has gone so far:

June 12
I managed to run 12 kilometers in 1 hour 14 minutes. The good news - I met both distance and time targets. The bad news is that this is the first time in a couple of weeks that I slowed down during training. In all my previous training runs, I managed to keep increasing my speed slowly from start to end. In this run, however, I was doing pretty well until at around 10 kilometers when I started feeling winded. I managed to cover several hundred meters more before needing to slow down.

My main goal during the marathon is to run 30 kilometers at an average speed of 9.5kph (or higher). If I can do that, then I can surely finish the marathon in under 5 hours (and possibly even beat my best time of 4 hours and 52 minutes). I now need to learn how to pace myself over longer distances much better and how to manage my energy more efficiently.

June 14
My target was to run 18 kilometers on June 14 (saturday) in 1 hour and 54 minutes. I barely missed my time targets - I covered my target distance in 1:56. The good thing though is that I managed my energy levels and pace much better, which was really my goal. I think that I could have kept running at least a few more kilometers without dropping speed which certainly gives me a lot more confidence with respect to achieving my speed goals for the marathon.

One week off
Last week, I had so much work that I didn't have time to train. I was a bit upset about it, buy my friend Allan told me that there in certain running circles, there is a school of thought that it is sometimes good to take a week off from training. I thus decided to just run again on Saturday.

June 21
Goal: 10 kilometers in 1 hour.
Result: 10 kilometers in 59 minutes 45 seconds

Yahoo!

June 23
Goal: 7 kilometers in 42 minutes
Result: 7 kilometers in 41 minutes

So far, so good. My speed is increasing, and my discipline to run has been pretty decent. My next goal is to run 14 kilometers in 1 hour 24 minutes.

Wimbledon!

Wimbledon, the lone tennis Grand Slam on grass just started today. Roger Federer swept aside his first round opponent, Dominik Hrbaty in three very easy sets. He's won this title five years in a row and hasn't lost on grass in - get this - his last 60 matches on this surface. Despite the fact that he hasn't been in his best form this year, he just won a grass tournament in Halle a couple of weeks ago and he is still a strong favorite to win the title. I wouldn't be surprised if he breaks Bjorn Borg's record of consecutive Championships won (they are currently tied, both with 5 titles in a row).

I would love it, though, if Rafael Nadal can actually breakthrough and win his first Wimbledon title. He just won his first grass court title a couple of weeks ago, and it was a pretty strong win because he had to navigate through two strong-servers and grass-court specialists in Ivo Karlovic and Andy Roddick as well as world #3 Novak Djokovic en route to the title. He is definitely on a hot-streak right now (he's won his last 17 matches) which will certainly help his confidence, but he does have a tough draw. He gets a bit of a break though, with Djokovic being Roger's half of the draw.

Two more weeks of very interesting tennis. Let's hope this tournament lives up to the hype...

Independence Day

Before the day ends, let me greet all Filipinos all over the world a very happy Independence Day!

Marathon training tracker - June 10

Breakthrough! I just ran 6 kilometers in 35 minutes and 26 seconds. That is an average of 5 minutes and 54 seconds per kilometer. Or an average speed of 10.14 kph. This matches the my speed about 2 years ago. Yahoo!!

Of course, I covered "only" 6 kilometers. But even in previous shorter runs I've had this year (i.e. 5 kilometers) I had to start running at 8.5 kph and just gradually build to 10kph towards the end of my run, ending up with an average speed of about 9 kph. Even in all my long runs recently, I had to start running at 8.5kph.

When I got to the treadmill for this training run and started at that speed, I somehow felt I could actually run a faster. I moved up to 9kph but I felt I could still take it up a notch. So I took a gamble and moved the speed up to 10 kph. I completed my first kilometer in a smidge over 6 minutes and I decided I was feeling strong enough to try and complete my 6k run with an average speed of 6 minutes per kilometer. I slowly increased my speed over the next half hour to 10.5kph. And with 200m left in my run, I still managed to sprint (or well, I ran at 12.5kph).

As I posted the other day, my initial goal was to cover 6k in 39 minutes (I was supposed to do it on Monday, but I had to work and ended up meeting up with my friend David for drinks - I hadn't seem him in years so it was great catching up - so I moved my training run to Tuesday). Needless to say I am really happy that I managed to shave off more than 3 1/2 minutes from my target. This gives me lots of confidence now leading to the marathon.

Next target: 12 kilometers on Thursday in 1 hour 16 minutes.

Rafael Nadal, the King of Clay

Rafael Nadal annihilated Roger Federer in the final of the French Open, 6-1 6-3 6-0. Wow.

If I had to put money on it, I would have bet Rafa to win his 4th French Open title in a row for sure. But I would never have bet him to have won in the manner that he did.

Clearly, there was immense pressure that was on the 22-year-old's shoulders (in fact, he was only 21 before the tournament started and just turned 22 while it was going on). He was the heavy favorite to win, with a good chance to equal Bjorn Borg's record of 4 consecutive French Open titles. Djokovic was hot on his heels and could take over the #2 spot that Rafa has had for more than 150 weeks (i.e. 3 full years) in a row already. Nadal also didn't have a very good start in 2008 and lost early in Rome, a clay court tournament he had owned for the last few years. He had to battle blisters during the clay court season. And Roger Federer, the guy who Nadal has beaten in every French Open encounter they have had since 2005, recently hired Jose Higueras as his part-time coach in the hopes that having a clay court specialist in his camp would help him in his cause to win the one Grand Slam event that he has not won yet.

The fact that he played 3 close sets in his first round win against a player I had never heard of before certainly didn't help his case. But that must have been a fluke. Because after that, Nadal just put on a dazzling display of aggressive claycourt tennis that left his opponents bewildered and matched that with his patented incredible defense that left his opponents frustrated. And exhausted.

A lot of people were expecting the final to be a more or less close encounter. After all, Roger took Nadal to three sets in Berlin a couple of weeks before. And their previous encounters in Roland Garros went four sets. So when Nadal whipped the mighty Roger - possibly the greatest tennis player ever - with the loss of only four games, it had everyone shaking their heads in disbelief. Including Nadal himself.

With Roger still firmly at the top of the rankings and Djokovic nipping at their heels, Rafa may very well end up being the best player never to reach the #1 ranking. A lot of people talk about how Roger could have easily won a couple of French Open titles, and even the elusive calendar Grand Slam, if Rafa were not if the picture. But if you look at it from the other side of the fence, Nadal could very well be the #1 player in the world 3 years in a row, with a couple of Wimbledon titles under his belt, if Roger weren't around.

Rafael Nadal did not drop a set en route to winning the trophy - only the seventh time in the open era that a male player went through the draw without the loss of a set - and it now gives him a perfect 28-0 record in the second Grand Slam event of the tennis year. At just 22 years of age, Nadal may very well win a few more Grand Slam titles in Paris. Clearly, he is the king of clay. And may very well be the best male clay court player in the history of tennis.

*****

Congratulations to Ana Ivanovic, who won her first Grand Slam title by beating Dinara Safina in straight sets. The win has also allowed her to become the #1 player in the WTA rankings.

Still Oz Elbow Room gig last May 23

Last week I posted about the audition that my band, Still Oz, had in Elbow Room last April 5. We passed the audition and were asked to return for a paid performance on both May 23.

We had to play 3 sets which meant about 25 songs or more. We hadn't played in a long time so we needed practice, which was difficult due to conflicting schedules, but we managed to re-learn enough songs.

Our first set went fairly well - we ended up throwing in a lot of songs we were very familiar with already. I managed to take a video of most of our songs and when I watched our performance of Third Eye Blind's "Jumper", I cringed as I was singing the verses way too quickly! We also performed Radiohead's "Creep" for the first time and it was a bit rusty with some wrong chords here and there but not bad overall - we got good applause from the crowd, in fact.

