A few posts ago I was just talking about how Dimsum Diner was one of my favorite fast food joints.

The reason for this is that the food they serve doesn’t really have that fast food kind of quality most chains have. It is actually more of a restaurant than a fast food place, especially the ambience. But unlike restaurants, Dimsum Diner serves their customers impressively quickly. So whenever I want to eat restaurant food but only have an hour to spare, I go to Dimsum Diner and order a combination of any of my affordable favorites: chicken/pork steamed rice, beef/asado/kingdao rice, beef/asado/shin noodles, mango pandan/sago, black samba, buchi, oh and more yummy treats. (Mmm, my tummy’s rumbling at the thought of all this delectable delights!)

Gim and I were driving by Nuñez Extension this afternoon, and we passed by Dimsum Diner. To our shock, it was closed! But why?!! Dimsum is supposed to be open 24/7.

Upon closer inspection, we noticed that the area around the restaurant looked kinda shabby, as if it had been closed for some time already and nobody was bothering to clean up the dust that was building up on its walls and shutters. All the lights were closed and you could barely make out the large signboard in the dimming sunlight. Also, on the front door was a sign that said: “For Rent”.

I could only speculate why they had decided to shut down. Perhaps they were getting too much competition from the other restaurants or fast food chains. Remember, Dimsum is surrounded by Greenwich, Jollibee, KFC and the newly opened Pizzito, not to mention the many family restaurants in the area (Alejandras, Carlito’s Grille, etc). Perhaps, due to it being summer, their customers had dwindled down and they weren’t making any profits anymore. (KFC and Pizzito seem to be suffering the same fate, but Greenwich and Jollibee seem to be faring well.) Who knows?

It’s really unfortunate, because most people I know like Dimsum Diner. And usually, whenever I go there, the place is packed with people. For sure, this joint will be sorely missed. Especially come the new schoolyear. We can only hope they realize they’ve made a mistake and reopen after summer.

But if they don’t, hasta la vista Dimsum Diner! Donnel and Carmi and Gim and I will miss you!! ;-)

I’m happily typing away at a post, detailing the wonderful moments of my day when I suddenly realize that — hey, I should upload my recent pictures! So I whip out my cellphone, activate my Bluetooth, insert my Bluetooth device into my USB plug and double click on my software. The icon on my cellphone starts to flash intermittently, and then… the inevitable happens…

“Unable to connect”

What??? Oh no, oh no, oh noooo. So I unplug my Bluetooth device, uninstall my software, restart my cellphone, reinstall my software, replug my Bluetooth. Oh, you think that was quick huh? Yeah, try doing it twenty times more and you won’t be thinking it’s such a breeze.

After hours on my PC and uninstalling/reinstalling, restarting/rebooting doesn’t seem to do the trick, I take a drastic measure. So I go to Start -> Program Files -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore. And pray, “Lord, I hope my Bluetooth will work after this.”

Several retries and an hour later, I am finally convinced of what my Windows XP is trying to tell me. “System cannot restore to this point. Choose another?” No, thank you. I have a system restore point for every other day of the month of April. Why oh why can’t I restore to a single one of them?? If anybody knows — and I’m serious now, and I’m rarely serious — please, oh please, tell me why!

Uuuurrrgggghhh!!!

So now I have all these wonderful pictures on my cellphone and no way to share it. Yes, ecstatically wonderful.

This is what I get for buying a Bluetooth device worth P1800 from Sapro.

A word to the wise: Don’t buy it, too.

Almost everyone has pined for someone they love. I have. I met a girl more than three years ago and it was love at first sight. She was sitting there, her hair flowing like silk, alabaster skin glowing with its own unearthly radiance. She batted her eyelashes and looked at me as if I were the most fascinating creature in the entire world. She twirled her hair, pouted her lips, crooked her long, slender finger. I was in cloud nine! Birds were chirping, flowers were blooming, and bells were ringing in my head. I was determined right there and then to impress her. I was going to show her what I got. I was going to turn her on. Right there I made a speech for her. I told her how her beauty surpassed that of Aphrodite. Told her how my heart raced when I am near her. Told her how I would sell my soul for her.

Alas! I failed. Miserably. My futile attempts at impressing this heavenly goddess managed to elicit only a disdainful smile. Nice try, Romeo. But failure only spurred me to try harder. And try harder I did. I sent her flowers everyday, spent my lunch money on chocolates, wrote her sentimental cards. I soon became a regular at Chocolate Treasures. Family and friends asked me why I seemed to be getting so thin. I only smiled in reply and mumbled “Who can eat when one is in love?”. For in love I was. Gradually, my efforts paid off. *She* noticed me. She started hanging out with me, started talking to me, allowed me to go shopping with her. My past failures didn’t seem to matter anymore. And then, the unthinkable happened…

I thought I had her love, thought she saw me the way I saw her. Thought we shared the beating of one heart. But No! it was not to be. The virginal goddess saw me as a sibling! A younger brother who made her laugh, and brightened her day. I was *crushed*. So crushed was I that I decided to jump off a pier and drown myself. I pined for her. Pined for the one I love.

