thursday tattles: delicadeza, freedom force, christmas

And just like that it's already December.

And December this time around is going to be special for me and my little family. Anytime between now and the 26th, we can expect the 4th member of our little mob to arrive. A false alarm over the three-day weekend had us packing and getting to rush off to the hospital but good thing the overnight sleep helped stopped Elvie's contractions. Last Friday, she was still in her 37th week when the contractions happened, still a bit early for Baby Isa to step into the world. But this week, Elvie is now in her 38th week and it's much safer now for the baby to be born.

So, my nerves will be a bit jumpy in the next couple of weeks or so anticipating that call from my wife about a water bag getting broken and something about rushing off to the hospital to have the baby delivered.

Let's see, bag is packed -- baby's going-home clothes, receiving blanket, Elvie's and my own clothes, a book or two to bring along, my PSP, deo, cologne, soap, toothbrush, spare blanket (for me), smallish bath towel, small notebook, lots of pens, glucose-meter, charger for the cellphone, digicam ...

Am I ready? I have to be. I'm going to be a father again :)

* * * *

Have had some difficulty sleeping the past three nights.

Last Sunday night, I wasn't able to sleep early despite feeling drowsy as early as 9pm. I ended up sleeping past 3am already. That was still fine because Monday was a holiday so no problem extending the winks in the morning.

Last Monday night however was a real bummer though. With work resuming the next day, I knew I had to really sleep. Unfortunately, I again wasn't able to catch Mr. Sandman early and ended up sleeping around 3am again. I ended up a zombie at work.

Last Tuesday's bout with sleep was better as I managed to get myself knocked off half past twelve.

As of this writing, it's already 12:20am Thursday. No sleep in sight yet. Good luck to me.

* * * *

I've put playing Innocent Life on hold for a bit as it was getting boring.

I've instead fired up my laptop and am now playing an old game from circa 2002 -- Freedom Force.

If you're a fan of old-school comics, hawking back to the days when comic heroes were reciting cornball lines and drawn Jack Kirby-style, you're going to love Freedom Force. While it's a video game, it pays homage to the Golden Age of superhero comics (forget Darna or Captain Barbell or Lastikman, mind you) with those outrageous dialogues that heroes and super-villains alike recite before attacking, and cut-scenes offering the origins of the heroes you control.

Speaking of control, FF is a squad-based, tactical, real-time strategy game where you control a group of up to four super-heroes and direct their actions in fulfillment of a stated mission. You start of with a Captain America knock-off called Minute Man but as you progress through the missions, new heroes join you or you hire available heroes. You also upgrade your heroes to unlock better powers.

Action can become quite frantic and some missions will require you to split up your heroes. This can lead to frequent scrolling all over the map to ensure that you keep your heroes in check. Thank goodness for the space button -- the PAUSE button. While paused, you can issue commands to your hero making the game (and the heroes) easier to manage (and helps you catch your breath).

I first played this game some four or five years ago and back then I had to play it on someone else's PC because my own desktop couldn't handle the graphics (full 3D!). But flash-forward to today, it runs smoothly on my Compaq CQ40 thanks to the ATI Radeon shared video graphics.

* * * *

In the news ...

According to DILG Secretary Puno, PGMA running for Congress is heeding the clamor of her future constituents. He says that call to run as Congresswoman of the 2nd district of Pampanga outweighs the call for delicadeza.

So, delicadeza is no longer a trait to be valued, you say? 'Lang hiya ...

* * * *

Because of the timing of our daughter's birth, we'll be celebrating Christmas in Makati for the first time since Elvie and I got married. It has become a tradition for us to spend the holidays with my parents in Laguna these past years so this year is a break of that tradition.

Well, it might also end up that we might be spending Christmas at the hospital after all. Elvie's due date is around December 26 after all, give or take a week or so.

However, like I mentioned earlier in this post, this Christmas season is quite special not only because of the birth of our new daughter but also because we'll be celebrating Christmas in our little apartment whereby we'll be preparing a Christmas feast -- the first time we'll be doing that.

