Goodbye old blog. Hello new blog.

It's time to move spaces...time to change sceneries. I'm switching to this new spot (http://www.cla-sy.blogspot.com). Besides there are some minor glitches in this old blog of mine that I am not so keen on fixing. So there.

My Weekday and Weekend

This week has been a good one. I took the half day off at work on Tuesday. I had a valid excuse though since I had to go to the dentist to get my retainers. I got to go home early for a change! If you could only see me grinning from ear to ear now. That’s how happy I am. Babaw ba? Hehe Then I spent Thursday and Friday attending seminars-orientations at work. These are the last of the several trainings and seminars that I had to take after which I would no longer be officially called a new hire. I’m now as regular as a regular employee can be if that makes sense at all. I had a good time, a very good experience indeed. It was nice meeting new people from different departments. I was the only one from my department so I had no choice but to interact, whether I like it or not. My people skills were definitely put to test. Surprisingly I was more at ease and more comfortable than usual.


Aside from having a good work week, I got to meet old friends as well whom I haven’t seen for the longest time. Jane and Krizia are finally back. Yehey!! It’s been almost more than a year now since we’ve last seen each other. I already miss our lunches, outings, our intimate and not so intimate conversations together. Jane’s not staying that long though. Boohoo. I’m looking forward to our dinner this Tuesday…Red! Big time na si Jane. Haha While they’re back, Kim and Ro naman will be leaving for China next week. I was supposed to go with them too but I didn’t get the green light from my mom. :( Anyways, I had lunch with them today together with Lizsa and Kathryn at Masa’s and went to the Vintage Bazaar afterwards at Rockwell. The place was jam packed. I really didn’t get the chance to shop because there were people, loads of people everywhere which was good in away since I didn’t have to spend away my hard-earned earnings on unnecessary stuffs. I got to buy one top though. Hehe


Also had dinner awhile ago with the Ateneo peeps at Greenhills Promenade. It has also been awhile since we all got together. With work and the different schedules that we all have, it’s hard to bring everyone together in one place unlike when we were still studying, parang ang dali lang to make plans. Now that we’re out of college and all working, it takes double effort just to keep in touch with everybody. The more I get older, the more I realize how much I value and appreciate the existing relationships that I’ve been able to maintain with several people, at the same time realize the importance of time and effort put into building new ones. Haay…I feel so old na. Hehe

It's greener over this side..

If there is such a thing as a “work birthday”, I’ll be turning one next month. It’s been that long already since I was introduced to the REAL real world. I’m still not sure which one is better or should I say worst, school or work. I still can’t decide on that one yet. Work would probably be better than school if only I wasn’t as clueless as I am now with my career. One minute I want to be in the corporate world. Next minute I want to be an entrepreneur. Who knows maybe next week I’d want to be a zookeeper or something?! Layo ata nun…Hehe

I used to want to study abroad. And since the plan didn’t materialize, I now want to work abroad instead. And with the current situation in the country, there are a lot of people who have the same plan as I do. More opportunities for a better life they say. We always think “it’s greener on the other side”. But thinking about it now, I don’t think I’d still find satisfaction or peace of mind even if I go abroad. I’m most definitely sure when I do get to my destination or wherever, it’ll be another “it’s greener on the other side” episode again.

I should just be grateful for what I have now. If I let myself be ruled by this kind of mentality then I will never be truly happy. It isn't that bad anyway. It’s actually more than, greater than, to the highest nth exponential okay. It’s all a matter of perspective really. Why go to the other side of the fence when I can actually fix my side and make it better? And who says it’s greener on the other side when I’ve thicker and greener grass on my side? I’ll even plant flowers on it just so it’ll not only be greener but more colorful as well. Happiness is not found in things or in places; that kind of happiness is usually of the fleeting kind. It'll last only as long as it takes to have another mid-year or end-of-season sale. That fast! Happiness is a personal choice. I don’t have to postpone it. I can be happy if I choose and want to be happy wherever, whenever, and whatever the circumstances may be.

