It has been raining everyday for the past week. I welcome it though. I love the rain. I don't know why it's so soothing, but it makes me sleep better. I haven't been able to sleep properly the past week due to work concerns, that's why when the weekend rolled over, I slept for 8 to 10 hours every night. Just last night, I slept for almost 12 hours! Now that's a record for me.
Come to think of it, I need some relaxation techniques. As mentioned, I could not sleep properly the past week as I was thinking of work everytime I close my eyes. I have to relax else I will lose sleep! I decided to have a massage Friday night hoping it will help me sleep, but after the massage, my thoughts kept drifting back to work! Good thing I was so exhausted Saturday night that I immediately fell asleep when I collapsed on the bed. Hopefully tonight, I can get more sleep to help me survive the week.
Don't get me wrong. I love my work. I just did not realize how much thinking it entails. I was so used to doing routinary work and thinking at a micro level, that am having difficulty adjusting to my current tasks. My mind is churning ideas and figuring out possible loopholes all day long that it takes awhile before it stops for the night. I talk to different people everyday and am practically everywhere. I keep my cellphone with me all the time in case any of my bosses or colleagues needs me.
Watched Superman last week. I so want to drool over Brandon Routh. We also watched Pirates of the Carribean: Dead's Man Chest yesterday. Great movie although I made the mistake of going to the restroom in the last part of the movie (when Capt. Jake Sparrow was swallowed by the kraken and Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly was on their way to see the witch to find a way to bring Jack back), thus I missed the ending. When I came out of the restroom, the credits were rolling. Argh! I can't wait to see the last installment of the trilogy next year.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Saturday, July 08, 2006
It's A Rainy Day, It's A Rainy Day
I'm a Sesame Street Kid. I grew up on Sesame Street. I remembered my mom or was that my grandmother who had this warehouse at Makati--right beside Pasig River--where they stored imported books. I'd remembered scampering up the piles and open the boxes filled with wonderful wonderful books. I'd inhale the smell of new books and try to read one with my mom catching me.
I don't know why, but they'd bring whole a boxful of books and I remember going gaga over them. I remember having the sesame street books series. The topic above came from the Sesame Street tv show. It's the first thing I thought of when the rain came pouring down this morning. It's the perfect weather to settle down and take a nap or watch dvd's.
Which reminds me, I have to bookmark that Sesame Street site that I found before and now I found again. It's a nice site to remember all those lyrics of long-forgotten Sesame Street songs that have somehow stuck in the dark recesses of my brain.
As previously mentioned, it's raining right now. I have to confirm though if there's a storm. Leo and I plan to watch Superman tomorrow at Mall of Asia. I hope we can get seats. We have already reserved tickets for Pirates of the Carribean. Now that's something else that am looking forward to.
Man, I can't believe that it's already July. Half of the year has passed which means, it's less than 5 months till Christmas and 3 months till Halloween. We're all excited over that as I plan to bring my nephew and niece back to the office for the trick o' treat. It's always a big thing at work and we're excited over what costumes the two kids will wear. As Miguel is quite big now, he's going to be very adorable wearing a piglet costume, or probably a pumpkin costume. We'll just see what's available. Chloe would look angelic in an angel costume or probably a fairy costume. We'll just see.
Man, I would want my kids to grow up on Sesame Street.
I don't know why, but they'd bring whole a boxful of books and I remember going gaga over them. I remember having the sesame street books series. The topic above came from the Sesame Street tv show. It's the first thing I thought of when the rain came pouring down this morning. It's the perfect weather to settle down and take a nap or watch dvd's.
Which reminds me, I have to bookmark that Sesame Street site that I found before and now I found again. It's a nice site to remember all those lyrics of long-forgotten Sesame Street songs that have somehow stuck in the dark recesses of my brain.
As previously mentioned, it's raining right now. I have to confirm though if there's a storm. Leo and I plan to watch Superman tomorrow at Mall of Asia. I hope we can get seats. We have already reserved tickets for Pirates of the Carribean. Now that's something else that am looking forward to.
Man, I can't believe that it's already July. Half of the year has passed which means, it's less than 5 months till Christmas and 3 months till Halloween. We're all excited over that as I plan to bring my nephew and niece back to the office for the trick o' treat. It's always a big thing at work and we're excited over what costumes the two kids will wear. As Miguel is quite big now, he's going to be very adorable wearing a piglet costume, or probably a pumpkin costume. We'll just see what's available. Chloe would look angelic in an angel costume or probably a fairy costume. We'll just see.
Man, I would want my kids to grow up on Sesame Street.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
What a Week!
