Archive for February, 2006

27
Feb

Lots of Smarts, Not Much Common Sense

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Books, TV and Movies

Bg_candidates_1I just finished watching the first episode of the newest season of The Apprentice. There were 2 new contestants that I was particularly interested in; Charmaine, who is from ‘Pinas, and Tarek, who is Mensa. I was thinking hey, lets see how these people fare. I’m Pinoy and Mensa (IQ of 156), and it would be interesting to have your own "proxies" in the show. Little did I know that my proxies would get into trouble this early on.

Tarek was chosen by The Donald to be PM for the first task, because of the fact that he was Mensa. He was squared off against Allie, who was from the Harvard School of Business. I’ll not go into how the 1st task went, but suffice to say that Tarek’s team lost by a 10% margin. Going into the boardroom, The Donald asked Tarek to choose whom he would bring into the boardroom, and Tarek chose Summer (who most everyone knew would be fired because of her non-participation), Lenny, an entrepreneur from the USSR, and Lee, a Cornell graduate and business analyst who didn’t seem to get along well with Tarek. Instead of it being a slam dunk with Summer getting kicked out, Tarek barely survived by the skin of his teeth!

Now I don’t know about you, but if I had to bring 1-3 people with me, and argue my case not to get fired, I would stick with bringing in just the 1 person whom I think should be fired, instead of bringing along 3 people who’s only common bond is their resentment that you brought them into the boardroom.

This brings me to the point I’d like to make in this post - being Mensa means that your IQ is at the top 2 percentile. Meaning that if you’re in a room of 50 people, odds are you got the highest IQ in the room. But IQ is a very narrow test of mathematical, spatial, analytical skills. It doesn’t make you good with people, nor make you a good dancer, or painter, nor can it help you be an athlete. God knows it took me until college to learn how to talk to girls.

This Apprentice epsiode in particular shows just how lousy Tarek’s knowledge of how people behave really was. The Trump boardroom was in chaos, everybody was critisizing Tarek’s leadership when it could’ve been just him and Summer, and Summer would have been the obvious choice to fire in that situation, with no one to defend her.

Lets hope Charmaine doesn’t get fired in the next episode because of the manana habit.

24
Feb

“My Genes are not too Tight!!”

By jjao 2 Comments
Categories: Health

In college back in ‘Pinas, one of my classmates had a sister who grew up in the Midwest. One day she asked her mother, "mom, why am I shorter than my classmates?" Her mother, patiently told her "anak, it’s because of your genes." Indignantly, the sister defiantly exclaimed "my jeans are not too tight!"

What does this have to do about my post? Except for tight jeans, nothing.

Just for shits and giggles, I tried on a couple of my old jeans thinking that maybe since I lost about 13 lbs now that I might start to fit into my old clothes again. I found a pair that was very sentimental to me - it was a pair of "Creeks" jeans. Creeks was a store in Megamall that used to sell their own branded clothing. I’m not sure if they’re there anymore, but back in the 90’s they paid our band in mechandise to play an acoustic set in their premises, as a kind of promotional gimmick. Oh lots of people did come, but so did the mall security, who said that we were playing too loud.

I looked at the tag - it said "size 29". Okaayyyyy. I tried it on. Of course it didnt fit. Well it did, but I would die from asphyxia or at the very least suffer from severe loss of blood flow in the legs if I kept it on for more than say.. half a second. This sort of thing gives me a lot more incentive now to keep on the weight loss program. One of these days I’m gonna fit in them again, I swear!

Now I’m trying to look for my old Jag pants. They also paid us in mechandise to promote their brand. But this one’s a size 28. Whoopie!

24
Feb

Breaking the 160lb Barrier

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Health

I weighed myself today, and lo and behold! I am now 159.4 lbs! I promised myself I’d throw a party every time I broke a 10lb barrier i.e. 160lbs, 150lbs, and finally, 140lbs - to the 139lbs my doctor recommended to me for my cholesterol.

It feels weird. My skin seems loose. My office shirts keep un-tucking themselves (is there such a word?) because the pants are now too big for me. I am starting to look like a twentysomething in the mirror! But yet, it was only 6 years ago since I was FOB at 142 lbs. In fact I still have some size 29 pants in my closet, which meant that up to 2 years ago, when I bought my own place, I could still fit myself into them (with maybeeee a litttttleee holding of the breath).

