To recap: For businesses, Twitter is effective as a Marketing/Lead Generation platform only if it is used to build trust for your brand. Start with considering using it as a Customer Service tool. I see what you did there @SMARTcares, I see what you did there and I love it.

I’d also like to thank everyone who attended SEMCON 2009, you guys were great. See you next year!

Let’s move along.

What’s more unforgivable than the fact that I haven’t taken my team out to any form of team building activity in my three year tenure as a manager is the fact that I let one of my team members choose where we’re going to eat. An even more unforgivable mistake? I let this asshole choose.

Now, I’m not exactly a food connoisseur but I don’t have bad taste either. If I were to describe my palate, I would probably liken it to that of a college student’s. If a typical college frat boy loves it, then chances are I’d love it too. I like gallons of cooking oil on my food, I like slathers of mayonnaise on it, I love cheese and excessive amounts of condiments on it.

Also, when I go to restaurants, I have this habit of staking it out and take my time to carefully study its menu. I hate having to ask for waiter recommendations and prefer to  know what exactly what I am going to order as soon as I am seated.

For God knows what reason, this asshole chose to go to an Indian restaurant for our team lunch.

Now, before I proceed, I want to go on record that I am, in no way, racist. I love Indian culture and truth be told, one of my closest friends is Indian. (Sup, Sanjay. I haven’t forgotten about that hundred bucks I owe you. I’ll pay you soon. I know, 110 bucks it is.)

What bothered me the most about our lunch is the fact that I couldn’t pick my food in advance. This is not because of a momentary bout of indecision, but rather because of what the fuck was on their menu:

• Paneer Mumtaz
• Tawa Kheema Mutton
• Dal with Methi Leaves
• Jumbo Paper Dosa
• Chicken Bouli Handi
• Kulfe
• Kheer

My Initial thoughts on these menu items:

1. I consider myself considerably smart, well-read and cultured enough to have a working knowledge of Persian, American, Greek, Japanese and Thai cultures. But when you’re looking at a menu where the only words that ring a bell are “Chicken” and “Jumbo”, you know you’re in for one huge clusterfuck.
2. “Paneer Mumtaz” sounds like the roasted appendages of a 1980′s Indian child star and really, I don’t think I’m brave enough to try that shit out.
3. “Tawa Kheema Mutton” is absolutely balderdash. It’s like me opening a restaurant and saying that my specialty is “Beef Kukurikapu.” Utter nonsense. But of course, no one calls the restaurant out on it at the risk of being called uncultured.
4. I have a feeling that “Bouli Handi” isn’t food. It sounds more like slang for when a girl masturbates a guy and accidentally clasps his testicles tightly when he approaches orgasm. (i.e. “So Kate was down there giving me the most vicious Hand Job ever right? When I was about to come, I pulled on her hair and out of nowhere she was giving me a Bouli Handi. Next thing I know, she’s crying in the corner because I punched her in the face out of instinct.)
5. “Kheer”–Excuse me, but I think the politically correct vernacular would be “Homosexual.” Fag.

The meal was, surprisingly, delectable. I don’t know what the fuck we ended up ordering but it was this chicken stew with curry and Indian spices. It was so good I can only assume that it was made from good dreams and the laughter of innocent, orphan children.

Of course, the meal was not without food items that didn’t really do it for me. One thing, their rice had cashew nuts, raisins, peas and what tasted like motor oil. The only description I could muster after a few spoon-fulls was that it tasted like an old memory and is probably what an antique shop would taste like if it was edible. Of course, I acknowledge that this rice may be acclaimed by food critics world-wide and only I couldn’t appreciate it. I’m simply too uncultured, dumb and poor.

All in all it was a good meal. But to the owner of that restaurant: Seriously dude, turn the “authenticity” down a notch. We get it, you have a real Indian chef you flew from Hyderabad and your menu is in Indian. Just, really, tell us what the fuck’s in the food! Dammit!

I get this nagging feeling that my employer is trying to force me into a painful transition from slack daddy extraordinaire (and party boy emeritus) to a real employee, not just someone who manifests himself as an unreasonably high salary in monthly accounting ledgers; eats up the company’s bandwidth by downloading entire Gossip Girl episodes at work, and doodles three-headed, big-busted succubi when he’s supposed to be taking notes at meetings.

This intent is corroborated best by the corporate slavery device I now constantly have in my pocket. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I, Mike Villar: Rising Internet Star, have been issued a BlackBerry.

