Saturday – 20 Nov 2010

[smartads] This is a very easy Philippine quiz.  Most people should be able to get at least half of them right.  You Filipinos out there, better get them all right.  Answers at the bottom of the page, if I can’t find the official answers, because I haven’t found them yet, I’ll just answer them all because I think I know the answer to all of them.  Most of the answers are at this website:   http://library.thinkquest.org/J001561/pi/quiz.html (copy/paste) –  but the author forgot to give the answers to questions 6, 7 & 8, so just make your best guess on those.  The answer to question 3 might be hard unless you’re observant.  You actually should be able to get 7 & 8 because I have mentioned those 2 in this blog.  As for question 6, well take a guess, that’s what I did, but I know I’m right.

1. What is the capital of the Philippines?
A. Pampanga
B. Paranaque
C. Manila

2. What side of the road do the people of the Philippines drive on?
A. Left
B. Right

3. What are the four main colors of the Philippine flag?
A. White, green, brown, blue
B. White, red, khaki, brown
C. White, yellow, red, blue

4. Which of the following is not a Philippine letter?
A. A
B. B
C. C

5. What are the two most common animals you would see in the Philippines?
A. Cat, Dog
B. Fish, Hamster
C. Fish, Frog

6. Do kids make homes on top of cars?
A. No
B. Yes

7. What is the Philippines nickname?
A. The Land of The Rising Sun
B. The Pearl of the Orient
C. The Salt Mine Galore

8. Who was the hero of the Philippines?
A. Michael Jordan
B. Hercules
C. Jose P. Rizal

9. What is one of the famous hills in the Philippines?
A. Chocolate Hills
B. Hills of Fire
C. Rice Hill

10.  The money used in the Philippines is called…
A. Pesos
B. Rupees
C. Dollars

This morning it was warm when I got up at 0847.  It was warm because the electric was out.  In fact it had been out for about 2-2 1/2 hours already.  It turned out to be another one of those scheduled brownouts that no one knew about.

No lights doesn’t mean no pancakes, so I made pancakes.  I used the last box of mix to do it.  Crystal, Khan and Lita helped me with the 5 pancakes I was able to make with this batch of mix.  The same amount of mix varies on the number of pancakes I make for 2 reasons.  1) The size I make the pancakes.  I usually try to make medium sized pancakes.  2) The amount of water I use in the mix.  I don’t use a measuring cup or anything when I put the water in, I just guess.  Sometimes the pancakes are too thin when I do that though.  The only time I don’t try to make only medium pancakes is when I had the Pillsbury mix.  I had to make large pancakes then just to keep it down to 8 pancakes.  When we go back to Tacloban next month, I will buy 2, maybe 3 more boxes of that mix.  I kind of liked those Vanilla Creme pancakes anyway.

I think this is a good place to squeeze in my weigh in I did this morning.  Last Saturday I weighed 130.6 kilos (288.5 lbs).  This week I was at 130.1 kilos (287.5 lbs).  It’s a loss, but remember back on Oct 16th I was at 129.5 kilos (286 lbs).  My immediate goal is to get below that 129.5 kilos, then work on getting down to the ultimate goal (at least for now) of 85 kilos (188 lbs).  I say ‘for now’ because I may get down to 95 kilos (210 lbs) and decide that that is good enough.  If I feel good enough, I may stop.  I would like to see that “1” on the scale instead of the “2” though, at least once.  That would require me to get down to about 90 kilos (199 lbs) at least.  Stay tuned, heck I may never even get close to any of those goals.  If I’d start exercising, I’d have a better chance.

I did go downtown today.  I went to get some lottery tickets.  The 6/55 lottery is up to P550,000,000 ($12,791,000), so there are going to be a lot of tickets bought.  We only bought 7 for it.  The drawing is tonight in a little less than 3 hours.  I don’t know how much they take for taxes here in the Philippines, but I’m thinking it’s a little bit more than in the States.  Probably around 30%, so that would mean giving up almost $4M for taxes.  It’s okay, $8M is plenty to the rest of my life, even if I end up giving some of it away, which I’m sure I will.  Also while downtown we (Ado was driving) bought some gas for the generator.  Since the lights would be out all day, we would need to turn the generator on a little past noon.  Actually today we ended up starting it just after 1:00pm.  We only bought P100 worth of premium, unfortunately that generator only uses premium gas.  On the way back home it started pouring down rain.  It only lasted about 30 seconds though.  At least the hard rain only lasted 30 seconds, it was still raining afterwards.  When we got to the house, the gate was closed, so we did the standard thing, we honked the horn until someone came to open the gate.  Today it turned out to be Lita.  She got an umbrella and opened the gate.  She still got a little wet.  I thought for sure she would get someone else to do it for her, so I was a bit surprised when I saw it was her.  Ado says he still hears a sound on the drivers side front of the truck.  At least it’s not on the passenger side front where the wheel fell off before.

