I'm back!

Yehey, it looks like I'm back. Hopefully my DSL access will be permanent. I had my techie brother come over and fix my connection. Hopefully this will stop the intermittent connection.

Sorry for being so out of touch this past month. I had friends and loved ones calling and texting if I'm still alive. Well, I'm still alive and kicking.

Let me see, what happened the past month...

My brother-in-law who's based in the US came home before Halloween and he and my sister went around the country beach-hopping. We also joined them at Anilao. Here are some pictures.

This is my very cute niece, Chloe Mei. She's five months when this picture was taken. She's growing to be really fat and sassy :)She looks like my family. I don't know how much she weighs right now but she's really heavy. I carried her when they went trick or treating in the office. My arms grew weary and tired after a few minutes of carrying her. She was dressed as a piglet by the way :)


This was taken at Anilao when we went boating with my family. Leo and I arrived at Anilao at around 3 pm. It was such a stressful trip. One thing that I've learned about Leo in our 20 months of togetherness, is that he doesn't like going to places he hasn't been to before. It took a lot of persuading from me to make him come to this trip. Eventually, he agreed but not after shedding a few tears. Heh. It was a fun boat ride considering we stayed in the boat most of the time while the rest of my family, except for my pregnant sister, me and Leo, went diving. I'm a bit hesitant in taking the plunge literally since I was wearing my contacts at that time. I really wanted to join them but I was scared that water will pour into my goggles rendering me blind (try getting salt water in your eyes with your contacts on and you'll know what I'm talking about).

This was taken by my cousin. A really nice sunset of Anilao. You guys should see it. It's absolutely breathtaking.


This would make a really nice family picture, except we're not technically a family. Hehe. It's a nice candid shot and a pretty one at that. Everyone liked it because we're all smiling, especially Leo. Most of our pictures seldom has him smiling, so this one is such a treat. The little girl on my lap is my niece Chloe, and the boy that Leo's lifting is my cousin/godson, Kiko.

And this last photo features my whole immediate family and their respective spouses. That's my dad in the middle carrying my one and only niece. From the left to right are: Jeff and Claudine (my twin sister), Mhon and Cheryll (who happens to be 7 months pregnant now), Lorelei (my half sister) together with my dad and Chloe, then there's me and Leo and beside us are my sister-in-law Nessie (mother of Chloe) and BJ. Yep, everyone's married now except me and Leo. Hehe.

Lemme see, after the Anilao trip, we had the Halloween party at the office. It was really fun. Too bad I still don't have pictures of that. Am still waiting for my siblings to send me pics. I'll post them once I get them. Chloe is really cute in those pics.

WRITTEN COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS

My WCE's have started last October 17. Since then, I've already taken 3 exams and I feel good about them. That means 4 exams more to go. I still haven't received the results but I do hope I pass.

PROMOTION

Though I continually gripe about my work, I was promoted to assistant manager last October 1. I don't know if it's something that I should welcome considering the promotion comes with additional job responsibilities, but at least it helps me appreciate my job more. If I was in the same position when I started my MBA, I would've access to lots of raw data which would help me with my pre-MBA and core papers!

Peter Parker's uncle was right in saying that "with great power comes great responsibility." I was never this responsible for so much when I was just a junior officer. Now I could feel the pressure and the stress. Not only to perform as expected, but to ensure that those under me would perform and exceed expectations as well. With our new organizational chart, I'm going to have 5 people under me. 1 junior officer, 3 permanent staff and 1 temporary staff. I've already requested for reorganization of workstations to enable proper working conditions. We're grouping all working teams together. I now think more about work, rather than of school.

My boss also went on block least starting last Monday. It means that I'm OIC until he returns. I'm glad I survived the past week and just one more week to go before my boss returns. During the past week I realized that the position as head of our department should be a manager position. As the case may be, my boss is only one level above me and one level less before the manager level. I hope he does get promoted soon. I don't know how he handles the stress that the job brings.