The Dubai Chronicles

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

oh yeah, it's me

Mga minamahal kong kababayan.

For the last several weeks, the issue of the tape recordings has spun out of control. Tonight, I want to set the record straight. You deserve an explanation from me, because you are the people I was elected to serve.

As you recall, the election canvassing process was unnecessarily slow even after the election results were already in and the votes had been counted.

I was anxious to protect my votes and during that time had conversations with many people, including a Comelec official. My intent was not to influence the outcome of the election, and it did not. As I mentioned, the election had already been decided and the votes counted. And as you remember, the outcome had been predicted by every major public opinion poll and adjudged free, fair and decisive by international election observers, and our own Namfrel.

That said, let me tell you how I personally feel. I recognize that making any such call was a lapse in judgment. I'm sorry. I also regret taking so long to speak before you on this matter. I take full responsibility for my actions and to you and to all those good citizens who may have had their faith shaken by these events. I want to assure you that I have redoubled my efforts to serve the nation and earn your trust.

Nagagambala ako. Maliwanag na may kakulangan sa wastong pagpapasya ang nangyaring pagtawag sa telepono. Pinagsisisihan ko ito nang lubos. Pinananagutan ko nang lubusan ang aking mga ginawa, at humihingi ako ng tawad sa inyo, sa lahat ng mga butihing mamamayan na nabawasan ng tiwala dahil sa mga pangyayaring ito. Ibig kong tiyakin sa inyo na lalo pa akong magsisikap upang maglingkod sa bayan at matamo ang inyong tiwala.

I took office with a mandate to carry out a plan for the nation. Since that time, I have focused on making the tough but necessary decisions to make up for years of economic neglect. We passed a comprehensive, fiscally responsible national budget; raised new and necessary revenues to reinvest in the people; and implemented new anticorruption measures that have led to the highest collection of taxes in history.

Nothing should stand in the way of this work, or the next phase of my reform agenda, which includes new investments in education and social services with our new revenues; and an expansion of our successful anticorruption and lifestyle checks.

That is why I want to close this chapter and move on with the business of governing.

I ask each and every one of you to join hands with me in a show of unity, to help forge One Philippines, where everyone is equal under the law, and where everyone has the opportunity to use their God-given talents to make a better life.

Our nation is strong and getting stronger. The progress is steady and I ask you to walk with me on this journey to rebuild our great nation. I remain your humble servant and promise you that I will fulfill my constitutional oath of office to serve the people to the best of my ability.

God Bless the Philippines.

Monday, June 27, 2005

you can call me baduy but...

i really dig this (take note, it's not south border). out of 9,000+ mp3 songs stored in my drives this was the first played out of randomness. i was going to cut it off but i suddenly i decided not to...

i really dig it, men.

when i was in manila, i still remember when my younger brother-in-law played this over and over again. with a touch of the original evergreen's tune, salbakuta's revival made it a hit among the masses. the truth is, lyrics were good.

you can call it stupid but to me it's sincere and noble.

discoursed by jeff @ 4:30 PM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink

Sunday, June 26, 2005

the traveler

after months of bringing the bulky, heavy external drives which died out on me for the past week, i opt to get a new gadgetry. the lexar jumpdrive traveler usb flash drive, a usb2.0, 512mb storage capacity gives me the comfort of bringing external storage at the size of a keychain.

not only that, it has a capability of private browsing, email, bookmarking and caching of files when you use it on a public computer.

i cancelled the ipod craving and eyeing for something that eludes me for so long...

