I love Warsaw

Leaving

2007-11-30T13:58:00.000+01:00

"When will you be back?" asked one of my Polish colleagues from the office.

"Maybe next month, maybe never - who knows?" I replied.

When I arrived here 2 weeks ago, I realized that despite the cold weather and the language barrier, I really did miss this place. I went inside my old apartment last night - the one I stayed in for 10 months the last time - it was strange to me that it didn't smell like cigarettes and my stuff wasn't scattered all over the tables and chairs.

Days were filled with meetings and mind-numbing, work-related negotiations. Nights were filled with meetings as well - I met many old friends for a beer, and made quite a few new ones (also over some beers). I had a ton of work, but I had lots of fun as well.

Despite all this, I can't wait to get back home. I'm going to miss this place, though. A lot. Goodbye Warsaw, ciao everyone! Until we meet again!

Standing on a train for 3 hours, building a snowman in Zakopane

2007-11-27T16:44:00.000+01:00

Since it was our last weekend in Poland, we decided to go up to the Polish mountains last weekend. Our destination: a small town in the Tatras called "Zakopane." Since we wanted to get there early, we took a midnight train from the Warsaw Central station to Zakopane.

Unfortunately, since this was a night train, what would normally take 6 hours took more than 10 hours. The train passed by several other cities (Czestochowa, Katowice, Krakow, and a bunch of other smaller towns). Rowdy groups of men drank, smoked, and sang (it was actually more like "shouted") all night. Occasionally, they would also approach you and ask for beer money (in English - surprising!). Because we didn't have seat reservations (one of our companions insisted that it was not necessary), I spent the first 3 hours or so in the train seated in the hallway (my lucky trip buddies managed to get "proper" seats). As you can see below, Polish trains have very narrow hallways - I had to stand up whenever these rowdy men wanted to go to the bathroom (which happened every 5 mins or so).

As people slowly got off the trian after each stop, I was finally able to get a seat. However, as it turned out, these "proper" seats were not that much more comfortable than those hallway seats. Oh well, at least I didn't have to get up whenever someone passed by.

Zakopane is supposed to be a lot colder than Warsaw (on the average, about 6-7 degrees C colder) - something like Baguio is to Manila back in the Philippines. It certainly looks very cold in the pictures. Surprisingly though, even if the temperature was indeed lower when we visited, it didn't feel any colder there than in Warsaw. In fact, we even thought that the weather Warsaw felt a lot colder than Zakopane - something we attributed to more "wind chill" in the capital. Zakopane was cold - there was snow everywhere - but the wind wasn't constantly trying to freeze your nose off.

Filipinos would go up to Baguio to ride horses, eat Strawberries, and shop for souvenirs. Warszawians would go up to Zakopane to ski, eat Oscypek, and shop for souvenirs. Since skiing down a mountain to break some bones didn't really appeal that much to us, we decided to build a snowman instead.

Back at home when you go for a trip to the beach, building a big, nice looking sandcastle seemed like a piece of cake - I mean how hard could it be? Just stack up some sand and mud, use your Havaianas to round out and shape the edges - and BAM - you have a sandcastle. I figured the same should be true with snowmen (minus the Havaianas) - I mean how hard could it be, right? You just need to create 3 snowballs of different sizes, put them on top of each other, and BAM - you have a snowman.

Like building sandcastles, building snowmen was not as easy as it looked. Snow was hard to handle - primarily because it was heavy and cold. It was also hard to shape - it would turn rock solid quickly if you squeezed it too much. Our first attempt at building a snowman was pathetic. Really, really pathetic.

Then, we had a breakthrough. In cartoons, to create a big snowball (to presumably crush the kalaban), you first need to start with a small ball of snow. They would then push this ball down a slope, and it would gradually get bigger, and bigger, and bigger as it gathers more snow from the ground.

We tried this "cartoon theory" out in practice, and it worked! Snowballs really do grow like in the cartoons! As you can see below, we managed to create something that resembled a snowman (he looks like he got punched in the jaw by Manny Pacquiao). Success! Sort of, at least.

People who walked by took pictures of us building this thing ("Look at those silly Asians, trying to build a snowman in the park! There is dog shit everywhere! Ewww!").

The trip back to Warsaw was much faster - we decided to take a bus to Krakow (took 2 hours), and the express train to Warsaw (2 hours and 40 mins). This time, we made sure we had seats reserved. :)

I don't feel like going out today

2007-11-26T11:34:00.000+01:00

That's right - its snowing heavily here right now. Fortunately, I am working from home today and tomorrow, since everybody in our office went to the lakes for their annual offsite.

Anyway, we had a great time last weekend in Zakopane and Krakow - my next post will be about that. Hope everybody back home is safe - I heard there were a couple of storms headed our way.

Santa

2007-11-17T09:10:00.000+01:00

Alright, alright - before you hit the comment button, let me say a few words about the picture above.

An officemate of mine here in Warsaw was compiling a list of Christmas traditions from all over the world - these traditions will be published in our local, in-company magazine. She asked me about how Christmas was like in the Philippines and I gladly told her about hearing Christmas Carols over the radio as early as September, about our penchant for going to mass early in the morning ("Simbang Gabi") every day for last 9 days before Christmas, and how we eat food with Spanish names (Jamon, Queso de bola, Paella, Lechon de Leche) on Christmas eve. I also mentioned that although pine trees do not grow naturally back at home, we make do with decorating plastic versions of these trees in our houses.

She then wanted to take a picture of me to publish in the magazine, and I gladly obliged. They did some photoshop "magic," and this is how it turned out. I have no problems with it, though - it looks fine. Really, it does.

I think I should mention at this point that the lady who took my picture and did the photo-editing is the Country VP of our company here in Poland. :)

Here is another picture of Santa that Mav asked me to put here - she somehow thinks that it is related to this blog entry:

See the resemblance? Hehehe...advanced Merry Christmas everyone!

It's 4am, and may kwento ako

2007-11-16T07:09:00.000+01:00

One word will sum up why this blog was updated frequently the last time I was in Warsaw: jetlag. Despite traveling back and forth numerous times over the past year across several time zones, my body still thinks its 11:00am, when in fact it's 4am.

My antidote: coffee, an ipod with a wifi connection, and lots of cigarettes. A couple of beers last night also helped. There is now a permanent haze of smoke in my apartment (it has been there since last night) - it's similar to the smog over Makati on a clear day. I would open the windows to let the smoke out, but its so cold outside that I'd rather die from suffocation.

The past 48 hours have been interesting. I was able to get a good seat on the plane to Amsterdam - I had an aisle seat, good legroom (no seat in front of me), plus no one was sitting beside me. It was like being in business class (not!) - the food was terrible though, but that's expected. Also, as you can see from my last post, I originally thought that my flight was on the 15th. When I re-checked my ticket, I discovered that I was actually flying on the 14th - this stressed out Mav a lot (she's still stressed out, I think), and I suddenly had a ton of things to finish.

Warsaw didn't change much since my last visit. We had dinner at a new restaurant last night (called Papaya) which had raving reviews ("Must visit!") - it was pretty good. As expected, the "spicy" pork dish I ordered was not spicy at all, but that's OK. The beer still tastes great, and I'm looking forward to stuffing myself silly with Keilbasa later tonight.

I'm going with some Pinoys from the office to Krakow tomorrow. we'll stay there overnight, and then take a bus to Zakopane - a small ski town up in the Polish mountains. There should be lots of snow, and I am not looking forward to that.

Anyway, that's it for me. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Leaving again

2007-11-09T05:49:00.000+01:00

Hey everyone! I haven't been updating this space for a while now - a lot of exciting things have happened recently. I "bought" an ipod touch (emphasis on the word "bought" hehehe) and "upgraded" my car stereo (2 pre-outs! Aux-in!) so that I could plug my ipod to my system. I can now practically live in my car, as long as there is a toilet and a Mcdonald's drive-through nearby.

The "issue" is that I work from home twice a week (Thursdays and Fridays), and my new office is only a 15 min walk from my apartment. End result: my car is now officially a "garage queen" (minus the garage, hehe). That thing hasn't moved in days, and a full tank of gas lasts forever!

If you need tips on how to spend money on items you won't actually use, contact me.

The most relevant item for this blog is that I finally got (after 1 month of waiting) my Polish visa! I'm going to be in Warsaw from Nov. 15 to Dec. 1! To my friends in Poland, LET'S DRINK!!!

Unleash the hidden nerd

2007-10-04T14:43:00.000+01:00

When I was a child, I used to be such a nerd. I didn't like playing sports or going outside, I always brought along a ton of books, I asked a lot of questions, and I complained when our family newsletter (yes - my family is so big that we used an internal newsletter to keep each other updated) congratulated a cousin for being ranked 3rd in his class (I was ranked 1st and wasn't mentioned).

I lost my "nerdiness" when I entered high school and discovered beer.

(At least this is what I think - my cousins who I grew up with still think I'm sooo nerdy).

Some of my friends in college called me the "secret nerd." They were amazed at my ability to party and drink almost every night, and somehow manage to get respectable grades.

My secret? I lived right behind the university - so while the rest of my classmates were on their way home stuck in traffic, I would be in my room studying and finishing papers. By the time they got home, I would be drinking. Hehehe...

I lost all of this when I started working - I became interested in "normal" stuff. Cars, travel, large speakers, house music, going to the gym (although the effects don't show), drinking beer, drinking wine, drinking rum cokes, drinking scotch, food (especially Persian food - yummy!) - I was slowly losing the inner "nerd" in me.

Enter TED - which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. TED is an idea-sharing conference that occurs once a year in the US. It costs $6,000 to attend, and all slots are taken 1 year in advance. They decided last year to post their most interesting talks online. I stumbled onto this site when someone showed me a very interesting clip with "TED" plastered at the start.

I got hooked - its YouTube for nerds. Here are two of my favorites:

Hans Rosling - amazing how he can turn something boring (like statistics, which I still hate) into something very thought-provoking.

Dan Gilbert -a very, very, very interesting (and nerdy) take on how to achieve happiness.

Each talk is about 18 minutes long - and they cover a wide variety of topics. "Normal" people watch 24, Heroes, Prison Break, or Grey's Anatomy to unwind after work - I prefer watching short TED video clips.

Isn't that so nerdy?

Updates

2007-09-13T02:39:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone!

I realize I haven't been updating this space recently - I've been very busy. These past 2 weeks, I've been staying at the office from 8:30am to 10:30pm. EVERYDAY. "Toxic" is an understatement.

Anyway, for those who I haven't seen yet, here are some quick (and uninteresting) updates on my so-called life:

1. Boom-boom - I had my car speakers changed, they are much louder (and they sound much "clearer") now. I was so excited to have them changed that we arrived at the shop in Araneta Ave. at 8am (the shop opens at 9am). Hehehe....I also lost 75% of my trunk space (the subwoofer stays in the trunk, hehehe). That pretty much rules out long road trips for me and my car.

2. The beach - because I stayed in cold, cold places (i.e. Brussels, Warsaw) for most of the past year, I swore that when I got back, I would go to the beach. This finally came through a few weeks ago - I went to Puerto Princesa with my brother and cousin a few weeks back. We had a blast! It was perfect - we stayed at my tito's resort. It's not open yet, so solo namin - ayos, the best talaga! I still have the insect bites to prove it.

3. Favorite foods - the moment I got home, I had sinigang, lumpiang shanghai, adobo, crispy pata, sisig, and other "pork fat deep fried in more pork fat" dishes. Heavenly!

4. Beer - because I was drinking beer heavily in Poland and Belgium, I didn't realize that my tolerance for alcohol went up dramatically. I missed San Mig Light a lot, so on my first night in Manila I had 10 bottles. I didn't feel a thing - it was like drinking water. My tolerance has gone down though - I am back to normal now.

5. Gym - I've gone back to the gym (you can catch me Gold's Gym in Glorietta early in the morning, during weekdays). It hasn't helped though - my tummy is still nice and round. Maybe I should cut down on my beer intake.

6. Office move - my team is moving to our 2nd office in Ortigas. As a result, my travel time has been reduced from a 45 minute drive (to Makati) to a 10 min walk to the new office. Starting next week, I will also work from home twice a week (Thu-Fri). Ayos yan, Wed night pa lang, pwede nang uminom hehehe.

