This was a spontaneous idea. I wish I could do more "silent" strips, unfortunately trying to deliberately come up with one is a lot harder than coming up with a dialogue going.

Would you believe I was flabbergasted to know that Alanis Morissette dropped by to do a concert when I read this recently? I was like, "WHEN?!" Hehe. Yeah, I freak myself out.

Just another birthday strip for Jeff, 'nuff said.

This is a remake of an old strip which originally features one of my best friends in college making the wise crack. It never saw print anyway so I changed to feature one of my closest friends in high school as a birthday greeting for him.

This is the second and last of the strips starring local professional basketball players whom I personally know. The second panel should show them before or after the handshake as I didn't know how to draw people interacting with each other at the time.

I personally got to know some local professional basketball players care of my brother back in the early to mid 90s. We watched their practice along with some other fans of the different teams here in a gym right after school and got to watch their games care of a couple of complimentary tickets and what-nots. Some of them remain good friends of my brother and I to this day, one of these being Jeffrey Cariaso. Good guy, very down-to-earth, and him and his Fil-Am posse back then (his cousin, Lyle, included here; Jay, which became a player in the MBA; and Joey, and Barry) were a pretty much a happy group and I was pretty fortunate to have hung out with them off the court.

The reference to nail polish was made during the time the family first arrived in Hong Kong and me and my sister saw these myriad of colors available, which at the time saw only different shades of red and none of the funky colors which came much, much later here in the Philippines. These days you don't see girls painting their nails as it's so 90s.

Ah, basketball. Nobody talks about it anymore unlike the old days back in the early 90s. The reference to the Orguss 02 OAV was made because of the sheer novelty of watching the first episode where robotics technology meets 1930s sensibilities. It was sheer genius for me at the time (Japanese cartoons and comics haven't entered the mainstream at that time).

This was how it went with two of my close friends outside the building while waiting for next class back in college. It was so funny I had to include it in this strip.

I bow my head in shame.

I don't usually put this much detail in props, especially newspapers because drawing the lines that stand for newspaper articles is tedious. I made an exception with this one because the panels would look too empty save for the details on the school paper Jason's holding. By the way, these two talking to each other is an aberration because, well, it's a long story but let's just say they've got a huge accidental rivalry going on between them.

I'm mighty proud of the details I did on this one which shows the 1.) old school grounds I grew up with in my alma mate, 2.) the argyle design on Wilfred's sweater which I wouldn't normally attempt if I didn't have that much time in my hands at the time.