where the moon shines

These days everywhere you look you will be reminded of one of two things: Valentine’s Day and the Chinese Lunar New Year. Both happy occasions fall on February 14 this year, so there’s double celebration, and double reasons for donning red.

As soon as the month rolled in, you would have already seen decorations and promotions relevant to Valentine’s. One of those that I didn’t mind, and actually participated in, is the Facebook promotional that UNICEF Philippines is running:  I Love UNICEF. Here’s their description from the FB album:

Hello UNICEF friends and supporters! In celebration of Valentine’s Day, UNICEF Philippines invites you to Show Your Love for UNICEF! Send us your photo with an “I Love UNICEF” sign and make a statement for children’s rights. Take a snapshot using your webcam, digicam, analog camera or cameraphone with your kids, best friend, special someone, classmates, neighbor, teacher, officemates, everyone and we will post them in the Show Your Love for UNICEF album. Please send any photo up to 200kb with your name and where you are in the world to psfrmanila@unicef.org from February 8 to 14, 2010. Happy Valentine’s Day from your UNICEF family! Click away for children’s rights!

Because I believe in UNICEF’s projects and worked with them in the past, and welcome the inspiration for taking more photos, I sent in my entries of course. My nephews were very willing participants too!

Adam and AJ were here on the day I decided we would join in. They so happily went to find a piece of paper, markers and crayons, and worked together to make this sign. While taking their photos, I also told them a little of what UNICEF does.

The next day, it was Esban’s turn. When he was very small, I took him with me to the UNICEF’s offices while running an errand for work. He doesn’t remember it anymore but it was a fun day. When I told him about it, and what UNICEF does, he said that it was like my old work at Asia ACTs. That part he remembers

Go, make your own I Love UNICEF sign and show your support for this organization dedicated to upholding the rights of children! Fan them in Facebook too Or if you just want to look at the photos, they are here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=186352&id=102248760571&ref=nf

On a very different topic…

We were talking about bloated tummies at work this morning, and how women get bloated during menstruation. I, of course, had to comment that such was the case with me. LOL. But also that I am bloated every time anyway. Haha. Seriously though, I feel bigger than ever. I feel and I look it. It’s sad really. I heard that bloating and constipation (which I suffer from sometimes too) are symptoms of a colon clogged with too much wastes. Yes, I have been reading up a bit on colon cleanse reviews and it does seem a good idea to do that every once in a while. Not just to lose weight too, but for overall wellness.

I finally made a donation to the Haiti Fund, through Hope For Haiti Now, the organization that launched the star-studded telethon to raise funds.

I figured that since I was already enjoying the videos of the performances from the telethon, I might as well make the donation through them. You can also checkout their YouTube channel if you want to see amazing performances and short features.

If you haven’t donated to the Haiti Fund yet, well what are you waiting for? Every small contribution counts!

My PC woes haven’t been resolved so I have to be offline for a longer time. Sigh. On the upside, I did (finally) get to finish Inkheart while Alfred worked on the PC.

Today on the news, we tuned in just in time to hear about the bodies of two Pilipino aid workers recovered from the rubble of the UN offices in Haiti. Let us all offer our prayers for the repose of their souls, and for strength for their families in their time of bereavement…

I have not yet been able to make a donation. I initially wanted to donate through the Episcopal Relief and Development website, as suggested by my mother. After all, it made sense to donate through the Church. But as I was trying it out, the website won’t accept non-US addresses, or perhaps I just haven’t found a way to do so. If you live in the US, do checkout the ERD website and learn how you can donate through them.

At work, I happened to have pulled up Bing.Com and needed to run a search on something, when right there at the bottom of the page I saw this link:

Clicking on How you can help Haiti has brought me to two different pages so far, one is this, and here’s the other. Both pages give you a list of charities where you can donate. Microsoft isn’t accepting donations, but they have already made their pledge of support for the recovery efforts and rebuilding of life in Haiti. They have also committed to matching the donations made by their US employees to their choice of charities (upto $12,000 per employee). I think corporate giants should take a clue from this…

There is no hurry in making a donation. I bet even just blogging about the various channels through which people can help is already a good move. The people of Haiti will need our help for many many months to come.

Save the Children also has this donation page up for their own Haiti fund. I have worked with Save the Children (their UK-Philippines office specifically) and I trust in this charity. Like ER-D, they are already there on the ground so you can be assured that your donations will make it to the intended recipients.

The above links will direct you to many other donation pages, such as UNICEF’s and the Red Cross, go through their lists and find the charity that your heart  is comfortable working with.

For digital scrapbookers, here’s an additional incentive to make a donation. The Daily Digi has a freebie for those who will email them that they have made a contribution to a charity of their own choice. Now I don’t see that they’re asking for any proof of donation, but I hope that no one will abuse this. It’s a wonderful idea though.

Here’s a blogger who is running a contest on blog and tied it in with making donations for Haiti via UNICEF. Scoot over to Cornyman’s Money-Blog where each comment he would match with 10 cents in donation to UNICEF.

Here’s yet another blogger who would donate $1 to God’s Littlest Angels, an orphanage in Haiti, for every blogger or reader who comments about what they have done to donate for the relief efforts. Check out Cents Saved.