The second set was good too, but we played a lot of not-very-popular songs so the audience impact wasn't as high. We tossed in Bush's "Glycerine" (which we haven't played in ages!) and the Dave Matthews Band version of the Bob Dylan classic "All along the watchtower". "Stuck in a moment you can't get out of" by U2 was a partial disaster. While I was singing the first verse, Bunky told me twice to jump straight to the chorus so I omitted the second verse. But somehow the rest of my bandmates kept playing the second verse so it seemed like I actually forgot a portion of the song! Ugh. Anyways, we also got requests to play "No rain" by Blind Melon and "Crash into me" by Dave Matthews Band. Now most of the time, we get requests to play songs that we don't know how to play, so when we got this, we decided to go for it. We also tossed in "Black balloon" by Goo Goo dolls which is probably one of my favorite performances of ours that night.



Our third set was for the most part decent. The crowd was fairly sparse already so we didn't get a lot of cheers from the crowds anymore by this time. We performed Coldplay's "Yellow". Now clearly I am no Chris Martin, but what I loved about this performance is that I can now sing it much better than when we were starting out. I used to have difficulty singing in this range without belting. Also, my lower falsetto was too thin and I wasn't very good transitioning from a chest tone to a head tone and vice versa. Now I do a much better job of it (still room for improvement of course...)



Our last two songs for that night were "Far behind" by Candlebox and "Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews Band. What was interesting was that for most of the third set, which started at around 1230am, the crowd had thinned significantly so we no longer got a lot of strong crowd reaction. That changed when I belted out "Far behind" - the moment we finished, we got pretty loud cheers and applause from the crowd. Bunky actually gave me a high five and told me I nailed it. Which was great, except for the fact that when I checked my camera, I saw that it had run out of memory!!! I only managed to save the first 30 seconds of the song. I need to make sure that in our next gig, I start recording late enough in the show to make sure I get "Far behind" on video.

Anyways, a pretty good gig overall, and definitely not bad considering the amount of practice we got to put in. Click here for to see the rest of the videos of our gig (or well the rest of the vids I uploaded on youtube).

Marathon training tracker - June 7

I ran 15 kilometers today in almost 1 hour 39 minutes. Woo-hoo!

I have to say I am really pleased at the rate that my training is going. I have managed to run a few times (about once a week maybe) for a couple of months but it was only in the last two weeks that I really buckled down and started setting specific targets to get me ready to run the full marathon. And so far it's been pretty good.

Next goal is to run 6 kilometers in 39 minutes on Monday.

Arnel Pineda: the new lead vocalist of Journey

Talk about Philippine pride: Filipino Arnel Pineda is the new lead vocalist of the band Journey!

Some time ago, Journey were looking in the internet for a possible new vocalist and stumbled into Arnel's videos on youtube where his former band "The Zoo" were covering Journey songs such as "Faithfully". Lead and rhythm guitarist Neal Schon was impressed enough by the performance that he found a way to get in touch with Arnel and he then asked Arnel to audition for them.

Check out this video for the full story. It's a really amazing story, which includes his audition in the US embassy and his inspiring rags-to-riches story.



video uploaded in youtube by user lizejedlily

And here's an interesting story posted in the Philippine Star a couple of days ago (apparently, the story has been making its rounds on email but I only read about it the other day)

How Arnel impressed US Embassy officer

Here’s an interesting follow-up item to Funfare’s story a few issues about the GQ magazine’s six-page splash on Arnel Pineda as the newest Journey vocalist, this time about how Arnel impressed the US Embassy officer when he applied for a US visa, taken from the US Embassy News on the Internet (passed to Funfare by Jojo Gabinete).

The GQ story recounted: When Pineda went to get his visa, the guy who interviewed him at the embassy — “His name is Ben. I can’t forget his name,” Pineda says— was a fan who’d seen him play with the Zoo a couple of times, so Pineda took a request, and everybody in the office looked up from their desks at the guy singing Wheel in the Sky.

Here’s the full account by “Ben,” from the Embassy News on the Internet (tense changed from “present” to “past”):

Months ago a band showed up at my window. It was Lemons and Oranges, or something fruity. I asked about their music; looked at their posters, CDs, etc. At the end of the interview, they were saying, “Come out and see our show tonight.” I said, “I can’t take any free tickets yada yada yada but maybe I’ll pop in.”

It was a Friday. I went with two LES. We got a table, ordered some beer, fried chicken and so on. The opening band came on. They were called “Zoo” — this I’m sure of, since I’m from Kalamazoo, the name stuck.

The Zoo started rocking out to 70/80s tunes. But the coup de grace was indisputably when they busted out Journey. I mean, the singer was not just goo — 95 percent of all Filipinos are good singers — he was really darn good. I couldn’t shut up about it. I was telling anyone who would listen, “Dude, not only does this guy have pipes, and range, he’s got perfect pitch. He has only missed a few notes on some of the hardest power ballads in schlock n roll history.”

The LES grudgingly agreed, but they’ve been desensitized to the regular displays of amazing karaoke you get in Manila, so maybe they were just humoring me.

The next week I was sitting at an NIV window next to an officer named Singer. Singer and I were doing FMJs and so we would trade off regular NIV applicants occasionally so that we got fair share of student visas.

I heard Singer say, “Journey? The band Journey?” He flipped through papers. He sounded unhappy.

I butted in: “What’s that all about?” He turned off his mic and looked over at me. “I don’t know. This guys says he’s going to try out for Journey.”

I was puzzled. “Journey? The band Journey?” Singer went, “That’s what I just said, [EXPLETIVE]!”

“Great, another nutjob. I’ll take it.” Singer took my student, I took the nutjob.

I looked over his stuff and said, “Purpose of travel?” and all that. I started to scrutinize more carefully and realized it was the guy I saw from the night before.

“Hey, does your band play at Bagaberde?” He confirmed and he went on to tell me the story of how he uploaded some clips of his band that he recorded to YouTube and contacted Journey’s manager, having heard they were looking for a new singer.

He said they called him up and invited him to the US to try out. Given the malarkey you get at a Manila NIV window, this story only got points for being original.

He produced some flimsy e-mails and letters, etc. So I went, in my best dubious voice, “Yeah? let’s hear Wheels in the Sky!”

He belted it out for the whole waiting room and for the staff to hear (I made sure to take off my headset and let the speaker play it because what I was really doing was covering my butt).

I said, “Look sir, there isn’t a person in this Embassy who would believe that story — going to try out for Journey! — not a soul would believe that. Except for me. I saw you sing last Friday and I couldn’t shut up about how your vocals were perfect Steve Perry. So I tell you what. I’m giving you that visa. You’re going to try out. And you’re going to make it....”

And the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history, my friends.

Marathon training tracker - June 5

I was initially planning to run 10km on Wednesday but due to scheduling constraints, I decided to run instead on Thursday. I'm still training on a treadmill even if I actually perform better on the road. This decision on my part is due to two things: (1) it is so hot this summer that if I run on the road now, I'm certain I will get dehydrated and tired - a lot more really quickly, and (2) running in the gym allows me to go home immediately after a run and put ice on my knees. My plan is to keep running on a treadmill for the next two weeks then do a "short" run on the road (maybe about 8km) and see where my endurance level is at. Hopefully by then my leg muscles would have strengthened sufficiently to provide better support to my knees and keep me injury-free. And hopefully my stamina would have improved a lot as well which will allow me to fight dehydration much better.

In any case, I managed to complete my 10km run in almost 1 hour 5 minutes. My speed has ever-so-slightly improved over the last few runs which is a good sign for me. I also managed to keep increasing my speed all the way to the end.

Next goal: run 15km in 1 hour and 40 minutes on Saturday.

French Open 2008

So the French Open is in its second week already, and there have been quite a few surprises to go along with several expected results.

