Last Day and Lunch

Today was the last day of the training activity. The attendees seemed satisfied. Certain aspects of the training could be better, I admit. Next time (if there will be a next time) should be almost perfect.

For lunch we went to the basement of Sentral Senayan 1, which is the office tower where Oracle Indonesia offices are located. Most of the Oracle staff eat at the basement establishment, which is actually part of an adjoining mall.

This glass of lemon iced tea (non-refillable) cost the equivalent of 100 pesos. Kind of expensive. They really profit on the tea..



Refills are 42 pesos.

This meal cost about 165 pesos:



The soup is a combination of bago leaves (that's the Malay or Filipino term for Gnetum gnemon); unripe nangka (Bahasa or Cebuano) or langka (Filipino) fruit, also known as Artocarpus heterophyllus; and sliced corn. With some amount of chili.

The main meal had rice wrapped in banana leaf; a small dried salted fish; some lettuce and cabbage; two tomato slices; a patty of what turned out to be ground and cooked soybean; and some chicken. Actually not bad for the price.

On the way back to the hotel at 3:00 p.m.



McDonald's at the back. Ubiquitous Kijang (Toyota Revo) with old Kijang (Tamaraw FX) behind it.

Today's News

In yesterday's Jakarta Post, here's what was on the front page..



"The women's wing of one of Malaysia's ruling parties has urged the government to rethink a plan to recruit domestic helpers from China, arguing they could seduce local married men." (emphasis mine)

Apparently there is a looming domestic crisis in Malaysia. Due to poor wages, the lack of minimum wage legislation, and other issues, Indonesians are far less willing to undertake becoming maids in Malaysia. This has created a labor crisis. There are 200,000 plus maids in Malaysia, of which only 20,000 are Filipino. And the Filipino maids earn three times more than the average maid due to their esteemed English skills.

And there are too few Filipino maids to go around. I guess Inday is far less hot than Xiu Xiu because there's no headline blaring that Filipino maids will seduce local married men.

In other news.. the street crossing in front of Hotel Mulia by night:



And the satellite image:



Was talking with one of my Indonesian colleagues earlier today. Apparently car prices here are far higher than back in the Philippines, almost Singapore-level in fact.

For example, the Mazda3 1.6L sedan (which incidentally was only launched here a few days ago, when it's a 2003-2004 model in the US and Philippines) goes for the equivalent of 1.4M pesos, and the 2.0L sedan is almost 2M. Compared to the Philippine price of 800K pesos and 1M pesos in Manila.

The Camry 3.5L Q-spec is 2.5M pesos here as opposed to 1.9M. I did see a Lexus RX, with a full glass roof!



They also have many variants of the Avanza, in addition to the J-spec and G-spec back home, Indonesians also get to enjoy the E-spec and S-spec.

In Singapore a car like a Civic apparently goes for around S$ 55K, which is 1.6M pesos. Almost twice the Philippines price, but that's inclusive of the famous Singapore COE permit. And not far from the Indonesia price.

On the other hand, Chinese food is cheap. We went to a Chinese chain restaurant, Crystal Jade in Plaza Senayan (which is the flat boxy building to the right of Oracle's office in the satellite image), which apparently is also widespread in Singapore.

The hakaw cost the equivalent of 80 pesos. The place was quite Zong-level, very attentive service, at Luk Yuen prices. I could learn to like this place!!

On a more work-related topic, the attendees of the training session were able to either install TimesTen on Windows (much easier than Linux, turns out, although I never tried it), or used my bloated 8GB VMWare image. In both cases, things have worked out and they have been able to do the practice sessions.

We're running a bit behind (not news, same thing happened in my training session last week) but things are rolling along. I will just have to skip the lab for advanced replication as tomorrow is the last day. So at least we will be able to cover Cache Connect in more detail.

I may also have to defer my flight to Friday (more time away from home! I'm not exactly jumping with joy). But we may need to go to a major prospect.

Taxi

Today's first day of training went adequately.

Unfortunately the attendees were unable to do the lab exercises because the cheap DVD-R's which I bought from CDR King last Saturday at 9.00 pesos each were broken. No wonder my burner only reported 1.0X speed when the 20.00 peso Sony DVD-R's (also from CDR-King) would burn at 10X.

