From the monthly archives: October 2007
This week feels like petiks week. Well, for our case, since our team is following Philippine holidays, we only have two work days this week. Count that friends, just two. Tomorrow is the last day for this week, and then it’s off to a long weekend (where my family and I will head over to Singapore) and when I get back on Monday, I’m on night shift, so I’ll be up all night. See my body clock adjust to this schedule. :P Nothing big, I’ll be used to this, and there’s no need for life insurance no medical exam for me. Really. :)
It’s Halloween’s Eve, and I’ve managed to stay away from all the scary stories that are around TV or anywhere else. Just a few more days and I’m saved again. Whew. I remember when I was young up to about first year college, one usual Halloween thing my brother and I always do is to scare ourselves silly by watching the (now defunct) Magandang Gabi Bayan Halloween special. Yes, it became corny over the years, but the visuals and the stories affect me so much that I couldn’t sleep for a week. Bah. I remember during this one year, I couldn’t sleep in my room facing the wall because I feel like someone’s sitting on the sofa bed in my room and watching me sleep. :P
I don’t know what is so satisfying with scaring myself that I couldn’t go to the comfort room alone, so by sophomore year in college I stoppwed watching them altogether. I also maintained this thought that if the thing I’m going to watch is just going to scare the living daylights out of me, then I’d rather not watch it at all. That’s why there’s no Grudge, Shutter, Sukob and all sorts of horror movies for me. You can tell me the story but don’t make me watch. ;)
Yes, I’m your next door scaredy-cat. :P
Interestingly, today a lot of people came to work in costumes (and there was this one girl who wore a dead bride costume which almost scared me. Good thing I saw her regularly-dressed companions. Turned out they were judges for the company competition), and a lot of them were KIDS! Today was the Trick-or-Treat thing at the office, and right after lunch, Grace and I headed over to Shopwise to get tons of candies for them. Then we heard they won’t be going to our floor which depressed us, but then they started going up and we all ogled at their cuteness. Ah, to be a kid again! I never experienced trick-or-treating, although I dreamed of it. Haha. A lot of kids will had overflowing candy baskets earlier — good luck with eating all of that. :P
I wish I brought my camera earlier. There was this really cute kid who wore a Princess Leia (sp?) costume…I wanted to pinch her cheeks in cuteness. *gigil*
Time to work more on the novel. :) Happy Halloween (in advance :D)!
I’ve bene staring at Flash MX all day, it’s not funny anymore. Wah. I’ve never been so lazy to program ever, but maybe it’s because I’ve been distracted with NaNoWriMo (if you don’t know what this is again, it’s National Novel Writing Month) all day.
Yes, it’s almost that time of the year again. The time where I temporarily disappear from posting because I need to put in words in my novel and when I do post, it’s always about the novel I’m currently writing.I’ve talked about it a couple of times before in this blog, but I’ve concentrated most of my updates in my official NaNo blog, which you can visit right here.
Why do I keep on talking about this? Well, besides the fact that this is an excuse for me to be creative, I am the Municipal Liaison for the Philippines for NaNoWriMo this year, so I’m definitely encouraging people to join up. If you’re a NaNo-er and you’re from the Philippines and you haven’t made your presence known at the boards yet, then do so now! Make sure you set your regional affiliations to Asia :: Philippines so you can see the Philippines forum. If you’re a newbie and you just decided to join, you’re more than welcome to do so. :) You’ll also get some free stickers if you do (I’m serious). We’ll be having a big meet-up at the end of the month, so the more people, the merrier! :) Join the creative insanity! :)
Now the only thing that’s kind of bothering me right now is that I’ll be going to Singapore on Friday, which means my writing will be halted a bit because of the travelling thing. I won’t be bringing Ginger there because I don’t want to bring too many stuff, but I obviously want to write…so I guess it’s pen and paper for me for the entire weekend. Unless I can hostage my dad’s laptop for the weekend, OR, if I can get my Aslan by that weekend, then that would be so much better. :) Let’s see.
Oh, and aside from all the novel-related posts, expect a post about Singapore complete with photos. We’ll be bringing a couple of digital cameras there (yes, more than one — our normal digicam, a borrowed dSLR, and my brother’s video cam), so I’ll be breaking the monotony of my words with photos. Or maybe in my way to preserve the words I churn out everyday, I’ll just make a photo post. Whichever.
Okay, back to preparing for NaNo. :) Excuse me a bit while I talk to my characters.
