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Credit must be given to Jayme Esmeralda Brucal-Gatbonton for helping me choose the platform for the new site. Thanks, Jayme.

Image courtesy of webdesignerdepot.com that distributes clean, nice-looking twitter icons for free

A chronology of recent tweets on my Twitter.com account.

October 25, 2009, 9:30 PM:
Currently addicted to Twittter — via JournoTwit — and my own alltop.com page. This has something to do with the fact that I have a deadline.

October 25, 2009, 9:34 PM:
On top of the fact that I like being challenged to say what I want to say in just exactly 160 characters. No more, no less. So there you go.

October 25, 2009, 9:40 PM:
It’s 140, not 160 characters as earlier mentioned, as I had a previous affinity with the number, it being my previous ipod mp3 sampling rate

October 25, 2009, 9:44 PM:
Enough, Mr. Basilio, enough! You have ruined our weekend with your instant, useless, and incessant blather. Go beat a deadline or something.

Shown is a picture of a ticket for the Alecks Pabico benefit concert

(More content can be found at http://www.jackthescribbler.com although it won’t  necessarily be about getting cheap airfare. But still, it won’t hurt to visit. Thanks.)

To Alecks Pabico, who wouldn’t mind my jokes

Next to feigning sickness and alien abduction, the death of a family member or a friend is one of the better excuses to avoid going to the office.

This was exactly the reason why I was able to skip work for two days, however short and temporary.

I told my supervisors that a friend died and I was in quiet mourning (i.e., comforting my similarly-bereaved friends while drinking vodka at the wake on the sly).

In doing so, I accidentally stumbled upon one of life’s most well-kept secrets: to avoid work, have someone you know die.

But that’s not as easy as it sounds.

And in the case of Alecks Pabico, the very first Philippine Collegian editor I served, I would rather be a bundy clock boy and HR’s BFF than have him beat deadlines somewhere else.

Alecks was so loved that hours after he died on Wednesday last week, funeral arrangements were already being prepared by an ad hoc committee composed of his friends — an ADB consultant, a UP law professor, a litigator, and myself, a drunkard.

Although I fail to remember having to volunteer for such a responsibility, I took to the mission with much aplomb since it involved free alcoholic drinks upon its successful completion.

Moreover, it was my only way of paying tribute to Alecks, one of the gentlest, funniest people I have known (and I say that as someone who excoriates the living, the dead, and other half-dead entities whose only contributions to this planet are hot air and carbon emissions).

My task at Aleck’s wake, while easy, was both a curse and a privilege.

It helped me get in touch with other friends I haven’t seen in decades but it also emphasized that the instant reunion was brought about by Alecks’ demise — an eventuality that he was prepared to face even before he knew his time was up.

About a week before he died, he delivered a speech during a benefit concert held in his honor.

Alecks pretended to stumble on the stage, much to the horror of the audience. He then chuckled, poking fun at the audience’s worst fears.

During his remarks — which I missed by an hour — he also made light of his condition, just about the same attitude he exuded the last time he and I made contact.

Sadly, it was only through Facebook (though we did see each other in August when Collegian alumni held a separate dinner in his honor).

Two weeks before the benefit concert, he uploaded an image of the concert ticket and wrote a status message that said: “Look at what friends from UP Samasa are plotting, but with my consent, of course. To those whom I count as friends, hope you support the effort. Thanks!”

I was the first to reply and did so in jest. “What about your enemies? What will they do? ,” I said.

Alecks was nonplussed.

“Hmmmm, how about asking yourself that question? ”

Hours later, in the same status thread, he gave me a gentle reminder, something which I will never forget.

““Enemies” invoke a lot of negative energy. Dwelling on the negative only serves to defeat the event’s very purpose, which is to send positive, healing vibrations.”

So I said: “OK, smart Alecks. I’ll send you good vibes. ”

Apparently, my online gesture wasn’t enough.

Goodbye, my friend.

Too bad we weren’t able to see each other one final time.

In any case, I’ll always remember you, Alecks — inside and outside Facebook.

Just promise to go easy on updating your status messsages.

———————
Contributions for the family of Alecks Pabico are still accepted at http://onelove.chipin.com. All funds will be allotted for his family, wife Mira, daughters Marlee and Kaya, and son Giles.

Consumers have made a mad scramble for items such as sardines, biscuits, instant noodles, candles, batteries, and flashlights, the president of a Philippine supermarket association told GMANews.TV.

