Rachel and Fran's Party

Fran just turned, um, 25 on Monday and Rachel is moving to New York. Here are some pictures from their birthday/going away party at Oceans:

Yeah, so I managed to get into just about every picture. Deal. I hardly get to be in any pictures because I'm always the one taking them. So like I said, deal.

Happy Birthday

23 years ago today the world said hello to Emily!

Happy birthday, Boo!

Kitty's Got a Cone

Mochi, the cat that lets us live in his apartment, has been chewing on his nether regions so much that it turned raw. Ouch!

I called the vet (the only one on island) to see if they sold those cones that you put on an animal's head to keep it from chewing a wound. They didn't have any, so I had to improvise. I took the top off of my blank CD case, cut a big circle in the top, and slipped it onto Mochi's head.

It was a perfect fit. My improvised cone was a little too long though, so I cut it down to about half its length, but not before taking a few pictures of Mochi looking miserable.

In other news:

Last night I went to a concert featuring the APO Hiking Society, Nanette Inventor, and Rachel Alejandro (mega-hottie).

I'm not up on my Filipino pop culture, but apparently they are all a pretty big deal in the Phillipines. I took a video of APO Hiking Society's last couple songs:

I'm Converting

After 10 years of having an hotmail account, I am finally switching over to google. My new email address is my first and last name with no dot, no underscore, or dash at gmail.com. Please update my email address. Hell, feel free to send me an email!

Also, please check out the new Beautify CNMI website, www.beautifycnmi.com. We've been adding stuff to it for months, but we only recently paid to have it hosted at the dot com address, which is much easier to remember than the blogspot nonsense...and when I say paid, I mean somebody else paid to do it.

Karaoke!!!

Tina, Diana, and I are going to start a band. We're going to call ourseleves the Halfahaoles. We go on tour next month. Look for us at your local karaoke bar.

Edit:

Google Image Labeler. It sucks you in. See for yourself. You've been warned.

Thanks, Mona via Josie! Thanks for nothing.

Guess who I saw today?

I saw Uncle Manny!

Manny Borja is my godfather. He lives in Chicago, but is visiting Saipan for two weeks for the launch (is the proper word launch?) of his new Chamorro book, Estreyas Marianas: Chamorro.

I have a signed copy already in the mail for you, Mom. Also, featured prominently in this photo is my new hat. Thanks!

Edit:

The Red Sox have exactly 11 games left in the regular season and the Yankees have exactly 11 left, too. If the Red Sox can manage to win every single one of their remaining games and if the Yankees lose every single one of their remaining games, the Red Sox will win the AL East for the first time in...well, let's not even think about that.

Hangs head in shame...

Today's Daily Pic

Myspace is truly amazing

A blast from the past:

Fishing in Massachusetts. From left to right, me, Becky, Alex, and Nathan. I have no idea which stream or river this is.

Over the weekend I got a Myspace message from some guy named Natulufugus. Turns out he's Nathan Siegwart, the kid in the picture above. He grew up in the house next door to us in Worcester.

His family left Worcester right around the same time we did, moving back to Michigan. Coincidentally he just recently moved to Florida a few months ago, but he is way up in the panhandle, a day's drive from Orlando.

This morning he sent me a few pictures from what must be right around 1986 (that would make me 8).

He claims that his sister, Becky, always had a crush on me. You decide.

Unfortunately, Becky was four years younger than me. In elementary school that was just too wide a chasm for our young hearts to cross. If only we had met in our twenties or thirties (and I was single)...

Malafunkshun Boyz

The Malafunkshun Boyz sang four songs at the Red Cross Club 200 Fundraiser. I recorded the first two. See them HERE and HERE. If you've never lived here or if you aren't Chamorro, there is no way you'll even get half the jokes. Sorry.

In the process of uploading my two videos to google, I found a bunch of Malafunkshun TV shows available online. Just do a google video search of Malafunkshun. Enjoy.

Club 200

So if you didn't already know, I cut my hair.

Emily and I went to Club 200 last night. Club 200 is the annual Red Cross fundraiser on Saipan. Tickets are $200 per couple and it includes dinner, entertainment, and a raffle ticket.

Emily's been dying for a chance to get dressed up and I try to take every opportunity I get to wear my suit (I figure that every time I wear it the cost ratio per use goes down). I also remember going to this fundraiser with my father as a kid. We were both really looking forward to going.

Dinner was nothing extraordinary; It was your usual hotel buffet spread. The entertainment was good. It was provided by the Brown Republic Band, some Polynesian dancers, and the Malafunkshun boys from Guam.

Nobody really cares about the the food and the entertainment, though. Everybody is there for the raffle. They sell over 1000 tickets every year and they give a hefty portion of the money they take in back as prize money. The grand prize this year was $15,000. There were also 20 or so smaller cash prizes. In total they gave out 64 prizes, including his and hers mopeds, power generators, travel vouchers, and even a bush cutter.

We didn't win anything.

We made a weekend of the event though. The hotel where the fundraiser was held, the Saipan World Resort, offered a special room rate to anyone attending Club 200. We checked in around 2 PM and lounged around the hotel for a few hours before the event kicked off. It was great not having to worry about parking and traffic.

The rooms at World Resort aren't as nice as the rooms at the Hyatt or as big as the rooms at Fiesta, but every single room faces the ocean and has a very spacious balcony overlooking the Saipan Lagoon. The cost of the room also includes admission to the adjoining water park, Wave Jungle, so for the price we paid our stay was very reasonable.