And when I was able to get some Imation blanks from the local office, the attendees didn't have disk space for the 8GB VMWare image. Probably didn't have the RAM either, as the image wants 512MB of RAM. That's on top of Windows and VMWare itself.

So all day was just talk. I've been polishing my spiel since last week's training, and I'm honestly getting better at it. But still all talk!

This morning's cab ride was around 12,000 IDR but I didn't have any change so ended up giving the cab driver 20,000 IDR. Outrageous! but then again that's only 45 pesos. I sometimes give that much extra to cab drivers back in Manila. The return cab ride to the hotel was 11,500 IDR and this time I paid 15,000 IDR.

I actually don't mind paying a bit extra because the taxis are in generally good condition. So far none of those rattletrap cabs with slipping clutches and holes in the floor like back in Manila. Incidentally the local Vios taxis (which are power-nothing, so equivalent to the Vios 1.3 J in Manila) are finished in vinyl. Even the roof. Not that rough paper material that adorns even the Vios 1.3 E back home.

Then again that rough paper material also covers the roof of the Civic FD and Mazda3.

I saw a bunch of Yaris hatchbacks. Far more common than in Manila. And a Fit Aria. What's that, you ask. The estate version of the Honda Jazz/Fit (e.g. a stretched model). Well, it helps that Indonesia is right-hand drive like Japan. Makes importing Japanese cars much less of a headache.

One of my Singaporean colleagues thinks that Jakarta is an overall better place than Manila. I actually tend to agree. There really is a lot more green. And less pollution. The only drawback is flooding, even in the central business district. There often are two- to three-day unscheduled holidays during the monsoon season.

Turns out all those people I saw along the highway yesterday were catching hito or catfish. Because it had rained heavily a few days ago.

Land of the Kijang

Took the morning Singapore Airlines flight to Jakarta. It wasn't a direct flight, had to transfer from SQ918 to SQ958 in Singapore. That took about an hour. Connected using SingTel in Singapore, and with Telkomsel in Jakarta.

While on the plane, I amused myself with the better amenities of SIA as compared to our flag carrier. Among them, individual LCD monitors for each passenger, even in economy.



And check this out - Recaro seats! at least now I can claim to have sat in a Recaro seat, even if not at the wheel of an expensive race car. This particular seat is dated early 2006, so either the seat is new, or the plane (a Boeing 777-300) is. Quite a contrast from our flag carrier's antiquated fleet. The 777 has a couple of really huge engines (Rolls Royce Trents, I believe). Very impressive-looking when set to reverse thrust.



Soekarno-Hatta International has seen better days. Larger than NAIA Terminal 1 or 2, about as old as Terminal 1, but they have very nice architecture. And profusions of bougainvilla plants. Same thing at Changi, actually. Lots of bougainvilla.



A funny thing I noticed is that Soekarno-Hatta is like a very large version of the old Davao International Airport, right down to the architecture and the wooden carvings and Islamic motifs.

I honestly had no idea what the conversion rate for the Indonesian currency was. I needed to withdraw some money in case my hotel taxi didn't show up and I'd have to pay for one myself. Checked the currency exchange and saw this figure "8600" for the US Dollar. So, I thought, 86 IDR per dollar, or something like 2 IDR per peso. When I got to the ATM I was perplexed: because the minimum withdrawal amount was 100,000 IDR. That would be almost a hundred dollars, I thought.

After more checking, it dawned on me that the figure at the currency counter was not 86.00 IDR per US Dollar, but rather 8,600 IDR. Whoa! I'm a millionaire all of a sudden!

Here's one of those bills disgorged by the ATM machine: Lima Puluh Ribu Rupiah.



Worth about.. $5.7 or 276 pesos. Well, taxi flag down is 6000 IDR so one could actually pay a cab fare with one of these..

Turns out according to XE.com the official exchange rate as of today is 8,786 IDR per USD.

Taxi ride from the airport was pegged at 170,000 IDR ($19.35 or about 900 pesos) via Silver Bird (the most trustworthy cab company in Jakarta, according to both Oracle Travel and my cousin who worked here for several months). The meter in the ancient Nissan Cedric (a boxy contraption with power locks but no power windows) read 90,000 IDR at the end of the journey, not counting a couple of expressway toll fees ("Bayar Tol," said the tollway booth sign) at I believe 10,000 IDR a pop.