Luckily… As I was thinking my morose thoughts, intent on ending my life-long suffering, the impossible became possible. Incest was committed! With her eyes dancing like Egyptian serpents, her mouth partly open like the Nile, She kissed me. Devoured my lips, carressed my cheeks, enveloped me in a breath taking, cardiac-arrest causing, coma inducing, passionate embrace. And the rest is history.

A week ago Gim and I switched cellphones and SIM cards and he hasn’t come over since.

After a spate of text messages imploring him to come and visit me or else I would leave him for good, Gimmi comes bursting through my door, glaring at me with blood red evil eyes, his ears almost steaming off smoke.

Him: You, you….!!!!

Me: (batting my eyelashes furiously) Lovable girlfriend?

Him: (stuttering) No, you, you, you spiteful… you…

Me: (confused but willing to help) Bitch? Um, moron?

Him: You bad person!!!! What is the meaning of this??? (waves cellphone at me)

Me: (lifting an eyebrow) Me no comprende, señor.

Him: Who is this man? Why is he texting you?? What is SDRAM!!!

Me: Huh, well it’s –

Him: I know what it is! I asked my officemate about this SDRAM!!! It’s a room, a place where women sell their assets to men!!! Why have you done this to me??? Why?????

Me: But, Gim….. it’s necessary……

Him: (blowing his nose) I thought you loved me…….

Me: (placidly) I don’t have money…..

Him: But, but, you can borrow from me….. or your mom….. or somebody!!!

Me: Yeah, but you know it’s old and used and sometimes doesn’t work anymore, you know… Better sell it as soon as possible before it’s completely useless.

Him: What? Used? Lovedoo, I thought you were a virgin!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: Huh? What’s that got to do with this?

Him: First you admit that you’re a prostitute and now you’re telling me you’re still a virgin???

Me: Um, Gimmi, SDRAM is Static Dynamic Random Access Memory. I’m selling it online. That’s a message from somebody who’s interested in buying old computer parts… what did you think???

Him: But, uh, but… but my officemate said… it was something about sex… and um… a room… and…. uh…. oh.

He was so happy he gave me his entire month’s salary.

I love fast food. I lloooovve it. But up until two years ago, there were only so many choices a Zamboangueño could choose to binge upon — Chowking, Jollibee and Greenwich.

I hate Greenwich. Their pizza is so bland. The few times I take a bite I feel like I’m foraging for edibles in the desert. Their crust is too thin. It started out as a promo. But then I guess they decided that cutting back on flour = cutting back on overhead AND making people think they were getting something better. Who are they kidding? Now, whenever I go near a Greenwich outlet my ever-shrinking pockets tug nervously at my pants and my feet haul my body away as fast as they can!

Chowking food tastes great… the few times I felt brave enough to heed the alarm bells in my mind telling me I’m one second away from suffering mysophobia AND sitophobia. But, erhm, does the food taste great because of the condiments or, ehrm, the cockroaches? Hmm, why don’t you ask Erbie Fabian??

Now Jollibee — I love Jollibee food. Even though their beef is made of worms. It tastes just like beef anyway. (Hotdogs are made of vegetables, did you know that? Keep telling yourself that whenever you decide to veer a leeteel beet away from your diet.) I love their new Chicken Torpedo. I never knew a tiny strip of chicken, a little spread of mayo and a leaf could taste so good wrapped inside a hotdog bun. (Or could cost so much.)

These days we’ve got a few more choices on the list like Dimsum Diner, KFC and McDonalds. Well McDonalds is just a few meters away from Ateneo so it’s very convenient to go there, especially for fast food lovers so weighed down by the weight of their weights. (You know we have to take care of our feet more than thin people because our feet endure worse.) Unfortunately, their menu isn’t very, ehrm, long. Small burger, big burger, bigger burger, biggest burger… Well you get the gist. Desserts are great though. You know that’s what people really go to McDonalds for, ‘coz the last time their ice cream machine broke down, the only person enjoying their Happy Meals was Ronald McDonald.

Me, I love to have the best of both worlds. So what I do most of the time is this: I go to Jollibee and buy my favorite Chicken Torpedo and then zap on to McDonalds for their fries, Kingcone and juice.

God bless the fast food chains.

Yes it is.

I would show you a pic but, um, Gim took it home.

So I’ll show you tomorrow!

But finally.

It’s here.

Yay!!!!!

P.S. It looks fantastic!

P.P.S. For those who want to know, it will be released in May.

P.P.S. I’ll post tomorrow. I am just so sleepy right now.

