My Super Wrench

I was running errands at Robinsons Pioneer when i came upon this guy demonstrating his wares. He was selling Super Wrenches. Being a sucker for tools and since it had my name on it, i just had to listen to him. The tool was actually very handy. Being a person who likes doing stuff myself, i know that it can come in handy when the need arises. What clinched the deal was this antic of his where he clamps the wrench on a pole beside him and then lifts his whole body while holding on to the clamped wrench. My vise grip often slips on me so if this thing can actually do this then i must have it :) Before buying, i went to the nearby Handyman store and checked out the cost of wrenches and vise grips. Yep, 500 pesos for a set of 3 wrenches was a good deal so i went to the ATM for a quick withdrawal and got my own set. So far, i got that pesky wheel off my rolling stool without damaging the stool. If you find this tool in the mall, get it.

Skills

I’m currently reading the Oct 2007 edition of Popular Mechanics. Glenn Reynolds wrote an article about “Forgetting the Basics.” His first paragraph was a quote of science fiction author Robert Heinlein, who wrote:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

After reading this paragraph, I realized how much I have learned through the years. In the sci-fi world of Heinlein, I’m actually human. I haven’t conned a ship but I’ve read something about it. Setting a bone is part of being a doctor. I designed a small house in a virtual environment. I learned programming when I was 9 years old in 1982. I can cook a little and having been in karate for 25 years, I can fight efficiently.

Reynolds says that Heinlein’s description is a tall order given how kids these days are. In this instance, I’m glad I was born when I did. My dad wasn’t the kind who would teach me stuff. He actually didn’t like my asking all those questions and touching the stuff he was doing. He did let me watch when he tinkered with stuff and he did purchase an entire set of science encyclopedia books. Luckily, I never did get into a LOT of trouble with trying out what I learned and experimenting on my own. I had cuts, bruises, burns and more than the average share of electrocutions but i’m still whole and functioning well.

As I was growing up, I realized that some of the things I learned needed to be shared. It would be a shame to let all that experience go to waste. I tried teaching my baby brother little by little but he was not that eager to learn. He does ask if there is something that he wants to know so I’m happy that he is that way. I do hope that my future children will have the same curiosity and aptitude that I have so that I can teach them everything. And yes, I will teach them. I wont just show but I will try to explain why things are done that way and more important, why it is safer to do it that way.

My first Swiss army knife was this huge complete thing I bought from my Flight Attendant Tita who sold it to me for 900 pesos while I was in grade 7. It now costs almost 4000 pesos. I love that thing. It had everything but I always felt hesitant to use it because it was so nice. I eventually got myself a small one that goes with my keys and I won a medium sized one in college during the Physics department’s McGyver contest. Those I used with gusto. The funkiest thing I did with a swiss knife was during our tour in Europe. One of our group was this girl who had braces. She was in so much pain because the wire at the back was poking her cheeks. She forgot to visit her orthodontist before leaving. I volunteered to fix it J Yeah, while the bus was stopped, I took out my trusty swiss knife, cleaned it with alcohol and cut that wire inside her mouth.

My parents dreaded the day I finally bought my own screw driver. I think I was 9. Nothing was sacred. I opened everything I can. Some… needed time to get put back together. During those times, whenever something doesn’t work when my parents got home, they would scream my name to ask me to explain. It wasn’t always because I opened it. I think they eventually forgave me when I started being able to actually repair things that they themselves broke. I can solder wiring, figure out which component is malfunctioning (just the basics), and I can rewire circuits.

I’m now in my power tools phase. I’m being extra careful. I need my fingers for doing surgery in the future :)

Massacre in 2 months

I just became the 3rd man in a delegation to participate in the goodwill games of the International Shotokan Karate Federation in San Francisco. The competition is on Oct. 21-22. This will also be an opportunity to meet and talk to the Chief instructor of the ISKF, Sensei Teruyuki Okazaki. He is a 9th dan black belt and the oldest living student of the Father of Modern Day Karate, Sensei Gichin Funakoshi. I guess that the honor plus the fact that im represnting my country is worth getting beat up.

