Why do people misspell my simple name John to Jhon? Always! Everytime I would order a cup of coffee at Starbucks, or whenever I would go to the local laundry shop, or I’m dining [sic] in a fastfood they always never fail to write my name in ORs as Sir Jhon. And here I thought we are a big Christian nation! Ever seen the name of Saint John the Beloved misspelled as Saint Jhon? Or Saint John the Baptist as Saint Jhon the Baptist? I bet you haven’t! Pronouncing John is ja-han, not jay-hon! Next time I’ll be telling everyone that my name is Peter and I’m expecting they will write it down as Fighter.

Last Tuesday, former ADDU HS 4Blue classmates gathered around for a drink or two at Greenbelt. Among the attendees were Sally, Janoah, Jeanny, Kate, Crystal, Rhea, Mikko, Dino and Charles. It was a fun night until the waitress informed us that bars in Greenbelt 3 closed at 12 MN. WTH?!?

Anyway, naisip ko, sobrang tagal na rin pala since kami nagkita-kita, about <10 years ago, sobbing moments. Imagine that! Then it dawned on me, I can’t anymore remember high school, maybe because I am a nerdox way back or maybe I just want to erase that memory. Anyway, back then all I ever had were school and home. You can’t blame me, my baon at that time was around PHP 20, yes PHP 20! But aha! It became PHP 40 when I was in 4th year, but PHP 40 at that time was next to nothingness. I remembered during my last years in high school that the only source of snacks I had were kikiam and mentos, imagine that, filling your stomach with air to alleviate the hunger. After snack time, I will still have around PHP 20. For lunch I will just buy a rice, a bar-be-que and a free soup for only… drum roll please… PHP 10!!! Hooray for province price! (So that must be the reason I am a walking skeletor back then!)

Jeez, just finished watching the Bb. Pilipinas Pageant Q&A portion and wow, the whole TXT generation is really coming back to haunt us. Watch it here. I am not good in English, but damn those things were taught in elementary! And don’t f****ng tell me to let them answer in Tagalog because we are in the Philippines, the mere fact that she is a college masscomm student, MASS COMMUNICATION for pete’s sake!, in one of the top universities in the country that should be an indicator that she is [sic] at least fluent. With so many blunders, nothing against her, but why did she win again?!?

Excerpt from the Q&A:

Q: What role did your family play to you as candidate to Binibining Pilipinas?

A: Well… my family’s role for me is so important because there was the wa- they’re they was the one who’s very… Haha… Oh I’m so sorry… Ahhmm… My pamily… My family… Oh my god… I’m… Ok… I’m so sorry… I… I told you that I’m so confident… Eto… Ahhmm… Wait… Hahahaha… Ahmmm… Sorry guys because this was really my pirst pageant ever because I’m only 17 years old and haha I… I did not expect that I came from… I came from one of the tough 10. Uhmmm… so… but I said that my family is the most important persons in my life. Thank you.

On the side note, I want to kill myself because I didn’t watch the Incubus concert. F******!

I always shudder everytime someone is going to ask about my company. Well - disclaimer first - I love my company, the products we are offering are great! The people are great! The pay is great! - wow this feels like an advertisement - moving along, the only problem I have is that my company is not (yet) a household name. So everytime someone’s going to ask me, hey what is your company?, I would never say the name of the company, ok I only whisper it, then I always add, well it is based in Europe! And our clients are worldwide telecom firms! And they will reply, well ok… Sensing they are lost, I reiterate, you know Globe or Smart right? Well those are the type of clients we have. But then they will never back down and ask, so are they your clients? *sigh* Hopefully *sigh*.

This wasn’t the first time that this happened to me. When I was still employed back in Cebu, I always told back home that even though they didn’t know my company that it is a big Japanese firm and it’s famous in Japan. Ah just like Sony or Toyota? Well err no, more like like like oh I give up! People will always equate big, established and famous companies as ‘THE’ company to worked for. Everyone (especially the parents) wants you to work for a big conglomerate because then they can be proud of you and endlessly be boasted among their circle of friends. Usually the conversation will start this way, parents: Oh my son/daughter works for <insert big name firm>! Friends: Oh really? That’s great, what is his/her position? Parents: We don’t really care as long as he/she works there.

*Sigh* It feels so hard to justify where you work. *sigh* But hey it is in Makati! Oh, still in the Philippines… But hey! Google started as a small company and look at them now! Oh, we aren’t the Google… But! Our clients are abroad and they are really big firms! Yes, but did you happen to be deployed abroad already? Oh…………….

Are you? Do you do these…

1. Play PSP <or insert favorite portable gaming system> while walking along with your friends on a MALL!

2. Listen to your iPod <or insert favorite portable music gadget> doing headbangs, singing loudly, and turning the volume to skyhigh with that white earbuds fully knowing that it’s a shitty earbud, just so others will say, omg! he has the ipods!

3. Having very loud ring or message tone? Just so others can recognize your spanking brand new cellphone err smartphone err iPhone err everything but the kitchen sink gadget?

4. Wear a brand new shoes and always - for the love of God - pretend that it is from your brother? Or you just brushed it over the weekend to look slick?

5. Open up your car windows and pretend your music is the coolest shit there is?

6. Walk along a corridor, smiling, while embracing your gf/bf and waiting for someone to say, "oh is that the one?" and proudly saying, yes pare this is MY gf/bf! Wow, what a beautiful trophy! 