No Title in Particular

The phones are finally working and DSL is up again. If I only knew that threatening PLDT was the solution to have our phone lines up and running again, I would have done so earlier on. For more than a month now, we’ve been continuously following up on PLDT. They keep on saying they’re already at it but without any progress. And it took only one call...just one call! We told PLDT to just disconnect everything. Discontinue the service! We won't pay! Who wants to pay for a service that sucks right? They said to give them three days. I didn’t know what they pulled out of their sleeve. Whatever it is, it worked. So now you know what to do if in the future your phones don't work. Give PLDT an ultimatum! ;)

Hello Garci?

The rallies in Makati are not doing us any good at all. They say today’s rally was the biggest so far. There’s another one coming this July 25. I really don’t think GMA would give in that easily. For one, the rallies lack support from the middle class which I think holds the strongest voice. Unlike Edsa 2, the recent rallies are nothing but hordes of people you know were just paid to be there. Second, there’s no other successor who is suitable enough to become president. Not that I’m in favor of GMA, it’s just that who else would be a better replacement? None. So I’d rather stick it out with the current president than have a new one in place who barely knows a thing about running the country. Whatever the outcome will be—impeachment or no impeachment, I just hope they get it done and over with. The economy is taking a hard beating from all these political brouhahas. The peso is of no value anymore and it continues to devaluate each day as the political situation worsens. I don’t want to come to a point that I would want to get out and live in another country. My friends who are now in other parts of the world are having doubts already of coming back. I don’t blame them, there’s nothing to come back to anyway. But I’m still going to be optimistic about it. For whatever good is left of it, I still love the Philippines. And I will not leave. As if naman din I have the means. Hehe

Horosccope for the Day

This is what my horoscope says, "Try not to be so serious and intense today, dear Scorpio. Walk with a lighter step and don't feel like you always need to be in control of every single thing you come in contact with. Take more of a go-with-the-flow attitude and you will be in exactly the place you need to be. Extreme actions will lead to extreme consequences, and there is no need for that sort of behavior."

How apt and so true. It's right on target.

Closing Cycles

This one's from Paolo Coehello again. He must have been reading my mind! Hehe Kim sent this to me a few months back. And now that I had received the same thing in my inbox (this time by Marge, my officemate ), it seems to be reminding me to start closing cycles. I promise I will. Not yet now but soon.

Closing Cycles
By Paolo Coelho

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important(however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the ideal moment. Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person. Nothing is irreplaceable. A habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

It's on Animal Planet

Stop thinking all the time that you’re in the way, that you’re bothering the person next to you. If people don’t like it, they can complain. And if they don’t have the courage to complain, that’s their problem. You’re afraid to lose your dignity. But what’s dignity? It’s wanting everyone to think you’re good, well-behaved, full of love for your fellow man. Have some respect for nature, watch a few films about animals, and see how they fight for their own space.

I got this excerpt from Paolo Coehello. It makes a whole lot of sense to me. If there’s one thing I’ve recently learned, it’s asking—from asking a simple question, whether intelligent or dumb to asking a huge favor from somebody, and even to asking someone else out. Well, the last one I haven’t done yet. I’m still mustering enough courage. I’ve always been one who hates and if possible, avoids hassling people since I myself don’t want to be hassled by others. As a result of not wanting to hassle and be hassled, I usually end up doing things and answering questions on my own even without having the faintest idea whatsoever. I had to resort to mere assumptions, wild guesses, trial and errors, gut feel (even if it isn’t as reliable), fortune telling (haha!), and what have you. It’s a hit or miss thing. Though I’ve had my fair share of hits, I would have to say the hits are still outnumbered by the misses I’ve experienced. And it’s all because of not having the guts to ask. The same goes for wanting—from wanting to own something whether small or big, to wanting to do something because I just feel like doing so, to wanting to just be without anyone imposing on me.

Stumbling upon this excerpt of Coehello sort of reaffirmed what I needed to do; that is to stop thinking and start learning to ask and want without any guilt or apprehension whatsoever. After all, people can always complain if they really want to. So starting from hereon, I got to be a kick-ass lioness roaring like hell ruling over her space in the jungle.

