Ein gutes neues Jahr!

In 31 minutes, it'll be 2010 in the Philippines!

Here's to wishing an awesome 2010 for everyone!

Holy crapappy.

Now I understand why they say it's difficult to sing Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me... dang. It *is* difficult to sing. I keep running out of breath!

But it's such a nice song and I want to be able to sing it in karaoke!

Frohe Weihnachten!

I hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Have a wonderful and happy Christmas, everyone!

Cat stories

Mimiw was lounging on the cold tile floor...

Me: Hoy Miming, in heat ka ba?
Mama: Grabe ka naman. Ang bata bata pa niyan para ma-in-heat.
Me: Eh bakit sa malamig na sahig sya humihiga? Baka in heat nga.

LOL!

The convo is me asking my cat whether she's in heat. My mom is shocked that I would think that because Mimiw is but a kitten.

Test

Another test. Posting from my phone.

Edit (10:22 p.m.): I'm putting back comments on Disqus to Blogger. It just bothers me that I cannot see what posts have new comments on my dashboard because they've all been pinged back to Disqus.

And there's also something wrong with the template I used before because it won't show how many comments a post has. Grrr.

Meet Mimiw

Mimiw (as she is called by most of us in the family) is the latest addition to our home. I got her from a friend's friend who saved her from a nasty life on the streets.

I love that she's very sweet! She lets me carry her around like a baby. And she almost always stays with me whenever I pick her up, i.e., even if she wants to get down, I make her stay and she stays.

My mom's having fun with her. Right now Mimiw is cradled in my mom's left arm and she's being rocked and cooed at. Having a "baby" in the house has started the baby jokes again. My mom often says, "Since I can't get a real grandchild, I guess you'll have to do Mimiw." *eyes roll*

Still mad

I'm still angry with one of my brothers. I yelled at him the other night for not cleaning properly the container he ate in. Imagine if I did not inspect the container he left on the sink to dry, the idiot would've just left it there with the hardened cheese stuck to the side. My mother would wake up in the morning angry if she sees that.

He is such a slob! And I hate him. I really do. If I could give him away, I would. I will not tolerate filth and laziness in this household. It's not like he's being asked to clean the entire house. All he has to do is pick up after himself. How hard can that be?!

Hoping...

Remember this?

Well, the last part is over and done with so now I wait.

Part of me is glad about the timing because it means that if things push through, I won't have to do anything till next year. But part of me is also scared at the prospect of starting again.

New Moon

I am very, very glad to let you know that New Moon is really good. And I mean really good. Way better than Twilight, which completely sucked IMO.

I loved the effects they did for the wolf phasing, chases and fights. It was awesome! It made the hair on my arms stand on end.

The sucky parts were very few, thank goodness. I hated the scene were Alice showed her vision of Bella and Edward running slo-mo. It was too cheesy. Cheesy, too, was the scene in the water after Bella got whipped by the waves after she cliff-dived. Too bad she didn't die because I swear it would have made me feel better. And it's not even because I want Edward for myself. The pasty-faced dude can go to hell for all I care.

And seriously, what were they thinking showing Edward's body right after having your eyes feast on Jacob's oh so delicious bod?! What the hell were they thinking? Seeing Edward's white-out white body and oh my god your body has got nothing on Jacob's bod made me want to puke.

All I really wanted to say was: get your sorry, scrawny, ewww excuse for a body out of my face, Edward!

Thankfully Jacob got his hair cut when he started going wolf. I swear long hair does not suit the face of the actor they cast as Jacob. It made him look horribly ugly. I couldn't get past how ugly he was with long hair.

But, really, I would definitely encourage anyone to watch the movie. It was really nice. I guess it's a plus that I can hardly remember the story of the first three books so it was like being tabula rasa when I watched New Moon.

Itinerary today

I told you all (well, my Plurk friends anyway) that I'm meeting Jenn (May's friend), right?

Well, today, we're planning to meet her in Causeway Bay coz that's where she is (getting a mani).