Probably the biggest surprise actually came shortly before the French Open started when Justine Henin, who was #1 at that time, announced her retirement from tennis effective immediately. It was shocking in that she was a four-time Roland Garros champion, and had won the last three French Open championships. Despite her below-average results early this year, she had to have been the favorite to win her 5th title and 4th in a row.

A couple of other surprise results include the elimination of Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Then again, both results probably weren't that surprising. Serena did win a clay title this year, but it was on green clay, which plays quite differently than that red dirt. This is Serena's worst surface so a loss is probably more expected than a title, but she did get bumped out of the tourney by Katarina Srebotnik and if I had to put money on that match, I'd go with the younger Williams sister.

Maria Sharapova on the other hand lost to an in-form Dinara Safina who just won a clay title in Berlin shortly before the French Open started. Like Serena, Maria has never really well done on clay as the surface takes off some of the power of her shots. So her losing to her countrywoman who has been playing well recently isn't much of a shocker, at least not to me.

On the men's side, most of the top guns are still around. Nadal hasn't dropped a set and is favore to win his 4th French Open title. Federer has been playing superbly too and hasn't dropped a set either. Djokovic has dropped one set, way back in the first round I think, but has been pretty ominous since then. In fact, the Serbs have been doing pretty well here, with both Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic still in the running.

If I had to guess, Nadal will win the title on Sunday. On the women's side, I'm not too sure. Jankovic, Ivanovic, Safina, Dementieva, and Kuznetsova all have a shot at the title. Makes it interesting to see how things pan out on the women's side.

Marathon training tracker - May 31

I was planning to run 12 kilometers on 1 hour and 20 minutes last Saturday. It was really hot that day and I knew dehydration could be a factor. And after my bad experience with feeling quite dehydrated in a 5k run I had earlier that week, I decided to make sure I had a water bottle with me during my training run.

I managed to run 12k but about 2 minutes slower than I had planned. Still, it's not bad. I am also loving the fact that my knees are still holding up and that I'm not experiencing any pain. Hopefully it stays that way. My next target is to run 10km on Wednesday and then to go 15km on Saturday. Let's hope I can achieve both these distances. There really isn't a lot of time for me to get to 42k, so the more long runs I can do between now and then, the better.

Summer Ice Escapade

My mom and I took my nephews ice skating yesterday in the Megamall ice skating rink. The initial plan was that only my nephews would go on the ice - we would get them each an ice skating instructor who could help them learn how to skate. But as they getting ready, they asked me to join them. So I got myself a ice skating ticket and got on the ice with them.

I've only been ice skating three times in my life before. The first two times was in the Megamall ice skating rink when it was fairly new (which was way back in the early 90s). The third time was with my colleagues in Belgium about 5 years ago during my short stint there. I have mentioned in a previous post that I do know how to move on skates or rollerblades (not very well, but well enough) so I was certain I would find my footing fairly quickly.

In fact, I actually found my balance on the skates a lot more quickly than I was expecting. Especially considering the amount of time it took for me to find my balance on my rollerblades a couple of months ago. What made it even better was that in a fairly short period of time, my nephews both figured out how to move on skates too. They obviously had difficulty initially and couldn't really move without assistance. But after some time, the instructors taught my nephews how to walk - and to stop - on the ice and pretty soon they managed to get around without having to hold on to anyone. They did have their fair share of falls but they knew how to stand up whenever they fell.

I managed to take a few photos of my nephews while they were skating (I was comfortable and confident enough on my ice skates to actually carry around a camera with me and take photos) but I used my mom's camera so the photos aren't with me. In any case, it was a really good day. I'm pretty sure that we'll be ice skating again sometimes in the fairly near future.

Bell X1 - Eve, the Apple of my Eye

My friend Tim strongly suggested to me that I download the song "Eve, the apple of my eye" by Bell X1 about two weeks ago. I couldn't download it on itunes at the time so I just searched for it on youtube and immediately upon listening to it, I got absolutely hooked! I've been listening to it over and over and over again and I am still not tired of it!



Bell X1 also do an incredible acoustic version of their song (which I actually prefer). Check it out here.

Anyways, I just realized that I can actually download songs from itunes as long as a I have an itunes gift card (which I have - Denise and Yong Han gave me a couple as their 'thank you' for me singing in their wedding). But I'm thinking now whether I just order their CD on amazon and save my itunes GC for other songs that belong to albums which I have no interest in buying. I'll probably ask Tim what he thinks of the Bell X1 album that this song is on and I'll decide on what to do then.

Still Oz audition in Elbow Room last April 5

Well, it's taken me nearly 2 months to write about this. My band Still Oz had an audition in Elbow Room over in Metrowalk last April 5. We actually passed and were asked to perform on May 9 and on May 23, but both Ipe and Oz were unavailable on May 9 so we ended up playing only on May 23.

Anyways, we used to record our performances on tape (where those cassettes are, I no longer have any idea) and it was always good to review our performances 'coz we could figure out what we were doing right and what we could do better. Now late in 2006 I bought a Sony W100, which is a point and shoot camera that has video-taking capabilities. So I figured that I could use this, along with my tripod, to shoot videos of our performances. That way, it would be easier to see the ways in which we can improve. My memory stick is 2Gb so I can actually take about 2 hours worth of decent-quality video with it, which meant that I managed to get our entire audition on video.

We were a bit rusty overall but we did manage to pull off a couple of decent songs. Here is a vid of what I think was our best performance of the night - our cover of U2's "All I want is you":



And here's one of our cover of Live's "Lightning crashes", which I also think was pretty decent (if you can get past the fact that I was a quarter-step faster than the drumbeat in some parts of the 2nd and 3rd chorus):



I only managed to complete the video upload today. Stupidly, I didn't reduce the size of the videos - they are all in the 70 to 95 Mb in size and it takes me about 2 hours to upload a vid of that size to youtube! Now I had already uploaded a few of my full-sized videos early on and since I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, I decided to stick with uploading the rest of my full-sized videos.

Click here for our entire playlist on youtube. You may want to skip "Bright Lights" (4th song) as we performed that one quite badly LOL.

I'll be posting about our May 23 gig soon.

Marathon training tracker - May 29

I ran 9 kilometers today. I was actually a bit tired on my way home and I was thinking of skipping training and postponing it to the next day. But when I got home, I somehow felt a surge of energy, and that was enough to get me to the gym.

My last few runs hadn't been very good. I mentioned running for an hour a while back, and I didn't manage to run for the entire hour as I had to slow down to a brisk walk twice. Earlier this week, I had intended to run for 45 minutes but about 20 minutes in, I started to feel extremely dehydrated, so I ended up stopping after about 33 minutes. To add to this, I'm not as fast I was two years ago.

So I decided that for my training today, I would run at a fairly slow pace - around 8.5 kilometers per hour - and just try to sustain that for an entire hour. What was great about my training run was that I not only managed to run for the entire hour without stopping, I also managed to keep going faster and faster and never dropped speed. I went up slowly from 8.5kph to 10kph towards the end of my run, and I even sprinted for the last couple hundred meters. I was feeling quite tired late in my run and wanted to slow down actually, but I managed to will myself to keep going which I did.

I've also started taking Mike's advice of putting ice on my knees after each training run. I had a bit of knee pain for most of the second half of last year and I want to make sure my knees stay injury-free. So far, they've held up. Hopefully it stays that way.

I am now planning to run 1 hour and 20 minutes on Saturday and hopefully I can cover 12 kilometers in this training run. I don't know exactly when the marathon will be but it should be sometime in July, so I have maybe a month to a month and a half to go from 9 kilometers to 42. Wish me luck!