It's been quite a last week of June.
My sister left for the US last Thursday. It was nerve-wracking though. Her interview went as scheduled last June 19 and she was supposed to receive her US Visa 5 days later so she set her departure date for the 27th. However, when the 26th came, her visa was nowhere in sight. She had to cancel her flight and tentatively rebooked it for the next day. Fortunately, her visa arrived on the 28th enabling her to leave on the 29th. I went to their house in Quezon City last Tuesday to bid her farewell and also to attend the despedida of the sister of my brother-in-law who's also leaving for the US. Anyway, am glad she finally got her dream and is now happyily together with her husband. I wish them all the best.
Last Friday, I played referee between two people at work. We were called to attend a meeting with managers of two other departments present. Two departments that have always been at odds with each other. Well that Friday, they chose the time to really have words and they were shouting each other already. As the third party, I calmed everyone down. It was difficult as the other person involved used to be my boss. I tried to be as rational and calm as could as I don't want to be accused of taking sides. After that incident, I was pretty shaken up myself and if I was the type to smoke, I would've taken a drag then and there just to calm my nerves.
As for yesterday, the company had an outreach activity at SOS Alabang. At least it's near and I could come and go as I please. I was there early so I was able to help with the preparations. I had one of my officemates take me to Leo's afterwards where I waited for him to wake up. She picked me up an hour later so we could have coffee at Gloria Jean's. We talked for an hour before I returned to Leo's house.
Also watched "The Wedding Date" yesterday on DVD. Dermot Mulroney is absolutely SOOOOOOOO scrumptious and delicious. *sigh*
My sister left for the US last Thursday. It was nerve-wracking though. Her interview went as scheduled last June 19 and she was supposed to receive her US Visa 5 days later so she set her departure date for the 27th. However, when the 26th came, her visa was nowhere in sight. She had to cancel her flight and tentatively rebooked it for the next day. Fortunately, her visa arrived on the 28th enabling her to leave on the 29th. I went to their house in Quezon City last Tuesday to bid her farewell and also to attend the despedida of the sister of my brother-in-law who's also leaving for the US. Anyway, am glad she finally got her dream and is now happyily together with her husband. I wish them all the best.
Last Friday, I played referee between two people at work. We were called to attend a meeting with managers of two other departments present. Two departments that have always been at odds with each other. Well that Friday, they chose the time to really have words and they were shouting each other already. As the third party, I calmed everyone down. It was difficult as the other person involved used to be my boss. I tried to be as rational and calm as could as I don't want to be accused of taking sides. After that incident, I was pretty shaken up myself and if I was the type to smoke, I would've taken a drag then and there just to calm my nerves.
As for yesterday, the company had an outreach activity at SOS Alabang. At least it's near and I could come and go as I please. I was there early so I was able to help with the preparations. I had one of my officemates take me to Leo's afterwards where I waited for him to wake up. She picked me up an hour later so we could have coffee at Gloria Jean's. We talked for an hour before I returned to Leo's house.
Also watched "The Wedding Date" yesterday on DVD. Dermot Mulroney is absolutely SOOOOOOOO scrumptious and delicious. *sigh*
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Love According to Neil Gaiman
It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your
heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build
up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so
nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other
stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of
you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss
you or smile at you and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes
hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in
the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends"
or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way
into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the
mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets inside you and rips you
apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love.
From Sandman:The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman.
The above quote came from one of Neil Gaiman's books. I've forgotten
who forwarded it to me but when I read it, it somehow struck a chord.
Where am I?
I was lucky to have a good seat in the shuttle this morning. I had a
place where I can rest my head so that I can catch up on sleep on my
way to work. So I plugged in my earphones and let the music lull me to
sleep.
After a few minutes, a girl in an exclusive girls' school uniform got
in and sat beside me. I blinked at her and went back to sleep. A few
minutes later, the door opened and I suddenly heard people giggling. I
opened my eyes and the two girls apparently know each other and they
started giggling and laughing. I thought it will just be a momentary
thing but they were giggling and laughing throughout the 30 minute
trip. The bad thing was, I could hear them through my earphones (and
my music was loud) and one of the girls was seating beside me and she
kept on jostling me whenever she would laugh or giggle. I wanted to
tell them to shut up and the "nice" side of me kept on telling me that
they are just girls. I then started to think when I was when I was
their age. I realized than I must've been laughing and giggling as
well if I saw an old friend. I must've been caught up with the
intricacies of life that I've forgotten what it feels to be carefree.
I suddenly felt so OLD!
