Merry Christmas!

I tried my hand at creating a small video from a slide-show. Enjoy and please feel free to comment and/or criticize! BTW, the song title is Ask Me Jon by the Ocean Blue.

Edit. I have made 3 small edits on the original video. Here is an updated version.

New Old Blogs

I have moved a few posts from the other blog that I have been rarely posting to and which is about technology and geek-speak. I am shutting it down. They are mostly under the tech tag.

Filling Empty Book Shelves

If you have books lying around the house that you want to sell for cheap, please drop me a message kapanalig_sa_wala-at-yahoo.es (replace -at- with @). Please send me the titles and with the price and the conditions. I prefer books on history, Filipiniana, literature specially Philippine literature, philosophy, and art. No romance books please. I will be in Manila from time to time, I can contact you for a meet. No rush.

Foie Gras

I was in the the office today from 8:30 in the morning until about 6:00 in the evening. Except for the short break around 10:00 am to pick up a ham and cheese sandwich and a big cappuccino from the cafe at the basement, I didn't take another break until about 4:30 in the afternoon. As a result, I was starved. I work in a really expensive portion of the city and I didn't intend to spend a small fortune for a quick meal so I went to the supermarket also located at the basement. I took a banana, a chicken and rice noodle salad, and what is labeled as something with (テリネ) terrine, salmon pie, and foie gras pate. I was so tired such that I merely mumbled when the lady behind the cash register asked me something and I think I said "はい、お願いします" without really understanding what she said. Back to my desk, and after a detour to the loo and the vending machine to get my limone tea, I thought to myself I should start with the foie gras as it looked - おいしいそう - so tasty. But wait a minute. Where's the chopsticks? So that's what the lady was asking me about! Anyway, the basement is too far to go back to and I most probably somebody else has been keeping some disposable chopsticks around and sure enough just a few desks away, I found them. Great foie gras using chopsticks! I took a bite and savored it. It really is so tasty! Why didn't I know about this before? Right then I decided that it's never to late to learn a few more things about it so I turned to the net to find out more about this very tasty something. But what I found out almost made me choke for two reasons. First is reading how foie gras is prepared force-feeding the goose or duck to make its liver grow abnormally bigger and second, because literally, foie gras is French for fatty liver! I know of a disease in humans of the same name and I thought it could not be any different given the way its preparation has been described. I was diagnosed with a fatty liver two or three years ago so I know it very well to make my imagination run weird things. I don't usually eat liver, except the occasional chicken liver and the canned liver spread. Moral of the story is the old cliche that if you want to enjoy what you're eating, don't bother finding out how it's prepared. I heard from my very knowledgeable ex-manager how some great tasting tender juicy Japanese beef are prepared but that's another story. Will I have foie gras again? I love steaks. Maybe I'll have foie gras with it occasionally.

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture. :)

Books On Origins

The books currently in my small shelf. This section is where books on science and religion are lumped together. Due to lack of space (space is a premium in Tokyo!) and from time to time I ship my books to the Philippines such that they don't accumulate here. Shipping them over has its downside and upside. The downside is that I cannot just pick up a book if I like to. The upside is that I get to keep them even if they are so inconvenient for me. I'd rather ship it than give them to others here as what is customary once there is a space crunch at home.

I just got news that the first shelves in my home mini-library in Laguna are almost done. I hope they look good. My shelf here is one of the cheap assemble-yourself type so there's not much joy looking at the books since the shelf is so ugly. I may get the chance to come home yet this New Year's and I am excited with the book shelves. If it looks good, I'll take a picture and post it here.

The small purple book above is the Jefferson bible. A curious book the verses of which were based on the Christian bible and compiled by Thomas Jefferson, handpicking the non-supernatural portions of the four gospels and arranging them chronologically as he thought the events "happened". The huge book is Stephen Jay Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I still have to read it.

Clutter

I just realized how cluttered my desktop has become in just a week!



Here is another shot taken a bit later. No wonder I couldn't find small items when I need them.



On the pictures is six-year old Yuki's monitor, an Eizo FlexScan L557. On the foreground is AnnieHall, the 3 year old PowerBook G4 I am using. I think the flat screen can be used in the Philippines. I read somewhere it's dual rated with 100/240 VAC but I couldn't confirm it yet. If so, I'll bring it home one day to make space to my desk and give me some legroom since Yuki's half tower is bulky, noisy, and dissipates a lot of heat, specially in summer. And besides, I have been using AnnieHall all of the time now proving that I don't need a Windows desktop any longer.

(This post has been moved from another blog I am thinking of shutting down.)