A Conversation with Poon

Richard is one of my good friends who is from the "industry", before he is who he is now.  He truly is an inspiration and a living testimony of how great God finds His way to our hearts.  So from time to time, we engage in long talks about life, love and faith over coffee or food, as in "madaling - arawan" (to the wee hours of the morning).  But for the past few months, I've been very busy with work, and I haven't really found the time to meet up with him and our friends.

Last week, I got a surprise text message from him, asking me where he can call me.  Of course I knew that I'd get a bit of scolding from him for being a workaholic of some sort.  As soon as I picked up the office phone, I was ready to accept the scolding.  To my relief, he wanted to talk about something else, whew!  We spoke for a few minutes and just when I thought that I was able to escape the scolding, I offered a small amount of information that may have initiated the scolding.

He told me, "di ko kailangan yang (confidential) mo, ang kailangan ko oras mo."  (If other people heard this, they would have misinterpreted it, BIG TIME!).  I just replied with my usual line, "sorry na, busy lang po".  The "po" irked him some more, and he said, "ngayon pino-'po' mo na ako".  I was just laughing inside because I knew the conversation will become long-winded if I argue with him. So I just agreed, that I was a workaholic.

After a few minutes of playfully arguing with him, he asked me about my (non-existent) love life, and he thought that the reason that I was busy was because I was dating someone.  I strongly denied that I was seeing someone, saying that I didn't have one (love life).  He surely didn't believe me.  And here's one of his lines: "baka nag kikissing kissing ka na dyan ah".  I found it adorable and funny, it felt like having an older brother lecturing me about the birds and the bees.  I forgot to tell him that I was already 31 and I need not be reminded of the things he was trying to imply. hahaha!

I truly miss our conversations.  I'm hoping to find time to have coffee with him and our friends..

Tough Times..

Since yesterday, I've been having bouts with my temper (mainly because I can't control it).  I've picked fights so easily.  Scolded majority of my students.  And was angered by the simplest thing.  It might be the pressure or might be the time of the month, but I don't want to be this monster.  I want to be in control again.  Take charge.

Tomorrow, I WILL TRY my best not to lose my temper.  I may fail, but it's worth the try. hay! Sana wag lang may magpasaway!

Is Confused..

If you'd be totally honest with yourself, can you count your real friends? I mean REAL friends. The ones who will not get annoyed at your idiosyncrasies.  The ones who will be honest with you and tell you what they really feel.

I've asked this question to myself for a few days now, and honestly, I really still do not know the answer.

YOU are nothing but MEAN. And all you're ever gonna be is MEAN.

Lines from Taylor Swift's song "MEAN"

You, with your words like knives

And swords and weapons that you use against me,

You, have knocked me off my feet again,

Got me feeling like I’m nothing.

I bet you got pushed around,

Somebody made you cold.

With that same big loud opinion but,

Nobody’s listening,

Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things.

But all you are is mean,

All you are is mean.

And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life,

And mean, and mean, and mean, and mean.

And all you’re ever gonna be is mean.

And all you’re ever gonna be is mean.

And all you’re ever gonna be is mean.

*I hope and pray that you will not end up in an "Institution", where you will be treated the way you treat people now.  What's more important is, that you get "healed" from your current ILLNESS. 

You are truly pitiful. Pathetic. And a total waste of space. The last laugh will be OURS.

Good and Bad Days..

I've been having more bad days than good these past few months. All because my career is now my world. Wouldn't it be nice to finally give it all up and just focus on what I really want to do?

But because of my responsibilities at home, what I really want does not really matter.

How does one make the most out of the situation?

Should I consider taking a break?

Today was a bad day. Yesterday was a bad day.  Tomorrow, will not be a work day but I have a feeling that it will be.  Praying for a good day tomorrow. Please God, I can't handle another bad day...

Here are realizable goals I've made for this year. I'll bookmark it to serve as a constant reminder that I have these goals to accomplish.

1. Conquer 170 by the end of January. Subtract 10 every month after. Until 130. (Of course everybody knows what I am talking about. HAHA!)
2. Make home improvements. As my brother put it: Make the house visitor - friendly. Accomplish before Angel comes home.
3. Be totally liquid. Accomplish before the year ends. Deduct 10 percent of net pay for savings.
4. Say goodbye to hoarseness. Finally take those lessons. Accomplish before 3rd Quarter of this year.

I do hope these are realizable goals. And I will take note of any progress in any one of my goals. (",)

I am once again a Manila girl.

I tried living independently when I was still taking my Masteral studies, and when I graduated, I was "forced" to live in my beloved Cavite again. So for 6 years, I endured the everyday hassle of heavy traffic, waiting for the car before me to move, or sleeping in buses when I didn't have the strength to drive. Talk about stress.

And so when I had the opportunity to live back here in Manila, I grabbed it, without talking it over with my parents (I didn't feel the need to talk it over with them! Come on, I am almost 30 for heaven's sake!). I've been living independently for a week now, and I am loving it. No more morning stress for me, and my voice started to go back to its normal state! So it was the stress that was causing my "hoarseness".

Experiencing it once more, made me think about the PROs and CONs of independent living. Let me break it down...

PROs:
1. No more curfew. Papa doesn't really need to know what time I turn in. hahaha!
2. No more waking up early! If my classes start at 7:30am, I wake up at 6:30! wooo!
3. No more traffic! I walk to school from my building!
4. No more toll fees, never-ending gas fees and parking fees!

