with so much to dream of, she was always looking forward to the day as it broke. Where is she now? I lost track of her a while back. I used to be able to talk to her and be on top of every single thing that went on with her life. She used to tell me all about her dreams, and all about her aspirations. But for quite some time she’s been silent. She no longer talks to me about what she wants to do in life. She rarely tells me of her happy moments anymore. I rarely get to see her, maybe that is why she doesn’t talk much to me anymore. When I do get the time, she just sits there, almost like she expects me to read her mind. I can’t talk to her, maybe she feels that i can’t relate? I don’t know what the problem is, but i wish things could go back to being the way they used to.

I realized I hadn’t been able to blog about my recent trip back home for one of my best friends’ wedding. It was a trip over the weekend as i had tonnes to do (which probably explains why i wasn’t able to blog about it) so i took the trip home with the channel 9 guy as my escort.

 

 

Yes, I cried when she walked down the aisle. I was very happy for her and excited about her and her new chapter in life. I wish I was able to spend more time with them during the preparation period though. I guess that’s the down part about working so far away from home. There is so much you end up missing. But i was happy that i was at least there for the celebration. Even if it was just for the weekend, I made sure that I was there for the 1st wedding among our barkada. I still can’t believe that one of us is already married, although we did expect that Karen would be the first among us. That was a very happy day for me.

                 

      

They got married on my birthday. I still remember about a year ago when my Karen sent me a message on Friendster asking me whether I could come home on my birthday. I knew that instant what that meant. And when the day finally came, it was indeed a very happy birthday for me. Happy because i got to spend time with my friends and family, happy because i was part of that important moment in their lives, and happy knowing that their marriage will be a great one.

Also happy that I got to wear a very cute dress 🙂

      

Of course the next day, I got to spend mothers day with my family, who I’m glad are doing well.

         

It was definitely the greatest weekend I’ve had in a very long while.

 

oh, and i almost forgot. of course i got to eat balut again– this time, even i admit it was a bit freaky. Because i don’t want to scare you off from reading my blog, only those who are really interested (and who have passed the test of the previous post, should click on the image for a larger view. I’m serious. dead serious. dead duck serious…

 

And, no, i didn’t finish him off..

Singapore is quite a small country. A bit more than a year ago, I had realized how easy it was to walk form one station to another (for some stations around the CBD) and thought about how i probably wouldn’t be able to do the same in Manila. Whenever I was around bugis, I’d usually take a walk down to City Hall, or once there Dhoby Ghaut, when I went to the Mall, for exercise and boredom relief, and time killing. Walking usually saved me 1 or 2 train stops. Recently, I’ve picked up walking again. Something to do when I needed to clear my head of the stress I am feeling. At first, the same routes, Bugis to City Hall, or City Hall to Bugis, or Bugis to City Hall to Dhoby Ghaut, or Dhoby Ghaut to bugis. Earlier this year I had already walked Orchard to Dhoby Ghaut Several times. Last week I had walked from Lavender to City Hall.

I was watching a movie at Orchard, and I had time and a lot of stress to kill, so i decided to try and take a walk home. I told myself, if I get tired (or lost) along the way, I could always take a cab.

I actually made it home! I plotted my walk and according to live maps, I walked a total of 2.75 miles, in a bit over an hour, including 2 mall stop overs. Non-stop walking but more going around the floors looking for something to buy, and thankfully failing, partly because it was already closing time. Walking is good exercise.

I just saved myself 5 stations from Orchard -> Somerset -> Dhoby Ghaut -> City Hall -> Bugis -> Lavender. ^_^

• There are times when you’ll just have to face the music in order to move forward. Even though you don’t like the music that’s playing, you’ll just have to get through it and get it over with.
• Don’t let mistakes make you make MORE mistakes. It’s tough not to panic and get distracted, and just concentrate on what coming next. But you’ll have to, or else, You’ll end up missing more notes, and not achieving what you could if you had just dealt with what was in the now rather than what has passed.
• When dealing with face-offs, it’s not enough to simply make use of advantages as you come by them, it’s also wise to know WHEN to use them.