The cars on the streets are very much like back in Manila, with a notable exception: none of those horrendous smoke-belching jeepneys. Maybe in the lower-rent section of Jakarta analogues might exist, but I'll never know..

The streets of Jakarta that I've seen are the home of the Kijang. Probably 40% of the vehicles on the road are one of the three generations of Kijang: the original one, now somewhat rare (known to us Pinoys as "Tamaraw FX"); the second generation Kijang, which we know as Tamaraw FX Revo; and the newest, shiny generation, Kijang Innova. Pretty easy to figure out what that one is.

There also is a proliferation of both the Toyota Avanza and Daihatsu Xenia. There were very few sedans on the airport expressway, just an occasional AE101 Toyota Corolla, a single Mitsubishi Lancer, an Accord, a couple CR-V's and Ford Escapes.. and a vanishingly small number of Honda Fit's.

The Mitsubishi Adventure can also be found here, under the monicker Mitsubishi Kuda. And the Isuzu Highlander (and Crosswind) go by the intimidating model "Panther."

Overall, the vehicle distribution is very similar to Manila. And the economic condition seems pretty much similar as well (if a tiny bit cheaper).



One thing I found funny though, the hotel I'm in is relatively upscale (the sign at the gate said Pintu Masuk Hotel which seems fairly self-explanatory). Manila Peninsula or Mandarin class. But the vast majority of private vehicles in front of the hotel disgorging Nokia N73-toting matrons were..

The ubiquitous Kijang Innova. "G" spec, of course, with lots of extra chrome. But not quite the assembly of Teutonic machinery (or at least, Japanese SUV's) one normally sees outside hotels in Makati.

Someone like myself could actually survive here, unlike say in Beijing. The Silver Bird booth person at the airport could speak some Filipino. And I passed a couple of Sakit buildings on the way to the hotel. They don't use crosses on their hospitals though, and the buildings are blue.

There were a lot of waterways along the airport expressway; some covered with Azolla algae. And I was surprised to see hundreds of people lining these waterways, with their Honda scooters lining the banks. They were.. fishing. And they weren't using bamboo sticks with a line attached, but real rod-and-reel gear. I believe I've seen street vendors in Manila selling those.



Either I'm in an outskirt of Jakarta, or this city is really less urbanized than Manila. Because those waterways were choked with nipa palms and mangrove trees. And underneath a particularly high flyover was a veritable forest of banana trees. There's a lot of greenery in this section of town.



There's even a Cycas palm inside my room!

The internet access is pegged at 140,000 IDR per day (about $16). Seems reasonable enough, a bit lower than other hotels I've been. And it's quite fast! about 1Mbit. At the rate I'm going, I'll be blowing a million Rupiah a day at this rate (most of that for the room bill). Sure doesn't make me feel like a millionaire.

Oblivion

After meeting my college friend Patrick last week, and listening to him rave about how great a game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is, I decided to pay a visit to our favorite public transportation station (MRT Ayala Station) to see what all the fuss is about.

Patrick reported that Oblivion was barely playable on his computer (GeForce 6800, Pentium 4 2.6GHz). My home computer is actually far weaker than Patrick's: I only have a 1.4GHz processor, but I thought that my DX9-capable, Shader Model 2.0 ATI Radeon 9600 Pro would make up the difference.

Turns out Oblivion requires SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) in order to operate. And my ancient 1.4GHz Athlon-C does not support SSE! quite a shocker, because my even more ancient Pentium-III does support SSE.

After being frustrated by not being able to play, I decided to install the game on my notebook. Of course this notebook, though billed "Vista Capable," has an Intel 945GM Express video card, which is far less capable than my desktop's Radeon 9600 Pro. But - this notebook does support SSE, and it has two cores. So even if one core is dedicated to emulating hardware T&L, it should still work, right?

I had to use Oldblivion, which is a loader for Oblivion that allows it to work on non-DX9 video cards. And.. well, it works! the graphics are underwhelming in the extreme. At least I got to hear Patrick Stewart as Emperor Uriel Septim. But I wouldn't want to play this game at such horrendous quality.

I should've gotten Company of Heroes.

Edit: Hallelujah! Jade Empire is now available for PC (released March 2007). All hail Bioware!