You’re probably thinking: “Big deal, the company just gave you a shiny new toy and here you are whining like an ungrateful bitch! A fat, ungrateful bitch at that! ” And to that, my friend–who is unschooled in the ways of the corporate world and probably poor–I’ll say: you do NOT understand the ramifications of being issued a BlackBerry. Among other things, if you have one, your boss can Email, IM, call or SMS you 24/7 and expect you to reply. This wasn’t the case for me prior to being issued one as I always had the “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to call you back. My phone went dead” excuse and the “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to email you back, my DSL got cut today. You see, I was thrown in jail last night for drunk driving–whether or not I’m guilty is for the court to decide–and I used the money I’m supposed to pay my monthly DSL subscription with to post bail.” excuse.

However, when the decision that, because of the nature of the work I do for the company, I needed to be issued a BlackBerry was made, I didn’t go farther than subdued protest because I didn’t want to sound too much like a slacker.

Resistance, however, was futile since every member of my department’s senior management was being given one. To make things worse, the person who handed me my BlackBerry curve for the first time sort of looked like he expected me to start shrieking in delight like a seven year-old on Christmas who just got “Footloose” on VHS as a present (Yes, that is an accurate description of me back in the Christmas of 1989. Well, fuck you). Really? You expect me to be happy about the idea of me literally carrying my work around with me 24/7? You know what would really make me happy? Getting a blowjob from someone who doesn’t cost 700 Pesos. Or not a man. You dick.

The only “positive” thing I could see coming out of this entire BlackBerry thing is that I can see myself at a random bar swinging back my fifth bottle of beer while thumbing away on my BB–obviously trying to look more important than what I really am infront of underage girls. Then, I can see myself whipping out my other cellphone and pretending to call someone while still trying to look like I am sending an email on my BlackBerry. Then I could see myself whipping out my laptop in the bar because god knows there is nothing sexier than a man talking to someone on a phone, typing an email on his BlackBerry while composing another email on his laptop. And finally, I can see Brock Lesnar coming over from the next table and punching me in the face because I’m being a motherfucking douchebag.

But fuck. Seriously, this entire BlackBerry thing is going to take a lot of getting used to. I am really not good with this entire productivity thing and for those of you who had enough money to go to college, you’re probably familiar with the Irresistable force paradox which asks “What happens when an irresistable force meets an immovable object?”

Now, the BlackBerry is the irresistable force of productivity while I’m the immovable object of indolence. Now, what do you think happens when the BlackBerry and I inevitably clash?

That’s right: Death.

And I don’t mean I’m going to die from stress, I mean I’m going to commit some nasty murders. So watch your back.

(If my boss is reading this: By “Death” I actually meant “Death to laziness!” I mean really, let’s all be productive here for fuck’s sake)

Mike Villar: Bullshit Machine from Mike Villar on Vimeo.

My company’s CEO, armed with a video camera, ambushed me while I was dicking around on Facebook and asked me what I was working on.

Surprisingly unfazed and on my toes, my response was–arguably–the worst, most badly-delivered bullshit spat out by anyone who has ever lived.

Not my finest moment.

Also, my fellow manager Alvin Jimenez‘s reaction at 0:07 was nothing short of priceless. It’s sort of an amalgam of raw disgust, not knowing whether to laugh politely and a pinch of pity.

(Oh and thanks to Rico Sta. Cruz for adding the score towards the end of my response. It really added drama to my monumental failure.)

Admissibility review is a section immigration officers send people who range from naturalized American citizens who’ve been out of the country for dubiously long periods of time to those whose identities are questionable.

I thought to myself: “Hey, it can’t be that bad, I just need to tell them that it’s normal for a lot of Filipinos to speak fluent english, idiots. And maybe I have a new passport because I didn’t need one until now and got it for the sole purpose of this trip? Again, idiots.”

Boy, was I wrong.

Admissibility review was a fucking prison. Just to give you an idea of how it was in AR, I approached an INS officer and kindly asked him if I could go out for a few minutes to buy some food because I was starving. His response was “SIT DOWN SIR!” his right hand touching his holstered sidearm to make a point. Dick.

Also, there was a time during my stay at AR when I badly needed to go to the restroom. So again, I asked an INS officer and asked if I could use the restroom; reluctantly, he said allowed me to and asked one of his colleagues to escort me and a party of Mexicans to the restroom.