Madam Purita's Crystal Ball

I wonder how accurate fortune telling and the other psychic stuffs are. My sister and I had a kick out of our “fortune readings” last weekend at Eastwood. Madam Purita, our fortuneteller had a lot of good things to say. I have to give props to her since she got some of the details right without me telling her, but you could tell also a lot of her “hulas” were just plain “bola” but amusingly funny though. Upon sitting down, she told me right away that I would get married next year. So that leaves me a few more months before finding the one. At the rate I’m going, it looks like it’s going to be a whirlwind romance then. I don’t think so. She further predicted that I would leave soon, probably by August or September. I asked her where. She answered Taiwan right off the bat. I wonder where in the world she got that one. In fairness to her though, I have planned on going to China to study this August. Unfortunately it didn’t push through. Madam Purita would have totally impressed me if she had guessed this accurately. She was able to guess though that I have a sister who’s living abroad. At first, it didn’t sink in since she said living. But then I remembered Candice who’s now in HK training…so it’s close enough. She was also able to guess that we were four siblings in total. She had the 4 of Hearts (or was it diamonds?) up in the table. That I had to admit was a good one.

The 15-20 minutes reading was an entertaining one. Most of the predictions have been made towards the future so I wouldn’t know if it is accurate or not. I would have to see in the next couple of months and validate Madam Purita’s claims. Surprisingly it was a feel good kind of thing. She had me ask questions without saying it aloud and she would answer it with a positive or negative answer. I’m crossing my fingers it’s not all bull. Hehe It’s an ego booster, I tell you. Hearing nice things one after another makes you want to look forward and move forward. Even if it’s not 100% true or accurate, it’s still sort of encouraging to hear the things that you want to hear. Sometimes though it doesn’t hurt to believe and be hopeful, just as long you don’t cross the borderline of being a fanatic to the point of letting the predictions totally control and affect your everyday decisions.

In A Balloon Situation

If I could put my current situation into an analogy, it would be that of a balloon tied into a railing somewhere outside; it’s flying alright but not quite. Really it’s all just an illusion; I let myself think that I’m already way up in the sky, but in reality I’m still tied down. What I don't know, it’s only because of the balloon's long string that’s making me fly, high enough for me not to notice that big knot over the railing.

Does the problem lie with me wanting to have and do so much, so much so that I can’t seem to appreciate the simple things that actually make my life more meaningful? Life’s great, not perfect though but it’s still good. But why despite this, can’t I seem to stay satisfied? I say blame it on the consumer ads that are plastered all over the place. Take the Nike ad as an example. Remember the ‘Just Do It!’ campaign? There’s also the most recent one by Addidas, the ‘Nothing is Impossible.’ ad. Like everybody else, I want to be Superman who can conquer the world and do a gazillion of things in this lifetime, just so I could say I’ve lived a worthwhile and jam-packed life. It’s frustrating because I just don’t see the ‘Live life to the fullest!’ motto happening with me. It’s those ads, I tell you.

Letting Go

I don’t know if there is such a thing as ‘over thinking’. I’ve been thinking so much the past few months, I think (see there I go again) I’m going to have a mental breakdown. Okay fine I’m just being overly dramatic. Hehe

I’ve been thinking the same thing over and over again. It’s like my mind is set on auto-rewind with a dysfunctional play > and fast forward >> button that refuses to cooperate. This is doing me absolutely no good at all. It hasn’t provided me with any satisfying answers at all. The more I think, the more baffled I get. The more I analyze things, the more I end up totally wrong in my assessments.

Maybe all I need to do is just leave things as it is and not think about it as much. Got to move forward and start anew. Got to accept the situations for what they are and let go. There are some things in life that I can’t hold on to forever. As the old saying goes, the only thing that’s permanent in this world is change. People will come and go. Things will eventually change. I have to stop fooling myself, and stop holding on to something that’s not there. The others have turned over a new page already. I too, shall do the same thing.

I shall move forward. I shall march on like the little drummer boy. Staying at a standstill will be non-negotiable starting from now on. Life will be good. Life IS good. Damn, time to make that play button to work right again.

