donger need food.

All Work And No Play...

...make Ernie a dull boy.


Too bad I wasn't at one of these gigs.

posted by VirtualErn @ 5:03 PM 3 comments

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Home.

The internet is an amazing little thing. Who would've thought that a tiny little twisted pair of copper wire possessed the power to not only catapult you into the farthest reaches of the universe, but also make you feel like the loneliest place on earth. Bouting insomnia resulting from a severe workaholic episode that's already lasted a week (and counting), I decided to wield this utlimate social tool and take a tour of the world around me.

And I felt utterly alone.

My face lit by the dim glow of a million liquid crystals, I clicked. And read. And clicked. And scrolled... I reveled in Ms Luzon's newfound kitchen prowess; I drooled over tabachoy's images of fat-filled Baja style goodness; I pondered over damoomoo's interesting observations about money dances (hey...if I get married, I'm havin' one -- who's gonna pay for the open bar?!?!?); I found myself peering into crisperville's accounts of a fabulous european romp; I sat perplexed by laragitara's snippets on life... And for some reason, I started to think about "Home." Maybe it was the thoughtful little note that popped into my mailbox today, handwritten, from a good friend clear across the country who wrote just to say, "hello". Or maybe it was the fact that this stupid Beta Blogger upgrade has yielded any form of friendly commentary on this page to be highly ineffective.

So what does home mean to you?

I imagine it to be a wonderful thing. Like silencing a packed house of 1000 people in a darkened auditorium with the sound of your pick as it strummed steel strings. Or reading a good book in front of a cozy fire, your feet cuddled by warm cottom slippers and the heat from your labrador retriever resting quietly on the floor. Or sitting in the cockpit of your four-wheeled racer, screaming into a decreasing radius corner, executing yet another perfectly rev-matched heel-toe downshift, nailing the apex, and exiting in a beautiful four-wheel-drift. Or standing in the arms of the woman you love in the middle of a crowded dance floor, not a care in the world. Or the roar of laughter as your friend of 20 years decides to recall a fond memory of your childhood long since forgotten... Or for some lucky few, coming home everyday to the sight of a wonderful bundle of joy not unlike the one pictured above.

Ah yes...I really am a sentimental old fool.

Thank goodness for the internet! For without you, I wouldn't be able to spend yet another darkened hour of a sleepless night throwing words into the ether and looking back at a collection of memories sixteen months in the making.

posted by VirtualErn @ 1:23 AM 2 comments

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SUPER HICAS

Every now and then I am reminded of a very tiny place in a dusty corner of my heart vacated by an old friend.


Slower than a constipated snail crossing a puddle of molasses and muddled by a U.S. spec drivetrain that contradicts its birthright, my little old red two door hatchback still holds a special place in my stockpile of memories. Maybe it's because of all those grandiose plans that I had in store for her. Or maybe it was because of all those times I've spent underneath her ten year old California-bred undercarriage, in dirty apartment parking stalls, in greasy stadium parking lots, in cold garage floors...Whatever the case, sometimes I find myself remembering old times like it was yesterday.

Like that chilly Saturday spent in a back parking lot in a Redwood City office park. I'm sure passers-by probably found it odd to see a weirdo computer professional hunched over a dusty red car, the sweet smell of radiator fluid spilled on the ground, a water pump in his greasy wet left hand, a 10mm socket in his right, and curse words emanating from his mouth as the stupid bolt refused to line up with the housing.

Or that wet and windy day in Willow Springs (my first track event ever), haulin' ass into turn three on the fastest track in the west, learning a little too late the consequences of being unprepared when my heavy right foot falls effortlessly to the floor while pressing the brake pedal. I tell you what...there's not many feelings quite like the feeling you get when you're doing 80 miles an hour, the corner in front of you is coming up awfully fast, and your car isn't slowing down.

Or the way you feel when you approach her from a certain angle, when the lines look just so right, when the setting sun casts a special glow on the upper half of the side panels, and you just can't bear the thought of selling her.

And I can still remember that unique way that old interior smelled, the heavy action of the short shifter kit that made your arm sore, the incredibly harsh & bouncy ride of the worn AGX suspension, the imprecise (and kinda weird) feel of the rear end's SUPER-HICAS effect, the gouges in the leather steering wheel right above the 10 o'clock position, that obnoxiously loud roar of the clutch-activated fan when the temperature got hot outside, and all the shortcomings of that craptastic lazy-to-rev rough-past-4000RPM monster-torque-low-power built-like-a-tank KA24DE motor... yet somehow, anger and resentment are missing from my memory. No, I instead have a strange longing for days gone by, to long drives on the coast in that hunched down 2+2, the first used car that I had ever bought.