And really, nothing else tells you that you’ve got it bad more than taking a piss with 5 Mexican guys while you’re being watched closely–too closely, in fact–by an armed Immigration officer.

The entire AR process stranded me for an additional 5 hours in LAX.

(Seriously, America, I know you’re still sore at my ancestors for selling you the Philippines for several million dollars and the country not turning out the way you expected it to be, but this entire AR thing is taking it a little too far.

Also, that bit I told the first immigration officer about me losing my original passport in North Korea during my stay there to take flying lessons and get explosives training was a Joke. You know, as in Ha-Ha?

Dicks.)

Anyway, through my years of working for various companies, I want to share a valuable lesson I learned: The corporate environment is about doing less work and, at the same time, appearing to be more busy and exuding an aura that you are more important than you actually are.

If what I said in the paragraph above is new to you, then, my friend, you probably suck at your job.

The only way to make people actually like you is to intimidate them by acting like you are superior to them. This can be achieved with lazy, yet artistic strokes of Corporate-ese in your everyday email correspondence. Want to sell the idea of buying ad slots in MySpace or FaceBook to your boss but can’t find the words to justify it? Then say something about a “Paradigm shift”. Want to squander your company’s marketing budget by sponsoring irrelevant charity events for a bogus charity put up by your wino half-brother? Then say that it’s called “Social Responsibility 2.0″ and that all the cool marketing cats are doing it.

Want to impress that cute, new employee in your department? Well, dream on because a member of the board of directors who drives a stretch hummer already hooked up with her last week and is probably stuffing her silly as you read this.

Anyway, here are a few words and phrases from the Corporate-speak dictionary that I hate. So much, in fact that I print each one of them in 36pt Helvetica, urinate on the paper I print them on and throw them at passing cars every night after I get drunk.

Moving Forward

No.  I am not “moving forward”. I’m actually just sitting stil in front of my desk laughing at d-bags like you who say “moving forward” when normal people actually say “In the future.”

Low-hanging fruit

Is he talking about my testicles? Dude, did you hear that? Was he talking about my testicles? I think he’s talking about my testicles!

Touch base

Woah dude, no. I don’t play for that team.

Liaise

You mean “talk to” right? Because, really, I am not in the mood to take anyone out to a seedy lounge where we’ll sit in a dimly-lit cubicle listening to a two bit jazz band while exchanging government secrets.

Bandwidth

Dude, here’s a tip: Bandwidth : Computers/Internet and “Freetime” : People.

Synergy

I’m drinking buddies with the guys on the other department. I think we can “work together” fine without making our relationship sound like it’s a deadly laser fired from a mothership.

How about you? Are there any specific corprate buzzwords you hate?

Now, what do you think it takes to ruin my day? Well, not much. Just a computer and about 4 minutes.

Allow me to explain: Part of my job is to make sure that our ad-serving platform is properly serving paid, 3rd party banner ads across several of the company’s web properties. Now, in order for me to look at our websites from the perspective of someone in the United States (the country most of the ads we serve are geotargeted to), I need to log on to something called Citrix.

For all of you non-techie types, citrix is sort of like a virtual machine that is hosted remotely and has a US-based IP address.

I usually get on the damn thing at night and the problem with it is that every time I hit a key on my keyboard, there is like a 2-second delay before the character appears on the screen. This results in me typing way faster than the shit actually appearing on screen which can be really confusing not to mention annoying. For instance, when I’m not on a virtual machine, I can type the sentences below in three seconds flat:

“Your Gazongas look delicious. I want to lick them. I will pay you in sex dollars!”

But because I’m in a virtual machine environment and because of the 2-second delay I mentioned earlier, with the same amount of time, I can only produce:

“Yousr gaonas look deslicous I wanat tis lick sthtem”

Thanks to this stupid fucking delay, everything web form I fill up within the Citrix environment is full of typographical errors. The result is that I am taking at least five times longer to do really simple tasks I need to do like bypassing the company firewall to check out new party photos from my hot FaceBook contacts, or logging on to my personal web-based email to forward funny videos of kids hitting their balls on railings after falling off their skateboards to my brother. So frustrating, really.

Now, I am a very angry, easily aggravated person who has a temper shorter than his bird (which, like I’ve said numerous times, is about the size of a Hershey Kiss).  I often find myself seething with anger over the most mundane things at which point, I invariably curse like an old prostitute being stuffed by a drunken sailor and throwing shit around but I’m usually able to hold it in and, eventually, smother it. But this virtual machine thinger is pushing me to the edge.