Saturday, June 24, 2006
My Summer Memories
I got the idea for this post from my friend Cessna's blog. She said she's not particularly fond of wet markets and depends on SM supermarket for her wet market needs. However, I guess I'm the opposite.
No, I don't make it a hobby of trudging or visiting all the wet markets around the Metro. I guess I just have good memories of those places. When we were kids, particularly around the elementary age, my parents would send us to the province to spent the summer. My aunt or grandmother would go to the wet market everyday to buy fresh meat, fish or vegetables to serve for lunch and dinner. I would gladly accompany her. I don't know why but I find myself fascinated whenever she would buy live catfish and have the vendor clean and chop it for her. Hmmm...that speaks volumes of my personality. Must be some Freudian thing. But, the best thing about the wet market in the province is when we would stop by the sweets store. Note that a provincial sweets/chichiria store rarely sell those imported candies. They sell the locally made ones and they're not even branded. I forgot what some of them are called but I love this small round yellow sweet thing. It's like a cookie but it's too soft. Also there's a sweet candy called "tira-tira". It's basically brown sugar molded into sticks. And the local cheese curls. I forgot the brand but they're sold in little packets and you can buy them in bulk (like 20-30 pcs in one big plastic).
My best memory of our summer is when our ice cream "suki" would pass by. We call him "lapit-suki". I innocently thought that it was his name but apparently, it's just something that he keeps saying again and again and my aunts just call him that. Anyway, he sold really creamy ice cream. It's so good that instead of buying a cone, we'd bring out our glasses and have him fill those up. And during fiestas or any celebration, my lolo would buy one whole can of ice cream (his favourite is langka. mmmmm...yummy). The can is not the ordinary 1 kl can you can buy in the supermarket. It's the long silver one. I don't know how much ice cream that holds but it can certainly feed all of us.
Actually, it's not only summer that we get to go to the province. My maternal grandparents and relatives have a big house in the province. Big enough for their brood of 13--most of them married. So every weekend, or every summer, we would get picked up and my siblings and I would join some cousins for a nice short/long vacation. As there were so many of us, we would never get bored or find nothing to do. We have relatives all around Batangas so we'd take trips to visit them, and we'd bring back food in the process. We would bring back a kaing of lanzones and eat them in front of the TV. My grandparents also owned a betamax rental then, so we'd bring home the latest movie (Night of the Living Dead--that certainly caused me some sleepless nights there. It did not help that the room that I shared with my relatives overlooked a wide expanse of lawn and I was calculating the distance of the house from the cemetery) and watch it while eating green mangoes (either with bagoong or with my favourite dip--soy sauce with sugar!). The house also has two bathtubs and we'd fill up one and soak in it with our cousins.
That big house really holds wonderful memories of my childhood. Too bad it's not the same as it was before. Everything changed when my grandfather died fifteen years ago. Though my grandmother is still alive, her health began to deterioriate after his death. She's based in the US now and she'll probably stay there for good. She doesn't have the strength or stamina to endure the long travel back home.
I remember my relatives and I would be sitting at the marble front steps in the late afternoon or early evening with my grandparents. We'd play games or hold contests there to amuse ourselves (cable was non-existent back then). The front lawn was so wide that we can play tag or any outdoor game imaginable with lots of room to spare. I'd lose out on "monkey-monkey" (I was not a very good runner), but I loved the "luksong tinik" or "piko".
It was in the province that I learned to do household chores. My grandfather did not tolerate slackers and he ran a tight ship. He would have us cleaning the house, the garden and there was even a time, had us help with the slaughtering of the chickens (they had a poultry farm at the back of the house, beside a small piggery). He did not exactly had us do the killing, but we had the distasteful task of dipping the chickens in boiling water and pulling out the feathers. Aaaaaaahhhh!!! I must have a strong stomach because am still eating chicken up to now.
As we did not have any nannies back then, we had to do our own laundry and make our own beds. My siblings and I would wash our clothes by hand at the back of the house. I did not worst job of all compared to my sisters. They would patiently scrub or make "kusot" their clothes while I, taking the easy way out, would stomp on them, mimicking the washerwomen at the small river nearby with their "pamalo".
Those were the days indeed. I wish my future children would have the same experiences that I had. It has certainly helped me in more ways than one.
