Pinay in Jeopardy!

Unleaded : P41.37 / Liter
USD 1.00 : 50.43 Php

The kids have been going to bed early these past few days and I've been catching up on the tv. Watched House on Monday, Letterman Tuesday (Sharapova!). Tonight it was Jeopardy! I sat up quick when I saw that the lone girl contestant looked distinctly Pinay. (Don't ask me how we do it but we Pinoys can spot a fellow Pinoy like the word was tattooed on their foreheads, am I right people?)

Her name was Trisha. I didn't catch her surname so I thought the only time Trebek would say it again was if she won which looked like a long shot in the early going. She ranked last after the Jeopardy round but had a streak off the bat in Double Jeopardy. At the end of that round, she placed second with $8000 to the champion's $14,800. In Final Jeopardy the champ fumbled; our suspected Pinay nailed it and wagered enough to win.

Trebek congratulated his new champ, "Trisha Barrero". I typed it in and quickly got lost in Googleland. After a few sidesteps, I hit the right track. It turns out her name is Tricia Barreiro, "an interactive project manager from Santa Monica, California..." and Pinay indeed (GI in fact). Graduated with honors from Poveda and packed up for the states in '87. Turned 30 in 2003, single and looking. Loves traveling and game shows. She even won Ben Stein's money a few years back.

The Jeopardy stint was fairly recent (May 23, 2006) and is discussed in the Jeopardy Boards, detailed in J! Archive. I peeked at the thread about her next game and something interesting came up during chit chat:

"COIN CON CONNOISSEUR"

Alex: Tricia Barreiro is our champ. She's from Santa Monica, and she has a little strange streak in her, I think, because you taught the daughter of a foreign ex-president to do something illegal. What? Who was the ex-president?

Tricia: Oh, gosh! I don't wanna name names.

Alex: What country?

Tricia: The Philippines.

[Laughter]

Alex: Okay.

Tricia: There's not a lot to choose from.

Alex: Uh-huh. Was it a man or a woman?

Tricia: Okay, well--oh, gosh.

Alex: And what did you teach the daughter to do?

Tricia: Well, there's a public pay phone that used to take four different kinds of coins, but it's really hard to get four coins together, but it was quite easy to get two or three, and we figured out how to use two. So one day, the daughter walked up and said, "Does anybody know how to use the 2-coin trick?" And all my friends turned and pointed to me!

Alex: You don't even need the coins. If you hit it in a certain--well, that's another story.


(Hey! I knew how to do that 2-coin trick on those red payphones that took 4 ten-centavo coins. A rare craft, but it's not asked in her compatibility test.)

So who's the presidential daughter? She's the one who's been in a number of game shows herself -- as the person who uses her brains the least but never goes home empty-handed.

Return of the Manc.

Unleaded : P41.37 / Liter
USD 1.00 : 50.56 Php

The Ricky Gervais Show has returned for Season 03 and is now midway through its 6-ep run. (You know where to get it.) So far, no monkey news, no knob news, no Rockbusters. Karl's diary, check. And a new segment, poetry!

Pilkington is up front and center like before, but now seems a little blasé about it all. Maybe it's just his health -- been to hospital, tube up me knob, kidney stones. Gervais and Merchant are somewhat subdued as well. Maybe it's just slack, both fresh off the Extras Series 2 post-prod.

But make no mistake, the podcast still kills. Not to be listened to when alone in public, performing surgery, or operating heavy equipment.

Deal or no deal ordeal.

Unleaded : P42.37 / Liter
USD 1.00 : 50.26 Php

Saw a girl lose big time in Deal or No Deal tonight. After a lucky run that had the audience rallying wildly behind her, she said Deal to P299 grand with only 100G, 200G, 300G, 400G and 1M left on the board.

In a snap the crowd turned on her like she just missed the game-winning lay-up. They moaned and groaned, slapped their foreheads, tore their hair out, all shocked (shocked!) at her decision to take the money and run, not the least of whom were her personal miron a few feet away -- her posse of friends, sisters, and a co-teacher -- who earlier were screaming, squealing, bouncing in their seats with the rest of the pack.

Even the millionaire hostess got in on it. "Why oh why did you do that?" she cried as she lectured her on statistical probability and DoND logic.

"I just feel I am going to end up with less if I go on," was all the girl could muster.

Everyone in the studio shook their heads. Just imagine the head-shaking that must have been going on in her home town. Probably enough to cause a mild quake.

The girl was an awful sight. Her whole being screamed, "What have I done please don't hate me can i undeal the whole thing!" I never saw anybody become so alone so instantly. Abandoned even by friends and family quicker than you can say "Balato ko, ha!". Left on her own on national TV.

This is the way this game show works. It's as merciless as it is mindless. Nothing works up a crowd like moolah and doing next to nothing to get it. And nowhere else can you be love object one minute and leper the next in more spectacular fashion.

It would turn out (the show is played to its alternate conclusion, just to drive the stake deeper) that she would have won the million bucks had she said No Deal til the end. I'll leave the ensuing pandemonium to your imagination.


If there's any justice or decency left in this world the girl will be left alone with her loot just as promptly -- no gratuities to nobody, nothing to her favorite charity, zilch to her posse. Especially her posse. Just as the ordeal was all hers, so should the money. Big if.

New blog but not really.

I decided to do some housecleaning around here and found that my blog (or what passed for it) and its URL were stuck somewhere in the bowels of Blogger, never to be seen by anyone but me. Didn't know how to fix it so I just picked some posts to save and flushed the rest down to oblivion. I figured I'd just as soon start with a clean slate.

Easier said than done though. Staking your claim on a URL is tougher than ever in this shrinking cyber frontier, with everyone wanting their own piece of web real estate and knowing how to do it. All the prime locations are taken, some flourishing with life, others laid to waste with nothing in them but token test posts -- tombstones to mark the birth-death of the blog/URL.

Some examples of the latter: hit or miss, stuck in a moment, hunt and peck, flotsam and jetsam, the light fantastic, warts and all. Nice hooks, gone forever.