z610i Test Publish

"This is me and Ron in Aristocrat, Malate"

I gotta new phone! Whoopee! At last, after almost 2 months of waiting, the Sony Ericsson z610i finally arrived in the Philippines. I'm just so loving this phone.

I'm just testing the "Blog This" function. And yes, I chose this photo because hindi na galit si Ron. Yey!

Huwag Ka Nang Magalit, Please.

Hay naku. Nainis lang ako. Actually, kahapon pa to e. Pero kebs.

Siguro nga meron kang karapatang magalit. Or maiinis. Or kung ano pa. Pero ang sakin lang, wag ka naman sanang bastos. Hindi ko namang ginustong hindi ka makasama. Malay ko ba na meron kayong usapan ni Gerard. Ako, nagising lang ako nung umaga at tinext si Gerard. Sinabihan akong aalis kaya sumama ako.

Huwag ka nang magalit dahil hindi naman naming ginustong maiwan ka. Merong konting pagkakaiba ang ginusto at nakalimutan. Oo. Puno't dulo nun ay hindi ka nakasama pero hindi namin ginusto yun. Isang spontaneous na pangyayari yun para sa akin. Hindi ginusto pero nangyari.

This is a "just in case" post. Since you do not want to talk to me, this is my reaction. I want to explain my side, our side, of what happened. As a friend who I really treasure, I want to reach out. My initial reaction was to shut you out as well, just like what you did last night. But I changed my mind. You deserve something better. So here it is. Whenever you're ready to talk, I'm just here. You know where to reach me. Ron, don't shut us out. Magpakalma ka muna tapos kausapin mo na kami.

Pasensya talaga.

Taking It Easy

Physical and mental strain on one's self is inevitable. Yes. It happened to me. Again. A few weeks back, I was really feeling the strain of my 11 x 4 (11 hours by 4 days per week) schedule. I feel like I was crawling through my shift. Every after one, I felt so tired. All I wanted to do was go home and sleep. Thank god, that was usually the case except for some unplanned instances. But the bottomline is, I needed some rest.

So, I asked my soooper generous and gorgeous friend, Gwen, to swap shifts with me even for a month. Happy me, she agreed. So here I am now, enjoying my new normal shift (This is only applicable for people who work the graveyard shift) of 8PM to 5AM. Yey for me! This is a less toxic shift since there are less people who need help. All I gotta do is work on my daily tasks and that's about it. (Thank again, Gwennie!!!)

As the days go by (2 weeks to be exact), I can really feel some of the wellness coming back. Little by little, the energy that I once shown for work started to be there again. My attitude of do-it-now-and-definitely-not-tomorrow is indeed here again. I can feel it. The only problem is my productivity is being compromised. Why? It's because there are fewer service tickets to be processed and by the time more come in, I'm outta the office. But it's cool. I think my teammates and I will be able to work something out for these coming 2 weeks.

After our month-long swap, I'm headed to the beach for some R & R. It's gonna be a 3 day retreat that seems to be very promising. When I get back, I'll have my old 11 x 4 schedule. That's fine. I think I'm ready for that again. I wish I could have the time adjusted an hour earlier though. I'll have that addressed as soon as the proper authority comes in tomorrow. (*ehem* A)

Aahhh. I just thought about what I did. I felt the exhaustion and I properly handled it. I think I'm getting better at this taking-care-of-myself thing. Kudos to me.

Mine Again!

After almost 5 months, it's mine again. Anything I please, I can have. No. It's not another person. It's my time. Thank god.

Last Saturday was the culmination of our annual sportsfest. I was pretty damn surprised that we beat our opponent. We're the champions. To top it all off, our account was crowned overall champions for the festivities. We bagged 4 golds, 2 silvers, and a bronze. Whooopppeeee!

It was a truly grand night. We were sharing the victory with everybody. Every face present that night shared everybody's joy. All of the accounts joined in the fun. Emotions were running high from realizing that their efforts were all worth it. Each sprained ankle, each broken bone, and each nasty scratch all paid off and recognized with this single night. This is it. Awards night.

As a usual PS ritual, extreme emotion is always best served with a bottle (excuse me, bottles. Many bottles) of ice-cold beer. After freshening up, we regrouped at Carafe. Laughs, inside stories, and back stabbing comments were shared. Then, it was time to call it a night.

In my 2-year stay with PS, I've always looked forward to the sportsfest. It gives me the chance to meet and get to know more people. I just love it. Although, I do need to sacrifice my time since I'm committed. Thinking now, I want my time back. It's a good thing it's finally over. I'm gonna miss it, that's for sure. But I'm still glad it's finally over.

I still have memories, stories, videos, and pictures to remember it by. Till next year, if I'm still in PS. So, a last cheer for the champions... Hoorah!

