I might make this more regularly. Not a new habit. I was doing this quite a lot in college using the university library internet. Dropped off a cliff once senior year stuff came, and fell off once corporate work came a-calling.
No “weekly music setlist” though.
I did my bi-weekly curated news checking, and found out that the replacement show by TAPE Inc., “Tahanang Pinakamasaya” (Happiest Home) was canned. At least they allowed the outgoing cast a big farewell episode on GMA7, something they denied TVJ to have on that network station (they quit via a recorded video on Facebook). From what I’ve read, the studio incurred millions of pesos of debt, and the owners would rather pull the plug right away instead of betting hopes on a stable future. Losing the “Eat Bulaga” rights was plainly a big loss to the TAPE Inc. company. If you thought them losing their three big moneymakers in TVJ (Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto and Joey de Leon) was a gut punch, the IP loss is their double-leg amputation.
Meanwhile, the relaunched “Eat Bulaga” show on TV5 is still going well with using what worked for the crew before. I tried watching an episode, and it was clear that TVJ still had the goods on what really makes a Philippine noontime show tick. Only big issue, I think, is when these three TV icons retire. What will happen then? Maybe, only the future can tell.
I’ve lived thru the 90’s and 00’s and saw a multitude of challengers to the “Eat Bulaga” crown. Lots of them. And all of them fell by the wayside, some of which were unfortunate and some that dealt mortal wounds unto themselves (notably ABS-CBN’s MTB and Wowowee). And now, even the original studio that produced “Eat Bulaga” for decades has failed. The only show so far (I think) that could live side-by-side with “Eat Bulaga” is the show that went its own path and barely tried to “compete” with the kings – “It’s Showtime”. And last I heard, they’re set to take over the noontime slot that the “Tahanang Pinakamasaya” show left behind.
It’s very likely that the producers of “It’s Showtime” know that the only reason they stayed on this long is that they never tried to be like “Eat Bulaga”, and hopefully it stays that way. There’s room at the top of the mountain after all.
So I got a new work task last week, after the Sitefinity 13-to-14 upgrade task that went rather well (still fingers crossed no shit happens). It’s for optimizing the same web app for performance.
I’m excited for it, as it gives me reason to dig thru the code I inherited and maybe learn things along the way about this application.
Slightly worried it might trigger my OCD and chase as many millisecond gains in performance that I could gain. Script and CSS optimizations, minimizing app-to-database transactions by bulk-requesting label texts, refactoring inefficient loops and model bindings, so on and so forth. Lots of things to chase, and the biggest thing that completely ate my Friday last week was setting up a dual website for comparing performance.
We’ll see. Kendo still sucks ass in terms of resource, though.
Our housecleaner just dropped off a bagful of packed pre-prepared cooked rice and dishes (like curry and thai basil chicken) to our house last Sunday. Ostensibly, she was receiving those prepped meals by the boxful and she could not eat them all. To the point, her pets got a bit fat die to her feeding some of the rice to them. So, she asked a while ago if we could take some off her hands.
The cooked rice packs were perfect for one singular purpose: fried rice. Man, saved me some money for dinner a couple of times. The other cooked food though? Mixed bag. The butter chicken was OK, the Singapore-style chicken curry was disappointing (it was nearing its Best By date after all), and the Thai basil chicken was too salty. I don’t know how they cooked the stuff before packing but likely no one bothered to check the saltiness level. Saltiness never goes well with basil. It just sucked.
Yesterday, she handed me another big grocery bag full of rice packs. The flavor’s good enough but can be leveled up with garlic and shallots, and a few dashes of liquid seasoning, then paired with a sunny-side fried egg. Yum.
Or maybe I can experiment with other stuff to put in fried rice, like Chinese sausages. They’re on a good price at the grocery right now.
Speaking of culinary experiments… I tried making cookie butter. I had some cookies I bought from Scarlett (a Chinese grocery chain) that I grew weary of eating last year. So I crushed eight of them, put them in a food processor with two spoonfuls of peanut butter and three knobs of unsalted butter, blended until “smooth”. By smooth, I meant “food processor can’t do as finely as I wanted to so I blended for 30 minutes”.
Passable. It can be blended with milk for a morning smoothie with bananas. As far as spread on bread… too grainy. Should I have pureed it first with water before butters went in? I dunno.
Well… no choice. I’ll have to buy milk and bananas next week.
I definitely have to finish my re-play of Final Fantasy 7 Remake by the next couple of weekends before I jump to Rebirth.
Last I stopped was on the pillar climb, between Biggs and Jessie.
Probably I’ll skip some sidequests. I still remember which sidequests helped me with my endgame build in my first playthrough, so those I’ll do.
Bought a snack from 7-11, basically flavored dried chillies in a bag. Went for the “Barbeque Flavor”. I definitely did not see this when I went to Thailand, so… I’ll probably hunt for a Thai grocer here in Singapore this coming Saturday. See if I can buy some more.
They’d go FANTASTIC on fried rice as well.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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