...the digital rebel.

discoursed by jeff @ 3:18 PM  |  3 comment(s)  |  permalink

Saturday, June 25, 2005

wahed itnan talata

thanks teacher sol for the assignment. now i can put something for this day... things are so-so last weekend (aside from the guy who was superdooper drunk last thursday night that he pissed on the living room and fell asleep that he slipped with his own pee...).

nuf' said...

three names you go by:
1. jeff
2. jeffoy
3. jepaperts

three screen names you have had:
1. zchizzerz (skit-sers)
2. brad pitt
3. tom cruise (wahahaha!)

three physical things you like about yourself:
1. my hands
2. my hair
3. my d...

three parts of your heritage:
1. negrito
2. malay
3. indones (i researched on this again!)

three things that scare you:
1. flying
2. the ring (japanese version)
3. rejection

three of your everyday essentials:
1. food and water
3. humor
2. inspiration

three physical things you don't like about yourself:
1. love-handles (belly)
2. pimples
3. teeth

three of your favorite musical artists:
1. bob marley
2. the doors
3. alanis morissette

three of your favorite songs:
1. love move in strange ways - blue zoo
2. redemption song - bob marley
3. out of reach - gabrielle

three things you want in a relationship
1. faith
2. hope
3. love (parang elementary ah..hehe)

three lies and truths in no particular order:
1. all men are created equal (how about women?)
2. i am no musician
3. quiet in nature

three physical things about the opposite sex that appeals to you:
1. hair
2. eyes
3. bumpers

three of your favorite hobbies:
1. photography
2. graphic design
3. reading books and articles

three things you want to do really badly now:
1. go home to my wife and kids
2. i need a vacation
3. i gotta work...

three careers you're considering/you've considered:
1. cook
2. art director
3. photographer

three places you want to go on vacation:
1. europe (paris in particular)
2. davao
3. pagudpud (nice and quiet)

three kid's names you like:
1. miles joshua
2. maria juliana
3. im still planning for the third one... might be another mj

three things you want to do before you die:
1. attend my daughter's 18th birthday
2. skydiving
3. acquire at least a million bucks with my own effort

three ways that you are stereotypically a boy:
1. not showing weakness
2. bolero
3. prankster

three ways that you are stereotypically a girl:
1. organized
2. pms
3. pa-cute

three celeb crushes:
1. jessical alba
2. elisha cuthbert
3. charlize theron

now it's your turn! four people that I would like to see take this quiz now:

1. knoizki
2. lara
3. sofia
4. etchie

back to work... :P

discoursed by jeff @ 5:36 PM  |  3 comment(s)  |  permalink

Thursday, June 23, 2005

template teaser

for airwind's template. he wanted a nature-type of layout (and green too). photos are quite passe and so i decided to draw instead.

also, i started working on teacher sol's (hopefully will be finished before her b-day), luchie and etchie as well...

..stay tuned.

discoursed by jeff @ 2:30 PM  |  4 comment(s)  |  permalink

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

what do they call it here...

in dubai...

flat - apartment
lift - elevator
signal - stoplight
to let - for rent
w.c. / loo - c.r. / toilet
roundabout - rotonda
petrol - gas
birds - chicks
bloke, lad - buddy, pare
mobile phone - cellphone
sms - text

indian - pana

i'm still thinking...

discoursed by jeff @ 10:53 AM  |  7 comment(s)  |  permalink

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

jesus is a cowboy

two nights ago, i've been teaching japs on how to use the adobe photoshop. while doin' some lectures, i made it a little bit more fun...



we just used the pic of our local friend who looked like jesus christ (although he's a muslim) as a subject. he showed that to him afterwards and he liked it...

he said, "this p***nginang designer na to, i like it. ganda!" (btw, he knows how to speak tagalog, bisaya and other dialects as well...)

in other news, my external hard drive power adapter got busted last night. i had to replace a new one fast because i got a lot of pending gilids.

minamalas nga naman oh...

discoursed by jeff @ 8:52 AM  |  3 comment(s)  |  permalink

Sunday, June 19, 2005

the foundation

i salute thee to the men who courageously stand themselves as the i-beam of the family, their responsibilities as a father and husband...

...keeping his family on top of his list among others...

...bringing home the bacon he earned and spend forth to his family rather than to himself or to beer buddies...

...who washed piles and piles of clothing and dishes when kumander is not in the mood...