There are other major positive work-related developments, but unfortunately, I cannot share them publicly. I might be back in Poland though - late Oct to early November. I won't be staying long though - maximum 2 weeks probably. There is still a big question mark on this - will keep you posted.

That's it for me.

Goodbye Warsaw

2007-07-30T13:39:00.000+01:00

Warsaw has been my home for the past 9 months. I missed all the birthdays of my family members this year from Warsaw - 5 family dinners I really looked forward to every year (next to our annual family New Year dinner, of course). I also missed our annual family summer outing - I spent Holy Week stuck in the office, working. All the restaurants and stores in Warsaw were closed during this time, so I had instant noodles and cold hamburgers for dinner on some days (I can't cook, remember?). I also spent a fortune on cellphone bills trying to get in touch with various friends and members of my family - just so that I'd have someone to talk to (I was the only "loser" online during this time in Yahoo Messenger, hehehe).

It wasn't all that bad though. Warsaw is not the cleanest city in the world, but it is a lot cleaner than Manila (heck, it is even cleaner than Brussels, Paris, or Berlin). The air is fresher, traffic is almost non-existent (cars are moving - so its not traffic!), they have a bunch of nice, big gardens scattered around the city (which during the summer, gets really interesting hehehe), and it's relatively safe because of all the policemen walking around. Public transportation is cheap and reliable (but not quick, except for the single, unfinished Metro line), locals are generally friendly and helpful, the ladies look smashing (I read this somewhere - according to a recent survey, men thought that 70% of all the women in Warsaw were pretty. I disagree - I think its more like 80% hehehe), and the beer is strong. I also met the nicest, friendliest group of Filipinos in Warsaw - people who I will really miss a lot.

What more could you want, right?

Most of these things will sound very strange to some people (especially a Pole), mainly those who have been to Warsaw. But I guess it's all relative - if you ever go to Manila, you'll know why I'm talking this way.

When I got back to my apartment in Warsaw after a recent trip to Brussels, I even caught myself murmuring: "ahh...home, sweet home." I guess this is due to the fact that for the first time in my life, I've spent more time abroad than at home. My mind should get "rewired" to its original state soon - I hope.

Alas, Warsaw is finally getting rid of me. Will I be able to rid my body of this place? Well I sure hope so, I gained 10 kilos here - it will take me months sweating it out at the gym before my "beer muscle" fades away.

I will really, really miss this place.

This is probably my last post from Poland (at least for now). Although I'd love to come back, there are no plans for a "return visit" anytime in the near future.

I'll see you in Manila in 2 days! Ciao!

5 things guidebooks don't mention about Poland

2007-07-25T21:02:00.000+01:00

Guidebooks (like the Lonely Planet) are usually very, very good. I use them a lot - and they have saved my butt many times over. It is impossible to be very comprehensive, though. If you're planning to go to Poland, there are a few interesting things that the guidebooks leave out. I've listed down 5 of my "favorites":

1. Polish "voice overs"- when the TV show you're watching in Poland is in English, they keep the original soundtrack in tact - all sound effects, conversations, even the music. You will notice, though, that they add an additional sound "layer" - a strange man's voice is translating every spoken word into Polish. This is fine - however, its the same guy's voice every time. It doesn't matter if the person speaking on TV is 50-year old man, 20 year old girl, a 3 year old child, or Triumph, the insult comic dog - its his voice ALL THE TIME. Every TV show, every advertisement - its the same guy. And he is so emotionless - the lady on TV may be screaming in terror - he will speak in the same tone, at the same pace ALL THE TIME. Good thing I figured how to turn him off.

2. Thank you means something else - one of my Polish friends just spent 3 months in Manila. When he got back to Poland, he picked up some Filipino habits - i.e. pointing with your lips, saying "psst" when calling someone, etc. He also acquired the habit of saying "thank you" to waiters when paying the bill. Big mistake. When you're eating at a restaurant here in Poland, saying "thank you" is interpreted as "keep the change."

3. Małe piwo - this literally means "small beer." Colloquially though, its the Filipino equivalent of "sisiw." (for non Pinoys out there - "sisiw" literally means baby chicken). They say it to mean any of the following: that's nothing, no problem, that's easy - for the average Pole, a small beer really is very easy - next to nothing even. Sisiw lang yan!

4. Charlotka - this one literally means "Apple Pie." It can also refer to Żubrówka (that popular Polish vodka, with a blade of grass inside the bottle) mixed with apple juice. Żubrówka literally means something like "Bison brand vodka." The joke is that its unique taste comes from the blade of grass inside the bottle - grass that has been pissed on by some pissed-off Bison.

5. Salad with everything - anything you order will come with salad. You will just have to live with it. Boiled cabbage, carrots, beetroot (my personal favorite - NOT!), or pickles - they serve them with Chinese food, kebabs, hamburgers - literally everything. Try telling a waiter you don't want any of the Polish salad with your food, and you'll get strange looks.

These things are strange for me, however, they find me strange as well. When I ignore red traffic lights, honk at pedestrians, call waiters "boss," and speak a mixture of English and Filipino while on the phone with folks from Manila, I am branded as the strange foreigner.

To each his own, I guess.

Kobylany

2007-07-18T20:27:00.000+01:00

Since my great European adventure is almost over (I come home on July 31 - permanently for now), I decided to fill up my remaining weekends with out of town trips.

Last weekend, we went to a small town near Krakow called Kobylany. It's a nice valley which is particularly popular with rock climbing enthusiasts. Obviously, it's popular because there are tons of big rocks in this area. Rocks which you can climb. That's why its popular with rock-climbing enthusiasts (Whatever!). We even saw a Polish wedding (pictured below, in the wooden church). It's basically the same as a Filipino wedding, except nobody wore a Barong Tagalog and everything was in Polish.

Since I have no desire to climb big rocks (and hit my head on one, like one guy in our group did), I decided to go hiking (with my new friend, Agnieszka - you can see her back below taking a picture of a big rock). Miraculously, the weather cooperated - it was 10 degrees and cloudy the whole week before this.

"Home" at this place meant cramming together in a small shack (that's Krzysiek - my "kolega" from the office who invited me on this trip). Too bad for them, I had a pretty serious snore attack on both nights hehehe:

Evenings were spent grilling sausages, drinking beer, playing charades (using English movie titles, for my benefit) and exchanging stories. This is when I found out that the Polish title for the movie "Dirty Dancing" (Wirujący seks) literally means "Spinning Sex!" If you saw the film, you would definitely agree with me - it is a very good translation. Hehehe...

On our way back to Warsaw (this place was 4 hours away by car), we passed by a horse ranch - owned by one of Krzysiek's good friends. This place was packed with horses - and I mean packed. I've never seen so many horses in my life! (I am exaggerating - there were only about 20 of them there). The owner also had 2 dogs which were so big that you would think they were small horses (again, I am exaggerating - but they were quite big). Each one weighed 75 kilos - thats more than I weigh (if you add up their combined weight hehehe)!

I hope everybody else had a great weekend. See you soon!

Lose weight, be rich

2007-07-09T20:02:00.000+01:00

Everyone I know would love to lose weight, and everyone on the face of this planet also wants to be rich. Skinny and rich - its ideal isn't it? Its the reason why we pay p120 pesos (or 26 zloty) to watch Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie running around on the silver screen in Rockwell - we want to be just like them. Perhaps we don't want to adopt children from halfway around the world (like they did), but we work our assess off in the gym and do the same at work to try and chase this ideal.

I just found out from this post that these two things (losing weight and becoming rich) are very similar.

Everybody knows how to lose weight - all you have to do is exercise more and eat less. Getting rich is the same, everybody knows that to be rich, you have to spend less and earn more. Everybody knows this, its not rocket science.

Why then do people still go on South Beach diets? Or invest in stupid get rich schemes? Why are there still so many fat people riding the MRT eating chicharon, why do we still see people who try and hit the jackpot with Zagu-or-lechon-manok-type-copycat businesses? Don't they know that 95% of all diets fail, and that 9 out of 10 new businesses fail within the first 2 years? Why can't people just eat less, exercise more, spend less and earn more?

Alas, reality tells us that this is not as easy as it sounds.

I am the perfect example. Due to my recent "European" adventures, I just wiped out every centavo in my savings account - money I have been slowly putting aside for the past 4 years. In these past few months, I also gained 10 kilos (not pounds, kilos - thats 22 pounds!). My pants are getting really tight, and my wallet is getting really light. I am slowly becoming the fat, bald guy who doesn't have any money. Not exactly Brad Pitt material, I know.

I know how to lose weight, and I know what it takes to be rich - its just, well...difficult. In my case, I have identified several problems:

I like to eat, but I cannot cook. As a result, I spend a big chunk of my income on restaurants (and in case you are wondering - no, eating out is NOT a necessity). The main problem is that I am very picky when it comes to food - if I have a bad meal, I feel terrible all day (or night, depends on when I eat). Good food, on the other hand, makes me feel great! I guess its in my genes - I am Capampangan, in case you didn't know.

Since Polish food is not exactly at the height of culinary sophistication (except for their Kielbasa - which is very, very good), I am forced to spring for more expensive meals. I also generally don't like fast food (except for Jollibee Chickenjoy - I love this, but it is obviously not available in Poland), vegetables, and fruits - which makes things worse. I can save a lot of money (and lose a lot of weight) if I cooked, but I just can't cook. I know, I know - if you know how to read, you know how to cook (try Googling "5 minute meals") - I guess I am just too lazy. Being a picky eater and a terrible cook is a bad (and expensive) combination. If you still don't believe me, read this post from my favorite personal finance blog.

I also spend a lot of money on stupid things - like beer. I absolutely love beer. The problem is that in Europe, beer is very expensive. The calories from beer also go straight to your gut. I am trying very hard to limit this expense - however it seems that the world is not cooperating with me. For example, today during dinner (at a restaurant, of course), I ordered one beer with my meal. The waitress gave me 2 beers. When I asked why she was giving me 2, she said that the 2nd one was free. Alright - free beer! Hehehe...

I also do not exercise at all here in Warsaw (walking to the office pantry to get a sandwich in the morning is NOT exercise) and I am not exactly earning a boatload of money (boss - if you're reading this, please take note). I guess I am a hopeless case - destined to be fat and poor.

Hopeless, that is, until I learn how to cook.

The best beer in the world

2007-06-24T08:23:00.000+01:00

This is another post about beer. Please don't complain - my topic choices for today was either beer or my ingrown toenail. I think beer is a better topic. Also, the beer pictures look better than the ones I took of my toenails.

Search for "the best beer in the world" using Google, and it will show you a picture of the beer I am drinking in the picture above. If Michael Jackson says so (I know what you are thinking - I am talking about the writer, not the singer), you better believe him. According to his article, Saison Dupont is "impossibly delicious." Mav is holding a chocolate beer - that one was "impossibly undrinkable." She liked it though. I am not a big fan of chocolate anyway, so I guess I am a bit biased.

I also had a bottle of 1 year old Orval. As you can see from the label, this particular beer was bottled in 2005! When I got it, it was old and dusty. I had a "new" bottle of Orval before tasting this aged one just for comparison - the aged one tastes a lot better.

This bar I went to had over 2,000 kinds of beer - they are in the Guinness Book of World Records for this. Most bars in the Philippines have only 4 or 5 kinds of beer - and they are all from San Miguel. How's that for freedom of choice.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on Westvleteren - you could only buy this at an abbey somewhere, and you're limited to 1 case per year (they take down the plate number of your car to make sure you don't go back and buy another case). There is so much demand that you need to "book" your visit in advance by calling a call center.

Kinda reminds me of those donut shops in Manila, where people fell in line for hours to get their hands on a box. Those donuts were good.

The question now is that is this beer really that good? Hmmm...

Ilan ang panganay?

2007-06-22T14:41:00.000+01:00

That's my most common follow-up question, after I ask somebody how many children they have. It seems like having multiple first-born children has its advantages:

Firstborns found to have higher intelligence

From this article:

"Wading into an age-old debate, researchers have found that firstborn children are smarter than their siblings — and the reason is not genetics, but the way their parents treat them, according to a study published today."

Why am I not surprised? Hehehe.

p.s. sorry I haven't been posting lately, I promise to put up some more stuff this weekend.

What do you do?

2007-06-07T18:25:00.000+01:00

"I am a doctor, but I am studying to be a nurse so that I can go abroad and earn in dollars."