Fun in Singapore part 2

After the very social and utterly exhausting Saturday I had, I ended up just chilling on Sunday. I was supposed to meet up with Paulo, Giselle, and Gabe for lunch but Gi texted me early on Sunday morning to tell me that Paulo was sick and so they had to take a rain check. Ben also invited me to hang out with him and his friends but I told him I was just really tired. I needed to make sure I was well rested for the work that I needed to do the next day!

On Monday, I headed to Vivo City to have dinner in Marché with Denise, Marion, and Kleng and her family. Marion was in Manila the week before and Kleng was unavailable when I met up with Denise and Yong Han on May 1st, so we decided to meet up again for dinner that week. I suggested Marché because I had eaten there before and enjoyed the food, the ambience, and the set-up. Apparently so did the rest of them.

Now interestingly enough, my friend Joyce was also in Singapore during my second week there. Anna had been encouraging Joyce to visit her in Singapore and weeks before, Joyce had already booked her tickets. So it was cool that I ended up going there practically at the same time so we all got to hang out. We met up in Clarke Quay on Tuesday night and had dinner in The Tapas Tree (a Spanish restaurant).

Joyce and Anna in The Tapas Tree

I was feeling really tired so I begged off early (which was actually around 1030pm already) and since we didn't really get to hang out as much as we wanted to, we agreed to meet up again on Thursday. We found ourselves along Orchard - we ate in some noodle place in the basement of Paragon. After dinner, we swing by Wheelock Place so I could get dessert - Paul told me the week before that the desserts in Big O Cafe and Restaurant were really good so I wanted to try it before I left Singapore. Big O was closing already but they let us buy a couple of cakes to go. Joyce wanted to see my hotel room so we bring our desserts there. And I really do have to say that the Big O Cheesecake is a definite must-try for dessert lovers. It is so unbelievably good! So good in fact that the next time I go to Singapore I will try it again.

I hung out again with Ben on Friday night, but this time with a different set of his friends. We begin the night with a few beers in Balaclava in Suntec City. At around 11pm, the crowd was thinning and the few people who were still hanging out decided to move somewhere more exciting. Ben and his friend Stuart were talking about Attica and I say, "what is Attica?" They look at each other and then look at me and ask "You've never been to Attica?!?" So naturally they decided to take me there.

We make a few stops before heading to Attica. We grab a drink in this Cantonese pop bar (can't recall the name of the place), then we head to China One for a couple more drinks. We move to this other bar in Clarke Quay before finally making our way to Attica (Ben's friend Mel managed to get us through without paying the entrance fee - way to go, Mel! :) ). Ben had a couple more friends there - Sandee and Shazana - and we spend the rest of the night just hanging out there.

check out the cool Attica fog :)

I ended up getting back to the hotel at almost 5am and I fell asleep almost instantly. I get up about 5 hours later to pack my stuff and check out, and by around 1230pm I meet up with Alvin, Che, Paulo, Giselle and Gabe in Crystal Jade in Takashimaya for lunch. I hadn't seen Alvin, Pau and Gi in my Singapore trip prior to that day so you could say it was a bit of a photo finish LOL. After lunch, we moved to the Coffee Club for coffee and dessert.

just the adults

Gi with Gabe

I head back to my hotel at around 3pm (buying a couple of boxes of Royce chocolates along the way) and then head to the airport for my 5pm flight. All in all, a fantastic trip. The work was intense, but it was great getting to hang out with all my friends there. Can't wait 'til my next trip to Singapore!

Fun in Singapore part 1

I was in Singapore a few weeks ago for work. I love going to Singapore just because I have so many really good friends there. It was a bit of a paid holiday in parts because not only did I get to spend a weekend there, but I was also there on May 1st, which is also a holiday in Singapore (I had to be there a couple of days before and had to continue working after). Since there was no work that day, I had lunch with Paul and Les in Hard Rock Café. Later that night, Denise and Yong Han picked me up from my hotel and we headed to Sentosa to have dinner in Coastes, a restaurant on the beach. I had never been there before, and I had never gone to Sentosa just for dinner, so it was a nice experience. The pizza there is pretty good.

I spent Friday night with Ching, Sarah, and David. John was supposed to join us too but Ching said he had to do something urgent at the last minute. We had dinner and drinks in Cuba Libre which I believe is the favorite Clarke Quay hang out of Sarah and David, and it was of course cool to see the two of them dance a bit of salsa to the live music there.

Saturday ended up being a day of firsts. Che organized a gimmick in Mind Café with my office friends - Tim, Ching, John, Steph, Tonette, and Joel (and well Che of course). Mind Café is basically a place where you can get food and coffee, and then pay an extra fee to use any of the scores of board games they have there. I had never been there before and with most of us being major board games fans, we ended spending about 6 hours there, playing Hit or miss, Snorta, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers (all of which I had just played for the first time as well).

Afterwards I met up with my high school friends Anna, Kokog, and Topher (who was there for the weekend, in transit from Dubai to Manila) for dinner in Newton Circus. Ching joined us for a bit but had to leave early and Mikey and his family joined us later on. I had been to hawker centers in Singapore before, but never in Newton Circus.

Afterwards, I headed to Clarke Quay and met up with Ben and his friends. We had a few drinks (mostly vodka-redbulls) in Bungy Bar which was right next to G-max, the reverse bungee ride in Clarke Quay. I asked the folks I was hanging out with whether they had been on it and none of them had. I then told them that I would never ever ever get on that ride. Which essentially led to Ben somehow convincing me to get on it with him and his friends. I'm not a fan of amusement park rides so I was sweating bullets while waiting for our turn and needless to say I was scared shitless whilst being thrust up and down in the air. I was a bit out of sorts for a few moments after getting of the ride haha but I was really pleased that I got on it. There's something about conquering fears, however temporary, that is quite gratifying. :)

We then headed to China One afterwards, where I ended up hanging out with a few folks from Denmark and Norway because they came up to me and chatted me up after seeing my "Sverige" (Sweden) shirt. My new Scandinavian friends were actually planning to head somewhere else after Clarke Quay closed and invited me to join them (Ben and his friends had since gone) but I told them I had an incredibly long day and had very little sleep so I needed to head back to the hotel. I ended up getting the facebook address of one of them and I now have them as friends there. I found myself back in my hotel room at 430am.

More on my awesome Singapore trip in my next post!

Aces and Goals

There was still a chance for Liverpool to make it to their 3rd Champions league final in the last four years. But after 90 minutes, Liverpool and Chelsea were deadlocked 2-2 aggregate, with both teams scoring one away goal. They had to play an extra 30 minutes right then and there to break the tie. Chelsea scored two goals early in extra time, and with 3 ½ minutes left, Babel scored a goal. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to match Chelsea’s other goal in extra time and as a result, Liverpool are out. What makes it even more awful is that Liverpool should’ve been given a penalty in extra time but the referee changed his mind. If Liverpool scored that one extra goal, they would have gone through on the away goals rule. But they didn’t. Damn. (And watching all those stupid replays really hurts! LOL)

I’m not really sure who to root for now in the Champions League final. Man Utd beat Barcelona to set up an all English Champions League final. I really don’t like Man Utd, but then I don’t really want to root for the team that beat Liverpool. I guess it doesn’t really matter to me now.

At least Liverpool are almost ascertained of another shot for Champions League glory as they have locked 4th place in the English Premiership (remaining ahead of Merseyside rivals Everton, thank God).

*****

Ever since Michael Owen left Liverpool, his career has kinda gone downhill. He had a brief stint in Real Madrid where he did have moderate success (scoring quite a few goals in the few games he played in, and having a very good goals-to-minutes-played ratio). After Real let him go, he ended up in Newcastle United. But even there he hasn’t been able to play a lot – he’s been sidelined so often in the last few years due to injury.

So I’m glad that he has scored 11 goals this season. And in fact scored a double for Newcastle a couple of weekends ago. Not bad. I just really wish he could have an injury-free season. I’m pretty sure he still has a lot of great years left in him if he can only play a full season.