I have gotten on and off the guitar hero addiction recently. Because of a recent "devastating experience" I had to find something to get my mind off the stress (way too much apparently). Lo and behold, just when I thought I was going to break down, a colleague of mind gave me the news that we had Guitar Hero 3 in the house. We played for about 5 hours — well he left early but I stayed on. :p I absolutely LOVE the game, maybe more so because of my inherent love for playing music, or maybe because it was a distraction to my worries. Consistently played for about 5 days, but I forced myself to stop. I HAVE WORK TO DO! But, once all this dies down, I’ll definitely get back on it. This game totally rocks.

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O O O O O

  <- I realize this doesn’t look straight to me

//blogging on my laptop at a kopi tiam through Internet Sharing on Windows Mobile

Still can’t believe it’s been a month since I left this room after hurriedly packing up my stuff, excited to go home, all that after 10 months of not touching Philippine soil. It was definitely a good break, and a much needed one. 2008, a meaningful year for me. I’m excited to get started and I can’t wait to find out what’s in store this year. I feel it’s going to be big.

I miss my family, I miss my friends. To all those people back home, thanks for making time to meet up and catch up. That’s another set of memories that I will carry with me while I am here. 🙂

I visited the PH office today and 2 things were most frequently said to me: "Kelan alis mo?" (When are you leaving?) and "Tumaba ka!" (You’ve gained weight!).

Life is grand 🙂

Christmas eve, while we were walking back to our car, I looked up at the sky and saw something I haven’t seen in the longest time: Orion’s Belt. It’s my favorite constellation, probably because it’s the only constellation I learned to see. Its quite a conspicuous constellation and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the most popular.

There have been many moments in my early years that I have gazed up at the sky to find it. Since I have moved out of the country, I have not had the chance to see it, maybe because of the blazing city lights that outshines the stars. Back when I was in Manila, after I had graduated college, I was living and working in Makati, and I had never been able to squeeze time to find a nice spot away from the city lights.

Looking up at Orion’s belt was comforting. It kind of let me know that despite all that has changed in the recent years, there are still things that remain the same, things that have always been there despite our not seeing them, things that will probably continue to be there, even if you never choose to look at them again.

It is always comforting to see familiar things when things seem so different.

Merry Christmas! This was definitely a fun day.

First of all, the guest of honor, the Lechon.

I was so happy to be able to spend time with my cousins. This is the most complete we’ve been in years!

Of course, my whole family was there as well, including my grandmother from my dad’s side

And this is me and my grand dad from my mom’s side

I’m trying to upload all the photos into my event site http://triphome07.events.live.com Let’s see how that goes.

Anyway, I’m a bit sleepy from the food and the wine. I’ll see you tomorrow! Hopefully I will have more to say 🙂

We have a small house but it is home to me. I believe we’ve been living here a bit over 10 years. I can’t remember exactly. I do remember moments in my grade school thesis life where we did some of our experiments here and that was 1995, so yes, it’s been over 10 years. You’ll see in the driveway our old beetle. It doesn’t function anymore, but that car has been my dad’s ever since he was courting my mom. He’d use that car to drive up to my mom’s place "up in the mountains" and knowing the terrain going up even now with all the road fixes it’s gone through, I’d say that’s one mean beetle back in it’s day. Maybe someday we will think of getting it restored. The little house in the foreground used to be my grand dad’s bachelor’s pad, where he would stay when he came to the city. We built it around the time when my grand mom (mother’s side) passed away. He used to come every weekend but then he went back to staying at the farm most of the time. When my grand dad (father’s side) passed away, we converted it to a "bachelorette’s pad" for my grand mom. But it ended up becoming her storage house. She had TONS of stuff from our old house in Lapasan. Can you imagine cramming up stuff from a house that’s almost 5 times bigger than that little house. I think I know where I got my tendency to cling to so much junk.

