My place is getting too messy again and I’m getting increasingly irritated about it. I hate the clutter and my lack of time to place things in order. I wish I have magic to set every thing in place and in sparkling cleanliness with just a flick of the fingers. I’m also wishing for more space, especially after I saw the size of the unit directly across ours (I share my studio-type apartment with my sister). There’s no room for Modern Furniture here. The bed, a sofa bed, and the other appliances already take too much space that I can barely walk around freely.

I know I shouldn’t be complaining too much because, all things considered, it’s just the right place for us. But I look at the pictures of condominium units furnished with Contemporary Furniture and I can’t help but salivate over the idea of a spacious housing space, with a nice room stuffed with Designer Furniture, nah, ordinary Bedroom Furniture. I honestly don’t know a thing about interior designing so if I have a space like those you see on magazines and TV, I’ll probably ask someone else to pick the right stuff (to furnish the place with) and arrange them. I do have an idea of what would make a place right for me, and it’s not really something posh or anything specific like opting just for Italian Furniture. I just want more space. Better stop dreaming and start clearing up the mess around here.

Whenever I come home from work these days, I get this overwhelming feeling of wanting to go straight to bed and sleep like a log. Lately though, I couldn’t resist watching old and new episodes of several TV series that are available online. If you haven’t heard of such sites that post links to a multitude of TV shows and movies online, drop me a message and I’ll point you to the right direction (he-heh!).

Anyway, here’s another previously unseen clip from The X-Files, with a short commentary by Chris Carter. Just another proof that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are the biggest Mulder-Scully shipper of all.

An officemate asked me today about shopping online and in the process I learned about something important – not particularly to me but to parents of little babies. Apparently, there’s a baby bottle ban going on in some parts of America, Canada,and other countries. This is because of the ongoing debate about the risk of bisphenol A (BPA) – a chemical used in the manufacturing of baby bottles and baby formula containers. According to reports, “animal studies have linked BPA with breast, prostate and reproductive system abnormalities and some cancers, but experts disagree on whether it poses health risks for humans.” [AP].

I’m sure a lot of parents would want to be on the safe side and buy BPA-free baby bottles. I heard that those are quite expensive, though. If you can afford it, it could be a good gift these coming holidays for your mommy friends, as my officemate was planning. I’m actually thinking along the lines of musical toys or mobiles because I’ve got a list of friends who recently gave birth.

I didn’t know that sports betting is so prevalent until I’ve heard about the case of the Russian tennis player Nikolay Davydenko – he became, what they say, tennis’ fall guy when organizers became ”curious” about matches that appeared to have betting patterns. In other words, it seemed suspicious that someone of Davydenko’s caliber (he’s a consistent top 10 player) can lose to someone unranked so early in a tournament and then win the next tournament he enters. Could it be that he’s rigging his own results? He has since been cleared from all charges.

Sports handicapping is the process of predicting the result of a competition, and in the world of sports, tennis is possibly among the least profitable in terms of winnings. But it is a reality; I remember the 2004 movie Wimbledon where James McAvoy (the brother of Paul Bettany’s character) always bets against his brother during tournaments. Well, things like that happen in real life and it may be a source of entertainment for spectators but the athletes should not be a part of it. Imagine if Federer purposely lost that epic Wimbledon final because his girlfriend took a big bet in favor of Nadal? You get the picture.

Last week, I wasn’t able to meet a friend as planned because I didn’t get her message. A week before that, I had an unfortunate disagreement with another friend and it’s quite funny now, looking back,  how my cellular phone has a part in it.

I dropped my phone while charging and I suspect it affected the batteries or maybe more. I wasn’t receiving messages on time, or at all. I didn’t know that right after I dropped it, the phone stopped working. It has power but I wasn’t aware that I wasn’t sending  and receiving messages, let alone calls. I only realized that when I saw my outbox folder and I had these five or six messages I thought I sent for the day all in there. It didn’t fare much better the next days, and I was seriously panicking when one day it rejected my SIM card. I had to restart the phone and even remove and replace my SIM for a number of times before I made it work again. As I’m not planning to buy another phone, at least not for another 10 months until my contract with Smart expires, I can only hope to have back one of the old unlocked cell phones I used to keep at my place before my sister took them for herself and my brother. Better yet, I’d like to hope that my phone will start working well again.