"I work for the family business."

"I have my own business. We sell (soap/cellphone load/purified water/lechon manok/zagu-or-similar-type-drink)."

"I work as an (IT person/HR person/salesman/marketing guy) for (large multinational company)."

"I am the son of (name of a mayor/governor/general/senator/congressman)."

"I sit around the house all day, watching downloaded TV shows from the internet. My parents give me all the money I need. Hey did you see my new car? Its really quick and shiny!"

What you do defines who you are. Your answer to this question, and how you answer it, tells other people what kind of person you are, what you are interested in, what your priorities are, what's important to you. At least in my book, what you do tells me more about you than the clothes you wear, the car you drive (or what modifications - if any - you've done to it. Case in point - my neighbor removed all the "Kia" badges on his new car, and changed them to "BMW" badges. See what I mean?), or the company you keep.

I ask this question a lot, especially when I meet new people. I ask this also when I see old friends who I haven't seen for a long time. The answer to this question, and how it is answered, changes frequently - for some people, it can even change daily. This is because priorities shift all the time - when you think you have too little money, then studying to be a nurse when you are already a doctor so that you can go abroad suddenly becomes appealing. If you have too much money, then your priorities shift too - now you want to run for public office so that you can get even more money. Hehehe. (That was a joke. Seriously, it was!)

If the answer is interesting, I usually follow it up with "What about your job?" Most people, like me (as evidenced by this blog), love to talk about themselves - so be prepared for a long answer. Sometimes, the answer to this follow-up question is predictable - for instance, I haven't met a single call center CSR who liked what he did. I'm sure they exist - there are tons of folks who pay to talk on the phone all day (just take a look at the success of Sun cellular), and being paid to do just that would be their perfect "dream" job - I just haven't met any of them.

My problem is that I've never had a straight answer to this question. I tell them that I work for a large American multinational corporation in Makati, and that I work with computers. This is usually followed by "ano ka programmer?" I tell them no. "So ano, technician?" Again I say no. Then I tell them that I work in the IT support organization (well at least I used to work in support, I shifted now to something different and more confusing), and they say "ahhh, parang call center!" Again the answer is no.

Head-scratching follows. A lot of head-scratching.

When I was working from home one time, my younger brother was observing me work. He then asked me, "what do you do? All I've seen you do is send emails all day!" Aha - to that, I can say "yes." I send emails, IM messages - I even attend meetings. And we talk about computers! All day!

More head-scratching.

So what about you, what do you do?

Dutch Maiden/s

2007-06-07T11:03:00.000+01:00

Sorry I haven't been posting in a while - I've been pretty busy enjoying my stay in Manila. Anyway, a lot of you have seen this picture already - don't I look so pretty? :)

While I was putting on these clothes (there were about 4-5 layers of them), I could hear kids asking their parents "mommy, why is that man wearing the ladies' costume?" People would also shriek whenever I raised up my skirt to get something (I was wearing maong pants underneath hehehe).

The guy with me is Anton, our half-Dutch, half-Pinoy family friend. He drove me around Holland with my tita to see how cheese is made (in Edam), and what a traditional Dutch fishing village looks like (in Volendam). Here is another picture of us with some real Dutch maidens:

When we got to the cheese factory pictured above, they asked us where we were from. We told them that we were from the Philippines - so these girls started speaking in Dutch. They said stuff like "hey come out here - there are 2 hot, young guys out here!" (that is not a lie - they actually said "2," so they thought I was hot and young as well hehehe). Of course, Anton was fluent in Dutch.

When he demostrated this ability (which he did eventually, after listening to a good part of their conversation), the girls were blushing so hard that they looked like tomatoes! (well they didn't really look like tomatoes, but their faces turned so red that...well you get the idea!)

I am back in Europe, by the way. I just got here last night, after a long (12 hours!) and bumpy no-smoking airplane ride. I had to lug myself and my large maleta from Amsterdam to Brussels - it was a smooth but crowded 2 1/2 hour train ride.

On Sunday, I am flying back to Warsaw from Amsterdam, so that's another 2 1/2 hour maleta-carrying train ride for me. I am really looking forward to this leg of my journey (that's a lie). If I keep this up, I'll probably lose the 10 kilos I gained during my last stay in Europe (another lie).

I'll be back in Manila on July! See you all again soon!

Home Sweet Home

2007-05-17T05:31:00.000+01:00

I am back in Manila! Its soooo hot!

Actually, I arrived on Tuesday (May 15, 2007), so I didn't get a chance to vote. Oh well, I guess that means for the next 3 years or so, I have no right to complain about our politicians.

I'm staying in Manila for work until Friday, I'll then spend all my weekends in Angeles. I've already booked the manicurista for Sunday - my toenails can't wait!

The past 3 months have been amazing. Work was very stressful (but surprisingly fun), I saw a lot of changes in my personal and professional life (just to set the record straight - NO, I did not "propose" when we were in Paris a few months ago - please stop asking me hehehe), and I saw so many beautiful places and met so many interesting people. As you can see from the picture above, about half of the places I've been to are not even in this blog. I actually have some more magnets I haven't posted up - they broke in transit and I have to repair them using super glue.

There were just too many things happening at the same time - it was just an amazing whirlwind of events.

It's so great to be back home - call me (my cellphone number is the same), let's go for a beer (or lunch, dinner, whatever). I'll be here for the next month (or so), then I'm flying back to Warsaw for the last "leg" of my journey.

See you all soon!

Berlin

2007-05-02T16:11:00.000+01:00

Saying that Berlin is an exciting city is a gross understatement.

All I knew about this city before I came was that it was once home to the infamous Berlin Wall - which split Europe (and the rest of the world) into two halves. After a lot of research, I discovered 3 things about this city which I didn't know before:

1. Kebabs - Berlin is home to the inventor of the Doner Kebab (we Pinoys know it by its Arabic name: Shawarma) - the most popular fast food in the city. Serving it wrapped in pita bread was the brainchild of Mehmed Aygun, a 16 year old Turkish immigrant who set up his first Imbiss (or snack bar) in 1971.

2. Zoo Station - one of the major bus/tram/railway stations in Berlin, it served as the inspiration for one of U2's most famous albums (Zooroopa). This album was obviously recorded in Berlin - and the station is obviously next to the city Zoo (which is the official home of Knut the Polar Bear).

3. Dirty - it is a surprisingly dirty city - there are cigarette butts everywhere, and picking up after your dog is not a popular practice. As a result, you will sometimes encounter dog poo on train platforms, sidewalks, and even inside the train itself. Also, like Warsaw, Berliners love to smoke (cigarettes, that is) - and they do it everywhere.

I took a sleeper train from Warsaw to get to this city - I had no choice really, my Polish visa's 30-day limit was expiring in a few days and this was my last weekend to get out of the country (read this post for a background on my visa situation). Since I had a Schengen Visa, heading to Berlin was the cheapest (and easiest - but not the safest I heard) way to get a fresh stamp on my passport. The journey took about 8 hours - I had my own bed, and spent the night bunked in the couchette with 5 other Russian guys. It was a relatively uneventful trip - I was a bit buzzed (I had a "few" beers in Warsaw before boarding the train hehehe), and the only thing I remember about it was waking up a couple of times in the middle of the night to show my ticket and my passport (to a guy with a funny looking hat).

If you are a tourist, sightseeing is very, very convenient. Two double-decker buses (numbers 100 and 200) leave from Zoo station every 15 mins. They go around the city, passing through every major tourist attraction - you can get on and off anytime you like. These hop on/hop off buses are quite common in touristy places - the difference here is that you don't need to buy a special ticket for this - the regular public transportation ticket (which is valid also in all of the subways, trams, and trains) handles it all.

Quite cheap, a day pass costs only 6.10 euros (p384 - wow ang mura nga! Hehehe!).

Ok then, why do I think this city is so exciting?

It's the party scene of course - Berlin is THE home of techno music (or "Ugs-ugs" as my brother calls it). In fact, Paul Van Dyk who is the god of trance, grew up in East Berlin. Berliners party in empty warehouses and converted power stations - you'd never guess there was a club there by looking from the outside. There are no signs, and the entrance is usually located in some strange backalley that taxi drivers cannot find. Once you enter, it's a different world.

Astig no?

Money and happiness

2007-04-25T21:31:00.000+01:00

Money can't buy happiness:

Low earners top job happiness poll

But it can buy a lot of things that can make you happy, for example:

Wala lang, just my stupid thought for the day. :)

Last Yosi

2007-04-23T21:25:00.000+01:00

I brought 4 reams of Winston Lights to Warsaw when I came. Below is a picture of my last (partially devastated) pack:

In pesos, a pack of cigs here costs p120 - expensive considering they just cost p19.50/pack in the grocery store (Pioneer Center - for those of you who are wondering) near my apartment in Manila.

And the bad thing is that they don't sell Winston Lights!

If you think the prices and the selection is bad, in Western Europe, a pack of "cancer sticks" costs 4 euros each (about p250).

Wow! Talk about discrimination!

When I look back and think, I realized that I just finished 800 sticks of cigarettes in the past 2 1/2 months. That's a lot!

I should quit, I know. :)

How NOT to get lost

2007-04-23T21:10:00.000+01:00

I get lost all the time. I've lived in Manila for 9 years, I still get lost a lot. In my hometown, Angeles City, I only stay on the major roads - for fear of ending up somewhere unfamiliar. I have a poor sense of direction - I frequently make wrong turns, and cannot tell North from South on any given day without a compass.

Now that I am halfway around the world, how do I survive? Mr. self-proclaimed "lost boy" uses a bunch of tools - here are my favorite ones:

1. Lonely Planet - these books are simply amazing! If you're planning to go somewhere unfamiliar, make sure you have one of these in your pocket. They are truly worth their weight in Gold. Need a cheap place to stay? Look it up! Can't decide where to eat? Look it up! It is just a gold mine of information. When I was in Tokyo, I frequently followed their restaurant recommendations. When I told my Japanese officemates where I have been eating, they were very surprised - these places were local favorites. I actually even have the Philippine version - it was written by an Australian who explored our islands extensively. It still lists "Embassy" as the hottest place in town. As they commonly say, it usually takes a foreigner to show people how pretty their own country is.

2. Metro - if you have a palm, ipaq, or any other type smart phone, download this program and install it now. This piece of software has subway, bus, tram, and train maps of almost every city in the world. All you have to do is input the station names in the "To" and "From" fields, and it automatically calculates the shortest route (or the route with the least connections - depending on how your preferences are set) using available public transportation links. I've used this in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Warsaw, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Berlin and a bunch of other cities I can't remember now - this is the single most useful travel tool I've ever used. When I get lost, I just look for the closest bus/tram/subway stop - I can then continue my journey from there. It is so good, I base my cellphone purchasing decisions on whether or not it is compatible with this software.

3. GPS - we've all heard how useful these devices are. Enter the address, and it automatically calculates the shortest route for you. If you make a wrong turn somewhere, it will automatically recalculate the route and set you on your way again. It knows all of the one-way streets, you can ask it to bring you to the nearest parking lot, restroom, gas station, or pub. Some versions even know which streets are clogged with traffic, or which roads are closed. It can even pick your route based on toll fees - showing the cheapest options first. These things are amazing - really, really amazing. Too bad they cost 600 Euros each.

Some people I meet on the road tell me that getting lost is part of the fun. I think its simple a waste of time and energy - why get lost when you can have fun?

Happy travelling!

Work

2007-04-19T21:52:00.000+01:00

I've never been so tired in my life.

Between work, living in a foreign country, and other personal issues - it really is very stressful. Never have I been so tired in my life.

"He who does not work, let him not eat." I forgot where that quote originally came from, but considering the amount of work that I have to do, sometimes I don't feel like eating anymore. Actually, it isn't the amount of work, it is more of the nature of the work.

Don't get me wrong - I love my job. I just moved into a new role, that's why I'm here (partly) - and it is absolutely great. I get to control and influence a lot of things, and for the first time in my professional career, I actually feel like I'm in charge. Almost. At least until this week.

The problem with my job (I am a project manager, by the way) is that you are ultimately responsible for whatever happens to your project. Never mind if resource managers suddenly pull out your most experienced resources and replace them with new people (who were hired 2 weeks ago), it doesn't matter if your customers give you all of the requirements at the very last minute (despite months of constant, almost daily follow-up), nor does it matter if your manager doesn't support you at all - and tries to poke holes and see problems into everything that you do. YOU are responsible, YOU are the "one neck to choke" if everything falls apart.

