50 Posts

I’ve finally reached 50 blog posts. I published my first post on July 2005 titled Blank and there had been long, dry spells and some spurts in between. Sometimes the pen just runs dry.  You imagine yourself a writer yet you struggle with concepts, with words, with creating meaning. Sometimes the creative juices are overflowing and the pen can’t keep up with the thought process, the buzz in the mind. Sometimes, you just can’t find any reason to write.  In any case, writing is not that easy and that is why I admire those who are prolific and whose talents seem inexhaustible. The same way ink becomes a painting, notes become music, clay becomes a sculpture; words become prose or poetry.

When I wrote Blank, I said I was going to try blogging not to find a reader but to find the writer. I haven’t written much from 2000 to 2005 and it was somewhat of a struggle to try and do it again. So I decided to name the blog Tabula Rasa which I took from Dean Ophelia Dimalanta’s An Unobstructed View.

I have 50 posts. The slate is no longer blank.

Eating in Texas 2

Here’s another list of restaurants we’ve been to in the past year. The list is easier to remember now that I’ve been using FourSquare.com. I simply looked at my check in history and here they are.

1. Tan Tan (8066 Westheimer Rd Houston, Texas 77063) – One of our favorite Chinese/Vietnamese restaurants. This is their second location and it looks modern. The first one is iconic here in Houston. We love the Salt Toasted Squid, Shrimp, Scallops and Tofu.  The Walnut Shrimp, House Special Rice Cake, Diced Beef and Stir Fried Flat Noodles are very good as well. The menu is thick and there are lots of options.

2.  Cafe Singapore (12345 bellair blvd #b2 Harris, TX 77072) – I don’t think there are a lot of Singaporean and Malaysian cuisine restaurants in Houston but this tiny, nondescript cafe is well worth the drive to Alief.  We ordered the recommended Beef Rendang and it was delicious.

3.  Tradicao Brazilian Steakhouse (6800 SW Fwy Houston, TX 77074) – We love steaks and one of the best ways to enjoy it is in a Churascaria . There are a number of these restaurants now in Houston all vying to the Texas-sized appetite but Tradicao is still has one of the best value for the money. 14 or so cuts of beef, pork, chicken and shrimps make it a delightful experience. They also have a salad bar but we didn’t have any of that. We were there for the meat and we left the place very satisfied.

4. Yori-Yori (1302 Blalock Rd Houston, TX 77055) – We’ve been to the one inside Super H Mart and Ranch 99 and both have been consistent with their dishes. It’s basically a Korean fast-food restaurant so it’s fast (obviously) and affordable (also obvious). We go for the seafood dishes and not the more common bulgogi and kalbi since those you can buy in the supermarket and then cook at home. Definitely worth a try before you do your grocery shopping. Super H Mart has several other establishments that we’ll try for sure.

5.  Gigi’s Asian Bistro – (5085 Westheimer Ste B2515 Houston, TX 77056) – This one is located inside the Galleria so expect that it’s pricier than going to the typical dimsum and dumpling place. The restaurant looks excellent especially the semi-private booths at the back. What lured us in is the all-you-can-eat dimsum that they have on weekends. The quality and the flavor were good and they were served with more style.

6. Shawarma King (3121 Hillcroft St Houston, TX 77057) – We went back to the Philippines this year and forgot to eat Shawarma, darn it. So we went back to Shawarma King. The place serves other dishes of course but nothing beats the price of the shawarma. It’s still not the Shawarma we love from home but it will do for now.

7. Sushi Choo Choo (12149 fm 1960 w. Houston, TX 77065) – I was looking for a fun place to eat with the family and saw this recently opened sushi place in FM 1960. We went there and we’ve been back several times already. We liked the concept (similar to the sushi boat we’ve had in California) of using conveyor belt to parade the sushi. The plates range from $1.00 to $4.00 and we all have our favorites. We also like the Japanese fried rice that they have on the menu. Sushi purists might shun a place like this but nothing beats the variety, the fun and the value of a place like this (especially during their happy hour).

8. Maggiano’s Little Italy (2019 Post Oak Blvd Houston, TX 77056 ) – Faye’s aunt Melissa got her PhD. and had her celebration here. I loved the food so much that I think I gained several pounds that night. Most memorable were the stuffed mushrooms, the fettuccine alfredo, the salmon and the tiramisu.

9. Makati Asian Cuisine (16427 West Little York Houston, TX 77084) – There’s not a lot of Filipino restaurants in Houston (yet) so it’s always good to see one close by. Makati is a buffet restaurant that serves Lechon during weekends (extra). The food is good and Bernard, the owner is very nice.  They have the usual fare including a very good Nilagang Baka. They also have good desserts including halo-halo.

Will RockMelt rock or melt?

Like everyone else, I have the standard stable of browsers: IE; Firefox; Safari and Chrome.  I use IE at work because the applications we use render best on IE. At home, we use Chrome primarily because of its speed.  It’s beautiful in its simplicity although I must admit I was initially apprehensive because I felt I was surrendering too much to Google. It already knows a lot about me and my browsing that using its browser was a bit scary. IE and even Firefox felt bogged down, though, and Chrome’s performance was better.

A few weeks ago, I read about a techcrunch.com about a new browser that was backed by the guy who built Netscape. The premise seemed interesting enough. In light of all the buzz around social networking and as much as there’s a overabundance of ‘sharing’ and ‘liking’ and ‘retweeting’ going on, a browser that made all these easier seemed like the right idea.

I went to RockMelt.com and asked for an invite.  A few days later I got the invitation and downloaded the browser. I’ve been alternating between Chrome and RockMelt ever since. RockMelt is built using the Chromium platform which is the platform that Chrome uses so it looks and feels like Chrome.  It is interesting, though, that instead of creating plugins that sit on top of Chrome, they decided to take full control and embed the additional features into the browser itself.

On the left bar is for FB friends – online or favorites. Here you can send a message, write on the wall or see recent activity. Also on the left is a quick way to update your FB status or send a tweet.

Over on the top is the standard address field and a search field.  What’s new here is the Share button. When you are on any web page and you feel the urge to share, clicking this button will allow you to easily share on FB or Twitter.

On the right side is the feed section. It starts off with RockMelt, Facebook and Twitter but you can add feeds from other sources. I currently have TechCrunch, CNN, Fortune and Brian Solis. Once you download RockMelt, they’ll give you four invites to share.

So will it be the future of browsers? Will it eat into the users of the major browsers? Probably not.  Is Facebook and Twitter the end all be all? Most likely not. It’s an evolution. It’s fun and easy. It rides the wave of Facebook and Twitter and hope it gets adopted. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and if you are browsing for fun or if you are swept by the flood of sharing and over-sharing, this surely is worth a try. The good thing here is that it’s still fast, simple and easy. And as long as the world continues to be engaged in social media and social networks, RockMelt will have a quick link on my desktop.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It’s Christmas Time

Note: This is from the archives. This was a piece I wrote back in college. 14 years ago and I was already standing on my soapbox.

Someone said that the tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he still lives. It’s Christmas time and many are dead.

It is Christmas – a time when men bask in the spirit of giving, caring and hoping; a season when people all over commemorate the coming of our lord; an annual miracle. It is marked by lights glittering in every household, trees adorned with assorted garlands soaring up high into the sky, and carols sung joyously on every radio. It is a cool season heated by warm greetings all over.

But there’s another world outside: a world of dread, fear, anxiety and despair. A world where men’s refuge are the sidewalks. And here they sleep, hugged by the coldness of the pavement, blanketed by the shivery dampness of the night, unmindful of the perils of the dark. And in the morning their bodies will be burned by the scorching heat of the sun. All these while their bodies and souls ache for nourishment and thirst for something that will quench their desire, their desire for a better life.

We give our son a brand new Power Ranger toy this Christmas and we see the joy brightly shining in his eyes. We give old clothes and cheap plastic toys to a poor child and we imagine the same glimmer in his eyes.

We spend grandiosely on food and drinks, pat each other on the back, congratulating one another for a fruitful year that led to a better Christmas. We smile as we hear the trickle of coins, the Rizal’s that we hand down to dirtied hands, satisfied that we have done our civic and Christian duty and that we have the Christmas spirit in us and we imagine that they’ll have a better Christmas for what we have done.