“People are alarmed and they are buying more than what they need,” Steven T. Cua, president of the Philippine Amalgamated Supermarkets Association Inc., (Pagasa), said. The industry group is composed of supermarkets that serve the low to upper-middle market.

“Selling areas are crowded and queues are very long,” he said on Friday evening as television news programs aired reports of empty grocery shelves.

Demand for instant food items have surged since these can be prepared and consumed easily, Cua said.

These food items can also be transported with minimal difficulty should consumers be forced to relocate and/or leave their homes in case of floods, he added.

For the past few days, appetite for instant food items was driven by bulk-buying for relief operations for victims of the storm Ondoy.

But on Friday night, consumers stocked up on their supplies, alarmed that a new storm may unleash effects similar to those wrought by ‘Ondoy’ just a week earlier.

In the meantime, demand for candles, batteries, and flashlights was spurred by rumors that the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) will be cutting off power in its areas upon the arrival of typhoon “Pepeng.”

Meralco, Metro Manila’s lone electricity distributor, has denied the report.

To ensure that inventories are well-stocked, supermarkets have switched brands, especially if quality, price, and sometimes even the manufacturer are the same, Cua said.

He also acknowledged that inventories have been reduced as some deliveries were delayed by floods that were caused by record amounts of rainfall a week ago.

But buffer stocks of basic goods remain stable, Cua said.

This view is shared by Corazon C. Curay, logistics director at the Makati-based XVC Logistics Inc. Curay is also the president of the Supply Chain Management Association of the Philippines (SCMAP), an industry group that represents firms that store and deliver goods made by manufacturing giants such as San Miguel, Nestle, and Johnson & Johnson.

Damage to inventories has been minimal, Curay told GMANews.TV in an earlier phone interview held four days after Ondoy submerged the Philippine capital.

“Manufacturers just have to catch up on production,” she said, adding that some companies may be forced to sell their products in larger or smaller sizes, depending on their stocks.

Although Curay expects an increase in bulk prices of raw materials, companies will refrain from passing on the hike to its customers since it may translate to lower market share.

She also downplayed apprehensions that delayed deliveries and increased demand will boost basic goods’ prices.

Cua agreed.

Despite reports of increased bulk-buying – which raises the possibility of higher goods prices – neighborhood groceries have yet to buy double of what they usually purchase, Cua said. This indicates that they do not expect higher prices in the short term, Cua explained.

“If they wanted to take advantage of higher prices in the future, smaller stores would have bought more,” Cua said.

“People are just reacting too quickly to news of the storm,” he said. “Consumers should just buy supplies good enough for one and a half days, instead of three.”

Shown is the right hand side of my new blog at tumblr.com

http://yabbb.tumblr.com/

Yet Another Blog By Boojie

Elizabeth Tundag (left) and Pricella Gealon try to cheer up despite their exhaustion during the last day of Cory Aquino's wake.

They got lucky.

On Tuesday morning of August 4, Pricella O. Gealon and Elizabeth S. Tundag were able to book reservations and fly to Manila on the same day.

By 8:30 in the evening, the pair was already bound for the Philippine capital, somewhat pleased with themselves after getting good prices for their tickets.

But they weren’t exactly in the mood to relish their good luck.

The pair – volunteers of the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) in Cebu during the 1986 snap elections – looked forward to paying their last respects to the late president Corazon C. Aquino.

“She was my idol,” Tundag told GMANews.TV during the wee hours of Wednesday in Manila. “She set out to do what she promised to do when she became president.”

An hour after take-off, Gealon and Tundag were already at the Ninoy Aquino airport, waiting for a taxi to bring them to the Manila Cathedral.

After a short stop at a nearby apostolate office – where they dropped off their overnight bags – they were able to join thousands who lined up to get a glimpse of the late president during the last day of her wake.

But the flight, the traffic, and the long wait during their departure and arrival took their toll.

At about one in the morning, after enduring cold winds and intermittent rainshowers, the two women decided to leave the queue.

No one could exactly blame them.

They were wet, exhausted, and were nowhere near the cathedral entrance.

At that time, the queue snaked around the block where the church stood, extending anywhere between three to five kilometers from the entrance, depending on various estimates.

The line even became longer at two in the morning, reaching the back of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) building, which was still at a distance from the cathedral.

By this time, both Gealon and Tundag were already seeking refuge at the Palacio del Gobernador, a nearby building.

While sitting at the building’s lobby steps, they tried various strategies to stay up the whole night, if only to keep vigil during the last day of Tita Cory’s wake.