...who are doin' their job as a father too much by having extended families (mistresses)...

...who are playing with his kids rather than blogging (i'm exempted..hehehe)...

...and last but not the least, doing the job what he has to do...

...being a father.

mga pre, happy father's day!

discoursed by jeff @ 2:25 PM  |  4 comment(s)  |  permalink

Saturday, June 18, 2005

new skin

after long delays, i was able to upload the new skin. it was supposed to be launched on the 1st bday but unfortunately to what just happened. i prefer the old one though and i'm still deciding if i will keep this.

what do you think?

discoursed by jeff @ 1:16 PM  |  7 comment(s)  |  permalink

Friday, June 17, 2005

back again

it's the sixth time...one more and that's it. we arrived early in the evening (one hour early due to chance passenger flight). i'm getting used to fly on a small plane already (thanks to the frequent flier courtesy of visa changes). the better part...

duty free.

one box of bud (two sixers), one litre of cuervo gold, bacardi limon, and absolut mandarin (only four bottles/boxes allowed).

forget what happened, this bud's for me. hehehe.

sidenote: thank you fellow bloggers for the warm thoughts. as long as i am here, tdc will continue.

discoursed by jeff @ 11:44 AM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink

Thursday, June 16, 2005

no chance

my officemates and i got our visas yesterday and the airline office booked us for friday. that's two days... and it's a modus operandi. how did i say that?let's analyse the situation...

you arrive late in the evening and dubai immigration is closed. you have to check-in to a hotel (it's free on the first day of stay) and wait for your visa to be faxed the next day. if your visa arrives, that's good. if not, a dhs35 / day in a hotel will start charging you (price may vary on the hotel/holiday).

now for the visa-came-on-the-first-day scenario...

you don't want to be charged for the hotel stay, and so you have to leave on that same day. you have to book your flight back to dubai because you got your visa already. no visa, no booking. this is the partypooper part... they will book your flight one or two days after no matter how important you need to go back. and so you have to stay in a hotel for a day or so... income on their part and that's good business for them.

so what to do?

two things. first you find a corrupt / greedy insider for you to be rebooked on the preferred day with a little bit of red tape. the second one is to take a chance passenger flight. we're unlucky on the previous and we went for the latter.

we woke up early in the morning and went straight to the airport for the chance passenger flight. unfortunately, there were no flights in the morning. that was a stupid move for us. we forgot to ask the schedule and so we stayed there till one o'clock in the afternoon, the first flight of the day. as time almost close, people were coming in and most of them were chance passengers. the system of their booking flights were so messed up that eighty percent of the passengers for that schedule were
taking chance flights. there were five takeoffs on that day and all in vain...

tired, pissed, and most of all lost the opportunity to attend the farewell party of a friend...

f*ck, we headed back to the hotel and watch LOTR on cable.

discoursed by jeff @ 11:40 AM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

TDC turns one

yep, it's the dubai chronicles' first birthday. i took the effort in going to a cafe just to post this from the beautiful island of kish, iran.

how did all started? why blog? who influenced this 'addiction'?

during the 'dark ages' of my life here, im just fed up in keeping it to myself the rants and complaints on what's going on in my life. and so i write (blog) what i have experienced, good or bad. by the moment it grew, few things added like the galleries (sorry for not updating this...just wait they will be more), the out of the box mind etsetera section, and some widgets like the counter, tagboard, and some stuffs.

it became a passion and at the same time a logbook. when we were in high school, i used to write on mini notebooks, doodling and making records on what i have sensed in every aspects. i still have those tiny notebooks (xtian gave me the thought of writing a diary) and i kept it as a memoir. now, technology is all over us. no more paper but still i made copies of this blog on a cd and going to keep it in a shoebox full of memorabilia from the past events when i get back home.

my wife's cousin, eegow introduced me how to blog. he showed me the door, i chose to open it.

and here i am, one year old of contributing myself to blogosphere...

and still continue to do so. thanks everyone for making this happen.

discoursed by jeff @ 5:50 PM  |  5 comment(s)  |  permalink

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

chicken soup from the dead

i just want to share from a subscribed newsletter i got...