(11:42:09 AM) may: anyway, puwedeng brunch lang tayo sa Maritime tapos i meet natin si Jenn sa Causeway Bay. Andun kasi siya today. Subukan natin yung cheesecake place.
(11:42:42 AM) may: Go around the area a bit (andun yung high-end shops_ + Ikea. Tapos punta tayo IFC, take Star Ferry. Mas maganda kasi pag gabi.

Not too great

I have what my doctor says is bad urinary tract infection. Pus content was seen in my urine sample and it's pretty high. My tummy's been spasming really bad. I wish this would be over soon. I have a ton of things to do at work and my being out sick and the trip to Shenzhen (hopefully) next week takes even more time away from my other tasks.

Yeaaah, it's all about work, isn't it?

This reminds me of a question I was asked earlier. The dude asked me what activities outside of work I engage in that helps me do my work. Honestly, there's none. Nothing physical or anything that involves physical interaction with other people anyway. After work I'm either at home, in the mall, or at home on the computer again. What could I tell him? Well, guess what I ended up telling him? I told him that I'm online all the time on forums (Plurk is what I mean! haha!) and my virtual interaction with the peeps there help me handle the virtual interaction with the team in other parts of the globe. I know, it sounds kind of lame, but there was nothing to say!

Excited!

I am excited about something, but I can't tell you what it is yet. I don't want to jinx it. I will tell you about it when there's something more definite to tell.

I am praying that things push through, that this is happening because God wants to make it happen for me.

I hate this feeling

Here I am again, thinking about going back to Wordpress for blogging. Crap! Why can't I just stop thinking about what blogging engine to use? CRAAAAAP! This is insane---I'M INSANE!

But, no, I'm not moving. If I do move, it will be to buy a domain name for me, but I won't be leaving Blogger.

Let's talk about the trip to Hyderabad

I'm sure it's obvious that I'm back from Hyderabad. I got home Wednesday afternoon, around 4 p.m. Thankfully there were no delays on the flights. We even left Hyderabad a couple minutes earlier than scheduled. I love trips like that!

Unfortunately I did not get to shop as much as I had been planning to in Changi Airport. I did not get much sleep because my flight was at 12:20 a.m. (GMT+5.5). In Changi I had to keep going back and forth because the gate where we got in was far from the gate where I'm to board the flight to Manila. And I did not see any sign about what direction to take to get to Gate E28 (We got in gate E7 or something). I did not even get a decent breakfast at Changi, even though I wanted to. I was just too tired and did not feel like eating. I had maybe $20 to spend on breakfast and all I got at Spinelli's was Earl Grey tea. Blech. I managed to buy a neck pillow at that $20 store in Changi. I did not bring my blow-up neck pillow and was having a heck of a time sleeping because I couldn't position my head comfortably.

Anyway, you obviously also know that I had a great time in Hyderabad. I wasn't sad or weepy or anything. Not like I was my first two days in Munich. You know, I forget why I was sad my first two days in Munich. I better go dig up that blog post about it. I'm sure I'll laugh reading it because I can't imagine why I was sad and weepy then. All I could think of is that Munich is the first city I've been to where people spoke languages other than English, and I wasn't used to it. I felt lost, and scared that I will stay lost. And the town where my hotel is is a place where very, very few people spoke English. The up-side to the Munich trip was that I wasn't as apprehensive going out by myself, taking public transportation. In Hyderabad, I was advised by a Hyderabadi not to take the auto-rickshaws. I e-mailed this guy whom I found online. He had a website about Hyderabad. A week before my trip I asked him what places would be nice to visit and where I could find so and so stuff. He told me a bunch of things including what kind of transportation to take.

