mom sent me a text message monday as i was driving home telling me that my sister checked in to the hospital to get tested since she's been having severe pains in her abdomen recently. that meant i had to take care of my nephew again since my uber lazy brother will just sleep the whole day and DO NOTHING. well he did cook some food this morning but it was likely out of his own vested interest (read : he was hungry) so i don't think that counts. as expected, he slept the whole day with me working while taking care of my nephew. its not that i'm complaining because despite my nephew being really naughty at times, he is a sweet, adorable little boy. its just that i get so exhausted at night and i can't sleep well when my nephew sleeps with me because subconsciously i need to check on him throughout the night. this is why during these times, i don't really get enough sleep. suffering galore.
while driving home monday, v hitched a ride and kept me company. we talked about our lost loves in some conversations. its been a while since i talked to anyone about mcb, i don't miss mcb that much anymore but i told v that i know for certain that mcb is my one great love. its nice in a way to be able to talk about the past with no regrets - yes, i don't have any regrets meeting mcb because despite everything, i have had the best & worst times dealing with mcb. so there ...
tomorrow is focal download, i don't think i'm going to hit the target ACS and i put up. the signs aren't good but like always i'm hopeful that it remains acceptable. for some reason, looking back, i'm surprised that i'm not setting up a range from which i can say whether i will be happy with the result. i guess with all the things happening - of people ... friends moving out, rumors of closing down, somehow focal doesn't seem to be as important as it used to be. the latest good news about tv is really exciting and admittedly saddening because soon there'd be one less reason to go to the office. the only good thing i guess is that we've seemed to have grown closer being separated (JAA, TV and the rest) so it seems our friendship will survive post-company I.
i haven't decided yet when i'd be going back to school. strama + 1 elective for majoring + oce and i should be done. all my classmates/friends are either finished already or are taking their oce this term. i'm not sure yet if i can devote the time needed for strama and that's what keeping me from enrolling. but i've tentatively put august when i will reconsider enrolling so i can be done by march/april08.
i really need to update my resume. i've been procastinating doing that for months already. i've really been shortsighted lately, thinking only of two things - one is going to the beach this weekend ... and two, my upcoming US trip. yay, my boss just approved for me to travel for two weeks (instead of one). i just realized though ... i'm leaving april 7, which is the weekend after this week. good news with that trip though, it bumps up my asia miles mileage enough for up to 3 tickets to HK - the fam gets a free trip! that means we can bring my nephew to HK disney for his 4th birthday. exciting months ahead.
March 27, 2007
March 22, 2007
make your own havaianas
the evil twin sisters jona & trixy invited me to hang out at power plant in rockwell early in the morning because havaianas was having a "make your own" booth beginning today. i call these twin sisters "evil" because i was never planning on buying any new havs (having just bought 2 pairs last january and i bought a pair of gap flipflops during my US trip) but for some reason i ended up with 3 pairs - hahaha. evil temptresses! hahaha it was fun though seeing jona & trixy again, we always seem to have equal amounts of fun and serious conversations. we had some vietnamese lunch today - it wasn't that good but somehow we were thankful to not eat so much. we pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at starbucks enjoying our coffee (non-fat, no whipped cafe mocha as always) and indulging in a luscious serving of banoffee. that banoffee dessert is awesome - sinfully delicious ... damn! we're probably having dinner on saturday but trixy & i will probably go boxing tomorrow night. i need some exercise i swear.check out my 3 new havaianas slippers above. don't they look awesome? now have to plan where to wear these expensive slippers hahaha i love my green & red havs! they'll definitely give accent to my casual jeans & shirt do!
btw, happy birthday to a very dear friend - arlene! i am so glad we have found true friends in each other and i wish you peace, happiness and love always. take care always.
Supersize Me
yes, it is about the 2003 documentary that morgan spurlock made where he dealt with the subject of obesity and fast food. the plot is simple, for 30 days he will eat nothing except what is in a mcdonald's menu and will supersize only when he is asked. he will also need to eat three meals a day (breakfast, lunch & dinner) only from mcdonald's. this may sound ridiculous but i found it kind of enlightening that he gained 17lbs in two weeks and during his mcdo-regimen, he started having liver problems, depression, anxiety and he became sluggish and tired. having grown up along with the fastfood industry, i suddenly feel like i should withdraw from eating it completely. they even did a random survey of a number of nutritionists on the question on whether one should eat fastfood and not surprisingly, most of them said one should never eat at a fastfood restaurant. in a way, how fastfood came to being is mainly to answer the call of people who are so busy that they are too tired to cook at home. i can only imagine the amount of kfc, panda express, in-n-out that i have been eaten when i was in the states for eight weeks. no wonder i gained as much as 10lbs. after this film came out, mcdonald's introduced a number of supposedly healthy salads which turned out to have the same calories as a big mac - ugh! eating healthy is a conscious choice and i dare say its very difficult (& expensive) to eat healthy when you are out or with friends.i realized however that after staying away from the gym and gaining weight during my trip, my body aches more when i'm sitting for a long time. my legs hurt so bad after walking a lot when i went to the office. everything i'm feeling right now tells me i should go back to the gym, get my heart pumping, work out the lactic acid build-up and get in shape.