Yeah, beat up because i have an inexplicably heavy weight for my height. This means that i will probably be in the same weight class as a bunch of 6 foot and up karatekas. Im only 5'7" so do the math. Still, im counting on the next few weeks to get me in better shape to do this.

So if you see me walking like i got raped by the Village people or wincing at every move, that's the reason.

My world map

My uncle has this globe in his place that was filled with pins. Each pin turned out to be a place he visited and placed a certain object in. The globe was really full of these pins including one in each of the polar regions.

I recently stumbled onto a feature of facebook where you mark each city that you have visited. After checking it out, i ended up with this map.

I have been saving up air miles and money to go back to Paris but i think i should reconsider and check out other places that i havent been to. Im a long way from matching my uncle's globe.

.... im single... Iceland!!!!

The thief grandson of that thieving former president

(Bleh! I was asked to rewrite this by my lawyer friend. He said not to name names so that he wont have to spend time defending me. Dude, im doing this reluctantly.)

Almost a decade ago, while i was in med school, i realized that i needed to setup a way to finance my being a doctor. I knew that being in medicine doesn't necessarily mean that i will have a lot of money, not in this country. With this in mind, i called in 4 people who wanted to invest in my first company. For a total of 150,000 pesos, we were able to setup a decent internet cafe in front of La Salle Health Sciences Campus in Dasmariñas, Cavite. We were the first and did pretty well. However, this endeavor taught me a few things. Among these were, 1) Choose your partners, particularly choose competent ones and 2) know when to quit. I eventually felt that, being the one managing the network, i was spending too much time in it. I decided that i didn't want it anymore and asked them to either buy me out or sell and split the profits.

The greedy one in our group partnered with this so called real estate guy and grandson of this former president whom i'll just call Emilio Alingago. This guy's name is Emilio Alingago III. I should have listened well to my history teacher and figured out that this guy will be just as big a thief as his grandfather. You see, we drew up an agreement that they would pay us our asking price in installments. Alingago had the patsy pay the first part first then when it was time to collect his half, he just paid one and refused to pay the rest. We kept coming to collect and they kept begging off even though they were still operating the cafe. Later, i went to his house and when i asked him, he said that he will not pay. I said i'll just have to sue. As i was walking back to my car in his driveway, he slapped me from behind. The funny thing was that he didn't punch but slapped! What kind of a guy slaps another guy? Thats beside the point. I turned and when i was about to retaliate, he hid behind his wife who begged me to go. I noticed that i was still inside his gate and beating him up inside his property might put me in a bad legal position.

I talked to my lawyer then and after demand letters were sent, we didnt hear from him. Im not sure if my lawyer was right when he said that running after a mere 125,000 (total selling price was 250k) was worth it since i might spend just as much in trying to recover it. Anyway, i frequently feel the urge to either grab a rifle and shoot him in the b**ls or just plain draw him out and have him fight me to the end. My fear of God always keeps me at bay plus the fifth Dojo Kun (the principles of karate that we recite loudly each time we practice) is to refrain from violent behavior. My friends and family know that i have always been gentle and have avoided fights even though i am very capable of defending myself. However, they dont know that it is a frequent exercise to cool these thoughts. Thoughts of teaching people who are bad a lesson. My priest once said that it is normal to have these thoughts enter your mind and it is only when you foster it or act on it that is bad. Anyway, a short prayer or soft music provides a good change in my stream of thought. I know God will take care of things later but i guess i will always have these thoughts to entertain whenever i remember him. Actually, it isnt that much of a bother because we did get paid and having that company taught me quite a bit about business. I had unlimited internet which helped learn more about stuff in the WWW. Plus, to top it all, it helps to exercise control since it will build up my patience. This will always help me be able to keep my cool and avoid tearing "evil-doers" to shreds. I guess im pretty much more of Superman than Batman, oui? :)

Celebrity look alikes

I just tried out this celebrity look alike program with MyHeritage.com. I had to try it with more than one picture because.. i'll show you why.As you can see, my first picture shows my top 3 look-alikes as 2 women and Jet Li. Heck, of the list, half of them are women! Hmm.. tom welling played superman right? ;) Basing it on the first picture, the picture i used in my passport, it is saying that i look 50% like a girl if i shave and stuff.