Besides watching the continuous stream of people who stayed in line with a mix of envy and amusement, the two women also listened to stories exchanged between the building’s security guard and various other visitors.

There was a teacher who complained about the snooty family ahead of her in line. “I even spoke to them in English,” she said.

Or the middle-aged woman who was torn between heading back home on her own since she lost her companions (and, for some reason, her cellphone signal).

For their part, Gealon and Tundag swapped stories during the time they accompanied Cory Aquino in her presidential campaign in Cebu more than 20 years ago.

“When I saw her for the first time, I immediately got the impression that she was very close to God,” she said.

And even though they failed to get their last look at Cory, they will never forget the day they decided to go on a sudden, unplanned trip to Manila one gloomy day in August.

“We’ve already seen her in person,” they said. “It’s enough that we came over to attend her burial and pray for her.”

A downscaled poster of Engkwentro as found in its multiply site. To visit said site, please click on pic.

Engkwentro is Filipino film noir and social commentary rolled into one.
But instead of hard-drinking gumshoes and peroxide blondes, the film features two brothers, Richard (Felix Roco), a drug-dealing gang leader on the run from a vigilante death squad, and Raymond (Daniel Medrana), a truant schoolboy turned neophyte of a rival gang.
With his life at risk, Richard is determined to join his mother in Manila and perhaps even stay there for a few months, if only to cool off.
While plying his drug route – a move to raise cash for his trip – Richard encounters Raymond and learns that he has joined the Batang Dilim (Kids of the Dark), instead of going to school.
As part of his initiation, Raymond is instructed by the gang leader, Tomas (Zyrus Desamparado) to fetch a gun, which Richard later confiscates and returns to its previous owner for a price.
Tension mounts between the two gang leaders, eventually forcing Raymond to make a choice between his new master or his brother.
These complications end up foiling Richard’s plans, emphasizing the hopelessness, even the inability, of those who seek to leave the slums for arguably better lives.
With its quick narrative pace, Engkwentro is able to dive right into its characters’ motivations and moral ambiguities, doing away with the easy, formulaic dichotomies between good and evil, victims and suspects, masters and slaves.
To complement this steely realism, Engkwentro offers unflattering portrayals of dingy alleys and clapboard shacks located in a Davao City slum, the movie’s setting. The images are so sharp and biting you could almost smell the stench of squalor.
But at the same time, Engkwentro has no qualms about baring its political agenda.
Barely a minute or two into the production, on-screen text about the prevalence of extra-judicial murders in the country give viewers a foretaste of what to expect.
Unlike other productions that serve generous helpings of propaganda, Engkwentro manages to stay on message by focusing on elements that help move the story along.
Take the opening sequence, which is already worth more than the price of the ticket.
With the screen rendered pitch black, viewers hear someone gasping for breath. Seconds later, through flickers of light, Richard is seen running for his life.
Similar chase scenes would later be repeated, emphasizing that everyone who is anyone in the film is more or less on the run from someone – cruel cops and crooked creditors, jilted suitors and jaded friends, envious enemies and evil parents.
Meanwhile, providing an auditory backdrop to the whole film is the city mayor’s disembodied voice from a radio broadcast.
Although he continues to deny involvement in the extrajudicial murders of known criminals, the mayor – played by Celso Ad. Castillo – implicitly supports the death squad’s activities.
Unfortunately, the mayor’s spiel is too strong and too confident to be taken seriously, turning his character into a caricature.
But this inconsistency fails to distract from the overall qualities of the movie, which is a winner.
Engkwentro is dirty, gritty, and real, however anyone looks at it.
It is just about the right film to show in a country that could use a little shock therapy to jolt it back to its senses.

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Engkwentro is directed by Pepe Diokno

Pop-up box shows Gmail's new enhancement, Drag and Drop Labels, which allow users to better organize their messages

Never have I been as enthusiastic about being a Gmail user as I am now.
Or at least not since five years ago when a close friend — someone whom I’ve shared a beer with for roughly half my life — gave me an invitation to open my very own Gmail account.
It was a privilege at that time because being a user of Google.com’s newly-launched free webmail service was strictly by invitation only.
It took me seven months after its April 2004 launch before I got an invite.
The process took longer than I expected — since I had a bunch of tech geeks and netheads as my friends — but it was well worth the wait.
Besides promising to store a gigabyte’s worth of email messages — at a time when owning a 256 MB thumb drive was cool — Gmail’s overall look and feel encouraged people such as myself to enjoy the experience of sending and receiving email messages even on a slow dial-up net connection.
As soon as I got my own Gmail account, I got hooked, ignoring and eventually neglecting my other web-based email addresses such as Yahoo!,
Lycos, and Hotmail.