March 19, 2007
jet lagged & weekend laziness
this is the part i hate when traveling to & from the other side of the world - the jet lag. for the past few days, i've been sleeping really early in the evening only to wake up around midnight (and no, i am not an "aswang" hahaha) - my body still thinks its in the Arizona timezone (midnight is like 9am there, time to be at work). it will probably take me a few more days before i get acclimated to this timezone - i desperately need some gym time soon. there's nothing better than a tiring workout to get myself off the jet lag faster.
i've spent the better part of my weekend in bed just watching shows i've downloaded. there's really a lot of it still that i haven't seen, add to the so many dvd's i've had on queue since a year ago. i had fun meeting up with allan and trixy for dinner last friday. we ate at conti's and i had a really awesome baked salmon (yum!) before we stopped for coffee at starbucks. i was pretty much in bed around midnight thinking "this is good, my body clock can reset itself." only to find out two hours later that i was wide awake - bummer!!!
i started organizing my mp3's on the itunes in my macbook and being the OC that i am, i had to re-tag all the album covers to a higher resolution because they were quite blurry in full-screen mode. yeah, its pretty hard being OC like this (at least its not over the top) where i like everything (mp3) tagged properly with song title, artist, album, genre and album covers. if the mp3 doesn't have those, there's no way they get synchronized in my ipod. so far i've managed to tag properly almost 16GB worth of mp3s, and there's probably 60GB more left (hahaha). Harddisk space is pretty much getting limited and i will need to attend soon to backing up my TV shows to DVD. There's like a 100GB to back-up, its such a boring task to do.
Ahhh its monday today, this for me signals the start of the week and i promised myself i'll start dieting this week. being the OC that i am, i don't start anything other than a monday. i think its that whole notion that since its a new week, that is the only time i should start something new. yeah, i have my weird moments. A & T probably thought i was crazy when i told them that every morning when i take a bath to get ready for the office, i wait until the clock is in increments of 5mins - i don't start if its :03, or :21, it should be :05 or :025 ... hahahaha its just easier for me that way to assess how long it took to finish a chore.
i've spent the better part of my weekend in bed just watching shows i've downloaded. there's really a lot of it still that i haven't seen, add to the so many dvd's i've had on queue since a year ago. i had fun meeting up with allan and trixy for dinner last friday. we ate at conti's and i had a really awesome baked salmon (yum!) before we stopped for coffee at starbucks. i was pretty much in bed around midnight thinking "this is good, my body clock can reset itself." only to find out two hours later that i was wide awake - bummer!!!
i started organizing my mp3's on the itunes in my macbook and being the OC that i am, i had to re-tag all the album covers to a higher resolution because they were quite blurry in full-screen mode. yeah, its pretty hard being OC like this (at least its not over the top) where i like everything (mp3) tagged properly with song title, artist, album, genre and album covers. if the mp3 doesn't have those, there's no way they get synchronized in my ipod. so far i've managed to tag properly almost 16GB worth of mp3s, and there's probably 60GB more left (hahaha). Harddisk space is pretty much getting limited and i will need to attend soon to backing up my TV shows to DVD. There's like a 100GB to back-up, its such a boring task to do.
Ahhh its monday today, this for me signals the start of the week and i promised myself i'll start dieting this week. being the OC that i am, i don't start anything other than a monday. i think its that whole notion that since its a new week, that is the only time i should start something new. yeah, i have my weird moments. A & T probably thought i was crazy when i told them that every morning when i take a bath to get ready for the office, i wait until the clock is in increments of 5mins - i don't start if its :03, or :21, it should be :05 or :025 ... hahahaha its just easier for me that way to assess how long it took to finish a chore.
