Archive for May, 2005

Moved in

Friday, May 20th, 2005

    I’ve just (kinda) finished unpacking my stuff in the dorm. First thing I set up was the computer, while I was directing the maid what, and where to put my clothes, bags, shoes, etc., then my room mate arrived. Upon his arrival, I suddently felt that we’d jive somehow. The person looks pretty friendly and gay (happy!), like myself (at least that’s what some people say). Most of the employees here seem to be pretty friendly and nice, just don’t know if that’s just for now, though.

A few hours ago, I paid for the 1 month activation fee of my DSL connection, and I feel that its not really worth it, though. I WILL be disconnected EVERY 3 hours, because the server resets itself to refresh the connection. That’s what the Data Center personnel told me. Oh well, at least I’m back on broadband. I will just have to deal with this, I guess. Oh, and another comment that I have, is that some (actually, A LOT) of ports are blocked, so I couldn’t use my file-sharing programs that I normally use. I couldn’t even receive a file on IRC, for crying out loud!


I’m getting pretty hungry, so I might just go out, or have something delivered here. Craving for something sweet, green and crunchy..

Conjunction with The Terminal

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

I
watched The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones,
and Stanley
Tucci. I will not
disclose details about the movie, because
I want you
(the reader) to watch it for yourself. As of now, all I can say is that,
I find it
as an inspirational flick. Of course, things are always subjective, but that’s
just what I personally think.

I entitled
this post as such, because I truly felt that my life is linked to some of the
scenes from the movie. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I will not disclose details,
I’ll just cite my side, and that cover different points in my existence during
the last few months (around 5 to almost 6 months). I will try to sort it out,
and will make the motion picture as a basis for the sequence. For further assistance,
just contact me. First off, I would like to commend the stupendous introduction.
I was fond of the simplicity of it.


On my first
day at The Spa (see previous posts for more details), I felt so vulnerable and
confused when I entered the dressing area. I was expecting that, I will have my
private room, where I could change. However, there was none. That made me a bit
thwarted and worried, until I saw someone undress right there and then, in
front of me. I figured, what the hell, so I did the same. I guess I was just
expecting too much from The Spa. It’s an exclusive (at least it looks like one)
spa and I guess its just right to expect the highest standards from them.


I suppose
it also applies during my first few weeks at work. I often do not log off
properly (which adversely affected our team’s ratings/statistics). The
workforce analyst (and sometimes, our manager) would always go to my terminal
and manually log me off. What can they expect; I’m new to the industry. It took
me a while before I could learn the ropes, but I got it in no time!


I got tired
of foraging around for tracking sheets and having to deal with the
confusing-gridlines of the original layout, after a few weeks. So what I did
was, I improvised and made a couple of versions. The first version was
environment-hostile (it was still paper based), I simply highlighted the
gridlines in an alternate manner, to avoid confusion. My next version was
pretty ambitious. Other people, including my superiors, were curious about it,
and were approaching me asking what I was doing. It was made with the open-source alternative
for Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.Org. I made it for myself, because I find it
really time-consuming to write (NOT TYPING. I am a slow writer), have a
discussion, and navigate the computer all at the same time. When my supervisor
found out about it, he suggested a few stuff to improve it, and I was able to
make that. He also wanted to implement that for everyone’s use. However, it was
still pretty technical for the typical person to use (that’s according to him).
I believe that, given enough time, an average person will get to know how to
use it, though. That pretty much raised my reputation, from ghastly to somewhat
better than that. I felt like a lab rat being watched. It was quite okay,
though. At least I was able to prove something that’d probably benefit the
entire company.


The movie
made me see the value of true friendship. When I got into trouble with one of
the government agencies in the country, without any hesitations, my friends
helped me out with it and allowed me to hide my computer in their place.


When I was
young, my dad promised that he’d give me a car, once I become of legal age. It
took awhile for that to come true, but it did. I learnt from the movie, that a
loved one will always find ways to make a promise come true, no matter what it
takes. My dad is now in the process of giving the other car to me. However, I
think I’m not ready for it yet. I prefer to have a driver. In this(my) case, it
was the other way around from the movie.

ANIMO! Article

Sunday, May 15th, 2005

    I am currently working on posting my brother’s article in ANIMO! here in my post. Stay tuned.

Not-so-Average Sunday

Sunday, May 15th, 2005

    Started the day by eating lunch, I woke up at around 12:30PM. I connected some audio/video equipment downstairs, in the Guest Room after I ate, for the FiberMed presentation/demo. We tried several players, but unfortunately, the disc was written in the wrong way, with a crappy software (Roxio), and was only VCD 1.1 format. The guy that made the disc looked very clueless of what I was telling them.

After that, I went to my grandma’s to bring some mangos, and chat with my cousin. When I arrived there, the seats were arranged in a circular manner, because they were expecting visitors. When the visitors arrived, they just sang a few songs (2 of my aunts are choir members), and ate. Before the singing started, my aunt invited me to go with them to the mall, because her daughter needs to buy school supplies. So, before they ate, I rushed home to change my clothes, and fix my hair.

They were already finished eating, and the visitors were on their way out when I came back. I, basically, just picked up my aunt there, and went to her house.

We were supposed to go to a middle-class mall, but my uncle didn’t want to, because of the distance. As an alternative, we went to 2 branches of National BookStore. We went to the one near one of the most exclusive universities in the country, our rival institution, first. Despondently, she didn’t find everything that she was looking for in that branch. So, we went to another branch, which is nearer to our hometown. A plethora of people were in the mall. We were so disappointed! Probably, because there was a sale, some celebrities, and it was the 15th (pay day). Go figure.