Long weekend up ahead! And this time I really promise to work on the following:
- The soon-to-be due Flash project I need to finish
- My NaNoWriMo novel preparations
But first!
Appetizer
Name a great website you would recommend to others.
In the spirit of the upcoming writing event, one great website that I would recommend is the National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) website. There’s an inner writer in you that wants to write a novel, and this is the perfect time. :) Sign up now!
Soup
On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 as highest), how often do you dream at night?
I dream a lot…so around 8, I guess? I hardly remember most of my dreams though. Last night I dreamt I was talking to someone about my upcoming novel, but I’m not entirely sure how it all happened. :D But I dream about the weirdest things too, like me and a group of friends getting some superpowers, and a friend of mine could transform into a horse and run really fast and she used it to run away from our enemy, and I tried transforming into a cheetah but nothing happened (except that I got aching arms), and we were all trying to protect a blue fairy named Seth, who looks a lot like Rice from the Beethoven movies. Hm. I told you it’s weird. There might even be a part of that dream that involves power supply repair, but I can’t remember anymore. :P
Salad
Did you have a pet as a child? If so, what kind and what was its name?
The first pet I ever remember having was a big black dog named Darna. She was a nice dog, but she died after a year or something. :(
Main Course
If you had the chance to star in a commercial, what would you choose to advertise?
I don’t know…anything geeky, perhaps? Haha I’m a geek at heart. :) Or notebooks? Haha I can’t think. I’m more of a backstage/behind-the-scenes person. :D
Dessert
What is your favorite kind of hard candy?
Skittles. That’s hard candy, right? :)
If you’re a Filipino who’s joined NaNoWriMo, make sure your home region is set to Asia :: Philippines so you can join the fun in the Philippines forum. To know how to set your home region, click here. :)
I love getting those optical illusion emails. You know, those graphics that you have to stare at for a long, long, long time and you have to see the hidden stuff, or find something that doesn’t seem to be there but is there? :D
Here’s some sort of an optical illusion, from Gadgenista. Like what she said, this is too good to pass up. :)
Is the dancer spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise? More details about the illusion under the cut. :)
Oh hai! Anyone up for Orlando vacations? No? Well, it doesn’t really matter for this post (I’d love to go on vacation to Orlando too, but Sydney is the priority)…and I’m getting sidetracked.
Let me share to you one of my current favorite websites, one that never fails to make me laugh: icanhascheezburger.com. If you haven’t been to this website before, then you better get there fast to see what I mean. No wait, let me just give you an example so you’ll see why I like this website:
I’m a sucker for cat (and other cute animal) photos. One of the favorite emails I receive everyday is the Cute Overload email, where I can ogle at all the cuteness they send everyday. :) But seeing the captioned pictures in I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) just tickles my funny bone that sometimes my teammates give me weird looks for my sudden giggles when I’m browsing the site. I mean, who can resist this?
My shift (I feel weird saying this word) doesn’t start until 12:00 noon based on the text message from my boss, so I’m still at home, waiting for breakfast to be cooked. I stayed up until 1:00am last night, watching Heroes and waiting for my downloads to be finished. This is the only time I got to make use of torrents properly and now I am loving it. I just really need extra hard disk space. Haha. Ever since Ginger crashed, I haven’t restored all my laptop’s files in it. For one thing I do not have any backups, plus I was just too lazy to pull the stuff from Triskal to Ginger, and who knows if Ginger decides to have an episode and crash again.
Anyway, the only thing I’m intent on restoring is the Joan of Arcadia season 2 episodes I downloaded before but lost. I’m almost done with Part 1 (91.8% of 4.03GB) and Part 2 will follow right after this. So now my downloads folder is actually bigger than my documents folder. Hee. :P Other than Joan of Arcadia, I have:
- CSI: New York, Season 4, episodes 1-4
- Heroes, Season, 2, episodes 3-4 (watched episodes 1 and 2 through streaming, heh)
- Pushing Daisies, Season 1, episodes 1-3 (it is only up to episode 3 as of now, right?)