You probably think that after using the damn thing for at least a few hours everyday, that I will get used to it but really, the opposite is true: The virtual machine gets incrementally slower as my day progresses and the aggravation I feel burns stronger and stronger deep inside. It doesn’t help that I clocked in for work 5 hours early today because I wanted to get some shit done and have like a gallon of caffeine and a pound of sugar coursing my veins right now.

Now, all the caffeine and sugar I have in my body right now,  the slowness of the virtual machine  I’m working with and my temper which is already lit only means one thing: In about 45 minutes, I am going to rip somebody’s arm off and DESTROY my computer with it. Most likely while screaming and/or crying.

Fucking day, I swear to God.

Two days from now, I shall be celebrating my birthday. I will be turning twenty-seven years old.

I view my 27th birthday as a pivotal point in my life primarily because it provides me with the crushing validation that I, Mike Villar, Rising Internet Star and Sex Man Child, am, without a doubt, in my late twenties.

The years following my 25th birthday have been spent mostly denying the fact that I have reached the quarter life (a term which, up to this day, I insist to be a huge misnomer. I mean, tell me. Who was the last person you knew personally who lived to be 100 years-old? Realistically, and with this generation’s generally reckless and frivolous lifestyle factored in, twenty five is actually more “mid-life” than it is “quarter life.” And that’s if you’re lucky.)

I’m not worried and anxious about going through a delayed quarter life crisis like most people do because, I think mine already manifested itself through an existential crisis that transitioned into a full-blown anxiety and panic disorder a couple of years back.

I am actually more worried about “peaking.” I believe that everyone’s momentum as far as potential would go, once they reach 27 years-old, drastically slows down if not come to a screeching halt–Lars Ulrich formed Metallica when he was 18 years-old, Steve Jobs founded Apple with Woz when he was 22 and Kevin Rose put up Digg when he was 27.

The point is, at 27 you should have pretty much become the person you will be for the rest of your life.

I’ve also written a post in the past about Seth Godin’s “The Dip” and how it translates to a man’s marryability:

Lately though, I find myself in a serious bind–or as my recent favorite author Seth Godin would call it: a Dip(or, who knows? Maybe even a cul-de-sac?). This “Dip” that I speak of is the fact that I feel that as if, right now, I have peaked. I am as marry-able as I’m ever going to get.

In fact, forget “peaking” as I think I’ve passed my peak years ago. Right now, my life is on a downward slide that will ultimately end in a mail-to-order bride, annulment, severe alcoholism and drug addiction, murder and fire.

I am proud and happy that I overcame this marryability dip as I proposed and got engaged to my girlfriend two short months before my 27th birthday. However, barring any drastic changes in the near future (like me realizing I’m gay two years from now, joining a gay nudist colony in the Visayas region which, as it will turn out, is a secret R&D lab for Intel. I will be really happy as I will be surrounded with two of my favorite things in life: experimental processor chips and cocks. But really, the chances of that happening is rather slim. If I were to give an estimate I’d say around 88%?), I don’t think I will, for the better or otherwise,  be changing a lot. I have pretty much become the person I will be for the rest of my life.

To give you an idea of the key changes that happened between my 26th birthday and now: I am now, not as interested in Masturbation, dick jokes, finding out the answer to the question “how many bottles of beer does it take for me to pass out and activate my powers of teleportation, whoring my blog to corporate entities by using it as a channel to air their stupid propaganda in exchange for a buffet dinner and a case of soda. I am now more interested in condominium interior design, savings accounts and financial management.

Everything said, I feel happy and content about my 27 years of existence. I have a wonderful fiancee, a supportive family, a job that pays the bills and doesn’t suck that much and a host of marketable skills that should be sufficient to provide me with a comfortable lifestyle for the years to come.

Tonight, as a pre-birthday celebration, I am going to put my ipod in a zip-lock bag, fill up the tub, light up some candles and stroke my bird to the thought of Anne Hathaway’s sex scene in Havoc (Okay, so I lied. I guess I am more interested in masturbation than what I’m leading you to believe). You may be asking yourself how this is different from any other weekend in my life and the answer to that is, apart from the tub (my mom is very big on conserving water) and the candles, it is not very different at all.