*****

It’s not very common for both the #1 and #2 players in tennis to be unable to win a title in three months. But that’s exactly what happened at the start of this year. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have been undeniably the two most dominant players in the last few years – with Federer being #1 for the last four years and Nadal being #2 for the last three years straight. But neither of them won a title from January to March. And it’s not like neither of them were playing.

The titleless streaks ended this month. Federer thumped a clearly overmatched draw in Estoril for his first title this year. He could’ve won his second shortly after that, but Nadal reestablished himself as a favorite for the French Open title this year by beating Federer in the final of Monte Carlo and then solidifying his status as the best tennis player on clay right now by winning his 2nd title of the year on the red clay of Barcelona. Considering he's had a lackluster year up until the last couple of weeks, the fact that he's dropped only one set in his last ten matches has re-established Nadal as a favorite to win the French Open title this year.

*****

Even women’s tennis has been a bit strange this year. Sharapova had a very lackluster 2007 and few could’ve predicted her to win her 3rd Grand Slam title in Australia this year. But that’s exactly what she did. And Justine Henin, who was the most consistent woman on tour last year, seems to have lost the consistency and defensive ability this year, not having won a title yet either. And then Serena Williams, who seemed so out of it early this year, goes on an amazing tear, winning three titles in a row, beating Henin with an embarrassing score of 6-0 6-2.

With the clay court season coming though, Justine may once again find her form in the same way that Nadal has. Both Serena and Maria are not very good on European clay so their recent successes may be slowed down by the red dirt. Both Ana Ivanovic and Svetlana Kuznetsova, who have been finalists in Roland Garros, have both been playing well in the last couple of months and may have a shot at the title.

So as has been the case in the last few years, I still have no clue which woman will take home the French Open title this year.

Preparing for Marathon #5

I’m now starting to run again. Partly for health reasons (I have a lot of extra inches around my waist now and I don’t feel as sprightly nor as energetic as I have been in the past), partly for vanity and financial reasons (most of my clothes don’t fit me very well anymore and I refuse - and well have no money - to buy new clothes hehehe).

But the main reason is that I plan to run my fifth marathon in July or August (depending on when the Milo marathon will be held).

I haven’t really been running recently i.e. the last several months because my knee had been giving me problems during this time. So from around November to February I worked on strengthening my leg muscles by using the lower-impact elliptical machine instead of the treadmill. Then, a little more than month ago, I started running on the treadmill again, just to see if my knee would be okay. I began with 15 minute runs, went up to 20-25 minutes, then to 30 minutes. So far my knee was holding up pretty well. Then a couple of Saturdays ago, I ran 45 minutes straight.

And last Thursday, I decided to run for an hour. It wasn’t a very good run – I had to slow the treadmill down to a brisk-walking pace three times during that hour – but I was happy with the fact that I managed to will myself to stay on the treadmill for the full hour. I wanted to stop after about half an hour and again after 45 minutes but I think the thought that I had very little time left to prepare for my marathon kept me going. Okay that sounds more like a sense of urgency than discipline, but anything that will get me covering more distances during training is good. :)

American Idol on WII

Have you ever played "American Idol" on WII? I did, a couple of weeks ago. Hannah, who is now based in Costa Rica, and Mike, based in the US, were both here recently so we decided to have a mini-reunion. We had dinner at Raffa and Joh's house. They prepared barbecue and pansit and provided drinks, I brought dessert, and Pia and Hannah ordered Pritchon. After a heavy dinner (and watching the American Idol elimination night during "Idol Gives Back" week), we headed to Joh and Raffa's entertainment room where we played American Idol.

The American Idol WII game is basically like videoke, but instead of seeing only the lyrics, you can also see the pitch of each note. The highest score possible for a full song is 100,000. And if you select the American Idol style game where you have auditions, semifinals and weekly eliminations, after each performance, the judges give you very accurate critiques! And with the voices of Randy, Paula, and Simon. It's uncanny really.

It was a really fun night! We were supposed to play 4-5 rounds I think. I did well with "How to save a life" by the Fray during the auditions (all of us except Mike passed LOL). Then I decided to sing Phil Collins' "In the air tonight" thinking I knew the song but apparently I didn't know the phrasing of the verses so I got a dismal score LOL. Hannah started teasing me saying I would get eliminated because of my low score, but for some reason she chooses to sing the Guns N' Roses version of "Knockin' on heaven's door" and does even worse on that song than I did on mine so she gets the lowest score LOL.

Then for some reason we ended up resetting the game so we started a shorter version. This time I sang Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" and I couldn't get the phrasing of the verse again and got another bad score. It was interesting though that in both songs that I bungled up, the judges commented that I started shaky and ended strong - which was pretty darn accurate coz I knew the chorus of both songs but not the verses. Their comments were pretty accurate as well for the other folks.

Other memorable moments:

• Bohemian Rhapsody - Hannah first tried it out, then Raffa and I did it as a duet, and we didn't score well on either occasion LOL. I'm still trying to figure out which voice is being used during the bridge (or well you know that part that goes "I see a silhouetto of a man, Scaramouch...") coz we kept getting scored poorly while singing that part.
• Joh getting a perfect score! Apparently, "My heart will go on" is the easiest song to get a high or even perfect score with, as everyone who tried singing that song did extremely well with it. That also wasn't Joh's first time to score a clean 100 thousand on it. Way to go Joh!
• I scored 97,000+ on "Irreplaceable"! The phrasing of this song is tricky, but I've listened to it so many times already that I know how the verses are sung. So I ended up getting my highest score of the night on that song. I also got 96,000+ from Fuel's "Hemorrhage" although my score would have been higher if I didn't end up singing Chris Daughtry's version - he sings at a higher key in the end - and so I missed the pitch completely for a few seconds LOL. I also got 90,000+ on "I don't wanna miss a thing" and it could also have been higher if my throat wasn't tired and dry by then coz I couldn't sing some of the really high notes in the end anymore LOL.
• There's a battle game option in American Idol where two people sing the same song at the same time. Whoever gets a higher score wins. This was so funny, especially when Pia and Hannah had their show-downs.

All in all it was a great night, and when we left, apparently Joh and Raffa kept on singing LOL. Too bad that both Mike and Hannah aren't here in Manila anymore. It would certainly be great if we could have played that game again. :)

Britain's got talent: Charlie Green

A friend of mine sent me a link. This kid is 10 years old and yet he has the confidence, stage presence, and the vocal control of a seasoned pro.


video uploaded in youtube by BritainsGotTalent08

The way he tackled the really high parts of the song, where he transitions flawlessly from his chest tone to a head tone then back to a chest tone, is impossibly good especially when you consider his age. A lot of singers who have been performing for years can't do these vocal transitions half as well as Charlie can. And his scatting was extremely confident.

(I wonder if his mom is Filipino...)

A Saturday with Habitat for Humanity

I recently joined the socio-civic organization we have at work and the first event I got to participate in was a Habitat for Humanity activity, held a couple of Saturdays ago. I had never been able to join a Habitat for Humanity activity before, although I've had a couple of opportunities to do so in the past, so I readily made myself available in this activity and even helped out in the planning.
The activity was going to be held in the SNKI (or Samahang Nagkakaisa sa Kamarin, Inc.) site in Kamarin and we were supposed to be there by 730am. which is terribly early for me. In any case, I managed to get to the assembly point by 630am and was actually one of the first few people there. Lots of people were late and some even backed out at the last minute, so we ended up getting to the site at 845am which was a lot later than expected.

