:Six Feet Under… and then some.

Where does the smell of a new car go? I mean, If you had a new car hermetically sealed in an oversized tupperware for 5 years and opened it, would it still have that new car scent? That would imply that there would be a finite number of “sniffs” that you could get out of a new car. That means that for every unit of inhaled “new car scent,” out comes regular air. Of course, this question is a corollary to something I’ve always wondered about: If you were stuck in an enclosed space (say a car or an elevator) and you farted, could you filter out the smell by breathing it all in and exhaling it out? Would your lungs act as chemical scrubbers? Would your exhalations still smell like fart? Could the Mythbusters test this one?

And no matter what you say - and as much as I lke the product - “Newport New Car” doesn’t really smell like a new car.
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Speaking of car fresheners, I’d like to admit that I’m a pushover when it comes to itinerant vendors. I was sitting in my car once when this guy comes up and starts marketing California Scents car fresheners. He was (for the low, low price of 100 bucks…) willing to sell me not one, not two, but three! count em, Three! car fresheners (in casings that looked like old cell phones). I asked if he had Newport New Car, but alas, all he had was Coronado Cherry. To compensate, he said that in addition to the 3 fresheners, he’d also give me 3 free refills. I said sorry, no dice. I still wanted Newport. I wasn’t to overly fond of Coronado Cherry (smells like cough syrup…). But still he persisted. For the same price, he was willing to give me 4 sets of fresheners, and 4 refills.

I am now enduring what I envision will be several months of a car that smells like cherry.
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Anyone else out there with labrador retrievers? Just a question: Do your dogs smell bad? Bad, of course, being a relative term. Hanging around Sancho has probably dulled my perceptions of doggy stink, and since he has perennial sinus problems, he also grunts like a piggy-piggy.

Maybe I can just rub Sancho with Coronado cherry?

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I started the trip this morning to the farm with a stupid tune in my head which to me sounds like some tune from an old family computer game.  I asked Feliz what it could’ve been, but she said she never had a family computer as a kid.  What she did have was TV.  So then we started playing "name that tune" in the car. and I started humming the theme from "Three’s Company," and she asked me If I knew where else John Ritter was in.  Apparently he was Gorbash in The "Flight of Dragons."  I would’ve never guessed that because I only saw the show once years ago.  She was surprised that I had only watched the film once ,whereas she had bought the video on VHS as soon as it came out on sale in ACA video.  Alas, some poor schmo before her had taped a 30 second segment of "Eat Bulaga" over the critical part of the film, and so I’m still dithering on whether or not I want to borrow the tape (assuming it hasn’t been consumed by molds yet…).
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Did the paragraph above make any sense whatsoever?
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While on the subject of cartoons,   I’ve got a smurf question.  Is Gargamel the name of the sorcerer or his cat?
I hated the smurfs.  They were too cute.  I wish I could choke them all until they were, uh, blue in the face.  And what’s the deal with Smurfette?  Tongues are wagging…
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Forget the question above.  I asked all knowing Google and Wikipedia.  Gargamel was the sorcerer.  Azrael was the cat.  Other disturbing things I discovered:  Smurfette used to be a guy smurf.  No kidding!  Gargamel apparently transformed a male smurf into a female one in order to lure the others out.  Read about it on Wikipedia.  Its a hoot!
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Final question (for which no answer on Wikipedia could be found) to those living in Manila. What are "Pulis Oysters".  I see them all around  sweeping up and planting stuff.  Why "Oyster?"  I thought that the answer  could be found by simply asking them, alas when Feliz’s dad did that, even THEY didn’t know what it was.

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Current short term project (aside from a table and pig pens and stuff…):  Improvise an underwater "housing" for a digital camera using a Baxter 1-L D5NSS bag.

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I’ve
always thought of myself as an avid diver - ready and willing to go at anytime,
anyplace.  But I’ve come to the realization that I’m rather picky.  A
few months ago, I was planning to get my dry-suit certification and to go
diving in Lake Michigan while in Chicago.
Alas, dive season didn’t start until April, and I was already slated to
return to Manila in March.  In
retrospect, this wasn’t such a bad thing because while attempting to solo-dive
off Calatagan last June, there were times that visibility was reduced to just a
few feet, that I realized that I was a spoiled clear-tropical-water
diver.  So Patricia, if you’re reading this, kudos to you.  I don’t
think I’d be as big a fan of diving if I had to do what you did with 7mm
wet-suits or dry-suits.