CONs:
1. Independent living means paying for my own place and utilities: electricity, water and laundry!
2. Independent living means I do my own laundry if I won't pay for laundry services.
3. Independent living means I need to do all the chores that I normally rely on Yaya.
4. And now I am sick, independent living means that I have to take care of myself. Buy my own food and medicine. hay!

Overall, I am happy. Being independent means so much responsibility. Now I feel really responsible. (",)

I've been feeling very tired for at least a month now. Today, I stopped and "evaluated" what have I been doing lately. I realized I've been spreading myself to little to many activities.

I broke down in number of hours all the things/activities I've been doing in a day or in some days:
1. Work: Basically consumes 12 to 13.5 hours. (Kasama na ang raket dito. hehehe!)
2. Facebook Games: Consumes at least half an hour, actually, sinasabay ko ang pag fefacebook kapag may activity na ginagawa ang mga students ko.
3. Daily commute: It takes about 1 to 1.5 hours from my house to work, and about 1 hour from my work back to our house in Cavite. I make it a point that I leave at 9pm so I won't have to spend so much time waiting for the traffic to move. Nakakapagod din mag shift ng gear ng madalas ah!
4. Consulting: medyo mahaba ito, especially kung may meeting. pero di naman daily. It can range from 3 hours to 5 hours. Isama na natin dito ang site maintenance which takes 10 to 30 minutes of my time in a day.
5. Bonding time: almost daily. Depende kung sino kasama ko. Pag office people, roughly 2 hours a day. Pag outside of the office 3 to 6 hours.
6. Gym: 1 to 2 hours. pero hindi daily. kaya nga mataba ako ngayon di ba?
7. Personal: 1 hour on grooming, conversations with God, email, calls and texting..

Let me sum it up: 13.5 hours (Work) + 0.5 hour (FB) + 2.5 hours (Commute) + 2 hours (Bonding time)+ 1 hour (Personal). So dapat may 4.5 hours pa ako for sleep! But I normally need 7 hours!!!

Kaya pala! Namimiss ko na manood ng TV.. PAGOD NA AKO!

Social Networking Sites: Which ones do you have?

The world just got smaller since the birth of FRIENDSTER, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, MULTIPLY, MYSPACE and other social networking sites that connected families, classmates, former lovers and friends. And in an effort to catch up with all these important people in my life, I first befriended Friendster, then I got an invite to Multiply, then showed my face in Facebook and the latest addition, tweeted my life on Twitter. Allow me to share with you what I really think about these sites.

Let's begin with FRIENDSTER. I got a ton of invites to connect with friends on Friendster. My former students were sending me invites everyday until one day, I signed up for an account. What I like Friendster at first is that it is was like an online resume. I got to see who was visiting my profile, connect with 500 friends (which was later increased, darn it, I had to create a new account 'cause I thought I reached the limit), showcase my pictures on a single album (later improved to have more than one album), customize my profile page with music, video, change the background and colors with CSS and feature my friends on a single page. Too bad, the improvements were slow, people got bored and so people started to move to other SNS.

Enter FACEBOOK. Facebook is very similar to Friendster. Only better. The interface is easier to understand, the layout is easy on the eyes, adding up friends was easier, online chatting, supported more applications, requests are summarized which can be customized and of course, the never-ending games, quizzes and newsfeeds! I love the photo-tagging feature, that by tagging a photo, it automatically appears on the tagged-person's album, no more reuploading! Although there was a major thumbs - down on their policy on photos, but I think they were able to solve it already (I hope, but still, I don't really trust fineprints so most of my photos are still hosted in other sites.) Aside from Facebook's photo policy, what I don't really like is that my profile page isn't customizable. It's the same as everyone else's. I can't express my individuality (well maybe in pictures na lang). Although almost everybody is in Facebook, I still maintain one more site for everything that I want to share the world.

Go and MULTIPLY! This by far is my favorite of the Social Networking Sites. Why you ask? First, it is fully customizable, although the Multiply logo may appear on all sites, but the banner, the arrangement of the boxes and the text colors are fully customizable. It may pass as a personal website if I may say. Second, it allows you to sell stuff. Online shopping has never been more alive! Better than e-bay! Third, music, photos and videos can also be posted or embeded and not necessarily be hosted in Multiply. Sharing can be done on a different levels of relationship; sharing can be limited to colleagues, friends, family, specific individuals or share it with everybody, even people not on multiply! Entries on Multiply can also be posted/linked on Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! If not for Multiply 4.0, this site would have been enough for me, but since its deployment, I found it slow and a little bit more difficult in the eyes. The interface got a little confusing. haha! I also do not understand the Media Locker and Autouploader features. Maybe I'm just too lazy to read on about this feature so I opted not to use 'em at all! hahaha!

Tweeeeeeting on Twitter!!!!! Twitter is the ultimate stalker/conceited-friendly site! You get to choose who you follow, and if people found you interesting, they'll start following you. You get to inform other people what you are currently doing, will be doing or have done. If you are basically uninterested in other people's business, I advise you not to sign up with this site. It allows you to tweet messages 140 characters long so if you're going to share a video, photo, blog or any other site, use URL shorteners such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com. If you want to be entertained, follow people who are friends even outside of twitter, their tweets are really interesting even funny at times. But that's all you get from Twitter, short messages of what's going on with their lives, another site will still be needed to host photos, music, video, blogs and the like.

So there. I don't have a Myspace account so I really can't say anything about it. All I have are these four. Take your pick. Add me up. Social networking sites are here to stay. Let's wait for the next fad and who knows, the next one may combine all the good qualities of the aforementioned sites. Go ahead, be a FRIENDSTER, add up and MULTIPLY, paste your face on FACEBOOK and tweet on Twitter! The world just became smaller!