Risking Fatherhood

Recently published research showed that men have biological clocks that cause their ability to father healthy children to ebb with time. After reading the report on this, one thing is certain: they should have included Filipinos in their studies.

It is widely known that women have their own biological clock where, as they age, they become less and less able to conceive babies. I think the cut-off for them lie just after the age of 45.

Men, on the other hand, are able to father a child long after women have hung their panties out to dry and be moth-balled.

There are a number Filipino men who I think will be able to contribute to this study.

The first person that came to my mind after reading the report was the 65-plus year old Filipino, Dolphy, who, as most of you Filipinos know, managed to produce more than 15 little versions of himself. His latest wife, another celebrity by the name of Zsa Zsa Padilla, can still attest to his vigor and zest in bed. People won't be surprised to hear reports that she's pregnant with an additional Quizon heir.

Going back to the report, I have to admire those researchers for their spunk (no pun intended) and tenacity to acquire the needed data. I mean, the only way you can determine the ability of a person to father a son is to ask for his sperm samples. And to get the needed data to prove that sperm cells deteriorate through time, you need to get samples across different age groups.

Acquiring sperm samples from teenagers is a piece of cake. Everyone knows they have lots of it so they can afford to share it. They problem lies with older males. Knowing that their little sperms are slowly dying, why would they opt to give them to a medical study that only confirms what everyone already knew rather than use those few remaining healthy sperm cells to create new babies? Most old timers are already successful. They can afford to have a new baby since most of their children are already grown-ups and should have stable jobs that can support them if necessary. Why not go for another?

There will also be ethical issues that need to be addressed. One is the fact that researchers knew or, at the very least, had a hunch that a person's sperm cells deteriorate through time. By knowing this, why would they get an old person's sperm cell while knowing that there is the possibility that it may be the last batch of baby-producing sperm cell that the person will have? Is it not endangering the ability of a person to have kids?

Well, that's a HARD and STICKY issue to contend with.

Trying to be a Cook

Being an engineer, I have no problem analyzing equations as long as I know enough about the theories behind those equations. I have no worries about solving a problem as long as the problem doesn't involve naked women. When naked women are involved, I am as much an engineer as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a basketball player.

As we all know, men generally do not know how to cook. Except, of course, the occasional male who is either gay or is a professional cook.

We all know that there are professional cooks who are males. A non-professional, male cook, however, is a rare breed. A professional engineer who knows how to cook is an even rarer breed.

Take me for, example.

I know nothing about the difference between saute and fry. If you tell me to saute something, I'll end up frying it. My knowledge about slicing things is more than limited. It's negligible. If you tell me to dice some carrots, you'll end up with sliced carrots of varying sizes.

To tell you the truth, being an engineer, with all the measurement and computational skills that a top Philippine university honed, does not help in the kitchen. Even if I try my best to slice those pesky potatoes as uniformly as possible, I always end up with slices of potatoes that look like they just made a side trip to the meat grinder.

This is because men, generally, do not belong in the kitchen. There are certain skills or genetic characteristics needed in the kitchen that women have a monopoly of.

Take women's hands for example. A female hand is soft and thin as compared to a male hand that is rough, thick, and, for some, stubby. This can be a hindrance for males especially when trying to clean the innards of a fish, for example. A female can just put her finger in through the stomach and deftly pull out the insides of the fish. If a male tries to insert his thick, stubby fingers inside the fish, you'll be having fish filet for dinner.

Of course, I may be generalizing too much here. I once had a female classmate back in high school that has fingers the size of my legs. It's not pretty, I'm telling you.

I know I have a point here when I started this entry.

Wish List

Christmas is just around the corner.

Since everyone I know have a Christmas wish list already, I thought of creating my own although this particular list is not just for the holiday season but for the entire year. My aim is to get as much of these items as possible in the coming year.

• My own car. I am already going to graduate with an MBA degree and I intend to work my ass off the coming year so I'm hoping that I get to save enough money to buy one. That or I get hired by a company that provides one to its employees.
• A laptop. As I've said, I intend to work next year. What else can boost my productivity other than a brand new laptiop with a high speed processor, gigabit RAM and Wifi Internet connectivity? Heck... I can already imagine myself hanging out at a nearby Starbucks doing my reports and presentations.
• A mobile phone. But not just any mobile phone, I want the latest, slimmest phone in the market with a megapixel camera and MP3 playback capability.
• A 17" TV. I'm not asking for a Flatscreen TV nor an LCD TV. A CRT will do. I just want to watch TV while getting ready to sleep.
• A DVD player. Since I want a TV, I want a DVD player to go with it. I am not looking for a particular brand as long as the player can support all kinds of disc formats and has 5.1 surround capabilities for...
  