Sometimes, I wonder if all this is worth it. Should I transfer somewhere else? Will it be better?

"It happens in all bloodsucking corporations," my friend said. Touche!

Oh well, at least I get to travel. :)

Small, silly, irritating things

2007-04-11T19:54:00.000+01:00

Living abroad is an amazing experience, but soon you get to realize that everything is not as "hunky dory" as you first thought. You soon realize that some small, silly, unexpected things can and do lead to big irritations. Nothing that'll kill you, but irritating nonetheless:

1. TV - if you can't understand Polish, TV choices become very limited. You are basically stuck with two English channels: CNN and BBC. I accepted this as a fact of life abroad - for several months, I tried to stay entertained with looping news stories about the weather, Iraq, football, and whatever the hell some crazy dictator was doing halfway around the world in Africa. And then I discovered the special "+" button on my remote - it was the language option! From there, I figured out that "Angnielski" meant "English." As soon as I selected that option - voila - the language changed from unintelligible Polish to understandable English! I could now watch the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and a bunch of other sports and movie channels. You cannot imagine how happy I became because of this.

2. Toenails - a manicurista goes to the house every 2 weeks to cut the nails on my hands and feet. I obviously have to cut them myself here. This normally isn't such a big deal - I mean how hard can it be. The problem, however, is that my toenails like to grow in a strange way. In fact, I even went to the hospital emergency room once for an ingrown toenail. It isn't that easy either - with a belly like mine, its a struggle to bend down and reach for those toes. I compensate by prevention - before I left, I had them cut so short that they were sore. For maintenance, and to ensure I don't forget, I set my cellphone calendar to remind me every Saturday morning (at 10am) to cut those damn nails down. It has worked so far, I did see some blood a couple of times though hehehe.

3. Laundry - I talked about laundry in a previous post, however, I would like to add one small thing. Everybody knows that you have to separate white clothes from the colored clothes when stuffing the washing machine. (Well, not everybody - I didn't know about this last year, and that explains why some of my white socks are now bluish-white hehehe). The funny thing is that, apart from my underwear and some socks, I didn't bring too many "whites." As a result, when my supply of clean "brip" is running low, I start to consciously wear my white shirts to the office. This is so that I can wash them later that night, thereby increasing the load of whites I need wash. Dagdagan ang puti, para di sayang ang labada. Hahaha - ang weird ko!

4. Coffee - My apartment came with a crappy coffee maker - a 1 cup percolator. Because I am a bit of a coffee nut, this was a very big problem. This device didn't work so well - it was slow, only made 1 small cup at a time (if you were lucky), and leaked like a Nursing Board Exam. This crappy situation was the reason why I finally decided to buy a French Press - it cost about 60 PLN (about p900) - and it surprisingly makes good coffee! It is also perfect for traveling - all you need is hot water, coffee beans, and a coffee cup (well you can skip the coffee cup if you're really desperate, and drink coffee from the spout). Now I don't have to suffer from coffee deprivation anymore - yehey!

Reading this, I cannot imagine how spoiled I was in the Philippines. All TV shows (at least all the interesting ones) are in English, I don't cut my own toenails, I don't do my own laundry, and I don't make my own coffee (in my hometown, somebody else does it for us - even puts in my preferred amount of sugar hehehe). I guess these conveniences make up for the everyday hassles we as Filipinos have to deal with (i.e. traffic, crappy public transportation, pollution and litter, and corruption). Bawi bawi lang.

Wet Monday

2007-04-10T19:10:00.000+01:00

Easter is a special time for Polish people - especially Easter Monday. It is a day when everything is closed (look, the streets are deserted! I took the picture above standing in the middle of the main street - only on Easter I guess), people spend all day at home eating and drinking with family, and boys run around the streets chasing girls - with water.

That's right - groups of boys spend all day standing on street corners, market squares, and upper story windows carrying bottles and baskets full of water - patiently waiting for their "victims." Girls run away and scream - but there is no escape, they should have just stayed at home (to eat and drink hehehe). Apparently, the communists tried to wipe out this tradition (called "Smingus-Dyngus") a long time ago, seems like there were pretty unsuccessful.

Here is a boy waiting for his next victim:

And here is a girl filling up for a counter-attack (this is pretty rare, they usually just run away and scream hehehe):

Of course, men can also be victimized - especially "strange-looking men" (i.e. foreigners). Fortunately, it was raining the whole day, so I was pretty much spared from the wrath of these water-carrying lads.

I was still wet though, but from the rain - not from water bottles.

I am still not used to spending Holy Week in cold weather, away from family. I guess I have to get used to it though - depending on how things turn out, soon I'll spend more and more holidays away from home.

(If you're confused about that last comment, send me a message - I can explain hehehe).

I hope you had a great Easter - Wesołych Świąt Wielkanocnych! (that's "Happy Easter" in Polish - impossible to pronounce, I know).

Luxembourg

2007-04-02T19:28:00.000+01:00

When I told people that we would be traveling to Luxembourg, I heard a lot of comments regarding its size. In fact, the only thing one friend recalled about this place was the fact that it was "very small." In one of my work-related meetings, one person even joked that his system had data on almost every country in the world - including Luxembourg.

This small country in Western Europe is only 82 kms long, and 51 kms wide. In size rankings, it is 175th smallest (out of 194) in the world. There are only 450,000 people here, and around 120,000 (about 1/4 of the total) commute to Luxembourg everyday from neighboring countries to work. There are 3 official languages: German, French, and Luxembourgish (which is similar to German, but sounds somewhat like Dutch). English is also widely spoken.

Despite being very small, the capital (Luxembourg City) is also one of the richest cities in the world - per capita income is close to $70,000 USD, one of the highest worldwide. (In case you were wondering, the per capita income in the Philippines is a paltry $4,923 USD).

Due to its small size, you can walk around the city center and see all of its sights in around 2 hours. Because this picturesque city was built on a rock with deep valleys on each side, the sights were absolutely amazing:

Small countries have small armies - Luxembourg only has about 500 soldiers. Many of them become policemen or customs officials after their "tour of duty." Here is a picture of one soldier:

If Sparta could ward off those Persians with 300 soldiers, I guess Luxembourg can pretty much defend itself with 500.

Paris Videos

2007-04-01T09:11:00.000+01:00

Sorry everyone, these videos are over a month old. I thought of posting them way back - but work got in the way. Better late than never.

The Eiffel Tower at night - night time is really the best time to view this beautiful structure:

A view of the city, taken from the steps leading up to Sacre Cour. Since this is on top of a small hill, it has become a very popular afternoon weekend hangout for young people. It also helps that the view is spectacular:

This shows the interior of Saint Chapelle church, just behind Notre Dame. The poor quality of the video does not do justice to the amazing interior of this place - the whole wall is covered with spectacular stained glass windows. If you go to Paris, DO NOT miss this place:

We took a boat ride up and down the river Siene, say hello to Mav:

The Tuileries gardens on a windy day - this sits between Champs Elysees and the Louvre museum. My feet were aching from all the walking we did - so we decided to take a short break here:

Ahh the Louvre, with its famous (and controversial) glass pyramid - the "scar" on the face of Paris. They said the same with the Eiffel Tower when it was built, and this pyramid does contrast with the surrounding architecture. I like it:

I shouldn't have posted these videos - now, I want to go back to Paris. It's such a nice city, its almost impossible not to fall in love with it.

Maybe in a few weeks. See you there! :)

Windmills

2007-03-31T14:50:00.000+01:00

Kinderdijk in Holland was about an hour away from Antwerp - close enough for a day trip. It is one of the few places in the world where you can still take a picture of windmills while inside another windmill:

They were beautiful - check out the videos below:

Who would've thought back then that structures originally built for flood control would be preserved and become tourist spots later on.

p.s. even though it was very tempting, I purposely omitted any mention of Don Quixote de la Mancha, or the song Windmills of my Mind (by Grady Tate). This is the reason why this post on windmills is long on pictures and video, and short on text and stories.

Driving

2007-03-31T14:02:00.000+01:00

If you can drive in Manila, you can drive pretty much anywhere. Nothing you see on the road will surprise you.

I drove through 3 countries last weekend (Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg), and although I received a short "orientation" on the European rules of the road (c/o Mav - who has a Belgian driver's license), I was still pretty surprised at several things:

1. Priority to the right - this was probably my biggest (and weirdest) shock. Active only in Belgium and Luxembourg, it basically means that the car on the right has absolute priority. Sounds pretty simple, but when you're driving along on a main road at 70 km/h, and some guy comes out from a side street on your right - you have to give way. Actually, you have no choice - they won't even slow down - they just assume you'll stop. The same rule applies for intersections - the guy on the right will just speed through the crossing without even looking. This rule alone causes an additional 250 traffic accidents a year - it is a very, very abnormal rule.

2. Diesel cars are quick - Diesel powered cars are supposed to be slow, noisy, and slow. I was driving (for the most part, at least) a diesel powered, automatic Volkswagen Golf TDI. It had a 1.8 (or is it 1.9 - I forgot) turbo diesel engine - and it was surprisingly quick. My family owns 2 diesel powered vehicles in the Philippines, one has a 2.7 liter engine (no turbo), and the other vehicle has a 2.9 liter turbo diesel. This Golf is a LOT quicker than any of our diesel cars, heck it was even quicker than my 1.6 liter gasoline car. I felt like I was driving something with a 2 liter gasoline engine, but with lot more torque. Astonishing - I wouldn't mind having one of these in Manila.

3. Speed limits - these are strictly enforced, there are speed cameras everywhere - 50 km/h in the city, 70 km/h on "secondary main roads," and 120 km/h on the motorway. I understood this to mean that you can drive below this limit, but not exceed it. I was wrong. It actually means that you should maintain your speed at EXACTLY this limit. Aggressive Belgian drivers will get impatient and tailgate if you run at 48 km/h in a 50 km/h zone.

4. Flashing headlights - back at home, if you flash your headlights at someone, it means "get the hell out of the way, I am coming through." Here, it is exactly the opposite - flashing your headlights at someone means "go ahead, and be quick about it!"

5. Parking and narrow streets - you cannot imagine how tight parking spaces are here. They are very, very tight - after parking, it is almost impossible to open any of the doors in any reasonable way. You have to be extremely thin to get out. Streets are also impossibly narrow - it is stupid to drive anything larger than a Honda Jazz in the city.

6. Bicycles are like cars - bicycles, especially in Holland, have the same rights as cars. This means that if they appear on your right, you have to give way. If you need to overtake, it is like overtaking a car - you have to patiently wait behind the rider and only go for it when the opposite lane is free. It doesn't matter if you have enough space - you give bicycles the same space as you would a car.

7. Giving way to pedestrians - this is obvious, you have to stop at all pedestrian crossings to give way to the people trying to cross the street. Sounds simple enough - but theory is very different from practice. Since we don't do this in Manila (we actually use pedestrians to "block" other cars, so that we can go and take their lane), I instinctively don't give way. Mav has to constantly remind me to stop. It is really more difficult than it sounds.

8. Traffic lights - the traffic light on your right is the one that applies to you. It is a very simple rule - however, there are some large intersections with 5 (or more) traffic lights. What do you do when there are 3 lights to your right, and one of them turns green? Do you go? To be safe, what I do is I just stop - if the car behind me gets irritated and honks his horn, that's my signal to go. Hehehe.

9. Signal lights - if you're changing lanes, you have to use your signal light. This is to inform the car on your left/right that you are changing, and that he should give way - and they do give way. In the Philippines, its the exact opposite. If you use your signal light, the car on your left/right will speed up to close the lane. I never use signal lights in the Philippines when changing lanes - this is because to be able to effectively change lanes, you have to "surprise" the guy next to you.

There are obviously more rules - like you should only overtake trams on the left (or is it on the right - I forget, sorry), you should always use your signal light when exiting roundabouts (some don't look like roundabouts at all), you should always keep right on motorways and only use the left lane for overtaking, etc. Also, Belgians are not exactly model motorists - on the motorway, I was probably the only one following the speed limit.