Cloudy Weather

Thanks to the cloudy weather in this part of the world, ALP's monthly stargazing session in Caliraya, Laguna has been canceled. So no debut for my ball scope.

The activity has actually been moved to next Saturday; but I am flying to Jakarta the day after, and I can't afford to be up all night Saturday and miss my flight.

On a slightly more positive node, I removed the expensive furniture sliders from the ball scope's base, and replaced them with bits of plastic from the martyred plastic bucket. (which I ended up not using for the upper truss assembly). There's less friction now than when I used the bucket's base as the scope base a few nights ago; but still enough (more than with the furniture sliders) that the scope doesn't sag.

Ball Scope Second Light

It was remarkably clear when Lalai and I got home. I moved the old car to the semi-covered parking slot (where the air-conditioners of the unit above drip water incessantly on the car) and Lalai parked the new car at the open parking slot, our slot. Even if there's more dust, there's no water. And dust is easy to, well, dust off.

I saw Jupiter rising in the east, Scorpius with Antares shining in its heart, Ursa Major, and Crux. Decided to take the ball scope up to the roof for another spin.

After lots of adjusting, I got the Rigel Quick Finder centered. Jupiter was fine, small and well-detailed in the Vixen 32mm Plossl (which reached focus without any problems). Not much more detail in the Vixen 12mm Plossl, and much harder to get good focus. Antares showed two horizontal diffraction lines, from my Nils Olof Carlin-style three-vane spider. I saw Dubhe and Merak, and one of them was an obvious close double (I forget which one).

Used the Rigel to star-hop a bit from Antares, looking for M4. Finally found it, but it wasn't even round at 38X, more like a sprinkling of sugar on a brown piece of paper. Yes, the light pollution is that bad!

At least, both the 32mm and 12mm Vixen eyepieces reach focus without fuss. Haven't tried them barlowed yet, but 100X seems to be the maximum for the scope at this time. I'm using Teflon-coated furniture pads to support the ball; they are just a little bit too slick, the scope has a slight tendency to sag. So obviously the ten-pound barbell weight was just right, five pounds would have been insufficient.

Problem is that the furniture pads are rubber-backed, hence they have some "give." And with almost thirty pounds pressing down on them, they certainly compress quite a bit. Which means the scope is wobbly. I have to go look for virgin Teflon pads or maybe PVC plastic sheet. That might work better than the furniture pads.

The Reality-Distorting Effects of Sentimentality

An hour after I wrote my "Old Car/New Car" blog entry, Lalai called me to pick her up at Gloria Jean's at The Fort.

As I headed downstairs, I was seized by a sudden bout of sentimentality ("poor car, it's been sitting in the open parking for a week now..") so instead of taking shiny red New Car, I decided to take Old Car.

Well.. it's not that much fun to drive. I've become accustomed to the auto tranny, so I lugged the engine on several occasions by letting off the clutch too abruptly. Yes, driving the 626 is very visceral. But that's only half because of the torque. The other half is because it's damn noisy! getting to 70 km/h in 4th gear is big business. Sure the Mazda3 takes way longer to get to that speed, but it does so in relative quiet.

And the suspension is noisier than I had remembered. I had always wanted to download some sound-level measurement software on my notebook. I had planned to record the sound of various cars going over rough pavement so I could pick the quietest one. But Lalai and I only ended up test-driving the Ford Focus and Mazda3, and the Focus is so elderly in styling that my noise considerations didn't even become relevant.

I don't feel like driving the 626 that much anymore, after that experience. It's just too.. unrefined, now, thanks to its busted suspension components.

I dropped an email to Speedlab inquiring about suspension components for the 626. Their reply floored me: 15,000 pesos for H&R springs, and a whopping 45,000 pesos for Bilstein shock absorbers.

Now the springs aren't that expensive, an OEM set would cost upward of 10,000 pesos anyway. But the Bilsteins cost three times as much as an OEM set. Of course, Bilsteins are reputed to last longer than the vehicle they're mounted on. And, both BMW and Mercedes Benz use Bilstein shocks. Quite an endorsement.

Then again, the H&R springs and Bilstein shocks combination would already cost half as much as the residual value of our old car. But for people who don't think twice about dropping 100,000 pesos ($2000) on alloy wheels, the springs and shocks would be cheap.