The only real difference is that this evening marks the start of a theme I intend to adapt for the rest of my life: KEEP IT SIMPLE AND REAL, YO. I don’t know how exactly this will play into my everyday life, but I’m guessing I have to say goodbye to my unhealthy obsession with expensive hotel rooms and fancy dinners and I probably need to stop getting 400-peso haircuts, shopping at clothing stores and paying exorbitant amounts of money for shirts that make me look like a fat, pretentious d-bag as opposed to looking “Web Chic” (which was what I was going for, really) and stop hanging out with people I secretly hate for the sole purpose of career advancement. (sorry Marc. It’s nothing personal. Like I said: KEEP IT SIMPLE AND REAL, YO)

Lastly, staying true to my KEEP IT SIMPLE AND REAL, YO theme; I want to say that I find no shame in begging. So, if you want to make my birthday less suckier than what it’s shaping out to be, you can donate money to my “birthday” fun using the ChipIn widget below.

I can’t promise you anything in return, but what I can promise is this: The money you donate will be put to good use (meaning it will be spent entirely on booze.)

I want to thank you guys in advance for your generosity and remember, if you are too cheap to donate money, I’ll settle for you throwing some good vibes along my way and a birthday greeting. Although, really, I prefer money.

(Let’s not be cheap here and try to outdo the whopping $5 I managed to raise the last time I asked for donations. Cheap motherfuckers)

• The restroom in the 6th floor pantry area
• The restroom at the Jade Palace (The Chinese restaurant beside our office building)
• The restroom in my floor’s manager’s area
• And the restroom in the garage close to my office building

The restroom over at the Jade Palace (specifically the cubicle that’s supposed to be exclusive to the handicapped) has served as my second office in my early days with the company. Now, the reason why I walked all the way to a Chinese restaurant to do my business back then was because my bowel is particularly known for exhibiting this weird timidity when I’m around new people. The result of me forcing myself to take a dump in one of my office’s restrooms would invariably involve me, a lot of sweat, a lot of grunting, around three hours and a really nasty hemorrhoid.

As months passed, I grew tired of that particular restroom smelling like a 200 year-old Chinese man’s burning beard and after I developed a certain degree of comfort with my colleagues from work, I was able to mark the restroom in my floor’s manager’s area as my territory.

Now that I think of it, this particular restroom is actually perfect for me–sure it usually takes two flushes for my poop to go down (four during this one time I used one of my socks to wipe my ass. I don’t know either, don’t ask.) but it’s generally clean, has a copious supply of tissue paper and it has a strategically placed window that takes care of the horrible stench my poo leaves behind (I was once told that my poo’s smell is a cross between a dead, rotting mountain goat and a construction worker’s armpit after twelve hours of  hard labor. I don’t know exactly how that smells like, but that probably means it’s really bad)

Actually, I love this restroom so much that sometimes, when I feel like I just want to be alone, I bring my lunchbox with me, lock myself up and spend my entire lunch break there just laughing by myself.

But really, I think this is something I should tell my psychiatrist  first before I tell you so let’s leave it at that for now.

However, recently, and I’ve never really encountered this before, my once glorious poop sessions have been regularly interrupted by someone jiggling the door knob to the restroom not knowing that it is occupied. I cannot stress enough how utterly distracting this is especially if you’re like me who needs to conjure up every ounce of concentration in his body to poop properly.

The worst part is that, most likely, the person who habitually does this is a girl given that I share the manager’s area not only with this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy but also with this girl, this girl and this other girl.

So, what usually happens is that, on my way to the restroom, I inevitably have a conversation with one of them, duck into the bathroom for like half an hour or so before finally coming out all sweaty and shit for everyone to see on my way back to my area.

Well obviously, everyone in the area knows that I took a dump every time I do this.

This fact effectively ruins my pooping routine. Given the way my bowel behaves, I can only take a poop while I comfortably rest in the fact that nobody knows that I’m doing so. I can not take a dump knowing that someone less than 10 feet away from the room I’m taking a dump in knows that I am, in fact, taking a dump while he/she works on a document or has an Instant Messenger window messaging somebody from God knows where that his “fat office mate is once again defiling the toilet lol”

An option for me is to do a turbo dump and do my thing in less time than what’s normal (the national average, so I heard was around 5 minutes) but why the fuck do I need to cut down on my pooping privileges time-wise? I’ve never believed that “breaks” in the corporate world  should be limited to an hour and a half a day so, the extra hour I take to take a dump while privately laughing at FML entries is uncompromisable.

Life.  so hard.