Expect waistlines to explode this Christmas season and I'm sure my endocrinologist will be admonishing me come January for the weight gain -- and I'll hear her say I'm grossly obese again! But, it's bound to be a happy Christmas so a little pagalit will be fine. I just have to stay a bit conscious not to eat too much, hopefully.

friday frolicks: ad congress, globe diss, starbucks, spec-fic news, ikai, isa, psp

Globe has got some serious issues when it comes to fulfilling its promises to its consumers.

After promising to yours truly that the landline and internet connection would be back by November 1, guess what? Still no connection until now. Why am I not surprised.

Their most recent excuse after I visited their Greenbelt business center earlier this week -- their field contractors have revised their earlier deadlines and now our area is set to be serviced on or before the second week of November.

Egad!!! Doesn't the use of "on or before" entail a definite date and not a vague period of time such as "second week"?

My innards were screaming for blood and I wanted to turn the CSA's own innards inside out but I controlled my temper and left the counter without another word. No use in saying thank you, thanks or gracias (although that's impolite, mind you) because I did not receive the expected assistance that had me wait 30 minutes for my number to be called in the first place.

Hay, ang buhay consumer nga naman.

* * * *

And since I've not been blogging or surfing at home for the longest time I've turned my attention to other stuff.

I'm currently in the midst of the winter season in Innocent Life, a PSP game that touts itself as a "futuristic Harvest Moon". For those already scratching their heads and asking what the heck Harvest Moon is, well, it's a game, actually, a series of games released initially for SNES (1996 first release) and subsequently in other consoles such as GameBoy, GBA, PS 1 and 2, Nintendo DS, etc. It's a series of farming simulation games whereby you inherit a farm, grow crops, tend livestock, and a gazillion other tasks including being friendly with neighbors.

Innocent Life is pretty much the same as the earlier Harvest Moon games but flash-forwarded a gazillion years to the future where farming tasks can be automated.

It's not exactly an exciting or engaging game (personally, the Harvest Moon game I played before was more exciting and fulfilling) but since I'm a sucker for RPG simulation games, I'm sticking to it and hoping to finish the main pivotal task (appeasing the Fire Spirit via the Water Spirit thereby preventing the explosion of the volcano that will surely and likely destroy the town where my creator (you play a robot trying to be human) and the friends I will get to know live) within a year and not withing the allowable two years.

The problem with the game is that there tends to be dragging moments when you find yourself with nothing to do -- especially at the start of the seasons when you just finished planting your seedlings for that season. And, the game starts to become boringly predictable and that you can't "speed" up the movement of events because the important events that trigger the chain reaction of events is so time-bound. Like right now, I am just waiting for the 24th day of winter for the next main event to happen even though I've completed the prerequisite tasks for it before autumn ended.

At least in the Harvest Moon I played (Friends of Mineral Town played on PC via emulator), I seemed to have not enough time during the day to do tasks and build up my character. It was exciting but also stressful, in fact. Innocent Life is, let's just say, less stressful and at times, ah, I just plod on until the next main event.

But since there's really nothing better to do during my free times at home, I'm sticking with this PSP game for now.

* * *

What I haven't been doing though during this "downtime" of mine from blogging and surfing is reading.

I've been amassing books and graphic novels and magazines but I haven't been reading them. They're all in the book pile, some with their wrappings still intact. Still waiting to be opened include all the stuff I bought at Komikon along with Martial Law Babies as well as a couple of issues of Entrepreneur Philippines and tons of books. The book I got last week, Firebirds Rising is the latest victim unfortunately.

And there are many books in the pile that remain on the "unfinished-reads" list. I'm guilty of leaving a book I'm reading unfinished and owe much apology to the likes of JRR Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett, among others, for letting their works collect dust while I fiddle and diddle and take up another reading material (or the PSP nowadays) and promise to get back to finishing the erstwhile books "one of these days".

* * *

And have I told everyone that Elvie and I are expecting a girl?

She's going to be a Christmas baby (give or take two weeks) and as such, we'll be christening her Risa Kristine. Her aka will Isa (pronounced EE-ZAH and not the Filipino I-SA).

Ikai, our eldest, has now taken to pertaining to herself in the third person as "Ate Ikai". And that's a good sign for us because it's an indicator that she is now prepared mentally and emotionally for the coming of her baby sibling.