Getting Some Zoom-Zoom

After Mazda did their corporate restructuring under a Ford executive, one of their new marketing schemes was the tag line "Zoom Zoom."

When applied to the RX-8, Mazda6, or Miata, "Zoom Zoom" doesn't sound too out of place.

But when you consider the local 1.6L Z6-powered Mazda3, "Zoom Zoom" becomes distinctly un-funny.

Which brings Speedlab into the picture. They fabricate a K&N cold air intake kit for the Z6 which boasts an additional 12-hp at 4000 rpm and 6-hp at peak RPM. That would actually make up much of the difference between the 1.6L Z6 and our old 2.0L FS-E!

Now if I had 11,000 pesos to waste (and our Mazda3 was out of warranty..)

Ball Scope First Light

Manhandled the ball scope to the roof just a few minutes back. It's now ungodly heavy, thanks to the extra ten-pound barbell weight I epoxied to the inside of the ball. But no more top-heavy problems. Success!!

I have this theory that a five-pound weight would have been enough, but I couldn't find the five-pound weight, and the ten-pounder was just sitting there, so I used it.

The Rigel Quick Finder works as advertised. There's so much friction between the ball and the bottom half of a plastic bucket that I'm using as a base right now. This means more work for me, I have to fabricate a proper base. Which is just as well, today is Election Day and there's bound to be violence. Best to just sit here at home and work on my telescope.

The trusses have an unnerving tendency to spring out of the truss clamps at inopportune moments; I will have to fix this as well. But otherwise, things are fine. The scope reaches focus fine with my home-made 24mm eyepiece (didn't try the Vixen Plossls yet). But they should be fine as well. I hope.

New Car / Old Car

After having driven the Mazda3 for a bit, I think I can get the feel of it and how it compares to our old car, a Mazda 626.

What immediately leaps out about the Mazda3 is that the steering is sublime. I am no enthusiast driver, but it's a delight to see the nose leap left or right at a flick of the wheel. The steering is heavy and very precise, with no dead zone. It's heavier in fact than the steering of the 626 (and I thought the 626 had faulty power steering because of a fabricated power steering hose).

The Mazda3 interior is acceptable, but like the Civic FD and Toyota Vios, the roof liner is made of some paper-like substance, not cloth like the 626. The plastics on the 3 are harder. The dash looks better though, the 626 dash is so.. early '90s. Which is completely to be expected.

Both cars have very firm suspensions. Both produce lots of noise over rough pavement. The 3 is better-damped of course, it is fourteen years newer and has had the benefit of better noise suppression technology. But the comparative noise levels surprise. I would have expected a greater disparity. I always thought our 626 was noisy. Yes it is, but turns out that's normal.

Or, nothing short of a BMW or a Camry will satisfy my desire for silence.

The only areas where I think the 3 has better NVH is in engine noise suppression (the 626's firewall insulation is gone, and it has a too-small muffler meant for a 323) and damping over rough surfaces. The ball joints on the 626 are rattling loose. Same story for the bushings. The springs are weak, damping time is quite long.

The 3 has some pretty nifty little touches: the dome light comes on when you get in (even after you shut the doors). When you turn off the engine, the dome light comes on again so you can get out. But it doesn't have courtesy lamps or even map lights (the Civic FD does have map lights). The 626 has all of the above but no timer function on the dome light.

One area where the 626 completely kicks the crap out of the Mazda3 is in performance. The combination of the puny 105-hp dinosaur Z6 1.6L engine (from the 323) and the over-eager automatic transmission means lethargic performance. The gas pedal on the 3 feels like it's attached to the throttle plate by a rubber band; press on the gas and snooze for a few seconds while the engine (attempts) to catch up.

The automatic transmission is very eager to upshift, resulting in stupid combinations like 3rd gear while crawling along behind a tricycle at 1000 rpm. It also means that when you boot the gas to overtake that tricycle, there is a very noticeable lag before the transmission kicks down, and the "little engine that couldn't" squeals like a stuck piglet as it revs up and tries its best to propel the 3's sizable bulk forward (the 626 actually weighs less than the Mazda3).

Another funny thing happens when you floor the gas pedal. The revs climb to 3000+, and you actually feel this sort of shudder or vibration through the gas pedal, like the engine is really hating what it's doing and is letting you know.

