Merry Christmas

It's not really the gifts nor the food nor the Christmas decors that make us feel the Christmas spirit... It's celebrating Christ's birth and knowing how the world changed when he first came to us. It's also renewing ourselves and changing our life for the better.

****
By the way, I made a "Christmas" chicken adobo for the first time and it tasted great! Thanks to the online recipe of Food Network plus of course I made some modifications (included brown sugar and pineapple chunks). Yummy!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_21152,00.html

My New Laptop

Intel Core 2 Duo! 14.1 " WXGA TFT...DVD-R/RW...Wifi...Card Reader...free bag and 1GB flash drive.. and within my budget =)

Some dreams do come true! So, I'll keep on dreaming some more... =D

Lazy Weekend

After the 2-hour-after-shift-badminton last Saturday, here's what I did Saturday afternoon and whole Sunday,

• Ate lunch at Next Door (aka North Park), the usual...spicy squid, sweet and sour pork, yang chow rice, and siomai plus 500ml of Coke Light (I'm on a diet, hehehe).
• Went home and had a DVD marathon of CSI: Las Vegas
• Slept 8 hours
• Woke up
• Bought 10 big pan de sal, 2 ube Spanish bread and soya milk from Pan de Manila for breakfast
• Watched some more CSI, while eating in bed
• Ordered Jollibee, 1 pc Chicken Joy, macaroni soup, palabok and Coke
• Watched pirated dvds, License to Wed and Blind Dating, while eating in bed
• Went to church to attend mass
• Ate ice cream with banana and KBL soup at Chicken Inasal in Metrowalk
• Drank milk
• Watched One Tree Hill (corny TV series, Dawson's Creek wannabe, even the adults act like teenagers, and everybody is somebody's ex)

Do I really wanna live my life like this? Swine reflex? a couch potato? a life of lethargy?

Sometimes maybe... ;-D

To all the Hopeless Optimists out there...

I really thought I was the one who coined the phrase "hopeless optimist." I guess I was wrong. I searched Google and found out that there were a lot of bloggers using that phrase, too. Let me be the one to define it though,

hopeless optimist n. a person who has an incurable habit of looking at the bright side of every desperate situation.

I really think I'm an authentic hopeless optimist :-)
****

Tweaking

Still in the process of tweaking my blog...trying to reinvent it...but I don't seem to have the patience, the passion, the inspiration to do this anymore. Blame it on the gloomy weather.

My Prayer

God grant me

the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Bohol Escapade

My Manileñan friends, Mae and Theta, came here to Cebu last May 4-May 7. It didn't require a lot of coercion to have them visit me. I think it's because they're always game for something new and adventurous. Before, it was used to be going to Puerto Galera, watching movies, playing badminton, then playing DOTA. Now it's up to another level, going to Cebu, Bohol then maybe Boracay, Pagudpud or Camiguin next time. Right, girls? Ü

I really enjoyed the Bohol Escapade and Cebu tours that we had... hope there's lots more destinations to explore next time.

I uploaded some photos in http://flickr.com/photos/curlyque (photos not public, you need to be my contact in flickr to view the pix). But check out their Multiply sites: http://lemonmae.multiply.com/photos

http://theta27.multiply.com/

Team AltaVista

'Tis a sad day today...I was asked by my boss to be transferred to another queue in my program. Basically, it means I'm going to be handling a new team composed of new hires (fresh meat! Hehehe).
I've been with my team since I started here in Cebu last year, we're going to be almost a year old. Agents come and go in my team, also some agents got moved to a different position, a few resigned (not because of me though!).
I just hope I made a difference in their lives, or that they learned something from me. I hope they know that all I wanted for them was to succeed in their work and their lives.
We're still going to see each other though...still on the same company, same building, same program, and the same floor! =D I'll make sure they're in good hands.
For my team, thank you so very much for everything!

Team Pictures

(L) While on avail (R) Aux "Training"

(L) Waterfront Casino gambling days (R) Posing for Vonage


(L) Team GA at Alavar's (R) Team GA at Cafe Laguna

Summer's Here!

Yep.. it's too darn hot here in Cebu...especially in the office, the A/C is broken. :-(
Anyways, there's a lot of things going on for me this month and the next one. Hopefully, though I would have my dream vacation come true. Maybe in Bohol again, the beach is really nice there, I wasnt able to savor it though because last time I went there we went island hopping.