- Burn Notice, Season 1, episode 1 (I was inspired by this sponsored post I made about this show)
- Gossip Girl, Season 1 episode 1 (Just one for now, I’m looking for the torrent of episode 2)
That’s it so far. Haha. I want to download other shows (Eureka, 4400, House, Kyle XY — I’m such a cheapskate, I don’t want to buy dibidis of this…wel, not now) but I’m afraid I might run out of space. Like I said, I need an external hard drive! The only thing that would be better than this might be world series tickets, but then I’m not exactly a baseball fan, so I’d settle for my TV shows thankyouverymuch. :)
This is some kind of a useless update, hah. But if you have a TV show suggestion, post a comment and I’ll see if I like it. :D I need media exposure. Hah. :P
So last Friday was our company’s quarterly Townhall Meeting ((Townhall Meeting - company wide meeting)), our second one ever since we got hired. We just had a meeting with our new Operations Lead ((There was a bunch of promotions that happened at work late last month, and for some of the people it was their second promotion for the year — talk about good succession planning)) earlier that week, and he requested us to attend the night shift meeting so we could go with the entire team. We were excited to go there, only because of the commercial that our team made for the meeting.
So the updates came and we were all laughing with the commercials and cheering with all the positive reports, while Grace and I reeled with hunger. Awarding time came, and I was planning to go out to get some food because my head was seriously hurting when the emcee started to talk about team awards and then he called us. As in our team.
Apparently, our team won a Bravo award for our being bibo, not only for our work related stuff, but also for extra curriculars. Okay, I didn’t exactly hear what the emcee said about us because we were all suddenly on spotlight and then we were all ushered onstage to get our framed certificates (picture to follow, I left the certificate at the office :D) and have our picture taken with the leadership team. I was smiling and shaking at the same time because no one really expected it, and when we went down, the other teams were congratulating us and I really don’t know what to say. Total surprise!
I suddenly felt like I was in high school again, going up the stage to receive awards and stuff. I remember remarking during our first Townhall Meeting that it felt like a quarterly reading of honors back in elementary/high school. Only, instead of all awarding, it was full of company updates (which I personally don’t mind…I’m a geek that way :p) and games and awarding on the side. And it’s a good way to get to know people from the other teams. :)
The night ended with my winning of a P500 worth of GC for Yellow Cab, which we spent immediately for a late dinner of pizza, which we shared to the people from the other teams. Good times, yes. :)
Today I should focus on the project I’m supposed to finish (Flash MX all afternoon, yeah! FOR ASLAN!)…and then find some time to plan for NaNoWriMo. I need to focus, because the TV shows I’m downloading will be available by tonight, and that’s what I will focus on then. :D I need an external hard disk.
Have a blessed and relaxed Sunday, everyone! :)
Yesterday was a mixed emotions day. I was happy it was Friday, and I was excited for our quarterly Townhall. I felt bad for someone because of something I did, was excited for receiving something totally unexpected. But what kind of disturbed me the most for myself, was how I didn’t really feel anything about what happened in Glorietta 2.
Okay, I didn’t really feel nothing. I have this defense mechanism where when something really big happens, be it positive or negative, I tend to push the emotions away for a while and then feel it when I’m ready. I store them all up somewhere inside, then digest it when I know it’s “safe” to do so. That is why it takes a while for me to feel really happy or really sad about some things, because I choose not to feel it immediately.
When I heard about the Glorietta 2 explosion yesterday, my guy teammate was more worried than I am about it. Then again, maybe I wasn’t that worried because as far as I know, there was no one I know in that area — only a few people, that is. My brother works in Galleria, I’m in Eastwood, my mom’s at home, my best friend works in Shaw, my other friend is in Bacolod, the other one is in school. So my first initial thought was, Thank God I don’t work in Makati.
But after some time (like today), I felt selfish for that thought. Here I am again, thinking about myself in a time where other people are hurt, other people lost their loved ones and other people are in trauma for having to witness such event. I am relieved that I wasn’t there, that no one I know got hurt…but I can’t help but feel like I should be feeling something else for the people affected other than sympathy.
I know that might not make any sense, but forgive me for thinking aloud. This thing made me realize again how short life can be — how a person can be alive one day and gone the next. While I still believe that a person will not die unless it’s his time to die (and God only knows when that is), I now feel sad for the people who had to go in a way like this. :(
All I can do right now is pray. My prayers are with all the people and families affected by this tragedy. Keep safe everyone.
It’s Friday and our servers are down again. :( I’m supposed to be writing a document that’s somekinda overdue, as well as tinkering with Flash but I’m too lazy to do the two things. Plus I have a meeting tonight so I sort of have time for that later. Yes, I’m procrastinating…ah, it’s been a long time since I wrote those words. :)
Anyway, serving up Friday’s Feast # 8!
