Ramblings and Brain farts

Not a good start

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I have no business sitting here at home and much less, blogging. I should be on my way to work now. I can’t bring  myself to prep for work though. Halfway through my shift yesterday, I started feeling nauseous. I tried to close my eyes for a bit and take a nap but I couldn’t really. And usually, if you knew that a nap would help, you start feeling better the moment you close your eyes right? Well, I didn’t.

We have a clinic of course and it’s just a few steps from my station so I paid the nurse a visit. She took my blood pressure and it was just normal. She gave me an anti-vertigo pill. Two hours later, I wasn’t any better. To the contrary, I had to run to the ladies room several times because I thought surely, I was going to throw up. It didn’t happen though. Finally, with two hours left in my shift, I had asked my boss if I could just go home early. He let me go.

From the time I got home until a few minutes earlier, I slept. So if it was just about sleep, then I should be feeling better by now. I’m not. It’s not as lousy as last night, but it’s not much better either. I’m thinking of taking my ass to the hospital for a checkup. I’ll sit on it a few more minutes though.

I was pissed off yesterday because it started raining just when we were about to head to work. So we had to stay a bit for it to die down. Well it wasn’t about to stop so we decided to just brave the rain and get on our way. It took a longer time than usual to get a cab.  To make things worse, my pant legs got wet while I was just outside the house! And it took hours to dry off, I tell you! As soon as my legs started to feel cold, I thought about Justin boots and how nice it would be to have been wearing a pair just at that moment.

What really got to me was that the cab driver seemed to be new to the job. I had to give him directions. Now, that’s not so bad but when we found the streets flooded, I had to redirect him again. I mean, other drivers would know what to do, he just didn’t. We had to reroute three times, with each time on my lead. Ugh.

The usual 10 minutes it took for me to get to work became  40 minutes yesterday.

Remind me not to go through Scout Reyes, Mother Ignacia, and Timog Avenue the next time it rains. Those streets were flooded and it doesn’t make sense. I wasn’t surprised about the strip of Mo. Ignacia near Burger King because it’s a slope and there really was a very low part of it. But Scout Reyes and Timog Avenue? ! Calling Quezon City officials! Do something please.

Yesterday was supposed to be my first day at work for the new fiscal month. It wasn’t such a good way to start.

September First – Family

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Today, we were up before 6AM to make it to the morning service held in honor of my late Lola, Maggie Somebang.

Though the mass was held at 630 in the morning, there were still quite a number of people in attendance, mostly relatives and close family friends. We served breakfast right after the service, and my aunt made delicious carrot muffins to go with the usual breakfast fare of longganiza, scrambled eggs, and corned beef with potatoes and peas.

September 1st 2008 marks the fourth anniversary of her journey to heaven. It has been four years since our lives were drastically changed. Four years since. Somehow, I can say it is a bit better now, compared to the year after.

After breakfast, Alfred went home while I paid my cousin Ton a visit. She had an operation to remove a myoma and a cyst on her ovary (which is thankfully benign – a chocolate cyst). We stayed there for hours, talking about many things concerning the family. Caring for her was her girlfriend Margie, with me visiting is another cousin, Candy, and our niece Dalnes. I haven’t been hanging out with any of them in a long time. So being there in the hospital was a good time to spend the rest of the morning.

By 1PM, her doctor finally came back and gave clearance for her to finally go home, four days after the operation. She had been worried about the cost of her extended stay there, so she was relieved to be finally able to leave. I didn’t wait until she was actually discharged though, Dal and I left Candy and Margie to assist the patient.

Sometimes I can’t help but think how different times are now. I wonder how things would be different, specially in the lives of some of my nieces/nephews.

Lola, I know you’re up there, preparing the house in which we all would again be spending time with you. Some of us need your support more than others; I know you are there when they need to make crucial life decisions. I hope that when you look down through the clouds, you see us and feel proud, or at least happy with the paths we’ve  taken. You are remembered and loved. Always.


Eraserheads forever!

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The band that we so loved since gradeschool is back in the headlines.

When I first heard the buzz about an Eraserheads reunion concert, I was thrilled. It shook the Pinoy Rock scene when front man (and my ultimate crush) Ely Buendia announced that he was leaving the band, many years ago. The remaining three members, Raimund, Marcus, and Buddy, decided to continue and even enlisted a new vocalist – a girl. That was shortlived though, because the Eraserheads would never be the same without Ely.

Then the news died down, I never really knew whether there was going to be one or not. Two days ago, I was shocked to learn that the concert was slated for Saturday, August 30. Shoot. I won’t see them. The most awaited reunion concert, and I was not going to witness it.

So I was sulking last night. And it didn’t help that Alfred couldn’t care less. He’s not a big E-heads fan, you see. He would go see Sandwich play (which former E-head Raimund now fronts) but he couldn’t care less about the band that started it all. He even had the gall to tell me that it was fortunate that I had missed it because the concert was cut short.

My first reaction was, where’s your humanity dude? We’re talking about a person who possibly had a heart attack! And not just some person either – it’s Ely Buendia for pete’s sake! It is alarming news, specially because he had already undergone a heart operation just last year.

