TheFranciscos.Net

Hell yeah! May bagong kanta ang The Youth! One of my all-time Pinoy favorites is back from the dead. I found this on YouTube and wanted to share - here’s “Taong Grasa” by The Youth. Lagi ko pa din pinapatugtog ang “Album Na Walang Pamagat”… definitely the best album that came out of the Pinoy Alternative craze back in the mid-90s. Apparently, this new song came out early 2006. If anybody has news about them, please let me know. Salamat.

Long time since the last post. Aileen, Zoe and I have been busy taking care of our new addition in the family, Rafael. Most of you know about this now anyway, but in case you don’t, here are his vitals (about 6 months late):

Zac Rafael Concepcion Francisco
Born At: East Texas Medical Center
On: January 30, 2007 at 4:57 AM
Weight: 6 lbs, 14 oz.
Length: 19 1/2 in.

As of his last checkup about a month ago, he’s now a healthy 17 lbs, and about 21 in. Mother, father and big sister are all doing fine too. Thanks for all the good wishes!

The day I set foot out of my house to leave the Philippines and move to the States, I knew that this day would eventually come. It’s been 8 years since then, but it still doesn’t make it any less significant. Yes, I’m finally eligible to apply for US citizenship. What does that really mean though? Ibig ba sabihin non puputi na ako? Does it mean that I’m turning my back on the Philippines? The subject of immigration by Pinoys has been beaten to death by a lot of Pinoy bloggers (including an excellent post on it by the great Jim Paredes on his site), but for me, it is simply a formality. I’ve lived in the States for about 8-9 now, and I don’t have any plans of leaving, so why not reap the benefits of being a citizen? I’ll have a blue passport, have social security benefits (or what will be left of it when it comes time for me and Aileen to retire), and be able to petition my relatives from the Philippines to live here.

I’ll always love the Philippines, and will always be proud of being Pinoy. Becoming a US citizen doesn’t change that. I don’t even have to renounce being a Filipino citizen. As they say, there’s no place like home, and I feel that I will always consider the Philippines my home.

This week sucked. The picture below sums it all up.

Flight delays and cancellations are inevitable in the life of a business traveller, but this week’s trip just takes the cake. I had to spend one night in Houston enroute to a customer site at Biloxi, MS because of thunderstorms. Good thing M & D now live there so they were able to pick me up and I was able to spend the night at their place. Unlike some of the other poor saps that were forced to sleep on the floor of Terminal B, I got to sleep on a nice bed. The next day, after waiting to go on 4 flights on standby and not getting in, I finally got to Biloxi in the afternoon. My luggage didn’t fare as well as I did though, and actually didn’t see my luggage until I was back in Tyler. Anyway, I took a flight to go home the next day, and again, thunderstorms messed up my flight plans. I almost had to spend another night in Houston since all flights to Tyler were cancelled. I lucked out though and was able to rent the last available car at Advantage. I drove home that night, tired and pissed off at the whole week-long ordeal, but glad that I would be spending the night at home.

One thing I’m proud of is that considering how pissed off I was at the airport, I was able to fight off urges to scream and let off some steam at the customer service reps. In fact, I noticed that most of the people that were screaming bloody murder were people who (at least in my perception) weren’t frequent fliers. Maybe I’m just more patient with airport snafus since I deal with it all the time, but this week’s problems were above and beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before in my travels. Still I kept my cool. I must be mellowing in my old age.

Today is a sad day for music… I just read on MSNBC that Tower Records announced recently that they were liquidating their assets and going out of business. This doesn’t come as a surprise though - their prices haven’t been competitive for years now. Shops like Best Buy, Circuit City, and even Walmart have been bringing CD prices down to rock-bottom. A B&M with mostly only CDs and DVDs to sell simply can’t compete with that. Still, none of them even come close to having the selection that Tower had. I used to go to the Tower branch in downtown Philadelphia whenever I had the time (or when I was bored with work) during my days working at First Union. There was also the branch right across the street in King Of Prussia that I used to frequent. More recently, I was working on a project in Nashville a few months ago, and right across my hotel was a Tower store that I visited whenever I could. Many nights (not to mention many dollars) were spent browsing CDs and DVDs in those aisles. This was a sanctuary to me where I relieved stress and depressurize after a long, hard day. Besides the vast selection of domestically produced CDs, it also had a wide array of imported CDs that no other store (at least the B&M sort) came close to. The people who worked there also seemed like they loved what they were doing. They were always knowledgable with music (any kind), and were genuinely friendly. I’ll always have fond memories of Tower Records.

So what can we do as a replacement now? Well, there’s always the internet. This is how I’ve been buying most of my CDs lately anyway since I haven’t lived near a Tower Records in years. There’s a couple of stores like SirenCD, Duffelbag, GEMM, SecondSpin and even Amazon and Ebay to fulfill my CD addiction needs. Still, internet shopping doesn’t and will never have the same sense of instant gratification that you can only get at a regular B&M store, but it will have to do.

