The High Cost Of Living

Coming back from my annual checkup I find out that my high cholesterol levels have returned. Not really surprising, since I haven't exactly been exercising ever since the twins arrived (heh...blaming the kids). Plus I hadn't seen a doctor in a couple of years, so the high cholesterol was expected.

So, time to make a lifestyle change again. On tap are (a) more exercise (probably walking/running, since I can never get to a gym--plus, trying to save money) and (b) better diet. Yeah, time to lay off the cheetohs and anything with "partially hydrogeneated oil", since that turns into bad cholesterol.

Unfortunately, eating healthy is expensive. I bought natural peanut butter for $5.00 ($3.00 more than the regular stuff), and "good" butter for around $3.00 ($2.00 more than the regular stuff). Bread costs $4.00 (around $2.50 more than the wonder bread type). Less fastfood as well (which I guess is okay, because I don't eat that much anyway). Still, though, it would be nice to have that option.

Gotta do it, though. Otherwise I'd get to meet the cute little ankh-wearing lady sooner rather than later.

Rockstar: Supernova, Week 4

The good: Storm, Magni and Dilana. Good version of "Time after Time", although my favorite still remains that by EBTG (Tuck and Patti isn't bad either).

The bad: Josh, Ryan, Phil and Zayra.

Posers: Ryan, Dana. "I'm wearing denim skirts! Combat boots!" Yeah, those make you a "rocker". Sigh.

Everyone else...*yawn*

Bye, Phil.

Miss Universe

Since there's nothing on this summer, we decided to tune in to the Miss Universe pageant. It's mostly irrelevant nowadays around here, but I remember being all excited about it when I was small, hoping Ms Philippines would somehow make it into the finals. I still remember Pebbles de Asis' answer when Bob Barker asked the question:

Bob: "So you have The Price Is Right in the Philippines?"
Pebbles: "Of course, it's my favorite show!"

The answer, innocent as it was, made me cringe. The answer probably didn't matter one way or another, but I'm still convinced that contributed to her not winning.

This year, it's Miss Japan...yowza. Talk about mysterious and attractive...unfortunately, she was only runner-up to Miss Puerto Rico. I'm also convinced that her slip-up (when she didn't answer the "How did you learn French and Spanish" but instead said "Hello" in English) during the first Q&A that did her in.

Oh, and Miss Philippines winning Miss Photogenic? Pinoy vote-in power at its finest--the same folks who got Jasmine and MiG all the way to the top three.

Photograph

I think I've mentioned before that my wife had given me a Canon Rebel for Christmas, but wound up returning it. In exchange, we got a Canon EOS 30D. It's a lot of camera, and sadly I haven't been using it to its full potential. I brought it to Manila and all, but at times my trusty old Canon ELPH S410 seemed to outperform it.

I'll start taking it a bit more seriously, though. My goal is to get good enough so as to take pictures of my sister-in-law's wedding in November.

 

Sometimes, though, I get lucky. The shot above is of Amelie. The scab on her nose was caused by an overzealous puppy. 

Rock Star: Supernova, Week 3

Yes, Storm, I did use Google. Didn't know she fronted a band called Storm Large and The Balls (heh), with two bald guys. "Laura Domela" is the search term Tommy Lee should use, if he were so inclined.

Anyway, Magni rocked, I liked Jenny but she's so terribly wrong for this competition, and was disappointed in Toby. And then there's Dilana. Wow.

Hopefully she doesn't flame out like Jordis did.

Doubleheader

The wife and I played hooky from work today, in order to watch two movies:Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's and Superman Returns.

Loved POTC:DMC. I'm not sure why so many people are dissing it--it was a pretty good thrill ride, and I though the plot points meshed together nicely (a sharp contrast from other comments I've heard, which complained of the disjointed nature of the movie). YMMV, of course. Johnny Depp was fabulous as CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow, while Bill Nighy was fantastic as Davy Jones. His crew was pretty creepy too. A lot of people were saying that the first one was a lot better; personally, we watched POTC:COTBP the night before and I fell asleep! I guess they just looked fondly upon the first movie because they remembered the ride. Of course, I missed the "extra" scene after the end credits, like when I missed the monkey extra scene from the first movie. I'll see it on the DVD, I suppose.