March 16, 2007
flight gone wrong
i should have posted this a few days back but i got pretty busy working - yes, there's actually deadlines i need to work on. after seeing the film "300", i had a quick lunch, went to the office to print my online check-in confirmation and stop by gizie & larry's house. i was at the airport a bit later than i would have liked and since it was spring training (baseball) this time around, there was a long line on the check-in counters. i managed to check-in without so much fuss except that the lady told me i should balance out my luggages since my bigger luggage was 8lbs over. knowing the other bag didn't have any space left over, i decided to just shove a number of the shirts on my carry-on luggage.
i was relieved when we boarded the plane after walking a good distance since the terminal was at the far end of the airport (bummer!). i pretty much in between dozing off & waking up when i realized later on that we haven't really taken off. it turns out that we were about to take off but then a warning light came off the pilot's console and so we had to go back to the gate. they tried to troubleshoot it for about 30-45mins only to tell us that the plane wasn't flying anywhere. now, despite the setback, it was actually a relief that they caught the mechanical failure before we took off, who knows what would have happened then, right? we pretty much deplaned after the announcement and then waited for a while for them to sort it out. we were lucky that they were able to find another plane in record time and they directed us to proceed to the gate. again the terminal is at the other end of the gate where we docked - it was a freaking long walk and in flipflops, that didn't fare well with my aching feet.
we reached LA a little before 11pm and so after realizing my bags were already forwarded, i dashed off from terminal 1 to terminal 4 in a record 5mins to try and catch my 1120pm flight. i was out of breath when i got to the check-in counter and had to beg the people in line to let me go first. when i got to the counter, they told me the flight was closed but they can put me in the waiting list for the 120am flight. i went for a bite to eat and then later on managed to check-in both for my LA-HK and HK-MLA flight. Not only that, they seated me in a seat where no one was seating beside me so i had two seats. while two seats doesn't really substitute for a business class seat, it was good enough to at least have more room to stretch.
when we reached HK, i dashed to the Cathay Pacific business lounge for a quick shower. this is the part where i really like having the marco polo club card - having a shower after 14 hours feels like heaven and i managed to hydrate my already dry skin. the other good news was that when i was boarding, they said i had a change of seating and i already knew i've been upgraded to business class. and i have to say, business class seating is truly awesome. i only wish they'd give me the upgrade on a HK to LA flight instead, but hey, i'm not complaining. one more trip and i've got 3 free tickets to HK (from MLA) out of my mileage, that's reason enough to stick to this airline.
i was relieved when we boarded the plane after walking a good distance since the terminal was at the far end of the airport (bummer!). i pretty much in between dozing off & waking up when i realized later on that we haven't really taken off. it turns out that we were about to take off but then a warning light came off the pilot's console and so we had to go back to the gate. they tried to troubleshoot it for about 30-45mins only to tell us that the plane wasn't flying anywhere. now, despite the setback, it was actually a relief that they caught the mechanical failure before we took off, who knows what would have happened then, right? we pretty much deplaned after the announcement and then waited for a while for them to sort it out. we were lucky that they were able to find another plane in record time and they directed us to proceed to the gate. again the terminal is at the other end of the gate where we docked - it was a freaking long walk and in flipflops, that didn't fare well with my aching feet.
we reached LA a little before 11pm and so after realizing my bags were already forwarded, i dashed off from terminal 1 to terminal 4 in a record 5mins to try and catch my 1120pm flight. i was out of breath when i got to the check-in counter and had to beg the people in line to let me go first. when i got to the counter, they told me the flight was closed but they can put me in the waiting list for the 120am flight. i went for a bite to eat and then later on managed to check-in both for my LA-HK and HK-MLA flight. Not only that, they seated me in a seat where no one was seating beside me so i had two seats. while two seats doesn't really substitute for a business class seat, it was good enough to at least have more room to stretch.
when we reached HK, i dashed to the Cathay Pacific business lounge for a quick shower. this is the part where i really like having the marco polo club card - having a shower after 14 hours feels like heaven and i managed to hydrate my already dry skin. the other good news was that when i was boarding, they said i had a change of seating and i already knew i've been upgraded to business class. and i have to say, business class seating is truly awesome. i only wish they'd give me the upgrade on a HK to LA flight instead, but hey, i'm not complaining. one more trip and i've got 3 free tickets to HK (from MLA) out of my mileage, that's reason enough to stick to this airline.
