Be That Man

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The Man Who Thinks He Can

Written by Walter Wintle

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a person’s will-
It’s all in a state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are,
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself
Before you can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can!

Starbucks Secrets

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sb
If you still don’t know about the Starbucks secret menu, you are missing out. I’ve been taking advantage of it ever since I first found out about it last year. And if you visit Starbucks often, then you should be taking advantage of it too. You’ll save some money and it’s better for your health. If you just have no clue where to start, I’m here to tell you how.

The accidental discovery

I found out about the Starbucks secret menu some time last year on accident. I was sitting quietly on a table at the Starbucks in front of Ateneo de Manila, along Katipunan Ave., when I overheard one of the baristas asking about a “short” cup of coffee. That caught my attention because as far as I knew, there were only three official Starbucks drink sizes, and these were tall, grande, and venti (small, medium, and large). Short was not one of these sizes. So I headed to Google.

What I found out after a few minutes of googling is that there was indeed a short Starbucks drink size, but it was a secret. It belonged on the Starbucks secret menu, where many other types of drinks and configurations existed out of the public eye. I was privy to “secret club” knowledge now. After reading this entry, you will be, too.

Benefits of ordering short drinks

If I’m not mistaken, you can order any Starbucks coffee drink (except frappes) in the short size. Here’s what you’ll get when you do so:

  • You will get 10 Pesos off your order (ex. a short signature hot chocolate only costs 125 Pesos while the tall version costs 135 Pesos)
  • You will get less calories/caffeine/sugar from your drink, which means it’s healthier
  • It’s easier to carry short drinks (to go) because of their smaller size
  • You will experience pride in knowing that you hold secret knowledge that other Starbucks-goers don’t know about

Is there any downside to ordering a short drink? Yes, but it’s nothing major.

I’m not trying to judge you, but if you’re a caffeine or sugar junkie, you might not get your fix out of a short Starbucks coffee drink. Also, when you order a short drink, prepare to not hear your name called out after your order is completed.

You know how, after your drink is ready, the barista shouts out the name of your drink and your name to get you to take it from the counter? They don’t do that if you order the secret short size. So if you get pride from that sort of thing, well, you’ll miss it if you order short.

Still, if you want to save a bit of money and make your drinks a little bit healthier when ordering at Starbucks, then the short drink is your friend.

Extra secret: Use Starbucks mugs

For even more savings, order your drinks with Starbucks coffee mugs (or bring your own tumblers if you can). Why? Because if you order a coffee or a chocolate drink with a mug, you will get a 5 Peso discount. So now if you order a short drink and use a Starbucks mug instead of a paper cup, you will be able to get 15 Pesos off your order! You only pay 120 Pesos for a short signature hot chocolate, which is awesome.

There are many other items available in the secret menu, but for now these are the only ones that I’ve tried ordering from our local Starbucks branches. If you want, you can go do some extra research and try out some of the other drinks and configurations yourself. Once I get around to it, I’ll definitely let you know.

P.S. Some branches also have a secret “free upsize” promo going on now (such as the Starbucks near St. Peter’s Parish along Commonwealth Ave. in Quezon City), so you should ask for that too. Enjoy your coffee!

P.P.S. Want a bigger drink instead of a smaller one? Try the Starbucks Trenta — bigger than the Venti or in other words: extra large.

Try This

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Soccer

Try something new with zero expectations. You will either breeze through it or you will struggle. What happens next will depend on how it makes you feel.

A story from 2012…

Two years ago, I was seriously out of shape. And it was starting to get really bad. But here’s the thing: I had no idea how bad it already was.

It was then that I had to join a contest of sorts, kind of like The Amazing Race, and it was set in a jungle where the participants had to perform many different kinds of physical activities. We did a lot of stuff, but one thing in particular really stuck with me. It was when we had to light a fire with nothing more than a couple of sticks and our bare hands.

Lighting a fire turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. I couldn’t last for more than 10 seconds rubbing the sticks together to start a flame. Yet all around me I saw others doing much better, with some of them even managing to make some smoke come up.

I felt so exposed, and I realized that I hadn’t ever failed so publicly in my life. All I had to do was rub two sticks together! And I still couldn’t do it.

I was so terribly weak that even my female teammates could hold on to the sticks and keep rubbing them together much longer than I could. I felt awful. And even after the event wrapped up the very next day, I still couldn’t get over what happened.

What else could I not do? My unexpected failure to start a fire in real life somehow managed to start a fire inside of my heart. To make a long story short, I started finding out more and more of my weaknesses, and I decided to fix things. I just wanted to make sure that I would at least be able to light that fire when I go back to the same event next year.

