Flicker is the Right Word

Friday blackness. That is how it is this very moment. Interstate 90 looks like one of those highways in horror movies where creatures drop dead from the skies and into your windshield. The absence of light that could have come from civilization along this area in Wisconsin makes it hard to know what lies out there at this time of the night. Corn fields, lakes or just deserted plains, I could not exactly tell. Where few lamp posts stand are billboards pointing to eateries and gas stations. A car or two crosses the way once every 10 minutes. Other than that, nothing disturbs the blackness that takes place in the expanse where light seems to be unheard-of. Not even the starless skies connecting to the horizon somewhere is able to muddle up the supremacy of the swallowing darkness. Blackness creates a way for the horizon and the skies to mate with soft oohs and ahhs minus the spying eyes of traveling creatures.

I suspect a heavy rain would come sooner. The short dashes on the middle of the road are starting to reflect, moist from the intermittent drizzle. They used to be the inanimate whites that only illuminate when hit by bright headlights. This time around they manage to steal life from the rain droplets. The car windshield seems to agree with my thoughts as it slowly gathers moisture in a fashion akin to a bottle of cold soda left to sweat inside a humid room. Right after a flying bug hit the windshield, crushed by the impact, rain starts to fall. Blackness consumes every uncharted territory left for any flickering light. Blackness marries the rain to engender an even blacker environment. READ MORE.

Before you close this window thinking that this post might be a spam or a fraud, I would like to point out that this isn’t. This is not one of those emails you have been receiving asking for donations for a sick child in Africa who, in reality, does not exist. This is a legitimate appeal to save a child.

READ the COMPLETE TEXT.

Just a couple of miles east from the center of Brookings, South Dakota,
is a strawberry farm. I forgot the name of the farm, but it is so easy
to find the place. A big signboard can be seen at an intersection where you have
to turn right coming from Brookings downtown.

It was my first time to pick strawberries. I love
strawberries but I don’t usually pick them myself, I rather buy them
packed in plastic containers from WalMart. In stores, a pack of
strawberries can cost a little over a dollar a pound. When there are
too much supply, the price can go down quite significantly. But direct
from the farm, a pound can cost way too cheap.

Being in the field picking these teeny-weeny, cutie little fruits lying
on the ground is pure awesomeness. With the best summer day for picking,
I was all-smiles with my first experience. The fruits come in packs, a
twig can have more than 5 pieces, varying in sizes.

While others came with huge buckets, stupid me I forgot to bring a bag. A lady
who partly owns the farm, provided me with a cartoon box intended for the
picking event. I was assigned to a row of strawberries and was instructed to
pick those in my row alone and to stick a flag to mark the point where
I end. This is to give other pickers after me a clue where to start
their turn.

I had a cartoonful of strawberries after less than an hour of picking.
Not a bad speed for a first-timer. However, I felt bad to realize that I left
my camera at home. I could have taken photos while picking. Anyway, I
took a few shots upon arriving home.

Time to search for a strawberry cake recipe!

Visit LAKAW.com for more of my daily stories.

More to come later….

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton visited Brookings, South Dakota today for a town hall meeting at the Agricultural Heritage Museum.  She arrived on the dot at the scheduled time of 5:30PM.
Since
I rooted for Hillary Clinton this coming U.S. election [although I
really couldn't vote], I was eager to meet and see her in person. This
was the best time to meet a soon-to-be president of the United States,
so I thought. Also, the Agricultural Heritage Museum is just a
stone-throw away from my office or from my house.

Continue Reading…..

What are the whey protein pros and cons? Could whey protein lose those few extra fats?
Why do we need whey protein supplements in our body? Does it really
represent the best protein source for muscle-building nutrition? Should
it be part of your muscle-building diet?

My friend Val, who
drinks it everyday would want to provide you with information and facts
about the unique nutritional benefits of whey protein shakes.
People
often freak out when they see guys casually preparing a whey protein
shake using the “scary and unnatural” powder from a big plastic jar.
Some of them, who have lactose allergies, have a good reason to freak
out. Yet, others do that only because the “organic culture” drew a very
vivid stereotype for use of steroids, making any performance-enhancing
food supplements appear as POISON. Nevertheless, folks that care enough
to read about whey protein lose their fears and start using the
substance themselves. Not always, of course, but at least they lose the
prejudice attitude toward the ones who drink protein shakes. It is all
because protein is a vital nutrition for human beings and whey protein
is this same nutrition extracted from milk. CONTINUE READING  — TO MY TRAVEL BLOG.

Last Saturday, it was snowing in Black Hills, South Dakota. The day
before that, my friends and I thought the temperature will be above
zero degrees Fahrenheit. We were wrong. Just an hour before we will
reach our destination, the snow began to fall so heavily.

We
were all worried. From Brookings, we drove 5 hours to the Black Hills
region just to see Mount Rushmore, the monumental granite sculptures of
the heads of former United States presidents: George Washington
(1732-1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Theodore Roosevelt
(1858-1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Why only them? Americans
considered the four to be amongst the greatest of Presidents they ever
had.

As I’ve mentioned, we were all
worried about the weather condition bothering our view of the mountain.
With the snow falling like crazy, expect the view to be hazy or worse,
the mountain to temporarily vanish from sight. We sacrificed our work
for that day just to see the 4 faces we only read about in books when
we were still in the Philippines.

Thank God, when we reached the top, the snowfall started to subside.

My
first impression upon seeing the Mt. Rushmore is this: it isn’t as huge
as I expected. Maybe because we were far away from the mountaintop. We
only stayed at the area where tourists are allowed. Nevertheless,
whoever carved the faces did a very good job. Imagine carving the faces
5,725 feet or 1,745 m above sea level!

