The DJ who's not a DeeJay: August 2009

Silhouette of Our National Hero

Saturday, August 29, 2009
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One of things I love about Krispy Kreme is that it's not just about buying donuts. Krispy Kreme is an experience.

What kind of experience ? There's lots to tell. If you go to one of their donut factories, you get to watch an assembly line of donuts being dispatched at the "finish line" and ready to be served hot and fresh off the grill. When their krispy Kreme logo is lighted up, you get a free donut. Each time they open a new branch, they offer cool promos for the first few guests.

They also introduce new and exciting themed donuts coupled with your favorite brands like the Chocolate Kreme Cakes made with Oreo, Hershey's Cookies and Kreme and Chocolate Karnival. They cater to the times like during the UAAP college basketball season where they introduced blue and green sprinkled donuts representing Ateneo and La Salle respectively. The list just goes on and on. Krispy Kreme just seems to come up with something new all the time.

Their latest promo is the Krispy Kreme FaveFan Promo where everyone has a chance to win a year's supply of doughnuts including a trip to Krispy Kreme headquarters ! To celebrate 72 years of service (6 dozen in Krispy Kreme numerology), Krispy Kreme announces a worldwide search for its number one fan.

The Krispy Kreme FaveFan Promo is open to 9 countries, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, United Kingdom and the Philippines (aren't we lucky ?). To join, all you need to do is go to http://www.krispykremefavefan.com , click on the Submit Entry and complete the form. The form also requires you to answer the question "How has Krispy Kreme made your life special?" ( in a maximum of 1,000 characters). Include a photo with your entry and you automatically have a chance to be selected as the Krispy Kreme Fave Fan for the Philippines. Winners from all participating countries will win a year's supply of donuts plus a trip for two to the Home of Krispy Kreme. You'll also get the chance to design your ultimate donut !

Also join the Krispy Kreme FaveFan Promo Facebook page and be amongst the thousands of fans the ever-growing Krispy Kreme community has.

Hurry and submit your entries now cause the deadline for joining ends September 15, 2009, 11:59:59 p.m. Philippine time.

Log on now to http://www.krispykremefavefan.com and tell Krispy Kreme how they made your life special.

Friday, August 28, 2009
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Social Traps

elevator

There are times when you see someone coming your way and you'd rather not see them, be seen by them, greet them or talk to them at all. In cases like these, you could just avoid the person.

If you see the person in a corridor, you could take the stairs, take a u-turn and go another direction, bow down to hide your face, turn your head the other way as if you had a stiff neck, or if you have the guts and ability, look the person straight in the eye in an emotionless state (dedma).

It's not that easy to avoid someone when you're in an escalator or an elevator. That's why I call these 2: social traps. You'll just have to endure being with the person you're avoiding because you have no complete control over the machine you're taking.

When you're in an escalator, you are bound to see everyone at the opposite side. And if you're already on the escalator, there's no turning back. You could always go back and walk double time. But that would catch more attention. Plus, if you don't have the agility, by the time you've jumped off, chances are, the person you're avoiding just stepped down from the other side. The best way is simply to look away or hold a huge newspaper in front of you.

Elevators offer a different awkward situation, especially if you and the person you're avoiding are the two last people left inside. What's difficult about this situation is that you have very limited options. Due to the elevator's size, there's no way to distance yourself from the other person. There's not much room to look away and you're bound to get closer against your will when you have to press the floor on the elevator panel. In addition, and depending on how many floors both of you are going to, the torture ride must be endured anywhere from 10 seconds (fast elevators going up or down only 1 floor) to 3 minutes (old buildings with super slow elevators and it stops on every floor with no one getting inside).

Just how can you avoid someone in an elevator ? Facing the other way looks stupid. It's like riding a rollercoaster and facing the back. If the elevator had other people, you could manuever your way to hide beside or behind someone. If you're really desperate, you could get off the next floor and wait it out or take the stairs.

A worst case scenario is you're in an elevator with the person you're avoiding and you and the person are the only two people inside. Things keep awkwardly quiet. You start to perspire in anxiety and suddenly, the worst thing you were hoping wouldn't happen, happens. The person makes an initiative to talk to you. Do you want to acknowledge ? Hell no ! You've been avoiding this person. Ignoring the acknowledgement would only make the person think you didn't hear it well. But in an close-to-empty elevator with only the two of you in complete silence (unless there's elevator music but that's a at minimal volume), it's very hard to convince the person you didn't hear them (unless your tone-deaf).

