Where art thou 2.7?

I have been stumped in the last hour or so. Philhosting’s support contacted me early this morning giving me a fix. But it didn’t really fix my problem.

My blog is rendering but I am back to WP 2.6, and all the changes I’ve made since the time I upgraded, are gone. Where’d they go?

Until this is sorted out, I will continue, sadly, to blog over at http://verabear.blogspot.com

I hope posting this does not aggravate the situation…

Our first fun weekend of 2009

Note: Long post ahead. Rather than dwell on the fact that my site is still down and I have been asked to disable my redirect before they can fix it, I’ll just talk about the weekend I just had.

It feels like I just had a long weekend. On Tuesday evening, Alfred and I went to Greenhills, believing that it was the last day for their Night Market, as posted on their website (okay, this is really embarrassing because I just checked out the link now, and we actually looked at an archived page, and the dates were for last year’s nightmarket!). When we got there at 8pm, the regular shops were already closing and the parking lot where the night market stood in December, was already cleared out.

 

We just decided to have dinner because I hadn’t even had lunch. Our final choice was a filling meal at Max’s. After the sumptuous meal, we checked out the section of Greenhills that was still open at that hour: the Promenade. We checked out Gourdo’s and I admired all the baking and cake decorating stuff they had there. The only thing I picked up to take home though, was an oven thermometer.

We spent some time at Fully Booked too. There were so many interesting titles, but I restrained myself from making any purchase, there are still several books left on my to-be-read pile from months ago, plus books I got in November and December. I also figured I’d checkout my favorite second-hand bookshop before I buy never-been-owned books.

We were supposed to head home after leaving Fully Booked, in fact, we were already on our way down the escalator. Then I remembered that Iskul Bukol’s LFS was supposed to start 10:35, and that was a little more than just 5 minutes away. The boyfriend is a big TVJ fan (hehe) and he really wanted to see it, so I asked him why not go see it now? We sure weren’t sleepy yet anyway. 

It wasn’t as funny a movie as I expected it would be. But it wasn’t too bad either. There were inconsistencies too. Like the kid being able to speak Tagalog. I mean, by the time they were looking for the Peseta, the kid was already talking comfortably in Tagalog, but when they first found him in the hotel room, he couldn’t understand Vic.

Anyway, after the movie, we braced ourselves for a difficult time finding a cab. Good thing was, there were several taxis lined up near the Music Museum entrance. Since it was already midnight, it was a nice quick ride home. 

Before leaving for Greenhills the other night, I took this photo of Esban, for my Project 365 Day 6 post:


That’s Esban showing me what they did with this makeshift rooftop I took home with me from work the other day. It’s a rooftop we used for bay decoration for Christmas. I took it home because they would be thrown out anyway. And what a waste that would be. Just as I predicted, the kids loved it! Since there were three more of this in the office, I took them home too so each of them would have one to play with.

The next day was almost spent just sleeping. But we didn’t even let the rains stop us. We went to Quiapo to have Frankie’s lens fixed (finally!), and to check out some iPhone clones. Alfred got Mang Romy to put in the missing screw on his PDA too. 

We had a nice walk (eventhough it was drizzling, and it was muddy) from Hidalgo to Raon, to Isetann. Then after walking around and having a snack of shrimp and pork siomai, plus two pieces each of mini bibingka from Bibingkinitan, we took a motorized pedicab from Isetann back to Hidalgo. Because it had been raining, it wasn’t hot at all, and you couldn’t smell pollution. Yes, you could smell the common street smells of Quiapo, but it wasn’t really all that bad. 

As in our previous visits to Quiapo, we went into the church to pray a bit. We were surprised that there were a lot of people, because we knew that the feast of the Nazarene wasn’t until Friday, the 9th. As it happens, there are pre-event programs ongoing already. 

Because there was already a crowd at the back of the Church. The image of the Black Nazarene was being returned to it’s storage after what I assumed was a short parade/program at the plaza. Everywhere you look, there were devotees waving their handkerchiefs, and cloths
 that bear an image of Christ, and some prayers. I’ll share those photos too, but first up, here’s the photo I took from when were at Plaza Miranda, right in front of Quiapo Church (click the photo for a larger view):

Thankfully, it was a cloudy and rainy day. Had it not been so, I’m sure I would’ve developed a migraine because of the heat and the crowd. Hidalgo street wasn’t as crowded as in our previous visits. Seems like they cleaned out the road for the event, there wasn’t as many vendors out as there used to be. 

From Hidalgo, we took another motorized pedicab to the 168 Mall.  We ended up buying new curtains for the room (love it!), plus curtains for my brother’s room too. Alfred already put them up, and they look wonderful! I also got three pairs of jean for 730 pesos (less than 20 dollars!), while Alfred got himself a pair of shorts. We also ended up buying a few DVDs of movies and TV series.