Alone In The Metro (Reprise)

Reading back through the post, I realized that I just couldn’t expect that much from most of the people I know. It’s not that I’m blaming them for not keeping me company. It’s just that I thought, deep down inside, they’ll be there when I need them. Of course, no one is at fault. They have their own lives and I have my own. Bottom line is, I need to relearn how to be independent.

I was able to get in a cab around an hour after I wrote the post. I was dead tired. A good thing was Mr. Cab Driver was kind enough to sense that I was dead tired and he got all the necessary information to navigate our way to our village’s gate. I almost slept through the whole cab ride.

I woke up with the sound of rain crashing against the cab’s windows. We were almost at my village’s gates. I got some money from my wallet. I gave Mr. Cab Driver a generous tip. I then felt the world was against me when I saw that I had to wait in line in the pouring rain in the tricycle terminal. This was the first time I had to do that in my 17 months of stay in our village. I was groggy. I still don’t know what made me stand for another 10 minutes in the cold rain. But I did. I triumphed.

The next thing I knew, I was late for our last practice. I immediately stood up from bed and grabbed a much needed cup of coffee.

Alone In The Metro

I feel so alone right now. No one is replying to any of my messages. I feel abandoned and neglected.

I just finished buying stuff for Saturday's event, the cheer dance competition. I just came from my shift, then to the 2nd to the last practice. I'm now sitting alone in my favorite coffee shop (CBTL) listening to my preferred music just to take my mind off the throbbing pain in my legs.

I feel like shit.

I can't decide how to go home. Usually, I'd jump in the next available cab and I'm on my way. This time though, I didn't want to go through the hassle of explaining to the cab driver where we're going and that it won't be that far off to my place. I also didn't want to risk being stuck in traffic and paying a big-bunch-a-cash for my cab ride. I decided to wait for an hour or so.

So I'm now sitting alone in CBTL in GB3 waiting for a more convenient time to go home even if I'm dead tired. (By the way, I'm writing all of this using my mobile phone. I also haven't ordered yet.)

At this point, I just want to go home and lie down. I just couldn't help but feel forsaken. I'm pathetic. I can't help it. I want some company.

Oh well, thank you my dear iPod. You've proved yourself to be a friend who I can trust. I'll just hope for the best for me. Hopefully, I'll be able to crawl into bed later with my sanity intact.

Time Management and Me

Spending time with your special someone is a privilege that is given to a worthy person. Nowadays, time is of the essence. It's a thing more valuable than money and money won't compensate for time lost, I think. It's something that takes effort from both parties. It's something I'm desperately trying to make more of.

Looking back at the past couple of months, it seems like everything was a blur. Day after day, I went on with my daily routines like going to work, attending to social obligations, and more importantly for me, taking my only known form of escape, sleep. From this short list, I would say that it is pretty easy to manage them. Unfortunately, there's more than meets the eye.

I've said it before that I'm on a compressed work week. That eats up almost 65% of my entire 24-hour day (including my traveling time and the time I use to prepare for work). Usually, 5% - 10% of it is allotted to some miscellaneous activity that was not previously planned. If you ask me, I'd never accept any more responsibilities outside of the initial 65% of my day but there's usually some unplanned activity that needs to be addressed immediately, so that's the 5% - 10% for. With those 2 parts of my day, it only leaves me 6 to 8 hours of sleep per day. I think that it might be more or less the status quo for an average Filipino male's daily sleep but my body needs 8 to 9 hours a day to function properly. That's just me. That's something I was accustomed to. I tried to change that but I failed.

Moving on, I have 3 days off from work. Here's how I try to juggle these remaining 72 hours of my week. For the past couple of months, I've been using some of that time for volleyball practice and the volleyball games. There's also the cheer dance practices that just came up a couple of weeks ago (I only play a minor part in this event, though). I also allot some of it for my family. This is where some quality time is given to them. I owe them so much and the best gift I can think of to give them is my time and yet it's proving to be quite challenging. Within these 3 days, I also spend sometime with my best friends. It's usually a couple of hours for dinner, a cup of coffee, and a bucketful of talk. Other than the aforementioned, most of the non-work related time goes to "T" (No names?? :D).

It seems to me that I'm trying to justify how I manage my time, successfully or unsuccessfully for that matter. I've decided that I'm going to rate my time management performance as "average". Unfortunately, that is not enough for me. An "outstanding" is what I want to achieve. Personal assessment is harder than a panel of directors, I think.

So what am I trying to point out? I want more time. I want to spend more time with "T". I want to spend more time with my family. I want to spend more time with my entire circle of friends. I want to spend more time for myself. Everyone I mentioned holds so close to my heart. They made me who I am at the moment.

Hhmmm... It's back to the drawing board for me.