I always joke that in the Philippines, traffic rules (including stop lights) are just "suggestions" - you should follow them, but its more common for motorists to ignore them. In fact, some motorists will even get mad at you if you decide follow the rules - I frequently get honked from behind when I stop at a red light in Manila.

When you drive in the Philippines, you automatically assume that all the other motorists on the road are bumbling idiots, incapable of understanding or following road rules and having absolutely no common sense. This means that late at night, you still slow down on every intersection, even if stoplight says green - just in case some idiot tries to beat the red light. It also means that you honk at cars backing up from parking spaces, because you assume that they are not looking and might back into you.

Here, the basic driving premise is exactly the opposite - you assume that all motorists WILL FOLLOW the rules. This means that they will stop when they have to, they will give way when you have the right of way, they will look first before exiting a parking slot, and they will stay on the right and overtake only on the left.

Some people say if you grew up driving in Manila, nothing you see on the road will surprise you. This is wrong - I was actually surprised that people DO follow traffic rules (no matter how strange these rules are) in other countries.

Bier, bier, bier!!!

2007-03-26T16:19:00.000+01:00

Beer - the nectar of the gods.

"If you like beer, you will love Belgium. If you don't like beer, you will learn to like it once you visit Belgium."

That's what the guidebook said - and I agree wholeheartedly. This book also had a special section which dealt with the different kinds of Belgian beers. I read almost every line twice - this was my very short "beer education":

The first thing that really shocked me about beer is that you really have to use the proper glass for each one. I initially thought this was just a load of BS - but there really is a huge difference in taste. For example, I tried pouring half a bottle of Chimay Blue (which incidentally is my favorite) into an ordinary glass. I then poured the remaining half into the proper chalice-shaped glass - the difference in taste was HUGE!

I think its because of the way the bubbles (or "head") forms - using the proper glass forces it to give off the correct aroma, which accounts for the big difference in taste.

Beer shopping is difficult, there are so many kinds of Belgian beers available that you will just go crazy trying to pick the "correct" ones.

Fortunately, I had a shopping list - courtesy of a Belgian officemate who was also a beer nut. I looked for, and bought, every beer on the list.

I'll post comments about the beers I liked in a seperate entry - I must have tried 2 dozen different kinds.

Cheers!

Warsaw pictures

2007-03-18T10:49:00.000+01:00

I was talking to a Polish guy once when I was going around Poland - when he heard that I was staying in Warsaw, his first comment was: "What are you doing in that ugly city?"

Here are some pictures I took of the city last year - tell me if you think its ugly:

Nice, eh?

Warsaw Rising Museum

2007-03-17T13:26:00.000+01:00

Museums are not really on the top of my "to see" list. When I went to Amsterdam, I did not visit the Van Gogh museum; when I went to Paris, I did not go inside the Louvre. I know - this is sacrilege for most, but to each his own I guess.

It is quite surprising then that last weekend, I went to visit the Warsaw Rising Museum. Opened in 2004, it chronicles in full multimedia glory the Warsaw revolt of 1944. Before this musuem was opened, the history of the Warsaw revolt (or "Warsaw Rising") was a confusing and unorganized mess. Many of the historical facts surrounding this event were hidden or distorted, mainly due to the fact that Poland was under communist rule until 1989.

It was an amazing experience. Not only was it the most modern musuem I've been to (admittedly, I haven't been to too many museums in my life), it also shows the rich (and tragic) history of this great city. I personally prefer museums that tell an interesting story - the history of a people or place, how people lived and died back then, what weapons they used, how medieval people used partly-eaten corn cobs before the invention of toilet paper - it is certainly more interesting (to me at least) than places which just collect various pieces of art or sculpture.

A Polish friend of mine once told me that the reason why Warsaw has been destroyed so many times during its history was because the Polish people would rather fight back than surrender.
This is unlike, for example, Brussels or Paris - they never fought back, so these cities are still pretty much in tact. In fact, the English word "surrender" came from the French - the original word is "surrendre."

Not surrendering is evident even in the logo of the museum - the letters "P" and "W" shaped like an anchor (seen above) - stands for "Polska walcząca," meaning "Poland Fights."

The Warsaw Uprising lasted for 3 months (August 1, 1944 to October 2, 1944) - they were battling the Nazi Germany occupation of Poland during World War 2 - the same war which resulted in the decimation of Poland's (and much of Europe's) Jewish population. You can probably read about this whole thing on the internet, so I am not going into it with too much detail. Basically, the Germans destroyed about 85% of the city - and they did this systematically. They brought in demolition experts, these guys walked around the city block by block, and marked every building with chalk - indicating the "best" way to demolish it (i.e. how much explosive to use, where to place these explosives, etc.). End result was that after the Germans left, the city was literally flattened - not a single building remained.

Poland's biggest ally during this time (the Russians) stood at the border, and basically just watched the destruction of Warsaw happen. After the Germans systematically destroyed everything, they left Warsaw. The Russians then came, and stole what was left.

The Russians then built a large tower in the center of the city (now called the "Palace of Culture and Science") - it was Stalin's "gift" to the Polish people, a symbol of Communism, and Russia's influence over this area of the world. Since there were no buildings left in the city when this was built, it was a stunning sight. I saw pictures of a flat Warsaw with only a huge tower existing in the middle - WOW! Especially if you compare this to how it looks now:

It's still the tallest building in Warsaw, and (understandably), the Polish people absolutely hate it. I went to a meeting at our client's office a month ago - the meeting room had windows facing this tower. I commented to my Polish client that their office had a "nice" view. He said that actually, it was a "terrible" view.

There is even a joke that at the top of this tower is the best view of Warsaw. This is the best view because it is the only view that doesn't include the tower itself!

A visit to any place is uninteresting if you don't know its history. A visit to the Warsaw Rising Museum is definitely a must - if you ever come to Warsaw, you should go here first. It sort of puts things in the proper perspective.

The picture above came from the official Warsaw Rising Museum website.

Sick

2007-03-14T20:47:00.000+01:00

I haven't been feeling well for the past few days - too much partying I guess. I took 1/2 a day off from work last Wednesday (after we got back from Wisla) - slept for about 16 hours, waking up every 4 hours to drink 2 500mg Paracetamol tablets at a time. That helped - a bit.

The problem is with my tonsils (which translates literally to "little tongue" in Polish). Once or twice a year they get infected, and when things don't go so well, I will start getting a 40-41 deg C fever coupled with a nasty visit to the emergency room. When I went to the doctor with this problem in Manila early last year, he said that the next time I get a tonsil infection, he will have to cut it off.

That course of action didn't sound so pleasant, so the next time it happened (sometime late last year), I avoided the doctor like the plague.

Falling ill in a foreign land is not easy - the tricky part really is finding an English speaking doctor. If I don't find one, I would have to learn how to say "don't you dare cut off my little tongue!" in Polish. It's risky, since if you mispronounce something, the meaning totally changes, and who knows what they'll do.

Mispronouncing foreign words can get you in a lot of trouble. An Italian colleague here once tried to say "Who is that pretty girl?" in Polish. It turns out that the Polish word for "pretty" is very similar to the Polish word that means "easy." Guess which word he pronounced, and how much trouble that got him into, hehehe.

If I don't find an English speaking MD, I guess I will just have to cross my fingers and say again and again in English: "No cut, no cut!!!!"

Luckily, I did find an English speaking doctor. She was very good - in fact, she prescribed 7 different kinds of medicine:

The last medicine she prescribed was "Orofar," which is a lozenge - something like an industrial strength version of Strepsils. Anyway, when she was trying to ask me if I was already taking a lozenge, she didn't know how to say it in English. She grabbed her dictionary, looked for the right term, and exclaimed: "do you have anything to suck?" Hahahaha....even if I understood what she meant perfectly, I still couldn't help but laugh out loud.

She then prescribed a pretty strong antibiotic - so I had to ask her the question: "Can I take alcohol?" She said "yes, but not too much." Then she asked me if I smoked. I said "yes, I do." She said "you should stop." I said "I know!"

She laughed. I guess it was her revenge.

As expected, her handwriting was terrible:

I guess doctors all over the world have nasty penmanship. She's very good though, I feel a lot better already.

As a final note, the most surprising thing about this ordeal is how expensive medicines are back at home. I bought the exact same antibiotics in Manila a year ago, and they cost more than twice as much. I guess 50% of the price we pay for medicines go to our doctor's "commissions," in the form of "free" trips abroad, medical "seminars" in fancy hotels and restaurants, and other nasty "perks." Of course, its not easy - they have to meet their respective "quotas," otherwise they get nothing. Its sick (no pun intended) I know - I personally think we should hate them more than lawyers or politicians.

To avoid a similar predicament, always remember to drink your vitamins, go to bed early, and don't get sick!

Going out in Warsaw

2007-03-11T16:10:00.000+01:00

Warsaw at night is a true party town - the city is packed full of restaurants, pubs, and clubs - many open until the wee hours of the morning. It is also surprisingly pretty safe, even at night - as long as you don't wander off to the more "seedy" parts of the city.

What they don't have, however, is a central party area. Clubs are pretty spread out across the city - this essentially means that a night of pub/club crawling will involve more than just a few taxi rides.

In Manila (and in my hometown as well), there is essentially just one crowd of partygoers. Everybody knows everybody else, and people mostly flock to just one club at any given time time - whichever place is "hot" for the month.

I've been to quite a few clubs here in Warsaw, and it certainly is not the same situation. Different "kinds" of people (i.e. one club would have mostly students, another one would have mostly expats in their 50s trying to pick up girls half their age, another one would be full of B-list celebrities, etc.) flock to different kinds of clubs. There's even an Irish pub where the Irish community hangs out in ("Bradley's"), and an Irish pub where the tourists hang out in (aptly called "Irish Pub").

Come to any of these clubs late (like 11pm-12am), and you'll find a mean looking doorman "filtering" out guests. If he doesn't like your face, or how you're dressed, you won't get in. I've seen girls get turned away because they were not "pretty enough." Foreigners can usually get in without a problem - so thats good news for me.

Since women here in Warsaw are generally a good looking bunch (tall, slim, sharp, eastern-european features), the "filtered" girls in certain clubs are just true bombshells. I'm not going to try and describe them, or how its like to get in - you will just have to come here and see for yourself.

To give you a small taste, I compiled a couple of the most popular songs played in the local clubs. Please take note that most of these videos are not safe for work (NSFW). I believe they'd even be illegal on Philippine TV. Local channels, however, show even "stronger" stuff - that's Europe for you I suppose.

Holly Dolly - Dolly Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffqy8U4ceFA

Fedde Le Grand - Put Your Hands Up For Detroit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUVkZkqKmXQ

Alex Gaudino feat. Crystal Waters - Destination Calabria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWu-e6B2AJs&mode=user&search=

Camille Jones Vs Fedde Le Grand : The Creeps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBBdt3NWHHM&mode=user&search=

DADA Ft Sandy Rivera & Trix - Lollipop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPe16KLGyzg

Bodyrox feat Luciana - Yeah Yeah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0GM2bHhXE

Benny Benassi - Satisfaction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odgjQa7SxIY

Guess which one is my favorite? Hehehe....

My Wisła weekend

2007-03-08T22:02:00.000+01:00

I went to the mountains this weekend, in a place called "Wisła." This is a town up in the Polish mountains, about 400kms south of Warsaw. It's a small town best known for the champion Polish ski jumper Adam Małysz - you'll see his pictures everywhere here. It was supposed to be a skiing trip, however, since I have a bad knee injury (my left ACL is gone, for those who are familiar about these things) - and I was advised to stay away from the slopes.

Disappointing, I know - a once in a lifetime opportunity, gone. Oh well, I don't care too much about skiing anyway - its 30 minutes of lining up to get on the ski lift, and 30 seconds of going down the slope. I also didn't want to spend extra to buy/rent all that equipment (I was supposed to buy ski pants, ski jacket and gloves, and rent ski boots, skis and those sticks you use to poke the snow while you slide down). The conditions weren't good as well, it was sunny, and the snow was beginning to melt - turning it into a slippery mush.

Who am I kidding? I was (and still am) extremely disappointed. Maybe I'll go back this weekend, while there is still some snow, and try it out.

The other unfortunate thing is that I forgot to bring my camera. How dumb. How very, very dumb - especially since I bring my camera everyday to the office and back. How can I forget to bring it on this once-in-a-lifetime trip? Oh well.