I've found that keeping the automatic transmission in "manumatic" mode, and up-shifting at 3000 rpm plus, gives back (some) of the immediacy and performance of the manual transmission 626. But not all. And working the manumatic all the time to keep the engine boiling gets old really fast. Also, the Z6 is very undignified when flogged, much like a piglet getting his balls removed. The 626 is noisy too at 3000 rpm, but it's a different kind of noise, a confidence-inspiring sort of noise, like a large hog having his way with the mommy pigs.

The 1.6L engine is purely adequate for city driving, where the automatic transmission and low average speeds don't tax it beyond its rather modest limits. But I don't want to try overtaking a large bus on a provincial highway with the Mazda3. It has no authority.

The 626, meanwhile, in spite of having a sensor problem which effectively limits the engine's performance to 3000 rpm, has lots of authority. The engine is only 118-hp, another dinosaur of a Mazda engine, the FS-E. But what a difference that 13-hp and 40 N-m maximum torque make.

The engine is a long-stroke design, not square in profile like, say, the 4AGE. It has a lot of torque (compared to the Z6) down low, and can confidently propel the 626 forward even from 1000 rpm when you boot the gas. It's not such a chore to drive, even with the manual transmission, because of the torque.

I notice that my driving style of very gently stepping on the gas pedal, which works fine on the 626, results in a long line of irate drivers behind me when I'm driving the 3. The Mazda3 absolutely requires considerable depression of the throttle pedal (say, 1/3rd to 2/3rd of the way to the floor) to get any sort of scoot out of it.

Which is really funny, because the Mazda3 we got is a Limited Edition hatchback, with 16" rims, fog lights, and a full aero kit. It could actually pass for a Mazdaspeed 3 (which is what I thought it was when I saw it in the showroom). All show and no go.

Makes me wonder if we should've gotten a Hyundai Matrix with its tractor diesel engine. But, Lalai didn't like the Matrix. It's an old (circa-2000) design, and a Hyundai to boot.

The Mazda3 only has an edge over the 626 in stop and go traffic, which really taxes my clutch foot. But on a provincial highway, I would feel much more confident in the 626.

Which is why, wallet willing, I want to fix that sensor problem, replace both the springs and shocks with new ones, and fix the ball joints and whatever other rubber pieces underneath need fixing. Sure the 626's interior is slowly coming loose from age, but it's still comfortable, if somewhat dated.

The Mazda3 is really let down by the engine (which is OK, I knew coming in that the Z6 was a weakling, and Lalai doesn't mind the lethargic acceleration). For city driving to and from the office, the Mazda3 is just fine.

The idea of getting the Mazda3 2.0 R crossed our minds, but it was simply too expensive. The monthly payments on an "R" spec Mazda3 would have put us in compact SUV territory already. But if I had my way and had no regard for practicality, the Mazda6 would surely be a worthy successor to our 626. The 3 is just.. a stop along the way.

Finishing the Ball Scope

Long weekend, tomorrow is national election day. So I've had some opportunity to work on my telescope rebuild.

Everything is coming together nicely, this time I was careful not to cut too much away from the truss tubes (and end up with a too-short optical tube). It's much nicer when I can leave the scope for a few hours and go to the mall. Lets the glue dry nicely.



Problem is, it's now top heavy. When I did my initial balance estimates, the trusses were about 10 inches longer (so I thought I had enough leeway) but there was no focuser, eyepiece, diagonal, spider, or finder up on the upper truss assembly.



Now with my home-made helical focuser, Rigel Quick Finder, diagonal and holder, and eyepiece up there, the tube sags downward when it's anything less than 40 degrees from the horizontal. I will have to try putting another five-pound barbell weight inside the ball. If that doesn't work.. I'm fresh out of ideas.

Revenge on the Wedding Car

One of the things about Lalai and my wedding which really annoyed me was that the car rental company substituted a Toyota Corolla Altis J for the Altis G which we had reserved (and paid for).

Quite aside from the fact that the Altis J is used as a taxi in Cagayan de Oro City and even, rarely, here in Manila, the rental for the Altis G was a good 30% to 50% more expensive.

I didn't get to see the rental car at Mandarin when it arrived, because of that old tradition that the bride and groom see each other at the church. My brother probably didn't know the wedding car should have been an Altis G, or couldn't tell them apart.