So what do you do ?

You could place earphones on your ears. Whether you're actually listening to music or not isn't important. In this case, it tells the other person you may not have heard them. But that may also just make the situation worse, especially if instead of talking to you, the person taps you to signal they're talking to you.

So what do you do then ?

You could pretend you're on the phone with someone but would have to constantly talk so the person wouldn't have any chance at all to butt-in and have social time with you. In this case, you're not granting the person any chat time by pretending to be talking with someone else. And if you're going up several floors, you'll need to know how to talk constantly without pause.

So what's the best thing to do ?

Don't take these social traps if you have a hunch you'll be caught in an unforeseen and awkward situation. But then again, how do you know when these things happen ? They just do. So just be prepared how to handle them. And if I were you, I'd take the stairs.

But that's just me.

Thursday, August 27, 2009
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Fly

balloons

Thursday, August 27, 2009
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Cameras Have Rumors Too ?

camera

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
2 Comments

Bottomless Tea

cup

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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National Geographic To Air Filipino Documentary

national geographic

Tuesday, August 25, 2009
2 Comments

Jumpshot

jump

Tuesday, August 25, 2009
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How Many Candles ?

candle

Monday, August 24, 2009
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LTO Advertising Expired Website ?

car

The Land Transportation Office or more popularly known as LTO has their official website located at http://www.lto.gov.ph.

Two months ago when I renewed my license, I was handed a flyer promoting their newest online service. Their catch phrase was "Why fall in line when you can go online. Transact Now @ LTO Online". The ad said to log on to http://go.lto.net.ph

So I decided to check it out and got this message:

The name lto.net.ph has expired

I found out that the domain expired last July 19, 2009. Does that mean that the online service has been discontinued ? Could it be that the website is still fully working and just an oversight to renew the domain ?

So as for the online part, it's offline. But much worse is that the domain has expired making it up for grabs.

Let's hope that a promoted online service stays online.

Sunday, August 23, 2009
2 Comments

Boing !

photo

Sunday, August 23, 2009
0 Comments

Twirled Lamp

lamp

Saturday, August 22, 2009
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Of Planes and Airports

airport

Saturday, August 22, 2009
2 Comments

Picking A Lock

cabinet

My mom accidentally lost her keys. One of the keys in her keychain included 2 keys to her cabinet. Her cabinet had all her clothes there. Fortunately, there was a fresh batch of newly washed clothes that haven't been kept yet so she had time to look for her keys. But after 2 days, my mom still couldn't find them and then asked my dad and me to help her look for them.

We did look for it everywhere possible in their room but we just couldn't find it. We were hoping that it wasn't accidentally thrown in the garbage.

While we were all losing hope, I decided to try some other keys in hopes that one of them may open her cabinet even if it's not the actual key. I tried around 20 keys and none of them even budged.

With all options exhausted, I suddenly thought of the unthinkable... to pick the lock.

I've never picked a lock and I've only seen it done in movies and on TV. So I took a regular paperclip and deformed it to make it long enough to insert inside the keyhole. Then I took my precision screwdrive set and got the smallest screwdriver to help me maneuver around the lock.

After a couple of tries, I decided that I was thinking the impossible and it would never work. I then took a last look at one of the keys that looked similar to the lost keys and tried to manuever the keyhole again with the paperclip and screwdriver.

And after 20 minutes of trial and error, I shocked myself when I was able to open the cabinet ! I was ecstatic and astounded at the same time. And my next reaction was: "Hey ! I got a new skill !" There was still the other half of the cabinet locked and so to test my newly acquired skill and to prove to myself that it wasn't just luck, I tried picking the other lock.

Since I had some practice from the first lock, I was able to open this lock in 10 minutes. "So it's not luck !" I exclaimed. I was beginning to think if I could do this for other locks too, but didn't bother to try out any other lock cause I already spent around a half an hour trying to open the cabinet.

Funny thing about this all is that not more than 20 minutes after I was able to successfully pick and open two locked cabinet doors, my mom finally found her set of keys. I could've just waited a few more minutes and I wouldn't have to try opening the cabinet... but I didn't mind cause I acquired a new skill: "lock-picking".

