Is Heaven a Place on Earth?

Most Memorable Customer of the Day: "Saan yung Maria Clara Shangri-La [Sangria]?" (Where is the Maria Clara Shangri-La?)

No matter how many times Ynee corrected her, the lady still insisted she was looking for Shangri-La. Either already soused to the gills or just some elderly hippie type, who knows? Aren't we all looking for paradise on earth? ;p

Forget life, my *toys* are getting weirder

Being throughly distracted by checking a couple of jackets for damage, it took me a while to actually see this:

Persuasive devil, isn't he?

DOH stands for D'oh

Just watched this on the news tonight. A Department of Health or city official was being interviewed on the dengue outbreak in Valenzuela City and I caught the tail end of the interview as I was switching channels. I'll assume he was being asked on what the citizens of Valenzuela could do to prevent being bitten by dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

Nameless DOH/City Gov't Guy: "...mag-pahid na lang ng skin repellant sa mga kapwa." (Just rub skin repellant on your neighbors/fellow man)

Which actually sounds pretty painful as prevention goes. How does repelling your skin make you less attractive to mosquitoes? Who, in the first place, would want to repel skin? And why do I have to rub it on other people? Wouldn't they hate me afterwards, when all their skin falls off?

Most Memorable Customer of the Day

I've been down with a fever for the past couple of days (since Monday night, actually) so today's my second day at work. It's great, though, to have met such interesting customers during my recovery period.

1st MMCD: "Magkano ang Fundador?" (How much is Fundador?)

Ynee: "Anong size?" (What size?)

1st MMCD: "Yung 1 ml." (1 milliliter)

Ynee: "One ml?? 1 Liter, 440."

1st MMCD: "Ah! Oo nga, 'kala ko gamot, eh." (Oh yes, I was thinking in medicinal terms.)

Well, in England, they do give you brandy if you're feeling faint...so I guess it could classify as medicinal...

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Nearer closing time...

2nd MMCD: "Meron ba kayong dried hipon?" (Do you have any dried shrimp?)

I think this can stand on its own, don't you?

Lost in Translation

I walked into my dad's room to ask my mom a simple question.

Me: "Where's the thing you use to soak your feet in?*"

Mom: "What??"

Me: "You know, the basin? For your foot spa?"

Mom: "Why are you asking me for crab claws?"

Me: "D'oh!"

Life would be much easier if I didn't try to speak my native tongue.

*Translated from Chinese

A few minutes later...

Mom: "Where can we get that vibrator fixed?*"

Me: "What???"

Mom: >points at foot massager<

Me: "Ohhh..."

Note to self: The language barrier works both ways.

*In the original English

Wait til we get our Hanes on you. Not.

Was in the 168 Mall today with Ynee -- just bought a pair of socks at this stall that sold socks, men's and women's underwear, when this caught my eye.

P.P. Boy (brand) men's briefs

Good grief.

Hee!

I came home from work, had dinner with Mumsy, walked into my room, turned on the computer, looked up -- and laughed out loud.

Either the household help has a quirky sense of humor or my new giraffe is really friendly.

Avast ye landlubbers!

Bought a load of dvds today -- got Alias seasons 1 to 4 and The L Word seasons 1 & 2 for Trissa then grabbed MacGyver season 2 and Queen: Live at Wembley Stadium for me. Myself. Whatever. Who cares if my blog's grammatically inconsistent?

G'day, Mate!

I got my hardbound copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince today (courtesy of the wonderful cousins down in Oz)! Well, I was actually supposed to get it last week, as I received the post notice on Thursday, but it clean slipped my mind on Friday, and the post office is closed on weekends. Ehehe...anyway, I'm saving this up for the weekend; I don't want to carry it to Divisoria as I'll probably get caught up in it and end up ignoring all my customers. (Waaay bad for business, yes?)

Market! Market!

Went to the Chinese temple in Santol this morning to say hi to Ama (accompanied Go-tsim) and Angkong. Lunched at home, then Zeish came to pick me up -- we went to Market! Market! in Fort Bonifacio to check out this used bookstore (sadly disappointing). Bought vegetables as I didn't do the marketing this morning; also got a couple of plushy toys that were too cute (and in one case, goofy) to pass up.