I expected a difficult time hailing a cab home, but it wasn’t too bad. Traffic wasn’t very cooperative though. I ended up sleeping on the way and waking up with a headache. But even that didn’t ruin my day. We ended the day by watching a movie when everyone was already asleep. It was a local movie starring Toni Gonzaga and Vhong Navarro – My only you. Rock n’ Roll! 🙂

Oh well, why couldn’t we just have regular days like these all the time? 😉
This post reposted from my blogger blog.

The case of the Alabang Boys (who really aren’t boys anymore)

I’ve been telling my brother to switch channels – listening in to the Congressional Hearing is really frustrating me. It’s like watching a telenovela, so much drama!

I don’t mean to have my non-Filipino readers at a loss as to what this Alabang Boys case is all about, but I don’t want to narrate the entire story here. You can checkout some of the links from this search result: http://results.myhpf.co.uk/framedresults.asp?Keyword=alabang+boys+case
Department of Justice officials, specifically the fiscals/state prosecutors, are taking heat for releasing a Resolution just before Christmas, which was in effect dismissing the case. As it appears in the hearing, the tone and language of the resolution was as if it was taking as fact, and siding with, the position of their respondents. In fact, the resolution looks like a case agains the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. Err?
There a number of irregularities with this case, and I am in no mind to list them all. But had I been sitting in that hearing, here are some questions I would have asked:
  • Since Atty. Verano (representing the respondents) claims that he had no prior discussion with Usec. Blancaflor regarding the case, why did he have the Order sent through his office? He had his office messenger bring the document to Blancaflor’s office, why not just messenger it straight to the office of the Department Secretary?
  • Claiming that he did not want anything to do with the document, why did Blancaflor allow his secretary to take the document to the office of the Secretary of Justice? Would it not be construed that he is endorsing the document? Shouldn’t he have just outrightly refused to do anything in behalf of his fraternity brother?
  • Why did the office of the chief state prosecutor release the resolution to the public, without clearing it with the DOJ secretary, given that they have a memo circular mandating a review of all cases of this nature that are for dismissal?
  • In Fiscal Rasado’s case, why didn’t he inhibit himself from reviewing the case, when he already knew that the defense lawyer was his law school professor? He is in charge of looking into the merits of the case and recommend it for filing, or for dismissal. At that stage in the case, he was like a judge who must assume impartiality. Although if I was in his place, I wouldn’t personally be affected if my college professors were part of a case where I need to make an important discernment, I would think it would still be the better thing to do, in the interest of fairness to both parties, to request that the case be assigned to a different fiscal. KWIM?
  • Shouldn’t be the DOJ be working in partnership with the PDEA? Shouldn’t they be actually helping PDEA build solid, air-tight cases about drug pushers/traffickers? They should be represented in the PDEA team! It appears that they have no measures for coordination here. PDEA does its job, and then DOJ may or may not let the case reach the courts? How does that help the campaign against drugs?

This post reposted from my blogger blog.

Project 365 – Day 5

Update on Verabear.net

The site is still unavailable. I received an email from support, get this: asking what link was showing the error. Uh hello? Didn’t I send a screenshot? Doesn’t it show the URL? And to think that he was the same person who emailed back when I encountered this issue before. Shouldn’t he already know what to do about it? Ugh. 

Rant over.

Project 365 – Day 5
A few days before saying goodbye to 2008, I found a link from Hummie’s World to this cool blog where I found a link to a very very cute desk calendar. I followed the links and downloaded the file.

It took until the morning of the fifth for me to print out a sample. Icut out the printouts as directed, and then set them up like so. Isn’t it just the cutest? I had suggested to my mom that she can give some of these away to her officemates so I printed and cut out four sets of these! She actually requested more but I ran out of gsm 220 paper. I really like how it turned out and if I just had space for it on my office desk, I would totally plant one there. 

I printed these out on my Canon Pixma printer. It’s amazing how the colored cartridge has shown the prompt for low ink for months but I am still able to get good quality color prints. The colored ink I purchased just before Christmas still sits here unopened. I am not complaining, of course. It’s amazing.

I have a day 6 photo, but am too lazy to continue posting. I’d also have to delay sharing Esban’s photos. I didn’t get much sleep this morning/afternoon because we were tuned in to the Congressional hearing on the case of the Alabang Boys. I’ve got some thoughts on that issue that I’d like to share too. I’ll try tomorrow. Tonight, I sleep. 🙂 
This post reposted from my blogger blog.

Project 365 – Day 4

I took this photo before going to bed this morning. It’s been extra cold these past two days, and though Zune doesn’t seem to be complaining, I figured he’d appreciate a blanket. I covered him with this towel and he didn’t try taking it off or anything!

 
Esban also took photos today, and I’m thinking of having him start his own Project 365. I can setup a blog for him, and post the photos myself, along with whatever he wants to say. I don’t have time to post them up right now, but he took great shots of dad’s toy cars. I promise to put them up tomorrow. 

This post reposted from my blogger blog.

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