7. Posts in multiply, friendster, myspace, facebook, flickr all the cool places that you have been with the following caption - "conquered <place> next stop <place>" 

8. Talks about "cool" movies, "cool" books and "cool" music that you alone have heard, well some of your friends.

If you do then congratulations! You are a freaking show off - just like me and everyone else. We all are guilty of some if not all of these things one way or another. As a human being, hell as a Filipino we want others to recognize us not by who we are - well others will debate on that - but by the persons, things and places we associate ourselves with. And for as long as we live we will always be show off. Always. Whether that’s a good thing or not, depends on the crowd we are trying to please.

Wow! It has been almost 2 months since I last blogged here. What the f*** happened to me? Well, I just got bored, plain and simple. And since I’m not monetizing on this endeavour - in fact i’m losing countless brain cells and neurons just to come up with a decent blog.

And thanks to my friend that we will be naming Ruel for anonymity, I have a new entry for my blog, this entry is aptly entitle FUHA. What is FUHA? Well I have to share a little ‘backgrounder’ on that infamous term.

One night, while traversing along a major throughway we talked about sex. Yes that 3 letter word that guys love to talk all day and all night long. Somewhere along our conversation the word FUBU came up. Ruel, that innocent looking maniac guy, asked, what is ‘FUBU’. We told him it means ‘gwapo’ or handsome. But he didn’t fall for it - he is freaking learning. So we told him the truth, FUBU stands for F*** ____, he quipped aha! fucking bubuyog, what a guy, so we said, it’s F*** Buddy. Oh, smirking, do you guys have fubu before? Silence settled in the car and he quickly blurted the now infamous term (well within the confines of our office), I only tried FUHA. We jolted, what the hell is FUHA? Fuha you know, laughing at his own words, Fucking hand! And chaotic laughter dawned upon us.

For non-nihonggo speakers (that includes me, oh the irony!) it means ‘long time no see’ and yes it’s been a very long time since I last blogged. Many things that connived to stop me (temporarily) from blogging.

1. Smartbro acted quite funny for a week. Seems like a little movement of the antenna causes significant drop in internet access. I learned it the hardway. Someone hardwired his Smartbro antenna on top of my antenna and accidentally mis-aligned my poor antenna from Smart’s base station and we thought Smartbro was the problem (whew!).

2. My poor hard disk drive died on me (RIP). Two weeks ago my trusty information ‘holder’ stopped working and frankly I panicked because all my data, I mean all, was in there and it just died, I could not even access it with my again trusty Ubuntu Live CD.

3. Busy at work. Times have changed. I could no longer browse Digg at the office and not because it was block but because I could not put surfing in my time record (grins).

4. LBM. Yes. I had that for four days and the friggin* doctor wanted me to undergo ‘labatiba’, endoscopy and colonoscopy. Well fortunately he checked my stomach (tummy) and diagnosed that I have plenty of air inside. F*** kabag lang pala at dinaan pa ako sa takot.

But here I am alive and well again. 

Well just got back from Davao City and I was shocked to find out that the terminal fee at Davao International Airport just went up from a meager PHP 40 to PHP 200! Wow! I thought - well ok - since we have a better terminal compared to Manila Domestic Airport, understandable, but when I tried to hook up to their wifi, there is no more free internet access. What happened? It used to be that Smart offered free wifi access at the terminal and now it’s gone. I was hoping the super price increase will benefit all. I was really hoping.

This is the second part of my foreigner friend’s funny observation about Filipino cultures.

Friend: Hey janjan, why does Filipino have two names?
Me: What do you mean by that?
Friend: For example, your name, it’s janjan, same as dondon’s name.
Me: Oh, you mean we like to have repetitive names in our nicks.
Friend: Yes. What’s the deal with that?
Me: I really don’t know the reason (cause at that time I really don’t know the reason)
Friend: OK.

But now I think I have an incling on why we ‘love’ repetitive nicknames. See Filipino names are not that unique so we tend to repeat the name to differentiate a person from another one with the same name. John is different from JohnJohn which in turn is different from Johnnyboy. I am also betting that the reason we have repetitive names is that it just rolls out of our tongue or maybe the person we are calling are semi-deaf. For example, I called john’s attention but he is semi-deaf, so I have to say, ‘john, john listen to me’ so in a way your name becomes johnjohn. Well that is my reason. What do you think about it? Why do we ‘love’ having repetitive nicknames.

Woohoo! Having a blast so far in Davao City, nothing beats home. But before anything else I’ll ramble some rant. Just before I paid the entrance fee in Manila Domestic Airport a guy, with his best chum (I hope), just sidestepped me and immediately paid their tickets. They were supposed to be behind me but a guard (unfortunately) recognized them and gave them priority. I thought at first that maybe they were acquaintances but when I tried to look at the person - tada - he is a local politician in Davao City. Such a shame sir! And you want us to vote for you for a much higher position, well FU. And what’s worst was that you didn’t just said, ’sensya ha’ you just stood there and mind you own little business of cheating a simple ‘fall in line’ command.

On another note, barangay election is coming up and surprise surprise according to a neighbor, only rich people now can run for public office, wow, even in a barangay level the stakes are high, so high that even barangay officials wanna-be are giving PHP 100 to potential ’suckers’ or at least in Makati. Oh well. Election time is really here.