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Oct 30 2009
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life

And now the news…

UPDATE (10:33 a.m.): Passed by Burgundy on my way to work. I was expecting to see the place teeming with cops and media men, but instead there was none as if nothing happened. Weird.
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I woke to the news of a bomb explosion in Katipunan, Quezon City. I’ve only read it from tweets, and based from these the explosion was in the 7-11 convenience store in Burgundy Place. They say that the place now is infested by cops, and I’ll be able to get a first-hand eyewitness account of that later when I pass by on my way to work.

Also in the news, a fresh new typhoon is forecasted to hit Manila and other parts of Luzon this weekend. A signal number three alert level might be announced. That’s one typhoon every weekend, and super typhoons at that.

What is this world coming to?

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Oct 27 2009
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life

Couch Day Today

The Our Home people are delivering the couch and coffee table today. Because Charo didn’t go to work yesterday, I was tasked to make sure that this delivery is as smooth as possible. I called Marge, who works in our building administration office, to know the how-tos in securing a gate pass. Based from our short discussion, it was actually quite easy – get a form from the guard at the lobby, fill it up and have them submit this to building administration for approval. No sweat.

I also texted Mariel, our broker, on helping us with securing the permit, just to be sure. She said that our existing gate pass covers this already and that there’s no need to get a new one. Cool!

So I guess we’re ready with another major episode of this moving thing event today. Wish us luck!

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Oct 26 2009
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life

Moving in: The First Weekend

The first weekend of moving in went extremely well. Instead of doing a one-time big-time thing, we opted to do things nice and slow. I think that decision was a good thing. The whole process was so relaxed.

Last Saturday, my sister lent us her truck, where we loaded some items from La Vista and brought it to our unit at Pioneer Highlands. We hired four men to carry our stuff. The whole transfer took us 20 minutes from unloading the items to bringing it to the unit, and that includes a small ref, an aircon, three balikbayan boxes full of various items, racks, foldable tables, chairs, a cooler and cleaning materials. Not bad at all! And since the boys are already there, I asked them to install the window-type air-conditioning unit that we brought.

Sunday was cleaning day, and similar to the set-up from the previous day I brought in extra help to clean the unit up. Three to be exact. These guys cleaned everything – from the rooms, windows, walls and floors to even washing the dishes, glasses, plates and utensils that were given to us in our wedding a few years back.

Tomorrow, the sofa and coffee table that we bought from Our Home will be delivered, while the bed frame, mattress and a new 1.5HP aircon is scheduled to be delivered on Saturday. We just need to clear this with the building admin and it’s a go.

There are still a lot of items that need to be bought or transferred, but I’m sure everything will be in order very soon.

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Oct 19 2009
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life

Reparenting the Child Within: The Day After

I thought I’ll be able to go to work today but I guess I was wrong. Yesterday’s exercises from the personal growth workshop that I attended over the weekend drained me so I’m taking the day off to sleep and recuperate. I texted my boss about taking the leave and promised that I’ll tell her about it when I get back.

Talking about the workshop that I attended, it is called Reparenting the Child Within. It was facilitated by the good people of the RCW Foundation in their nice little building along C. Salvador Street, Varsity Hills, Loyola Heights in Quezon City. It ran from Friday night to Sunday evening. Now I don’t want to give it away. All I can say is that it opened my eyes and made me more aware of caring for myself. Yes, I highly recommend it.

If you’re interested to attend, there’s one next month and the month after that (they said it was a monthly thing) so you can sign up. For details, get in touch with Mae at +63 921 633 2587 or log in to their site (which isn’t updated yet) at http://www.rcwfi.org.

Oct 04 2009
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life, Ondoy

Don’t let the flames die down

It’s been a week now since I took in my refugees from Marikina after the great flood caused by typhoon Ondoy. My sister, my brother, my brother-in-law and their yaya has been living in our guest room since last Sunday, and they can stay there for another week if they want. I’m just happy that they’re all safe.

Their house has been hit by the terrible flood. The water level from my sister’s house was six inches short from reaching the ceiling while the first floor of my brother’s rented house was damaged by the flood as well despite it being a foot and a half higher from street level. The ref was floating and so was the microwave. The sofa’s finished and I don’t have any proof that I graduated from Ateneo because my diploma was totaled, too. Yes, there were a lot of stuff damaged, but at least they’re OK. Too bad I can’t say the same for a lot of families whose homes have been totally destroyed. Some of them are living in schools transformed into makeshift evacuation areas while a good number of them have houses that are still flooded up to now.

The government’s response was disappointing at best. It was actually the bayanihan spirit of the Filipino that became the silver lining in this very dark cloud. People from all walks of life stepped up, volunteered, donated, cleaned, prayed and did almost everything to help out those that were affected. If it was text power before, it’s now social networks which became the adhesive that united everyone. One can see the breathing and living Facebook, Plurk, Twitter and everything else in between come to life to coordinate the relief efforts. Seeing this first hand made me be amazed at how powerful this can be.

A week after the tragedy, my family will be transferring back to Marikina because their place is almost fixed. But there are still a lot of families who still need help. Don’t let the Bayanihan spirit die just yet. People are still counting on our generosity to bring them back to their feet.

Sep 08 2009
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life, office

Socialnomics

Sep 06 2009
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life

Make it happen.

You can’t spend the rest of your life waiting for something to happen. If you want it, be the one to do it. Be the agent of change and make yourself accountable. At the end of the day, if it didn’t materialize the way you want it to be, you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself.

Jul 31 2009
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life, TED

TED Talks

I’ve been spending some time watching amazing talks at TED.com. Here are some of my favorites:

Apr 14 2009
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life, office

Post Holy Week Shock

Wow! What a shocker!