Despite that, the rest of the day went very well. Engineer Noel Zeta who was leading the work in the site shared a brief history of Habitat for Humanity with the participants before discussing the SNKI Phase 2 project – which is comprised of 109 houses and is expected to be complete by July 2008. He then explained what we would be doing to help out. Engr. Zeta said that most of the actual house-building would be done by the skilled workers to make sure that the houses were being built with a certain standard and quality (I mean, you can't really expect corporate folks who have no experience in construction to be able to build houses, can you?) so our goal would be to ensure that the workers would be able to do their jobs well.

This essentially included moving hollow blocks from the large stockpile in the middle of the SNKI site to the center of each of the houses being built. By doing this, the workers could easily reach for the hollow blocks and build the walls. We had to move about 60 hollow blocks for about 8 houses which meant we moved approximately 500 hollow blocks that day. Of course, if you had to pick one up and walk several meters to bring it to where it was needed, it would take a really long time to 20 people to move 60 blocks (you may not think it's that difficult but try carrying an actual hollow block and you'll realize just how heavy it is). So instead of doing that, we decided to create a "human conveyor belt" from the stockpile to each of the target houses. This was still quite tiring, and we sometimes had to take breaks in the middle of the hollow block transfer to rest.


Shortly before lunch, a truck filled with sand actually came and dumped its load in the site. The sand would be mixed with cement, and this cement mix would be used for piling the hollow blocks one on top of the other to build the houses. Now the mixer was somewhere between the load of sand and the actual houses so we had to shovel sand into sacks and transfer the sacks to the mixer.
Finally, once the cement mix had been put together, we had to transfer the cement mix to where the houses so the workers could have the mix right in front of them when they start building the walls.

The activity was done at 5pm, and everyone was exhausted (but, well, not completely wiped out, coz we still had to drive home hehehe) but it was great to see that two of the "houses" which started out as ankle high walls at the start of the day were shoulder height when we were done. Before we left, Engineer Zeta introduced Nanay Ludy Magtalas, a board member of SNKI, who thanked us on behalf of the people whose houses they helped build. Pastor Caridad Sanchez then led the us in a thanksgiving prayer.

I got home a little past 8pm, which was actually supposed to be Earth hour where everyone who wanted to participate would turn everything off from 8 to 9pm. I was really dirty by that time, so I ended up being only, er, partially compliant to Earth Hour. Everything in my house was turned off - lights, aircon, TV - except the lights in the bathroom. I took a shower and waited 'til 9pm before turning on any other light or electrical appliance at home. Needless to say, I fell asleep shortly after that. :)

It was a very tiring day, but it was incredibly amazing. Habitat for Humanity never runs out of projects and are always looking for volunteers so if you are interest to help build a house (and burn a whole lot of calories in the process LOL), you may want to visit their website which contains their contact information as well as information on their program and history.

On to the Champions League semifinals!

Liverpool slotted four goals past Arsenal while conceding two goals in Anfield last night. This means that Liverpool make to the final four of the UEFA Champions League! What's even better is that in their last three matches against each other in the course of a week, Liverpool didn't lose. They drew their first two matches (both 1-1), both of which were played on Arsenal's home court, the Emirates Stadium, before Liverpool took advantage of their home game and sent Arsenal packing. Way to go, Liverpool!

They next meet Chelsea, a team they have had trouble beating in the English Premiere League, which is quite interesting because they have had pretty good success when playing against Chelsea in Europe. Hopefully they are able to get past Chelsea again. Would be great to have Liverpool play in their third Champions League final in four years (and gun for their 2nd Champions League title this century). Good luck, Liverpool!

An amazing Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was spent with my mom and nephews. My nephews had wanted go swimming for a while already and so on Black Saturday, we decided to go swimming.

Later that evening, we went to see the animated movie, “Horton hears a Who!”. CJ actually saw a billboard that said that “Horton…” was showing on March 22 and he knew it was May 22 that day so he asked if we could watch it that night. So we did.

The next day, we joined two Easter activities, both in Rockwell. Rockwell Club had an Easter in Candyland activity in the morning. They had lots of candy, some games for the kids, a bit of magic, and an Easter egg hunt. CJ and Ciera were at the front of the line initially when CJ needed to use the bathroom so that left them at the end of the line, which initially bummed me out. Then I realized it was a bit of a blessing in disguise because they both ended up in the last set of kids, and instead of having about 6 or 7 kids in the room at the same time, their group had only 4 kids. So that allowed them to find more eggs (which meant more candy). The coolest thing was that in their group, Ciera actually found the most Easter eggs and CJ got the second most eggs. Ciera actually got a special prize. It was just a candy cane, but he said that it was his trophy and that he wanted to keep it. (I think he changed his mind later that day LOL).

In the afternoon, we headed to The Tent in Powerplant where there was an Easter Circus. I was initially not too pleased with this one, mainly coz there were just waaaay too many people!! My mom fell in line in the face painting but it was a very long line. While waiting for our turn, things started to get better. They started having these live performances – clowns, fire-eaters, acrobats, and magic – that kept my nephews engaged. (The fire eaters were actually asked to cut short their show because balloons started popping due to the heat from the fire and security felt that it was a danger to the people there.) By the time we got to the magic show, it was my nephews’ turn at the face painting booth (they actually both just had a beetle painted on their arms). Before we left, my nephews joined one of the final Easter egg hunts for the day. CJ found only one and Ciera found two, but it didn’t really matter anymore because they did have a more successful Easter egg hunting stint earlier that day.

Since I mentioned watching Horton, I thought I’d talk about it in this blog post as well. I enjoy all types of animated films, but the ones I truly enjoy are those that get me emotionally involved, and generally, only the Pixar movies do that for me. So I was pleasantly surprised when I watched “Horton”. I knew I would enjoy it, but I didn’t know I would enjoy it as much as I did.

SPOILER ALERT! (Stop reading here if you don’t want to know more about the movie.) What I loved about the movie was the main theme which was basically about believing in something, even if nobody else, and fighting like hell for those beliefs. No one believed Horton when he said that there was a town on that speck on the clover and he had to go through extreme odds to make sure the speck was safe. And no one believed the mayor of Whoville when he said that their town was built on a tiny speck and he faced ridicule from the entire town. And when the film gets to (what I felt was) its powerful climax, when the creatures in Horton’s jungle all try to destroy the clover and the entire town shouts “We are here! We are here!” as loud as they can to be heard, I was genuinely moved. I actually want to watch it again, and I can’t wait to get it on DVD.

So anyways, it was a very fun-filled, albeit exhausting, weekend with my family.

Three matches in one week

Liverpool never seem to do that well in the English Premiere League ever since they challenged for the title but ended #2 way back in the 2001-2002 season. They still manage to be in the top four for the most part, but they are normally several points behind the champion.

They seem to do much better in Europe, however, getting to the Quarterfinals of the Champions League in three of the last four seasons (including this one). They won in 2005, lost in the final last year against AC Milan (the team they beat in 2005), and have once again gotten to the top 8 this year.

Their opponents in this round are Arsenal, who started the season incredibly strong before Man Utd caught up and took over the lead in the premiership.

The interesting thing here is that Liverpool and Arsenal will actually play three times in the span of a week. They met last Wednesday in the Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal. They play their 2nd match in a week tomorrow (still in the Emirates stadium), this time for the EPL. Finally, on April 8, they play the second leg of their Champions League quarterfinal, this time in Anfield.

It's been good so far - Liverpool managed to score a crucial away goal against Arsenal last Wednesday, giving them a draw. They have home court advantage this coming Tuesday, but there can be no resting on laurels since Arsenal are a very formidable team and are definitely capable of an away win.

Hopefully Liverpool can match their efforts from 3 years ago when they won. Hopefully they also remain at 4th place in the Premiership to ensure that they qualify for the Champions League again next year.