Of last week, today, and tomorrow

The past few days have been filled with a lot of activities. There’s the bridal shower, the wedding, and my uncle, who by the way is only a few years older than me. Uncle Adam or ‘Aahh-daam’ as we sarcastically call him (according to him, it’s ‘Ey-dem’ or something like that) came over here for a short vacation from the US. He specially requested that he stay over at our house. I thought we would have a hard time entertaining him. But it turned out to be no problem at all. It’s good to see him again, yeah even if he makes fun of our non-American slang accent.

My cousin got married yesterday, the first wedding in the clan. I can’t believe how much we’ve all grown. It seemed only yesterday when we would go to Q-zar or have sleepovers. Soon, we’ll all be married off with little kids running around the place. Well I don’t think it would be that soon for me anyway, although I’m almost next in line. (Nako pressure!) Yeah we usually follow the ‘according to age policy’ in our family. Haha I think I would have to pass though, because the big ‘L’ has been pretty elusive. They say it’s just around the corner, what corner are you talking about?!

I don’t know if it’s because of the recent events, but I’m relatively happy these past few days. It’s all about get-togethers last week and maybe up until tomorrow. I miss getting together with my cousins. We usually meet up only during required family gatherings. But now with the pre-wedding activities and with ‘Ey-dem’ being here, we’ve been going out a lot more often. Then last Friday, I also got to meet up with an old friend who came back from Canada. We go way back since elementary days, can you believe?! 5th grade to be exact. It’s been ages (literally!) since I’ve last seen her. Shucks I can’t help but think I’ve been left way behind already. Everybody’s changing and I’m still the same. If it were a race, I’m definitely in last place. This only means one thing; I got to run like hell starting here onwards.



Top to Bottom (L-R): She and Jay, the Newlyweds; Cousins; Adam attempting to be Jasmine Trias;
w/ my sistahs minus Candice

Risk It!

My friend Jenjen told me the other day, ‘take the risk girl!’ I thought to myself, should I? I feel like a rubber band being pulled into two sides. One tells me to go take the plunge, but the thought of falling into a deep ravine keeps coming into view that it makes me want to take the back seat instead.

I’m such a segurista. I always want to know the outcome before doing anything drastic. Being spontaneous with regards to decision making is definitely not my game. I still prefer sticking to the conventional way of picking through each detail, analyzing the pros and cons, thinking of other alternatives if there are any before taking the big jump. Yes the mind still rules over the heart here. It’s not easy though because one, you’re looking at a never-ending street with hundreds of possibilities running through your head every millisecond. Second, the mind sometimes eventually gives way to what the heart is saying, which makes it all the more complicated and confusing. Third, it’s always nearly impossible to guess the outcome of a decision with total precision. The tide can always change; sometimes as fast as kernels popping in the microwave. (Sorry, can’t think of a better analogy. Hehe) That’s why if you think about it, one can never be too much of a segurista as one would like to be. Whatever decision you make regardless whether how much thought you’ve given to it, it still somehow involves a certain level of risk. No matter how well-planned and how well-thought of a decision may be you can’t discount the possibility of the unknown and what-ifs lurking behind every decision you make. There are just two choices here, it’s deciding whether to remain in the status quo or to go out of your comfort zone and take a gamble with the possibility of losing everything.

And this is precisely why I seldom take risks. I understand this can never be a trial and error thing. There’s no turning back once a decision has been made. No one wants to be a failure and look like a fool, right? My status quo is already fine and dandy as it is, why still risk it? Why invest on emotions when you can get hurt in the end?

But what if (yes, the inevitable ‘what if’ again…), taking the risk is actually my passport to something even greater? Opportunities can be risks in disguise. So how now brown cow? Maybe it’s all about coming into terms with failing and looking like a fool. To a certain degree, I don’t think failure and looking like a fool can be so much of a bad thing anyway. If anything else, it actually helps us emerge as better persons, don’t you think? So maybe I should stop worrying about trying to be in control all the time and just embrace whatever fate may throw at me, even if it means having to look like a fool.