The journey started out interesting enough - we left Warsaw at 8am, and immediately people started drinking on the bus. And when I say drinking, I don't mean having a couple of sips of beer. I mean heavy drinking. Vodka. Shots of it. Lots and lots of shots. There was also lots of singing, shouting, dancing, and more shots. The trip lasted 6 1/2 hours, it was 6 1/2 hours of heavy, heavy drinking.

This was difficult - not only because it started at 8am in the morning. The main problem is that it was a no smoking bus, and it didn't have a bathroom. The bus stopped for a bathroom break every 2 hours, and immediately a long line would form outside the gas station bathroom. Women would continue to line up, men would get impatient and head for the trees. Ahh, being male has lots of advantages.

All of this - coupled with the fact that I got home at 3am the previous night from vodka drinking at a friends house - guaranteed a pretty interesting trip. 6 1/2 hours zipped by so quickly, I didn't even notice that we were there already.

As soon as we got to the hotel, we checked in and hit the pub. More drinking.

It was a Sunday, and because I was a good Catholic, I decided to go to mass. I hopped out of the pub at 7pm and started walking, looking for the Church. It was pitch black, I had no map, it was freezing cold and raining hard. After walking around lost for about 5 kms along a narrow highway, I decided to head back - there was no way I could find that Church in these conditions.

Apparently, Wisła is one of those few towns in Catholic Poland where there are more Protestants than Catholics - so finding the right church was more difficult than I first expected. Reminded me of Sagada back at home. Sagada minus the Marijuana.

The next day, we were blessed with warm weather (10 deg C - yes that's very warm) and lots of sunlight. A small group of people were going for a walk, and they invited me to go along with them. Since I thought it was a shame to waste such a nice day indoors, I decided to go with them.

15 kms and 2 hours later, I regretted this decision. I was trying to hail a taxi - but in a place where there are only 11,000 people, taxis are not very popular. My feet hurt - I needed a beer. Badly.

I got a vodka instead. And sleep. We played poker later that night, and I lost badly.

The next day, we headed home.

It might not seem like I had fun, but I actually had a blast. I got to meet many different people from all over Europe (about 98% of them were from Poland though - one guy was from Spain) and regaled them with stories about Balut, Sisig, and how in our professional basketball league, we have 1 tournament a year where imports are not allowed (a.k.a the PBA All-Filipino conference). I learned different Polish and Spanish bad words, and found out (rather strangely) that there is no Filipino word for “Cheers!” (I explained that this was because we traditionally drink using the tagay method – so people generally don’t have one drink each to say “Cheers” with).

All in all, it was great fun. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

Moules, frites, and bier

2007-03-01T20:51:00.000+01:00

The capital city of Belgium has 3 often-used names: Brussels (English), Bruxelles (French) and Brussel (Dutch). This city of 1 million people is also rightly famous for 3 things:

1. Moules - mussels to us English-speaking folk. The best place to have it is the a restaurant called Chez Leon, and the house specialty involves cooking them in white wine. They were very good, and the best thing is that we didn't have to worry about red tide.

2. Frites - when some pissed-off Americans started calling French Fries "Freedom Fries," in retaliation for France's strong opposition to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, some people in France commented that frites actually originated in Belgium. Pictured above is Maison Antoine, which means "get your fries here" in French. They serve the best fries in the world, 10x better than the ones Mcdonald's serves, and 100x better than the crap Jollibee dishes out.

They are cut thickly and served in a paper cone, topped with mayonnaise. You can also get them with a bunch of other sauces, like cranberry and strawberry (I am making imbento here of course - but I do remember seeing some strange sauces on the menu).

3. Bier - ahh beer. You just have to love a country that has more than 1,000 kinds of beer. They're also really anal about it - each one has its own special glass, and each one has to be served at specific temperature - depending on the type. In Manila, you're lucky if you get your beer cold, and if you want a glass and a bucket of ice ("que horror - you drink your beer with ice?!?!?")- you have to ask for one.

Above are 8 different kinds of Belgian beer. Out of these 8, guess which one I tried first? Thats right - the one with the most alchohol content. The left-most one said on the label that it was the "strongest beer in Belgium" - with 12% alchohol. It was terrible - worst beer I ever had. I still finished it though - sayang kasi eh.

"Pope, what about Belgian chocolates?" Well, yes they are also particularly good - there is actually a chocolate shop in almost every corner in this city. However, I don't know the French word for chocolate, so I am ending my post with beer.

I'm going back to Brussels next month - I can't wait.

Paris by night

2007-02-24T18:44:00.000+01:00

Although Paris is already a beautiful city during the day, I think many people would agree with me that it looks its best at night. There is just no other city in the world that is as pretty or as romantic as the French capital.

Although my wallet was stolen in the subway (first time it ever happened to me in my life - don't worry, the money and the wallet were returned), and my feet were still aching from all the walking we did (I mistakenly wore my light, but thin-soled sneakers), I still had a blast.

Exhausted from our "subway" city tour (we were too kuripot to get a "real" city tour - our non-kuripot excuse is that subways are faster than tour buses), we started our evening with a stroll through the Eiffel tower. It looks better when the sun goes down, and they turn the lights on:

Our real purpose was to take pictures, such as the ones below, and show them to our friends. There is nothing more idyllic than a picture of a couple with the Eiffel tower in the background - at night. You really can't go to Paris and leave without this - its a perfect "living room" picture, and a good conversation starter (i.e. "ay, you've been to Paris na pala. Yan ba yung Eippel Tower?" - in our living room , we get a lot of Capampangan guests hehehe).

Here they are:

We took so many pictures during this trip that our batteries ran out and all of our memory cards got full. That's no big deal, normally - however we brought along 3 cameras, 2 extra memory cards, and 1 extra battery. I figured we were taking about 150-200 pictures a day. That's a lot. But then again, you can never have too many pictures.

Anyway, after the obligatory pictures, we were hungry and wanted to eat. I "surprised" Mav by making dinner reservations at Gallopin, which is a very local, and a very French restaurant. There is emphasis on the word "surprised," since I told her about this plan way in advance - it was my first time in Paris, and I didn't want to get lost. This was our belated Valentine's day date.

The restaurant was in an out of the way place in a pretty seedy part of town. But it was packed. And I mean really packed. With locals! (The last people I wanted to see were tourists, like us) Good thing I made reservations.

I had potted duck Foie Gras (the house specialty - and supposedly, the best one in Paris) and Beef Bourguignon stew, Mav had onion soup and a grilled steak with Bernaise sauce:

The food was excellent. And I mean really, really, really good. Especially the Foie Gras - WOW! When I eat this stuff in Manila, I usually get just a tiny, half-a-toenail sized piece. And I'm talking about the little toenail here, not the big one. In Gallopin, it was as big as a large slice of bread.

Foie Gras is made in the most cruel way - involving force feeding ducks via a tube for 18 days (called gavage) before they are slaughtered. Anthony Bourdain, that popular tv celebrity chef, once said that the moment you taste really good Foie Gras - it makes you realize that the duck's suffering is all worth it. I agree with him wholeheartedly. It was so good, I wanted to hold back my crap the next day - kasi sayang naman (of course, I meant that in the most non-kadiri sort of way).

After our excellent dinner, we spent a couple more hours walking around this beautiful city, repeating "ang ganda no?" about 4 times every 5 mins.

Go to Paris! I guarantee you will fall in love with this place!

SNOW!!!!!!

2007-02-23T07:38:00.000+01:00

I was supposed to do a post about Brussels today - how I liked the beer, the things I saw, etc. However, I'm going to write about something else, I can't contain my excitement any longer. Look what I saw when I peeked out of my window today:

SNOW! Finally!

I didn't think I'd see some snow until our skiing trip next week. Some ski resorts actually advertise here that if we go and there is no snow, they can provide it for us. Kind of like extra towels or pillows - "Hello housekeeping? Can you send up some extra snow in room 301 please? Thanks!"

In case you're wondering, this is the first time I've seen snow fall. Corny ba? It is so nice to look at, everything is just sooo white. Kinda reminds me of my hometown after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption - when everything was covered in a thin layer of white ashfall.

The only drawback is the temperature, its -13 degrees C today. My ears are probably going to fall off before I get to the office.

Have a nice day!

Dam Square

2007-02-22T07:17:00.000+01:00

Here's a 360 degree video clip of Amsterdam's Dam Square:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5604112145667178469

Enjoy!

Curious things

2007-02-20T21:05:00.000+01:00

I noticed two trivial, but curious things during my short journey. The first one involves traffic lights in Brussels:

That's right - the red stop lights are heart-shaped. Apparently, this is their special Valentine's "gimmick" for the whole month of February. To the Philippine politicians reading this - too late, di niyo na magagaya hehehe. I guess you can wait for Christmas, where you can turn the green traffic lights into christmas trees - but then again, that'll be too late for elections in May.

Another "curiousity" are the male urinals, which can be found in the Amsterdam Schiphol airport's rest rooms:

There is an embedded housefly near the center of the urinal. The theory is that if you give men something to aim for, they will instinctively try to hit it. Apparently, this reduces "spillage" by 80%. To quote the netlore archives:

"If you go to the men's washrooms at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam," Vicente wrote, "you may notice there's a fly in the urinals. So what do you think most men do? That's right, they aim at the fly when they urinate. They don't even think about it, and they don't need to read a user's manual; it's just an instinctive reaction. The interesting feature of these urinals is that they're deliberately designed to take advantage of this inherent human male tendency."

I will be the first one to admit that this theory is sound - I took aim at that fly as soon as I saw it.

Amsterdaam!

2007-02-19T18:19:00.000+01:00

People's reactions to Amsterdam vary. Some people (like me and some of my friends) love it, others (like my mom) absolutely hate it. It is a place where bicycles replace cars,

and where they like to use 2 As instead of 1 ('a' instead of 'aa'):

Of course, Amsterdam is most notorius for its 'coffee shops,' which legally sell soft drugs (you can smell Marijuana everywhere, and I mean everywhere), and its red light area, where things are, to put it simply, shocking:

I spent 5 mins explaining to Mav what "Bondage," "SM," and "Animal" meant. If you don't know what these things mean, don't look them up - I don't want to pollute your mind (I already polluted Mav's by explaining). In fact, they invented the term "red light area." A red light at a window meant that you can get girls there:

The curtains are down on this one, meaning the girls are "busy," hehehe.

It really is a modern version of those 2 biblical cities, Sodom and Gomorra.

If you're an upright, religious guy (like I am hehehe), how can you possibly like this place? Well, I personally think it is unfair to judge Amsterdam based on drugs and sleazy red light bars alone. It would be like judging my hometown, Angeles City, based on our infamous red light area - Field's Ave.

The city is amazingly beautiful. We took a canal cruise (I know - its touristy, but what the heck - it's Valentines), and I was absolutely blown away. Here are some pictures:

View from the boat

Seven Bridges

Houseboats along the Canals
More canal pictures

Dutch people are also very warm and friendly. The food, though, is nothing to get excited about. The best Dutch food I had were the Von Dobben Croquets at Cafe Amsterdam in the Schipol Airport (no Visa needed - its in the non-Schengen section of the Airport). Dutch cheese, of course, is amazing, and is exempted from this observation.

If you have a couple of hours to kill in the Schiphol Airport, I suggest that you take the train to Amsterdam Centraal and have a look around the city. The canal cruise takes only 1 hour - and it is the best (and fastest) way to see the city. There are also free walking tours, operated by English speaking locals who rely on tips - these start at 11am and 3pm daily, the meeting point is right outside the train station. Skip those city tours they are selling from the airport - there are cheaper and better options.

Just remember, in this city, when the sign says "No Smoking," they are not usually talking about cigarettes.

The longest Valentine's day

2007-02-19T09:05:00.000+01:00

Our flight from Manila to Amsterdam left at 11 am on Feb 14. It was a 13 hour flight - however due to the difference in timezones, we arrived in Amsterdam at around 6pm. This means we "gained" about 6-7 hours - it was an extended Valentine's day "date".

Since we were a bit full from all of those airplane meals, we decided to just have a quick (and cheap) meal somewhere in downtown Amsterdam for dinner.

We were walking around, trying to decide on a place to eat. A waitress spotted us and hopped out of the restaurant - she managed to convince us to have our dinner there. She uttered the magic words - "first drinks free." Hehehe, you know how much I like free drinks.