I still couldn't find the time and patience to upload the Bohol pictures in flickr.com, maybe this weekend.

I'm also excited to go back to Manila, it might be sooner than I expected. :-)

Flickr Pix Uploaded at Last!

More photos in www.flickr.com/photos/curlyque2 .

Bohol and Cebu Pics

Coming soon... in my flickr.com account. I need to upload the pics though, I have 600MB of them.

Manila, Manila

I'm here in Manila for a 5 day vacation. Be with my honhon. Meet friends I haven't seen since last year. I was invited to a reunion with my college friends and also a reunion with my ex-teammates, I told them I couldn't make it. Jokingly, I told them why not move the reunion when I get there on the last weekend of January? So the reunions didn't push through. No, not that they waited for me, it's just that people are busy and they have no time to attend.
=)

So here I am in Manila, trying to text everybody, hope I'll get to meet them on my short stay here.

Camotes Island Misadventure

Where: Camotes Island, Cebu

When: Jan 6 and 7, 2007

So, I'm in Cebu for already 6 months going on 7. I came to Cebu, because I thought life's a beach literally. They said people are laid back, less stress in the workplace compared to the Makati branch of our office.

But 6 months passed by.. and the only beaches I went to were Bantayan, EGI (Mactan Area), and Hadsan. All were incomparable to Bora! (of course).

Then, the Camotes incident...

My whole team was supposed to go, but it was quite rainy the whole week, some got discouraged, I ended up with 3 girls. Sunday was sunny and perfect, but the boat leaves at 11am and is a 3 hour trip. We were in the boat 11am and then we found out it's leaving the port at 1pm. So we waited for 2 hours...slept a bit since we came from work. Then, at last it was moving, then there was a ruckus a few minutes later. They found out that the boat was sinking! So we had to dock to the nearest place. Me and my girls decided not to ride that boat anymore.

So we decided to take the Oceanjet scheduled 4PM, but an hour faster. When we were in the middle of the trip, I got seasick!

When we got to Camotes it was already dark, I thought we'd get to the beach in and go night swimming, but the ride going to the resort took almost an hour and we were too tired..

The following day.. it rained.. skies cloudy..

But still we went swimming in the rain. Found out a lot about corals and sea animals though, because of Concon (she took up BS Bio in UP).

Now to continue... we had to catch the 11am boat trip back to the city. So basically we just had like 4 hours to enjoy the beach. The beach shoreline did somehow rival that powdery sands of Bora and it stretched like about 200 meters to the beach. And even when you go further, the water won't reach waist level.

Another downer was there were a lot of corals, some sea urchins, lots of starfishes and algae on the water. But you'd enjoy them if you're snorkling (which we weren't, I forgot my googles).

So we hurried back to catch the last Oceanjet trip to Cebu (at 11am!). We were there a little bit early, rain poured. We were about a few minutes away from the dock when suddenly the "captains" of the boat decided to turn around and get the LATE passengers. They was actually one family riding 3 motorcycles, only 2 arrived, so they said they had to wait for the last one. The passengers (including us) were so impatient because we were already more than an hour behind schedule.

The mother of the wet and trembling kids, cried and wailed, and begged to the "captains" and passengers to wait for her other kid and husband and they really need to take this trip. Ad misercordiam...too much drama. Anyways the kid and husband arrived, wet and trembling also. But so finally, we were off to go.

Again, the boat ride was worse, the girls andn I got seasick.

But, the we were happy to see land again after a 4-hour roller coaster trip.

And we had to work again that night.

Plateau

Yes, definitely, my life is hitting a plateau.

I thought about it and I thought I need a change. Maybe a change of job?
Something I would really be passionate about.

Is it the 7th month itch on the job?
Also, Gretch is leaving for Singapore. That means no more gimik night outs.

I really thought about it and then suddenly it dawned to me...

It's quarter-life crisis! *sigh*

A Pattern

Here I am again trying to blog.
My first blog www.blurty.com/users/curlyque was shorlived.
I got locked out of my second blog www.hopeless-optimist.blogspot.com (maybe because I forgot my username and password and never updated it for 2 years).

I easily take these things for granted. Maybe I'm just not a public person, maybe I'm too lazy to write stuff, maybe there's nothing interesting that's happening in my life that I can write about.

Probably it's all of the above.

But why bother again to make another blog?

It could be therapeutic... you'll never know... something interesting might happen. =)