That one time I was on TV

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, student quiz shows on TV were a thing, the most famous ones being Battle of the Brains and The Digital LG Quiz. For some reason our school never gunned for these two shows. Instead, we joined a lesser known quiz show called TechnoWars. I love watching quiz shows and I have never heard of this one.

The quest for reliable internet in the time of COVID-19

It's as though Globe and Smart conspired to make my life miserable.

Memos from my employer have indicated that I might have to work at home for the foreseeable future, possibly until remainder of the year. With this expectation set, I knew I have to get my own wifi at home. Before pandemic happened, I was mostly reliant on office wifi for my internet connection. For the first few weeks in quarantine, I used my phone’s data connection, which is costly. A single Zoom meeting can use up my entire data allocation.

Getting food during a pandemic

A hung a food basket by the window for contact free deliveries.

Before Manila went on a lockdown, I would have all of my meals ordered from outside, not because I don’t cook, but I because my lease doesn’t allow me to. When the lockdown happened, my landlord was gracious enough to allow me to cook. He even lent me his rice cooker, pots and an electric stove. Problem is I don’t have a fridge, and without one the only foods I can cook would be those that came out of a can. Ordering through Grab and Food Panda was a hit or miss. Having not much much options, I signed for a meal delivery service until Grab's supply of driver stabilized.

What's up with Netflix's Neon Genesis Evangelion?

While browsing for things to watch on Netflix, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it has been carrying Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) for a while now. I've been watching anime on Netflix but mostly just works by Studio Ghibli that the app's recommendation algorithm probably didn't think I would enjoy a gory, psycho thriller. ABS-CBN aired a censored version back in the late 90s and it has been one of my favorite anime since. I would later get a copy of the complete English version and find out all the stuff ABS-CBN left out. I've seen this version through and through numerous times that as soon as I watched the Netflix version, I immediately noticed that a few things were off.

A review of face masks from Mercury Drug

It goes without saying that Manila is an extremely polluted city. And if our respiratory track isn’t being assaulted by smoke from vehicles or smokers, many Filipinos do not have the habit of covering their mouths when they cough or sneeze in public.

On finishing my first triathlon

Yey!

There’s always a time for firsts, the cliché goes. So last June 17, 2018, I finished my first triathlon. It’s one of those things the 25 year old me would never hope to accomplish. But I did, and h*&€ yeah it was definitely one for the books! I can't be more thrilled that my bucket list is now one entry less.

Four cheap ways to do macro shots

Even a disgusting fly looks oddly gorgeous upclose.

I've been fiddling around macrophotography lately using different techniques without buying an actual, professional macrocamera or macrolens. Here are four ways I've done so, DIY.

Murals in TUP Manila

On one of my lazy strolls in the streets I haven't explored I stumbled upon rows upon rows of amazing murals outside the wall of TUP Manila. According to this article, the murals were created two years ago by TUP's art students as part of its 113th anmiversary. There were a total of 55 murals!

Modern Baybayin, anyone?

Baybayin has seen a resurgence in popularity lately, and for reasons that are unclear. Perhaps the popularity of Kdramas and animé has made us suddenly envious of our Asian neighbors who do not use boring Latin-based alphabets.

There’s a problem though. Baybayin, being a pre-Hispanic writing system, is completely unfit to write modern Filipino. I believe that if we want to sustain the popularity of Baybayin it has to be modified into something functional. This has been done before by some Baybayin fans, some even adding the equivalent of phonetically redundant English letters such as C and Q. I personally don’t think this is the right way to extend Baybayin since it has existed independently from any Latin-based alphabet.

