Spaghetti for Breakfast

Friday night I went out with peter for a couple of beers over live music to unwind after work, same old bar room conversations.

Saturday night peter picked me up a quarter before seven, we grabbed dinner and had some beers over live music again. We drank at this new beer house right on the beach front, it is far out on the outskirts of the city and nobody frequents the place except for some fishermen around the area getting drunk over their day’s catch. The place felt so sober, and I loved it.

Sunday night I had to work late on a graveyard shift at home, I had to wrap up these accounts from two denim companies that had been dragging for weeks. I was done with the whole thing around 11pm and it was right in time for season two of Harvey Birdman on cable TV, but unfortunately I still missed that first episode because my father got hold of the paperwork I just finished. His eyes were tired at that hour and he was leaving the country tomorrow morning too, but he still got over my work and he kept bugging and asking me about the really complicated numbers I made across the records.

This Monday morning I drove both my parents to the airport, then I decided to catch breakfast at mcdonald’s. The counter that I lined up in was ran by this girl trainee who is new on the job, you could tell because she was just wearing this plain white compared to the fancy uniform of the other crew. She was getting acquainted with her job the hard way that morning, this new recruit was facing this muslim lady who was at the front end of my line. The muslim lady was raising her voice and she was complaining that she had been waiting long enough for her spaghetti, the new recruit explained that it is taking them that long because they don’t serve spaghetti at breakfast. The muslim became more aggressive and she said she had to catch a boat ferry that morning and if she misses her ride, she threatened that she’ll be suing the poor new recruit for her ferry fare and for the cost of this mobile phone she needed to deliver to a customer. The muslim lady was so crazy about her spaghetti and I lost my apetite and left just by watching the show she put up at the counter.

Little thoughts somebody should have dropped for the spaghetti lady:

• The clerk takes the order, the kitchen crew cooks the food, the customer relations officer takes the complaints.
• Spaghetti is 40 bucks, boat fare is 2 grand. Ride now you must, eat later you can.
• Even if you were christian or hindu, they would still serve that spaghetti late.
• There's a very long line of hungry people right behind you, and you might taste great you know.
• Traveling with excess baggage is a hassle, travel with a light stomach.
• People throw up when sea sick.
• Eating in a hurry causes indigestion
• Your boat ticket might come with a free breakfast.

Third rock from the sun

I was on my way to get some mp3 songs from my cousin’s place after work yesterday but I chanced upon this mall book sale instead. They were selling second hand books and the last time a scavenged a good book from a book sale was months ago when I bought this rare comic book for peanuts. This time I got myself a history book, it had a 200 price tag but it was in pretty good shape anyway. It’s a book about documents written by great people in the past that shaped history. It is quite interesting that I found myself reading this book since yesterday night. Here’s a something I found amusing.

“The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that many places in the bible, one may read that the sun moves around and the earth stands still. Since the bible cannot err, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes an erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable.”

Galileo to the Grand Duchess Cristina of Tuscany
Circa 1632

After narrow minded Christian priests took him for a fool for saying that the earth revolves around the sun which they believed otherwise. The priests were probably planning to screw the laws of the universe with religion.

Lemming Stance Maneuver

A strong earthquake rocked me from slumber land this morning. It shook for about ten seconds which was the longest seismic turbulence yet for me, and it was quite strong that I felt it must have shot up the richter scale, almost like something big was moving right underneath our house. There was a concrete beam right above where I slept and I felt it was going to come down crashing on me, so I got out of the house since it was too early in the morning to die. I was still in my pajamas when I got out of the house and my third brother was out there too with this girl neighbor of ours who’s about his age. They were looking up at my parents room and he was yelling and laughing.

“Look! the earthquake is gonna knock out father’s air conditioner down!”

The air conditioner had its exhaust vent sticking out of the wall and he was very excited about it happening, and he also told our neighbor.

“Oh, that’s my brother over there”

It dawned to me I was the only one standing out there in pajamas with my hair and face in all its morning glory. I went back to the house about a couple of minutes later when I felt our house wouldn't fall apart anyway. I gave my father a buzz on his mobile phone, they were having a vacation in some island in palawan, it was a little past seven and I thought he was still asleep but he answered, they were having a little morning walk around the island. I told him about the earthquake incident, and I told him it almost rocked their air conditioner down to the ground just to freak him out a bit.

These are souvenirs my brother got from the terra cotta excavation museum in China. The figure on the left looks like some high ranking strategist while the one on the right looks like some expendable foot soldier. General Da Niao and Private Ma Zhang (not their real names though, made them up myself) may look like Qin dynasty action figures but these clay warriors have better tricks up their ancient sleeves. Of all the dashboard icons I had in my desk, these two were the only ones who were able to jump off to the ground below at the height of this morning's tremor.

The strategist landed in one piece while the soldier broke both legs again, he already broke them a couple of days ago when he did his first jump. It was like they were doing a lemming stance maneuver during an earthquake, except they were jumping on to solid ground.

And today is july the 15th, that earthquake was a really really bad sign, tomorrow they will be releasing the sixth harry potter book.