Maybe I’ll try some of the old jeans on, it’ll be a hoot!

24
Feb

Finally, the Full High Definition Experience

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Web/Tech

DtvblogIt came as a surprise to me that at 11pm last night, after arriving from Detroit, that I had, in my living room, finally transformed my home theater experience into fully digital high definition.

Im sure most of you would care less about this, but to a gearhead like myself, thats a big deal. Here’s how it happened:

Last night I finally got my DVI-HDMI converter from AMAZON.COM, which allowed my high-def cable box to connect to my HDTV (shown above). Since my HDTV was of the older generation, it used an HDMI connection, which was video-only. So now I had a fully digital, high definition picture from source to display. The picture was amazing! The effect on the picture was not obvious on big objects on screen, but on the smaller detail like smoke and blades of grass were clearer than ever!

But then, what about the audio?

I was connecting the HD cable box to my home theater via a stereo connection.  I was connecting via a stereo connection from my turntable to my cassette deck back in the 80’s! This was no way to serve up the audio for a high-def picture, I thought.

But then I noticed a little red light, like an LED, coming from out of the back of the cable box.. could it be.. *gasp*.. an optical digital connection?

My encounter with optical digital connection started back in 1997. I had bought a minidisc player atMzr30blog a discount mall in singapore. It was the MZ-R30 , probably the first portable MD walkman by Sony, and it cost me a bundle at the time, around US$500, an exhorbitant amount, given the fact that I was earning in Pesos back then, but well worth it since it was the first practical portable digital recording media - really the precursor to the iPod and other MP3 players. Since there was no concept of MP3s or other music files (and a 4MB file was huge back then - you couldn’t fit one in any sized diskette! Remember diskettes?), the only way to transfer music files digitally was through a digital cable, an optical digital cable.

The optical digital cable is really a fiber-optic cable that sends information via bits using a small laser. if you looked into an end of the cable, you could actually see red pulses of light flashing through it as the bits came through. In order to transfer musica digitally, say from a CD player to MD, you would need to have a CD player and and MD player that would both have optical digital connections, one to send out the signal digitally, the other to recieve it digitally.

TosblogMinitosblogTo cut a long story short, I had an optical digital cable somewhere in the house, and I desperately looked for it. And I found it. The problem was, that both the home theater and the HD cable box accepted a "toslink" type of connection, but my cable was of the "mini toslink" type. This was literally trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. With crazy thoughts in my head, I lined up the laser light into the toslink jack, the connection was via lightbeams right? I dont need to have a physical connection, right? As long as the light lines up, I should get digital sound, right?

Then suddenly, against all hope, I started hearing sound from my home theatre. I laughed like a crazy man. It worked! I carefully lined up the cable, pointing the end of the laser to the hole of the connector, and secured it with scotch tape carefully on both ends, and started enjoying Terminator 3 in it’s full glory. Eat your heart out McGuyver!

Of course I’m buying a digital audio cable with "toslink" connectors. It was like 20 bucks at circuit city, but I found one in AMAZON.COM for 2 bucks, plus another 6 for shipping. for a total of 8 bucks. That’s ok, I can wait.

22
Feb

Big Mac For Me, Small Mac For VanDolph

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Health

When I got off the boat and first stepped foot into the US, what really grabbed my attention was that McDonalds hamburgers and sodas were a lot bigger here than those back in ‘Pinas. Of course, "colonial mentality" firmly ingrained into my being, I immediately concluded that back in ‘Pinas, people were scrimping on material (food), to save money and make bigger profits, while here in the US, people were served food in "real" portions.

Recently though, an article in the Washington Post , as well as my own recent experiences in weight reduction made me see this phenomenon, "why ‘Pinoy fast food is served in smaller portions than US fast food", in a new light. It turns out, in reality, ‘Pinoy food is normal-sized, and US food is over-sized.

To summarize, the phenomenon of "supersized" American food came about from marketing moves fast-food chains executed starting back in the ’80’s:

1) To give themselves a competitive edge, in 1983 Taco Bell started lowering its prices below its competitors. To catch up, the other fast food chains did the same.

