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.