No, I don't make it a hobby of trudging or visiting all the wet markets around the Metro. I guess I just have good memories of those places. When we were kids, particularly around the elementary age, my parents would send us to the province to spent the summer. My aunt or grandmother would go to the wet market everyday to buy fresh meat, fish or vegetables to serve for lunch and dinner. I would gladly accompany her. I don't know why but I find myself fascinated whenever she would buy live catfish and have the vendor clean and chop it for her. Hmmm...that speaks volumes of my personality. Must be some Freudian thing. But, the best thing about the wet market in the province is when we would stop by the sweets store. Note that a provincial sweets/chichiria store rarely sell those imported candies. They sell the locally made ones and they're not even branded. I forgot what some of them are called but I love this small round yellow sweet thing. It's like a cookie but it's too soft. Also there's a sweet candy called "tira-tira". It's basically brown sugar molded into sticks. And the local cheese curls. I forgot the brand but they're sold in little packets and you can buy them in bulk (like 20-30 pcs in one big plastic).
My best memory of our summer is when our ice cream "suki" would pass by. We call him "lapit-suki". I innocently thought that it was his name but apparently, it's just something that he keeps saying again and again and my aunts just call him that. Anyway, he sold really creamy ice cream. It's so good that instead of buying a cone, we'd bring out our glasses and have him fill those up. And during fiestas or any celebration, my lolo would buy one whole can of ice cream (his favourite is langka. mmmmm...yummy). The can is not the ordinary 1 kl can you can buy in the supermarket. It's the long silver one. I don't know how much ice cream that holds but it can certainly feed all of us.
Actually, it's not only summer that we get to go to the province. My maternal grandparents and relatives have a big house in the province. Big enough for their brood of 13--most of them married. So every weekend, or every summer, we would get picked up and my siblings and I would join some cousins for a nice short/long vacation. As there were so many of us, we would never get bored or find nothing to do. We have relatives all around Batangas so we'd take trips to visit them, and we'd bring back food in the process. We would bring back a kaing of lanzones and eat them in front of the TV. My grandparents also owned a betamax rental then, so we'd bring home the latest movie (Night of the Living Dead--that certainly caused me some sleepless nights there. It did not help that the room that I shared with my relatives overlooked a wide expanse of lawn and I was calculating the distance of the house from the cemetery) and watch it while eating green mangoes (either with bagoong or with my favourite dip--soy sauce with sugar!). The house also has two bathtubs and we'd fill up one and soak in it with our cousins.
That big house really holds wonderful memories of my childhood. Too bad it's not the same as it was before. Everything changed when my grandfather died fifteen years ago. Though my grandmother is still alive, her health began to deterioriate after his death. She's based in the US now and she'll probably stay there for good. She doesn't have the strength or stamina to endure the long travel back home.
I remember my relatives and I would be sitting at the marble front steps in the late afternoon or early evening with my grandparents. We'd play games or hold contests there to amuse ourselves (cable was non-existent back then). The front lawn was so wide that we can play tag or any outdoor game imaginable with lots of room to spare. I'd lose out on "monkey-monkey" (I was not a very good runner), but I loved the "luksong tinik" or "piko".
It was in the province that I learned to do household chores. My grandfather did not tolerate slackers and he ran a tight ship. He would have us cleaning the house, the garden and there was even a time, had us help with the slaughtering of the chickens (they had a poultry farm at the back of the house, beside a small piggery). He did not exactly had us do the killing, but we had the distasteful task of dipping the chickens in boiling water and pulling out the feathers. Aaaaaaahhhh!!! I must have a strong stomach because am still eating chicken up to now.
As we did not have any nannies back then, we had to do our own laundry and make our own beds. My siblings and I would wash our clothes by hand at the back of the house. I did not worst job of all compared to my sisters. They would patiently scrub or make "kusot" their clothes while I, taking the easy way out, would stomp on them, mimicking the washerwomen at the small river nearby with their "pamalo".
Those were the days indeed. I wish my future children would have the same experiences that I had. It has certainly helped me in more ways than one.
Virus Free
Apologies to my friends/relatives who supposedly received email from me containing attachments with virus. I don't think there's anything wrong with my office computer. I know I did not download anything last Thursday and the anomaly started when I used a computer at an internet cafe. I don't know though why the originating address is my office email address though. It's so disconcerting.
Nothing noteworthy happened much this week. My sister passed her interview and she's leaving on Tuesday. We're having a despedida for her tonight. My whole family is staying at BF tonight until tomorrow. There are plans going to Tagaytay tomorrow although I don't know if that would push through. We don't know where were going to go there. Unless we end up again having a picnic at People's Park.
Nothing noteworthy happened much this week. My sister passed her interview and she's leaving on Tuesday. We're having a despedida for her tonight. My whole family is staying at BF tonight until tomorrow. There are plans going to Tagaytay tomorrow although I don't know if that would push through. We don't know where were going to go there. Unless we end up again having a picnic at People's Park.
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