2) As everyone had lowered their prices, the competitive edge was lost. To regain it, fast-food chains started increasing portion sizes for a fractional increase in price i.e. to give customers a "better value". As burgers, fries, and sodas got bigger and bigger, over the next 20 years the public got used to the idea that this was "normal"

3) Upselling. "Do you want to super-size that for $0.50 more?"

To see how portion sizes have grown in the last 2 decades, check out this link! I was freaked out.

So it all made sense to me now. Competition was less fierce in ‘Pinas, as fast food was more of a treat than a replacement for the sit-down family meal, there was less competitive pressure to jack down prices, and increase portion sizes. Thats why portion sizes stayed the same as they were back in the ’80’s Thats why in ‘Pinas theres still a "short" Starbucks whereas in the US, people start off with a "tall". Thats why a medium "softdrink" is smaller than a small "soda".

Most importantly, thats why it seems like whenever I try to eat out, I always seem to eat DOUBLE my budgeted calorie intake for the meal at least! At the cafeteria here in Detroit, in fact, I realized in horror, that an order of my favorite Thai Fried Rice has 1500 CALORIES in it, which is like more than the total I should be consuming in a day! That’s not even including the soda.

Moral of the story: whenever you go out with a friend, share an entree. The half-sized entree is probably the amount you would have been eating, if you were back in 1980.

20
Feb

He Was Right Under My Nose

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Travel

SmmblogSince I did some research in my last post about St. Thomas the Apostle, I took some time to find some information online on my namesake St Jerome . Turns out that he is best known for having translated the bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin, and is the patron saint of translators, librarians, and encyclopedists. Like people reading their horoscope, I sort of try to take this information into the context of my own life - and of course - I like books and learning.

And finally, the kicker - I had unknowingly visited his final resting place at Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome back in 2002! In the picture, that’s me on the lower right corner.

20
Feb

Holy Hare Krishna Batman!

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Travel

You know how they say that when you travel, you get to meet lots of interesting people? Well in the 8 years that I have been traveling for a living, I have never met an interesting person on the outbound. Until today. He was my limo driver.

On the way to the hotel from the airport, I got into an airport limo, which really is nothing more than a glorified name for a taxi. The driver was an old man with an Indian accent. In the back seat of the cab I was trying to listen to my audiobook of "New Spring", a prequel to the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (see my mini-review on the sidebar). I could see the driver’s mouth opening and closing through the rear-view mirror, so I figured he was trying to whip up some small talk. I turned off the MP3 player and tried to find something to talk about.

I looked around the backseat for something and took a look at his ID. "George C. Thomas" it said, but other than his name, this guy was your typical dark-skinned, curly-haired, bushy-mustached, chicken tikamasala-eating Indian guy.

"So," I started off, "how did you get to be George Thomas?" He probably had his name changed when he turned US citizen I thought, which probably wasn’t a long time ago, given his accent.

"My family were Thomases for 4 or 5 generations now", he said. "I’m a christian, you see. Indian Orthodox. The church as started by St. Thomas the apostle." He then continued by talking about how St. Thomas lived was martyred in India.

I of course thought that this guy was blowing smoke up my ass. First off, I’ve never heard of the Indian Orthodox church, and it was highly doubtful that St. Thomas actually found his way to India. I resolved to do research on the web to get to the bottom of the matter.

Turns out he was right! Down to the St. Thomas’ setting foot in Kondungallur around 52AD, and his martyrdom in Madras! Looks like I was the Doubting Thomas this time around.

16
Feb

10 Down 20 to Go

By jjao 1 Comment
Categories: Health

10downThis week I’m hitting the 10-pound mark. Left-hand-side of the picture was me at 170lbs (12/2005). Right-hand-side is me at 160lbs (2/2006). I am calm, peaceful, in control. The only reason I’m posting this right now is to10down2_1 make me forget my cravings for.. steak. My mouth is practically watering for some steak right now! A hot, tender, juicy 1200-calorie NY strip steak with mashed potatoes and mixed greens!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! !@#$%

15
Feb

Final Destination III

By jjao 1 Comment
Categories: Books, TV and Movies

Fd3blogI just got out of the theatre here in Detroit, which was showing Final Destination III , and I thought "this Mary Elizabeth Winstead character looks a lot like Phoebe Cates!"