Movie Review: Kita Kita

Kita Kita is a light, cheesy romantic flick, but not the usual one. Girl gets temporary blindness, meets Boy, who is not exactly physically attractive. What will happen if Girl regains her sight? It’s very novel premise, and perhaps, the only thing that keeps the plot together, like a dish that has one main ingredient, the rest being a dash or two of this or that spice. This simplicity comes as a virtue, especially for a film whose main goal is magpakilig. For the first half where Girl goes blind, the movie wanders into Kdrama territory, indulging its audience with the beauty of Sapporo using perfectly sanitized shots. Then – not-so-spoiler alert – Girl regains her sight and some twist of sort happens. The masterplan of an intricately planned plot is revealed. You either enjoy the cleverly written story – which is what most people experienced, or, if you are like me, you are jolted out of the lives of the characters you have come to love, into the ugly feeling of being aware that you are in a cinema. The suspension of disbelief came crashing, though not into complete disappointment. It’s not a bad movie, not an exceptional one either. But it’s cute and I had a few good laughs. Still recommended. Rating: 6 of 10.

(Photo above is a screenshot from the trailer.)

Vietnam is matcha heaven

I almost always need caffeine during daytime. Energy drinks are packed with sugar, so coffee has become my only source of caffeine over the years. It's been the necessary evil I've had to live with, along with the palpitations, the bitter taste, the acidity. That is, until I learned about the effect of matcha. It's like coffee, but caffeine is released into the bloodstream more gradually, resulting into a prolonged awake yet relaxedstate. It's like green tea except that you consume the whole leaves. The tea plants are grown in conditions different from the usual tea, and the leaves are harvested immediately and dried to prevent fermentation. This gives matcha its unique, bright green color, and earthy taste. I've been consuming matcha in different forms - cake, crepe, and most often, as latte - but I've only thought about replacing coffee with matcha after doing my usual rounds reading random Wikipedia pages. Matcha sold in cafés are expensive, so I thought about prepqring my own matcha.

There's a problem, though. I've scouted all major grocery stores and found no matcha powder. I haven't tried Japanese stores yet but I've only seen actual matcha powder in Healthy Options. It costs - gasp! - 500 pesos per box.

You can imagine how happy I was when, on a recent trip to Central Vietnam, I found an entire shelf of matcha. I've known Vietnamese to be huge tea fans but I did not except matcha to be available in their grocery stores, considering that they are completely absent in ours.

Chillin at Nhon Hai Beach and Hon Kho Island

I used to be a fan of beaches, that is, until I went to Bauan, Batangas and joined a group of free divers. There's just so much more in the oceans to be fussy about whether the sand in the beach is white or not. So in my sidetrip to Quy Nhon before the start of the conference I'm attending I decided to go to a beach in Nhon Hai, a fishing commune about 30 min from Quy Nhon, and which, I've read, has a nice diving site.

Quy Nhon is the laidback beach town of your dreams

Immediately after I exited Saigon’s international airport I was barraged by cab drivers. I was supposed to go to Quy Nhon, a city in central Vietnam, by train, but the earliest ticket I could book was in four more days. I have been warned by blogs that trains in Vietnam can be easily fully-booked, but my contact in Quy Nhon told me that I could book a plane ticket on the same day. I wanted to experience what it’s like to travel on a sleeper train and lazily stare by the train window for hours, watching scenes from the countryside.

Fat chance.

[Attempting] Freediving

What most people don't realize is that swimming isn't just a single skill but rather a collection of several different skills. Being able to swim horizontally on the surface of the water (think freestyle, breaststroke, etc) is a different skill from being able to stay afloat in a stationary position (treading). Another skill, one which I am yet to acquire, is diving. So on one weekend I decided to join a group of freedivers called Team Rocket for some freediving tutorials. They arranged pretty much everything for the 2D 1N trip and all we were left to do is to freedive, or at least attempt to.

