A Milky Thing

Not long in the wake of the financial crisis comes the Chinese dairy goods scare. Four babies have died, while another fifty-four babies have gotten sick due to a chemical added to China’s milk, known as melamine. My take on the issue is a rather different one than the mainstream media shows you, if not cynical.

First of all, if it was not for the babies, this would not be an issue. (Americans are rather touchy when it comes to babies). International media (also known as CNN) picks the story up, spreads it around the globe, and, voila! Another major economic disaster. Let us not deny that the babies, God bless them, are really poor victims of the tragedy. But they are babies anyway, so they couldn’t have gone to hell, could they? But let us see the demographics: four babies plus fifty-four babies makes fifty-eight. Fifty-eight is less than .0001% of China’s 1.2 billion population, so that pretty makes this a very isolated incident to babies… make that really vulnurably weak Chinese babies. Consider that out of the millions of Chinese babies drinking milk formulas, only fifty-eight were affected by the very evil melamine! Oooh. Juxtapose that statistics to the number of Filipinos dying every year due to kidney stones because they put Knorr on their food everyday… that really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? Just my point: it might be a more effective way to commit suicide by drinking Knorr (MSG) than melamine!

Secondly, melamine has been present in our food supply since at least December of 2007, meaning that we have been ingesting, digesting, and deficating melamine for the past nine months! And if there was indeed something significantly odd in people’s systems like melamine, why then, of the thousands of blood chemistry tests among diabetic Filipinos, has there been no reports of the presence of such chemical? Of course, medical technologists are bound to report the tiniest oddities in your circulatory system, right?

Lastly, and this is only an assumption, I think that this melamine scare is nothing but media hype aimed to destabilize the rapidly growing economy of China in light of the Western financial crisis. So by all means, feed the economy! Eat M&M’s! Snickers Bars! Milky Ways! We are still alive, and more likely to stay so with a little melamine in our lives.

(plastics are more dangerous, did you know?)

Chuck’s Surprise Visit

Three days ago, I heard the most incredible and unbelievable news: Chuck Liddell is coming to the Philippines. Pfft, rumors, I thought. Why here, of all places, in the Philippines? Why weren’t there any advertisments? Why wasn’t it publicized? And then I got home.

“Oy, Migo, pupunta daw si Chuck dito?” I asked my brother, who is a freestyle wrestler. “Oo, sa Sunday,” he confirmed. “Sa Mall of Asia“. Disbelief turned into astonishment. People — ordinary people– may not realize how big that is. Picture George W. Bush taking a surprise vacation in the Philippines just for a day minus all his Sercret Service guys.

In a way, it was good that the event was all hushed up, that way only real fans of UFC would know about it, hence, a smaller manageable crowd. When we turned up at the mall by 3:00pm, we had to ask a security guard for directions (it was, after all, the third largest mall in the world), who was heading for the event himself. We followed him, and sure enough, the crowd was relatively small, considering Chuck. However, it was not small enough to get a clear view of the ring where he would later spar with his trainor.

Quite contrary to our expectation, it was not a press conference but a public demonstration of Chuck’s talent. He sparred for ten minutes with his trainor (I got a few good photos), and did autograpsh and photo shoots for those with VIP passes. What I really missed were the freebies (UFC caps and wristbands) which were being thrown by the ring ladies to the crowd. My brother and I was quite irked by most of the people, who were obviously oblivious to UFC or Chuck Liddell, and were there just because they knew someone famous would be there. For some reason, one can identify who are fans and who are just jumping on the bandwagon (just like rockers know fellow rockers, emos know fellow emos, and artistes know fellow artistes).

I was sorely tempted to grab those UFC caps from the heads of the people wearing them, then run, or else manhandle a child to wrest the wristband they don’t realize the value of… but then I was reminded it was a mortal sin to do so, so I behaved myself. I just think they don’t deserve those rare items — treasures they don’t realize the values of! Aaaargh. Anyway, I try to content myself with the nice-enough shots I took of Chuck “the Iceman” Liddell… and I was a mere six feet from him! Ha!

Failure to Launch

What is the use of a networking site if there is no network? I have just deleted my Xt3 account again (don’t even bother finding out what that is) because there are only three people in my “friends” list, two of whom are acquaintaces, and the other one a random guy from Indonesia who invited me. One of the invites I sent was being deliberately ignored, but I don’t care.

Indeed, I am finding lesser and lesser use of my account at Friendster, which I will not delete because I need the contacts. What more with Xt3, which is, sorry for this comment, a failure.