Write Your Obituary

Seriously. Actually sitting down and writing it can be a marvelous exercise in goal-setting. Make it long and detailed.

Your obituary can become your script, telling who you were, what you did, how well you were liked.

If you're like most people, you'll first list your accomplishments, successes, and positions in organizations. Then you'll revise your obit, realizing that what you want to be most remembered for is not how many initials you had after your name or how many employees were beneath you on the organization chart.

Rather, you'll probably want your life story to be about your character:

What useful things did you do?

How good a friend were you?

What kind of a partner?

How well did you behave in crises?

Write it. But understand that the only real way to have the sort of obituary you want is to start living the way you'd like to be remembered.

discoursed by jeff @ 10:05 AM  |  3 comment(s)  |  permalink

Monday, June 13, 2005

pinoy expat's plea

based on what i have observed from last night's ranting, my friends were having troubles with their loved ones back home. although most of them by financial reasons, people back in the philippines thought that once they went abroad, they earned big bucks.

please don't stick to that notion.

we too, suffered from difficulties not only financially but also emotionally. we also pay bills, debts, bought necessities for our needs. the difference, we earned a little more than back home... the drawback, we're forced to be away from our family and loved ones.

i'll take myself as an example also. my wife and i had differences in the past because she didn't understand the situation quite well. she thought that i'm just fooling around here. that's what other people think of us also. don't let the eyes deceive only what you see. try to understand first the situation before blahblahberring and complaining. we had miscommunication between me and my wifey. we both suffered. another lesson learned.

all we need is two things, understanding and communication. we don't want us leave people hanging. for blood and sweat sakes, we're doin' the best we could to improve the lives of our love ones back home...

so it's time for me to get back to work... live with it. :P

discoursed by jeff @ 8:53 AM  |  3 comment(s)  |  permalink

Friday, June 10, 2005

the bash

i must say, last thursday's party was a blast that even the whole city of dubai shut down their power from morning till afternoon. due to blackout, we were forced to come home early which was an advantage in preparing things. also we took advantage in taking some snapshots in the dark. japs and liz helped me prepared the party foodies.

only few friendly friends, family bunch friends, dad and kid friendsters, officemate and friendlies, friendly thai and the beauties, the roomie friendlinesses, singing friends, the old and new friends, the lick, shoot and sucking friends, jesus and the criminal friendlies, the friendly plert plert band, longhaired and feeling longhaired friendliests, and the uber-wasted friendly but drunk bassist, who came to party from evening till dawn.

kudos to the people who helped and participated, the well-wishers, thy visitors of this site, my family, and most of all the extraordinary one. thank you for one more year in my life.

now back to work, i have a lot of pending jobs to finish... hehehe.

discoursed by jeff @ 1:53 PM  |  2 comment(s)  |  permalink

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

nostalgic old bastard

one day left and another year of remembering the birth of one crazy *#($@#&&)% like me in this world.

how do i celebrate my birthdays? well as far i can remember there were times i celebrate it for three days (like last year) where my friends and relatives have different schedules and so i have to split it into three just to treat them. it ain't grand. i just want to enjoy the good times with them.

in college days, where i was a easy-go-lucky student and financially nil, improvised an idea to make my buddies enjoy the party. i had 500 pesos back then. i bought one whole grilled chicken, one case of sanmig pale, one ice bag, packs of ding-dongs, and one emperador longneck. ding-dongs and grilled chicken are the main course, emperador is the appetizer drink and finally one freaking ice cold san mig pale...

