fritzified.comfiner things in the life and mind of a self-proclaimed rockstar HUHLOLZ!

If I had my way, I’d be in t-shirts, shorts, and sneakers the entire summer season. “WTF, but we’ve never seen you in shorts EVAR!” Exactly! Come on gais, give the corporate rockstar slash almost-model a break! I don’t have much of a choice since I’m practically coerced by my day job to be in corporate drab on weekdays and man, those things can be annoyingly uncomfortable even when it’s raining out. Good news is, owing to the Intertropical Convergence Zone, we’re in for a shorter summer season this year as heard from the radio this morning (says PAGASA). Whether that’s a good or bad thing, blame it all on the ITCZ. Heck, we can even blame ITCZ for the hike in power prices since no one has balls big enough to own the boo boo!

On the subject of t-shirts (thank Jockey for supposedly inventing the tee in its current form way back in 1913 per the infallible wikipedia), I had for the longest time been wanting to get myself some David & Goliath goodies. A few months back, I was walking inside the Power Plant Mall and a statement shirt on David & Goliath’s show window caught my attention. It read “Trust Me! i’m a liar.” I went in, felt the shirt fabric, looked at the price, made a mental note to go back soon, and left. Good thing I didn’t buy the “Liar” shirt because, about a month later, I saw Juned wearing it and I’m not so keen on wanting to look like twins with anyone just yet. Sry, Juned-san. Read more…

I had only recently found out that in the 1980s, the Thailand government purportedly sent a few of their agricultural people to the Philippines to leverage on our advancement in rice production. The Thais then studied under the able tutelage of the International Rice Research Institute based in the country. Decades later, the “teacher” who in the past boasted of being a predominantly agricultural nation had lost its mojo in this very aspect while the “students” had taken what science they learned to advanced heights. To reinforce our country’s plummet to rice-farming Loserville, the Philippines is now one of the world’s top importer of rice. What happened to us and our rice themed glory days?

In Bangkok just the other day, I had seen with my own two eyes an example of how advanced the Thais had become in this aspect. Locally, I’m aware of the rice varieties that are so named depending on the length of time in days when they are already “ripe” for harvesting (like the so called IR-64, IR-32, and so forth). And then there’s the “malagkit” variety. I grew up buying rice from the stalls of the closest wet market from home when I was a kid so I know these things but nothing prepared me for what I saw in Bangkok’s Carrefour’s rice section.

Photos after the jump. Read more…

Thai food will assault your senses with a well calibrated interplay of taste mixed with smell, texture, and visual appeal. Enough said. Below are photos of what we had for dinner just a few hours ago. I could have these all my life and never tire of them. Wait, lightbulb moment: I’ll go buy some spice here so I can try replicating these sumptuous dishes at home in Manila! iGenius!

Enough with the talk. The photos, let me show you them. (TIP: you may drag the photos to see parts of the width covered by the margin. Try it! It was WOW for me first time I did it. Kthnx)

On May 3, 2008, The Banana Gangbang Rock Festival finally happened. For the first time, I got to hear Mike Villar sing with his band Tempestuous and, for the record, he sounds less annoying when heard and seen live. Better than “not annoying,” even! Marco Palinar, who was supposed to play with his band Sanity Kit, pulled off a one-man, one-song show that’s made of pure, unadulterated awesomeness. Ade Magnaye’s band Lose Your Beer Belly capped the night doing their originals and an encore cover of Dishwalla’s Counting Blue Cars. Also, Lauren Dado played for two bands, Zoo and Lose Your Beer Belly, for the price of one. Mannequin, a non-TMB band, also performed making the night a quintuple WIN extravaganza.

Bloggers present in the event were Helga, Penny, Pau, Rico M, Sahsa, Rico SC (the booming voice behind FOBCast Ep 5 who I thought was Rico M LULZ), Ria, Faith, Kring, Karla, Butch and Noemi Dado, Jen, and Peter Juan. And then there’s Lauren’s Ale. To the people who watched, TMB would like to express our most heartfelt thanks. Until the next rock fest!

Photos and more links after the jump. Read more…

This post is way late. Late like the time I got to the iBlog4 venue together with Comicology author slash fellow Man-Blog editor Bim and the dashing Liz Lanuzo (darnit, we missed Brian Gorrell!).

Overall, as most have observed and already professed, iBlog has gotten better over time. The topics are current, the speakers competent, and the attendees smart and participative.

We got to hear Karlo Licudine, the “pinoyblogero,” first and, no offense buddy, but I expected to “take away” more from the topic “From Student Blogger to ProBlogger.” There was a sizable number of students in the audience and some of them might have expected to hear tangibly solid material, point on towards the subject like what do students do if they want to start being a problogger, how much time they would have to spend online (having personally experienced how insanely crazy it is to juggle academics with other activities while in school), examples of problogging success stories, and other similarly valuable information. I’m not saying the material was not relevant as it was. I might have set the bar high with my expectations but I was thinking that the topic per se could have generated interest not only towards students but also among other bloggers who my want to earn while enjoying the blogging endeavor. Read more…

It’s Andrew Lloyd Webber week for your Top 6 on American Idol 7. To enhance your viewing experience, I suggest that the gentlemen don their best top hat/tuxedo and ladies, please spray anti-dust mite before wearing those awful feather boas (I mean, when did chicken and bird stink become fashionable on humans anyway?) and tasseled, itchy, and lacy dresses abominations (stay away from me while you’re in those because the smell reminds me of my great grandma, post-humus, srsly). Sit back, restrain yourself, and listen to the excruciating renditions brought to you by your finalists as they take on songs that may bore non-theater fans and the non-musically-inclined to non-existence.

Let’s begin.
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Whether it is true or not that a predominantly black colored website saves energy when displayed on CRT monitors, fritzified.com is turning off the lights for Earth Day. I’ll be reverting to the old theme on April 23.