This is our tree! This is the upper half of our living room. To the right would be the kitchen and dining area, and through the doors in the background would be our rooms. Those stairs lead to the attic. Where there is more junk. It was  supposed to be converted to a room for either me or my sister, but since I moved out to college, there wasn’t a need for it anymore.

This is our living room. Yes my mom loves old rose i guess.

  

Below are our pets. I don’t think they’ve been taken care of much which is why they look a bit sad.

This guy though, I don’t think is a pet, I think he’s Christmas dinner. I may be wrong though, he might be New Year’s. :p

I never thought I’d be so happy to see smog in the air. I flew into manila this morning and arrived at about 4:55. People were bustling into the queue for immigration, baggage claim and a taxi. Both my aunt and uncle  picked me up at the airport which was one less I’ve to queue up for.

When we drove to their house I noticed the busses and jeeps swerving along the way. There’s something about reckless and chaotic  driving to wak you up and bring you back to the country you are.

I’m so dead tired. I haven’t had sleep in days. So today, I just want to say hello from Manila. I should be able to upload pictures soon, but for now, a simple "Mabuhay" will have to do. 🙂

I was walking to work today and i realized my feet were aching. I think I have strange feet. The balls of my big toe is actually bigger than the ones of the rest of my toes, so that when I stand as I would with heels on, more pressure actually sits on it than the rest. So when I walk with heels of a certain height, it gets uncomfortable. I’m wondering whether there are shoes out there with support for this kind of configuration of feet. If not, in my alternate life, I would probably have designed a pair of shoes that would give comfort to these kinds of feet. They would be a pair of sturdy, comfortable but sexy pair of heeled shoes and the slogan would be: "For women with the balls"

Updated: the ink plugin seems to be having trouble with 2 "inkings", it was showing the same image on both. Thanks for the flag, blog reader, you limited my duration of apparent stupidity to 8 hours. I’m eternally grateful ^_^

I had never thought it was possible, but yes. I got lost (again) in Singapore.

From the office, I usually take the underpasses to the MRT. Today was the second time I tried figuring out on my own how to navigate to the MRT station above ground, and once again, I failed miserably. I could not orient myself with the buildings because I never walked around the roads above ground before. The first night was some time last week. I was even more lost that time, I ended up going around in SEVERAL circles before finally finding my way.

Today, even though I went around in just a single semi-circle:

 

it was a lot more tiring because I was wearing heels (last time I was in sneakers thank goodness).

It was stupidly amusing, but now that I think about it, I can’t help but think about how it reminds me of my life. I feel like I’m in one of those exercises in English literature, or Values Ed where they make you reflect on things and on how they relate to your life. So this is what I came up with:

My usual route, the underpass, reminded me of my life back home, not even Manila, but back home in Cagayan de Oro. While I was back there, I couldn’t help but feel that my life was defined. I knew that if I stayed there, I’d probably end up where I originally had planned to be: teaching at our local university. It’s not a bad end point, but it’s a defined one, at least from the way things were going. My life would have been predictable if I stayed on that route. Even back in college, my first college, I already enjoyed holding tutorial sessions to the younger batch in school. I loved sharing what I knew, and well at that point in time, I was definite that I would teach once I had graduated.

But stuff happened and I guess you can say that I needed a breath of fresh air, so I decided to diverge from the status quo and go out to explore the world beyond my normal route. First time it was in my sneakers: college – in Manila. Second college actually since I had already spent 2 years of college in CDO. It was a bustling new world for me and I had often found myself feeling like I was going around in circles in a sense that, I was doing things all over again: taking the same classes all over again, making best friends all over again (though nothing can beat the friends from your childhood days) Of course, there’s the part about exploring one way, making a mistake, realizing you’ve made the mistake, getting back on track, then making the same mistake again, and again, and again.