They had a Valentine's day special - a steak dinner for 10.95 euros. Thats still expensive for Philippine standards, but very reasonable for Amsterdam - where a good restaurant meal costs about 20-25euros per person.

We got our free drinks (water for Mav and a large beer for me), ordered 1 plate of steak ("sorry, we're not that hungry"). We cut the steak in half, and had our first "real" meal of the day (if you don't count the boxed food they serve in the airplanes).

A bottle of water costs about 3 euros, the beer was 5 euros. We paid 10.95 euros for the whole thing - that's almost 1/2 off! I guess the waitress was expecting us to order more.

To make up for this, I gave the waitress a 10 peso coin as tip - I told her that was her souvenir from me from Manila.

Score one for the cheapskates! Hehehe.

Our real Valentine's day dinner came a few days later - in Paris (naks - yabang hehehe). More on that later.

Finally!!!!

2007-02-08T02:58:00.000+01:00

First the good news - after 2 months of waiting, sending my passport back and forth from Manila to Bangkok, and enduring the "mag-T-TNT ka no?" stares at the embassy, I finally managed to get all my required Visas. Here's the Polish one:

And here's the Schengen one (from the Dutch embassy):

Both allow multiple entries, and are valid until July 31, 2007. The funny thing is that my Polish visa only allows me to stay for 30 days per entry. This means that I have to exit Poland and enter again every 30 days. In case you're wondering, Poland is a member of the EU - but they have not signed the Schengen treaty yet, so I had to get both a Polish Visa and a Schengen Visa to avoid going home to Manila every 30 days. Imagine, the Polish government is forcing me to go on vacation (and around Europe) once a month - how nice of them.

If you are applying for any type of Visa and are using a Philippine passport, get ready. I still remember submitting a bookload of documents when I was applying for a Japanese visa, and people crying in the embassy when they learned that they got denied. I suppose you can't really blame these Consuls - a big percentage of Pinoys going abroad start as tourists and end up as TNTs.

I guess I just got lucky this time. Very lucky.

Next stop - Amsterdam. I am leaving next week on Feb. 14 - will be back in May. See you around!

Jukebox in the sky

2007-01-14T07:18:00.000+01:00

Look everyone, its my Master's thesis! View the article here.

Some excerpts:

"This service, offered by RealNetworks, is what Real's CEO Rob Glaser calls "the jukebox in the sky." Originally designed to be used on a PC, Rhapsody allows users anytime access to an Internet library of over three million songs, including most that have ever been commercially released in the United States. Rhapsody subscribers, who pay $10 a month for unlimited access, today listen to about 130 million songs per month...

...When I spoke to Real's Glaser recently he predicted that for the ultimate jukebox in the sky, those of us in the United States will have to wait until 2010 or so. He assumes the entire country will by then have a ubiquitous wireless broadband grid using WiMax or something similar that will allow Internet data to flow everywhere like electricity."

I wrote about the "Jukebox in the sky" 4 years ago - it would be like having an iPod (I envisioned a PDA-ish cellphone back then, since iPods didn't exist yet) which contains almost every song ever created. I was actually able to make it work - over a "trial" version of Globe's GPRS service (they had just rolled it out back then, it was still free), a borrowed Sony Ericsson t68i (I couldn't afford one - they cost p36,000 back then), an HP iPaq (again borrowed), and a Pentium 2 laptop used as a server. It worked in most parts of Manila, Subic, Angeles City and Baguio. My demo included streaming music from MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, and Lady Diane (remember the hit song "Saddam?" hehehe).

Some people (I am not going to say who) thought it was the dumbest idea they ever heard.

I guess it wasn't so dumb after all hehehe.

My birthday and the New Year

2007-01-11T03:40:00.000+01:00

I apologize for not updating this blog for a long time - my internet connection hasn't been too good, and I've been busy drinking and partying. I will make up for it with a very long post hehehe.

My birthday and the New Year are very close to each other, so I've always thought of both events as one event. It's also probably because we drink so much every night from Dec. 31-Jan. 3 that it all seems like a blur to me.

In case you didn't know, I had my birthday a couple of days ago. If you didn't greet me - shame on you! I know who you are, and I will not greet you as well on your birthday!

Of course, the above statement is just my lame excuse for forgetting to greet people – my friends all know that I forget birthdays all the time, even those that are 1 day before/after my birthday. My mom even reminded me to greet my girlfriend on her birthday 2 years ago – that’s how bad I am at remembering important dates.

As you may know, a lot of things can happen over a year – things we don’t expect or plan for, but happen anyway. I have listed down some of these unexpected items – some of them are silly, but well I am a silly guy:

1. Working a couple of months in Europe – this was probably the biggest surprise of all. It was triggered when my girlfriend found out that she was going to be working in Brussels for about a year. I talked to my boss and requested a similar transfer, and I was lucky enough to get it. Of course, Mav (my girlfriend) got a better deal – she’s got a company-sponsored car there – but who’s complaining. I love Warsaw – something that’s pretty obvious from this blog, and I am really enjoying my stay there.

2. Receiving a surprise party for my birthday – every time I am invited to attend these surprise birthday/despedida/anniversary parties, I would always feel envious. I usually ask myself – “when will someone ever throw me a surprise party?” I finally got one – thanks to Mav and Lissa (Mav’s best friend) for arranging it. If you weren’t invited, you know who to blame. =)

3. Weddings/Marriage proposals – first of all, I am not talking about myself here, so quit snickering. When you start attending more baptisms, 1st birthdays, weddings, and engagement parties – it’s a sure sign that you are getting older. I remember an era when I was spending a lot of time practicing for and attending proms and debut parties – I was thinking back then that I was getting older. Those were the good old days - the next big shift will probably be when I turn 60 – then, I will be attending funerals.

4. Spending an evening on board a yacht – A couple of days ago, we went on a short trip through Manila Bay to watch the World Pyrolympics – it was a fireworks display for those who don’t read the newspaper – and we had the best view in town. I hate boats in general, I get dizzy and sick from all the shaking – but this time I had lots of fun. I guess being on a multi-million dollar yacht with free-flowing food and wine makes all the difference.

5. Gaining weight – I never thought this would happen. Although I was a regular at Trellis, I was also regular at the gym – so it all sort of cancelled out. For the longest time, I neither gained nor lost weight. However, I stopped going to the gym when I left for Warsaw. Although I tried my best to walk more and take the taxi less, it wasn’t enough to offset the sheer amount of food I was taking in when I was there.

Before Warsaw:

After Warsaw:

What will my list look like next year? I’ll probably be still circling the globe trying to make more money for my employer, while my brother and all my cousins will have doubled or tripled their respective businesses. I’ll get to visit more places in Europe, many more of my friends will either marry (more like get pregnant and then marry) or propose, and I’ll be older and (hopefully) wiser. I won’t have that much more money, but I’ll be happier – and ultimately that’s the only thing that matters.

Happy New Year to everyone – let’s all look forward to better and happier times ahead!

Leaving

2006-12-14T17:12:00.000+01:00

All my bags were packed, I was ready to go...standing there outside my door:

Sorry about that - I couldn't resist saying those lines after I went through my camera and saw this picture. In case you were wondering - yes, those are my bags, and yes, this was taken right before I rode the cab to the airport. The cheesiness is appropriate.

Here is what my street looks like at 4am in the morning - I took this short video just moments before boarding the taxi:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2340484869796767171

A quick disclaimer before I continue - yes, I am home - I've been here for 3 days, and I am writing this from my apartment in Manila. I will continue to update this space with some of the other stuff I saw while I was in Poland - haven't had time to write about everything yet. So keep checking back for updates.

Anyway, on with the post. My flight was an early one - departure was at 6:20am. It was freezing outside - 0 degrees C, with lots and lots of wind.

You couldn't exactly see the wind in the picture, but trust me, it was there. You can hear some of it in the video I posted above. When I saw this thermometer, I started debating in my mind whether to wear 5 layers of clothes (since it was so freaking cold), or only 3 layers (since I was headed to a place where it was 29 deg C). I wore 4 layers - hehehe.

Guess what I did the moment I landed in Manila?

I met up with Mr. Sisig and Mr. Lechon Kawali. Mr. San Mig Light was also very happy to join us. Sarap!

Sorry for turning this again into a food post at the very last minute - I guess its now clear why I gained 10 lbs in the last 30 days.

See you guys around!

Going home

2006-12-11T22:30:00.000+01:00

Travel agent calls my cellphone at 8am today:

TA: "Sir Pope, I finally found you a flight after 2 weeks of looking!"
Me: "Wow thats great - kelan ang alis ko?"
TA: "Tomorrow."
Me: "Nyeh!"

See you guys in Manila - will be there Wednesday morning! Gimmick tayo!

Krakow Videos

2006-12-09T16:36:00.000+01:00

I uploaded some videos I took in Krakow - the background music wasn't artificially inserted, there are musicians literally everywhere.

Here are the links:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5345911134007370

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-623559656019933488

Enjoy!

Krakow

2006-12-09T11:30:00.000+01:00

Krakow is probably the most popular Polish city in the world for tourists - and for good reason. I mentioned in my previous post that we went there last weekend - since we were too cheap to spend the night (and thus pay extra for a hostel), we decided to turn it into a day trip.

We left Warsaw at 6:05am, it was a good 3 hours by train.

When we got there, guess what greeted us - SNOW!

There wasn't any falling from the sky, but there was a thin layer of the stuff everywhere. We are tropical people, and the sight of snow gets us excited very quickly hehehe.

Since we went on a Sunday, it meant that museum tickets were free (we were so cheap that we didn't even want to pay the 10 zloty - p180 - entrance fee). We decided to go straight to Wawel Castle, so that we'll be among the first el cheapos lining up in front of the ticket counter.

Wawel Castle was great - really really beautiful. Here are some pics to show you what I am talking about:

After going around and exhausting ourselves, we stopped for lunch at a local kebab place. And then started walking again.

We found ourselves at the Krakow Old Town - really really nice as well.

The best thing about Krakow is that all the interesting (i.e. "touristy") places are concentrated in one small area - and there are no cars/buses/trams - you really have to walk around a lot. A map is very useful here.

Next time I visit Krakow, I'll definitely stay longer. They say that there are 100 pubs per square km here - and that night is often more interesting than day.

Wine, cheese and sausage

2006-12-05T21:52:00.000+01:00

There's nothing more European than wine, cheese and sausage. And there's nothing more Polish than warm wine, Kielbasa, and Oscypki.

We went to Krakow last Sunday, and we were blessed with very good weather. After the usual Wawel castle and Old Town tour (courtesy of my p72 Lonely Planet guidebook), we came across the city main square, which was absolutely filled with people:

Apparently, Poland had this championship volleyball game with Brazil, and the streets were packed with people watching it on a big screen they setup in the main square:

Unfortunately, Poland lost - by a big margin.

Anyway, after wandering around for a while, I noticed people lining up in front of this particular barrel-shaped stall:

I had no idea what they were buying, but having a long queue in front of some "mysterious" barrel-shaped shop is always a good sign in my book. I decided to line up - and after some sign language and lots of finger pointing, I finally ended up with a plastic cup full of warm wine.

It was very, very good - perfect for the not-so-cold (around 6 deg. C) weather. Alcohol content was quite high though - I am not sure if that is good or bad. Also, unlike "normal" wine, the buzz did not go away after my visit to the bathroom.

After walking around a bit more, I came across this:

Initially I thought they were grilling sharksfin siomai - the kind we get at the local Hen Lin stall back at home. There was also a fair-sized queue, and since I was feeling a bit adventurous after drinking some of the warm wine, I decided to line up again.

It turned out to be grilled cheese - called Oscypki - a specialty of the mountain towns south of Poland. They were very good, and also very salty. A perfect snack, reminded me of the grilled cheese sandwiches (made of Ques-O) I used to eat back home.

Now this next picture needs no explanation:

Foot-long Kielbasa!!! Ang sarap!!!

Communist times

2006-11-29T22:20:00.000+01:00

I attended our company party last night - the theme was "Poland 20 years ago." It was interesting, since Poland during the 80s was behind the so-called "Iron Curtain."

