22 posts from March 2007

Since I was a kid, watching old Kung Fu movies on Philippine TV and rented Betamax tapes, I've always aspired to be a ninja, or a kung fu master, or to do something ninja-ish.

I wished I could do stunts like this:

But reality quickly sank in, because all I could do was along the lines of this:

So I had to settle to being a paintball-ninja, then a technology-ninja, and also a daddy-ninja. I'm also now in training to become a poker-ninja master. 

Oh well, it was just a dream.

Just Notorious B.I.G.'s said:

I'm going going, back back, to Cali Cali

Yay!  I'm going home to Los Angeles for a quick visit in two weeks.  I can't wait.  On my agenda are lots of eating, since that's what I miss the most.  Let's see, I gotta go to:

• In 'N Out Burger
• Outback Steakhouse
• Lots of Filipino food!  And we have to visit Jollibee, of course!
• Curry House
• In 'N Out Burger again

To reflect my mood, I'm changing my Vox site to the LA theme.

As I've posted on my blog before, I'm now temporarily living in Ireland.  My company has relocated here from California, and we've agreed to move to Dublin for two years.  I've made many observations about how life here in Europe is different from the US, and even the Philippines.  Today, I'm posting about one aspect in which I believe the US should follow suit: vacations (or holidays as it is referred to here.)

The Irish sure love to take their vacations!  Some info:

• The standard mandatory vacation time is 20 days per year.  (In the US, you get a measly 10 days.) That's a whole month, people.  This of course increases with position/rank, amount of time at your job and other factors.
  
• On top of that, in Ireland, you get 9 public holidays per year.  Mind you, these aren't all on -real- holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and the like.  They even had to make up 'bank holidays' as an excuse to take some more time off.  These are scattered amongst 4 Mondays throughout the summer.
• Plus you get the customary sick and personal days on top of that.
• The vacation business is huge here in Ireland.  It's everywhere online, newspapers and the many travel agencies you'll find at malls and such.
  

In all, for my situation, I get almost two months' time off this year.  Yay!  This almost balances the pains of being away from home since our family has a lot of learning and exploring to look forward to over the next couple of years.

Being in Ireland, and with the availability of low-cost carriers, it's (relatively) affordable to see the rest of Europe.  This is our plan for the next two years.

So, my wife and I sat down last week, pulled out a calendar, and started planning our vacation schedule for the year.  So far, here is what we have:

• April: Trip home to California for a week.  We need a quick sunshine fix and visit with family. We might sneak in a quick trip to Vegas as well.
• May: Planning to do a quick four-day weekend this month.  Not sure yet where we're going, but likely somewhere close by, either in Ireland (Galway, Belfast) or Scotland or Wales.
• July: Week in Spain.  We are exchanging part of our timeshare in Vegas for a week at one Marriott's beach resorts in either Malaga, Marbella or Ibiza which are in the south of Spain.  We're still working out the details and picking which resort to go to.
• July, August, September:  These are the summer months which we plan on taking every opportunity to go out and explore.  We're still working on plans for these, but places on our radar are:

• Rome, Italy
• Venice, Italy
  
• Barcelona, Spain
• Stockholm, Sweden
  

• October: Halloween in Paris.  We exchanged the other half of our Vegas timeshare for a week at the Marriott's Village d'Ile-de-France which is right beside Disneyland Paris.  We'll spend the week visiting the usual Paris landmarks.  It'll also be a good opportunity for the kids to spend Halloween at Disneyland.
  
• December: Christmas and New Year's in London/Belgium/Amsterdam. Last December, we had a rather quiet new year's eve with just my wife and two kids.  The kids were already asleep, and my wife and I huddled in front of the TV with a slice of cake and watched the celebrations in London.  They had quite a fireworks display which cost several million Euros, some free concerts, and a parade the next day among other things.  We knew right then that we had to be in London this year, so that's the plan.  The Christmas holiday is quite long (12 days) so we plan on taking a train to Brussels, Belgium and/or Amsterdam during this stay as well.

As you can see, we're really taking advantage of this opportunity.  Can't believe we actually have time this year to do all this. 

...plus we have 2008 to see the rest.

How do you handle phone calls from telemarketers?

I ask for their home phone number and tell them I'll call them back at dinner time!  That usually gets a laugh from them, then I politely (or sometimes impolitely by necessity) hang up on them.

What will be your famous last words?
Submitted by ngocaroo.

Ouch.  That hurt.

I'm starting a little project to give my brain a little coding exercise.

I'm working on a blog aggregating site that focuses on promoting Filipino-owned blogs.  It's a work in progress, but may be found at www.pinoyblogmachine.com.  Basically, the idea is this: create a central site where people can get their fix on Pinoy blogs.  Quite simple.  People who own blogs may ask to be added to the directory, and we'll pick up their posts automatically from their RSS feed, say every 4 hours.  Or something like that.  The post will then be credited back to the rightful owner with links, etc.

There are a handful of sites that do this currently, but I wanted to try to create a cleaner, sleeker site.  Plus, it's good practice to keep my PHP skills up to date.

At this time, I'm looking for blog owners here at Vox and elsewhere who would like to volunteer and have their site listed on PBM.  There really is no work on your end except giving me your permission.  I'll use your site/s to seed PBM with content and for testing purposes as well.

Thanks in advance!