I just gave away my cheapo cell phone.  Lita wanted to know if it was okay if we gave it to J.  I told her, I’d trade him for the pink phone he has now.  He was trying to get a cover for it while we were at Robinson Mall last time, but they didn’t have a cover for the type of phone he has.  It’s a weird brand I think.  He inherited the phone from Juvic after we bought her a new one for her 19th birthday.  I don’t like pink, but I hardly ever use my cell phone here in the Philippines.  I’ll probably end up giving it away to someone later.  I think Chatty might need a cell phone, I just don’t know when her birthday is, but Christmas is coming up anyway.  I like Chatty, but I think that maybe I pester her too much.  I think she would like to tell me to leave her alone, but she has too much respect for her elders to do so.  I’ll try not to bother her so much in the future, but I still will a little bit.

Speaking of Chatty, she was at the house earlier today decorating Titing’s Christmas tree.  She was doing an excellent job too.  I’ll bet she could make some extra money doing that for people that don’t like decorating the trees.  It looks very nice.  Think I’ll take picture of it now that it is finished.  I took one earlier of all the decorations, but the tree was only half finished at that time.  There I did it, and almost got a good picture of Chatty in the process.

Monday, the 22nd, is Ceasar Khan’s birthday.  He will be 5 years old.  I should be able to remember his birthday for 2 reasons.  1)  It’s on November 22nd (as in November 22, 1963) and 2) it is exactly 1 week before Jaclyn Nicole’s birthday.  I’m not sure how old Jaclyn will be but I’ll give it a guess and either her or Joyce, I’m sure, will correct me.  I’m going to guess 27 years old.

The lights finally came back on at 4:55pm.  It’s unusual for them to be early, but it didn’t bother any of us.  Sure with the generator we have lights and a fan, but the generator can not operate the computer, and even though we could watch TV, the cable is out because of the brownout.  In fact, the cable is still out.  Even after the electric came back on, it is not up.  Not sure what’s going on with that, and no one has offered any information.  Titing usually calls to find out what the problem is, but he hasn’t told me anything, if he did call today.

Yes, I know, I missed the Tagalog word of the day yesterday.  I was feeling guilty about not having a post on Thursday and I just wanted to get Friday’s out, and I just missed it.  I will put more words today to make up for it.  I’ve had some people that told me they like having that in there, so I’ll keep it.  You know I’m still open for other suggestions too.

Tagalog word(s) of the day:  Isa (E-sa), dalawa (da-la-wa), tatlo (tot-lo), apat (aw-pot), lima (le-ma), anim (aw-nem), pito (pe-tow), walo (wa-low), & shim (shawm).  Which mean: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9.

I noticed that on that quiz, you have to look up the answers from the website.  You just click on the subjects and there are some very short facts about the Philippines that include the answers.  I did notice several errors the author had though.  He had errors, that I know of, under Alphabet, Other Things and Tradition.  The one under Tradition was the one that really stuck out for me and that got me looking for other errors.  There are probably more than just those 3 errors too.  Think you Filipinos out there can find those errors?   The one under ‘Other Things’ everyone should be able to spot.  It’s not an error of facts, it’s an error in sentence structure.  As for the answers to the quiz, here they are:

1.  C  2.  B  3. C  4. C  5. A  6. B  7. B  8. C  9. A  10. A

Top Blog settings at this time are: 436 of 1583 (27.5%) Personal and 2219 of 6851 (32.3%) Overall.  The stats for this website are reset every week.  We have 145 unique visitors for this week (at #436), so far.  The top blog so far this week has 103,279 unique visitors, so we have a long way to go for the #1 spot and probably never be able to get there.  The #100 Overall site has 9,250.  The #1 Personal site has 22,820 and the #100 personal site has 1,067.  I think those last 3 could be obtainable, but it’s going to take time and more readers.  The hits right now at 2130 PI time are : 33031.

Well that’s it for this evening.  I hope I made up the missing the Tagalog word of the day.  This quiz is kind of messed up, but it does have some basic Filipino facts that everyone should know, if you want to know things about the Philippines.  As for how I met Lita, that will have to wait until another day.  I have it written down and will pass it from day to day until I get to a day that I don’t have much material, then I’ll talk about it.  Keep those suggestions coming.

Salamat, Palaam