A Day in Las Vegas

I was in Las Vegas, Nevada recently to attend to some matters that required my personal attention. There were quite a number of matters to attend to that I had to stay in town for a few days.

Anyway, I ended up staying in a hotel/casino that was right next to Steve Wynn's Wynn Las Vegas Casino.

The following is a photograph I took from my hotel room windown. It shows the Wynn and its sister casino, the Encore. The latter is nearing completion and is scheduled to open its doors to the public later this year.


While I was in town, the management at Encore announced that it was looking at filling up 5,300 positions in preparation for the casino's opening. Quite a hefty number of employment opportunities for one casino building. But everything has always been grand and ambitious in Las Vegas and the Encore is no exception.

Below is a photo of the same two buildings that I took from street level.


The following photo shows the swimming pools behind the Wynn Casino.


The following photo shows the 18-hole golf course run by the Wynn Casinos. Quite a piece of property. One can just imagine the amount of money that went and continues to go into the development of the entire Wynn casino and resort complex.


The last photo shows a shot of the mountains east of the city. This vantage point offered a beautiful view of the sunrise. Luckily, I'm an early riser and was able to admire the beauty of the sunrise every morning.


But being an early riser doesn't mean that my mental faculties rise with me for as you can see, I have no pictures of such sunrise to show you. :D

I love going to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City in New Jersey. Although I do not consider myself a gambler, I enjoy watching people gamble and I also enjoy the various forms of entertainment that both places provide. I hate noise and crowds but a casino is one place where I don't mind hearing a lot of noise and seeing a lot of people having fun.

I used to frequent Atlantic City with my late uncle. He was an excellent three-card poker player and I remember the hours I used to spend just watching him play, hours that often extended into the wee hours of the morning. Plus, we always drank and ate well whenever we were at a casino. But now that he's gone, I don't think I'll be going back to such places anytime soon. It just won't be the same without him.

As for Mr. Wynn, you can read more about this casino developer here.

Thanks For The Awards

I would just like to express my sincerest thanks to some blogger-friends who handed awards to me over the past few weeks. But let me apologize too to both Fingertalks and Gizelle for my tardiness in posting the awards. There are times when life and job simply get in the way of blogging. Hehehe Anyway, here are those awards:

First off, a big thanks to Fingertalks for the following "Arte Y Pico" Award. Her blog has been for me a constant source of inspirational quotes and lessons.


Lots of thanks also go out to Gizelle for this "Photography Buddy" award. Through the photographs she regularly features on her site, I've come to admire the beauty of both the people and city of Vienna, Austria where she and her family (especially her cute kids) are currently based.


And last but certainly not least, thanks go out to PrinsesaMusang for the following "Brillante Award". Although still new to the blogosphere, Her Royal Highness has impressed her readers not only with the quality of her posts but also with the thought she puts into them. I won't be surprised if this young lady becomes the recipient of the Carlos Palanca Award for Literature someday.


Thanks again, ladies, for the kind thoughts and words. I appreciate them a lot.

A "6 x 4" Meme

RJ tagged me for this meme. I am calling it a "6 x 4" meme because for each of its six questions, the blogger is asked to provide four answers. Anyway, here are the meme's rules:

Click copy/paste, type in your answers and tag four people in your lists! Don’t forget to change my answers to the questions with that of yours.

1. Four places I go to, over and over:

Outside of work, these are the places I go to to unwind:

* Hoboken, NJ - Frank Sinatra's birthplace, the city sits right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. One can go for a morning or evening stroll along Frank Sinatra Drive by the Hudson River where one is given a great view of the Manhattan skyline.
* My basement - It's the only place in my house that stays cool throughout the summer. This is where I get to relax to either watch my DVDs or play my CDs.
* Atlantic City, NJ - Although I don't really gamble, I love going to this place for the entertainment it provides. Plus, the city is by the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and has a long boardwalk one can take a leasurely stroll on. This was an activity I used to enjoy doing with my late uncle. However, now that he's gone, my visits to this place will certainly become quite rare.
* Philippines - As RJ said on his blog, I'll keep going to the above mentioned places until I come home.

2. Four people who e-mail me regularly:

* Former co-workers from my first job
* Former high school and college classmates
* Con men who claim to be from either Nigeria or Russia who want to gain access to my bank account
* Headhunters - There are basically two kinds: Those legitimate ones who provide me with job leads either within or outside of my current industry and ones who offer to perform a certain "job" for me. :D

3. Four of my favorite places to eat:

* Crown Palace (Marlboro, NJ) - This restaurant is in my opinion has the best Chinese dimsum and provides the most professional service of any Chinese restaurant within the Central NJ area.
* Amber's for their Pancit Malabon - Pure pancit Malabon heaven. :D
* Burger King - I love the Whopper.
* GoodAh - for their longsilog and for sentimental reasons. (However, Tapa King might soon nudge GoodAh from my list of four favorite places. We shall see. Hehehe)

4. Four places i’d rather be:

* Anywhere with my love
* Manila
* Makati
* California

5. Four TV shows I could watch over and over:

* Two And a Half Men
* Twilight Zone (reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel)
* Saturday Night Live
* Three's Company (whenever reruns of this show that starred the late John Ritter are shown on American cable tv channels)

As you can see from the shows I listed above, except for the Twilight Zone whose episodes focus on the bizarre and mysterious, I am very partial towards comedy shows whenever I sit in front of the tv. They provide me with a break from the stresses of daily life.

