I’ve been checking out Friendster profiles, and found out how many people use MyHeritage to establish themselves as “celebrities.”  MyHeritage is the 21st century equivalent of deluded beliefs of looking like celebrities.

   It’s not that I’m immune from delusions: I take medication for delusions.  So to humor myself, I ran the MyHeritage face recognition on two of my better pictures (my yearbook pictures) and I was pleasantly surprised.

    And needless to say, my ego is inflated to the size of a scrotum stung by a thousand killer bees: the hypothesis being that all MyHeritage users are deluded.

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Exhibit A: Me without glasses:

72% Mary-Louise Parker, 72% Lalaine, 70% Joshua Jackson, 68% Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 68% Andie McDowell, 67% Gary Cooper, 66% Richard Dean Anderson, 66% Ernest Hemingway, 64% Chew Chor Meng, 63% Keanu Reeves.

   I heart MyHeritage: I have a strong resemblance to Ernest Hemingway, McGyver, and Keanu Reeves.  It figures: I read a lot of Hemingway, I watched (to a certain extent) “Babylon 5,” and MyHeritage was not the first time I was compared to Neo (that distinction goes to Krissa).  And like Keanu Reeves, I can’t act my way out of a paper bag.

Exhibit B: Me with glasses:

63% Joey Yung, 62% Daviegh Chase, 61% Takizawa Hideyaki, 58% Megan Ewing, 58% Vivien Leigh, 57% Woranuch Wongsawan, 57% Siti Nurhaliza, 56% Son Ye-jin, 56% Michael Vartan, 56% Zsa Zsa Gabor.

   Save for a celebrity named “Takizawa Hideyaki” and Michael Vartan of “Alias” and “Never Been Kissed” fame, I find MyHeritage to be dubious: how in the heck do I look like Zsa Zsa Gabor?  I mean, I’m the first one to admit that I look like a woman, but this is ridiculous.  I don’t heart MyHeritage.

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   Because I don’t heart MyHeritage, I think that people who use face-recognition technology from Shockwave Flash objects in the Internet - and take it seriously - are fools.  Insecure, pitiful wretches.  Canker sores on the herpes-infested mouth that is the indifferent society.  Hemorrhoids in the inflamed anus that is the world.  Stray bits of feces in the rectal hair of stray dogs.  Vain souls who should be first in line at the purge of sinners at Armageddon.  Locusts on the fallowed fields of life itself.  People who should be rolled into the city square chained naked into wooden cages, hanged in the gallows, dunked in boiling asphalt, paved into a road, and ran over with a steamroller.

   Figuratively speaking.

   As it seems, a couple of my friends have posted MyHeritage-related stuff in their personal websites.  I don’t know about friends who look 68% like Matt Damon, or 74% like Charlize Theron.  He sure as hell doesn’t look like Matt Damon, and she looks more like Anne Curtis than Charlize Theron.

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   But there really is no substitute to flattery: the kind of “MyHeritage” that does not require an Internet connection.  Take my dad, for example.  Here’s a 52-year-old man with a balding spot at the top of his head the size of a personal pizza, and he compares himself to Sam Milby and (goodness gracious) John Lloyd Cruz.  I love my dad and all, but I don’t see him in “Maging Sino Ka Man” anytime soon.  And oh yeah, his dancing skills are enough to win him P5,000 in “Wowowee.”

   On the outset, however, I did inherit the genetic trait of celebrity delusion from him, but of a different sort.  Last night, my friends jokingly alluded to me looking like Ryan Agoncillo in “Ysabella,” when he used hair extensions.

   Needless to say, I was flattered.  Go ahead, flatten me with a steamroller.

   Nothing is more comforting than a steaming hot bowl of bulalo.  If anything, bulalo is my favorite Filipino dish.  I’d go to many places to look for it, to eat it, and to warm my heart and soul with its quintessential simplicity and taste.

   Because bulalo is served on almost every bus stop or travel stopover in the Philippines, the proverbial hat is overflowing with all sorts of places where “the best” bulalo is served.  But if I have learned anything from eating late dinners at greasy spoons, the best bulalo is not the stuff served at Michelin-starred restaurants, or in places where it’s a mortal sin to take soup with the wrong spoon.

   But allow me to add another place to that long list of bulaluhan, where a bulalo addict like me should go in the search for the best-tasting bulalo in all 7,107 islands of the Philippines.