Despite the controversial theme and some pretty controversial events (which I will not mention here), we had lots of fun. We were given "tickets" (shown above) which we could use to purchase drinks. During the communist regime, each person received similar tickets every month - one coupon was for a 1/2 kg of sugar, another one for a loaf of bread, etc.

The tables were strange though - this was apparently what they looked like back then. You cannot see it in the picture, but the bowls were actually bolted to the table. Apparently this was done to prevent people from taking the utensils and bowls home.

I'd love to see airlines implement something similar, especially in Manila-bound flights hehehe.

This is what a typical communist store looked like. The purple stuff is denatured alchohol - used to light candles and remove tough stains from dirty clothes. A friend was telling me that during communist times, they would actually drink this stuff. They would have to filter it first though - to do this, they would cut a loaf of bread in half and pour the alchohol through it. This would apparently be enough to filter out all the bad chemicals.

My question is: "can't they use socks instead?"

I couldn't really "get" all the communist jokes during the party - there were lots of things going on at the same time. The most interesting thing about this whole event is that it's poking fun at a very painful past event.

They say Filipinos forget events like these rather quickly, that we tend to put the past behind us rapidly. I disagree - nobody would dare throw a "Martial Law" themed-party and poke fun at this event back in Manila.

A Polish friend said that they can throw parties like this because they're just "so glad that the whole thing is over." Amen to that.

Best Kebab in Warsaw

2006-11-28T07:12:00.000+01:00

There is a kebab place in almost every street corner and Subway/Tram stop, and here in Warsaw. However, there is also almost common consensus as to which one serves the best tasting kebab. For those staying in Warsaw, its at the corner of Marzalkowska and Swietokrzyska street - right outside the Swierokrzyska subway station. A friend told me that you will instantly recognize this place by the long line that forms in front of it at almost any hour:

When I heard this, I just had to visit. I just love kebabs. In fact, I ate at a popular kebab joint in Manila for 2 consecutive days before I left - just to make sure I won't miss it too much. Big mistake, I should've taken Sinigang instead.

I had 2 kebab sandwiches (one with cheese, one without), and they were absolutely wonderful. Waiting in line in this cold weather was well worth it!

Basia, basia, basia

2006-11-26T16:10:00.000+01:00

In case you were wondering about the title - let me start by saying that I am not talking about Basia Trzetrzelewska - that Polish singer my father likes so much (Papa, bet you didn't know she was Polish, noh?). Incidentally, "Basia" is actually short for "Barbara" - however, this topic is for another day.

The "Basia" I am talking about can be seen in the picture below:

I am not sure if you can clearly see, but that is actually a squirrel - eating a walnut I think. Since it was such a nice day, we spent a couple of hours walking around Lazienki park - it was just a short bus ride away.

The polish word for "squirrel" is "WIEWIÓRKA." However, for some reason, all squirrels here in Poland are called "Basia" - apparently all of them have the same name. That's why while we were walking around, we could hear kids (and some adults) calling these furry animals by whistling "Basia, Basia, Basia."

They were surprisingly friendly, and will gladly come close if you can offer them something to eat. Unfortunately, we didn't have any walnuts with us - so initially they didn't pay attention to our "Basia, Basia, Basia" calls. I then picked up a small stone, this was enough to fool some of them to come close and stay long enough for a photo op.

Hehehe - sucker!

Plans for the weekend?

2006-11-25T10:19:00.000+01:00

Someone asked me this question yesterday: "what are your plans for the weekend?"
To answer this, I have 2 pictures:

Zubrowska Vodka with Apple juice - they say its the traditional way of drinking it. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Reminders of home

2006-11-23T21:31:00.000+01:00

Here are some things that I saw today that reminded me of home:

It was raining very hard today in the morning - and its going to rain some more this week, according to the forecast. No floods and traffic jams though - that I don't miss.

Kare Kare! I so miss that. This place sells lamps though, not the peanut-flavored dish we Pinoys love. A friend of mine used to say "mahirap lang kami pare, ulam namin bagoong lang. Pero sawsawan namin Kare-Kare..." Hehehe corny.

Some people jaywalking - notice the red pedestrian light. I pass through this corner every day - and I see people doing this all the time - just like at home. I guess the red light is just a suggestion.

Its a Honda Civic! Hondas are pretty rare here by the way - when I was driving a Polish colleague around Manila in my Civic a couple of months back, he was amazed. Aparently, these cars are very expensive here. Notice the plates - they are just like mine - 777!

Receipts and Expense Reports

2006-11-22T22:26:00.000+01:00

I should do this everyday - I know - but then again I have other things to do (like updating my blog hehehe). Now I just spent 2 hours figuring out how much I spent and where. Check out the receipts below:

Add this to the fact that everything is in Polish, and some of my receipts obviously have the wrong date (one was dated 2005, another one just didn't reconcile correctly with my expense excel sheet - which I update every 2 days).
Oh well, I am waiting for the laundry to finish anyway - it takes about 1 1/2 hours to finish one cycle. I have time to kill...and more Tanduay to drink. =)

Royale with Cheese

2006-11-20T21:07:00.000+01:00

I went to Mcdonald's today for lunch. The instant I stepped in, I remembered this memorable exchange from Pulp Fiction:

Vincent: And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the f*ck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it a Royale with cheese.

I'm not exactly in Paris, and its not a "Royale with Cheese" here. As you can see from the picture, its called "McRoyal" - I'm not sure where they got the "royal" bit, but I suppose it sounds a lot better than ".113 kg with Cheese."
Strange though - when I mentioned this observation to an Italian friend afterwards, he asked me what system we used in the Philippines. I said we used both, and it actually depends on what we were measuring:

Weight (or Mass, if you want to be all technical) - we use Metric (Kg) for stuff like meat, veggies, etc. and English (Pounds) for a person's weight, or the weights in the gym.
Distance/Length - we use Metric (Meters/Kilometers/Km per Hr/Square Meter) for speed/distance/area, and English (Feet/Inches) for a person's height. We likewise use English for various other things, like if you wanted to buy a piece of cloth (Yards), or in Golf, if you wanted to measure the distance from the tee box to the pin (likewise in Yards).
Temperature - we use metric (Celsius).

I'm not sure how we ended up like this - I guess like a lot of things in the Philippines, when we were shifting to Metric a couple of years back, the shift wasn't as thorough as it was supposed to.
Just remember, when you hear someone say that he's "almost 2 meters tall," that means he must be very very tall indeed.

Manny Poohcquiao

2006-11-20T07:34:00.000+01:00

I know that everyone's talking about the Pacquiao-Morales match yesterday. Here's something I found while searching youtube for some match videos - this is really really funny!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-eU0EDERzI

Gayang gaya niya si Pacquiao. Enjoy!

English Mass and Dinuguan

2006-11-19T21:07:00.000+01:00

It isn't difficult to find a Catholic church here in Warsaw - Polish people are predominantly Catholic. The problem is that, like almost everything here - the language used is almost exclusively Polish. In fact, when we went to mass in Gdansk last week, it reminded me of the Capampangan Sunday mass back at home - I couldn't understand a word.

Fortunately, we were able to find an English mass in a chapel near where I live. It was a bit out of the way though, but the taxi driver didn't have any problems finding it.

The nice thing about attending an English language mass in a foreign country is that it is the best place to meet your kababayans. I had the same experience when I spent some time in Kobe and Tokyo - English language Sunday Catholic mass is a good way to get in touch with the local Pinoy community. And the good thing is, Filipinos abroad are usually very very friendly. In fact, to illustrate this, right after mass, we started getting into a car - and were on our way to a Filipino party.

There aren't too many Filipinos in Poland - less than 100 in the whole country.

The good thing is that the moment we stepped into the house, there was this distinct smell of Filipino food in the air. "Pare naamoy mo yon?" Dinuguan, laing, puto, chopsuey, pan de sal:

It was the best meal I had all week - the Pinoys here are great! I absolutely loved it!

A picture of my apartment

2006-11-19T17:36:00.000+01:00

Here is a picture of my apartment here in Warsaw, courtesy of Google Earth:

See - its in the middle of town (or at least its in the middle of the screen)! I can walk to all of the good restaurants and gimmick places, there is also a mall nearby. The Metro station, as well as a bunch of tram and bus stations are also less than 5 mins away.
The office, however, is on the other side of town. Getting there is very easy though - only a 10-15 min Metro ride away.

Smoker's Windows

2006-11-18T15:09:00.000+01:00

Here's something interesting I discovered recently:

This picture shows the window beside my living room. As you can see, the window opens normally, as we would expect.

If you twist the handle so that it points up, look what happens:

It opens up vertically! WOW!

I know, thats lame. But it solved a big problem - how to let the cigarette smoke out without turning my apartment into a freezer. Now all my windows are opened like this. I didn't do this to my bathroom windows though - I prefer my toilet seats warm, not ice cold.

Washing Machine

2006-11-18T12:12:00.000+01:00

I read somewhere that in New York, a sure sign that you are moving up in the world is if you have a washing machine and a dryer in your flat. I am not in New York, but I DO have a washing machine here in my apartment. No dryer though - my dryer is a bunch of hangers in the bathroom.

My problem is that I don't know how to use this machine.

This is partly because I never did the laundry back at home. A washing machine for me is my laundry bag. I put my dirty clothes in it, and the clothes magically appear in my closet all clean and pressed.

But the major reason can be seen in the picture above. If someone can translate it for me, please send me an email. I also have a swedish and finnish version. Wala bang Tagalog version?

In any case, we figured it out. My other Pinoy colleague from work experimented with it - using HIS clothes. Hehehe.

But we do save a lot of money by doing our laundry this way - the hotel laundry service cost them about 200 zloty for a couple of shirts (thats about p3,600). I hope my boss is reading this - we saved money for the company by experimenting with our clothes! Hehehe...

Warsaw - the hottest capital in Europe

2006-11-18T11:52:00.000+01:00

Ok, ok. I know, Paris and Munich are hotter by a couple of degrees. But you get the idea.

Yesterday it was about 12-13 degrees - thats very warm for this time of the year. When a couple of my officemates went to Warsaw last year, it was negative 28. Negative freakin' 28! Ice cubes would have problems with that weather!

Its so warm here that I only wear 2 layers of clothes under my coat. I leave my gloves and "hat" at home, and last night I was wearing only a t-shirt and a very light jacket - the kind you'd wear in Baguio. I was walking to the office yesterday and I discovered 2 drops of sweat in my brow - ang INIT exagge! Hehehe - yabang ba?

I tell the folks here that in Manila 2 months ago, the temperature dropped from 33 deg to 27 deg. I was walking down Ayala Ave and I could see lots of people were wearing jackets. Their jaws drop whenever I say that hehehe.

But seriously, we do have great weather here now - perfect for walking around. Days are short though, at 4pm its totally dark.

Will probably walk around a bit later. Still nursing my hangover. =)

Don't declare any more holidays!

2006-11-18T11:31:00.000+01:00

This is how much lead time I need in order to apply for the following things:

a Polish multiple entry business visa - 14 working days, plus about 2 days for transit to and from Bangkok (there is no Polish embassy in Manila)
a Schengen multiple entry tourist visa - 14 calendar days
a Czech republic single entry tourist visa - 5 working days

I checked my calendar, assuming I apply for a Visa as soon as I get home on Dec 21 - earliest departure date will be around the week of Feb 5. If more holidays are declared, this could be pushed back even further. So GMA, if you're reading this - stop declaring holidays! Hehehe.

We have a company-sponsored skiing trip on Jan. 20 - I'll probably miss that one. I will also arrive in Poland at the coldest part of the year - that'll be about a 30+ degree drop in temperature, not an experience I am looking forward to.

Its amazing that Filipinos need to wait at least 1/2 a month to get a Visa. I remember applying for a business Visa to Japan a year ago - that was tough as well. They have some crazy requirements - like an invitation letter signed by the president of the company (in Japanese), a company profile (again in Japanese), a daily schedule of all your meetings during your whole stay (again in Japanese), etc.

Oh well, things can be worse I suppose.

Welcome!

2006-11-18T11:15:00.000+01:00

Hello there. Welcome to my blog. Just a brief background - I am Filipino, and I am located in Warsaw, Poland. I am going to stay here for about a year, but I will come back to Manila every 2-3 months or so. Not sure where the title came from though - I've only been here for a week, surely thats not enough time to fall in love with a place.

In any case, I'll be updating this space regularly, so check back often!