Elvie and I are quite excited with the coming of Isa and more comfortable now than before when we were expecting Ikai. That's because, financially, we're secure and emotionally, we know now what to expect. We're just hoping that it's going to be an easy labor (Elaine, how do you do it?) because it seems like this one's going to be a bigger baby to birth than Ikai was three years ago.

* * *

And speaking of Ikai, she's turning three this month on November 18.

We'll be having a small celebration with a few family and friends and Ikai will be hosting a smallish children's party for the neighborhood kids (roughly about 6-10 kids).

Our little baby is growing and she has become quite the talkative type. Her mouth never seems to close and when she's not talking, she would be singing instead and can repeat the songs and dialogues of almost every commercial on the tube.

Here's here photo when she and her cousin, Mark, went trick-or-treating last October 30 at Elvie's office.

You can check out other photos at her own blog where I've uploaded them.

* * * *

Over on the speculative side ...

Jeff VanderMeer is currently on a suicide mission, este, book tour to promote his new books Finch and Booklife in 14 states for 27 events covering 36 days. So, his blog will be hi-jacked by a slew of guest-bloggers, playing mouse while the be-whiskered cat is away. Enjoy a change of tone for a wee bit until the VanderMeer gets back zombified from his book tour.

Congratulations are in order to Charles Tan, the Bibliophile Stalker, for winning the Last Drink Bird Head Award for International Activism for "his efforts to bring writers from other literary traditions and countries to the attention of readers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia" as well as to Kenneth Yu of Philippine Genre Stories for winning Fantasy Magazine's flash-fiction-and-graphic contest.

Filipino horror writers you are summoned!!! Estranghero Press's Joey Nacino and horror-guru Karl "M.F." de Mesa are calling for submissions to a new online horror anthology they've entitled "Demons of the New Year: Horror from the Philippines". Guidelines here. Deadline is January 15, 2010 with a target publication at the end of the same month.

Two Filipino authors are included in the latest issue of Expanded Horizons -- Eliza Victoria with her story "I Am the City" and Catherine Batac Walder's "Twin Cities". I've yet to read them but you can check them out in this fine SF webzine. You can even download PDF versions, mind you, if you prefer to read it traditionally. Plus, EH is also now accepting art submission! Check it out.

Rocket Kapre has announced that we only need to sleep five more nights before the launch of its planned quarterly SF webzine, USOK. Paolo Chikiamco promises for USOK's inaugural launch -- five short stories, two quality reprints, three all-new tales -- all for FREE on November 11.

* * *

Anyone going to the Ad Congress later this month?

I won't but a couple of colleagues are and despite the disappointment that it's being moved from Baguio to Subic for all-too-obvious reasons, it looks like it's going to be a great event.

I will most likely be attending next year's event as the Desk where I am now working is quite open to such activities for the development of its workforce. The participation fee is a bit on the expensive side as it costs around P16K per attendee (EXCLUDING hotel, transpo and other expenses which you (or your company) will shoulder) and of course, you will need to bring your own pocket money for those unofficial expenses (the tons of pasalubongs come to mind).

The Direct Marketing Forum organized by DMAP and Salt and Light Ventures seems to have gone unnoticed this year. Have they held it earlier in the year? This is another marketing forum that I would like to attend next year if they hold it again. I've attended the first three that DMAP and SLV did and the learnings from those conferences have helped me in my career as a marketer. I am now a firm believer in direct marketing -- marketing that really works because they elicit a response from the consumer.

I will also look forward to the next Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) events as I am also a practitioner of digital marketing having been an online marketer for the past five years (before my recent incarnation as a brick-and-mortar marketer in the Desk) so I'll be keeping my calendar open for that.

* * *

Speaking of calendars ... I am NOT going to be bitten by Starbucks' Christmas planner promo again. Case in point, the planner I redeemed after consuming P2,000+ worth of Starbucks last year (not helping the D, of course) went to waste neither my wife nor I used it. I already saw SB starting to advertise its Christmas offerings and I'm steering clear of any SB branch for the meantime :)