   It was 3 AM today when me, Jayson and Inin decided to cap off the night with a feed of bulalo at the 3H terminal at Abanao Road.  I’ve eaten bulalo in all sorts of places, and figured the bulk of them to be tasteless, chewy, sinewy, and expensive.  The bulaluhan where we ate was characteristic of the many places where I’ve eaten bulalo: dank, dark, musty, and smells of diesel oil.  This was different: it was deep inside a bus garage.  There was no sign: this is a place that you go to by word-of-mouth.  Because it was unlighted, I expected a hobo sleeping under a bus chassis or a woman being raped and snuffed out on a very dark corner of the place.  It looked like a scene straight from Wes Craven when he started out making horror films.

   The place was well-lit enough for you to see the comfort room-green paintwork, the cracked tiles, and the tattered linoleum floor.  This place had no menus or menu boards: the old signs made out of cigarette boxes or used white folders made it blatantly obvious that this place served bulalo, and nothing but bulalo.  For P60 a bowl and a P7 plate of rice, this was a cheap place.  There were no glass cases that showcased other food served.  There were no frying pans in sight: there were just dilapidated gas burners where big cauldrons of bulalo continued to simmer away.  This was a bulaluhan, in its strictest, most honest sense.

   Not exactly a family-friendly environment, either: the people who ran the place aren’t the cheery people of McDonald’s who have smiles literally sewn on their faces from serving Happy Meals.  I doubt that they would break out tambourines to sing the “Happy Birthday” song when a birthday is celebrated there (if there ever was).

   But for all the unappealing things you can say about this place, the first thing you should notice is that this place is crowded.  This is not the kind of “crowded” that there is in coffee shops in between shifts at call centers, or “crowded” Sundays at Jollibee.  This is the kind of “crowded” that says that the food here is good.  The people in there encompassed and represented a broad spectrum of society, from bus drivers to call center agents to clubbers from Legarda Road looking to stall a hangover.

   I think I know the reason why this place is crowded: the bulalo tasted damn good.  Unlike other bulaluhan’s that cheat the flavor by adding beef boullion cubes, the bulalo soup had that unmistakable flavor of bone marrow and beef that has simmered for hours, and imparted its flavor on the stock.  The beef was extremely tender, but still retained its texture and its character.

   The most impressive thing about it is that it didn’t need any side condiments like soy sauce or patis: it was perfectly seasoned.  You won’t see the smallest packet of Ajinomoto in the place: it was simply stock and beef garnished with young onion leeks.  I think that the bulalo was an old family recipe that wouldn’t be sold even to the Sultan of Brunei himself.

   Yup, Jayson was right.  Best.  Bulalo.  Ever.  Don’t mind the screaming woman.

   I had a lot of fun last night.  Too bad I didn’t bring my own digital camera, so the pictures will have to wait until next time.  Although I must point out that a few things didn’t go according to plan:

• I didn’t get really drunk and wasted;
• I didn’t get to watch the UP Baguio Lantern Parade, much less attended Pasiklaban, and;
• Because I’m not drunk, I’m blogging with a really benign hangover.

   With bullet-points over and done with, let’s get to blogging.

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   Last night, me and a few friends from high school got together to celebrate Christmas the best way we could: good food, good drink, and good companionship.  There was Dette and her boyfriend Bep, our two engineers Lincoln and McJames, our future engineer Chedan, our registered nurse Aaron, our future registered nurse Mickey, our insurance agent Haidee, our future events-planner Katz, Jayson and his wife Inin, and our future pharmacist Rhoda.  My good friend Noel couldn’t come to the party because he had a company Christmas party to attend, but showed up for a couple of minutes to say hello.

   We started off the night by having dinner at Kubong Sawali by Military Cut-Off Road.  “A bite to eat” is a nuanced expression: since it’s Christmas, we ordered three bilao’s of mixed seafood platters that included octopus, grilled squid, tuna sashimi, steamed mussels, steamed tilapia, and rellenong bangus.  While I’m not the biggest fan of seafood, I had a particular liking for the squid.  The tuna sashimi, while not very fresh, was quite good even if the wasabi obviously was the kind that comes in a tube.

   Because it was about time I treated my friends, I decided that a round of beers at 18 BC at Legarda Road to prime our stomachs was just the way to do it.  Then, at Aaron’s suggestion, we headed off to Samurai Comedy Bar, found at the basement of La Azotea.

   I can’t say that I like comedy bars: I’m not a fan of gay humor.  But if anything, there’s something enjoyable about comedy bars if you’re not dragged into the stage to interact with a gay dude.  It got very funny when both Jayson and Bep were dragged into said stage.  I just hope that that they didn’t hear me calling them “animal food-trough wipers” on the way out.  Ah, what I wouldn’t do to find a comedy bar inspired by “Monty Python.”

   We headed off to Nevada Square to end the night.

   Pictures to follow… something tells me this will be better if I posted pictures.