I
had a very good time. Finally, I’ve seen the memorial that attracts
approximately two million people annually in South Dakota.

Thanks to my Filipino friends - Cel, Ping, Janet and Minae - who made every second of our trip memorable.

Visit my blog for more stories.
See all Mt. Rushmore photos here.

There are instances in the life of a blogger that you really do not know what to blog about.  Shai calls it "dry moments".  How to fight dry moments is not so hard when you have been there quite often.

As
I was entertaining a thought of maybe writing about my upcoming 2nd
anniversary (later this month) as a blogger, I turned to Goggle to
search my name [Eric Salas] and see how it has spread over the internet
for the past couple of years via my blogs.

Voila!
Searching my name gave over 35,000 results. Most of them were from
links to my posts and few others from the professional groups that I
participated online.

It is amazing how search results could surprise you any moment!  The second page of Goggle reveals a link to www.basapa.com on his article about The 2007 Top Pinoy Probloggers.
The
post started with a collage of Filipino blogger photos [as shown
above]. I suspected that very instant that the bunch of individuals
I was seeing were the ones who made it to the list of Top Pinoy
Probloggers. To tell you honestly, I was only hoping for an honorable
mention award, you know those little acknowledgments you often read at
the bottom of a post with list of those who barely made it. So I
checked the last lines first and looked for my name. None.

I scrolled back to the beginning of the post and started reading - staring at
pictures and checking links of those in the top 10. Those links that I
haven’t visited yet, I clicked and checked and was left nodding in
agreement upon seeing the blogs. Of course Yuga will forever be the No. 1 Pinoy Problogger. Hats off to him!

Shai Coggins
came in at no. 11. Who’s next? Surprise, surprise! I saw my picture (waving at me) at
no. 12. Unbelievable, with all the thousands of Pinoy Bloggers around! I looked at the collage again to see if indeed I was there. LOL. That’s me on the top row!
Apart from the reason that I wasn’t expecting my blogs (composed gentleman and lakaw)
to be acknowledged (i need to promote my few other blogs this year), my photo that was used for the list was taken from
my Friendster account and not the ones that I have been using on my blogs
right now — two sufficient reasons for me to overlook my "own face" on
the collage. LOL.

Anyhow, I am so happy to be recognized as one of the 2007 Pinoy Probloggers, to be in the circle of amazing bloggers whose blogs have been part of my blogging routine: The J Spot, The Mommy Journals, Codamon, SELaplana, Jaypee Online, Jayvee, Touched by an Angel, Marhgil.

Now
that I have seen other interesting Filipino blogs on the list, I’m
afraid that the time I spend daily for blogging will be a little
extended.  Visit my blogs: www.lakaw.com and www.composedgentleman.com.  More blogs to be revealed soon!!

In this week’s BMJ, doctors warn of excess sorbitol intake, a widely
used sweetener in “sugar-free” products such as chewing gum and sweets.

Sorbitol has laxative properties and is poorly absorbed by the small intestine.

Their
advice follows the cases of two patients with chronic diarrhoea,
abdominal pain and severe weight loss. Although extensive
investigations were carried out, final diagnosis was only established
after detailed analysis of eating habits.

On questioning, both patients admitted consuming substantial amounts of sugar-free gum and sweets.

The
first patient (a 21 year old woman) chewed large amounts of sugar-free
gum, accounting for a total daily dose of 18-20g sorbitol (one stick of
chewing gum contains about 1.25g sorbitol). The second patient (a 46
year old man) reported chewing 20 sticks of sugar-free gum and eating
up to 200g of sweets each day, which together contained around 30g
sorbitol.

After both patients started a sorbitol free diet,
diarrhoea subsided, normal bowel movements resumed and weight gain was
achieved.

As possible side effects are usually found only within
the small print on foods containing sorbitol, consumers may be unaware
of its laxative effects and fail to recognise a link with their
gastrointestinal problems, write the authors.

In conclusion,
they say, our cases demonstrate that sorbitol consumption can cause not
only chronic diarrhoea and functional bowel complaints but also
considerable unintended weight loss (about 20% of usual body weight).
Thus, the investigation of unexplained weight loss should include
detailed dietary history with regard to foods containing sorbitol.

Source: British Medical Journal
More Interesting research results HERE.

Say, you found a stranger very attractive (however you define
attractive). Which one would you prefer: sex over a bottle of beer or
making love over a shot of vodka?

Sex over a bottle of beer is
common. All you need to do is get yourself drunk [10 bottles will
suffice] and in a matter of hours you’d find yourself in bed with the
stranger you lusted or dreamed so long to be with. Make sure that both
of you are extremely intoxicated so that the alcohol will do all the
thinking, talking, and the strategic planning of where and how you’d
perform the sex escapade - in the car, at the park, beside a big rock,
behind a tree, in the garage, or just to make it sounds so nice, in the
comfort of your own room. Continue Reading…

Two sleepless nights in the Windy City of Chicago, Illinois was,
whichever way I see it, pure fun. Okay, maybe there were few stolen
naps here and there, but two straight nights of bar fun made my
lately-not-so-exciting life ten years younger and sweeter.

The
perfect-looking couple, Mark and Xai, had the perfect tour recipe for
the new Chicago wanderer like me. As my initiation to the windy city, I
was brought immediately to a Filipino-owned karaoke bar on my first
night, after over four hours of road trip from Michigan. The couple
knew exactly what I needed - few booze shots for the karaoke trippin’
to start rolling. Continue Reading….