That's what we got for attempting to save a few thousand pesos and not renting a traditional boxy white "refrigerator paint job" W124 Mercedes Benz wedding car.

Thanks to that minor disappointment, I wanted Lalai to have a better car to use, by the time our first wedding anniversary came along. It has been a year, and a lot of negotiation and incurring of debt later, we managed to make it happen.

Took delivery last May 5, 2007, the day before our anniversary. Went to Sonya's Garden in Tagaytay on our anniversary the next day.

Leaving the Mazda Makati dealership.



Lalai says it's what she always wanted, aside from a compact SUV which we can't quite afford. It was the last red Limited Edition Mazda3 hatchback at the dealership (there are supposed to be five of these in the country). Normally one can't buy hatchbacks in red, and this one has fog lights, 16" rims, side skirts, and a rear spoiler.

I actually wasn't considering the hatch, even though Lalai liked it a lot, because the "V" spec four-door Mazda3 has much better features and costs only a bit more. But Lalai wanted it and the hatch can carry my big telescope in the back. Of course being a Limited Edition it also costs more than a "V" spec four-door, which is ironic because aside from the "bling" features, it has a lower spec than the "V" four-door (no ABS, no passenger-side airbag, no electronic climate control).

But cars are supposed to be emotional. If I was practical I would never get a new car since our existing car seems to be working fine at the moment (I managed to track down and eliminate the overheating problem a few months back and so far it hasn't raised its ugly head again).

Here next to the trusty fourteen-year old car which brought me to church on to my wedding day.



It seems we do have a predisposition to red Mazda's.

That old Mazda 626 in the background has given me no end of troubles, I've literally bled for that car (while replacing a clutch master cylinder by myself, with inadequate tools). But I can't bring myself to let it go. It's faithfully served us these past four years and it's not the car's fault that bits and pieces are breaking down: it was ten years old when we bought it.

I proposed in that car, because I didn't want to bring the big red rose bouquet with engagement ring attached to the single white rose into the restaurant and raise a spectacle. That's antisocial me.

(There was this recent Sony HD camcorder ad on TV, where the guy does the exact same thing on a yacht. I had a "hey! they stole my idea!" moment when I saw that TV ad.)

I haven't been able to tinker with Old Red Mazda much because we didn't have any other transport. Maybe when I scavenge some money I'll fix the sensors, replace the shocks and springs with Eibach, and otherwise overhaul the suspension. Old Red Mazda is still very usable, if a bit gas-hungry and full of rattles, but fixing the sensors and suspension would improve that.

Sleep

I just got off an 18-hour shift at our beloved customer. Two teams of engineers (in the UK and US) came and went while I was there helping them get core dumps.

Now, after four hours of sleep, it's back to the beloved customer to see if I can still help out.

Need.. Sleep..

It's 4:45 a.m. and I'm all alone on the 30th floor! of a building which isn't that of my employer. The next time someone asks for a core file from a 35GB-sized process.. I will have a fit.

Never thought I'd be using GNU Debugger again after all these years.

Fifty Two Weeks

It was a hot, dry Saturday, just like today, exactly fifty two weeks -- a year, short a day -- when Lalai and I got married at the Archbishop's Palace in Mandaluyong. Only because of the precession of the calendar is our anniversary tomorrow, instead of today.

I remember it was very hot on that Saturday, fifty-two weeks ago, because I drove, by myself, from Mandarin Oriental to the Archbishop's Palace, with only an assistant videographer for company. Our decade-and-a-half old car had gotten as hot as an oven in the Mandarin parking lot, and it's air conditioning was not up to the task.

Lalai meanwhile went to the church in our "bridal car," which was a white rental Toyota Corolla Altis J. The entry-level model. With black sidings and a torsion-beam rear suspension. I was quite annoyed because we had paid for an Altis G, the top-end model, and we got the taxi model. Thankfully it did not have Jhess Taxi or Vhong lettered on the side.

Our wedding day did not go that well, thanks to the corners we cut due to budgetary constraints. But we didn't go into debt, and all the money we spent, except for a present from my mom (which paid for Lalai's wedding dress), we had saved ourselves.

The past year has been good to us. We have had many blessings. For which we are both very thankful.