Movie Review: In This Corner of the World

Wars are a very common theme in anime, but this movie treats this trite subject differently. It focuses on the coming of age of a teenage girl who moves in with her teenage husband after an arranged marriage. Together with her husband's family, they go through and survive the hardships of the war. The cell animation, a rarity in modern anime, is visually stunning, kind of Hayao Miyazaki-esque but still very different. Despite being set during World War II Japan, the movie is still mostly dreamy, warm and funny. It didn’t hurt that the director threw in some abstract painting-ish scenes as icing on an otherwise already perfect cake, reflective of the main character who is a talented artist. After Kimi no Na Wa, I didn't know when I’ll be blown away by an anime next, or by a movie, for that matter. But this one did. Rating: 10/10.

(Image above is a screenshot from the official trailer.)

Movie Review: Kimi No Na Wa

I am huge Makoto Shinkai fan, so this review is bound to become completely unobjective. But consider this – I also run the risk of experiencing disappointment, if the story flops, or boredom, if this movie turns out to be just a derivative of his previous works. So how was the movie? Simply put, there are no words. The animation, the story – both are perfect in every way. Given Shinkai’s immensely popular anime films, I wondered if he still had something else in his sleeve, and he did. This movie, while bearing his signature romantic theme and gorgeous animation – no doubt a Shinkai creation at every frame - is still completely different. Rating: 10/10.

(Image above is a screenshot from the official trailer.)

Butterfly Collection

A trap!

Over the past two years that I've stayed in Ipil Dorm in UP Diliman, I have "saved" a number of birds and insects that have gotten themselves trapped inside. These animals get in through the windows by the staircase and the doors on both ends of the hallway. The glass panels give the illusion of an opening, and the animals will make every attempt to get through. Some birds eventually figure their way out without help. Insects, however, mostly just fly, hover near the glass surface and stay inside until they die. Today, I found yet another casualty, a beautiful butterfly with neon green spots. I looked for several online databases of butterfly species in the Philippines (such as this and this) and found what appeared to be a perfect match - a tailed jay or green spotted triangle with scientific name Graphium agamemnon.

Detail of wing

Underside

While I will continue helping birds and insects find their way out whenever possible, I decided to begin collecting butterflies and insects that have been trapped and died inside the dorm. These creatures are just too beautiful to be swept with a broom and thrown in trash.

Navigating Baguio's Tourist Trail

Going to Baguio for the first time twelve years ago as a high school student felt visiting a foreign country. I have never been abroad, though (even to this day) but I never traveled a lot as a kid and to my limited experience the Philippines is Manila and Manila is about the heat, the jeepneys, air pollution, trash and mayhem at night. Baguio, with its uneven topography, pine trees, houses built on mountain slopes, the cold temperature, less jeepneys, less air pollution, less trash and less crime, was someplace else. When I got into mountaineering as an adult, I would visit Baguio only as en entry point to Benguet. And having seen the Mount Pulag and Kibungan, places which had more than just pine trees, Baguio became boring and pale all of sudden. I never thought that Baguio would one day become my main destination until I agreed to join a group of friends who will be spending the long weekend. I was hoping to rekindle the fascination I had with the city more than a decade ago.

Here's a rundown of my Baguio experience:

Blogs merged

I will be merging two of my blogs - kenjokenjo and kenshin163 - so I can keep as few blogs a possible. The first blog is where I posts things related to travel and sports activities (yep, I'm "sporty" as fuark), while the second blog is for stuff which don't fit the first blog and my other blog, which is a math blog in Wordpress. Hence, expect more random stuff here from now and onwards. To get the randomness started, here's a pic of a colorful broom.

SWIMBIKERUN.ph's Aquaman 2014

I'm the clueless looking guy with blue goggles.
I'm not a fan of my running pic either. I hate it when my hair gets parted in the middle without me knowing. LOL.

Photo from SWIMBIKERUN.ph's fb page

Just a month after my terrible finish at the Ateneo Aquathlon, and here I am again, joining a swim + run event. As in the previous years, SWIMBIKERUN.ph's Aquaman was again conducted at UP Diliman, where the running and swimming splits are held at the CHK's swimming pool and the acad oval, respectively.

Here's how I fared: