Patient X Is So Overrated

Patient X is a disappointment!!! A waste of our PhP22.00. Oh, well. With all due fairness to Yam, the cinematography and music is fantastic.


But the story lacks the remote X factor.

Richard plays Lucas, a doctor in a barrio who fights the crazy, typical vampires. You know, the one who huffs and puffs and the does the wacky shoulder ups and downs. [Channeling Dion Ignacio.]

Cristine is Patient X. [Duh.]

It was still fun watching the movie. Ok, I just laughed while the film was rolling. It is not at all scary!!!

The story is not so good. After Yam's "Sigaw", I expected a whole lot more. The only plus side probably is that (for red-blooded males) Cristine looked fresh (though not believable) as a vampire.

And they really had to expose her legs.

Seriously, everything about Patient X (the movie) is not believable. The hospital is run down. I personally would not want to be confined inside. The police were too sipsip.

What really bothered me was the story. It could have been better developed. And oh yeah, the insinuated attraction between Richard and Cristine? Ewww...

One, she is a monster.
Two, she is his nanny for goodness' sake.

Let's keep the distance, people.

The Crazy Language Called English

If you are a nerd, you will surely like this. Ok, I am one!

You think English is easy???

Read to the end . . . a new twist!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce .

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?


You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP .

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP...
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this.

How True Is This?

The reason I am a writer is that I have an interesting way of looking at situations. In other words, I just think differently (or weirdly).

Sometimes do you think that 24 hours in a day is just too short?

Shanghai Baby And I

A very wise editor told me to cut the flowery words short and get on with my writing. Aside from reading voraciously (as in READ, READ, READ), I should be doing some WRITE, WRITE, WRITE.

Even if the words just would not come out. Because they eventually will.

Actually, I learned this technique way before in high school. I attended this creative writing seminar by a British writer. She said to let the words simply flow from my mind, from my heart, and to my hands through the pen. Or in my case, the computer keyboard.

Dj lent me a book entitled "Shanghai Baby". Coco's incredibly sexy and brave. And I am absolutely nothing like her. It's just that she's a writer too, and she's struggling to put out this BEST-SELLING NOVEL that if you asked me where mine is, it's still in the forensics of my brain.

Go, me.

Taipei & Beijing To Set Up Tourism Offices By February 2010

Taiwan and China agree to set up tourism offices in each other’s capitals (Taipei and Beijing) by early 2010, as Taiwan aims to increase mainland tourists.

Aren't Gifts Supposed To Be Free?

Many years ago, I lauded a magazine for pointing out the irritating and obvious error of the phrase FREE GIFT.

Ok, tell me what is wrong with the phrase FREE GIFT?

*tap, tap, tap* Time's up!

In the first place, a gift is supposed to be free. Why state the obvious?

Up until now, there are still publications making use of that redundancy. "Act now and get a free gift!"

We will be having our GREAT BINONDO AMAZING RACE tomorrow. And it's really great! Really great! Hope the other Pandas get lost. [PAUSE]











































And learn something from the Chinese-Filipino culture too, ofcourse. What were you thinking?

On a funnier note, if what I said is anything funny at all, someone texted me:
"Shanghai friends, what are other things that racers have to bring for tomorrow? Added instructions aside from not wearing slippers?"

I replied:
"Please bring one camera and pen per group. Please DON'T BRING valuables."

The reply:
"What if your face is a valuable? Hehe."

My response?
"Well, you could cover it up so that it won't get 'lost', but you will get lost either way if you do it."

Ok. Corny. LOL. I probably am the only one who found that funny.

New Scholars Chosen For GBF China Scholarship Program

We are actually nearing the end of our 5-month Chinese studies in the Philippines under the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation China Scholarship Program.

Anyway, we still made it in the papers. Haha. This is a clipping from the Philippine Star just last October 19, 2009.

Sky-High Ergonomics

Check out my byline in the Special 10th Anniversary edition of BluPrint published by the Mega Publishing Group.