On our way home, we stopped by in a well-known ice-cream/crushed ice parlor. Due to the broad range of choices, it took us a while to order. I ordered a Blueberry and Peach flavored ice-cream/crushed-ice meal. It was fabulous! What made it better, was that, my uncle paid for it! I wanted the ones that were on their poster, unfortunately, they didn’t have it (sarcastic: What a surprise). The woman explained why they didn’t have it, and the reason was pretty self-explanatory.

Appetizer’s now over, so what next; dinner? That was actually our dessert. Some sequence, huh?
Upon arrival to my aunt’s humble abode, she quickly rummaged around the kitchen, and tossed out something to cook. I was pretty bored, so I stepped in the kitchen, to see what I can do. Fortunately, I found something to do! I mixed the rice, while my aunt was busy slicing onions, beating garlic, slicing Spam, opening a can of mushrooms, and running around the house.  She had a difficulty in opening the can of mushrooms, so I tried to help, but alas, my effort was put into waste. So, I just continued to mix rice, and other vegetables. I don’t usually do that stuff at home, but I wanted to try something new, so I just did it.

I love it when I eat something that I cooked. Or, helped prepare, in this case. After all that, my cousin and I went to my grandma’s to hang out. It was around 21:00 then. I got pretty bored there, ’cause the 2 elderly people were already asleep, and my primary purpose to go there, was to make mango shake. Due to the noise that it’d produce, it just remained as a plan. A few minutes later, I scooted home.

While waiting for someone to open the gate for me, I saw my friend drove by. We talked a bit, in the (middle of) street (he was inside the car, I was standing outside). We decided to end the conversation, because his was causing traffic. I asked him if was going to his cousin’s (my friends as well) place, and he said that he’ll just pick up his dad in his(dad’s) friend’s place.

That’s about it.
/end.
 

Reserved

Saturday, May 7th, 2005

    We went to my future dorm yesterday and reserved a slot for me. I’m so excited to go back to school, and check in to my future dorm! Woohoo!

Saturday, May 7th, 2005

!#@$!@#$

Friday, May 6th, 2005

    This is SO devastating! I’ve waited so long for this (our company outing), only to find out that I cannot attend due to health reasons! FUCK IT! DAMN. I’m so upset (isn’t it obvious?).

I have to go to the office tonight, just to show up, so that they wouldn’t deduct anything from my salary. I signed their waiver that I’ll go, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m not feeling too well. Oh well.

Argument with Pizza Hut

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

 This probably won’t be considered as a creative criticism, but it was really frustrating when my pizza was delivered. I clearly told the operator that I want to use the Palm Card, so that there would be a free family size pizza with it, but when the delivery guy came, he just brought 1 REGULAR pizza!

I immediately called Pizza Hut, and reported the incident. I got so mad, I was about to cancel my order. Good thing, that the guy admitted that he forgot to mention that what I ordered was not included in the promo, and took all the blames.

Just finished eating around 5 pieces of Super Supreme pizza that I ordered, and I enjoyed every single bite of it.

I don’t like Mondays (or any other banking holidays, for that matter!)

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

    Before going to work, I checked the ATM if it was already online, so that I could with withdraw some cash, alas, it was still offline! Probably because it was a holiday yesterday, and there were a lot of people who were getting money from the same ATM last Saturday (April 30th). Their system seems to be down. Even other ATM branches aren’t working. Damned them!

Yesterday (Monday, May 2nd) was our Pajama Party at work. I wore cream/beige(?) PJ’s. Most of my office mates didn’t notice that I was already in my PJ’s, which I don’t have any idea why. It was a pretty normal day at work. I won a sachet of Swiss Miss, which I gave to my supervisor.

Sunday

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

    Last Sunday (May 1st) was a pretty average day. Went to church at
around 08:20AM, met my friends, and instead of listening to the boring
sermon, we just chatted a few. After the sermon, I went to my friend’s
house. When we arrived there, one of my friends (a female) noticed that
she left her underwears and other beach outfit on the couch, so she
gathered that and tried to hide it from me, and apologized. As a joke,
I said "What’s new?" She got a little upset when I said that, so I said
it was a just a joke (it really was).


They quickly changed into something more comfortable, and I was left in
the ground floor. My female friend finished changing first, so after
that, she popped in a movie called Catch Me If You Can. We watched that
for a few minutes, however, her brother changed it to Gangs of New
York. We also watched the latter for a few minutes, then my other
friend (the brother) offered to make Mango shake. While he was making
the shake, I told his sister that now’s a good opportunity for her to
change the disc to what we were originally watching, and so she did. We
finished disc 1, then had to go to the other house to meet their other
relatives, and have lunch.


We continued watching disc 2 after lunch. The movie was pretty good. I
now understand why it takes a few days(sometimes) for a check to
bounce/clear, thanks to that movie. When the movie ended, he quickly
changed it back to Gangs of New York. That movie is so gruesome, and I
was not enjoying it, so I just played around with my mobile phone
instead. My other friend (the sister) was a bit interested in it, I
think, so she watched it ’til the 3rd disc. However, her interest-rate
fell, and she fell asleep.


The movie was really boring me, so I asked my friend if we could just
go upstairs and play NFS Underground (one). He approved my request, so
we woke up his sister and told her that we were going upstairs, and
that she should go with us so that she could sleep in an airconditioned
room.


I got tired of playing NFS, so I just played around with PhotoShop CS.
While playing around with PhotoShop CS, my best friend called on my
mobile phone, and we chatted for around 45 minutes, or so. I’m not that
good of a multitasker, so I was on and off with PhotoShop, while
talking to my friend.


After the phonecall, my friends had to leave for a family-gathering, or
something, so I just went home, took a bath, and slept. And that’s how
the day ended.