Condo Hunting

Although I didn’t discuss it at length, I mentioned a few posts back that, thanks to stupid motorcycle gangs and bisayas, the embers of my dislike for Fairview, the place I’ve lived in for the past 20 years, have been stoked to a full-blown burning hatred.

Now, recently, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to get my shit together, move out of my parents’ place and start looking for an affordable albeit moderately-luxurious condominium unit within Metro Manila.

And because I work somewhere in the Shaw boulevard area, I could not afford to live anywhere else but within the Ortigas Business District or somewhere not more than a 20-minute drive from it.

In an attempt to write the understatement of the year, I’ll go ahead and say that looking for a decent condominium unit in the Ortigas area is a big, lactating bitch.

It seems like everywhere you look, all you see are ridiculously high prices, weird-ass building locations, shady neighborhoods and money-grubbing realtors who look like they’d gladly stab you in the neck if it means they could get away with your money as quickly as possible.

Also, since every other young professional in Metro Manila wants to live in business districts like Ortigas or Makati, you can take comfort in knowing that while you’re out there beating the pavement, consulting with friends and looking up listings on the internet and the papers, there are literally tens of thousands of people out there doing the same thing and probably doing way better than you are.

This leads to my greatest gripe as far as looking for business district condominiums would go– They are really fucking expensive. But then again what should you expect from a district where parking costs 150 pesos for eight hours, a rice meal 90 pesos and a sloppy blow job from a Bisaya masseuse working for a “garden spa” on Emerald Avenue a whopping 300 pesos.

(The 300 peso blow job led to the argument below between the aforementioned masseuse and someone who asked not to be named because by now, most of his extended family, coworkers and maybe even his boss, reads this blog)

Unnamed Guy: [Putting robe on after getting a massage] So um, how much for…”Extra service?”

Bisaya Masseuse: [In a heavy southern accent] Sorry ser? What you mean? Step on your back?

Unnamed Guy: No, I mean [pointing to the major tenting going on inside his shorts, then to his mouth which has this sucking motion going on]

Bisaya Masseuse: Oh! Bee Jay! 300 pesos for one hour ser!

Unnamed Guy: [surprised] but I don’t need an hour, can I pay you 100 pesos for 20 minutes?

Bisaya Masseuse: No! no! 300 pesos or no Bee Jay!

(By the time the argument ended, the person decided to just go on with it. After all, it was pouring outside and he had nowhere to go. These Bisayas, so business-minded!)

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An Open Letter of Apology to the Cast and Crew of Desperate Housewives

Dear cast and crew of Desperate Housewives,

TV shows come and go. Every so often, there comes a point when the life of a television series starts to flicker and grow dim. Worse, there is always a putrid uncertainty that comes with wondering if our favorite TV shows will even return as networks, with an insensitive and cruel disregard, toy with our emotions with executives waiting until the last minute to decide which shows live on and which shows drop from the lineup to their certain deaths.

Your show, Desperate Housewives, was one of the shows I wished death upon after its first season. And can you blame me? The inexplicably retarded storytelling, random betrayals and suicidally poignant interpersonal drama, as well as all the twists, turns, flips, flops and flops that happened midway through the 2nd season made the show really painful to watch. A pain which is, perhaps, worse than losing a loved one. Maybe even two loved ones in a bizarre hotel fire.

But still, I continued to watch. And I did so only because of Teri Hatcher and Eva Fucking Longoria.

There was actually a time when I was so obsessed with Teri and Eva that had either one of them asked me to quit my job, I would’ve said “done”; That had either one of them asked me to renounce my fleshly ways and dedicate my life to reading the bible, I would’ve said “done”; that had either of them asked me to embrace people from all walks of life and cultures and maybe give up sweets, I would’ve said “not until you give me a blowjob.” You get the point.

I was pretty smitten; so when I first heard about what many claimed to be a sweeping, insulting remark about medical schools in the Philippines made by Teri Hatcher’s character in one episode, I remained relatively indifferent to the issue.

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Blog Silence for Joseph Michael

I, along with the other editors of The Man Blog shall be observing a week of reverent blog silence for Joseph Michael Racoma, youngest son of J. Angelo and Caren, who passed away early this morning.

To the Racoma family and to all those whose lives were touched by Joseph Michael, you have our prayers and deepest condolences.

Uninstalling Adobe AIR-based Applications from Mac OSX

I’ve been playing around with Adobe AIR based apps onOSX for almost 3 months now and I must say that I see nothing but tons of potential for the new runtime environment.

The cross-OS platform uses HTML, Flash and AJAX among others to make highly-functional Rich Internet Applications and deploy them as desktop clients.

Currently, my favorite AIR apps include  Snitter, an AIR-based Twitter client for Mac OSX; Airpress, a Wordpress compatible blogging client; and of course, Pownce’s desktop client.

However, AIR being a relatively new runtime environment, applications tend to be buggy and I find myself installing and trying to uninstall apps a lot.

Usually, to make sure that I delete all files associated with the app I am trying to uninstall, I use either App Zapper or App Delete.

The process is pretty straightforward. I go to my applications folder and drag the program I wish to uninstall to App Delete or App Zapper and that’s that.

I’ve been trying out a lot of Adobe AIR-based apps in the last couple of months and until lately, I haven’t found a way to uninstall them as they do not appear in the applications folder.

What I found out was the AIR installer and apps are, by default, installed in your Home/Applications folder rather than your root Applications folder. So for a user named TedGrubb, AIR-based apps are installed in /TedGrubb/Applications rather than in /Applications.

Hat tip to Satisfaction’s Ted Grubb for the info.

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