I think maybe it all boils down to that unique relationship a man develops with his automobile. From the months spent scouring classified ads for a pristine example optioned just the way he wanted (with the somewhat rare four wheel steering and correspondingly unique faster steering rack), to the long drive down to San Diego to go buy it from a young high school student drafted to the University of Arizona on a baseball scholarship, to the four plus years of his life dedicated to its maintenance...Spark plugs, oil filters, headlights, suspension bushings, struts, sunroof latches, stereo upgrades (with requisite large bloody cuts), water pumps, thermostats, radiator hoses, clutch slave cylinders, brake fluids/pads/rotors, trunk struts... Or maybe it was the way I studied the lines of that car when I used it as my first drawing for the very first time I used an AutoCAD program waaaaaay back in 1990.

Whatever the case, I'm hopeful that one day when I'm more settled in my life (and equipped to execute all those big modification plans) I can be reunited with yet another fine example and renew a relationship long since suspended but not yet forgotten.

posted by VirtualErn @ 12:50 AM 0 comments

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State of Disrepair

Funny how things happen in "clumps".

1. My VCR fails to respond to certain commands from the remote control, preventing me from recording any programs (like when the stupid Comcast company fails to update their programming, invalidating that whole DVR feature).
   
2. My el-cheapo telephoto lens got infected by mildew again.
3. My DSLR broke a few weeks ago. It struggles to power on with this blinking thingy and the meter readings go all haywire.
   
4. Last night while trying to watch Wowowee footage (thanks Gary and Bev's Mom!!) my camcorder refuses to charge the battery, and then just goes completely kaput.
5. The fan clutch on the M5 needs replacing. And it's now leaking oil onto the exhaust so under some hard runs, it'll smoke.
   
6. I woke up this morning and my cable modem went out (it fixed itself a couple of hours later though)
7. While checking the router in the closet for the cable modem problem, I accidentally stepped on my toolbox latch, snapping it clean off. My toolbox won't lock now.
   
8. There's a short somewhere in my brother's Sentra that's draining the battery dead in about 3 days.
9. To top it all off, my jeans are getting tighter.
   

You know, maybe it's time I purged my life of all this excessive crap.
Or maybe I should eat more chocolate ice cream.

posted by VirtualErn @ 5:20 PM 1 comments

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And Larry’s Getting La-a-a-arger

He motions to the few remaining dark-colored and exquisite slices of roast duck sitting on the plate…“Hey Ernie, here, come ‘on have some more!”

For a long time now I had exercised self-discipline, in a desperate ferocious attempt to achieve goals that eighteen months and sixty pounds ago seemed wholly unrealistic. Under 220 pounds, I convinced myself. I want to jump out of an airplane. My uphill trek had taken me through continual battles with carnal desires for utterly sinful pieces of chocolate, bouts with the ever present “I’ll work out tomorrow”. I fashioned hair-brained theories to help me through it all

• Inventing a “quota” approach: with my ever-increasing age, my daily food allotment drops and drops – so why waste time on such low-quality foods like that utterly tempting bag of Doritos or that mouth-watering masterpiece Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger
• Misery: it’s widely known that unhappy people are skinny and happy people are fat
• Half of me: Regardless of how hungry you are, despite that inner voice beckoning you to take another bite, stop at the halfway point for all your meals. Stop worrying about waste and “finishing all your food” and just throw it all way. Let it go to waste. It’s OK to waste.

But the fact of the matter is this…

Energy in = Energy out

Plain and simple.

And yet, staring at those delectable morsels of heaven, facing yet another in a long never-ending series of crossroads, I falter and reach over with the glazed plastic chopsticks to take another bite. And so has the story been for the past couple of months…only the food has changed. So instead of wallowing with self-loathing at a job not done and pondering the very disheartening prospect of returning to my unhappy and unhealthy ways, I might as well spend the next few posts recapping the wonderful culinary journey I’ve had to date, and make a promise to set a new goal for the coming year.

(for a pictorial tour, go here)

posted by VirtualErn @ 2:09 PM 1 comments

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Ang Sayaw Ng Buhay Namin

There's something kinda weird about sitting 8000 miles away from home in a Singapore hotel room watching a Malaysian-subtitled Tagalog movie about overseas workers.

Crazy, eh?

But what I really liked about the film was how the themes were so fundamental to the family unit... I've seen situations where parents work their butts off to make loads of money to provide a good life for their kids -- but at what sacrifice? Not being there for your kids? How do you define success? How do you know if you've done a good job with your kids? There was a conversation in one part of the movie that I couldn't get the full gist of, but she basically said how some people see the good life that you've provided for your kids -- a house, food, education -- and say, "Wow, she's a good mother to her kids". But the reality is that her kids are jacked, so is she really a good mother?

I gotta say, though... Vilma sure can turn on the water works.

posted by VirtualErn @ 11:57 AM 1 comments

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