But seriously, Writers/Producers/Directors Glen Morgan and James Wong, who’s impressive credits include "21 Jump Street", "Space: Above and Beyond", "X-Files", "The Others (TV Series)", "The One", "Willard", and rest of the "Final Destination" series strike a chord in our subconscious: the thought of death. Like sex, dieting, and taking a sh*t, death is fascinating as we spend our daily lives struggling to get it, avoid it, avert it, ignore it or otherwise manage it.

There are clear parallelisms between the structure of the movie, and our own journey of coping with death. First the introduction, where all the characters are blissfully ignorant of what will happen in the next 1 1/2 hours of the movie. Same with us. We start off not even thinking about our mortality, or we feel "invincible" in the way that every young person has felt at one time or another.

Then the main characters cheat death by getting out of the roller coaster that claims the lives of all the other passengers in the next couple of screen minutes. They realize that death is after them. In the same way, something happens in our lives that makes us conscious of our own mortality. It could be the death of a loved one. In my case it was a broken foot. "Hey Im not invincible after all".

Then the characters die off one by one in bizarre accidents. First they are in denial, then they actively try to save themselves. Same thing with us. Going through phases of denial, trying to get healthy, trying to live a safer life, buying the car with the side airbags. Knowing though that one day it’s going to be our time as hard as we try to avoid or postpone it

This is probably why, regardless of how panned these movies are by critics, viewers will still connect with the story, even if only at a subconscious level. Of course no one expects his head pureed by an car engine fan, it’s not even on the list of the "Odds of Dying" article I read last month:

Cause of Death             Lifetime Odds

Heart Disease             1-in-5
Cancer                        1-in-7
Stroke                         1-in-23
Accidental Injury         1-in-36
Motor Vehicle Accident 1-in-100
Suicide                        1-in-121
Falling Down                 1-in-246
Assault by Firearm       1-in-325
Fire or Smoke             1-in-1,116
Natural Forces             1-in-3,357
Electrocution*             1-in-5,000
Drowning                     1-in-8,942
Air Travel Accident*     1-in-20,000
Flood*                          1-in-30,000
Legal Execution           1-in-58,618
Tornado*                     1-in-60,000
Lightning Strike         1-in-83,930
Venomous Bite            1-in-100,000
Earthquake                 1-in-131,890
Dog Attack                  1-in-147,717
Asteroid Impact*         1-in-200,000**
Tsunami*                    1-in-500,000
Fireworks Discharge    1-in-615,488

Interestingly, the chances of dying from an asteroid impact is greater than that of dying from a tsunami. Since we’ve seen tsunamis on TV, maybe we should start watching the skies.

Anyhoo, I look forward to more installments of the "Final Destination" series, critics be damned. The catharsis is worth the 10 bucks.

14
Feb

Arise, Frosty Man!

By jjao 2 Comments
Categories: Musings

Img_1159blogSaturday’s party was cancelled because of the weather, and what weather it was! Around mid-afternoon it started snowing, and every couple of hours I looked out the windows to see how much further the snow had come up. 1-2 inches of snow per hour, the guy on the TV said.

The disaster-preparedness guy in me did the math. Thats 2-4 feet if it snowed continuously for a day. If it snowed until Monday, we would be under 4-8 feet of snow! How to get out, how to get out? I checked the toolbox for the hammer and power drill. If it got that bad I would punch a hole through the ceiling to the upstairs neighbor for air. Seriously.

But then it stopped snowing Sunday PM, leaving 2 1/2 feet on the ground. It was gorgeous! The cul-de-sac in front of our house was a literal winter wonderland. I thought of Tita Nit’s trip to Antartica earlier this year. I didn’t even have to go ride on a cruise ship. We went outside to the lawn that evening and built ourselves our first snowman, using a shovel and candy bars. I was thinking of googling "how to build a snowman" but what the heck, it was fun trying to figure out how.

Statistically, NYC has major snowfall once every 5 years. 1996, 2001, and 2006 were the last 3. When the next one comes in 2011, I’ll build myself a 6-footer snowman.

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