• A 5.1 speaker system. What's good with having a TV and a DVD player if you can't listen to it properly. A set of 5.1 speaker system from Creative Labs will do. I have a small room anyway.
• An Xbox or PS3. I want to hook it up to my TV and speaker system and play NBA Live or Madden Football.
• A digital camera with at least 4MP of resolution so I can share with you guys whatever I think is worth sharing. Whether you like it or not.
  

Looking back at my list, I realize that these are all going to be placed in my room except, of course, the car which will not fit in my room no matter how much I want to sleep with it and the laptop which will not be of much use if it stays in my room while I am at work.

But before I can start buying these things, I have to buy a couple of things for my room first:

• An office/work table.
  
• A cabinet for my books and other various items.
• A bedside table where I can place...
• A bedside lamp. I want to be able to read while lying in bed.
• A carpet or the flooring that's in my youngest brother's room. The tiles in my room can get pretty cold and the airconditioning system makes matters worse.
  

I guess I have my spending schedule cut out for me for the coming year.

Party at my Place

For those of you who know me, there's going to be a party on Monday at our house. Most of my MBA classmates will be there so, contrary to what people think of graduate students, there's no need to bring your thinking caps. No thinking, not even a smidgen of intellectual thought, is allowed there. Just bring yourself.

For those of you guys unfortunate enough to have no friends to invite over for a party, preparing for one such activity can be a daunting task. It's just below the task of explaining to your wife why the hell are you late coming home smelling nothing like you spent the night working on a report.

First off, I have to take into account the number of persons who will attend the gathering so as to prepare the requisite number of chairs and tables needed. A house party is no fun, especially for the hosts, if drunk guests keep putting their cold drinks wherever they choose. The wooden furnitures my mom carefully selected for the house will surely look like an old, moldy antique after all this.

Next, I have to think of what guests can do when they get bored with each others faces. I mean, seeing the same faces for two years in the MBA program can easily sterilize you and, helped by the beer, a person can easily mistake one of my classmates for a chihuahua. Not that my classmates look like one.

Good thing we have a videoke machine at home. At least the guests have something else to do rather than just wreck the place avoiding the scenario of me explaining to my mom why one of the chairs is in the trash.

The bad news is that I will have to buy an exchange gift worth P200, including the P35 gift wrapper.

For those of you who does not know me, you should know that I am a typical guy when it comes to shopping.

Furthermore, you'll be surprised as to the extent of my maleness. I believe that a particular hormone exists in females making it easier for them to shop for gifts or for groceries or for other things that can shopped. I hereby call this the shopping hormone.

Typical males, unfortunately, lack this particular gene. This results to me being nauseous everytime I try to go to the mall and shop for a particular object. The lack of this hormone is the reason why males usually just pick the nearest item they can reach that they deem sufficient to address whatever needs they have.

The presence of this shopping hormone in females enable them to last for more than three hours shopping or looking or just trying on a particular item.

I intend to submit this theory to the local medical association for review and further studies.

Package Deal

Funny how life can bring you surprises.

I attended a reunion of my elementary and high school classmates from Diliman Preparatory School last Saturday, December 9, 2006. There I got to see again a lot of my former classmates.

One person that I really am thankful to see there was Katherine Samson, although Samson's not her surname back then. She got married back in 2001 and had a kid from a guy who also works for the same company where she works. They got separated a couple of months after she saw her husband cheating on her.

Anyway, I saw her and we talked. I asked her how she's been. Soon, I asked for her mobile number and we ended up texting the next day. Afterwards, we ended up having dinner at Teriyaki Boy along Tomas Morato Ave. in Quezon City.

While we were talking, I managed to learn quite a few things about her, namely:

1. That she's a very impulsive person. If she wants to go with you to, say, Tagaytay or to the Mall of Asia, I say you go with her because she is serious about it. "I might have no other chance to go there so might as well seize the moment," she said.
   
2. That she wants to take things slow from now on in terms of her going into another relationship. Hey! I can't blame her. After getting cheated on in her past relationships, I can understand if she wants to take it slow. Not that I am already courting her. I want to take things slow too. Especially now that I want a serious relationship.
3. Like me, she also wants to experience bungee jumping and sky diving. Hell! We pass this way only once in our lifetime so why not enjoy it? It's also a good way to die.
4. That she's open to having a relationship right now.

Now, this girl is really special. She's interesting. She's pretty. She's funny. She's frank.

I feel that I am willing to take this relationship a bit further rather than just stay as being friends or, as I call it, dinner buddies. One thing that I am, somehow, not comfortable with is the fact that she already has a 5-year old kid. People might call it a "package deal" where I get to have a girlfriend AND a son at the same time.

Some people will pass on this arrangement. Some people will not. Me? I dunno. I really have to think about it.

Help me out! What do you think about it?