Wow. No wonder this show has garnered so many rave reviews and hoarded numerous awards in the top awards shows. I just finished the first season of 30 Rock and I must say, it is hilarious! I loved the movie Mean Girls but I didn’t like Baby Mama a lot, good thing this was more Mean Girls than it is Baby Mama! While Fey’s writing and comedy shine behind the scenes, to me it is Alec Baldwin that steals the show here. His portrayal of Jack Donaghy is impressive, and fits him very well. Another bright spot is Tracy Morgan, who plays the crazy star comedian of the show. His acting comes so natural that I suspect that maybe he’s just like that in real life — after all, he’s playing someone named Tracy Jordan! Not surprisingly, I finished all 21 episodes of the first season in a few days. I’m now moving on to Chuck, but after that I’m definitely coming back for Seasons 2 and 3. I just hope it’s still as good as the first one!

New Year, New Music. As part of my New Year’s Resolution, I will try to make a Music CD compilation every month. So to kick things off, here is my January 2009 compilation, headlined by The Fray. Tracks in Bold are my favorites, and should be considered for the Best of 2009 CD at the end of the year:

1. The Fray – You Found Me
2. The Script – Breakeven
3. Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
4. Paramore – Decode
5. Fall Out Boy – America’s Suithearts
6. Alkaline Trio – Help Me
7. Franz Ferdinand – Lucid Dreams
8. The Killers – Spaceman
9. The Asteroid Galaxy Tour – Around the Bend
10. Johnny Foreigner – Salt, Pepa, and Spinderella
11. Anberlin – Retrace
12. Foo Fighters – Summer’s End
13. Oh No Oh My – The Boy with an Anchor
14. Keane – Perfect Symmetry
15. Snow Patrol – Crack the Shutters
16. Stereophonics – You’re My Star
17. Pearl & The Puppets – Make Me Smile
18. Psapp – The Monster Song
19. Florence & The Machine – Dog Days are Over
20. MGMT – Kids

Unfortunately the CD itself was far from perfect (either the media, the burning or the conversion screwed up) and the last two tracks are sometimes choppy. But hey, that’s what you get for doing it bootleg style.

Okay, I have to admit it. New Year’s Eve for 2009 wasn’t really a happy moment for me, so hopefully the rest of the year will turn out better.

We actually bought our usual three packs of judas belts, one for each gates of the house as well as the front door, but didn’t get it out at all. First, we overstayed at my Aunt’s house and by the time we were ready to leave it was already 11:56 PM — and going in and out of two villages was extremely suicidal at that time. For the first time, we actually left after midnight, and after the massive fireworks display in Manila. Second, the weather was not really conducive to fireworks as there was a light drizzle at that time. Early on my cousins were already having problems lighting their belts, and that time the rain was not as bad as when we came home.

Well, the economic crunch nor the damp weather didn’t seem to dissuade the residents Manila from setting of fireworks to welcome the New Year. Early in the morning, the temporarily popular fireworks selling ground located at the street intersecting Katipunan Ave. and Temple Drive swarmed with cars and stalls, taking up around 3/4 of the entire road. On the way home from our New Year’s Eve dinner, the fruits of these vendors have come to life as they produced a thick and heavy fog in Manila, which is strange for a tropical city sitting nearly at sea-level. (Btw, the picture above is that of Sydney Harbor, not Manila — a great shot of the fireworks.)

For the New Year, my first project was the reformatting of the old computer at the Guest Room and transforming it into a torrent downloading and media center. Stacked with two 30GB Hard Drives, it was originally a dual-boot XP and Mepis Linux system. In the end, I found that I still ended up using XP due to the user-friendliness and comfort level I had with the OS. However, since this computer was armed with just 256MB of RAM, I decided to try loading Windows For Legacy PCs (FLP) into the system. Check out the image above for the new look I achieved after some minor customizations and skinning.

However, here are the bumps along the road that I encountered:

1. I mistakenly forgot to backup the drivers for the PC and had to download them from the Intel website. I unwittingly downloaded a BIOS upgrade as well, which had disastrous results. Suddenly, my PS/2 Mouse was not working anymore and I was getting blue-screens on startup due to an ACPI error. I had to switch the ACPI level to S1 (less energy saving) on the bios to stop the blue-screens, and switch to a USB mouse instead of the PS/2.