The husband-and-wife team of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf stepped out for the 13th Grand Slam for Children, last Saturday, October 11.  

The annual event, a project of The Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, featured a host of talents, including this year’s performers Natasha Bedingfield, Sheryl Crow, The Killers, Lifehouse, Ray Romano, Rod Stewart, and David Spade. Charice Pempengco was among the list of performers that night (lucky girl). Other A-list celebrities, including Mariah Carey as a surprise guest,  were also in attendance. 

It’s a musical extravaganza with the aim of raising money to support the education of underserved children in the Agassis’ hometown of las vegas nv.

So this blog got lost in cyberspace (again!) for a couple of days and I was ready to lash out to my hosting provider (yet again). It turned out they changed the nameservers and I had to do some manual settings manipulation on my domain registrar’s site. I had to grapple with terms such as DNS settings, domain parking, IP masking, etc., and I don’t claim to understand them any better but I guess I must have done something right to make this site visible again. If it’s going to be this much pain in the you-know-where to keep this thing going, I might as well start preparing myself to shell out some good money to pay for better hosting. If only there’s sort of a “recipe” book on managing a hosted space – a Web site administration for dummies, perhaps (maybe there’s already something like that out there). Or maybe I’ll be better off reading Thanksgiving recipes. That sounds like a more delectable prospect.

For some reason, I suddenly got reminded of a few distant relatives. We practically grew up together, my three siblings and I, and their brood of seven – we went to the same school, the same church; we played the same games; we didn’t dream the same dreams.

I wonder what lives they have now – especially my kababatas (those roughly my age). Our parents used to brag in competitive banters about who got the better grades, who’s the meeker child, who got the better job after graduation. Where we came from, the biggest measure of success is whether you have set foot on foreign soil. I haven’t. One of my cousins from that family lives in North Carolina, I think somewhere near the Outer Banks; his brother was sent to another U.S. State early in his career. There was a time, by choice now vague in my memory, when I told my parents that I will do whatever I can to get a job abroad; I was actually working on something then, or so I thought. It didn’t surprise me that everybody in town found out and were anticipating my “departure.” I didn’t feel too bad to disappoint those merely spectators. I guess I just decided I was not meant to be big that way.

Five babies recently born with tails – from four mothers who were undergoing fertility treatments and one who didn’t plan to get pregnant but couldn’t resist the charm of one Luke Skywalker who supposedly sang to her tan-tatatatantan-tatatatantan-tatatatan.

Sounds like a creepy comedy skit? It’s actually an X-Files episode I was watching, make that rewatching, earlier today. It’s about a small-town guy named Eddie Van Blundht who not only has the genetic abnormality of being born with a tail but also has the ability to transform himself into the image of any other person he wishes himself to be, thanks to the abnormal abundance of striated muscles in his physiology. Now you know where Luke Skywalker came from. Having a problem with self-confidence, with his real self being this unremarkable-looking guy (who could use some diet pills) working as a janitor, he shapeshifts into other personalities, particularly to get the women who never would give him a second glance as himself. He’s a small potato, as they say, and his abilities somehow make him feel bigger.

Which brings me to my favorite scene.

That’s Fox Mulder in the suit and Faux Mulder in the sofa with Scully. Yeah.

Eddie Van Blundht said that he was a loser by birth but Mulder was a loser by choice. If anyone can be either is up for debate but if you can be somebody else, who would you want to be?

Whenever I get home late from work, which means 2 a.m. and beyond, I always make it a point to call for a taxi service. It may not sound so impractical if I don’t live about 20 minutes from our office; however, I’d shell out extra cash everytime than to risk rubbing elbows with the bad elements out there prying on the night-wandering public.   

Actually, I also feel entitled to it. After working too many overtime hours,  I am just too tired and too cowardly to commute. Last Friday, I was able to finish my work at about 3am and called the cab company I usually depend on for this but found out that their numbers have all been disconnected. Thankfully, I was able to contact another taxi service. During the drive home, I learned from the driver that the owner of the first company I called is now selling his car units because the drivers went on strike and they were not able to reach a deal. Too bad. For the owner, the drivers, and the clients/public.

The next day, a car on the side of the road with a “For Sale” tag caught my eye. I thought it still looks great for its price (Php160k); I would have been more than interested if I know I can afford it. Just the figures in auto insurance quotes online are enough to take away any excitement I may have felt.