6. Four people I think will respond:

* Mari
* Nyl
* Aline
* Neuroticsister

Ladies, please don't let me down. Naks! Hahaha Thanks in advance.

A Baker's Erotic Tale

Snglguy tagged me for this meme that requires one to come up with a short erotica of not more than 200 words, and with the additional condition that the following words be used only once in the story:

1. sleepover
2. whip
3. handcuffs
4. leather
5. sexy
6. threesome
7. hairy
8. shotgun
9. squeeze
10. explosion

Thus, here is the Baker's first ever attempt at writing a lousy, I mean, salacious story. :D

It wasn't going to be the usual sleepover, at least not the platonic type. She walked into my humble bakery early one Monday morning clad in a sexy leather outfit and brandishing a whip.

Through the haze of the heat from my bakeshop's ovens, she had appeared. I immediately felt shy and insecure being clad in my usual hanging Speedo tank top, loose basketball shorts, and green Crocs.

She didn't care one bit about my appearance. She came up to me, squeezed my manhood through my shorts and said, "I've been watching you for days now from the sari-sari store across the street. Seeing you in that sando drenched with sweat turns me on real bad. In my dreams, I've put you in handcuffs and kissed your very hairy ass."

The sight of luscious red lips on a woman in such a seductive outfit led to a premature explosion within my poor shorts. She pulled my shorts down and licked the cum off my penis that remained stiff as a shotgun within her hot mouth.

Finally, an invitation to three days of round-the-clock threesomes with her sister left me no choice but to close my bakeshop that week.

I'm not tagging anyone for this meme. Please feel free to write one if you so wish.

First Video Ever Played on MTV

The Beijing Olympics has been all over the news lately. In fact, it has practically dominated the global news spotlight that not even a shooting war that has erupted between the former Soviet republic of Georgia and its bully-of-a-neighbor Russia could nudge it from the headlines. Anyway, as a result of these two major events, August 1 went by quietly last week with hardly anybody noticing a little milestone. On that date, the music channel MTV quietly marked its 27th anniversary.

It was on August 1, 1981 when MTV made its debut to a new generation of music lovers. It was an immediate success. It revolutionized the music industry and spawned successful sister music channels such as VH1 and CMT (Country Music Television).

The following is the music video that holds the distinction as the first ever to be played on MTV:

The song is called "Video Killed the Radio Star" and was performed by a British New Wave band called the Buggles. The song was written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley before the band was formed. However by the time the Buggles as a band came into existence, only Messr. Horn and Downes remained. Mr. Woolley was no longer with his two songwriting partners by then, having decided to pursue his own music interests.

Mr. Horn did the vocals and played bass guitar on the song while Mr. Downes played the keyboards. Two ladies, Debbie Doss and Linda Jardim, provided the backup vocals.

The song was no longer new by the time MTV made its debut in 1981. The song was originally released in October 1979 and became an immediate number one hit in the United Kingdom. Although the song got a lot of airplay and gained quite a bit of following in the United States, its sales were not strong enough to crack the Billboard Top 40.

Given the song's title, one could say that the folks at MTV were quite cocky but prescient when they decided to use it as their debut music video. At the dawn of MTV, no one could have predicted save for the visionaries at MTV that the music channel would revolutionize the music industry. It provided a new channel (no pun intended) for music artists, old and new, to be introduced to music fans.

I was already a freshman in college when I got introduced to the music videos shown on MTV. At the time, cable television was pretty much non-existent in the Philippines. People's television sets were powered by antennas then and thus, tv programming was obtained from the five Filipino TV networks that were in operation (or were allowed to operate by the Marcos Dictatorship) at the time namely, BBC 2 and RPN-9 (both stations operated by the Benedicto family), PTV-4 (operated by the government), GMA-7 (owned by Menardo Gimenez), and IBC-13 (also government-operated).

There were hour-long television shows then that featured the latest MTV videos. It was through those music video shows where I first saw new and rising recording stars such as Madonna, Duran Duran, Boy George and the Culture Club, Tears For Fears, and Wham among many others. Unfortunately, my memory is failing me at the moment for I can't recall what those shows were. Sigh. Can anybody recall what they were?

As a group, the Buggles were a one hit wonder. However, members of the band, specifically Mr. Horn, found success afterwards as a record producer for acts such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Lisa Stansfield, Yes, China Crisis, LeAnn Rimes, and Seal. Mr. Horn was also a co-writer of Seal's hit "Kiss By A Rose".

Let me leave you then with the lyrics of the song that helped usher in a music channel that forever changed the music industry.

I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you.
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through.
Oh-a oh

They took the credit for your second symphony.
Rewritten by machine and new technology,
and now I understand the problems you can see.

Oh-a oh
I met your children
Oh-a oh
What did you tell them?

Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Pictures came and broke your heart.

Oh-a-a-a oh

And now we meet in an abandoned studio.
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago.
And you remember the jingles used to go.

Oh-a oh
You were the first one.
Oh-a oh
You were the last one.

Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone to far
Oh-a-aho oh,
Oh-a-aho oh

Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.

In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone to far.
Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR.

You are a radio star.
You are a radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.