P.P.P.S. Did I tell you the Beacon Yearbook 2003 is finally HERE!!! Yes it is!!!! ;-)

Don’t you just hate Blogger sometimes???

It has so many limitations.

For one, it can’t host pictures. So you have to use Flickr or Photobucket. (I tried to use Blogger’s own Hello + Picasa but it takes forevah to load!)

Second, you can’t have categories. How helpful are archives by month, or worse, week, really??? I’d rather categorize my posts by content rather than by date, wouldn’t you? It would be so much easier for viewers to find the posts that they were interested in instead of browsing through your endless rantings that had no connection to one another except that they’d been written continuously.

For another, you can’t upload additional HTML pages. I know, I know, it’s a blog site. But *still*, there are just times when you need some extra space! Like when you’re a devoted HTML fan and you just looove editing your page. And you can’t put an iframe on your blog because where will it point to when you can’t upload another file on your server?!?

See, I’ve been talking about redesigning my blog. And I have created a design already — it’s been in my PC for weeks. I can’t host my background on Blogger so I put it up on Geocities, my favorite free server before it was acquired by Yahoo. Now I use an iframe in this new design and it’s supposed to point to the page where I will put my blog posts. Ok, so I also upload this to Geocities. Now my Blogger post tags are on this page hosted by Geocities. So when I load my page on Blogger the template tags don’t work. Ok, so I change my base tag to point to my Blogger subdomain, not to my Geocities subdomain. But it still won’t work!!! Arrgghhh!!!

Which brings me to my last observed limitation:

Blogger’s support *sucks* !!! I click on almost every page of Blogger Help and I can’t find an answer to my problem. I scourge the web for enlightenment, but nothing!!! Just found ex-Bloggers who have moved on to better hosts! So I *finally* decide on my last resort. Email Blogger Help.

So I email and tell them, hi, can you help me, I need to know how I can solve my prob, blah blah blah, and I get as detailed and as humble and as helpless as I can possibly sound on paper, and I wait and *hope* for a response.

Next day I open my Gmail, and look, there it is! A reply from Blogger. Wow, that was quick, I thought, so happy to hear from them. I read my email, and what do I find??

AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

It’s an automated reply which redirects me to Blogger Help and tells me to email them again if I don’t find an answer to my question.

AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

And so I am giving up on *ever* using an iframe with Blogger.

If anybody wants to see what was supposed to be my new layout for Blogger, here it is, still in very very raw form, as you can see all the Blogger tags are there, and I hadn’t edited my sidebar or my header yet, and so, ugly as it is: (Might put this up in Tabulas, though, I’m starting a new account there.)

If anybody else has had the same experience as I have, please email me. Misery just looooves company.

After four days of having no internet connection (our phoneline was truncated during a sudden storm) I have gained all the pounds (must have been at least two if my imagination is to be believed) I lost!!

Why? What does a jobless person when she doesn’t have a job, her boyfriend has a job, the TV is being invaded by aliens, there is no job to look forward to, the phone is cut off, there is food *everywhere*, the job offers aren’t pouring yet, the bed is oh so soft and warm, and did I mention, she is waiting for a job to drop down from the sky and take her away from all this madness?!?!?

Nothing. Nothing but eat and sleep. Sleep, eat. Eat, sleep. Eat sleep eat sleep eat sleep eat.

After a while your world turns dark and you find yourself asking deep dark questions like, “What is the meaning of life?” “What is my purpose here on earth?” “What lies beyond death?” “Are we living in a matrix???”

AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

And then suddenly, a ray of light shines into your life. There’s a wonderful man knocking at your door, asking to see you. You open the door and it feels as if light emanates from his very being. He smiles shyly. You feel warm and giddy all over. Your smile reaches your eyes, you eyes twinkle excitedly, and you welcome him, usher him in, telling him you’ve been waiting for him for so long, and it is so good to see him…

With his deep dark gutter-y baritone, he says, “Hey… can I fix your phone?”

“My hero!!!!!!!!!”

I’ve been experimenting with paths in Photoshop.

After 5+ years of being a novice, I’ve decided that I better up my ante NOW, not SOON, SOMEDAY, WHEN I’M 60 YEARS OLD, MAYBE.

Here’s what I came up with.

That’s a cartoon Flisha!

I go to Google and type something in the search box. A second later, it comes back to me, saying:

“Seerched zee web fur html editor. Resoolts 1-10 ooff ebuoot 60,200,000. Seerch tuuk 0.40 secunds. Um gesh dee bork, bork!”

Has Google gone bonkers?

Apparently not. It’s just the Swedish Chef from the Muppets talking. Now I’m not a fan of the Muppets so I wouldn’t know how he really sounds but I love my new Google speak.

Check out some of the funny Google interfaces:

Bork, bork, bork!
Hacker
Klingon
Pig Latin

To check out Google’s new projects, click here.

Are you up for a leetel Google-a Seerch?