Blood on the Tennis Court

You have to check this out (video quality gets much better after 10 seconds). It happened during a tennis match between Mikhail Youzhny from Russia and Nicolas Almagro from Spain. It's absolutely crazy! LOL


video uploaded in youtube by user barney1573

Oh and if you want to know how it all turned out, Mikhail actually ended up winning the match 7-6, 3-6, 7-6. :)

Sixty-six

Last March 10, two of the greatest tennis players of all time - Roger Federer and Pete Sampras - squared off in a best-of-three exhibition in Madison Square Garden. There have been lots of discussion as to who the greatest tennis player of all time is, and having both Roger and Pete battle it out on a tennis court drew massive interest from people, whether rabid tennis fans or not.

The exhibition went the distance and the winner had to be determined by a third set tie-break that went 8-6 in favor of the current #1. Obviously, there would be no answer to the best-of-all-time question because Pete was 10 years older than Roger, and frankly there are other players who are worthy of being called the greatest (such as the legendary Rod Laver). But the exhibition was a huge success, and with 26 Grand Slam titles between the two of them (Pete has 14, Roger currently has 12 but you can expect him to win more), you won't find any other tennis exhibition that could boast of as many Grand Slam titles.

That is, unless you go over to women's tennis and stage a Dream Match between Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova. Which is exactly what happened in Tokyo on March 15, just 5 days later. Steffi and Martina teamed up with ex-Japanese #1 Kimiko Date to play their own "Dream Match" tennis exhibition on the other side of the world.

This exhibition was a lot more low-profile than Federer-Sampras, and I'm still surprised that there wasn't a lot of information shared about in the media, at least until the event was actually completed. Kimiko actually found her groove and beat both Steffi and Martina in their respective matches, but what most of the world must've been waiting for was the Steffi-Martina match.

These two ladies are arguably the best female tennis players ever (right up there with Chris Evert and Margaret Court, among others), and in fact are dead-even in their career head-to-head matches at 9-all. So it made perfect sense that their exhibition would follow in the footsteps of the Pete-Roger one. They played only one set, a Championship set which means that the first player to win 8 games wins. If they got to 7-all, they would play a tie-break that would be first to ten points. And amazingly enough, it did go to a tie-break, with Graf beating Navratilova by winning the final point with her trademark bazooka forehand that she hit for a winner.

Between these two ladies, you have 40 Grand Slam singles titles (Steffi has 22, Martina has 18). That's not even counting doubles titles (Martina, the most successful doubles player in history, has 31 doubles titles and 10 mixed doubles titles). So in that span of 5 days, four of the best tennis players - with sixty six Grand Slam singles titles combined - entertained the world with world-class tennis. If only the tennis gods can put all four of them together in a single event where they can all play tennis together...

A double dose of Elliott Yamin

Last Thursday, I was getting ready to go the gym when my friend Emmy texts me "Turn on your TV. Elliott on Rachel Ray". Now I remember reading about Elliott Yamin's appearance on Rachel Ray a few months ago from the e-train but I never got to see the show. My TV was on so I just flipped the channel to the Lifestyle network. I caught Rachel Ray talking about on of her viewers - a 12-year-old girl who had diabetes. Rachel Ray invited this young girl to her show and asked her to come up on stage. A video was then shown of her and when the video ended, Rachel asked her who was standing right behind her? Lo and behold, it was Elliott! The girl (sorry, I forgot her name) was quite surprised by it and all she could initially say was "I'm a big fan."

After the break, Rachel talks with Elliott, and the discussion revolves mainly around the struggles that people with diabetes have to go through. This was clearly a few months back because Elliott said during the show that his album was almost gold, and all Elliott fans know now that his album has already reached Gold status (congrats, Elliott! :)) After the brief interview, Elliott performed his mega-hit "Wait for you". Rachel then proceeds with the rest of her cooking show, working on a recipe that is diabetic-friendly.

Shortly after that show, I caught American Idol in Starworld (the treadmills in the gym have TVs so I managed to catch it even while I was in the gym). Earlier that morning, another friend of mine, Meg, told me that AI would have an excerpt of Elliott visiting Angola for the Idol gives back program. I was expecting a video that showed a bit of Elliott but instead I was greeted with a really good feature that included him. And not only that. What was even better for me was that the video not only featured him but it also included my favorite female Idol of all time - Fantasia! It was so great seeing both of them in Angola together. Seeing that video actually made my day. They seemed to get along really well too, and I'm actually hoping that when during the Idol Gives Back show in the middle of this season, they invite both Elliott and Fantasia to sing together. Oh man that is going to be a blast!

It is still my dream to see and hear Fantasia perform live. And if I got to see Elliott perform in Manila (four times, at that), then I know that some dreams do come true, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. :)

Damien Rice - 9 crimes

I first heard the song 9 Crimes by Damien Rice a couple of months ago while channel-surfing. As I passed through Starworld, "Live at Abbey Road" was on and the music being played instantly caught my attention. It was so powerful and haunting that I stopped flipping through channels and decided to listen to the rest of the song. I loved it so much that I just had to hear it again. So the next day, I searched for it in youtube (don't you just love youtube?) and found it.

Here's that snippet from Live at Abbey Road:


video uploaded in youtube by user annnaklara

In my search, I also ran across the video of this song. I initially found it morbidly interesting, and I later discovered that the video was inspired by a French movie from 1956 by Albert Lamorisse called "Le Ballon Rouge" or "The Red Balloon". The film is about boy who comes across a red balloon and discovers that the balloon seems to have a mind of its own. You can read more about it in this link.

Anyways, here's the video of 9 crimes:


video uploaded in youtube by noemigadu

Whew!

I saved a lot of my earlier digital photos - circa 2001-2003 - in a desktop that we have in my family's home. Anyways, my brother had been meaning to have it looked at and wanted me to back up the stuff I had in there. The only files I had there though were my photos so I started transferring them to my laptop.

When I started sorting my photos, however, I couldn't seem to find the photos I took during a trip to Paris that I took in Feb 2003. I was aghast! I took a lot of pics during that trip, and it pained me that I may actually have lost those digital photos forever. I consoled myself with the fact that I at least printed some of the pics from that trip (I had been meaning to put them in a photo album for the longest time but I haven't gotten around to it, but that's a different story).

Then I realized - I printed them out! Now, obsessive-compulsive that I am, whenever I want to have photos printed out, I copy those photos into a CD which I then bring to Fujifilm where I normally have digital photos developed. So that means I may have actually copied at least some of my Paris photos onto a CD that I stashed somewhere (yeah, not only am I an obsessive-compulsive, I'm also a pack-rat).

So last weekend I started digging up all my old CDs. And by sheer luck, I actually found one that had my Paris photos! Wahoo!!

What was even better is that this CD that I dug up actually contained ALL my Paris photos (and not just the ones I had printed out). Apparently, I didn't save those photos in the desktop we have at home, but I did save them in the laptop I used in my previous job. I transferred those pictures to a CD when I got a replacement work laptop in 2004, and that's why I didn't initially find that CD with the rest of the CDs where I saved files from my laptop before I resigned in 2006. Confusing? :)

Anyways, finding those photos actually made my day. Now I am planning to sort all my photos during the long weekend. I haven't even gotten around to blogging about my trip to Austria so hopefully after next week, I can do it already.

Tracy Chapman - Talkin' about a Revolution

After posting that video of Hallelujah, I just realized that there is so much great music out there in the world (a lot of which I still haven't heard). So I figured, it might be good for me to use this blog to share some of the music that I really love.

So here's a video of Tracy Chapman singing "Talkin' about a Revolution"

video uploaded in youtube by daressalaam2006

A truly beautiful song performed by a truly magnificent artist!

Meet the Spartans: what a rip-off!

It's not so much the fact that it's stupid humor. You knew that coming into the show. It's not so much a fact that it's simply spoofing pop culture. You knew that coming into the show as well.