Now, this second picture is one taken while having abstained from shaving for a couple of days and i haven't combed for the picture as well. At least now i look like other guys. Terence Howard just went up and Jet Li and Tom Welling disappeared. Who the heck are these other guys?

Maintenance is key

I just spent 4 hours reorganizing the spare equipment and storage boxes of my parents. I threw out another pair of sacks full of junk. You see, my grandmother is a bit of a packrat and my mom seems to have imbibed this trait. My dad, after having spent decades with her, probably got infected. He has a few hundred thousand pesos worth of optical equipment sitting at the hall gathering dust. Worse was that the most expensive chair (the one he wouldn't even let us sit on when we were kids) was in the dirty area outside with the shovel and a bunch of stuff leaning on it. I had to clean up the place because i cant stand seeing it.

The point of this entry is that i realized how important it is to know how to maintain your equipment so as to keep them in good working order. It will also save you money in buying new stuff. Sometimes it is as simple as just wiping away grime and putting grease on the area. Please note that i said grease and not WD40. Grease lubricates, WD40 actually removes grease even though it does provide a certain amount of lubrication that lasts for a short time. An example is that you put grease or machine oil in hinges (house or car doors) but you put WD40 on nuts and bolts that you dont want to rust away. I put WD40 on my battery terminals, too. I realized that it keeps the terminals from having those white residue. Perhaps the proof that what im saying works is the fact that my Lia (my lancer) still runs well at 14 years. While the other cars being used by my siblings have been handling really poorly. My sister had to spend thousands to have the pickup that she is using repaired because the one who used to drive it really didnt know anything about cars (or simply anything for that matter).

When i visited my uncle, i got pretty bored so i started to clean his backyard while they worked. Autumn sucks because i hated raking all those leaves. While at it, i stumbled onto his outdoor grill. It looked ok, just dirty. Inside, again, it was dirty. He left it that way because he said that there was something wrong with it. Since i couldn't resist the challenge, i grabbed his tools and surgically disassembled the thing. When he got home, i told him that i can fix his grill by just replacing the burner and by buying new lava rocks (normally you would use charcoal but this thing runs on propane fed into a burner and it would suck to roast stuff directly so you need these newfangled lava rocks to store the heat from the flame and gradually cook your food). He didn't believe me since when he was with us, i was still in the anything-i-open-will-get-put-back-but-not-necessarily-working stage of my Do-it-yourself training. He figured that it was worth a try since buying a new grill would cost hundreds of dollars. He bought the new burner for 17 dollars and a less than 10 dollar bag of cooking rocks. I installed it and when he saw it work (plus the fact that i cleaned the backyard), we had a cookout that weekend.

Yes, i like fixing things but i do know that some things are beyond my skills and will gladly step aside for experts. I believe that this is a good trait for a doctor, too.

Controlling Colds

This aint in any single med book but perhaps it would help others if i share this particular bit of knowledge.

It is raining a lot these days so colds will be common. If youre like me, your cold might start out with a sore throat and/or a runny nose. If this happens, start taking extra vitamin C (even just an extra 500 mg per day) and lots of water. Dont take too much vitamin C because it wont do you any good since youre just going to pee away the extra and may affect vitamin E. Gargle antibacterials and take lozenges for your throat.

The thing i really want to share is that when you get a runny nose, dont sniffle. Keep blowing your nose (dont cover one nostril and blow because you might bust your eardrum instead). Sniffling, specially the vigorous kind, might bring the bacteria into your lungs and eventually give you a lower respiratory infection on top of your current upper respiratory one. By just blowing your nose you make air go ourwards and not inwards which is the case when you sniff.

Sometimes, it fails but at the very least, you have a fighting chance of keeping the infection above the neck.