2. For some reason Windows FLP does not include the Disk Management MMC. I could not figure out a way to install additional components and didn’t like to try and reformat the whole thing again. I ended up using Acronis Disk Director in order to create the partition for my second hard disk. However, I was unable to change the order of the drive letters, so my Primary Hard Disk was at the C Drive while my Secondary Hard Disk was at the H Drive.

3. I just realized that there was no task manager built-in. I had to use Process Explorer instead.

4. The registry process for ffdshow seems to be screwed up for the K-Lite Codec Pack when installing in Windows FLP. I couldn’t play WMV files on the Media Player Lite, although FLVs and other formats were working. Luckily the latest version of VLC (0.9.8) seems to be a lot more improved than my old version and was now able to play FLVs and WMVs more smoothly. The question now is if it can handle HD quality videos as efficiently as Media Player Lite.

5. Firefox crashed twice for some reason, and hogged almost all CPU resources. I’m not sure if it’s because of the OS, the new version of Firefox, or the website I’m opening (wordpress and photobucket), but the program crashed out twice in a row.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the result now. But if there are some more problems I can easily just reformat the main hard drive and re-install the regular XP version instead.

She’s being dubbed as the next Malou Fernandez and her story is starting to spread like the Brian Gorrell saga. She has yet to graduate from college but thousands must now know her name. She is Tracy Isabel Borres, and this is her scandal, the latest to spread across the Philippine blog scene.

Basically, Tracy foolishly posted her candid thoughts on how bad her experience was during her Ateneo immersion with the Aetas on her facebook notes, trusting her friends to keep this private. Unfortunately for her, these notes were written in an elitist, downright condescending, and arrogant tone, filled with politically incorrect snide remarks. Worse, someone (probably one of her “friends“) leaked this out to the public. The screenshots of her facebook page are quite small and hard to read, but luckily the Smoke blog diligently converted it into plain text.

Obviously, the blog world responded with outrage to these remarks and immediately condemmed her. Check out Kitty Go’s Blog to see how she’s become the new poster girl for the snobbish elitist manila high society we’ve all grown to despise. On the other side of the fence are the semi-apologists like Atheista who feels that the backlash against this girl is somewhat overkill.

Tracy Borres has actually responded to her sudden fame in Mike Abundo’s Blog, but instead of placating the public this seems to have just added fuel to the fire.

My first reaction to this scandal was disgust. As an Ateneo alumni, this was another black spot that definitely tarnishes our school’s legacy. Looking back, I’ve known these cono-type girls at school who at first seemed very maarte and had that elitist air in them. But for the most part once you get to know that person and get past the usual stereotypes, you find a totally different person inside. However, this scandal just reminds you why those stereotypes were there in the first place.

I eventually felt pity for this girl because she naively thought that whatever she wrote on her facebook notes was only for her friends eyes only. How different is this girl from those hundreds of cellphone sex scandal girls who thought that their little private video was for private viewing only? There was an element of trust and friendship that was definitely broken.

Still, she deserves to be exonerated for what she wrote. I for one, have been to immersions to rural farming communities of the indigenous folk, both in high school and college. It’s only natural to be fearful of this radical change in environment, especially when you’ve lived a pretty sheltered lifestyle. But being totally aloof and perceiving these people as second-class citizens is totally unacceptable. Something is definitely wrong with this girl.

Nevertheless, this is who she is and this is her candid take on the world. I can say shame on her, but I can’t condemn her for thinking like that because that is her right to do so. Hopefully, this karmic expose would induce a little soul-searching for Tracy (although her response seems pretty unapologetic) and also be a lesson for everyone: never trust the internet with your deepest darkest thoughts!

If this gets big and spreads like wildfire, then there are many things to ponder. I wonder if her Theo Professor read this on his/her email or through the internet. And if anybody could leak her reflection paper, that would definitely be an interesting read. I wonder if she passes the course. I wonder if she will graduate at all from the Ateneo. I wonder if she will get a job after graduation. I wonder if her life will ever be the same again.

