Bonenkai

Will eat more than drink away the bad times of 2008.
I was going to list the crappy year that was, but I could enumerate none worth listing.
For me, guess it wasn't a bad year after all.
Or I just tend to remember the good things more - seeing the glass half full.
In the spirit Slate Cleaning Day, I resolve to ...

Ken Ken

Damn you, Will Shortz for enabling my puzzle addiction further.
How best to describe Ken Ken?
Sudoku with math.
Pre-requisite: Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

For a brainier time suck: http://www.kenken.com/

Combat

There are days that going to work is like going to combat. Receiving the night assignment through SBAR (a Navy communication tool), gearing up with your equipment (saline flushes, stethoscope, scissors, etc.), and hitting the ground running – non-stop.

Shouldn't really complain. Compared to what my brother in Baghdad, this is probably nothing.

Astro

With the year wrapping up, I’m already looking forward to 2009 when a CG “Astro Boy” soars high in the sky on the big screen.

Total 80s flashback after seeing the teaser – one of the afternoon cartoons I devotedly watched, even though we didn’t have a TV. I would slip out of our house and watch it at a neighbor’s living room. As a fan, I doodled that head a lot on paper, perfecting those two pointy peaks on his head, those wide Manga eyes, and the dash of white on his hair.

And I don’t need to spend money for a psych session to understand why I identify and adore this robot and his relationship to the “Professor.” That he only wears a black brief and red boots is another story.

Sondheim's "Road Show"

Previous Sondheim-Weidman shows (“Assassins” and “Pacific Overtures”) always felt like thesis statements, rather than narratives.
Timely, ill-timed, or timeless with its real estate boom and bust sequence?
Scattered: episodic structure, songs that mostly comment on the action, and few dialogue songs – Might have worked better with that dark vaudevillian tone in “Assassins” or the ironic thrust of the Loveland sequence in “Follies.”

From the man who can write “imperturbable perspicacity” into a song, the show left me wanting for those Sondheim wordplays. In addition to listening to his discography (marveling at “A Little Night Music” more than the others at the moment), getting to know the cruciverbalist in him and trying my hand at solving Sondheim’s old crosswords from New York Magazine.

Stephen Sondheim's Crossword Puzzles: The First One

Gifts

Difficulty finding gifts for folks.
Does that mean I know little about them or I know them too well?
Also, I probably think too much.

"Nutmeg"

Downgrading Nat King Cole’s version of “The Christmas Song” this year.
New holiday staple: the yummylicious John Legend crooning his craving for "Nutmeg."
Warms my heart (and other parts of my anatomy).

Pac!

Exuding Pinoy pride at the moment after Manny Pacquiao's 8 round TKO.

“You’re still my idol,” Pacquiao told him.

“No, you’re my idol,” De La Hoya said.

-Smaller Pacquiao Topples De La Hoya

Main Event

Oscar de la Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao tonight.
This tries my loyalty.

Root for Oscar? The namesake of my Stony Brook handle, who embodies a phrase that would otherwise be an oxymoron in others: a handsome boxer.

Or Manny? Because he’s a flip, hails from the same region as me, and speaks the same dialect. Thus, my inner patriot beats.

Like the movies, root for the underdog? In this case, Pac-Man.
Set in the midst of a recession, this is so "Cinderella Man."

And for those wishing peace on earth and goodwill to men, The Philippine Star reports that the “PNP anticipates zero crime rate during Pacquiao-De la Hoya match.” Hallelujah!

Red

For community health clinical as a nursing student, my section set up camp outside of the school's cafeteria taking blood pressures, giving out free condoms and lube, and handing out literature to fellow college students much like the Jesus people handing out their tracts to heathens. We warned about having too much fun in college: drinking, having sex. Or about not having fun at all: depression.

During one of those weeks, I created an educational poster to highlight HIV/AIDS. I thought it would be cool to hand out red ribbons to raise awareness. I found myself explaining what the ribbon is for more than what HIV/AIDS was about to the "younger" generation. That gap, of seven or eight years between me and "them," felt wide. To them, "Rent" is a period piece, as old as "La Boheme." Not even a whiff of the menace the disease once felt like, the anger of those early times only a cooling ember.

This one young woman asked me, "Wearing the ribbon means you have AIDS?"
If not for the fact that I was being graded, I would've laughed at her stupidity.
I hope she's learning some other things in school.