Appetizer
If you were a dog, what breed would you be, and why?
I’d probably be a golden retriever. Haha, I just love that dog. :) It’s big, playful and nice, and I’ve always wanted to have that kind of dog if only I have the time to take care of it. A runner up would be a schnauzer, but it’s kind of too masculine because of that moustache. :D
Soup
What does the color purple make you think of?
My favorite color! :) It also reminds me of the Unicorns, as in the Sweet Valley Unicorns, as well. My debut, grapes, ube, my favorite bag back in high school. Partner that up with pink and it’s cute.
Salad
Approximately how long does it take you to get ready each morning?
An hour? Depends on how energetic I feel. If I’m running late, I can finish getting ready in 30 minutes. One hour is just enough for me to take a shower, get dressed, fix my bags and eat breakfast. :D
Main Course
How many cousins do you have, and are you close to them?
I don’t know how many cousins I have, but we’re not really a big clan…so around 20? I think? Unfortunately, we’re not really that close — as I posted more than a year ago. I am getting better at talking to them, but we just don’t really hang out. We didn’t really grow up together, nor went to school together, save for a few. Or, my brother’s close to some of them, but we don’t really hang out. I envy people who are so close to their cousins that they have weekly playstation 3 sessions with them, just like other people do with friends who are not related to them by blood. *sigh* I’m still working on some of my cousin relations. :D
Dessert
Take your initials (first, middle, last) and come up with something else those letters could stand for. (Example: SFO = Sweet Funny Otter)
KAM. Um…King Action Matrix? Haha, where did that come from? It’s hard to find a meaning for the letter K. :P
Happy Friday, everyone! :)
Sorry for the long nonpost. I was bombarded with lots of work, plus extra rakets here and there that I have to do (FOR ASLAN! More to this on a future post). Truth be told I really don’t have anything noteworthy to post right now so I thought I’d share to the world er, my readers (whoever you are) my upcoming NaNoWriMo 2007 novel ideas.
- The working title of the novel is Red Meets Blue, much thanks to Matt Wertz for the lovely song. This is the second time I’m using a song as a title, the first time with A Page is Turned. I chose this (for now) because the colors red and blue means a lot of different things, which is sort of how my characters are — one is red, one is blue, but not in the traditional red-is-female-blue-is-male thing. :)
- The tentative genre for now is Mainstream Fiction. It’s not exactly the chicklit and it’s not young adult either…it’s a mix of chicklit/ladlit (I think?), religious and romance…so I go for a somewhat vague genre.
- I have two main characters, one female and one male. The female is Marianne Venia and the male is David de Gracia. Ooh, both surnames end with ‘a’. Anyway, they’re around 25 to 27 years old, both of them live in the same/near each other’s condo hotels somewhere in the Metro.
- Marianne is a tough chick. Half European (which exactly is yet to be determined) and half Filipina, sings and plays the piano on random times, and no day job yet. She’s also an atheist/agnostic (not yet sure, will get back at this) and does whatever she wants to do because she wants it. Her dad left them when she was young, and her mom died soon after and she was taken by her aunts to be taken care of.
- David is your regular nice guy. He goes to church, volunteers for causes, and is someone everyone gets along with. He’s also the manager and guitarist of Chasing Daylight (tentative name), an upcoming rock band. He’s quite strict with his personal standards and hangs out with the “right crowd,” which he grew up in.
- Other characters are: April, the lead singer of Chasing Daylight and David’s close friend (see the emphasis), Nathan, David’s best friend and Chasing Daylight’s drummer, a yet to be determined famous band who will be having a concert which Chasing Daylight will be the front act, Marianne’s sort-of-boyfriend/fling…and so far…that’s it. Oh, some people will also be making a cameo appearance in the novel. ;)
- The main plot is: band gets signed to play front act for a really popular band but female vocalist leaves for an emergency. Band could not back out, so they have to find a female vocalist. Nathan finds Marianne, who everyone loves but David dislikes because (although he doesn’t admit it) he think she’s not worth his attention because she doesn’t believe in God. Personalities clash and in the process, Marianne and David learns about God’s love, forgiveness and grace. Like what I told Grace earlier: This is what cheesy stories are made of. Hah.
And that’s it for now. For more NaNoWriMo 2007 goodness (tips, news and whatnot), hop over to More than Bitesized Fiction, my newly opened NaNoWriMo blog. :)