Immersions are said to be life changing, and this one definitely changed Tracy Isabel Borres’ life.

I just finished reading this book by Martin Short, which I bought at an unbelievable bargain price of a little less than P200 ($4) at National Bookstore. It’s really a bargain considering that it was one of those hard-bound books with a cover.

Basically it’s a Mafia book, but what I liked was that it covered a lot of new stories for me, such as families in New Orleans, Philly, Cleveland, Atlantic City, etc. and didn’t simply concentrate on the widely popular five families of New York. The book is a bit dated, but the final chapter on how the mafia has slowly become part of a global network of international crime points towards the interestingly scary scenario of a U.N. of Crime that knows no national boundaries.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone unless he’s a Mafia aficionado, and definitely fits into my collection.

It’s now Week 6 of the Fantasy Season and so far my teams are doing quite well, until now.

Starting with my main roto league, I’ve maintained the top spot by 3 points, but my GP lead is shockingly at 21-30 games ahead of my nearby rivals. I’m still really low in blocks and threes, while the %s are still up in the air. Meanwhile, in my Roto Public League I’m still lagging behind at 7th place, but I’m still hoping that the battle for the percentages would be the key in this league, and that the turnovers would soon catch up on the others.

In the Dribble Zone league I was finally brought down to earth, losing to the Memphis Grizzlies 2-6-1. First of all, I lost Corey Brewer to an ACL injury for the year. I’m keeping him for now just in case I make him a keeper. I made some bad mistakes, playing Kelenna Azubuike & Kenyon Martin when they were injured and missing out on some productive games from Nick Collison & Andrei Kirilenko.

In the Mukamo leagues I faced totally contrasting results. I posted a lucky 9-0 shutout against the RCBC Matadors, thanks in part to injuries to Josh Howard and Josh Smith on the RCBC team. Meanwhile, I was finally crushed by the FreeLoaders 1-7-1 in the Keeper League. I never expected to be one of the top teams in this league, especially with my strategy of drafting injured stars Gilbert Arenas and Monta Ellis. But with Azubuike going down, I now had three players injured and could not compete against a quality team like the FreeLoaders. Hopefully I can still hold on until those two get back and try to get into the playoffs.

There are only two instances when the Streets of Manila are completely devoid of traffic: during holidays like Holy Week, All Soul’s Day, Christmas, and the New Year, and when Manny Pacquiao has a boxing match. It is said that the crime rate in the city drops to zero on this day, and that the Muslim and Communist rebels and Government soldiers share an unofficial cease-fire during match day.

It has always been a dream to be in Manila during Manny’s matches. But today, The Dream Match ended up as a nightmare for Oscar Dela Hoya.

The consensus Pound-for-Pound King totally dominated his much-hyped multimillion dollar fight against the Pay-Per-View King, winning all 8 rounds before Dela Hoya finally surrendered. Pacquiao was naturally jubilant in his victory, while Oscar was left pondering about his future with his face reconfigured and his left eye almost shut close.

Coming into the fight as the 2-to-1 underdog and facing a taller, longer, and naturally heavier opponent (although Pacquiao unofficially came in heavier than Dela Hoya), Pacquiao proved all the fight critics wrong. He thoroughly outboxed and overwhelmed Oscar, and pounded him into submission. If Dela Hoya was to continue with the match there is no doubt that he would have been knocked out or at least be reduced to a bloody mess.

The best thing about it was that I watched the fight live via the MMA Channel in Sopcast — talk about free PPV coverage. The fight was already over when it was just being replayed here in local TV.  I really pity my cousin (a diehard Pacquiao fan) who paid P60 to watch the one-sided fight live in the local movie theatre. Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as Pacquiao losing to Dela Hoya.

Well, while Oscar ponders if he’s finally going into retirement (and after his showing in this fight, he should definitely retire), the sky’s the limit for Manny. I like to see him go against Ricky Hatton next — enough fighting those Old Mexican Boxing Legends, its time to see if Manny can stand up to the rest of the world’s finest boxers.