Long live Tower Records! I’ll drink a beer (or six) in your memory tonight.

I’ll keep it short but sweet - “The Departed” is no “GoodFellas” (nor was I expecting it to be), but this is one helluva movie. Great performances all around from Leo and Matt (neither of whom I was ever a fan of), to Martin Sheen and of course the always excellent Jack Nicholson. Even Mark Wahlberg had a great, albeit short role, as the second-in-command of “The Staties” (Boston slang for state cops).

This is not a gangster movie. Rather, it shows how two moles infiltrate different sides of the law. I’ve read that it’s based on the Chinese movie “Internal Affairs”. which I haven’t seen yet. I’m not sure how much of the script is a direct translation, but one thing “The Departed” has as an advantage over its Asian counterpart is Mr. Nicholson. There is simply nobody else that can deliver those lines of dialogue quite the way he does.

This is another career milestone for director Martin Scorsese. Maybe this time the academy will finally give him the Oscar for Best Director. Well worth your time and money.

I’m about halfway done with my courses to earn my MBA degree from Indiana University, currently taking up a MacroEconomics course (C561 - The US In a Global Economy, to be exact), and it dawned on me that I’ve never even mentioned that I’ve been working on my MBA on the blog. So I’ll jump right into explaining what led me to pursue it.

A little over a year and a half ago, I began to look at MBA programs that were being offered online. Why did I want to pursue an MBA? Many different reasons, but it basically boils down to improving myself and keeping competitive. Why an online degree? I’ve got a wife, a daughter, not to mention a job that requires me to be on the road around 60% of the week. If I wanted an MBA, either full-time or even part-time, that would have been a major disruption in my family’s lifestyle.

I started by taking the GMAT and TOEFL exams. I aced the TOEFL (I think Pinoys should be exempted from taking this since we generally speak good english), and did pretty good on my GMAT (I surprised even myself by getting a 700 on it with only 2 weeks of studying). I then started to look around at prospective B-schools. My selection process was pretty simple. I simply looked at the top schools on the Business Week list, checked to see if they offered an online version, and found out if the program was within my budget. I wanted to spend around $40,000 or so maximum, and because of this, some schools were out of my reach (Duke, Thunderbird, etc.). I eventually narrowed it down to 2 schools - Arizona State University (#31 on the BWeek list) and Indiana University (#20). They both had similar programs costing almost the same amount with the main difference being courses being offered sequentially (ASU) versus parallel (IU). I eventually chose IU mainly by default since I just missed the ASU application deadline by about 2 days by the time I got my recommendations together. I submitted my application in mid-July last year, got approved 2 weeks later, and flew to the IU campus in mid-August to start the first introductory course (other courses were done online).

Anyway, school has been pretty much what I expect it to be. I believe I’ve been getting as much knowledge as I would have gotten from a regular brick and mortar university, plus I have the added bonus of being able to study at my own pace. I’m halfway done now, and I’ve throttled down the number of courses I’m taking from 2 to 1 per quarter. Taking 2 courses at a time was just so hectic at times so I decided to take it easy. I’ll finish the course in 3 years instead of the regular 2 that it takes, but I think it will make things easier for me in my personal life.

At any rate though, I’d definitely recommend online learning to anybody who is thinking about getting an MBA (or any advanced degree).

I’ll be posting pictures (new and old) sometime soon, but in the meantime, here are some pictures with our friends Eugene and Mae in Washington DC during our trip there last week (courtesy of Tayam.Net). Most of these pictures are from the Natural History Museum and the Air & Space Museum at the Smithsonian.

“Look dad, it’s kryptonite.”

Everybody within earshot broke into laughter, and Zoe just looked at me with an impish smile. My daughter is truly a comedian at heart.

Here’s a list of stuff that I’ve been into this year:

TV: House, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, CSI, and Heroes (my vote for best new series of the year). I’m also a fan of 24 and The Sopranos. Can’t wait until their new seasons start next year.
Movies: The only movie that stands out for me this year has been Monster House. X3 (X-Men 3) was pretty good, although not as good as the Bryan Singer movies. Superman Returns was a little on the disappointing side.
Music: Sam’s Town - The Killers, Stadium Arcadium - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Major Lodge Victory - Gin Blossoms, Etc - Lloyd Cole, Under Attack - The Alarm. There’s also been a lot of good OPM music that’s come out recently the ones I listed to the most are Dong Abay - Flipino, Manila High - Kala, Makatha (self-titled) and Peace Pipe (self-titled).
Websites: Emusic, Newsarama, Comics101, Home Theater Forum
Comics/Graphic Novels: Fables by Bill Willingham, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, Life & Times Of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa, Y: The Last Man by Brian Vaughan, Ex Machina by Brian Vaughan, and Powers by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. I’m also looking forward to The Eternals by Neil Gaiman and the new Wildstorm titles by Grant Morrison. The Zsazsa Zaturnnah graphic novel by Carlo Vergara that I picked up during our recent trip to Manila was also very entertaining.