Everything's The Worst: Bullet Points (07.30.2008)

• There's this radio commercial for the Subic Poker Club that uses pinball sounds in the background. Pinball sounds!
  
  (On a side note: I love playing poker here in the Philippines because everyone just started to learn how to play the game. And then there are those few guys who have been playing a month longer than everybody else, who size me up the moment I sit down, treating me like a rookie. So I wait for that perfect opportunity, that moment when I have the nuts (the best hand possible), and then I play it slow and wait for them to bully me out of the hand. I just check-raise them, take all their chips, and watch their face go from an arrogant sneer to a what-the-fuck-just-happened discombobulation. Sometimes, everything's the best.
  

• No one in the history of Philippine radio advertisements can say "inquiries" right. "For in-kwee-rees, call blah blah blah". It's in-kwahyuhr-ee, or at the very least, in-kwuh-ree . A person doesn't "in-queer" about a personal ad, does he?
  

• There's this guy at work that plays the same Christian, post-grunge, 3 Doors Down-like song before the day starts. Three times in a row! I don't know if this is a pre-work routine he has developed, like a baseball player batter's box dance. But can't he put earphones on so he doesn't annoy every single person in the office? It's not like he doesn't have earphones, he has them, he uses them for other songs. Why doesn't he use it for this song? This guy has managed to piss me off and intrigued me at the same.

• There's this other guy at work who has a picture of his entire face stretched out as his desktop background, taken while he was practicing Zoolander's "Blue Steel" pose at home.
  

• There's this other guy who, I swear, hates me because he's below me in the the office's hierarchy of things. Look, I know we are all the same people outside of these company walls, but it's in your job description to draw up these piping isometrics in AutoCad for me. I've asked nicely, I say my "please's" and "thank you's", but you continue to indignantly drop these prints at my desk without saying a word.
  

• I seriously still don't know which co-workers I should call "sir" and "ma'am". And I hate being called "sir" by pipe fitters in their mid-40's. I like how it is in Canada where you call everyone by their first names, regardless of how much they make.
  

• If you say you're going to wait for me outside so that I can give you a ride home, don't hitch a ride from somebody else and leave me waiting for you for 30 minutes in my car, wondering if I would be a jerk if I just leave you without saying goodbye.
  

• Gas, amirite?
  

• Whenever they start playing the national anthem before the previews start in the theaters (Yes, they play the national anthem in the theaters here. That's another thing I will never understand about this country), there are still a few too-cool-for-school people who refuse to stand up. Will it ruin your street cred if you get off your ass for two minutes for your country?
  

• People make a lot of noise in the theaters here and no one seemed to be bothered by it other than me. In Canada, you sneeze and someone hurls a cup of fountain pop at you. Here in the Phils, everyone's making comments, predicting what's going to happen next, revering the lead man's dreamy eyes, letting their mp3 ringtones run amok; and yet, not a single person seemed to care!