shin{k}aide

Hello folks. I've moved me blog. Click here to go to me new home on the web.

Vox was a blast, but it's unfriendliness to outside comments prompted me to go back to wordpress. See y'all there.

Planning to move back to WordPress... and I've decided to take only the posts with the most personal value to me. This means just the most well-thought out posts and the ones that mark an important point in time in my life will make the cut.

While my primary motivation for dumping Vox is really just because it doesn't want to play nice with the idea of open commenting, I also want a large degree of control over the blog's design. As much as I love Vox's media utilities and quite possibly unlimited storage provisions, I don't like being tied down and settling for "it works just fine the way it is". No. If I can't make it work the way I want to, it doesn't "work just fine".

I'm getting tired.

This blog has been a personal chronicle to what can pretty much be summed up as "my trying to decide who I really am, who I really want to be (hey, sounds like a 30STM song!) and what I really want out of my life" (five jobs, dives into depression, a couple of personal epiphanies, etc). I have found it. Though it goes beyond words, I have affirmed it to a degree worthy of the label of certainty, methinks.

This blog has also been a witness to me during my weak moments, when I could not restrain myself. This blog has recorded the deaths of friends and loved ones who left too soon (just this Tuesday, Eddie Wong, father of my childhood friend Jared, died of a stroke at the age of 53; sometimes I wonder if it's even worth posting at all, for all the bad vibes it stirs up inside). This blog also contains a lot of crap (all blogs do, of course). I want to consciously create things that are of good quality, regardless of medium, and I figure that which I record and organize my thoughts and experiences upon would be a good start.

This blog began with the end of something I loved doing, and it will ironically, albeit fittingly end with the resurrection of that very same thing.

Time to finally start a journey with one true destination in mind, so to speak.

Funny, whenever I start a new phase in my life I also tend to switch blogging services. Hmmm.

Sunny Afternoon, Red Building

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Dad did a business Seminar today and he asked me to help him out with his presentation. It went well, and afterwards I decided to get some shots of the area.

A Sari-Sari Store In Sampaloc

The Cutting Edge Barbershop

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Had lunch with dad at Kenny Rogers' Roasters in Robinson's Place today. We were looking for a good place to load up on something meaty, and since Burger King was under renovation (or completely ousted, I'm not really sure), we thought checking it out again would be nice.

Kenny Rogers' Roasters Ribs

Dad had the ribs and I had the Salisbury-meal-thing. Neither of us opted for chicken, since a couple of months back we tried it, and it was underwhelming. The chicken is significantly much smaller than it used to be during their first few years in the Philippines (it didn't help that I know what their chicken tasted like back when I visited Texas), and it also didn't taste as good.

Kenny Rogers' Roasters Salisbury Steak

It's probably been a good number of months since we'd eaten at Kenny Rogers'. The first thing we noticed was that the interiors now looked more manufactured and generic, as opposed to the homey brick-and-wood-country-cabin look it had before.

Then, they reduced the number of side-dishes. A number of my favorites, including the garlic mushrooms, were now gone. So for my part, I just had the garlic and cheese potatoes. Which was utterly tasteless. The Salisbury steak itself was unremarkable, and dad didn't like the ribs either.

Both of us missed the time when Kenny Rogers was all about great, mouth-watering chicken seasoned with herbs and roasted over fire. Now they've gone and cheapened their brand by trying to cater to the same crowd Jollibee does, sacrificing food quality. They've added fried chicken, sub sandwiches, and other crap. Truth is, I wouldn't have minded it much if they had just retained the quality, but they didn't.

For what we paid, we should have just eaten at Wendy's. Kenny Rogers' Roasters sucks.

My best ideas come to me when I'm out, about, alone, and with a cup of coffee in my hand. Most of the time, though, I'm caught unprepared, as I prefer to travel light without anything that can encumber my movements. So...

A Bad Phone Camera Photo Of A Cup of Coffee and Notes On A Napkin

The Good:
Today, I was able to write a really good storyarc script, wholly enabled by imbibing possibly immoral amounts of Arabian coffee.

The Bad:
Now I can't sleep becuase I drank possibly immoral amounts of Arabian coffee.

The Stupid:
I also ate half of an 18" pizza; now I feel like I have rocks in my stomach in addition to my being wired.

I've finally figured out why I've been feeling so sick the past few days (specifically, getting asthma attacks every night, which hasn't happened to me in more than a decade!). At first I thought it was a combination of my last few bouts of mild insomnia (for lack of a better term), and maybe sick house syndrome (I have so many books and stuff lying around). But just today I've got it - I've been getting sick because of the renovations going on in the apartment unit below us (which is being converted into four more apartment units, which are seriously overpriced and undersized, IMHO).

We've been having pretty cool weather the past few weeks, so I've been going without the A/C for quite a spell. Bad move - when the renovations are going on during the day, all the powdered crap and dust rise up and settle on the higher floors... with our unit being the first stop.

At first I was wondering why my table had these tiny, gray bits of stuff that looked like eraser sheddings in the mornings, when I hadn't even started drawing yet. Then we saw the same thing in our patio, which had sort of a vertical vestibule (I don't know what other word to use for it) shared between three floors, leading up an opening on the top floor.

I'm using the A/C everyday until they finish renovations from now on. (I'm just glad I don't pay for our electricity).