But of course, after a while, you get used to it. I felt like I was back in my underground tunnel, pretty much knowing how to get where I wanted to go. Well, not really. It became as though I was just going through the motions, feeling more like relying on the tunnel’s path to find my way. Of course, the desire for fresh air comes in again.

I take a different route from the last time I ventured, and of course, I end up lost again though this time, but learning from past experiences reduced the amount of redundant errors. Lesser circles doesn’t mean lesser pain though: this time I was wearing heels, yes not a smart idea to go exploring with heels on.

Funny thing is, when people move out of their comfort zone, usually others view it as a step towards getting closer a dream that one is probably chasing after. Which is why I often ask myself whether I really am chasing after dreams, or running away from nightmares. I guess it’s a mixture of both. But either way, there has to be something that drives you. If you’re stuck and content with the status quo, i think it would be hard to go places.

I’m almost going home.. But as with everything that I look forward to, I’m sad because I know it’s going to pass. Sometimes I wish I could live in the moment of anticipation, approach the point infitely but never quite reach it. I used to look forward to Christmas time because of the season and time itself. I wanted the day to come when I could open gifts and get the stuff I want.But now that Christmas has changed from being a time i get things, to a time I get to spend with my friends and family, somehow, I dread it coming, because I dread it passing. I only get to go home once a year, and every day spent back home is very precious to me. Getting to go home is something that keeps me going through the day amidst everything that needs to be done.

Sometimes, I ask myself: what am I doing, and whatever for?

 

Thank you jonah for the rockin logo!

    

i think the gorilla part came from this picture

Changed the theme of the site to simple red so it matches the logo. You can also now reach this site through http://spaces.badgorilla.net w00t! Site is going to get an upgrade to .net 3.5 soon yey! for now, I’ll leave it as is. I hope I get the time to fill it up with content over my very long break coming up this Christmas. I’m definitely looking forward to that — 20 days and counting!

Went to the clinic today to get my blood test results and I’m happy to say that everything is normal. Now I can go back to drinking lots and lots of coke, and eating lots and lots of junk food

In other news, you can now start signing up to @live.com accounts. I already did sign up, but I thought about migrating my account. In the end I decided not to. This is actually my longest running blog among all that I’ve started before, and since there’s really no difference with the new account vs the current ones, I decided to stick with my current one. Sure I signed up, but that’s just so no one steals my id :p I would have loved the @live.com though. It’s just that I don’t seem to be able to keep my spaces address, sadness.

It’s a holiday tomorrow! Yey, I’ll get to do some fun stuff. I will wake up tomorrow, do my laundry, decide which coffee shop to go to, then drown myself in code and coffee.

It’s funny how 5 people are going to get to visit my own country a lot earlier this year than I am *sigh* I’m excited to go home. As the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s not so much about what’s there to eat, where is there to go, what’s there to do. I guess it’s about the friends who are there, literally 24×7.

True, I’ve made my fair share of friends over here, but there are just some things that you can’t beat. If I were solely thinking of my own feeling of comfort, then choosing to be back home would be a no-brainer. But yes, challenges are what keep life interesting. It’s tough to be away from my family and friends, but it’s a great way to force yourself to grow up.

10:00 – loaded up my first batch of laundry

10:15 – Went to the gym (woohoo!)

11:00 – Went swimming

11:45  – loaded up my second batch of laundry

12:00 – Ironed the long overdue batch of clothes

16:00 – cleaned my room (woohoo!! got rid of SO MUCH junk)

17:00 – eating cream cheese and bread, contemplating on what to do next while checking facebook. :p

Woohoo! had a fun day today! company outing was cable skiing at east coast park. The people that were there made it look so easy!! we could pick 3 types, the knee board, skis and the wakeboard. I wanted to try the wake board but they ran out, so I picked the skis instead.

