DAY 3 Medal Tally (November 29, 2005)
	COUNTRY	Gold	Silver	Bronze	TOTAL
1.	Philippines	41	21	25	87
2.	Vietnam	20	20	29	69
3.	Thailand	17	25	30	72
4.	Malaysia	17	13	17	47
5.	Indonesia	10	16	24	50
6.	Singapore	10	10	16	36
7.	Myanmar	6	8	8	22
8.	Brunei	0	2	2	4
9.	Laos	0	1	3	4
10.	Cambodia	0	0	1	1
11.	Timor Leste	0	0	0	0

The Philippines remains at the top of medal standings of The 23rd Southeast Asian Games with 41 gold medals. Impressive! This should make us proud. I’m too lazy to enumerate our gold medal haulers. Too many! Haha.

On our way to Star City (theme park) yesterday, we decided to pass by Rizal Memorial Sports Complex to watch some SEA Games event. We chanced on the men’s team event in gymnastics. We stayed at the (un-airconditioned) stadium for a while. Nothing exciting happening really at that time. The cheering squad of Malaysia and a handful of Vietnamese supporters were more amusing to watch. We left after around twenty minutes.

Gymnasts have insanely small waistlines and buff upper bodies. I just had to say that. How many days training in gym could get you to achieve that proportion? (Not that it’s very desirable).

Anyway, as I’ve said, we went to Star City yesterday. Kay had free ride tickets so Kid, Eric, AD, Deo, Fritz, Jed and I decided to use them. We commuted all the way to Pasay right after class.

It’s been twelve years since I’ve last been to Star City. And whatever memory of it I have is too vague for me to compare it to what Star City is now. We had fun. It’s an okay theme park, if you’re standards are not too high. Rode some rides, even wen inside the “Haunted House”, which was more of like a sauna room, really. I got really dizzy at the end of the night, I had to puke.

Wow. Vietnamese news site Thanh Nien Daily reports that Vietnam is on top of the SEA Games medal tally with 16 golds, the Philippines coming in as second with only 12 golds.

DAY 2 Medal Tally (November 28, 2005)
	COUNTRY	Gold	Silver	Bronze	TOTAL
1.	Philippines	23	10	15	48
2.	Vietnam	14	11	15	40
3.	Thailand	7	12	17	36
4.	Malaysia	7	10	8	25
5.	Indonesia	6	9	9	24
6.	Singapore	2	3	5	10
7.	Myanmar	1	4	5	10
8.	Brunei	0	1	2	3
9.	Laos	0	0	2	2
10.	Cambodia	0	0	0	0
	Timor Leste	0	0	0	0

The Philippines continues to lead the medal tally after the second day of The 23rd Southeast Asian Games. We won 18 gold medals today: three golds in diving courtesy of Sheila Mae Perez (women’s individual 3-m springboard), Kevin Ong and Brian Fabrica (men’s 10-m synchronized platform), and Zardo Domenios and Nino Carog (men’s 3-m synchronized springboard); a gold in fencing with Melly Joyce Angeles (women’s individual epee); a gold in Wushu from Pedro Quina (nanquan category); four golds in Athletics with Mercedita Manipol (women’s 10,000-m run), Henry Dagmil (men’s long jump), Danilo Fresnido (men’s javelin) and Rene Herrera (3,000-m steeplechase); four golds in Taekwondo courtesy of Tshomlee Go (men’s bantamweight), Esther Marie Singson (women’s bantamweight), Donald David Geisler (men’s lightweight) and Mary Antoinette Rivero (women’s lightweight); a gold in billiards from Alex Pagulayan, Leonardo Andam and Joven Alba (team snooker); two golds in Karate from Gretchen Malalad (women’s +60kg category) and Marna Pabillore (women’s -53kg); and ginally, a gold in Tennis with Cecil Mamiit and Eric Taino (men’s team tennis).

Phew! Keep it up, Team Philippines!

[reports from Inq7.net, ABS-CBNnews.com and 23rd SEA Games official website]

[POST-SCRIPT 23:07] Bakit iba ang medal standings sa ABC 5 at sa SEA Games official website?

CAST conducted a crash course / workshop for its applicants last Saturday. I was in school almost the whole day because of it. I’m too lazy to chronicle any more details.