...beer bomb style.

so each guest will take the hose into his mouth with the funnel on the other side. one will pour the whole bottle of beer to the funnel and straightaway will go down non-stop to the guest's throat... ice cold, enjoyed, and most of all effectively drunked.

quite a memorable experience.

there were also experimentation of alcohol during the night of celebration. my friend hanz once called this depth charge where you pour the tequila in a shot glass (white tequila is better) light them up and when there's flame, you will drop it instantly on a half full glass of beer and finally drink it up. a very effective drink for those who are tight on budget (and for one-for-all bottle of tequila).

there were birthdays where i experienced rushing people to hospitals, emoting to the max dramas, people lying dropdead on the sidewalks but the most memorable experience i had in my life was that party gatecrasher (or bitbit) who came to my birthday...

and became my everloving partner for the rest of my life. :)

discoursed by jeff @ 3:21 PM  |  8 comment(s)  |  permalink

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

joyride night

instead of doin' some of my pending works, bob insisted of going to ibn battuta mall for feasibility study on his "business" agenda. brenda, a friend of bob's, took care of the transportation (thanks for the ride, btw) because that place is far and local bus service will take eons to reach its destination. before we headed off there, we fetched japs and liz at lamcy plaza (dealing with some sidejobs also..hehehe).

when we reached the place, instead of looking for good sites we landed on this:


he's big, yeah, but you're faster...


hey, don't step on me...


wake up you moron!

and munched kfc for dinner. after that we dropped japs and liz to their place and drove off to sharjah to drop brenda to her place (ironically she has the car) but insisted to take us home...

and so we headed back to dubai and drop us. we spent few more minutes chit-chatting in the parking to kill some time...

discoursed by jeff @ 10:08 AM  |  7 comment(s)  |  permalink

Monday, June 06, 2005

and the winner is

the lucky one who will receive my present is...

airwind.

plus ma'am luchie, etchie, duke, yvette, teacher sol and sam

gee, i need punishment and so i decided to make you all winners. whew, congratulations to all who commented on the birthday gift post.

note: those names mentioned just email me at zchizzerz AT yahoo DOT com for details.

discoursed by jeff @ 8:44 AM  |  14 comment(s)  |  permalink

Sunday, June 05, 2005

i love milk

i love it so much that i drank almost a liter of it last night after dinner. the bad side was...

my sleep was disturbed and hell broke loose in the toilet...

...and the smell..eww...

addendum:

i added new blog reads to my links section. i'm tired of copy and pasting urls from notepad to browser...hehe.

discoursed by jeff @ 9:37 AM  |  1 comment(s)  |  permalink

Friday, June 03, 2005

the band

just a little jammin last night. i got a chance to take a simple profile pic of my friendsies. here they are:

discoursed by jeff @ 7:51 PM  |  5 comment(s)  |  permalink

Thursday, June 02, 2005

the birthday gift

my birthday will be coming next week. instead of receiving one, i would like to give myself a little present to the person who will be willing to redesign his/her blog for free. there can only be one (err did i hear it right?).

here's the criteria:

- the blog publishing software must be blogger. any other publishing software (which i don't know how to use it) will be disqualified... unless you give me the faq/help files for me to configure it, i'm surely willing to do it (maybe).

- tell me what's on your mind. give me ideas on theme, color, font, images, what to put (as long as you provide the snippets/widgets) in your blog. you can check faith and lara's blog for inspiration. after discussing it, i'll do the rest.

- last but not the least, the "why" question. why do you want to redesign your site? why do blog? why me?

submit your entries before june 5, 2005 by posting your comment on this post. the chosen blog will be redesigned on or before the 15th of june (depends on how busy i am).

let me give you a redesign as a birthday present... good luck!

discoursed by jeff @ 11:33 AM  |  9 comment(s)  |  permalink

m.i.a.

i'm off yesterday, strucked by katams. i wasn't productive and that day was wasted from sleeping and playing stronghold: crusaders. i was suppose to finish the new layout of tdc and my portfolio site as well.

oh well, burnout.

but later in the evening i boosted up a bit by keeping myself busy at the kitchen. i cooked sopas for the roomies and later after preparing the dinner, we watched the eye 2.

"i still see dead people..."

discoursed by jeff @ 8:51 AM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink

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