Coffee grounds, tea or me?

Went to Starbucks for coffee and dessert (for Nunkie). Ynee spotted some bags of coffee grounds on the floor and after asking the guard and baristas about them, found out they were giving them away for free. Apparently, coffee grounds are great fertilizer. Huh. I picked up two bags for Zeish's vermiculture thingy (earthworm farming). Maybe this'll help keep the the little buggers awake.

I finally managed to get my hands on Carnivale season 1! Wahoo!

Enroute to the Divi Mall, Ynee and I passed by this store that sells plastic (plastic bags, plastic cutlery, paper plates, styrofoam containers, etc.) and found tiny ziplock bags at 100 bucks for 1000 pieces! So much cheaper that the ones they sell in Tabora, and just the right size for earrings, small projects and loose Swarovski crystals.

Hey, who's driving this thing, anyway?

After several attempts to reinstall the driver (from nVidia's website) for my new video card, getting fed up with it and installing the old driver (from the cd included in the kit) and numerous restarts, false starts and starting-to-get-really-pissed-off, I finally managed to get normal-looking color on my DVDs. I have no idea which driver is at work, or which one I actually installed, but hey, who the frell cares?

This led to my playing Neverwinter Nights until 1:15 in the morning though. Oops.

Sacred, shmacred.

Having decided that I really wanted to get rid of that annoying flicker in my computer monitor, I swapped video cards around last last Sunday, and came to the conclusion that it was definitely time to upgrade the whole schmoodle. Sooo...

I lugged my CPU down to the Annapolis Carpark in Greenhills (which is where all the pc stores from Virra Mall moved to while they're renovating the place) and got a new motherboard (Asus P4VP-MX), a new processor (Intel Pentium 4 2.26ghz), new RAM (512MB!) and...oh yeah, a new video card (GeForce FX5500 256mb) :p It's just my luck that my old casing didn't fit the new motherboard, so I had to shell out an additional 1600 bucks for a black casing (which clashes horribly with my old white CD-writer, DVD-rom, and floppy drive) that came with free speakers, a new mouse and new keyboard (all black). All in all, I spent about 17 grand...and when I got home, I found out they hadn't installed the driver for my soundcard. Sheesh. Also, my brand new video card was making my DVDs play in really weird colors. I'm pretty sure that Johnny Smith's skin tone and hair color shouldn't be neon. Grr. Spent the night playing Sacred instead.

Realized after two crashes that Sacred is a cheese-eating crap-assed Neverwinter Nights wanna-be. Stopped wasting my time. Went to bed.

Dibidi, boss, dibidi?

With the crackdown on pirated dvds being strictly/well, not really/kind of/sort of enforced, sellers have resorted to covert means of attracting potential customers. A favorite in malls is to secure their wares and casually wander around, approaching passersby and murmuring: "Dibidi, boss, dibidi?" When I see these guys in motion, I feel like I'm on Sesame Street, watching the shady character that sells weird crap to Ernie...

Of course, in Divisoria, you can just wander into the malls and look at the stalls that blatantly sell these in plain sight. The fun thing about all this (besides being able to buy movies and tv shows for a fraction of the original's price) is spotting the odd cover or two; the ones that have bizarre mistakes such as wrong billing (which actor is the real star?), odd cover pictures, and even weird review blurbs.

Most memorable so far:

- The boxed (yet extremely) pirated set of Batman movies 1 to 4, starring... Arnold Schwarzenegger.

- Blade, starring Kris Kristofferson (no doubt the special effects/makeup guys won an Oscar for this)

- (this one's for you, Tsi) Elmopalooza, with the cover being a digitally retouched pic of Bert, Ernie, and sundry muppets looking like juvenile delinquents and smoking cigars.

Will post more when I see them :)

Water, water everywhere...

Just came from the kitchen where my mum had gone to get a drink of water. Hearing the sound of running water yet unable to find the source, she asked me to check it out. After figuring out the sound was coming from the balcony, I unlocked the door and found...five guilty-looking cats and one garden hose spewing water like Old Faithful.

I'm still trying to figure out what they were planning to do with the hose.