The 23rd Southeast Asian Games was formally opened last night with a grand spectacle in Luneta Park. It was apparently the first time the opening ceremony was held in a public park and not in a national stadium. The entire production was well-accompanied by the majestic performance of the San Miguel Philharmonic Orchestra and the San Miguel Master Chorale under the direction of Ryan Cayabyab. I noticed that only relatively small fractions of each participating country’s delegation attended the parade, probably because most of the athletes and officials are either in training or are already in Cebu, Bacolod or Subic.

DAY 1 Medal Tally (November 27, 2005)
	COUNTRY	Gold	Silver	Bronze	TOTAL
1.	Philippines	5	5	4	14
2.	Malaysia	5	2	3	10
3.	Indonesia	2	1	1	4
4.	Vietnam	1	4	3	8
5.	Singapore	1	0	1	2
6.	Thailand	0	2	5	7
7.	Myanmar	0	0	1	1
8.	Brunei	0	0	0	0
	Cambodia	0	0	0	0
	Laos	0	0	0	0
	Timor Leste	0	0	0	0

Some of the events have taken place even before last night’s ceremony. After the first official day of the games, the Philippines ended up with an early lead at the medal tally with 5 gold medals courtesy of: Marestella Torres ( women’s long jump); Shiela Mae Perez and Cesiel Domenios (women’s 3-m synchronized springboard dive); Michael Men­doza and Belinda Agora (latin category dance); Rico Rosima and Filomena Salvador (standard category dance); and Ronato Alcano (15-ball billiards).

casino games

How to make an anti-GMA protest shirt. [link via oks.ph]

The opening ceremonies of The 23rd Southeast Asian Games will be held tomorrow at the Quirino Grandstand in Luneta. I wish I could watch it live. Would anyone kindly tell me what TV station would air the ceremonies (and the rest of the games)? Anyway, we’ve earned our first medal yesterday, a silver, courtesy of our water polo team (gold went to Singapore).

For more SEA Games info, here’s the official SEA Games website. Here’s the medal tally. There are also official websites for the SEA Games in Bacolod and the SEA Games in Cebu. Sun Star has a special SEA Games blog. There’s also an updated wikipedia entry on The 23rd SEA Games in the Philippines.

Let’s support our athletes! If you have time, watch the games live and cheer for the Philippines!

[Picture at the right from this entry at Sun Star’s special SEA Games blog]

It looks like I’ve only been updating almost just once a week. Haven’t had much time to blog. For the past few days I haven’t been going home immediately after class. And when I do get home, I tend to get to sleep right away. When I wake up early the next morning, I read stuff for school and do homeworks (yea right).

Last Monday, the ‘dinner group’ (AD, Eric, Kid, Patti and me) plus Cha, Kerch and Pheng had dinner at Lutong Bahay.

I think I should lessen these eating out with the dinner group. Nasaan na ang pagiging kuripot ko? I haven’t been eating dinner at home anymore…

Last Tuesday, Chuck asked me if I could act in his short film opposite Max. Sure, why not, I said. It would be a pleasure. The film is about a young college pair wherein the girl tells the guy that she’s not really sure if she loves him at all. Or something like that (haha, I might be misinterpreting the story). It was just a short shoot. We started after my classes in the afternoon, around 4:30 PM, until around 7:30. We still waited for the lights at the Carillon to be turned on. Walang kahulugan ang pagshu-shoot ng kissing scene sa Carillon.

I had fencing class last Wednesday. We were finally able to use the sword thingum. We were also required to watch the South-East Asian Games fencing bouts on Wednesday in San Juan. Go RP fencers!!

Later that night, I had dinner at Jollibee Philcoa with my MCO friends Kim, Flau, Christer, Ely, Ivy and Shiela, plus Kid.

Application period for MCO (Mass Communicators Organization) and CAST (Cinema Arts Society) also started this week. We’ve been having small orientations in MCO everyday since Monday. For CAST, we had our org orientation for the applicants yesterday at the CMC Skywalk. It’s so cool to see a lot of applicants. I hope all of them pursue their application until they get inducted.

Anyway, there goes my picture-heavy post to make up for not blogging for days. I’ll try to update more frequently. But that’s not a promise. Hehe.