My teammates met me at my hotel, Ista, on Sunday morning, 11 a.m. Before I go into what we did, let me tell you about the Ista Hotel. The Ista is a wonderful hotel! I totally loved my stay there. It was my first time to stay at a five star hotel so you can just imagine how awed I was by the service and the facilities. They were so wonderful! I've mentioned it once here, I know, but I want to say it again: I still think those two boys from in-room dining are very, very cute! I only got one of the names, though—Jacob, I'll never forget you! If I could've stayed pen pals or e-mail pals with you, I would. You are too cute! I wish I could've gotten the name of the chinky-eyed dude. He was also cute.

At the end of my stay I gladly filled out the guest survey form and made sure to give it to them. In return, one of the hotel managers sent me an e-mail to thank me for taking the time to fill out the form. How about that! Too bad I never got the chance to check out the pool. I was wanting to but I found out that some people from our other sites (one from Tempe and one from Marlborough were also in Hyderabad visiting our office) were also billeted at the same hotel. I didn't want to run into them at the pool. Yeah, I'm shy that way (as if you didn't know).

So... I felt a little stupid when I first met my teammates. I immediately handed them the stuff I got for them (dried mangoes and a mini jeepney to remember the Philippines by haha!) and after saying hi and asking who was who, I led them outside so we could look for the driver and the car I had reserved for that day. When we were in the car, I was mentally smacking my head—I should've sat down at the hotel lobby with them first and gone over the itinerary. I'm stupid, what can I say. Plus I was also feeling way too shy and felt that I needed to keep things moving/going so I won't have time to feel so absolutely shy.

We first went to the Golconda Fort. I had read about it in an online forum and thought it would be a nice place to see. It was a nice place to see, but the timing could've been better. We should've gone there later in the day when the sun wasn't so annoyingly bright and hot. We didn't get to go to the top of the fort because 1) it was tiring, and 2) it was super hot. We'd have collapsed had we tried. I had fun looking at the empty rooms in the fort. You'll just have to get on Wikipedia to read about it because I can't remember half of the details. What was interesting about the place was their means of informing each other when there's trouble. Several places had this diamond-shaped depressions in the ceiling. This structure created an effect that helped them communicate with each other over long distances. For example, if you stood in the center of the place where the diamond-shaped depressions were, you could clap and the clap would echo 24 times (I think is what they said) and you could hear the clap from way beyond. There's also this room where they said the guests of the king were made to wait or sit, and in that room, whatever they talked about could be heard by the king from way up in his room! It had the same diamond-shaped things in the corners of the ceiling.

Oh, funny story at the Golconda. There's an entrance fee and it's 5 rupees per person and 100 rupees for a foreigner. The guy at the ticket booth said I was okay to go in for 5 rupees but the security guard would not let me get away with just 5 rupees. My teammates argued with him about it and they told him that I was from Northern India and that's why I looked the way I did. So then the security guard started talking to me in Hindi and I was like, "I'm sorry? What are you saying?" LOL! Raj had to pay the 100 rupees for me to get in. It was really funny.



We finished at the Golconda at past 1 in the afternoon. We went to a shopping mall and had lunch at an Indian restaurant. Seena treated us to lunch as it was her birthday the week before. Lunch was very good. Unfortunately I took no pictures. I was too hungry and didn't want to make them think I was weird or something if I had to make them wait before they could eat just so I could take pictures. Plus the server started serving the food as soon as it was on our table so I could hardly ask him to stop and put things back. LOL. I'm glad my teammates were not into anything too spicy. I asked them to keep things less spicy because I wanted to be able to eat the food and taste it. :-D They were very accommodating.

Hyderabad is a lot like Metro Manila—the crowd, the traffic, the driving, the motorcycles, it was all similar and very familiar to me. They have places that remind me of Quiapo, Divisoria, Quezon Avenue, etc. The area where the Charminar is looks very, very much like Quiapo and Divisoria. You can buy all sorts of stuff there. I got my sister's beads and stones at some stall in Charminar. But Seena says that the Charminar isn't the cheapest place to buy souvenirs. She says it's even more expensive there as it is a tourist spot. I'm thinking the vendors at the Charminar know how to play the tourists.