Eco Mama also runs a similar comments challenge over at her blog. This is specifically for those who have no means to donate, you simply have to leave a comment on her specific Mercy Corps Haiti Earthquake Relief post and she will match a dollar for each comment and make the donation through Mercy Corps.

So no matter how much you part with, it will count towards helping out the people of Haiti. Recently, my country was devastated by two typhoons and we relied on the world community for aid. Neighbors didn’t fail each other, and strangers were transformed into angels. For others, there is still much help needed. There are families still living in evacuation areas almost three months after the disaster. We know all too well that it will be the same for Haiti.

Oh, and today is our tenth anniversary. ?

In reference to yesterday’s post, all went well at work last night. Everything was smooth sailing, except for the fact that my PC issues haven’t been sorted out yet (I know IT’s working on it though and I thank them so much for that). Thank you for those who wished me well

One thing though is that I feel like I haven’t been much help to my boss yet. I appreciate so much that he isn’t pressuring me too much, and he’s not trying to make me digest everything all in one go. But he needs to off-load a lot of work, he’s getting sick already! All I can really do is focus on the job at hand so I can be of real help sooner.

Before I transferred back to the program, they ran an incentive program that was supposed to be just in time for Thanksgiving. Agents earned tickets based on their positive customer satisfaction survey results, and these were raffled off today. There were sooooo many prizes. I gotta say, it beats previous incentives we’ve had whether in this program or the last one I was with. The drawing itself must have taken a full hour to finish.

Prizes included Cheetos and Doritos (consolation prizes clearly), but there were also a lot of home appliances like flat irons, DVD players, microwave ovens, colored TV sets (without the tv stand though), washing machines, and a lot more. Yes, all those are in the plural. The fun thing about the way the raffle was done was that we took turns drawing the names of the winners, and when the person was around, he/she would draw from the jar of prizes. I picked the name of one of our own agents, but he ended up picking a can of Pringles as his prize! LOL The non agents in attendance (myself included) kept dropping side comments offering to buy the items from the winners, at very low prices of course. I have my eye on one of my agent’s prize – a sandwich maker.

Enough about my day.

While bloghopping yesterday, I came upon this wonderful project that aims to brighten up the walls of the Philippine Children’s Medical Center:

Here’s a description of the project lifted directly from their site:

Who are we?

Walls of Hope was initiated by a group of friends who have been brought together by their common attachment to the Philippine Children’s Medical Center. We were once patients, students and visitors of PCMC who have been inspired by the wall murals found around the hospital (esp. Gloria Villaraza Guzman’s Munting Patak-ulan).

What is Walls of Hope?

Most of the wall paintings in the hospital have already deteriorated or have been lost due to time. Walls of Hope is our way of giving back to the hospital that once catered to the health needs of our generation back when we were young. This is our attempt to help bring back the hope that the hospital walls has been known to give to its patients and to help sustain it to be experienced by future generations. The presence of these colorful murals is a powerful way of relieving stress and easing the hearts and minds of its visitors.

It is a 3-day event scheduled to happen on December 19-21, 2009. Volunteers are not required to be present during the whole duration of the event – even just an hour of your time already means a lot to us! The goal is to finish painting the whole first floor of the hospital in 3 days!

Click on the banner to hop to their page and find out how you can help out. I doubt if I can volunteer to do any painting, but I will look at other options on how I can donate. I’ve personally never been to the PCMC and have no relatives or friends who’ve had kids confined there, but I know that many kids walk these halls and they need a lot of cheering up, to say the least. I would love to help in any little way I can, I hope you would too.

I had blogged about my Starbucks Christmas, but had I known about the tie up between The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – Tomas Morato and ECPAT Philippines, I would probably have skipped it and patronized this instead.

Then I realized, I don’t have to go through this promo just to support ECPAT and their current projects. I could just as easily come up with the money equivalent to twelve cups of coffee, and hand deliver it to ECPAT myself.  At least I would know that the full amount goes to a very good cause, and not just a portion of it. (So there, I was able to rationalize my Starbucks Christmas – I’d be supporting Spark of Hope which is another charity altogether, on top of supporting ECPAT)

Okay, so if I were to pledge the cash equivalent of 12 cups of coffee, how much money would I have to set aside? Say a drink costs 115 pesos, multiply that by 12… 1380 pesos. That looks like a lot of money if I had to dish it out one time big time. But come to think of it, my rubber shoes cost more than that…

Hmmm. I’m not aware how ECPAT accepts cash donations, or for what specific projects the donations would go to. I should probably get in touch with them and find out. If anyone’s interested in supporting their advocacy (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) here in the Philippines (there’s an ECPAT International too, and local campaigns in many parts of the world), leave me a message and I’d be more than happy to pass along your contact details to their Info officer or Executive Director should you wish so.

Last week, while exiting ShopWise, Alfred asked me if it was possible to donate to a charity and they’d give us a card in return which we would then give as gifts to friends and family. Then we could say that we made a donation in their name, and they would actually believe us. Maybe we could do that with ECPAT.

Good deeds.