March 12, 2007
albuquerque, new mexico
these are my pics from my trip to albuquerque, new mexico two weekends back.
time to leave this town
i woke up thirsty saturday morning after spending the night with giz, larry and mindy at malee's for dinner and then acme and kashmir down in scottsdale for some drinks. i'd have to say scottsdale is abuzz with so many gorgeous people, far better than tempe i would say. we had a bottle of wine shared by three with larry having a bottle of non-alcoholic whatever (bummer!). i'd have to say i've gotten to like drinking red wine, it pairs up nicely with a juicy steak. anyway, it took me quite a while before the throbbing in my head subsided and i diligently started packing my stuff neatly. it was going to be a challenge because i knew somehow that i bought stuff more than my luggages can carry - and i haven't even bought any stuff for the fam yet. uhmm oh well, i'm good at organizing my things so pretty much at the end of the day, most of my stuff fit snugly in the luggages. i realized that the only thing holding my luggages from exploding were the strong zippers it had on it. it felt like deja vu - like last time i was here for seven weeks and i bought a lot of stuff. i had to leave my GNC whey protein since there was no way already it would fit despite that it still had like five or six servings left. ahhh, i'd have to visit GNC when i get back.
i checked out of the hotel earlier than i should have since i was planning on catching "300" before my flight. and since amc charges just 5 bucks if you watch before noon, i decided to watch the movie around 11am. the movie was visually spectacular though i'd have to say there wasn't really too much story in it as the whole plot was focused on the fighting. this is not to say that the movie wasn't great, but if i compare it to gladiator, i thought the latter at least had more story in it. after a while, i kinda grew weary of hearing gerard butler scream "spaaaarrrtttaaaannnnsss." still, i thought it was still a movie worth seeing.
my flight is still at 7pm later and its only 3pm. i decided to hangout at the office to print my online check-in confirmation. i also decided to print this book i managed to download "the celestine prophecy" which morgan asked me to read. so now i've got two books i need to finish, james redfield's "the celestine prophecy" and the extreme programming book. i've been kind of lazy to read books lately but maybe its time i started reading again if not for the enjoyment, but for the learnings instead. i'll pass by gizie's apartment later since i forgot the copy of the doctor's bill - yeah, its not enough that i paid a thousand plus dollars to the hospital but the doctor's bill is separate. what a rip-off!!! people here in america will probably just be saddled by debt if any of their family get sick.
i checked out of the hotel earlier than i should have since i was planning on catching "300" before my flight. and since amc charges just 5 bucks if you watch before noon, i decided to watch the movie around 11am. the movie was visually spectacular though i'd have to say there wasn't really too much story in it as the whole plot was focused on the fighting. this is not to say that the movie wasn't great, but if i compare it to gladiator, i thought the latter at least had more story in it. after a while, i kinda grew weary of hearing gerard butler scream "spaaaarrrtttaaaannnnsss." still, i thought it was still a movie worth seeing.
my flight is still at 7pm later and its only 3pm. i decided to hangout at the office to print my online check-in confirmation. i also decided to print this book i managed to download "the celestine prophecy" which morgan asked me to read. so now i've got two books i need to finish, james redfield's "the celestine prophecy" and the extreme programming book. i've been kind of lazy to read books lately but maybe its time i started reading again if not for the enjoyment, but for the learnings instead. i'll pass by gizie's apartment later since i forgot the copy of the doctor's bill - yeah, its not enough that i paid a thousand plus dollars to the hospital but the doctor's bill is separate. what a rip-off!!! people here in america will probably just be saddled by debt if any of their family get sick.
March 02, 2007
flying again
i had to wake up early this morning to get ready for my flight to albuquerque, new mexico. flight is still at 725am but since i didn't want to get stuck in the morning I10 traffic i decided to leave sometime before 6am. after all, i just remembered i had to fill up the tank before i drop off my rental. there wasn't a lot of people on the check-in booths for southwest airlines so i breezed through it and also the security. after taking southwest airlines to portland, i decided that i like this airline better than america west. not only do i find the free-seating a plus, they at least serve snacks instead of just drinks. the flights i took were never full so i usually 3 seats all to myself.
i'm a bit excited to visit albuquerque again mostly because this time i get to spend the weekend there unlike last time when i spent two weekdays without being able to even drive around. the airport is a bit far from where intel is (rio rancho) so its going to be a test of how effectively i read mapquest. 20 mins before boarding. its just a one hour trip so its not going to be that dull.
i'm a bit excited to visit albuquerque again mostly because this time i get to spend the weekend there unlike last time when i spent two weekdays without being able to even drive around. the airport is a bit far from where intel is (rio rancho) so its going to be a test of how effectively i read mapquest. 20 mins before boarding. its just a one hour trip so its not going to be that dull.
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