I'm glad I was with my teammates when I bought my sister's stuff. If they were not with me, I'd have probably been scammed! You won't believe how much one dude was charging me for a couple of strands of stones and pendants. It was crazy.

We didn't get to visit too many places that Sunday but I still had fun. They showed me the Hussain Sagar Lake and we drove around it before we went back to the hotel. I was so tired that evening that it was easy to fall asleep. I had a very, very good dinner of Murg Ka Raab soup and lemon cheesecake.

It was back to work on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday I took them to lunch at The Spicy Venue restaurant, and then they took me to this crafts village near the office. Unfortunately, we did not get to go through the whole place because I had to get back to work to get in touch with someone. :-( There were so many cool things to buy at the crafts village and it would've been nice if I had had the chance to go through each stall and bought stuff to give to friends. Not having enough time is a bitch, I tell you.

I wish I had stayed one more day like I had originally planned. But I had stuff to do back home. I'm hoping there will be a next time. I want to spend time with them again! They are my teammates after all and I manage them now. Hopefully the company will allow a second business trip to Hyderabad?

Click here to see pictures in my Hyderabad Flickr set.

Not feeling well

I called in sick again. *sigh* and it's true. I have been unable to sleep. The only reason i'm awake right now is because i still haven't been able to sleep. This really sucks!

Weirdness on the plane

I can't believe that after all this time he still gets to me. On my way back to the Philippines, I cried on the plane ride from Hyderabad to Singapore. Thinking about it now makes me want to tear up again. I guess it just reminded me of how lonely I was when I went home in September 2008 after spending 12 days with him. You won't believe how pathetic I was---me, crying over a guy?! Eww.

But, yes, I cried. And on that plane ride to SG, I cried. I kept thinking about how things should have been if all had gone according to plan. I was sure he was the one. I felt it. It just really sucks that it was a failed relationship. Again.

It's funny how during the first few days after we had broken up I was happy that I was taking the break up quite well. I wasn't weepy. I wasn't catatonic. I was not the the girl who could hardly eat or sleep in 2005 when another relationship fell apart. I thought it meant that I was okay with it all. I guess I'm really not. On December, it will be one year since we broke up. We were broken up longer than we were together. That thought alone makes me want to cry and hurt him or whoever really bad. I want to inflict pain on someone, anyone, because I am still hurting. Even after all this time.

Saturday in Hyderabad

I haven't done much except call R and talk about the plans for tomorrow.

I finally got my dollars exchanged for rupees. I also just ordered lunch; it's 2:18 p.m. here and I'm hungry. I had to wait for the guy that I was getting my Indian currency from and had to get bigger notes changed to smaller ones to use for tipping.

I also called for transportation because I need to go to the bookstore and to the supermarket to get some supplies. The food items in the mini bar are too expensive! I already opened the Doritos they had because I was so hungry! I did this at 2 a.m. this morning as I was still up then. I have to get paper bags for the dried mangoes and miniature jeepneys I got my teammates for souvenirs from the Philippines.

Tomorrow we're all going out! :-D I hope the transportation service isn't too expensive for our trip tomorrow.

Cute guy alert

A cute guy brought up the breakfast I ordered earlier. He was *really* cute! I wish I had asked if I could take his picture. I just don't know what reason to give. I hope I run into him again (if I manage to venture out of my room!) and take photos of him in secret. LOL!

Man, I'm hungry.

I created a photo set for Hyderabad in Flickr. The photos that are up were taken in Changi and some are pictures of my hotel room. Hehe! Just keep checking my photostream for updates.

I feel like doing something, but what?

I was supposed to have gone to a wedding today but I skipped. I'm not particularly close to the person getting married and I have no doubts about not being missed. I also do not feel like getting dolled up and enduring making small talk with people I often see at work. I'll see them again at work on Monday so I doubt I'll be missing anything.

I feel like going out today, though. I want to go to the mall to get a gift for my friend (who's been my friend since college) who is celebrating her 30th birthday tomorrow. I'm not sure what to give her. I'm thinking about buying a book, but we'll see.

