THE LORONG OF DODONG

The year 2008 was about to end and I still had 10 days of leave credits left. Fortunately, my boss allowed me to use them in one go and I got to go back home to Cebu for a 3-week vacation. Was it really a vacation? Here's a list of the things I did (aside from celebrating Christmas and the new year):

When Bluetooth file-sharing became a standard for mobile phones, I didn't want to name my phone with my own name like most people do. At the time, I just finished reading the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings so I named it after one of the lesser known protagonists: Imrahil. After that, I got to the habit of naming my gadgets. There's no common source for the names. I just name them with whatever comes to mind. Here's the list:

1. Motorola V3i - Imrahil
2. Olympus C-350 Zoom - Dolon
3. Compaq Presario V3218TU - Adrahil
4. Sony PlayStation Portable 2000 - ParSniP
5. Samsung F480 - Tocco Schermo
6. IPod Shuffle - Yuffie

If I had bought an IPhone, I would have named it PersIPhone.

The first time I played poker was in March 2007 when I visited my brother in New Jersey. He brought me to a party with his Cebu friends and after the eating and the talking and the many kumustahans, the group decided to spend the night playing Texas Hold 'Em Poker. It was a play-and-learn session and I immediately got addicted to the game. Luckily the poker set belonged to my brother and when we went home after the party, we had a little game of our own until dawn. When everybody went to sleep, I immediately googled for the complete set of rules.

The next day, we went for a tour to West Point Military Academy and passed by Walmart on our way home. Guess what, I found a 300-chips poker set with 2 decks of cards and an aluminum briefcase for $20. Unsay dugayan, palit dayon!

When I got back to Cebu, I wasted no time in calling my drinking buddies and teaching them the game. It became the start of a weekly gathering. Every Saturday night, we would meet, buy our favorite Red Horse, and then play and drink and play and drink and play and...

I have always thought of starting my own blog when I leave the Philippines, thinking that I'll have more time for myself, but to my dismay, it's the other way around. I don't know why but it feels like time flies so fast here in Singapore and weekends just whiz past you. You wake up and realize that it's Monday again. So here I am, almost 7 months later, and I finally found a few minutes to set this thing up. As my first post, I'll explain the name I chose for this blog:

The Lorong of Dodong

Lorong is the Indonesian for alleyway which simply stands for a narrow street in a city (source here). It is commonly used in street names in Singapore and it rhymes with my nickname so the whole phrase has a nice ring to the ears (mine, at least).

This blog will be an account of whatever comes to my thoughts - ideas (bright, crazy, or stupid), happenings, opinions, plans, observations, emotions... anything - and reading this will be like taking a stroll in the alleyways of my mind. You'll get to know more of what goes on behind my timid, quiet, and...