The failure of Xt3 to expand and reach more people lies in its exclusivity: World Youth Day 2008. While other networking sites focus more on what is present, Xt3 dwells on a past event which is WYD ‘08. People will feel detached after a certain amount of time. What was born with a hype, dies with the hype. If any product is to survive in a long-term span, never attach it to something with a timeline.

Then again, it never existed to sell itself. It is exclusive. And like any exclusive enterprise, it is not bound to last long. (Look at San Miguel Food Shop; the only outlet known to survive is in UST).

:-)

If only to answer the question of Downybearded of why I am suddenly coming with them more often (as opposed to my school-home-school schedule) compared to before, it is because I feel I missed out on so much things in college. Like, what the hell is college if you haven’t gotten drunk at least once, or haven’t stayed late into the night just to hang out, or haven’t gone road tripping only to run out of money for transporation? On the lighter side of these things, just to spend time with friends… which I never really did very much. Until now. Gaguhan. Kanchawan. Tawanan. You know, those little pebbles that make up the entire beach.

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It’s fun.

The Bandwagon

“If you can’t fight them… JOIN THEM! “

Today, I crossed over to the other side of the road… to Globe (handyphone)! Since I cannot convince fifty people to convert to Smart (I was literally the only Smart user among my classmates and friends), I had to succumb to reality: GLOBE IS BETTER.

What was I thinking, sticking to Smart for all those years, when all my peers are enjoying unlimited credits texting each other (and leaving me out)?! As soon as I got to Dapitan Street, I rushed to 7-11 and bought a sim card (as if I was buying a stick of yosi), a sim card which would change my life — forever! I could not suppress myself from beaming the moment I got hold of that sim card.

In the classroom, I was due to give a report. I couldn’t help myself:

“NAKA GLOBE NA AKO!”

I said, grinning, to the general applause of all my classmates.

Already I have been reaping the benefits of being a Globe user: I am able to text more people unlimitedly, and most important of all, people actually text me back!

Smart is not bad, really (it’s for people older than my peers who don’t need to text a lot). Globe is just better. So to the remaining ten or twelve people in my phone book who are still using that, join the bandwagon! Or else… we won’t text you!

Juuuust kidding.

S.B.

For most of today I had been busy having a hang over, and the night before that, with forgetting academics for a while and getting drunk as we post-celebrated two birthdays that night. No thesis, no reports, no reci. Thank you, Downybearded, thank you Chester. Belated happy birthdays.

Beer, for the first time in my life, has betrayed me in the form of Colt 45. I will not say how many bottles, but most of us got drunk. But I was well-behaved. Seriously. It happens, of course, that one needs to projectile-vommit behind your unsuspecting friend in the bathroom (not at him, of course), and then again in the same bathroom… and then again in the garage of your home. Waking up this morning was most unpleasant, because I only had five hours of sleep. I had a terrible headache, and my room was spinning. I brewed coffee, which wasn’t very helpful; I vommitted again outside… I decided that Colt 45 is one TV ad that does not lie.

Unfortunately, I had to spend the rest of the day “recovering” from the hang over travelling across Metro Manila with my classmates. We spent the afternoon at Barangay Bagumbuhay in QC where we were supposed to observe the ecosystem (“Welcome to Barangay Bagumbuhay – an ecofriendly community!“). The “ecosystem” consisted of a facility for garbage-turned-something else, cellphone-grabbing-monkeys, worms, and a powerpoint presentation. Really fun. We hung out at Gateway mall (the guys went window shopping at Nike, Addidas, and believe it or not, Rustan’s), after which we decided to stay at Chester’s house for a while and trespass upon his parents’ hospitality. We had trouble going home because we ran out of money. But nonetheless, we reached our respective homes. Safely.

Overall, the day was exhausting, unproductive, and fun, albeit academically harrassed. It was decided that there should be no thesis, no reports, no reci… at least for those two days.

Somewhat Vindicated

Ah, at last. I have found someone who shares my dissenting opinions about Obama. It would seem because of my nationality and proximity to where that politics is happening that any statement coming fom me regarding the issue of American politics would be less than authoritative or credible. But here is an American, bravely blogging our shared views about Obama. My site has been linked from his site, America Vs. Obama (tagline: Americans coming together to stop the newest disciple of Karl Marx) particularly this post.

And I thought I was the only one who drew the “absurd” parallelisms. Fredshelm (owner of aforementioned site) corrected me:

Nope, and neither you and I the only ones. It’s natural to compare people we think are disparagable to Hitler, simply because he is the most disparagable. In the case of Obama, such a comparison may not be inaccurate. Of course, we won’t really know for sure unless he becomes president. Let’s hope we never know for sure.

Indeed, let’s hope we never know for sure.