But I miss the water.  The last time I went diving was last May with

Norman, Andre, Leah, Renoir and April. The dives were notable for 2
reasons:  The conditions around the Cathedral and the castle were
remarkable.  Visibility was very good (as can be seen from the photo on
the right taken by Leah - I’m on the lower right and i don’t know what I was thinking), and for a site that Norman
described as the "megamall" of dive sites, there was nobody else
around but us.

The
second reason was that this was my first dive with my ‘new" homemade
bladder.  While this wasn’t my first dive with a homemade
BCD, this was my first with a bladder that I bought from SM Toy Kingdom (okay, it’s
a toy boat - not a bladder, but so what?)  It performed "mostly"
well - except for a tank cam band that was positioned slightly high - a fact
brought home by an incident where my tank slipped out towards the end of the
dive and had to be re-tightened by Leah (thanks again!).  I’ve since
repositioned the tank band and replaced any old valves that needed
attention.  Based on my short undocumented dive last month, it seems to be
functioning okay now.

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 Since
May, I’ve also skipped a few invitations to go diving from Norman and Ernest because
of pigs. 
That’s right.   Pigs.

Feliz
and I have decided that since we’re taking residency here, we needed to look
for alternative sources of income, and so we’ve decide to raise little piggies
into big piggies.  As of now, we’ve got ten (not-so-little) piggies, and
maybe in a month or two, we can get a new batch.  It’s a whole different
ballgame and it’s a whole lot of different reading to do.  We went back to
UERM last week to get our papers together for residency, and while there, we
decided to photocopy the books and pamphlets we were reading for raising
hogs.  I can only imagine what the med-students around there thought -
while they were holding transcripts of anatomy and physiology, here I was
holding a pamphlet entitled "Mga gabay sa pagpaparami at pagpapalaki ng
mga biik."  It also felt weird looking at their nameplates. Medicine
2011.  Man, you guys have got a looong way to go.

Special
mention to Neil Villamucho - whom we saw when we were in UERM.  Pre,
good luck na lang sa step 2 CS mo next month!

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Well,
since money is tight, and I’ve still got vacant week-ends, I’ve been
playing
airsoft with the boys every Sunday. Over
the past few weeks, I can honestly say that the group has made great strides in
terms of performance, and have even come up with a team name; The Fighting Gandhis. The guidelines we came up with for coming up
with a name was for something irreverent and not too serious (it’s just a game
after all…). Anyway, the name was meant
to mean that we were peace-loving but would fight. I dunno, but my money was still on “Tactical
Spam” as a team name, in honor of Mark’s ever-present spam sandwiches.

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Went
drinking last Friday night with Paulo, Apple, Noel, and Licai.  The beer tasted soooo good. It had been a while since I last went
drinking, and it was nice to feel the buzz again.  Another nice thing was that Paulo proposed to
go diving sometime soon, along with Apple, and my other erstwhile dive buddy
from Puerto Galera, Joey. It’ll be fun
diving with them again – even if its benign diving. Basta, just to get my gear wet again, and
more importantly – just to get their
gear wet again too.

I
just have to make sure I’ve got enough for the piggies…

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Why are there some segments of the traveling public that think that just because you’re both Filipino in a foreign land means that you’ve got to be instant best friends?

On a recent trip home from Malaysia, Marge was sitting in front of two Filipinas who had obviously just met that day at the airport.  The conversation she overheard went as follows:

     Woman 1:  "Pauwi ka na rin?"
     Woman 2:"Oo"
     Woman 1:"Ilang taon ka na?"
     Woman 2:"49."
     Woman 1:"Nag-me-mens  ka pa ba?"
     Woman 2:"Aba, oo, siyempre naman…"

Then the conversation starts to revolve around different brands of sanitary napkins available in Kuala Lumpur.
Whatever happened to talking about the weather?
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Also noted are the signs and advertisements which use inappropriate quotation marks.  For example, on a tricycle used to ferry bottled water was the company name followed by the quotation "We Delivered!"  I mean, why the quotes?  And who are they quoting?  Another example as seen outside a bar in Pasay City was a sign reading:
                        WANTED:
                        Attractive Waitresses
                        Good salaries and high "allowances"

I wonder what those "allowances" are.  At least the quotation marks weren’t around the "waitresses" instead.  Though on the other hand, maybe that would’ve been more appropriate.

But perhaps one of my more favorite examples of the use of quotation marks can be seen during election times, when it seems that every candidate HAS to absolutely have a nick name.  These can range from well known monikers such as "Erap", "Tikboy", "Pacman" and the like.    We had a candidate around here na halatang pinilit niya talaga na magkaroon ng isang nickname.  I’m not to sure about his first name or the position he ran for, but I think it went something like this:

                      Vote for Alex "Mr. T" Ty for councilor.       

Ayos!.

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