Friday, August 21, 2009
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Screw You

photo

Thursday, August 20, 2009
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300 People Participate in a Pinoy Flash Mob Dance

300

A couple of bloggers, including me and some guests from the media were invited to the Mall of Asia last August 8. All we knew was that Jollibee invited us to witness an exciting event. We had no clue what the event was nor what was is about. Everything was kept a secret.

All we were told was to proceed to the 2nd floor of the main building near the entrance cause we would have the best view of the event. When we all got there, we were as clueless as all the other mall-goers strolling around the mall and shopping.

And then we heard loud dance music. We looked down and saw a guy breakdancing. A few seconds after, the people nearby who looked like innocent mall-goers suddenly joined in the dancing. By this time, the dancers caught the people's attention who gathered around to watch what was going on. People watching at the ground level were constantly surprised cause a guy or girl beside them would immediately join in on the dancing. Little by little, people of all ages and different walks of life were dancing in sync to such wonderful choreography.

Soon were we to discover that the total people dancing reached a whopping 300 ! Kids, teens, adults, parents and even some grandparents were part of the exciting dance. Then, all of them took off their shirts, revealing a Jollibee t-shirt underneath. The newest Jollibee jingle "Iisang Sarap" by Parokya ni Edgar was played and they all danced to the catchy song commemorating the Jollibee Yumburger. 3 huge tarpaulins on the 2nd floor were also unveiled simultaneously revealing the cause of the event.

The dance lasted for four solid minutes of fun, excitement and surprise. It was so exciting to witness one of the country's biggest viral campaigns.

I figured that there must have been a huge amount of planning and secrecy to make this event possible. And I was right. The dance was choreographed by much-renowned dance gurus, Whiplash and directed by popular TV and music video director, Mark Reyes. Aside from that, you have 300 people who were in on the big secret that rehearsed for this big event. And the SM Mall of Asia had to be in on the secret too, but despite the easy urge to promote the event, they stuck to its essence to catch everybody offguard and witness the biggest flash mob dance in the Philippines.

It's so exciting that I hope I could be a part of something like this in the future... and be one of those dancing and surprising people.

Check out their official website at http://bestyoucanbee.com

Thursday, August 20, 2009
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Hail To The Throne

photo

Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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Market Greenery

photo

Monday, August 17, 2009
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Take A Hike

walk

I don't mind walking from one place to another as long as

it's not a hot sunny day or else I'll get drenched in perspiration
it's not raining or else I'll get drenched in rain
it's not polluted or else I'll be feeding my body unecessary waste

If it takes the same time to wait for transportation as the time it takes to walk from point A to point B, then walking is my best bet. And besides, I haven't been able to do my jogging rounds due to the unpredictable weather lately.

There are just some things that I'd rather not encounter when walking:

Bumps & Holes. Uneven sidewalks, lack of sidewalks or worse, no sidewalk for pedestrians will pose as hazards for my walking pleasure. I wouldn't want to turn my back every single second checking that I'm not in any close call with death from a raging jeep or an out of control car.
Noise Pollution. I easily get startled. And so trucks that have the horns of a cargo ship scare the living daylights out of me enough for my entire body to shake. Construction sites also provide the additional (unwelcomed) benefit of falling debris aside from the noisy hammering and drilling.
Creeps & Bums. If I need to hold my breath for 10 seconds or more because of a smelly person I pass by, I'd rather cross the road and spare the breathing exercise. Much worse are creeps that look suspicious enough to make you clench your bag and get ready to run for your life if they attack you.
Higad. Yes, higad. If you happen to walk through a park or a heavily tree-shaded walkway, be prepared for anything to fall on you. Leaves are okey. Branches may hurt especially if it's bigger than your arm. Flowers can be a delight. Fruits can leave a bump on your head and render you unconscious if it's a coconut. But higad (caterpillars) can really leave a nasty itch when they come into contact with your skin.
Birds. Rarely do they dive down and land on your head. So don't worry much about this. I'm talking about birds who release "bombs" that could land on you at gravitational speeds. In the vernacular, "ipot". So when you look at the sky, try to keep your mouth closed. That's possibly the worst part of your body to be victimized by a bird. In the military, you call that a "direct hit!".

Overall, walking is good for your health. So as long as you can avoid some of these obsctacles and unfortunate situations, I say enjoy the walk and take a hike.