Today's Daily Pic

MINA Beach Cleanup

MINA has been hosting a monthly beach cleanup at Wing Beach for about 4-5 months. We go out there on the third Saturday of each month and remove the litter that has been either left by locals and tourists or illegally dumped. One would think that there would be less and less trash each month.

Wrong!

This morning we filled up an entire pickup truck bed with trash. Unbelievable! So who is leaving this trash?

Well, we found a pile of cardboard boxes with this written on them:

These boxes are obviously from one of Saipan's garment factories. Thanks, Top Fashion! Thanks, Sears!

We should all thank Top Fashion for dumping their boxes on our beaches! It gives volunteers something to do every weekend. What else would we do with our lives if we didn't have to pick up after other people? Please call and thank them for keeping us busy. They are in Tanapag and their phone number is (670) 322-1611.

As for the rest of the trash, most of it is left by people barbequing. We picked up things like cans, bottles, plates, plastic forks, etc, but we also found two car batteries and garbage bags that are obviously being dumped by people living in the area.

Flotsam and jetsam don't seem to be a problem at Wing Beach, unlike Marine Beach and Tank Beach, so keeping this beach clean is really just a matter of not littering.

Someday.

Today's Daily Pic

I have a new hat

Well, it is more of a figurative hat. I was elected to sit on the Mariana Islands Nature Alliance Board. There was a story about it in today's Saipan Tribune.

MINA is the other environmental non-profit on island. They are newer and less established than RC&D, but have a lot of the same goals. I'm really excited about this development and I'm looking forward to helping them with their upcoming projects.

Today's Daily Pic

Diana's Mwaar

A mwaar is a wreath of flowers that Carolinians wear on their heads. Cinta made the mistake of letting Diana try on her mwaar.

Managaha!

Yesterday Beautify CNMI held an appreciation BBQ for their volunteers. We spent the whole day at Managaha eating, swimming, talking, and eating. We couldn't have asked for a better day.

Here are a few pictures:

22 points

Scott Randolph, Democrat for Florida State Representative District 36, just trounced his opposition (I forgot his name already) by 22 percentage points in the Democratic Primary.

His next challenger is Sheri McInvale (R-Orlando), Orlando's Fat Katherine Harris.

Click HERE to see Radioactivequill's Top 10 Reasons to Vote for Scott Randolph

Click HERE to donate to Scott's Campaign for State Representative in Disctrict 36

Let me explain my tattoos

I'm Chamorro and I have tattoos, therefore, the following pictures are of Chamorro Tattoos (or are they half-Chamorro tattoos? You decide.)

The cross tattoo was my first tattoo. I got it in July 2003 after drinking large amounts of beer at a concert...a Christina Aguilera concert. I never expected to get a tattoo in my entire life, but I'm glad I got that first one. I like pretending that I'm a tough guy with a cross tattoo on my arm (those of you who know me know that I am no where close to being a tough guy.)

I got my barcode tattoo on Emily's 20th birthday after drinking large amounts of Grey Goose vodka (it was about a month before we started dating). Her best friend Reese invited me out with them and at dinner we all talked about getting piercings and/or tattoos to commemorate the evening. After dinner we went to a tattoo parlor in Downtown Orlando and I told the tattoo artist that I wanted to get a barcode on my neck. He said that he couldn't freehand a barcode and that it would be best if I brought him a barcode to trace. We scoured the tattoo parlor for barcodes and in the end I had to choose between a barcode on a Mountain Dew bottle or a barcode on a pack of Marlboro Lights.

I went with the Marlboro Lights.

I originally wanted to put it higher up on the back of my neck, but I decided to get it lower down on my shoulders so that I would be able to cover it up easily.

I got my Democratic Donkey Tattoo during the John Kerry Campaign in October 2004. Two ladies on the campaign wanted to get tattoos so that they would forever remember all of the hard work they had done on the campaign trail. They asked me to drive them to a tattoo parlor because I was from Orlando. While they were trying to decide between getting dove tattoos or donkey tattoos, I let it slip that if I WAS GETTING A TATTOO that I would get an ass tattooed on my ass. 30 minutes later that is exactly what I had. I really like this tattoo because it morphs into other animals. If I stretch to one side the tattoo stretches out to look like a giraffe, but if I stretch the other way the tattoo scrunches up to look like a goat. One of these days I'm going to get back into shape. Then it will just look like a donkey.

Emily hates this tattoo.

These guys know how to party

Laura has some pictures posted on her blog of Walrus' birthday party. I noticed that they were having fun with chopsticks in some of the pictures. Here are some pictures of some Japanese guys having fun with chopsticks:

These pictures were taken on the cruise ship party that Emily and I attended back in June. I didn't post any of the pictures from this party because I figured who wants to see a dozen pictures of drunken Japanese?

Speaking of Japanese, I have a video hosted on Google video of an anonymous girl in Kanazawa singing "I'm a Barbie Girl." Google video allows viewers to add labels to other people's videos. Somebody added the label "sex" to this particular video. As a result, in the last few days thousands of people have watched the video and hundreds have followed the link to this blog.

Sorry, you won't find any sex on this blog.

Razor Ramon Hard Gay...in English!!!

This really makes me want to go back to Japan. In this skit, Hard Gay runs around Shibuya interviewing young people to see if they truly appreciate their fathers on Fathers Day.

He goes to a purikura booth first. Frickin' hilarious!

On a less happy note, for some reason this is the only Hard Gay video on Google Video right now. WTF?