Coming from a nine-day holiday break, going to work yesterday was a big shock to my system. At just 3:00 p.m., I was so sleepy that I had to go to the food stalls to get a recharge.

So how was your first day at work after the Holy Week break?

Mar 23 2009
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life, office

Please Make It Stop

Please make the meetings stop. That would be a great gift for anyone in the office.

After the big re-org, I can’t help but notice how many meetings I’ve been attending everyday. It’s actually getting to be too much that I end up doing nothing when the day ends.

What do you guys think about having a no-meeting day so that everyone can sit down and finish their work?

Jan 24 2009
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life, office

Bittersweet

Yesterday was the day when told members of my team that I’m transferring to handle another team. I tried very hard not to show it but the whole experience was a bit sad for me. I’ve been with them for more than a year and, before this new table of organization was announced, I had plans for them. Now that I’m tasked to head the online operations team, I turn over the reins to Domi. I’m sure he will treat them well.

As for my new job, Dennis and I finally had our team organization table approved after five long drafting sessions. The original assignments given to us were IPTV and TFC Now for him and ABS-CBN.com and News for me, and so this is where we based our individual TOs in the first draft. How are we supposed to find out that it’s not like that at all? Anyway, now it’s all finished with me heading the group and him leading the publishing team. With a battle cry to make things as efficient as possible, we now head into the fray.

Here. We. Go.

Jan 11 2009
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hospital, life

From one hospital to the next

My brother was discharged last Friday after a nine-day bout with Dengue. His platelets went down as low as 9,000 that we had an impromptu Amazing Race event. We had to call relatives and friends in the middle of the night, asking them if they have O+ blood and if they’re willing to be a donor to my brother.

He’s OK now, resting in his room for a few more days until he feels ready to go back to work. We thought that was the end of our hospital saga for 2009. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Yesterday, it was my father-in-law’s turn to be admitted in the hospital. This time it’s for pneumonia. He went for a consultation with Charo’s pulmonologist in the morning because of a week-long cough. Something didn’t sound right as the doctor was listening to his lungs using his stethoscope. After a short trip to the radiology department and a few tests in the emergency room, the doctor told him that he has to be confined.

It was good that she was able to diagnose his condition early, nonetheless no one wants to be sick, more so admitted in a hospital.

We’ll be going there in a while to help mother-in-law with the chores of being the bantay. As usual we’ll be bringing snacks and drinks for his visitors.

Sigh.

What’s up with 2009, with all these hospital sessions? Are these signs of things we should expect for the year? I hope not.

Jan 02 2009
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life

January Two

I’m spending the second day of the year in my brother’s hospital room. He was rushed here last night because his fever won’t go down. The doctor suspects that he has some sort of a virus infection, or worse it could be dengue. I’m just hoping for the first one. Spending the first few days of the New Year in a hospital is just not right.

Dec 31 2008
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life

My 2008 Highlights in Purchases

So it’s the last day of the year. In a few hours we’ll say goodbye to 2008 and welcome 2009 with open arms but with our fingers crossed. 2008 wasn’t exactly as fun and exciting as I hoped it would be. It was just OK.

I listed down a few highlights of the year in terms of what we bought.

IMG_29811. Graham. Of course. He’s the highlight of the whole year for me – that after a few years to toying around with the idea, we finally got a dog despite Charo’s mom’s apprehensions. Follow his development in pictures here, here and here.

2. The Nike Zoom Victory Shoe. I bought it about two or three months ago and it represents me slowly going into running. Actually it started this year when I bought a pair of Nike Air Structure Triax 10 on sale at Sports Warehouse. Then it got a little more serious when I bought a Nike+ iPod system and hooked it up to my iPod Nano. After eight months, I bought a lighter running shoe – and that’s the Nike Zoom Victory.

3. The Nokia E63. After more than two years, Charo has had enough of my dilapidated Nokia N70 and loaned me some money to buy the Nokia E63 and replace my old one. It’s a watered down version of their E71, but at P14,200 with wifi capability and a full qwerty keypad, I’m perfectly happy with it.

4 and 5. The Popcorn Hour and the Samsung HT-Z210 home theater system. These two totally revolutionized the way we enjoy our TV. We download the shows we want to watch on torrent (or we let Popcorn Hour do that for us) and then we watch it on out LCD TV with the audio hooked up to the home theater system via optical cable. Pure TV bliss. We’re now spoiled on watching our TV shows on full HD that we hardly watch cable anymore.

Dec 24 2008
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life, office, Trip

The Zoobic Adventure

We were supposed to go to Enchanted Kingdom after our long storycon, but we had to change our plans on the last minute because of the weather. The team was thinking of just going to the mall or maybe just having lunch at a nice resto but I figured there was still a lot that we can do for the day. The CR-V’s all ready and everyone’s all packed. Naturally, there’s one logical thing to do – ROADTRIP!

They had no idea where to go, so being the drive-happy person that I am, I told them we’re going to Subic. Now as to what we’re going to do there, we’d figure that out on the way.

Part of the highlight of the trip was actually trying out the new SCTEX. It was such a pleasure driving on that immaculate stretch of highway. Too bad it had a 100 kph speed limit or I would’ve given our ride a nasty cleaning exercise of its carbon build-up.

After some thinking, we decided we’re going to Zoobic.

So how was the adventure? It was so fun. We all had a blast! We managed to catch the last trip for the day and we made sure we’ve milked it for all it’s worth, taking lots of pictures whenever we can.

Check out the photos I took:

Mr. Officer, is that you? Tiger! Tiger! Too much lechon for one night, eh? Santa's Airforce Trainee Bearcat

For more of my photos, click here.

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