Well, I did end up participating in the same event the following year. But the setting was changed and so the challenges were all different. Still, I performed exceptionally well (I think). I managed to run really fast, fly about 20 meters or so through the air from a water slide, go from one end of the beach to another while on a rowboat, and even peel an entire coconut with my bare hands. By the end of the day, I felt like I could do anything.

And then we got to the rock climbing challenge, which had to be performed on a steep mountainside. I failed to complete it, and my team lost. But at least I had tried. Doing all of the things that I mentioned above made me realize that I should always do what I can. And whenever I can’t, I should try again.

How to Blog

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netbook and smartphone
So you want to learn how to blog. Well, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve been a quote-unquote problogger (someone who gets paid to blog) for a bit over five years now, and I have some information to share. These are things that I’ve learned on my own (often the hard way) and may or may not be of use to you, so pay attention. What’s true for me may not be true for you so take from this what you want, and leave out all the rest.

First things first: Create a blog

If you want to start blogging, then you’ve got to have a blog of your own. There are many ways of doing this.

My preferred method of creating blogs is with the use of the most popular blogging platform in the world, WordPress. You can also try any one of the following free blogging services: Blogger, Tumblr, LiveJournal, and TypePad.

There are many other blogging services available out there, but if you just stick to the ones that I mentioned above, you’re going to have a good time.

Pick a topic

Now that you’ve got your own blog, you can finally start blogging. How do you do that? Just pick a topic, and then start talking about it. It can be anything; work, your pet cat, the latest Apple iThing, whatever. After you pick a topic for your blog, you have to fill it with pretty much anything and everything that you think is relevant.

Of course, you want to avoid duplicating content that is already present in other blogs. That would be a waste of time not only for yourself but for everyone else as well.

What you want to do is make your blog full of stuff that can’t be seen anywhere else. These days, it’s hard to go around and read blogs without acquiring some form of cancer. So make your work count.

Never stop

It’s easy to start blogging. What’s hard is to keep blogging, especially if you feel like no one is reading.

Let me tell you, that feeling will never go away. Even after more than five years of being paid to blog, I still sometimes feel like no one is reading what I wrote. You’re bound to experience that, too.

I say fuck that noise and keep blogging anyway. The day you quit blogging is the day your blog dies, and you mustn’t let that happen. Keep writing essays, posting photos, and linking web sites that you think help make your blog a little bit more interesting. If you have no one else to show it to, you can at least show it to yourself.

Read other blogs

Reading other blogs is something that many bloggers do every day. I do it, too. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have anything to blog about. Even if you don’t depend on other blogs for your content, you can check out other blogs for other things, such as design tips, inspiration, and sources of useful information.

Reading other blogs is also kind of like a way to plug yourself into the social pipeline. It lets you connect to your peers, collaborate with others, and participate in relevant discussions. If nothing else, other blogs can offer you precious — and often free — online promotion.

But don’t spam other blogs. Just try to contribute as much useful information (that is relevant to whatever discussion is taking place) as you can. Whether people agree with you or not, if they take notice of your contribution, they might check out your own stuff. And that may or may not lead to you gaining a new reader or subscriber. Just don’t hurt your own chances.

Share, share, share

You’ve got to let everyone know about your blog. Perhaps not quite everyone, but everyone who you think will benefit from what you’ve blogged about.

If you have started a blog, then you most likely have something to say or share. So don’t be afraid to tell people about it. You can link them to your blog directly, or leave your links available in your various social networking profiles.

The point is, don’t hide anything. If you post something on your blog, then it must be worth sharing. And if you’re blogging about stuff that you don’t want people to know about online, then maybe you shouldn’t be blogging in the first place.

Miso-Hungry

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MISO-TEN
A few days ago I received an e-mail invitation for the soft opening of a new Japanese restaurant in a mall that I had never been to before in Quezon City. Its name is Miso-Ten, and it’s a typically small, easily accessibly, and prohibitively expensive joint found in Robinson’s Magnolia that serves freshly cooked ramen and tempura to its would-be customers.

As a tech journalist, I had no business attending such an event, but since I just re-launched this blog of mine last week, I figured I could use some new material.

I arrived earlier than the appointed time and decided to wait for the mall to open at a nearby coffee shop. I got a cup of choco but didn’t get anything to eat because I thought, I was going to have lunch at Miso-Ten anyway, right? Assuming that I would was my first mistake.
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