The main problem here is that the entire movie, including credits, lasts barely longer than an hour! Maybe 1:15. So you pay P150 expecting to at least go through stupid slapstick jokes for an hour and a half and you don't even get that. What a waste of dough.

It does have it's funny moments, but if I were you, I'd just wait for them to show this movie on HBO or something. Definitely not worth the ticket price. Ugh.

Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah"

Last week, Jason Castro performed the song "Hallelujah", which was originally done by Leonard Cohen. I got to hear it online early Wednesday, even before I got to watch the show on Starworld later that night, so I didn't hear the judges comments about it. The song sounded very familiar though (I later on figured out that I had heard the John Cale version in "Shrek") so I searched in youtube and in my search I ran into the Jeff Buckley version.

Now the only song of Jeff I knew prior to that day was "The Last Goodbye" which is an amazing song. And I knew from that song that he was an absolutely incredible vocal artist with an unparalleled mix of intensity, expression, texture, dynamics, and control. So I immediately listened to his version and I was immediately blown away! Have a listen and see/hear for yourself.



video uploaded in youtube by EmersonBlues.

You know how some people only sound good when they belt and some people only sound good when they are singing softer notes? Well, Jeff sounds amazing doing both. And dig this - he holds a note for twenty-four seconds at 6:09. You can't do that unless you have perfect vocal control and excellent breath control. And the guitar work on it, which I believe Buckley does as well, perfectly captures the emotion being conveyed by the lyrics.

After discovering this song, I kept playing it over and over and over again. I then started doing more research on Jeff Buckley to figure out which album or albums of his I want to get. This guy is truly magnificent and it's too bad he passed away before he could create more music and share it to the rest of the world.

Man on wheels

So guess what I did over the weekend? I went rollerblading! Or at least attempted to do so LOL.

Yesterday, my mom suggested that we bring my nephews to UP - they close the academic oval to traffic on Sundays and it becomes a huge park where you have dozens upon dozens of people running, biking, strolling, and even playing badminton. My mom felt that it would be good for us to bring my nephews outdoors and away from the weekend mall scene which is where we usually take them.

Now, when I was a kid, my dad taught me how to roller skate. He had these kid skates which I used and what I did as a kid was just put them on and walk around the garage in them. At some point, I managed to be able to move in them. I'm not sure how old I was when I last put on those roller skates, but it was definitely before I started high school. After that, my only other foray into skating was ice skating in SM Megamall a couple of times when I was in college. I was never good at it, but I enjoyed skating a lot. I also had fairly good balance and rarely fell on my butt. :)

Now way back in 2001, I was assigned in Japan for about half a year to work on a project there. I thought that it would be cool if I brought roller blades with me so I could head down to the park and roller blade there. So I bought these really cool looking roller blades that cost me a few thousand bucks actually. I had never tried roller blading before but I felt that if I could roller skate and ice skate, then I could surely rollerblade.

When I got to Japan, I got so immersed in work - it's the busiest I have ever been for that long a period of time - that during the weekends I ended up just resting. This meant only one thing - in the 5 1/2 months that I was there, I got to use my rollerblades only ONCE! LOL what a waste in investment. I had a lot of fun that one time I got to rollerblade so it sucked that I didn't get to use it more.

My rollerblades just sat in my room for the last seven years. I had been meaning to use them but I never got around to it - usually when I went to UP during the weekends, it was for running. So when the opportunity presented itself last Sunday, I decided to shake the dust off my rollerblades and give it another go.

As expected, I had a lot of trouble finding my balance when I had put them on. But after some time, I started getting better and began moving faster. It also took a while before I gained confidence in skating downslope - the UP acad oval wasn't exactly flat. I rollerbladed (really slowly LOL) for about 45 minutes before we decided to leave. It was a lot of fun, and my nephews did enjoy going to UP so we may just do it a bit more often.

Quick hits

Whoa! More than a month since my last update. That is so not good LOL. Here's a quick rundown of a few things that have kept me busy in the last month...

Attended my first beach wedding in Boracay

Tisha and Donald got married in Boracay on Feb 1. The last time I went to Boracay was in 2005 so I was looking forward to it. Especially since I had never been to a beach wedding before. Feb 1 was a Friday so I took the day off and spent the weekend in Boracay. The ceremony was held in the Parish of the Holy Rosary and the reception in Seawind. It was really cool! To add the experience, all the guests received a package when we got to our respective resorts. The package contained, among other things, recommendations on restos to try out and things to do. Coming up with a suggested itinerary was meant to encourage the guest to try out the same things. That way, when we think back to the wedding, we all remember the same things. Pretty smart idea, actually. So from the fact that we were in Boracay to the food tripping to the poker games to the beach volleyball to hanging out with really great friends, this wedding will truly be one very memorable one!

Valentine's Day Harana

The band org we have at work decided to organize some kind of Valentine's Day Harana thing - for a nominal fee, employees can request us to serenade anyone they wanted us to sing to. It was decided very last minute and only approved on the evening of Feb 12, which meant the email announcement would be sent only on Feb 13, a day before Valentine's day. We decided to make the activity last two days. That way, people more time to figure out if they wanted to avail of the service or not. It was so last minute that I was worried that not enough people would avail of it, but as it turned out, I grossly underestimated. In our building at least, there were a total of 18 requests sent in over two days. Now, that may not seem like a lot. But consider this - just because we had this event going on didn't mean we were exempted from work. Also, we had only two vocalists (myself and KC) and one guitarist (RJ) in our building (in our other office building, they got 8 song requests for only 1 day, and they had 2 guitarists and 3 vocalists). To top if off, most of the songs we would do, KC didn't know. So I ended up having to sing most of the songs (I sang solo in about 10 of the songs, and KC and I sang together in 4 of them).

I ended up having to work really long hours on those two days to make sure that my real work would not suffer from this activity. But it was worth it. Not only was it fun to sing for people but I also got to learn and perform a lot of really cool songs that I had never performed for anyone before such as "Fly me to the moon", "You and me" by Lifehouse, "Danny's song" by Kenny Loggins, and Kenny Lattimore's "For you". Considering that we didn't have a lot of time to prepare, I think we pulled it off quite well.

Still Oz reunion!

Well, kinda. Our bassist Sep just started a new job last November, but his scheduled is so whacked out - it changes from week to week - that we can't really gig just yet because we don't know when he's available. Anyways, our rhythm guitarist Bunky managed to get us a pro bono gig in Mayric's (where the great bands are born!) on Tuesday night last week, and Sep said he was free so we figured we might as well give it a go, even if we wouldn't get paid for it. Of course when we arrived, we confirmed what we felt before getting there - that our musical style wasn't exactly suited for the venue. I mean, the bands there play much heavier rock (as well as their original songs!) and here we are covering Dave Matthews Band. We were given half an hour to perform and we initially planned 5-6 songs but before we started we decided to trim it down to three. We did #41 and Grey Street by DMB, plus the DMB version of the Dylan original "All along the watchtower". It's the most uncomfortable I've ever felt on stage but the crowd was actually quite appreciative of our efforts. I'm still hoping Sep gets a more stable schedule so we can gig again soon.

Party for Raffa's 30th birthday

Raffa turned 30 the other day but Joh set up a birthday dinner for him last Friday night in Claw Daddy in Bonifacio High Street. Most of our barkada are already living abroad, and it just so happened that Pia was in Batanes and Meann in the US that day. So only Peegee and I made it to dinner. Joh invited Raffa's team as well - most of whom I knew - but she also invited Raffa's high school batchmates. Peegee had to leave early, and once dinner was done, so did the rest of Raffa's team. So I ended up hanging out with Raffa and Joh and Raffa's high school friends, having cheesecake and coffee in Miss Desserts in Serendra 'til past midnight. It was a great night filled with lot of great food and fun conversation. Thanks again for the blowout, Raffa! :)