Photo Archives: Shanghai Food
Jianbing. (Was) My default, almost-everyday breakfast, from this lady who’s always across the street from our apartment every morning. See a video of how its made here. Ridiculously addicting fare.
First 2 Weeks of 2010, I Wear My Nerd Cap
It all started with me bookmarking pages from a local computer enthusiast forum, and me making eventual treks to Gilmore, and this nondescript netcafe with a rice dealer store-front.
See, despite my being in the IT for god-knows-how-long, I think I’ve been practical and reasonable with my geek purchases, with a few misses, of course. For example, I have no fashionable laptop to carry with me anywhere, because work does not require it, and if I do need to be online, unlike years ago when the only other option would be to find a netcafe, I have with me a wifi-enabled Nokia E63 smartphone.
This also means that I have a trusty, Gilmore-assembled desktop computer at home, about half a decade old would be my good estimate. There really is no need to make an upgrade, but rust started showing up on the corners of my CPU, and, though the computer is working perfectly anyway, I deemed it timely to make some upgrades.
First idea that came through was my stabilizing the temperature, and finding a way to make my rig quieter that it is, but the rust was getting to be real eyesore.
Unwelcoming 2010
Hostile on the new year, eh?
That’s not as hostile as my first choice for blog title: 2009 You Bastard, 2010 You Bitch.
Though now that the holidays are over, expectations of daily life has normalised, and there’s none of that bloated, hopeful feeling, I now finally possess that settled feeling. December was the hardest, considering its where my birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve converge.
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Like most difficult predicaments this year, music was there to the rescue. I’ve always found it corny when people say music saved their lives blah blah, but now I understand: music doesn’t disappoint, people do.
On my sickbed this August, there were the dancing ladies of Perfume. On those overly emotional commute to work, there was the hope-laded pop-rock anthems of Kaela Kimura (I’ve discussed both acts on a previous post). On New Year’s Eve, the last chance that anyone could really cheer me up, I discovered ukulele geek-girl Tsuji Ayano.
There’s a more elaborate post on Ayano on my music blog here.
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The first half of New Year’s Eve was at work. I had expectations, but then I had a backup plan: buy pansit, make that festive food that night. However, after confirming via a phone call that this pansit place was open and was located where I would usually pass on the way to the bus terminal home -it was still listed as part of the now non-existent Fiesta Carnival on online directories- and locating the place, I resorted to doing the groceries to cook my own pansit. The pansit restaurant, which normally had the usual chairs and tables, was converted on that day to look like a busy phone billing area in the mall, an offsite horse-race betting place, an airline ticketing office on peak promo days. I was too tired and emotional to bother.
I cooked a Quezon special, sweet pansit chami, too much of it that I still have a plateful of it on the ref. Got sugar-free vanilla ice cream, too, which I realized was almost double the expected price on the checkout counter. No matter, I deserve this ice cream.
I damn well deserve that ice cream.
Christmas Eve, 2009
Merry Christmas to me! A new Samick Greg Bennett Design UK-50 Concert Ukulele on foreground, and my cheap months-old Lyric soprano ukulele on top.
Its not technically Christmas yet, but then I’m at home with nothing much to do, which hasn’t been the practice for the past few years. I’d usually be at my brother’s place in Laguna with the pamangkin’s. Slept most of the day, and waking up early evening, it doesn’t look like my kuya and I will be making the 3-4 hour trek today.
Christmas eve started early as I woke up before my workday alarm, hungry, since the only thing I did after arriving home last night was open the gate, slide the house-door, put aside the gifts for the kids, put down bag, go to room, take away the day’s garments of filth, lie down in bed and sleep. The commute home was done by ditching the provincial bus beeline of people, which already stretched to another terminal. Ditching the line involves waiting for everyone to be seated and waiting for the bus conductor’s instructions that there was still room to stand along the aisle. It was Christmas eve’s eve, and I’m scared of the NLEX traffic situation, so I boarded.
An hour before that I was at a toy sale, and what I expected to be an easy task turned out to be like all my other presumed easy tasks: it took me a rather long to decide what to buy. Two boys, an eight year-old and a five year-old, should be a fairly easy duo to buy toys for, but then the eldest, Enzo, who’s my godson as well, as far as I can remember, was into Beyblade’s, or something like that. My brothers and I grew up salivating over Mazinger Z (their generation), and Voltron (my time), what’s this fuss about a multi-colored top? I almost settled on a big-boxed Pokemon arena thing, but I found out later it needed some effort to construct. My nephew’s haven’t shown any patience to do that, so yes boys, you will get Transformers.
Music Profile Podcast of 2009
toe – After Image Feat. Harada Ikuko
I don’t think its believable, based on the music I listened to this year, that I could come up with a music list for 2009. Most of the music took a sidestep to all the Perfume and Kaela Kimura kitsch I wallowed in. What I sought out instead, just today, would be to come up with some songs from records released this year, and do a podcast on it. Sans rankings.
This is my profile of 2009-released music, in two parts. The differences are not so distinct, but the first one includes the more conventional songs, while the second one has a handful of brooding instrumental music, electronic/dance, and pretty brutal rock.
Stream Music Profile 2009 Podcast – Part 1 using the player below:
Download this part (Part 1) of the podcast here.