When I heard about what happened (that was also the first thing my mom and dad told me when I woke up this morning), I felt all the more that I should have been there with the other 60,000 fans. I don’t care if they didn’t finish the concert, the thought that it could really have been the last time I’d see them play together…

Anyhoo. Ely’s at the Philippine Heart Center, but is already in a stable condition. His fans are all praying for his fast recovery. His mom died on the 28th, but the true rock icon that he is, the show must go on. Imagine the stress that he was under. But the people who were at the concert say that the band still performed well together, and they don’t feel that they were shortchanged. They got 15 songs anyway! That’s not too bad at all.

Hopefully they’d give in to the fans and perform again when Ely is fully recovered. I’d definitely won’t miss it.


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Scrapbook Saturday #7- Organization Part 2

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Last week, we talked about organizing our photo stash. Today, I’d like to share one way for organizing your digital scrapbooking stash.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t anything new, and I’m even positive that I got the idea from a Scrap Girls tutorial for beginning digiscrappers. But since this was the first method I used to organize my stash, I’d like to share it with everyone tonight. 🙂

There are two key assumptions to this method though:

  1. The designers name and package their files/kits with a certain way that includes the designer name/initials, and the kit name.
  2. That you organize your stash as soon as you download and unzip.

Now, because not all kits I downloaded conformed to assumption #1, and I didn’t always unzip the same day I download, I admit that this method proved to be quite tedious and took away from actual scrapping time.

Despite that, I still believe that it could be a great way to organize stuff. In fact, when I got down to do some actual scrapping, it was actually not that difficult to shop around my own stash and find things that would go well with my layout.

So what to do?

Set up your folder structure. Yes. This means that you need to prepare the folders in your hard drive in which you’ll be dumping stuff after you unzip. I’ve got a sample here:

I created a new folder inside My Documents, and labeled it SCRAP. Of course you can create your own folder elsewhere in your hard drive if you want. My real stash is actually in a secondary HD, and the folder name is Digi Scrap Store (because I think of my shop as a big store!).

Inside the SCRAP folder, I created FIVE basic subfolders that you can see in the screen shot: BACKGROUNDS – or Papers, ELEMENTS, FRAMES, PREVIEWS, and TOUs (Terms of Use).

The next level of folders is where the fun begins. You can have as many sub-folders that you can think of within the five basic ones mentioned above.

For BACKGROUNDS, you may have subfolders per COLOR or HUE. At home, I have a PINK-RED, BLUE-VIOLET, EARTH-BROWN, GREEN, YELLOW-ORANGE subfolders. I did have a separate folder for THEMED PAPERS though. That’s where papers for specific occasions would go (halloween, Christmas, etc.).

The same subfolders of color and hue follow for my ELEMENTS folder. Within each folder for a color, would be even more subfolders for the many types of elements/embellishments that exist! For example:

 Coming up with categories for your elements can be fun, but also sometimes confusing. Haha. Aside from these three, I have GLITTER, DOODLES, JOURNALLING MATS, and many others I can’t particularly remember right now!

With this particular method, it is quite easy to find papers and elements that would match the colors of the photos you are scrapping.

One thing that was a challenge though, is the fact that, going back to assumption #1, not all designers would put their name and the kit name in the file name for each paper and element in the pack. So, after unzipping, you would need to find time to rename everything to include the information. Of course, when I started organizing stuff, I wasn’t very diligent yet. So what happened was, I would use a paper or an element, and have a tough time identifying who made it or from what site/kit I took it from.

Next week, I’ll share another organization tip with you all.

In the meantime, don’t forget to visit the rest of the participants to Scrapbook Saturday. Start with this week’s host at Nothing but Purple.

I hope you find this post useful 🙂


Culinary Dreams and PR3!

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Mae, a member of my team, dreams of one day becoming a chef.

I found out about it during one of our early coaching sessions. In my attempt to get to know my new team, I had intentionally set out to have an informal chat with each one to learn more about their work and personality.

In turn, I also told her that I wanted to get better at baking, and how I’ve been looking at short courses being offered around the Metro. She was familiar with the culinary schools too since she’s been looking around. So that’s what we talk about sometimes.

Before she left the office today, she told me that she had heard of another culinary school – The Center for Asian Culinary Studies (CACS). I went ahead and checked out their website. Apparently, Chef Gene Gonzales is the founder and President of that school. I used to watch Chef Gene on TV when he still hosted a cooking show (How ’bout my place, and some others). My mom and dad liked to dine at his restaurants: Gene’s Bistro that used to be in Morato and the Cafe Y sabel in San Juan.

Their curriculum looks rigid and packed but there are no short courses offered currently. I sent an email inquiring about the fees and am praying I don’t get too shocked at the response. Culinary schools tend to cost an arm and a leg!

I remembered an info-mercial about a charity where celebrity couple Judy Ann Santos and Ryan Agoncillo talked about the teachers they idolized. Juday’s was Chef Gene. True enough, when I checked out the Gallery posted on the site, there were photos of Juday with her classmates on their finals. The good thing is, the school isn’t capitalizing on its most famous alumna to promote the institution. They list instead their graduates who are now blazing their trails in the food and restaurant industry. (more…)

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