Liked Superman Returns. This one went on too long; I found myself wondering what time it was. Lois Lane wasn't pretty enough (then again, Margot Kidder wasn't too hot either), and Jimmy Olsen just seemed annoying. PJ's in love with Brandon Routh, though. And, like Calai, I found out about one of the plot points--on a freakin' technology website! Argh. Anyway, that ruined it a bit for me.

Oh, and the trailers for Night At The Museum and Talladega Nights were pretty cool too! "Lord, thank you for my sons, Walker and Texas Ranger." Hee!

Rock Star: Supernova, Week 2

(all hail Leper Pop!)

These are the "14 best undiscovered rock talent in the world"?!? A Marty Casey wannabe (who kinda looks like Michael Hutchence, IMHO, but without the talent or the charisma)? A bad Courtney Love impersonator? A camel-toe showin' Warrior Princess? Daddy's little girl playing dress-up (Born to be Mild...hee!)? Lindsey Lohan?
Creed homeboy who smiles too much?

*sigh* The only ones worth a damn are Dilana (who's still scary, but is apparently a sweetie offstage) and Toby. Oh, and (barely) Magni, who opened the show quite well. Other than that...meh.

I watched the performance show in thirty minutes (gotta love the DVR), as I was fast-forwarding through all the crap. RS:INXS was so much better, with practically everyone a good singer (yeah, even Asshat).

And yet, I'm still strangely compelled to watch. OB:House still kicks ass, and Bwak-bwak's good eye-candy. Plus, it's always fun to guess what Tommy and Jason are on that particular night.

EDIT: Wow, Jill killed EvenAsia...er, Evanescence tonight. Interesting that if they just tone down all the "peacocking", they're all actually quite good. Even Chris.

Rock Star: Supernova Week 1

(or, as I like to call it, "Tommy's Diner". Seriously, though, it's like a buffet for Tommy Lee, don't you think?)

Boy, that was interesting. Although I can't help feeling that Tommy Lee was heavily involved in the selection process. Most, if not all of the female rockers are all hot in some form or fashion. Well, except for Dilana, who's a bit scary. And (again, except for Dilana, who's one of a kind) is it just me, or do all the females look like or perform like someone who's already famous?

• Dana, the sweet little rich kid looks kinda like Winnie Cooper and performs like Jessica Rabbit from RS:INXS
  
• Jenny looks and sings like Liz Phair. I think she's better as a solo act.
  
• Jill looks like Charo, along with the *ahem* frontage to match. PJ thinks she looks like Pamela Anderson with those lips
  
• Patrice looks like Miranda from Sex and the City...so I can't picture her as a "rocker". More like a lawyer moonlighting as one.
  
• Storm looks like Tiffani Amber-Thiessen, or (depending on the camera angle) Lindsey Lohan. And who the heck names their daughter "Storm"?
  
• Zayra looks like Lucy Lawless, and makes like Daphna Dove with the flowing scarves

The guys...well, only Toby stood out for me, with his acoustic Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Lukas, although he sounded great, felt like Ty part 2 to me. Which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but he's too emo and seems to be too high-maintenance for my taste.

It's only Week One, though. We'll see if people improve, and if Tommy Lee can manage to keep his hands to himself. Doubt it, though. =)

Teaching Kids How To Spel

I like to think that I'm a good speller--after all, I did win a Spelling Bee waaaaay back in grade school (heh). Imagine my horror when I stumbled upon an article in Yahoo!, where an organization called "Simplified Spelling Society" is pushing to change the spelling of words to reflect how they're pronounced. Yes, change the spelling of words to reflect how they're pronounced.