First run, I haven’t gone off the launch port yet and I lost my grip haha 2nd try, I wiped out after 1 meter. I got further on the 3rd and 4th tries (and more tired because you have to swim back with the 2 skis). I tried the knee board once, wiped out again, so I decided to go back to the skis since I was already making progress. My last run, I was able to go all the way to the opposite end. I was supposed to make a turn but I wasn’t able to make it so the rope lost tension and when it regained on the turn, I got jerked forward and crashed. I pulled my muscle too! It was the worse pain I’ve felt (well, aside from menstrual cramps) so I lay floating in the water for about 3 minutes before I started swimming back.

All in all, it was fun. It was great to glide on the water, it was a struggle at first, but when I steadied myself, it was exhilarating. I’m gonna have to work on my turns though, and next time I can try the wakeboard. The guys who were boarding were doing somersaults were amazing! I can imagine the feeling.

Tomorrow is going to be a painful day..

Oi (sometimes spelt Oy) is a word used in Britain as a lively way to get someone’s attention so that they can be greeted or spoken to. It is a shortened version of the archaic word HOY which was used centuries ago for the same purpose.

Looks like we have something in common! HOY!!

Today was a good day. We had an event today at work. It was my "first solo act" in this country and it wasn’t bad. Last I presented solo to a bigger than 50 group was back in my home country. And I’ve been away for 8 months already so I was lacking the nerves for it. I seriously remember the tension and all just before it was my turn to present. When I started, I had all sorts of discomfort: I was currently suffering my feminine emergency series, was hungry cause I couldn’t take lunch for the audience’s sake (hint: BLECH@!!@#) Started off a bit tough, my throat was dry but eventually I got into the swing of things and went on with the session.

I think it was a pretty good session for those who appreciate code at least 😉  I realized speaking actually gives me a certain kind of high. But in order for me to be an effective speaker, I should have a firm grasp of what I’m talking about. I salute people who can actually get up and "wing it" without really knowing what they’re talking about. Some people are quite good at it too! I mean of course, it’s always better to know what you’re talking about but for people who have that skill, it definitely is something.

*Sigh*

I miss coding though. That too gives me yet another kind of high, so today’s session actually gave me a chance to study language again, plus speak and share about it to people. It was a great experience and I definitely enjoyed it. 🙂

One of the more interesting applications that you can find on FaceBook. Basically, it’s an application where you can anonymously post messages. It’s evolved ever since the first time I installed the application. Just recently when I was browsing through the application, they now had this option to view your Friends’ secrets. If I’m not wrong though, there is no way for you to know who among your friends have the application installed and you need, I believe, 15 friends using the app in order for you to start seeing messages exclusively from your friends. As you can see, it makes the application quite interesting.

I find it amusing reading all the secrets that gets posted. What’s more amusing are the stuff that seems to be coming out of one of your friends. It would be ideal that all your friends were personal acquaintances, people whom you think you know in and out. But FaceBook, being a social networking app where the chances of you adding your best friend is quite as much equal of you adding a business contact you meet at an event or something. You can expect to read some weird crap in there. Then again, you might have some friends that are just plain jokers playing on the anonymity and just entertaining their friends with their false secrets. I can imagine myself doing something like that, though to be honest, I haven’t been able to think something creative enough to gain hearts. What do I get when I get hearts? Nothing really. So yeah, let me get back to you on that one.

I’m half asleep while typing up this blog.

~/jocelyn

//posted via Windows Live Writer

It just doesn’t feel right, and I don’t want to drag this longer than I have to. It’s not the same when you’re with one you really, truly love. Everyday, you look forward to being there, and even when things go wrong, you look forward to overcome, because you know no matter what, you will manage.

If you’re driven by the wrong things, then you’re destined to fail. It’s been feeling quite wrong for quite sometime. Sure, it’s fun, but it’s not something I can take to heart.

I will see this through, I just wanted you to know that it will not be longer that what you would expect. I know you will understand.