Whoever said that in the eyes of a child there is joy, there is laughter, there is hope, there is trust had a different set of children in mind.

If we believe that justice has been served, that the economy is doing well, that housing projects are going on smoothly, that life after all is worth living, then let us spend a day on the street. Under the noon heat, half naked, let us stretch our arms and inhale the sweet, sweet Manila air. With the stinging sensation in our skin, let us embark on an adventure: riding a jeep and wiping the shoes of the passengers here; scurrying along busy streets while singing the same old carols and cleaning windshields there. At night, on a half full stomach, let us lie on a cardboard and savor nature’s air conditioning.

Yet there is an aspect of this holiday that can make use forget our successful states or our furious fates. There is a facet of this season that can wipe out materialism, then greed, then hate. There is something about this festivity that transcends mere merrymaking, something that makes all men equal. It is actually someone. It is Christ.

If only we can resist the hate, the greed, the materialism, then probably Christmas will be better. Christmas will be better.

Through Christ, let’s bring back the joy, the laughter, the hope, the trust.

Time Moves Fast

Time moves fast. We all know it. For those of us who are rearing our own young ones, we understand that time just moves too fast. Looking back at our childhood albums, brown and tarnished, we realized how life was simpler then, how growing-up seemed to take forever.

The world now is a multimedia escapade. There are so many things vying for our time and attention that multi-tasking is an absolute must if we want to keep up. Aside from all the worldly distractions, there’s also the factor of distance. Friends and family are spread throughout the world now. Keeping touch, as much as it increasingly is becoming easier with a myriad of communication options, is also posing its own challenges on today’s generation.

The apprehension is that our two kids will grow up fast, too fast. The unease is that, with everything around so fast-paced and with everyone not staying put, we – parents, family and friends – will wake up and find Rakesh and Kareena already in their teenage years.

We shudder at that thought.

So we digitize life. We create real-time snippets of our lives. We don’t want to just have an album that we – parents, family and friends – would look at years later all brown and tarnished; displaying pictures and words of times past. We want these web pages to be a DVR, pausing and rewinding not live TV but real lives.

So go ahead. Let’s immerse ourselves in the world of social networks and social media: Facebook; Google Plus; Bebo; PerfSpot; YouTube; Metacafe; DailyMotion; Flickr; Photobucket; Picasa; SmugMug; WordPress; Blogger; Posterous; Tumblr; Squidoo; Twitter; Plurk; Hi5; Or the other hundreds of options out there.

See you in the cloud.

Facebook Messaging

Messaging within one’s social network has indeed been the preferred method of communication for at least a couple of years now. It is faster because I don’t have to wade through all the emails in my inbox just to find ones that matter to me. It is clean because I only receive messages from people I expect to receive messages from. More importantly, it is an inbox that I control (compared to the email inbox which I cannot control).

It wasn’t something that was forced upon users, it just became de rigueur for those within the same social network. My friends and family know that if they want to reach me or they need me to respond to something, they better send me a message from a social media tool rather than from ‘traditional’ email.

Email for these millions of users, me included, has become a place to read messages from businesses or organizations that are outside the “network”. We acknowledge that email is necessary as we can’t stay locked in our network. We continue to engage with businesses and organizations and now we reserve email for that purpose. But for the most part, businesses and marketing have ruined email already. Users have lost control even though email providers have provided tools and added intelligence and protection.

On the flip side, marketing is trying to understand this phenomena. How do we get our email into that sacred Facebook inbox? The rules are different and the consumer has some level of control. Consumer backlash in this world can be very harmful just as consumer acceptance can be very profitable. Marketing and businesses are not content with staying in the email world. They acknowledge that the more they are engaged in social networking, the better it is for the brand. The focus now is to understand what this really means.

There are a lot of privacy and abuse concerns with a Facebook email. It was the same concerns people had with Google and Gmail and Chrome. There’ll be a lot of talking points about this but it all boils down to what Facebook users
will deem acceptable and appropriate. Users that are concerned will probably not sign up for the @facebook address….until everybody else in their network has one, that is.

Resistance might very well be futile. The Borg is now 500 Million strong and growing.

———————-
Fortune.com discussion

Facebook blog