Wow. Just...wow. After the initial outrage (and wincing at the writing style of the author...I picture her patting herself on the back, thinking how clever she is), I continued reading, if only to find out what their motivations were. From what I gather, Simplified Spelling advocates are arguing that the current system of spelling is "confusing" to children; words like "enough" is pronounced "ehnuf", but "dough" is pronounced "doh"; their way, they claim, would accelerate learning among children. This way of thought even had some high-profile advocates such as Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Mark Twain.

Now wait a minute, I thought. Franklin? Webster? Twain? Big names! Of course, I googled it to make sure. Franklin, yes. Daniel Webster, not really sure, might have confused him with Noah Webster. Mark Twain--well, I managed to find his essay on it, which seemed to argue that it will save pen strokes; unfortunately, this doesn't really apply in this day and age, when more often than not people bang away on a keyboard, and some words such as "education" spelled as it is currently require less keystrokes than "edyukayshun". Twain also seems to be promoting a sort of shorthand as well.

So what to make of all this? Well, personally I think it's nearly impossible to implement. It's too massive a change--imagine all the textbooks that have to be re-written, all the teachers that need to be re-taught. Most important of all, it's too confusing for the wee ones. Imagine mastering several difficult words in the third grade, only to be told to forget everything you've learned in the fourth grade. It's like that Twilight Zone episode Wordplay where the father wakes up to find that the meaning of words have changed.

It's impossible to change something completely overnight. The English language is an evolving beast, though, and it wouldn't surprise me to see some of what SS is pushing make it to the language. For example, l33t speak such as pwned! and pr0n have made it to common everyday usage. They will undoubtedly make it to Webster's at some point (if they haven't already). The texting phenomenon is also an interesting case, one I see quite often whenever my family sends me a message from Manila. You see Simplified Spelling in action, since you're trying to cram an entire message with a limited amount of letters, to wit: "m gng hm now. wil be hm soon. cya". It's only in text messaging though; their e-mails use regular, boring spelling.

So, for now I'll continue to live in the past, and revel in the fact that I once won the Spelling Bee (oh, and pray that Gaudere's Law doesn't come back to haunt me).

Petals Around The Rose

If you've been following the strange-but-funny idealogical war between Windows, Apple and Linux faithful, you've almost certainly heard that Bill Gates is stepping down from day-to-day activities at Microsoft. This has lead to some people praising Gates for his charitable work (he's stepping down to concentrate on his Foundation), while others continue to villify him, wondering at the hidden agenda Gates has in giving away his wealth.

Myself? I think he's a pretty smart guy to have been able to do what he did. He's also been very lucky. Anyway, what does this have to do with Roses? Well, some of you might know the game Petals Around The Rose. I certainly hadn't heard of it--until I came across an article about a young Bill Gates from Lloyd Borrett's excellent site, which provided an insight into his thinking.

The parts about Gates were pretty interesting (especially the last part--pretty funny, and a reflection about how programmers are lousy spellers); the part that grabbed me though, was the game itself. It was the first time I heard about it--essentially, the set up is this:

There are five ordinary six-sided dice that are rolled. There are only three pieces of information that you can have:

(1) The name of the game is Petals Around The Rose.
(2) The name is significant.
(3) The answer is always an even number or zero.

The Potentate of the Rose (the carney running the game who knows what the deal is) rolls the dice, and then tells the crowd what the answer is if they ask. Some get it immediately. Others never do (according to the Bill Gates story a lot of geniuses and math whizzes think up complex algorithms to try and solve it, but still come up with the wrong answer).

If I read the article correctly, Gates got it in the span of around three hours. After playing the game on Borrett's site on-and-off for an accumulated hour (and running scenarios in my head in the shower, which is where I work out the answers to most of the great mysteries in life, such as "How do I open that jewelled egg in Zork?"), I was able to rise to the level of Potentate. I won't give anything else away--it's pretty satisfying to solve it yourself.