Gmail's Drag and Drop Labels in action

Moreover, since I had the privilege of inviting 100 other people to enjoy the Gmail experience, I sent invites to myself, opening five or so accounts for work, personal stuff, and various other e-groups.
In February 2007, when Google.com finally made its free email service available to the public, I already was a Gmail veteran, with tons of mail in storage. These ranged from scanned images of Joyce Jimenez and hundreds of spam from Murli Menon, the CEO of Gujarat, India-headquartered
PhenoMenon Consultants Inc.
Just recently, Gmail introduced a new feature that has me going gaga over email again.
It’s called Drag and Drop labels, an enhancement of a previous feature, allowing users organize email messages by category and/or color.
Once a label is named and used, it automatically appears on the screen’s left side, sporting a color — one out of 24 shades — chosen by the user.
Any email dragged into the newly-created category then carries the label and the color of that category.
That’s not all.
Since each category acts like a folder, all emails carrying that label can be accessed by simply clicking on the category itself.
Thanks to this new enhancement, users such as myself are spared from the time-consuming burden of scrolling through various files, many of which have been buried in Gmail’s vast storage space, unlabeled and unaccounted for.
When Drag and Drop Labels were introduced, I went full blast, creating five new categories that covered all manner of email messages I wanted to keep — forwarded novenas from my aunt in West Australia, a chat transcript with a friend way back when we were both living within the tri-state area, and drafts of unfinished blog entries.
But like all technological advancements, Drag and Drop Labels have a hitch.
To maximize its benefits, you just have to sit down, formulate categories, and decide whether messages from the likes of Menon are really worth keeping.

Shown is the Facebook account of this blogger, which may prove to be boring to some.

Facebook is the new Friendster.
That’s what I told a friend of mine.
Or more accurately, that’s what I posted on his wall when he said that people who didn’t share our respect for both the Filipino and English languages — such as it was — were all set to invade and conquer our favorite social networking site.
Since he was an old fart who had a lot of time on his hands — which in turn, indicates the kind of company I keep — he was relentless.
“Friends, the end is near,” he said, continuing our discussion thread by posting on my wall. “Last night I was at a burger joint on Timog and heard two of these youngsters (from different tables) talk about Facebook. We’re finished.”
By youngsters, he was obviously referring to people younger than himself, which just about covered more than half of the Philippine population.
According to my friend — who is pushing 40 but has the mind and body of a healthy senior citizen — these young ones were about to lay siege on the Facebook community by mangling both languages through atrocious spelling and inelegant turns of phrase.
But I’m not bothered.
Practically no one among my 150++ friends on Facebook can be accused of befouling both languages, save for myself.
This explains why I remain choosy about whom I pick as friends in the said website, a decision that has benefits and drawbacks.
Since my Facebook friends are relatively literate, articulate, and open-minded individuals, I have no need to explain myself whenever the comments I post on  respective statuses, notes, pictures, and whatnot may be considered risqué.
They’re my friends, for crying out loud.
If they disallow and/or discourage me from airing my opinions, however biased (i.e., GMANews.TV is the world’s greatest website of all time) then they deserve being deleted from my A-list.
So far, none of my real friends on Facebook have been eager to curb my enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, I admit having to “unfriend” some of my so-called virtual “friends,” especially those whom I have never met at all. (Why I chose to become their Facebook friends in the first place is a mystery, even to myself. Blame it on alcohol, internet addiction, and plain stupidity.)
This, of course, has qualified me to become a world-class Facebook snob, according to my real friends.
But snob or not, I still am entitled to living the kind of life that I like, a right guaranteed under various international conventions to which this country is a signatory.
This right includes hanging out with people who share the same values and attitudes as I do.
Which explains why I recently looked up two college buddies whom I haven’t heard from in more than a decade.
Using Facebook’s private messaging tool, the three of us exchanged contact details and agreed to meet for dinner just to catch up on each other’s lives.
Details of the reunion — date, time, and place — was decided in just one afternoon, all thanks to the wonders of social media.
Since then, my college buddies and I have been able to organize a get-together on the fly, filling up my fair share of gimmicks and salvaging what remains of my social life.
Thanks, Facebook. You’ve got a friend in me, virtual and otherwise.