There's also the matter of just going out to get coffee and cupcakes, people-watch, and knit. I really also want to get a couple of local yarns to knit into decorations for our Christmas tree. I want to put up a Christmas tree this year. We totally did away with decorations last year because my mom, sister, and I were too lazy. But my mom and I were talking yesterday about re-arranging the furniture in the living area to free up some space and get some areas cleaned, and hopefully we'll have room to put the tree in.

Last night my mom and I also talked about what we're preparing for Christmas eve dinner. We both want to keep it low-key and stress-free. And so we've come up with the following food to serve on Christmas eve:

• Hotdog cocktails—We plan to go to a deli to get cold cuts to use with the hotdog cocktails and some yummy cheese!
  
• Lumpiang shanghai—I think this is what other people call spring rolls?
• Fresh lumpia—fresh spring rolls as opposed to fried
• Pancit
• Margarita—drinks for the girls (water for the boys haha!)
  

We haven't talked about what to do for New Year's eve fare. I'll most certainly put it down here.

*****
I'm kind of torn between using electronic devices to keep notes and using pen and paper. I have an E2 Tungsten that Robert gave me when we were still together. I have not been using it at all. I also bought this notepad from Barns and Noble a couple years back and it has since been gathering dust in my cabinet. Let's not even get into my cell phone that is a smart phone and you can use it to keep notes as well.

When I think about going electronic, I think about how it's a pain to keep the item charged. I mean, it has to have power so you can use it. But what's nice about electronic devices is you don't need other lighting to use it because it has its own lighting. If I go with pen and paper, I can't write in the dark.

*****

Where am I going with this post anyway?!

Nowhere, it seems. I just want to "talk". And Plurk is dead-zone land today what with the North Americans sleeping, and my European friends sleeping or working.

Ondoy is one of the worst, if not the worst

The rain has finally stopped. It had been raining since 7:30 p.m. last night and it only got worse when today broke in. I slept to rain and awoke to rain. I had to cancel a dermatologist appointment because the main road outside the subdivision is flooded. There was no getting out.

This typhoon is probably the worst I've ever been through. I know I did not have to get on top of our roof to escape rushing waters, none of my family did. But it was bad because streets in Quezon City (where I live) that do not normally flood as bad as España* does got flooded real bad today. Imagine Katipunan Avenue getting flooded. I have lived in Quezon City for more than 10 years now and I have never known Katipunan to get flooded as badly as it did today.

The news is filled with reports of people stranded in the topmost floor of their houses. Some are even in trees and on their roofs, waiting for neighbors to help them get across to somewhere where they can walk, dry off and get food. The pink fences that the MMDA put up in various parts of the city got torn down to allow cars to turn and pass through. Some areas are so flooded that even parked cars have become submerged. It's just downright horrible. I saw a video on Youtube where a car looked like the Titanic sinking.

You know, I do not know what the people who went out today were thinking. If they were not going to work but were going somewhere to have fun, what were they thinking?! I find it stupid that they would venture out in this kind of weather when it hasn't stopped raining since last night. And then they complain about being stuck in the highway, with no supplies in their car.

Another thing that strikes me as stupid is countrymen who keep wailing about not being rescued. What exactly do they think the government is? It's a government, not the Justice League or the Super Friends. They do not have Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquaman, Superman, The Green Lantern, Hawk Girl etc., at their disposal. That's not how they work. You have brains people, think! Save yourselves. Don't wait for a Superman to come fly you to dry land. You can't expect the government to have all the resources to help everyone that needs help. Not even the US government can do that. You need to think for yourselves.

Anyway, power was out for several hours today. I thought I was going to spend the night without electricity. Thank God it came back around 8 this evening.

The typhoon is on its way to the central provinces of Luzon*. I hope my mom's family in Pangasinan won't have to deal with flooding and will be safe.


-----
*España - a street in Manila (another city) that floods instantly at a little bit of rain
*Luzon - the northern island of the Philippines